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I've seen people totally find the ease in their parasympathetic system

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8 seconds

once they have the right support to not carry the panic,

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the life or death threat that was from a moment in time.

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Welcome to True Hopecast, the official podcast of True Hope Canada. I am your host, Simon Brazier. At True Hopecast, we explore the many psychological and

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37 seconds

physiological dimensions of mental health, bringing you motivation, inspiration, knowledge, and practical solutions for navigating yourself in

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45 seconds

this beautiful but wild world. Today, psychologist, educator, and author Annie Brooke discusses how early experiences

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53 seconds

influence the nervous system and our emotions, relationships, and behaviors throughout life. Today, we're going to explore why sensitivity isn't a

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1 minute, 1 second

weakness, while talking alone isn't always enough to heal trauma, what parents need to know about struggling children, and how the brain and body

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1 minute, 9 seconds

work together in healing. We're also going to be discussing the overlooked role of nutrition and supporting the body's biology to aid nervous system

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1 minute, 18 seconds

healing and regulation. This hopeful, insightful talk aims to give you new compassion and understanding for yourself and your children and others.

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1 minute, 26 seconds

Here is my conversation with Annie Brooke. Enjoy the show. Okay. Hi Annie, welcome to True Hope Cast. Thank you so much for being with me, for being with

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1 minute, 34 seconds

us today. How are you and what is going well?

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1 minute, 38 seconds

Well, first off, I'm very happy to be here. I love your mission of nutrition and how essential that is. And what's

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1 minute, 47 seconds

going well is I'm in the middle of teaching a seminar right now for therapists, for trauma therapists, and

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1 minute, 55 seconds

we're studying the earliest impressions from birth, prenatal time. And a lot of

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my passion is sharing tools that help people heal.

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Wow. and I share the tools that are psychological, relational, neuroscience-based, and you bring in

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2 minutes, 13 seconds

those great nutrition tools. And I think we have a lot to talk about and enjoy.

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I completely agree with you, and um I love the mission for nutrition. I'm going to steal that on my next um True Hope meeting. Thank you so much for that.

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2 minutes, 28 seconds

Yeah.

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2 minutes, 30 seconds

So, we're going to be discussing what if your trauma started at birth today. But before we jump into that topic, would you mind letting us know a little bit

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2 minutes, 38 seconds

about who you are and what it is that you do?

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2 minutes, 41 seconds

Yes, I am 72 years old. I'm a somatic psychologist, meaning I am a therapist

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2 minutes, 50 seconds

that works with into body sensation, body signals, and what are the imprints

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2 minutes, 59 seconds

that affect our responses in life? And I've been doing this for over four

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decades, over 45 years. I've been a uh I was the director of body psychotherapy for a master's program at Nuropa

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3 minutes, 13 seconds

University. I've run my own clinic for 17 years. And now I have the Brook Institute, which is a training program

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3 minutes, 21 seconds

for it. It's both online classes for people who want to look in the mirror with some help

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3 minutes, 29 seconds

because often we can't change the world around us or blame it forever. We have to look in the mirror and help ourselves

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3 minutes, 38 seconds

figure out how to thrive. And that's my mission and my passion. I have an Instagram channel. I have a YouTube

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channel. just sharing the tools that heal and uh training therapists. I've worked with children, families. I've

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3 minutes, 54 seconds

been in the public schools as a therapist. I've worked volunteered at hospitals with the child trauma units.

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4 minutes, 2 seconds

And I just have had years of loving people, you know, it's how do you hold that love

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in a way that helps someone learn resilience? Beautiful.

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Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. I want to jump into birth's hidden legacy. Um, many people

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4 minutes, 26 seconds

assume that their memories begin maybe later in childhood, but what what led you to discover that birth and infancy

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4 minutes, 34 seconds

can leave, you know, lasting impressions on the nervous system and how do those early experiences show up in adulthood? It was

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4 minutes, 44 seconds

a combination of personal experience, my own healing in my own life and clinical

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4 minutes, 51 seconds

study and theoretical study and practical uh experience as a clinician where

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4 minutes, 59 seconds

people would show me when I was working with children, they would start to show me their birth story. And so for myself,

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5 minutes, 7 seconds

I was born premature, which meant I was whisked away from my mom and put in an incubator and I didn't have any touch for 10 days.

