The Missing Piece in Healing

Why are so many people still stuck in pain, anxiety, and chronic stress—even after trying therapy, breathwork, and nervous system tools?

In this episode of the Movement, Mind & Meaning Podcast, I'm chatting with special guest Cynthia Allen as explore the hidden connection between trauma, the brain, and chronic pain… and what most healing paths completely miss.

You’ll discover:

• Why calming your nervous system is just the beginning How trauma rewires the brain and body to stay in pain
• The surprising role your body plays in retraining your nervous system
• How to unlearn stress-based habits and escape the pain loop for good
• What your nervous system is actually craving to feel safe and heal

Whether you’ve tried talk therapy, somatic work, or meditation—and you’re still asking “Why do I still feel this way?”—this episode will show you the missing piece in your healing journey.

Learn more about Cynthia here:

Cynthia Allen has been working in wellness practices, health care management, and organizational consulting for over 35 years. In 2001, she became a Certified Feldenkrais® practitioner and, more recently, a Senior Trainer in Movement Intelligence. She has a personal history in overcoming childhood trauma and found the Feldenkrais Method to be a vital part of returning to present moment living. In her private practice, she has had the privilege of working with many people who also have had a history of significant trauma wanting to come home to their bodies and movement. Cynthia has written about the Feldenkrais Method, pain, and trauma for the Alternative and Complementary Therapies Journal as well as the online Chronic Pain Partners. She has conducted and published a research paper: Alternative Movement Program in Geriatric Rehabilitation in the Functional Neurology, Rehabilitation, and Ergonomics. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, business partner and NLP guru, Larry Wells and their puppy Darby.

Visit her through her website at FutureLifeNow.com

Grab her free gift of the Turning, Seeing, Sitting, Standing, While Improving the Neck mini course here: https://futurelifenow.thrivecart.com/turning-seeing-sitting-standing-ever/

Please find the show notes below. Since it is a transcription there may be spelling errors and/or weird grammar. Ignore that and enjoy! 

Today we're talking about the missing piece in healing with my special guest, Cynthia Allen, a Feldenkrais practitioner. Welcome back to the Movement Mind and Meaning podcast. I'm your host, Megan Nolan, and I am really honored and happy to have one of my fellow BBD. What's BBD, Megan?Business by Design, one of the business courses that I'm in, one of my fellow BBD family members here with me. today. Cynthia Allen, as I mentioned, is a Feldenkrais practitioner. She'll explain what that is if you don't know. But today we are going to be talking about the sometimes missed, sometimes neglected, sometimes ignored, really essential component in your overall healing, thriving, abundant success, you know, pretty much everything today. So welcome, Cynthia. It's lovely to have you here. Oh, it's good to be here, Megan. I'm excited to to share with you and explore with you. Thank you. Thank you. So we'll have you circle 26 00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:05,1000 back to what Feldenkrais is 27 00:01:05,1000 --> 00:01:08,720 and all of that magic in a moment. But we like to just get right into it. We like to just get right in and get to know you. So you have an incredible list of certifications and experiences which people, if they're curious about that, can certainly read in the show notes. But. We just like to just just get right into the beauty of the magic that is you and that has really led to where you're at now, what you're doing, what you do, and how you serve and all that beautifulness with a little bit of a glimpse into your life and into your 41 00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:35,1000 story. So will you please take us to a 42 00:01:35,1000 --> 00:01:38,880 moment, maybe where you had a open heart, open mind, realization, situation, whatever it was for you that led you to where you're at now and doing what you do?Yeah, yeahSo I think it's important just to. Say something about my earlier background that would have led me to even want to do this. So I am somebody who had quite a significant amount of childhood trauma in a variety of ways. And then I also had movement coordination problems. I had definitely difficulty with chronic pain starting at a young age, so you know. Like many of us, you you do OK. You somehow manage to keep it all together. And then there's usually some point in life that people realize they can't keep it together anymore. Mine came in the mid to late 20s when my first marriage was breaking up and my mother was also dying from breast cancer, and I really began to realize I couldn't keep it together any longer. And so I did many things. I did psychotherapy, spiritual