In this episode of The Healers Café, Manon Bolliger, speaks to health coach and nervous system expert Mitch Webb who shares his powerful journey from biohacking and forcing his body to heal, to embracing trauma-informed, somatic, and nervous system-based healing. Discover how shifting from survival mode to self-trust and gentle awareness can transform chronic symptoms and expand your capacity for life.
For the transcript and full story go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/mitch-webb
Highlights from today's episode include:
Force vs. healing: Mitch describes how intense biohacking, strict diets, and "overwhelming force" helped only temporarily—true, sustainable healing began when he addressed unresolved trauma and his nervous system.
Sensitization & safety: Mitch explains sensitization (chronic hyper-vigilance, fear, and shrinking life) and how building safety, capacity, and self-trust through somatic and nervous system work allowed his symptoms to ease and his life to expand.
Bowen as a doorway to safety: Manon highlights how Bowen therapy can gently guide the body out of constant sympathetic overdrive, helping people slow down, become observers of their physical experience, and open another doorway into the deeper healing process.
ABOUT MITCH WEBB:
Mitch Webb is a health coach and nervous system expert who helps clients heal from the inside out. He works one-on-one with people dealing with gut issues, anxiety, autoimmune symptoms, fatigue, burnout, and other chronic conditions that haven't resolved through conventional approaches. Mitch blends functional health principles with deep nervous system work to get to the root cause—so healing isn't just a quick fix, it's sustainable. His approach is trauma-informed, body-based, and tailored to the individual. If you're ready to feel like yourself again, Mitch helps you get there. To contact, visit mitchwebb.com
Core purpose/passion: My core mission is to help people heal their nervous systems so they can stop chasing symptoms and start trusting their bodies again. I'm here to guide folks out of survival mode and back into a life that feels safe, aligned, and fully alive
– Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Website | Freebie | YouTube
ABOUT MANON BOLLIGER, RBHT, FCAH:
As a retired Naturopath 1992-2021, I saw an average of 150 patients per week and have helped people ranging from rural farmers in Nova Scotia to stressed out CEOs in Toronto to tri-athletes here in Vancouver.
My resolve to educate, empower and engage people to take charge of their own health is evident in my best-selling books: 'What Patients Don't Say if Doctors Don't Ask: The Mindful Patient-Doctor Relationship' and 'A Healer in Every Household: Simple Solutions for Stress'. and What if Your Body is Smarter than You Think? I am the Founder & CEO of The Bowen College Inc. which teaches BowenFirst™ Therapy and holds transformational workshops to achieve these goals.
So, when I share with you that LISTENing to Your body is a game changer in the healing process, I am speaking from expertise and direct experience".
Mission: A Healer in Every Household!
For more great information to go to her weekly blog: http://bowencollege.com/blog.
For tips on health & healing go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips
Follow: Manon Bolliger website | Linktr.ee | Rumble | Gettr | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn |
Follow: Bowen College Inc. | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube | Twitter | Rumble | Locals
ABOUT THE HEALERS CAFE:
Manon's show is the #1 show for medical practitioners and holistic healers to have heart to heart conversations about their day to day lives.
Subscribe and review on your favourite platform:
iTunes | Google Play | Spotify | Libsyn | iHeartRadio | Gaana | The Healers Cafe | Radio.com | Medioq | Audacy |
Follow The Healers Café on FB: https://www.facebook.com/thehealerscafe
Remember to subscribe if you like our videos. Click the bell if you want to be one of the first people notified of a new release.
* De-Registered, revoked & retired naturopathic physician after 30 years of practice in healthcare. Now resourceful & resolved to share with you all the tools to take care of your health & vitality!
00:00:00
Introduction: Welcome to the Healers Cafe, the #1 show for
00:00:04
medical practitioners and holistic healers to have heart
00:00:08
to heart conversations about their day to day lives while
00:00:13
sharing their expertise for improving your health and
00:00:17
wellness.
00:00:17
Manon Bolliger: So welcome to the Healers Cafe, and today I
00:00:23
have with me Mitch Webb and he's a health coach and nervous
00:00:28
system expert who helps clients heal from the inside out. He
00:00:33
works one on one with people dealing with gut issues,
00:00:37
anxiety, autoimmune symptoms, fatigue, burnout and other
00:00:40
chronic conditions that have been resolved through
00:00:43
conventional approaches, and he blends functional health
00:00:48
principles with deep nervous system work to get to the root
00:00:52
cause. So healing isn't just a quick fix, it's actually
00:00:56
sustainable, and I'm imagine so that it actually can take place,
00:01:01
right? Okay, well, I think this is very appropriate discussion
00:01:08
point for today. Welcome, and let me just ask you, what got
00:01:15
you focused in this field? What kind of brought you there.
00:01:22
Mitch Webb: Well, first off, thanks for having me on. I
00:01:25
really appreciate the introduction. Sounds so nice
00:01:28
hearing it. What got me into this work, school of hard
00:01:32
knocks, getting my butt kicked and trying to figure out
00:01:35
solutions.