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Wow.

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And we know that contact is a basic need, especially for an infant, because

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they're using their parent to help them orient to is the world safe? Will I survive?

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5 minutes, 32 seconds

Will I survive in relationship? And ultimately the child is saying to the parent, will you keep me safe?

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5 minutes, 39 seconds

And that I call the biological imperative. It's right in our brain stem and our physiology. And so for me, I was

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5 minutes, 48 seconds

one of those hyper reactive tip tempered tantrum kids.

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5 minutes, 53 seconds

And my mom didn't know what to do with me. And it was not until my 40s I was really starting to study this work that

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6 minutes

I realized, oh, I always had to do things perfectly. Why? Why would I get so frustrated if I couldn't get

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6 minutes, 9 seconds

something figured out? As a kid, you can see these kids, you know, they're like trying so hard and it's not working. And

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6 minutes, 16 seconds

for me, I was afraid I would be put back in the incubator if I wasn't perfect.

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6 minutes, 23 seconds

Oh, and that was an impression well before I could think.

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That whole experience of isolation, invasive, like a tube up my nose, heel

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pricks. I had both abandonment and invasion as an infant. Now, I was raised in a good family,

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you know. I had uh parents that were present and capable. and why does my mom have such a reactive little girl? So

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6 minutes, 55 seconds

that was always a puzzle. And then in my 20s, I had pretty big trauma where I was

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living in Maine and with a partner, we had built our house, we had cut the

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7 minutes, 9 seconds

trees, we lived on the land, and my partner started drinking and I didn't even know a thing about it. So all of a

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7 minutes, 16 seconds

sudden, my main companion is not very present. And so I went back to my parents to try to figure out what to do.

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And I get a phone call. The house has burned down. Oh my god.

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So now I'm having this sort of trauma of my partner not being present. And now the house we spent, you know, from the

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7 minutes, 37 seconds

ground up building is gone. And my animals were killed. And it was just a

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huge trauma. And that sent me into a healing crisis, which I wouldn't know the words for it

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at that age even. I didn't know what it was. But what I realized is there's a

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8 minutes

world, you know, that I have to make some choices here. And of course, my choice was, well, we committed to our

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project. I'm just going to keep this commitment. But I was getting more and more numb.

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And that's what people do under trauma is they find some coping mechanism. They shut down or they withdraw in a cave or

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8 minutes, 24 seconds

they act like everything's fine, but they're not actually thriving. They're not present.

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8 minutes, 33 seconds

And so then in order to get income because we I was a stoneware potter and all of my work burned up in a way I got a job on a fishing boat off Cape Cod.

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So now I'm fishing to make a living and coming home every three weeks. And at

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one point I was so worried that my brain wasn't functioning.

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And that's when you know that's where you work with how to feed the brain with nutrition. And my brain was getting fed

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9 minutes, 8 seconds

with worry. So much worry about what to do, what to do. And that I couldn't

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9 minutes, 14 seconds

really think straight. And so I came in, we we came in from four days of fishing and I my job was to sell any extra

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9 minutes, 24 seconds

lobsters we got up on the warf for money for the crew. So, I had to climb up this metal ladder and go sell my lobsters.

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And I had what's called a near-death experience.

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I was up on the ladder up at the top and it was a very low tide and I got ready

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to get over the cap rail and all of a sudden because of all my worry and everything, I just let go. Like a

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9 minutes, 53 seconds

combination of exhaustion and poor brain function. And in that moment, I had these epiphies.

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It was like I was being held in love.

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Time slowed completely down. I watched my body doing these spirals through the air.

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And had I fallen exactly straight down, I would have been impaled on a water tank that was below the ladder

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and had rebar. But what happened is I spiraled through the air. I was held in love and I had this insight of if my

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body survives, I'll go back and if it doesn't, I it won't matter because what matters is this amount of love.

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You know, I love seeing behind you where it says true hope.

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You know, I was being held in hope because I wasn't scared.

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10 minutes, 52 seconds

And then what happened is my body moved just sideways enough to hit a tow a tire an old tire and bounce and then I was

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11 minutes

back in it and I was like what just happened to me and I climbed back up and sold my

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lobsters but within a yeah within a month I was in Berkeley California studying meditation

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and I because I had made a vow to myself I want to feel this much love from inside my body

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and I want to understand that depth of spirit because I felt the grace of God,

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the grace of spirit in that moment. And so I found a meditation school and I

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started learning what to do with my brain.