direction, shamanic work, several different kinds of body work, art-related creative expression, and all of these things, or I should say most of them did help some, and maybe some of them even more than just a little bit. And still though,I was still a pretty big hot mess. That's just the truth of it. I was going through several years into this. I'm 78 00:03:07,520 --> 00:03:09,1000 still really struggling. So now I'm into 79 00:03:09,1000 --> 00:03:12,080 my mid 30s and I tried, 'cause I'm trying everything, right, that I can think of to try. I'm trying the Feldenkrais method. I go to a few classes and I think to myself, ah I don't know, this is a weird work. It's not too slow. It's too methodical. What the heck?And yet I kept feeling better and better and better. And I would think to myself, hold it, I didn't know anybody could feel good like this. I'd be at work managing my department and I'd 92 00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:42,1000 go, how is it that people, is it other 93 00:03:42,1000 --> 00:03:45,120 people who actually feel good?I never knew that you could actually feel good. And about a year into that exploration of just kind of going to some weekly classes, the instructor asked me if I thought I might like to train in the work 'cause there was going to be a training. coming to our area, to Cincinnati, Ohio. And I said, No, no, no noAnd then she said, Well, I'm gonna give you an application anyway, 'cause I think 105 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:11,1000 there's something here for you. And I 106 00:04:11,1000 --> 00:04:14,200 took the application out. My husband and I were doing the classes together. I took the application out and he got into the driver's seat and I got into the passenger seat and I started to cry. And he said, What's wrong, what's wrong?And I said, I'm coming home. It was so clear. Now, I didn't really know that I was going to practice it as a practitioner. I thought I was still taking it for my own health and well-being, but which was true. But about a year in, I thought this is actually, I've been looking to make it out of traditional healthcare into something more aligned with where I was and my beliefs and. my life at the time. So it 125 00:04:56,600 --> 00:04:57,1000 did become, it took a while to 126 00:04:57,1000 --> 00:04:59,840 transition, but it did become that my transition out of healthcare management and development into being a Feldenkrais practitioner. And for me, it was, you know, it was very, very meaningful to just have a possibility to find that, oh, my body. is okay, despite everything that I thought and believed, and despite how I felt to just have someplace where there was no judgment, where I could explore movement in a way that I would never have been able to explore because I didn't really have that capacity as a child. And when I did do it through the sort of traditional physical education, that kind of thing, it was horrible. I didn't really probably know for sure at that point how much it was gonna affect my emotional state, but I was still having regular PTSD like nightmares uh when I went into the program. And And that really started to shift over the course of the first year of study to where I could you know get in bed, fall asleep and not be scared to sleep. Because I didn't know what horrible thing I was going to dream up again that night. So it's just been an incredible blessing to me and I'm so happy to share it with others. Wow. Thank you. And thank you for your vulnerability and honesty in that and. And I love that you were able to explore different modalities and approaches to find your way back home to yourself and find a tool set that really worked. And that's really the 167 00:06:39,800 --> 00:06:41,1000 essence of this podcast is mind and body 168 00:06:41,1000 --> 00:06:44,200 tools to help us thrive and overcome and move beyond anxiety and depression and trauma and stress. And and you know, as my teacher likes to say, there's many paths to the same mountain, the same mountain being that. Thriving, vital, resilient, balanced self where we do feel at home, where we do feel like we're thriving. And I know that I can relate to what you said and and perhaps many of the listeners and watchers can relate too of having that moment of realization like this is this feels like my true and natural state and and having that realization that. For a long time I was like, really? Like, do people really feel that good?Do they feel this happy?It seems like it's not a real thing, you know, cause it just felt so foreign to me. And so I love that Feldenkrais and and I know later on you're gonna share some ways to get connected and to understand and explore that deeper. And so if people are curious about it, definitely check out the link that we're gonna share a little later on. But just so you know, it'll be in the show notes. So can we talk about how many people may understand at a deep level, but maybe not conceptually understand the