00:01:38
Manon Bolliger: Okay, do you want to expand on that?
00:01:40
Mitch Webb: Oh, yeah. How long do we got?
00:01:43
Manon Bolliger: I'll give back that
00:01:45
Mitch Webb: overview, and then, and then, if you want to dive
00:01:47
anything out, but we can do that. Is that cool? Sure, yeah.
00:01:51
So when I was 20 years old, studying abroad in Germany, it
00:01:59
was World Cup fell out of second story window party and drinking
00:02:03
and hit my head, had a traumatic brain injury. That's that
00:02:08
changed my life. A couple months after that broke out in
00:02:11
autoimmune disease, so like skin rash all over the place. And the
00:02:15
more I do this work, I see that's very common after a big,
00:02:18
a big traumatic event, or while we're doing the healing work and
00:02:23
panic attacks anxiety. Had insomnia for 20 years, until
00:02:27
recently, started sleeping again. Was on medication. They
00:02:31
gave me immune suppressants and kind of sent me on my way. And
00:02:36
that helped in college, when I was, you know, not really,
00:02:41
wasn't really affecting me. It was affecting me a lot, but I
00:02:44
didn't know what else to do, right? Couple years later, went
00:02:48
into the corporate world. Added a lot more stress there, I moved
00:02:52
into a house that had black mold. Honestly, I didn't know
00:02:56
that at the time, but I developed Lyme disease as a
00:03:00
result of being in that environment with the mold, it
00:03:03
lowered my immune system and Lyme as an opportunistic
00:03:07
pathogen. And it came out that way, mold and lime very similar
00:03:12
in symptom, symptom that come up with that. So I got into
00:03:20
functional medicine, started to work on I found out I had heavy
00:03:25
metals and I had diabetes, or, you know, metabolic issues, and
00:03:29
so just did the conventional biohacking, not conventional, I
00:03:32
guess it's more holistic and functional medicine route. But I
00:03:36
reversed the lime, or I dealt with that reverse the mold,
00:03:42
heavy metals, diabetes, with, with force, you know, with, with
00:03:47
typical biohacking and functional medicine type stuff.
00:03:51
Manon Bolliger: Yes, okay, can you actually specify not what
00:03:54
your regime was or what you were told to do, but just because
00:03:58
some people don't look at it like force. But I would agree,
00:04:04
what are you talking about?
00:04:05
Mitch Webb: Yeah, so like, like I was trying to fix my body, I
00:04:11
felt like I needed to be the doer of my body, like my body. I
00:04:14
assumed my body was broken and I was trying to fix it, and that's
00:04:19
a recipe for disaster, and it helped. I mean, I it worked
00:04:24
until it didn't, you know, it i was able. I learned so much from
00:04:27
these things. But, you know, I was dove in headfirst to the
00:04:31
biohacking world. I was fasting. That's how I reversed, you know,
00:04:34
low carb diets and fasting. And pushed that so hard until I gave
00:04:38
myself a thyroid issue. I was so afraid of carbs and exercising
00:04:43
and doing CrossFit, and body needs carbohydrates, but that's
00:04:46
just what the world was doing. And I, because I had head
00:04:49
injuries, I assumed that I could like ketosis my way to healing.
00:04:54
And you mean, you detox, you know, liver flushes, gallbladder
00:04:58
flushes, long ass. Fast, seven, eight days, you know, cost every
00:05:06
supplement known to man. I mean, I had a biohacking lab at my
00:05:11
house. I had a hyperbaric oxygen sauna, cold plunge when, you
00:05:16
know, I was had 15 different practitioners that I was seeing,
00:05:19
and none of them were talking about trauma, and that's kind of
00:05:22
crazy. And so I left the corporate world, became a health
00:05:26
coach and started teaching this stuff, and I was really good at
00:05:29
getting people to lose weight, but I kind of feel guilty at
00:05:33
this point now. I mean, I didn't know that I was coaching from my
00:05:36
trauma and teaching people how to overwhelm and force their way
00:05:39
to health. I still use biohacking and some of these
00:05:43
modalities, but it's not as a tool to heal, you know. It's,
00:05:48
it's a, it's support to for whatever's that day, you know.
00:05:55
And so going back to the story, though, unless you have any
00:05:58
questions,
00:05:59
Manon Bolliger: well, no, I think you're gonna probably
00:06:01
expand on that. What is, fundamentally the difference
00:06:05
between dealing with a trauma based incident than doing your
00:06:11
biohacking and putting Humpty Dumpty back together again by
00:06:15
force?