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Instead of making it worry, worry, worry, I actually could start using sensation awareness

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and stabilizing practices.

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11 minutes, 56 seconds

I actually shared that practice on my Instagram and it went viral. It had 160,000 views. And what those kind of

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practices taught me is we can learn.

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We can self-correct our own brain given the right kind of guidance and support.

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And so for me, I found myself in this meditation school. I I studied, I

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meditated. And do you know the difference between uh Simon between discursive meditation and just you know empty your mind?

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No.

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The difference I could never have done one of those. Oh, just sit and empty your mind. My mind was way too active.

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There was no way I could have done that.

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I would have failed at being a meditator. But what the Sufi based practice did is that gave your mind

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12 minutes, 58 seconds

something to do that was corrective and supportive. Oh, okay.

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And so, yeah. So, we would visualize like grounding your energy like a tree

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like you have roots and you can feel and see and ground. And then we would visualize opening our heart like, okay,

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imagine you can breathe through your heart. And so we're giving awareness to sensation and we're giving intention.

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Okay, I want to breathe through my heart. And then this is the part that stabilized my brain is worry is right

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13 minutes, 38 seconds

here behind the cortex and the limbic brain. And they taught us to imagine

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that you are creating an axis side to side through your ear level and you just

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13 minutes, 54 seconds

travel that axis until you find the middle.

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13 minutes, 58 seconds

And then we were creating an axis from the forehead out the base of the skull at a diagonal.

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And then you would go forward and back, forward and back. And your your viewers can try this. Can you go can you

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actually feel side to side and find the middle?

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Yeah. And then it's like, oh, there it is. And then can you from the forehead to the base of the occiput, can you go

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forward and back and find the middle?

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14 minutes, 37 seconds

And what that does, that axis puts you in the center of your head, which now I

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know all the neuroscience because I studied it all, but at the time I didn't know. I just called, you know, they just got to be in the center of your head so you can see clearly.

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14 minutes, 56 seconds

You're not in all your fears or your filters or your projections from your trauma history.

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And that began me having lots of really insightful experiences

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that felt I like I was connecting with my own soul and my own spirit, my own sort of will to live.

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It was very empowering. Simultaneously, I got enrolled in a 4-year training

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15 minutes, 27 seconds

program that used bodybased awareness. Ne it's called neorikian breath work and bioenergetics

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15 minutes, 37 seconds

and then group process dynamics and then burgene studies of personality. So I was

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in this training program where we were moving breath through the body and we

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15 minutes, 50 seconds

were identifying chronic muscular habits and looking in the mirror like oh what

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15 minutes, 57 seconds

do I do? It might not be the same thing that you do under stress, but what do I do? And all of a sudden, I was healing.

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I began to thrive. I opened a clinical, you know, I started my first therapy practice. I volunteered at children's

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hospital. I I loved working with the children who were really suffering from

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16 minutes, 20 seconds

difficult life. And that gave me such a great understanding in practical life.

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16 minutes, 28 seconds

How can you help people? How can you bring resources? Because I was finding it and it was a combination of the

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16 minutes, 36 seconds

mindfulness of meditation, the emotional work through the breath and the body movements and then I added

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16 minutes, 46 seconds

sort of improvisational study. how to move, how to roll on the floor, how to,

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you know, use dance. And so it was body, mind, spirit simultaneously.

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17 minutes, 1 second

And I saw that for me, I couldn't have had just one track. If I had just done

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17 minutes, 8 seconds

meditation, it would not have helped me physically get the fluidity that I needed. If I had just done movement, it

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17 minutes, 17 seconds

wouldn't have helped me stabilize and organize my brain. And if I had just done uh the emotional stuff, it wouldn't

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17 minutes, 26 seconds

have helped me have stability in my body physically or strength and it wouldn't have given me necessarily the connection to spirit.

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17 minutes, 38 seconds

So I really feel like body mind practices bring you in touch with your own inner spirit

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and that experience one saved my life but also gave me the mission to share what I

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learned and I've been doing it ever since.