interplay between many of the things that you mentioned, complex trauma or trauma itself, anxiety, stress and chronic pain?I mean, we all know the commonality is the body, but can you? Explain a little bit deeper from your perspective that sort of dance and interplay between these very common experiences that many of us have. Yeah, I think it's, I think it is really complex. And so anytime somebody gives an answer that's too simple, we ought to, 211 00:08:25,1000 --> 00:08:28,960 we ought to pull back a little bit. So let me. So having said that, I'm probably going to try to give an answer that's a little too simple, but. When we think about the way a human being functions, like we think of the thing called emotions, emotion, right? We think of emotions as if it is something that's in our control separate from the physical body or movement. And that's not true. I mean, now we're even discovering that the bones are sending signaling up to the nervous system, to the vagal system about emotions. So that when we say things like I felt it in my bones, that may not have been too far from the truth. And you know, a few years ago, we were really big into the gut, right?The gut, oh my gosh, the gut, the gut. And then it turned out the gut is is maybe perhaps triggering Parkinson's disease. That was something that came along as, oh, the gut is talking to the nerve and somehow it it sets off Parkinson's disease perhaps. So there are, Lots of studies now that show 238 00:09:31,1000 --> 00:09:34,880 that we are really a whole package. We're always a whole, whole package. Now, the way that we develop as babies is through the sensory world around us. So we start 244 00:09:49,440 --> 00:09:51,1000 out and yet it does look like babies are kind of born with a personality. I mean, it doesn't take long for anyone who's had more than one child to go, well, that child is different than my first one and the third one, whatever, you notice that they're different. And yet they have a long road of apprenticeship, of growing in order to really step into who they are. And that beginning state is in this sensory world where they're they're just like, you know, right, 'cause they don't have any choices yet. They don't coordinate hardly anything. First, it's just sucking and breathing and pooping. And And then it's like looking, like I can look maybe, and I can start to get my thumb maybe to my mouth and stuck on my thumb. And then it starts, 264 00:10:37,1000 --> 00:10:40,400 oh, I can feel the surface and I can press my foot and when I press my foot, which of course they don't even know as a foot, but in the act of pressing, they begin to know it as a foot. And so we know that the child is experimenting around 4000 times with every single possible movement variation before it goes on to explore and acquire a new set of skills. Another variation. It takes 274 00:11:03,440 --> 00:11:05,1000 time to build habits. It takes time to build habit. Now within that,There is not just the child doing that, but there's the parents and the environment around them. So parents will pass on things to children like fear of them hurting themselves or fear of them falling off of something, or they will over reward them for discovering something that for the child was really cool and they liked it. But then, oh, now mom and dad like that a lot, so I should just keep doing that. by accident in the celebration for the child, the parent can actually take over and smash down or or hover over or make it hard for the child to find their own emotional state about it as the primary thing that matters. And it's not anything anybody does on purpose, right?We We love seeing our animals, our children, other people excel and learn for sure. 297 00:12:03,1000 --> 00:12:06,1000 So it's not a critique of parents,But all 298 00:12:06,1000 --> 00:12:09,400 of this matters. So whether the parent is a parent who cheers their child on, or the parent is one that doesn't notice what the child is doing at all, or whether the parent is one who has problems with anger and does a lot of yelling or the environment is chaotic, the the whole state of the human being is being formed within that, not just the emotional state, but also the sensory state of how we know our bodies. What is our, what is our relationship of our hand to our arm, to our mouth, to our shoulder? Everything is being formed in that whole container of being a baby. Now it it lays down all these habits because 314 00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:47,1000 you and I couldn't possibly get out of 315 00:12:47,1000 --> 00:12:49,760 bed every morning and start from zero. We've probably seen those documentaries where people have lost. a significant capacity to maintain memory. And they do try to start over every day, kind of from zero. And it would, you can't get out of, hardly get out of bed. How do you roll over?How do you put on your shoe?How do you put on clothes?I mean, we can see the absurdity of that. So these are deep 325 00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:11,1000 habits. By the time I was in my 326 00:13:11,1000 --> 00:13:14,960 thirties and somehow feeling I had no choice but to really dig in and examine what was going on and looking for guidance, Most everything that I'd ever thought, mostly dark thoughts. I hardly had any positive thoughts. Dark thoughts, right? 