00:06:16
Mitch Webb: Yeah, I mean, I'm meeting what's here instead of
00:06:20
trying to fight it or run away from it. You know, it's
00:06:24
softening into it and slowing down and and feeling the
00:06:30
emotions and feeling the memories bubble up, and feeling
00:06:33
the images and, you know, the the symptoms and sensations and
00:06:38
welcoming everything and entrusting that, that the next
00:06:42
step is always there, and if I can just be with it and learn to
00:06:46
love it. And I have this analogy I've been sharing recently. It's
00:06:51
like traumas, like waking up with dog poo, like all over your
00:06:54
whole body and and the things that we have learned to clean
00:07:00
that, you know, they don't work. You can't scrub it, and there's
00:07:03
not enough hot water and soap, and it's just like, not coming
00:07:05
off, and you're going crazy. And that's what I was doing. I was
00:07:08
using what I knew, which is, avoid it, dismiss it, and then,
00:07:12
like, you know, beat the crap out of it with and I was a, you
00:07:17
know, in sports, that's the gear that I had, you know, I would
00:07:22
run, if this would make sense, but I would run the football,
00:07:25
and you could go score, but I wanted to go run somebody over,
00:07:29
you know, I wanted to hurt people, and that was my
00:07:35
aggression coming out and anger and all The stuff that I was
00:07:39
stuffing down being a kid and not knowing how to deal with
00:07:44
that, and feeling, you know, upon years later, looking back
00:07:48
with so much hyper vigilance and unsafety and so much anger and
00:07:54
fear and all the things. And I'm so glad that I had those
00:07:58
outlets, but that became the only gear that I had is I'm
00:08:00
going to overwhelm this with force. And it works in a certain
00:08:05
situation, you know, that's a good gear to have when you need
00:08:08
it. But it's like being David Goggins all the time and, you
00:08:11
know, or and just yelling at somebody until they get it
00:08:14
right. And that's what I was doing, you know, it's and it
00:08:18
basically had to exhaust myself and explore all the things to
00:08:24
see that it wasn't working and they had to figure out a new
00:08:26
way. And that's kind of about the time I started diving into
00:08:29
this work and learning more about the nervous system, and
00:08:32
that became the lens that I see the world through. Is, is, I'm
00:08:38
the medicine, and my clients are like, You are the medicine, like
00:08:41
we know what we need. We've just been taught to we've been
00:08:44
conditioned to disconnect from ourself, to abandon ourself, to
00:08:49
take on all these protective roles, like people pleasing and
00:08:53
intellectualization and perfection. And we think that's
00:08:56
who we are, but we're really buried underneath all of that.
00:08:59
And you know, I say this work is the great red pill, because it
00:09:04
starts by waking you up to your own stuff and your family and
00:09:08
relationships and society eventually, and you're like,
00:09:12
Man, this is, this is a, it's a different world than it was when
00:09:16
I started this journey. You know, because I'm seeing things
00:09:18
more clearly. I'm not, I'm not in, I'm not in survival mode,
00:09:24
and freeze and stuck, right?
00:09:26
Manon Bolliger: So, but do you think that it's the survival
00:09:29
mode operating through you? Then that led you to choosing the
00:09:37
these types of, let's call it more invasive but more
00:09:46
challenging therapies, or, you know, this kind of ego based
00:09:51
therapies, I don't know what
00:09:52
Mitch Webb: you Oh, yeah, 100% I mean, that's all that I do. I
00:09:56
didn't know anything else. I didn't know my family, is not
00:09:59
it? It doesn't know what emotions are. They don't know
00:10:02
what emotional healthy is, you know? They don't. I'm thinking
00:10:06
like emotional immaturity, and how to say the other side of
00:10:08
that. It's a lot of narcissism and emotional immaturity. And
00:10:12
I'm the black sheep, you know? I'm the I'm the problem, you
00:10:15
know? And it's a, we heard a quote yesterday. It's like, if,
00:10:21
if we don't work on our demons, they raise our children, right?
00:10:27
That's what raised me, and that's all I knew. Not that, not
00:10:30
that they're bad people either. Yeah, the best that they can,
00:10:32
and they're in survival. They handed that stuff to me, and I
00:10:35
used the only tool that I knew, knew, which is overwhelming
00:10:38
force, yeah,
00:10:41
Manon Bolliger: but the journey of overwhelming force obviously
00:10:46
played a role in what you became and what your passion is, and
00:10:52
your whole health journey in the end, like it's because I often
00:10:57
think, you know, gosh, How can you speed this up knowing now,
00:11:02
like, Did you did you waste time or, or was that what your body
00:11:07
kind of resonated with or needed, or you needed to go
00:11:11
through that you need to be shown that path before you could
00:11:15
go to the next one. Like, you know, sometimes I wonder about
00:11:18
information and how we come across that question.