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Amazing Annie such a great story. Thank you so much. there's so much um so many things that have come up in regards to

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18 minutes, 8 seconds

questions there and connections there, but I'd love to just um mention one thing that I think you'll resonate with is that obviously this this traumatic

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thing has happened to you and it changed your life and you know people experience trauma every day in different varieties,

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18 minutes, 24 seconds

different flavors and I think that our new inappropriate

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18 minutes, 30 seconds

cultural reaction to trauma is get over it and get on with it. And I think that

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18 minutes, 38 seconds

we have actually lost a skill set that humanity grew for

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18 minutes, 45 seconds

millennia in regards to that sensational awareness that you spoke about about um old knowledge, ritual, spirituality,

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18 minutes, 54 seconds

community. I think that when tra trauma would have happened to us because it would have happened in abundance 10,000 years ago

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and I think that we would have had skill sets and practices, rituals, dances, um

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19 minutes, 10 seconds

medicine men, medicine women, the elders would have had these types of practices that you've had to gone to school and

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19 minutes, 19 seconds

people go to school to learn to do to heal yourself and then help heal others.

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19 minutes, 24 seconds

I think that that's a part of our culture that we used to have that we no longer have the ability for. And it's a blessing now that we do have people like

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19 minutes, 31 seconds

yourself who are able to retach individuals the skill sets necessary to

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19 minutes, 38 seconds

help people deal with the trauma that they've experienced consciously like in an accident for example. But also like

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19 minutes, 46 seconds

going back to, you know, when we're born, our birth story and when we're young and we can't really remember these things and our brains are developing, our nervous systems are developing and

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19 minutes, 54 seconds

we create a story and that trauma has to sit somewhere and we're able to actually work through those things. I think that

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we have um yeah, we've lost that ability. But it's amazing that we've got people like yourself that are helping people reconnect that, re understand

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20 minutes, 11 seconds

that, and do their own work and then hopefully pass it on to um the next generation.

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20 minutes, 16 seconds

Yeah, that's always the wish. And you know, I'm so grateful for the elders I've studied with and the different

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20 minutes, 24 seconds

traditions. I worked in Africa for two years uh with a you know a project of

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20 minutes, 32 seconds

nutrition and one of the things that and I also lived on Lopez Island which was a

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20 minutes, 39 seconds

community that did a lot of community ritual like we would gather for the solstice or we would do uh we had a

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20 minutes, 47 seconds

native Arapjo elder who was teaching us how do you pray in a sweat lodge?

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20 minutes, 54 seconds

How do you use the community in Africa?

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20 minutes, 57 seconds

I saw I was able to witness a funeral of one of the elders of a tribe and we were

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21 minutes, 4 seconds

invited to be there and they danced for six months. They had a nightly

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21 minutes, 12 seconds

gathering and they danced and the women would dance and then the men and then they would dance together and it was the ritual of real life.

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And I think what you're saying I think that personal ritual is something instinctive in our bodies. I know my

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21 minutes, 30 seconds

father died when I was two and a half and he was a air force pilot. Okay.

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21 minutes, 35 seconds

And a test pilot. And in the process of I sure I was at his little I mean there's pictures of being at his

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21 minutes, 43 seconds

military funeral. Three little girls and my mom in our little dresses when I was age seven. I didn't know why I was doing

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21 minutes, 52 seconds

this. I would carefully take my wax paper bag from lunch, my little sandwich bag, carefully fold it, put it in my

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22 minutes

pocket. On the way home, I was riding my bicycle. I would stop every day at this dirt lot that had a yield sign up on the

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22 minutes, 9 seconds

corner, you know, one of those yellow signs. And I would park my bike. I would walk out on the sand. I would dig a

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22 minutes, 18 seconds

hole. I would bury my lunch bag. And then I would step back and I would go

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and that was a very important ritual. And what was I doing?

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22 minutes, 39 seconds

You know, you have to think, oh, what is this child showing me? In my child therapy, I'm always looking at what is the child showing me? There's a hidden

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22 minutes, 47 seconds

story they're trying to tell. And that does go all the way back to birth. But for me, I was trying to integrate the death of my father.

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22 minutes, 57 seconds

I was sort of reenacting, burying, folding because they would have folded the flag. You watch them do all that.

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23 minutes, 5 seconds

Yeah. And then they would have played the taps music.