334 00:13:32,1000 --> 00:13:35,840 The The belief I had about myself, I'd have probably thought those millions of times. Thought is a habit. It's a movement. I cannot say that enough. It's a movement. So it's all movement in the human body, whether it's your sense of swallowing,or me looking at you right now and receiving that image or or touching somebody else or somebody touching us, that's all movement and so is our emotional state. So it's a very important thing I think for us to grapple with 348 00:14:11,1000 --> 00:14:13,920 and I hope it can be helpful because if you have the right tools, you can begin to interrupt habits that no longer serve you. First, you have to know about them. You have to be able to discover that they no longer serve you. And it's funny the way that humans discover habits. We often discover them by accidentally doing something different. The environment didn't really take us in our normal pathway until we do something different and we like it. And then we go, wow, that's really unusual. OhhThat means this is what I usually do. Ohh This is what I usually do. Ohh I like, I didn't know he did that. I do that. I do that. My gosh, I do that a lot. In the Feldenkrais work, we 368 00:15:05,280 --> 00:15:07,1000 actually set up movement lessons in order for people to discover from in a really non-judgmental, in a very similar way as these babies, as you did when you were a baby. If you had a fairly good birth and a fairly decent set of parents, you were able to do this as a baby. We're trying to take you back to a place of non-judgment, of relative innocence where you don't regret, but we have some place that you can go and we do these movement, I'll call them experiments, in which you learn to be the observer as well as the person who is 383 00:15:46,400 --> 00:15:47,1000 being experimented with, so you're 384 00:15:47,1000 --> 00:15:50,560 completely in charge. and 385 00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:53,1000 you begin to realize, oh, every 386 00:15:53,1000 --> 00:15:56,960 time I go on to get interviewed, my right shoulder comes up. Ohh Every time I go to do these interviews, I cross my arms and I don't even like the feeling of it. That's interesting. You can begin to find ways to interrupt the habit patterns. And if you stick with it, you begin to realize that the the skills that you're learning can be carried over beyond the sort of physical awareness into the emotional awareness. Umm I love that. And And two of the tools we really speak to, which it sounds like you're saying in pretty much the same way. The two of the tools that we really use in the Power Pause movement are first and foremost, as you mentioned, Non-judgmental self-awareness, right?It is learning to become a witness and be 406 00:16:46,480 --> 00:16:47,1000 present with these patterns, with these 407 00:16:47,1000 --> 00:16:50,680 habits, and to cultivate compassionate curiosity because these are learned behaviors, right?And so these are learned patterns, learned habits. But the beautiful thing that you said that we often speak to here is, is the ability to change that once we cultivate those two key starting points. And then with these experiments, with these tools, with these practices, we can begin to. 417 00:17:09,1000 --> 00:17:12,360 Shift these patterns as we learn to to witness and and hold space for them, right. And just by knowing that they're there, we have that willingness and that curiosity. And so I love that. And so would you say that, you know, these 423 00:17:23,200 --> 00:17:25,1000 patterns are part of what keep us in the stress pain loop that so many people are experiencing, whether that's physical pain, but more so in the context of our conversation, emotional pain or mental pain? Yes, I think that ohh much of physical pain of the chronic musculoskeletal pain is caused by the defense against. That defense against might have started out in in a particular way that was important, but then as time has gone on, it's just become very chronic and anywhere that 439 00:18:05,1000 --> 00:18:08,720 there's a holding,It means that you're not able to use your physical self as well as you could use it. So that it means that you're not getting good circulation into that area. So there's a whole host of things there. There is studies that say that, and really compelling studies that say that there is a correlation between chronic pain and someone who's had adverse childhood events. But you've got to be really careful with that kind of stuff because we don't want people going around looking for trauma in their background or for them to figure out why they hurt. For the most