00:11:24
Mitch Webb: I've thought about that a lot. And I mean, I think
00:11:27
I'm in the position now that I can save other people a lot of
00:11:30
time, and that's kind of what I'm doing. And it's real easy to
00:11:34
look at missteps and mistakes and say, Man, I could have
00:11:38
gotten that earlier. You know, I would love to have been
00:11:42
introduced. I wish I came with the operating manual of how to
00:11:45
work with this human body and the emotion, all the things, you
00:11:48
know, but that didn't happen. And and I'm grateful for my
00:11:54
journey, and I wouldn't do it differently, because it made me
00:11:59
who I am. I wouldn't be. I mean, I'm the kind of person that's
00:12:02
kind of got to get my buck. I'm gonna say not anymore. I'm not,
00:12:06
hopefully, but was the type of person that had to take the
00:12:09
licks to understand. And you know, my my career in sports is
00:12:17
what made me never quit. Yeah, my experience that I have
00:12:23
attracts the clients that are perfect for me, and those are
00:12:27
that's who I am working with, and it scares the crap out of me
00:12:31
that someone can get a PhD and prescribe very strong drugs and
00:12:37
never have done the work themselves. So how are you going
00:12:39
to meet somebody else and in their stuff. And so that was the
00:12:43
gift, is I got my ass kicked, and I learned from it. And maybe
00:12:48
it took me 1000 freaking tries. But that's, that's the beauty of
00:12:53
the human experience. I think we, I think Earth is somewhere
00:12:56
we come to learn lessons, maybe, and learning mine, yeah.
00:13:02
Manon Bolliger: It's true. Because you're somebody will
00:13:05
resonate with your path or your transition. You're sort of the
00:13:09
bridge of, hey, we can do it another way, if you're open,
00:13:14
right and and because now you've done it, and people can get that
00:13:19
right because you've done that. So they
00:13:22
Mitch Webb: think, like, coming from a man's perspective, that's
00:13:25
been like, I have like a I kind of feel like I'm like a Joe
00:13:29
Rogan of the mental health space, where I can relate to a
00:13:36
lot of people. I used to think that my superpower was that I
00:13:40
could be anyone, for any, anybody. I was like a chameleon,
00:13:44
but I didn't know who I was. But I've been so I've worn so many
00:13:48
hats, you know, and I've been such a normal, browed out, frat
00:13:52
boy, jock, redneck, you know, Hunter, you know, you never
00:13:58
know. I have so many interests, and I feel like I can relate to
00:14:01
the men. And I think where it's, I mean, I'll be honest, get into
00:14:06
this work, and a lot of the guys feel very feminine. And it's not
00:14:10
that that that's bad. I tend to be more friends with girls now
00:14:14
than I do with guys, because they do the work and they can
00:14:16
understand. So I get that. But it's, it's it's being, I think
00:14:20
it's a little bit more approachable, certainly for the
00:14:23
man that I'm working with, because they're not as they're
00:14:27
not as interested in the work as the women are. It seems like to
00:14:32
me, that's my,
00:14:32
Manon Bolliger: yeah, no. I mean, I think you know whether
00:14:36
it's cultural or whatever, but there definitely is. I can I see
00:14:41
what you're saying. It doesn't seem like, Oh, I've never
00:14:44
experienced what you're talking but I
00:14:48
Mitch Webb: mean, unless you're asleep.
00:14:51
Manon Bolliger: Now, okay, so let's talk about the work you're
00:14:56
doing now, right? So how? Do you start with people? They, they
00:15:03
meet you, they there's some association to the journey. They
00:15:07
feel some connection there. How do you actually start with them?
00:15:12
How do you get them to start their journey? Typically, I'm
00:15:16
generalizing, of course.
00:15:18
Mitch Webb: You know, it's funny ask that question, because I
00:15:20
used to make me so uncomfortable. Until I got some
00:15:24
really good I'm still learning, you know, I got some good tips
00:15:27
from my mentor, Irene Lyon. And you know, health coaching is way
00:15:33
easy. You know, I can come in and I'm like, Alright, where do
00:15:37
you want to go? Cool. Where you at now? Yeah, what have you
00:15:42
tried? You know? Okay, cool. And I can build out a plan, and
00:15:46
we're doing the plan, and, you know, we're just kind of going,
00:15:48
there's, there's an outcome and, and I know where you want to go
00:15:51
and where you've been, and what you've tried and what's worked,
00:15:54
and what's not and what's let's navigate around that. That's
00:15:57
easy, you know, well, and this is easy too, but in this work,
00:16:01
we have to meet the moment and trust, trust the quantum field,
00:16:07
the environment, whether we're in person or not. And so how I
00:16:13
come in, what do I where I start? I don't know that. I
00:16:16
can't really say that's that's kind of hard to say. Where do
00:16:19
you start? I think I'm starting by building rapport and building
00:16:22
a relationship and trying to understand where this person's
00:16:25
at and what kind of capacity they have, what school skills
00:16:31
they have, whether that's in a physical, emotional and I really
00:16:39
Start with what's the low hanging fruit? Like they're
00:16:42
nervous, I have to trust that their nervous system will show
00:16:46
me where we need to go. I don't want to go to level three right
00:16:51
away. I want to start at level one. I want to start at the
00:16:53
level that you're at, you know? And it takes some like, from my
00:16:58
experience, it's just building a relationship, building a
00:17:01
conversation, and the next step will reveal itself and and if
00:17:05
I'm trusting that, and they're trusting that, learn to trust
00:17:08
that kind of modeling, that in the in the call that our nervous
00:17:13
system is the map, and it's going to provide the next step.