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23 minutes, 9 seconds

So here I was at age seven integrating with ritual and so in my therapeutic work I

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encourage people to find their personal ritual you know and it's rituals of health

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and that's what practices are you know when you start to do a practice it can become a ritual of health not an

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23 minutes, 32 seconds

obsession but a ritual a tool just like nutrition You can't get obsessed about it because

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23 minutes, 39 seconds

then you're a fanatic and people don't want to listen to you. But but if you know what you're talking about and you

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23 minutes, 46 seconds

have your ritual of self-care, it makes a huge difference in how you live life.

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23 minutes, 55 seconds

Beautiful. Yeah. I think um reminds me of a quote that I just looked up because I couldn't remember the whole thing, but it's when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.

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Meaning that you know if you if you refuse to confront your internal conflicts or suppressed emotions, the outer world is going to force you to

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24 minutes, 14 seconds

experience them and life experiences will appear out of your control and what we call fate. Um when they are actually unconscious patterns like playing out.

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24 minutes, 25 seconds

[snorts] I think uh I think that's an interesting way of you know being able to connect the inner world and your outer world and your experience as a human being. Um, and I'd love to ask get

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24 minutes, 35 seconds

your opinions because I think when people visualize therapy,

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24 minutes, 42 seconds

traditional talk therapy, you know, you've got the you've got the um you got the couch there that that individual be lying on on their back and you've got

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24 minutes, 50 seconds

the individual there with their glasses and notepad taking notes and you know traditional kind of like talk therapy. A lot of people think about it like that,

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24 minutes, 58 seconds

but we've got this great um seat there so many great sematic practitioners that are doing way more than that in regards

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25 minutes, 6 seconds

to like work with the body because I I don't think the talk therapy is is nowhere near enough. I don't think talking about your the I don't think

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25 minutes, 14 seconds

talking about your negative problems for an hour every week for for years and years is a particularly helpful practice if you're not engaging your physical

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25 minutes, 22 seconds

body at the same time. So, you know, you you've said and I' read on your website and you kind of you talk you said that talking about trauma isn't always enough.

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25 minutes, 32 seconds

So, why why is healing through the body so important and what are some of the ways um people can begin to reconnect with their body safely?

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25 minutes, 43 seconds

That's a great question and you know fortunately in my own healing experience I had to take step by step so that I did

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25 minutes, 52 seconds

feel safe enough to organize what was a distressing event.

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25 minutes, 58 seconds

So if we think about trauma um I like to distinguish between shock and trauma.

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26 minutes, 6 seconds

Now shock. I used to be an EMT and if someone was in a state of shock, you went into like triage. What do we need

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26 minutes, 15 seconds

to do to keep this person alive? But what shock means is simply that you are

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26 minutes, 22 seconds

so inundated with sensation and sensory input that you cannot process on an emotional psychological level.

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26 minutes, 32 seconds

Shock means you are instead of having access to movement and response, you are frozen.

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26 minutes, 40 seconds

Yeah.

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26 minutes, 41 seconds

And if you think about it like a little quick neuroscience idea is just that we have a lovely flow in our nervous system

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26 minutes, 51 seconds

which it's called an autonomic nervous system. It's usually below the level of thinking, but we can find it. We can

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26 minutes, 58 seconds

learn how to feel it. But there's the healthy movement and play and recreation. And there's healthy

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27 minutes, 7 seconds

digestion, rest. And we want to have a nice sensory motor loop, meaning that we

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27 minutes, 14 seconds

can have sensory input and we can respond. And that keeps us in our healthy animal nature

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27 minutes, 23 seconds

that we can have we have choice. So in a baby, primitive reflexes are you touch a baby's hand and they grab your finger.

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27 minutes, 33 seconds

You think of that as stimulus response or sensory motor and that's called a sensory motor loop.

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27 minutes, 43 seconds

Now when there's something like say you have a very angry parent that's always shouting,

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27 minutes, 50 seconds

you're not going to have a sensory motor loop anymore. You're going to have sensory guarded.

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27 minutes, 58 seconds

Yeah.

27:58

27 minutes, 58 seconds

My motor is going to be to guard and freeze or some people will try to shout back.

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28 minutes, 4 seconds

You know, all kinds of things. So, we want to refresh the body mind back to

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28 minutes, 11 seconds

healthy sensory motor loop. And we do that by resting our cheek against the experiences we've accumulated.