part, if you've been worked up by a physician, you don't need to be concerned about why you hurt. You need to be concerned about what's the solution of unlearning the patterns that go with it. And the same thing is true emotionally when we hold an emotional pattern. So let's say that the emotional pattern, like one I had was all men cannot be trusted. I didn't have, there was no gradation. It was all. And so through that lens, I would live my life and I would reinforce that emotional piece of there it is again, they can't be trusted. There it 471 00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:25,1000 is, they can't be trusted. They can't be 472 00:19:25,1000 --> 00:19:28,080 trusted. They can't be trusted. I could reinforce that for myself all day long. I didn't have any reason to have a different lens, but it became clear that I needed to find a different lens or I didn't have a life that was really worth living. You've got to find your way out of these corners that we end up in by accident. We didn't want to get there, but it happened and then you start to realize, okay, what I have here is me. Here I am in the corner all by myself. I can't, I can't make it through that corner. It's not going to let me go 487 00:20:02,320 --> 00:20:03,1000 through it. So then it must be a need to 488 00:20:03,1000 --> 00:20:06,720 turn around and start to examine what else is available to me, right?So I can totally relate to that. You're like standing in the corner, like, what's the problem?Why can't I change it?Because in that One Direction, only at the pivot point of the corner. And then, like you're saying, when we turn around and we realize, oh. OK, right. And all that OK might be very scary because we our world was so limited before. There is a safety and there is a safety in believing the things we believe. But because when you 502 00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:43,1000 turn around and you go, hold it, what 503 00:20:43,1000 --> 00:20:46,880 is all of that?Now, the thing that we believe has kept us safe, even though we know on another level it's not true, the thing that we believe has kept us safe is totally up for grabs. So that's that's pretty scary. So having these somatic tools that you're teaching, that I teach,where we can bring ourselves back here, present moment, grounded, butt on the chair, feet on the ground, head going towards the ceiling, breath, easy, normal, natural breath. Looking around what we see, and then we can take it into other kinds of movements that we can begin to foster more and more ease, more and moreeven elegance after a while. Then now we have are creating the environment in which we can afford to look around. We still can turn into the corner anytime we want, but we can say today I can maybe turn my body five degrees and that already opens up a huge amount. And maybe some days we feel like we can turn out and face the world sort of head on and go to the center of the room and look all the way around. So it's it's these tools that are at the level of sensation and curiosity, experimentation, non-judgment that can really make such a big difference. Umm I love that. And And I know that many of us can relate to That feeling of, OK, fresh perspective, right?Maybe we have, we listen to a podcast, maybe we do some, a journey of sorts, breath work, you know, shadow work, psychedelics, who knows?We have this moment where we turn around and we're like, oh, oh wow, OK, there's a whole big world out there. And I was just in this little zone and now. And that in and of itself is very liberating, very freeing, very exciting, but also potentially threatening to be a preconceived normal of the nervous system, right?Because it's new, it's totally new, it's unfamiliar, it's unpredictable. And so from your point of view, when we are turning around, whether that's through sensation, through movement, energetically, you know, mentally, all the all the ways we're turning around. We know that coming to a place of safety and center within ourselves to create that baseline, like you said, and I love the ease to elegance. I love alliterations and I just love that visual. So beautiful. So calming the nervous system to create that centered, OK, I can do this. This is a new phase. Here we go. We know that that's important, but oftentimes is just the beginning. So can you talk a little bit about that and maybe talk about what from your perspective, like what are next steps?What is that progression from there? And how do we turn around and make some progress forward? Yeah, yes. So it it starts with creating a sense of safety. I'm home. I'm home in my body. I'm home with myself. I don't. have a continual constant critical eye towards myself. But that's the kind of calmness and a centeredness and a beingness that we often will foster in like meditation or maybe you know you have a a place at the end of the exercise class or your asanas that you go into a really nice bone. But that's not, that's a calming, that's learning