00:17:16
And if I can get out of the way with me having some expectation
00:17:20
or some attachment to an outcome, and I can just be here
00:17:23
with this person, and their system feels safe. It's going to
00:17:27
say, hey, here I am. And it may be we start with food, it may be
00:17:31
we start with environmental health and learning about
00:17:34
circadian biology and grounding, and, you know, avoiding blue
00:17:38
light and then at night and getting sunlight in the morning.
00:17:41
And, you know, working on environmental stressors like Wi
00:17:45
Fi and fragrances that are inside and cleaning supplies
00:17:48
that are in the house. Like, if people are coming to me, they're
00:17:51
typically got a lot of symptoms, they're sick something, you
00:17:53
know, they tried a lot of things and nothing's working. And so I
00:17:57
want to make sure they've got the foundation of, are they
00:18:00
eating good food? Are they moving? Are they sleeping? Are
00:18:03
they drinking water? Are they getting outside? What are their
00:18:06
relationships like? Like, all that stuff is going to tell me
00:18:09
what's going on, and then from there, if the foundation is
00:18:13
checked, and then we're going into things like building of
00:18:16
capacity, learning how to orient and be here now and follow our
00:18:21
impulse and, you know, and once we're doing it depends on a lot
00:18:26
of my clients right now are more in a sensitized state, so there
00:18:31
it's kind of like global high and with a lot of over and under
00:18:34
coupling and and there's a lot of fear in that, and a lot of
00:18:39
fixing, Right? So they're using the biohacking stuff, and
00:18:42
they're end up chasing their tail, and they've got so much
00:18:45
adrenaline and hyper vigilance, and what's the word bewilderment
00:18:51
in the system, they're trying to figure it out. You know? It's
00:18:54
like, hey, that person doesn't need to be doing somatic work
00:18:59
yet. That person needs to learn to to meet that fear and be in
00:19:05
the fire and know it's not going to burn them and learn all these
00:19:09
compulsive behaviors that they're engaging in that are
00:19:11
keeping them stuck. And, yeah, I mean, it's like, it's like a web
00:19:16
right? And it seems so complicated, but to me, it feels
00:19:19
like having a lot of tools at my disposal, and if I listen really
00:19:23
good, the person will tell me what they need.
00:19:25
Commercial Break: What would your life be like if you were
00:19:28
pain free? If you were one of the millions who suffer from
00:19:31
chronic pain? The thought of just one day without it may seem
00:19:36
impossible. This is often because conventional medicine
00:19:39
tends to fall short in the treatment of pain, opting to
00:19:43
prescribe pills or recommend surgery rather than getting to
00:19:46
the root cause of the problem. But if you are suffering with
00:19:50
emotional or physical pain, there is hope. Join the founder
00:19:55
and CEO of Bowen College, Manon Bolliger, live online. Mind for
00:20:00
your body. Mind reboot. Learn how to listen to your symptoms
00:20:05
and get to the root cause of your pain, plus be trained in
00:20:09
basic bow and therapy moves so that you can reboot your body
00:20:13
for optimal health. You don't have to live in pain. You can
00:20:18
heal, stop the pain pill cycle by visiting
00:20:23
www.yourbodymindreboot.com, to learn more and to register
00:20:35
Manon Bolliger: which one. Yeah. Which one's the one to work with
00:20:39
first? Yeah. So is that, is that kind of your, your journey? How,
00:20:44
how it changed? I mean, you took yourself in hand, but not fixing
00:20:50
it more, just listening to what your body was telling you, or
00:20:56
how, how would you,
00:20:57
Mitch Webb: oh, my gosh. I mean, eventually, you know, it's more
00:21:04
recent, you know, to be honest, like the fixing and figuring
00:21:08
out. Like I was very sensitized myself. I was crushed with
00:21:11
fatigue and tons of anxiety, you know, and freeze with bunch of
00:21:16
sympathetic and my life was getting smaller and smaller and
00:21:21
smaller. I'm avoiding more and doing everything I can to put
00:21:25
the fire out. And I had some great mentors along the way. You
00:21:29
know, there's a time when I couldn't really feel my own
00:21:31
intuition. I think our body is the map, and it pulls us out of
00:21:35
whatever health hell hole we're in, and I couldn't listen. So I
00:21:39
had someone that was a medium, and they were helping me, you
00:21:42
know, connect to source and guides and get information. And,
00:21:48
you know, I was dependent on her, and then I was dependent on
00:21:50
something. There's so many things when I couldn't listen to
00:21:53
my body. I had other people that were helping me, and I was doing
00:21:57
all the research and just trying to fit a square through a
00:22:02
through a circle, you know? And, yeah, it took a lot of
00:22:06
repetition to get to the place where I'm like, Okay, I'm going
00:22:09
to surrender to this, and I'm going to walk through the I'm
00:22:13
going to walk through the fire of learning that my symptoms
00:22:17
can't hurt me, and I'm going to put down the compulsive
00:22:20
behavior, and I'm gonna just feel my body and, you know,
00:22:25
somatically track in a way that memories and emotions come up,
00:22:29
and I'm kind of letting a little bit out at a time. And that took
00:22:33
three, four years of doing this work, you know, that's been in
00:22:35
the last six months to be honest. I mean, yeah, made a big
00:22:40
turnaround doing that type of stuff and but here's the thing
00:22:44
is, it's like I had all these pieces from all these mentors
00:22:47
and things that I learned, and when things click for me. I was
00:22:52
just talking to Aaron, you know, earlier today, and it's like I
00:22:55
take these like quantum jumps because I've got so much, so
00:22:59
many resources and so much experience that when I get what
00:23:03
I need, it's like it boom, it shoots me forward quite a bit.