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28 minutes, 23 seconds

even if we don't know them yet.

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28 minutes, 26 seconds

How we do it is we pay attention to our sensation.

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28 minutes, 31 seconds

Because once we've learned to numb out, we literally, some people don't remember a thing about their childhood.

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28 minutes, 37 seconds

And it's especially true a thing about their birth until you give them the skills to slow way down.

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28 minutes, 47 seconds

We call that calling a pause so that the body can catch up with the speed of thought.

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28 minutes, 55 seconds

Thought it can be so fast but we want to slow down so that we can actually notice oh my heart is pounding or oh my t my

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29 minutes, 5 seconds

tummy is tied up in a knot or I'm just feeling anxiety.

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29 minutes, 10 seconds

We want to notice the sensory uh feedback and then we want to inquire

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29 minutes, 17 seconds

why like why right here sitting with me in this moment why are you anxious and they're having a memory.

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29 minutes, 28 seconds

Now what we call this in body therapy is precognitive memory before the age of

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29 minutes, 34 seconds

three is called implicit. Meaning you had experience but you had no context.

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29 minutes, 43 seconds

You didn't have a brain that like an example I never knew I would get out of the incubator. I didn't know oh this is

29:50

29 minutes, 50 seconds

a moment in time and you'll it won't be this way forever. For babies, everything is forever

29:58

29 minutes, 58 seconds

and they pick up this raw sensory and they can even pick up other people's sensory

30:05

30 minutes, 5 seconds

you know and start if one baby cries the whole room can start crying. Yeah.

30:11

30 minutes, 11 seconds

Yeah. And we call that uh the the development during an infancy we call it existential

30:19

30 minutes, 19 seconds

that they are just part of existence and that can be existential shock. So, if

30:26

30 minutes, 26 seconds

something happens where the baby's trying to get out the birth canal and the mom's given anesthesia,

30:36

30 minutes, 36 seconds

all of a sudden for nine months, baby felt mom move. And all of a sudden, mom's not moving.

30:44

30 minutes, 44 seconds

And I've had adult clients say, "I thought my mother was dying or my mother was dead." Because because

30:51

30 minutes, 51 seconds

everybody can try this. If you imagine, you know, you're in a moving dialogue, you've got one person, the other person,

30:59

30 minutes, 59 seconds

we can feel each other. We can feel the movement. And then if you're used to this for nine months, and then all of a

31:06

31 minutes, 6 seconds

sudden one hand stops moving, it's like, wait, what a what what's going on over there? And then you could start to panic.

31:16

31 minutes, 16 seconds

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially when your environment is predominantly water and the vibrations that would come with something like that. Absolutely. And that's why we like

31:24

31 minutes, 24 seconds

to go back and, you know, ponder, think about what was going on, what were the messages prenatally?

31:34

31 minutes, 34 seconds

Was there miscarriages before you were born? Was there an abortion? Was mom, you know, did mom lose a parent? And so

31:43

31 minutes, 43 seconds

her pregnancy was so full of grief and loss because an infant will pick all of this up and think it's part of them.

31:52

31 minutes, 52 seconds

because it's existence.

31:54

31 minutes, 54 seconds

They don't have the context that, oh, that's my mother's anxiety. I'm okay.

32:01

32 minutes, 1 second

Or that's the cultural collective fear going on. Yeah. Or the ancestral.

32:08

32 minutes, 8 seconds

And what's so brilliant about being able to slow down

32:14

32 minutes, 14 seconds

and look look like beneath the surface to the hidden stories in our implicit

32:20

32 minutes, 20 seconds

memory is the body will heal. The implicit memory will come to the surface and become explicit.

32:31

32 minutes, 31 seconds

We'll start to have associations click in. I call it connecting the dots. Like I didn't know until my 40s why I buried

32:40

32 minutes, 40 seconds

my lunch bag, but when I did it was like, oh, I was connecting the dots to my childhood's intelligence.

32:50

32 minutes, 50 seconds

And so what happens is people get these insights about why they've behaved the way they do and they start connecting

32:58

32 minutes, 58 seconds

the dots and having compassion instead of blame for themselves or blame

33:05

33 minutes, 5 seconds

on the world. You know, Simon, some people get stuck blaming the world.