to calm oneself in one's nervous system. It is not learning to regulate it. Not really. It's only one place. So you you then tend to go back out to function in, let's say your job. You go to your job and you're like, oh my God, it's the schedule again. And then I got to talk to this person, and then this person, and this person. And then the whole nervous system kind of lights up and goes bonkers again. And then you bring it back down at the end of the day with some kind of calming technique, if you're lucky. Calming tends to become compartmentalized you know to a certain kind of environment. And so what we we need to do is learn to regulate and that's to be able to bring it up and down. You do need to have a nervous system that goes up. You know We need We need to be able, if we want to run across the street, If we want to get something done fast, you can be such a thing as too calm. And you can also be you know totally wildly chaotic and not able to function too. So it's the ability to take yourself in and out, what we call reversibility in the Feldenkrais work. So we're looking for reversible movements, reversible action. So that if I go to reach for something and then I fall over, that is not reversible. That's not reverse, that's a bad idea, right?But if I go to reach and I realize my balance is being lost and I know how to bring myself back without hurting myself, that is a uh a reversible movement. And the same thing is true on the emotional scale. We don't wanna just be able to turn around and go, let's let all of this come in. We want to be able to turn around in degrees and go back to where we came from, step out, step forward, step to the sides. And I do mean that both literally physically, as well as in the way people think of their emotional state, which is a little bit different, but the words can still work across the physical and emotional. So the ability to regulate. So in the Feldenkraits work, we often start with these. The base in our lessons, we call them lessons because they are the active process of learning and we're not trying to drive towards a specific outcome other than that the person is in the learning process in the most conducive way that they know how to create for themselves right now. Then we take those lessons that might start with a lot of calming, a lot ofA lot of just being at home, feeling the surface, learning how to monitor your breath. But then we're gonna go into increasingly more difficult movement sequences. Not necessarily ones that you might think of as like becoming a pretzel necessarily, but like when you have to work harder to understand what's being asked of you. You have to think a little bit more. You have to go, huhI don't know if I know what that means. Did I ever feel that part of myself?I'm not sure about that part of myself. What would it mean to use that part of myself in the reaching process? What does it mean if she starts to ask, can you use your other leg, your foot, your pelvis to help you reach or to roll or to to do judo rolls or to spiral up and down or a variety of different kinds of actions. So we're looking at the process of action. And how can we allow those actions to be well regulated throughout?And so that the amount that your nervous system is like fired up and ready to go is appropriate for what you're doing. It's appropriate for what you're doing. It's not like fired up and ready to go, but you're supposed to be sitting here eating and having a really nice little breakfast that's quiet and calm. Well, I love that. And what I'm hearing you say is it's an exploration and we're creating versatility. You know, we're creating that ability to rise to the situation and then settle ourselves back down and not not live in the extremes, but find that mid happy ground that feels good both in our body as far as a movement perspective, but also in our ability to turn around and take it all in and make these shifts and step forward. And so thank you. I appreciate that. So you've shared a lot of really great tools and insights. And so we've reached the point of our episode today, of our experience today, where we're going to take a little power pause. And so we would love to have you guide us through this really powerful tool that people can use in any situation to calm themselves, calm their mind. And so would you please lead us through this? Yeah, so I want to lead you through something that comes from Michael Krugman's work called Founders' Sleep. He was also a Feldenkrais practitioner. He's no longer with us, but his work lives on. And he had a work that had three different components to it. One of them was called a date tamer, something that you could do anywhere, anytime in order to bring your nervous system back to a calmer state. And so we're gonna look at the secret handshake. The one thing that is really nice about this, it's also, I'll think of the other name too, but it's nice about this is you can do this anywhere. So you bring your hands out so you can see them and it