00:23:09
The thing too, like I could intellectualize it, yeah, knew
00:23:13
the science, and I knew how it worked, and it's like my body
00:23:16
just hadn't caught up yet, like I didn't have the capacity to do
00:23:19
the work that I knew my body needed because sensitization
00:23:23
thing was in the way I had to deal with that first
00:23:26
Manon Bolliger: Okay, so let's, I want to talk two things, the
00:23:28
sensitization, could you like, expand a little bit more what
00:23:33
that was for you, so that it's kind of becomes realer, and the
00:23:38
other part is surrender. What? What is that for you? But let's
00:23:42
start with the first one. I'll try and remember the second
00:23:45
Mitch Webb: I wrote it down. Yeah, so sensitization is when
00:23:51
we've got hyper vigilance from so we have an initial scary
00:23:58
situation that happens, there's fear, and then there's symptoms,
00:24:02
and then there's a secondary fear of the thing happening
00:24:07
again. Now we're creating like these neuroplastic symptoms,
00:24:11
like, for example, whenever we were hunter gatherers, this came
00:24:16
in really handy whenever I went to the area of the woods Where
00:24:19
the bear is and I get attacked, and I don't want to go back
00:24:22
there again, right? And so my body's saying, danger, danger,
00:24:25
danger. But because that fear is in my system, and it's not
00:24:30
completing, it's like it continues to build up and it
00:24:36
overwhelms and saturates my system with fear and hyper
00:24:40
vigilance, everything becomes a fear or a threat. And so my
00:24:44
system is constantly in fight or flight. And we know from, you
00:24:47
know, polyvagal theory, if I'm up here in really high
00:24:50
activation for a prolonged period of time, eventually that
00:24:53
low, that high tone dorsal is going to come on. It's going to
00:24:56
freeze, and it's going to bring me down here. And, you know. I
00:25:00
was just talking with with Irene about this. And, you know,
00:25:03
global high it kind of means, you know, our nervous system is
00:25:06
just naturally very high sympathetic, and so it's hard to
00:25:09
get that to come down very simply and with, and I was like,
00:25:14
you know, is that kind of the same thing? And she's like,
00:25:17
Yeah, but there's some over coupling. And under coupling,
00:25:19
where, for me, the way that looked is, whenever I had a
00:25:24
symptom, whatever happened 24 hours before that, I blamed and
00:25:27
it became all the things that I love to do. So it was exercise,
00:25:31
it was food, it was people and places and and then my world
00:25:36
just gets small. We get like agoraphobic can happen, meaning
00:25:39
I don't want to leave my house, and we basically the world gets
00:25:43
really small because we're avoiding everything, because
00:25:45
everything's a threat. And so to kind of come out of that, I had
00:25:50
to see the compulsive behavior that I was using to figure out
00:25:54
what was going on and to fix what was going on. And so when I
00:25:58
could see it is, it's almost like a lens. When that lens
00:26:02
comes on, everything feels scary. My thoughts are spinning
00:26:05
like crazy, and on the other side of that, I don't even have
00:26:09
those thoughts. I'm a completely different person. I'm just I'm
00:26:11
in my window of tolerance. I'm feeling safe, I'm feeling good.
00:26:14
I may have symptoms and things like that, but I don't attach to
00:26:18
them and and go on the ride. I kind of notice it, and if it
00:26:21
wants to be here, okay, cool, you can. It's kind of like
00:26:24
having a roommate that sucks in the background. And so if you
00:26:29
embodied that person, you brought them into life, and they
00:26:32
were talking to you like the sensitization is talking to you.
00:26:34
You wouldn't listen for that long, right? So I'm like, oh,
00:26:37
here it is again. I hear you. I'm not dismissing you and
00:26:40
telling you to go away. I'm saying I hear you, and I can
00:26:43
tell it's in my stomach. I'm gonna sit here for five minutes
00:26:45
and tell me everything, and then I'm gonna go back to what I'm
00:26:48
doing, and you can be in the background, and that's fine. And
00:26:50
that's it's like everything is a wave. And so if I can let the
00:26:53
wave come up and go down, then it completes and my brain isn't
00:26:57
going, that's a that's a priority, that's a priority, you
00:27:01
know. And eventually the brain goes, Oh, he's not, you know,
00:27:04
reacting to this anymore. So we'll move on to something else.
00:27:10
Does that make sense?
00:27:11
Manon Bolliger: No, it absolutely does, yeah. And then
00:27:16
the because I feel like there's still between that, where you're
00:27:20
you become more the noticer, so you are not taking things like
00:27:26
that, that the only reality is the, you know, hyper sympathetic
00:27:31
reality, that there's at least two realities happening, but
00:27:36
you're that's a
00:27:36
Mitch Webb: good point right there. I want to pause it right
00:27:39
there, because it, I got this from Simona Erwin. She's a good
00:27:42
friend now, so I've been working with her and in her community
00:27:45
and and I love doctor, Doctor weeks, Claire weeks is where I
00:27:50
first heard about this information. And what, what
00:27:54
Simona talks about is when we start to do this work, yes,
00:27:57
being the observer, kind of like watching a leaf go down the
00:28:00
water creek or river, whatever, and and then she talks about
00:28:05
these two rivers, and there's the river of fear and there's
00:28:08
the river of love. And so think about the river of love is like
00:28:13
attachment, repair and inner child healing and Building
00:28:16
Safety and capacity. And so yeah, I'm scared as crap right
00:28:20
now, but I'm going to be really talking to myself nice and
00:28:23
saying, Hey, I'm here with you. I see you. Not like, Oh, you're
00:28:26
safe. You got this. It's more like, Hey, I'm here and I'm not
00:28:30
going anywhere, right? Because we identify these younger parts
00:28:35
and we're able to say, what did that part need? You know? Like,
00:28:38
oh man, you know what. It needed to belong. It needed to feel
00:28:41
safe. It needed to feel like it mattered. It needed to feel
00:28:44
loved and unconditionally loved. And it's like, Oh, guess what?
00:28:49
Nobody's coming to give you that you know, but you can give that
00:28:56
to yourself, and that's the magic trick. And it's just when
00:28:59
that, when that trigger opens up all the things that I was
00:29:03
running away from and avoiding, now I get excited for I'm like,
00:29:07
Oh man, here's another one. Like, what's going to happen on
00:29:09
the other side of this? Now I know it's going to suck, and I'm
00:29:12
not, like, fun. I mean, I'm excited in what's going to
00:29:16
happen and what I'm going to meet and what capacity can I
00:29:19
gain, and you know what's gonna happen with this? And, like, how
00:29:22
much more can I can I love and learn about myself? And so it
00:29:26
used to be, oh shit, here it goes. And now it's like, oh
00:29:30
shit. Like, let's go. You know, it's a little bit different, and
00:29:33
that's a big change for someone like me that was debilitated.
00:29:39
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, you know, you're just saying something. I
00:29:42
don't know if I have the words for it, but my question, the
00:29:45
next question for you was, how do you from this observer? It's
00:29:51
like, it's a loving observer, right? How do you get to the
00:29:56
space of that trust? Trust the trust in the universe. Trust the
00:30:02
surrender like,
00:30:09
Mitch Webb: yeah, I wanted to know. So I think uncertainty.
00:30:15
What is it self? Trust is safety, and uncertainty is a big
00:30:20
part of not feeling safe, and so ultimately, we have to learn to
00:30:24
trust ourselves. I never had that. I didn't have that
00:30:27
language. I never felt safe. I never trusted, you know, so
00:30:31
that, how do we do that? You know, I've spent a lot of time
00:30:34
asking those questions like, yeah, I want to trust what I do.
00:30:37
Do that. You write it down a million times, and basically she
00:30:40
said something that really makes sense to me, and it's, you know,
00:30:43
safety is something interest is something that's built through
00:30:47
repetition. And I would add to that, you know, you got to see
00:30:49
the ball go through the hoop as an athlete, when you get the
00:30:52
yips. The yips means I'm like, I'm like, an athlete. I know how
00:30:56
to hit free throws, but for some reason, for certain periods of
00:31:00
time, I can't do it, and it's driving me crazy, you know. And
00:31:03
so there's all kinds of tricks for the Yes, but ultimately, you
00:31:06
got to see one go through this, through the hoop, so you can
00:31:08
start to trust it. You build a little bit. Okay? And so for me,
00:31:12
what was happening for many years, for a couple of years,
00:31:17
you know, two or three, I'd say, really, one to two years because
00:31:21
I was aware. I was consciously aware, and built some education.