doesn't matter which hand you choose, but you're going to wrap your fingers of one hand around the thumb of the other, that's all. Now the other fingers are still extended up in the air, okay. and you're going to extend now. Okay, let's do it again because I got myself confused looking at the camera. Okay, so here you wrap around the thumb. Now the fingers that wrapped around the thumb extend your index finger. So extend your index finger. Now wrap your fingers around it. So now you have two hold points. You've got your thumb and your index finger, and you're going to place them on your lap because we don't need any additional tension. in your body anywhere, just enough for you to know that you have your thumb wrapped with your fingers and your index finger wrapped with your other fingers. And we don't practice deep breathing. We practice light, easy, simple, slow breathing. So whatever feels to you like a nice breath is what you get to breathe. You don't have to make it anything special. And as you feel yourself sitting here, breathing in and breathing out, at whatever rate you are enjoying right now, on the next inhale, just ever so slightly squeeze the thumb. And as you exhale, release it. As you inhale, you makeA squeeze is only enough for you to know you've increased the contact, the pressure. It's not to strangle it. And as you exhale, you release and you let the thumb slowly be released from the pressure. The length of your inhale is the length of time that it takes you to do the light, easy squeeze. The length of your exhale is the time it takes you to slowly release that squeeze so that you synchronize the squeezing with your breath. Now you can pause for a moment. Just release your hands for a moment. You can bring them back up and we'll just practice this one more time and just stay with the same handhold, it'll be easier. So wrap your fingers around one thumb, extend the index finger of the fingers that wrapped around the thumb, wrap your other fingers around, place them back down, very comfortable. You could rest them on a table there if you are standing so that you don't have to hold the weight of your arms, you just really want it to be simple. You can imagine this is under a table at a meeting or you're at a family gathering. Your hands just look like they're just sitting in your lap. You don't have to, nobody has to know what you're doing. And now maybe as you come into your breath, on your exhale, you'll squeeze the thumb. And as you inhale, you release. You squeezed gently, lightly on the length of your exhale and you released on the inhale. So one of these was more pleasant for most people, either squeezing on the inhale or squeezing on the exhale. What was it for you? And I think it might be previous conditioning, but more comfortable was the squeezing on the exhale and relaxing and opening on the inhale. That's just the pattern we use in yoga. So it's familiar to me, but I like the diversity. I like the switching it up. Yeah. And so there's no right or wrong in this. You get to choose the one you like. And if it turns out one day you like it one way and another day you like it another way. That's totally fine. You don't have to do anything at all to somehow feel like you'd have to get squeezing right. The most important thing is that you don't squeeze. Yeah. It's so gentle. It's so gentle. Like if you were to think that you had a baby's hand and you wanted them to know you were there, right?Or a loved one that was ill and you wanted them to know that you were there, it would be so gentle, just so gentle. And you just go around with that. So you can do this at a stressful gathering, meeting. You can just turn yourself around at your own desk. If you are here, I could turn myself around away from the computer for all of you behind me. I'd like to do it for just a few squeezes and breaths and there will be an almost immediate calm. I remember we had a class where a woman who had been in significant, significant pain came and we did this together and she said, that's like the first time I haven't felt pain in years. And it was only like 5 minutes. It wasn't very much. It was really amazing what can happen when a person is able to bring themselves just to a moment of relative calm. Oh, I love that. I love the practicality. I love the ease of it. I could definitely feel the the calming coming through. Thank you. And that nice anchoring feeling. So if you're just joining us for the power pause, this is actually part of a complete episode of the Movement, Mind and Meaning podcast in which we are going a lot deeper with Cynthia Allen and talking about the missing piece and healing. And so this power pause was. A continuation of that lovely conversation. And so make sure to listen to the full episode because there was so many more Nuggets, so many more insights that, you know, if you are looking to be able to truly support yourself at the deepest level of your healing and move beyond trauma and anxiety and stress and sadness, then this