00:31:24
I knew I need to come up this wave and come back down to, you
00:31:28
know, hit the top peak activation, and come back down
00:31:31
and get back to a window of tolerance, of baseline. But I
00:31:35
couldn't do it, you know, and so I had this way of scaring myself
00:31:39
out of it, from a lot of the teachers that I've had that was
00:31:43
like, you're going to do too much now, for somebody that's
00:31:46
listening and beginning like, you better be a little bit not
00:31:50
scared, but hesitant, you know, aware of doing too much. You
00:31:54
know, that's that's a big part of this work. Too much too soon,
00:31:57
is not pretty, you know. So I basically learned a somatic
00:32:02
practice where I could this, combining bottom up and top
00:32:06
down. And I just kept coming up against that fear. And it was
00:32:10
like, Well, what happens if you sit there at that door and just
00:32:13
what happens next? And eventually, I was like, All
00:32:16
right, well, I'm not gonna stop this time. I'm gonna go through
00:32:19
it and see what. And it was like, you know, a minute and a
00:32:22
half of some intense emotion that, like on the other side, I
00:32:24
felt like a million bucks. And I'm like, Are you kidding me?
00:32:27
That's all I had to do is, is sit with it. Now, that's very
00:32:31
simple to say that too. So somebody that was in my role or
00:32:34
my position a year ago, let's say that would piss me off, but
00:32:39
you got to build capacity and go slow and learn to trust. And I
00:32:44
think safety is built by those little, little drops. It's not
00:32:49
some big, cathartic I wanted something like that, somebody
00:32:53
who has used overwhelming, forceful life. I thought it was
00:32:56
going to be this explosion moment, and I've had those as
00:33:00
well. I wouldn't recommend them. I find that, you know, the
00:33:06
little practice and the little drops and the consistency with
00:33:10
staying inside my capacity a little bit more having good
00:33:14
people around me, and then feeling the results of staying
00:33:19
with it and going, Oh, wow, this is way better, because I feel
00:33:22
like you go up that, up that ride. Let's call it a was it
00:33:29
when you do this roller coaster, when you get when you're going
00:33:32
up it, man, it gets intense. And so I think if you get scared and
00:33:36
you stop and you let your thoughts bring you out of the
00:33:38
experience, going back into that. That's a backlog. The
00:33:43
whole system's just getting clogged up, and that left me
00:33:47
feeling like crap.
00:33:49
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, I once heard that to go through an
00:33:55
emotion takes about 90 seconds. I forgot who said this, but I
00:34:02
remember that statement being Pivotal, because myself, I would
00:34:09
then just go, Well, I'm going through. Just stick with it.
00:34:13
Just stick with it where it's going to be done through, just
00:34:17
be with it. And it's like knowing that there is actually
00:34:20
an end. It's not, you know, because, again, this catharsis
00:34:24
and this all that we're so trained to believe that that's
00:34:28
the big purge and that it's all going to come out that way, you
00:34:31
know? And really, it's much more simple, if we can relax into it
00:34:38
and and know that there is an end. And, you know, we, we do
00:34:41
move forward, right?
00:34:43
Mitch Webb: Yeah, well, that's well, that's self trust, that's
00:34:46
exciting, that's trusting that what goes up must come down. My
00:34:53
therapist would tell me that, and I'd be like, That's great. I
00:34:56
mean, I love hearing that. But, like, when's it gonna come down?
00:34:58
Because I've been, I've been. Fighting this emotion for 40
00:35:01
freaking years. Yeah, because I'm doing 30 seconds every time.
00:35:05
I'm not 90, right? Exactly.
00:35:08
Manon Bolliger: Anyway, our time is up. That's it. You need to
00:35:12
write a book.
00:35:15
Mitch Webb: I definitely will someday.
00:35:18
Manon Bolliger: Anyway, thanks very much for sharing your
00:35:23
parents and yeah, thanks. And I'm sure it'll help a lot of
00:35:29
people to kind of clear the journey. Well, that interview
00:35:35
with Mitch, being an expert in the nervous system, really
00:35:41
brings to me home the message of how when working with the body
00:35:48
like as a bone therapist, how important it is to understand
00:35:55
the way the sympathetic system and the personalities that
00:36:01
thrive in that type of environment might at some point
00:36:07
benefit by more somatic, more slower down body felt safe
00:36:13
experiences, right? And Bowen is a perfect medium to really show
00:36:20
the body that it can slow down, that you can also become the
00:36:27
observer of your your physical experience. And that's another
00:36:33
door into the whole healing process.
00:36:37
Ending: Thank you for joining us at the healers cafe. If you
00:36:41
haven't already done so, please like comment and subscribe with
00:36:46
notifications on as I post a new podcast every Wednesday with
00:36:50
tons of useful information and tips for natural healing that
00:36:55
you won't want to miss you.