episode has, I'm sure, many golden Nuggets for you and as we prepare to finish up. just this PowerPause section and the whole episode, I know that you have a tool set beyond this beautiful secret handshake that we just got to practice, a gift that you would love to share with people. So will you tell us just a little bit about that, please?Yeah, so it is pure Feldenkrais and it looks at the function of turning. Turning, if you are gonna ask the thing that I see that most people have a restriction in, it's just this basic ability. And so that means you're carrying a lot of tension in the neck and the shoulders that you don't really even know that you're carrying. And so it's a series of short lessons. They're They're not as short as that beautiful secret handshake, but they're like in the 10 to 15 minute range. And it begins to help you really realize how quickly you can release muscle tension without stretching, strengthening, or pushing yourself hard, just really Starting to break up the habit of how you hold yourself and how you move. I love that. Thank you. And so make sure to check that out. I know that there is. A code for you to get full access for free. So all of the information is in the show notes, both here on the video and as you're listening inside the audio on whatever magical platform you'd love to listen on. So make sure to grab that. And if you're just watching the power pause, make sure to listen to the whole episode as well if you're on YouTube. And so as we close off today, Cynthia, do you feel? That there's anything that you would like to share from your perspective, of your beautiful background, of someone to someone, excuse me, to someone that may be in a season of sadness or maybe in a feeling of anxiety, maybe in this moment or of late that you would like to share to them. If you can literally just speak to their heart that you would love them to know that you think might be supportive to them, or maybe something that you would have liked to have heard at a moment in time like that in your past. Yeah, I I think one of my teachers talks about biological optimism. Ruthie Alon had this great phrase called biological optimism. And for me, biological optimism is when you you wake up and you realize the day ahead of you and you say, I can do this, I got it, I can do this life. You see your life folding out in front of you and you go, I can do it, I can do it. So many times when we're stuck in anxiety and stress, we don't recognize that we have been doing it. We've already been doing it. So now it's just about improving, somehow making it more pleasant, more easy. It's just building our skill set at navigating a little bit more. You've already been doing it. You can do it. You can do this life. We can do it together. That's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, that is important. And that's a reminder that we all need, right?We all need. We need to hear from others and we need to. We get to practice speaking to ourselves as a beautiful reminder and a coming home. And so thank you so much. It's been so lovely chatting with you today and. I know that you know you have so much wonderful magic going on. And so once people grab the freebie that you just spoke to, again, it's in the show notes. They'll be able to get connected with you and ask any questions that they might have about your work, about Feldenkrais, about how you can support them. So make sure to connect with Cynthia. And also we would love to know what landed for you. And so we will also include her Instagram in our show notes. So if you feel so comfortable, you can take a little snapshot and share it to your stories and tag us or send us a DM because. This is really about being of service and helping you to return to that, knowing that of that biological optimism and of that centered state where you know from your heart, from your bones, as you now learned that you can do this right. And and life is, as we discussed before we started recording, a wild roller coaster sometimes and having tools, having support, having community, having people that have walked the path and maybe you're just a couple steps ahead and can turn around and hold your hand really gently. Like a little baby hand and help you to walk forward too. And so thank you so much, everybody. And thank you again, Cynthia. It's been really lovely chatting with you. Thank you. It was a pleasure, Megan. Lovely. All right, everyone. Well, thank you for being part of this beautiful global movement. Thank you for doing what you do and showing up because. Yes, you are amazing and resilient and life is challenging sometimes. We admit that 1000%. And so thank you for hopefully getting some insights and tools. And now you know that once we learn something, we get to practice it, right?We get to, we get to start to implement it and that's where the true magic is. So let us know if what landed for you and we look forward to seeing and hearing you in the next episode. Take good care, everybody. Bye, bye.