33:11

33 minutes, 11 seconds

Other people get stuck attacking themselves. And neither of those is a healing place.

33:19

33 minutes, 19 seconds

But when you can slow down and get guided how to feel your senses, what are you sensing? And then what's the emotion?

33:30

33 minutes, 30 seconds

And then what's the thought? You've got the map.

33:36

33 minutes, 36 seconds

And then you're going to start look at, oh, my map is full of filters.

33:40

33 minutes, 40 seconds

Why I never finish a project is because I would, you know, didn't get to finish my birth. If I was born

33:48

33 minutes, 48 seconds

C-section, I might be afraid of finishing projects. Interesting. Yeah.

33:55

33 minutes, 55 seconds

Sorry. Yeah, please carry on.

33:57

33 minutes, 57 seconds

I had one little girl for I mean, I tell this story a lot, so some people may have heard it, but it was just so

34:05

34 minutes, 5 seconds

revealing to me the first time I saw her, and I always have the mom with with their child in my treatment room. She

34:12

34 minutes, 12 seconds

walks into my office. She walks around and then she goes into the corner behind the Japanese folding screen which was

34:20

34 minutes, 20 seconds

blocking a door to another office. I had soundproof tape there and all of a sudden she's behind there and I hear

34:26

34 minutes, 26 seconds

this rip rip rip and she is ripping the tape off the wall and I was and then

34:34

34 minutes, 34 seconds

she's taking that tape and she is taping up the crack, you know, between the three panels of the Japanese folding screen and she's

34:43

34 minutes, 43 seconds

taping up the crack and I was like, "Oh, what are you doing, honey?" And she goes, "Very important work." and don't

34:52

34 minutes, 52 seconds

you come in. And I thought about that and I was like, I bet you were born C-section.

34:59

34 minutes, 59 seconds

[laughter]

35:00

35 minutes

Sure enough, that was her whole healing process was

35:06

35 minutes, 6 seconds

her going back through the confusion of that experience, literally the sensory

35:16

35 minutes, 16 seconds

experience of a C-section, and integrating it. So it no longer caused her to create weird behavior. She

35:25

35 minutes, 25 seconds

was in at age. She would came from a good family, siblings, it fine at home, a bright little girl. And then when she

35:32

35 minutes, 32 seconds

went to preschool, she started grabbing another kid, creating a barricade in the classroom somewhere, and not letting the

35:41

35 minutes, 41 seconds

kid out. The kid had to be in there with her. And then the teachers, of course, would have to come separate them. And

35:49

35 minutes, 49 seconds

then she'd have these big emotional meltdowns. Mhm.

35:52

35 minutes, 52 seconds

And that's why she came to me. And once we realized, oh, she was separated from

35:59

35 minutes, 59 seconds

her mom, she didn't know where she was, she didn't feel safe, there were lots of pieces to the puzzle. By the end of her

36:08

36 minutes, 8 seconds

treatment, she had integrated the whole dang story.

36:13

36 minutes, 13 seconds

It was beautiful to see. So, so it just teaches me that we as human beings have

36:20

36 minutes, 20 seconds

an implicit memory. If we can work with it through our body awareness and looking in the mirror at our own behavior, we can unravel the puzzle.

36:33

36 minutes, 33 seconds

It's almost like you have to have a little detective hat and figure out why do I do this? This isn't normal, you know? Why do I avoid promotions?

36:44

36 minutes, 44 seconds

Why do I never start? You know, I have a great idea but never get started. That can often be because of your journey through the birth canal.

36:54

36 minutes, 54 seconds

It's not always that, but it could be.

36:57

36 minutes, 57 seconds

Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, that the I'd love to talk about like sensitive kids and and where that kind of maybe stems from, but you know,

37:05

37 minutes, 5 seconds

because I think sensitivity is certainly a gift rather than a weakness. I think most people would agree with that once they, you know, I think a lot of

37:14

37 minutes, 14 seconds

individuals would like their partners to be more sensitive or they'd like to be more sensitive. You know, I think that it can be an incredible superpower. But

37:22

37 minutes, 22 seconds

parents often worry that they're, you know, doing maybe something wrong when they've got sensitive children. How do you think parents can support those

37:29

37 minutes, 29 seconds

sensitive children without, you know, burning out or blaming themselves for it? first, you know, blessings to those parents because it's a challenge.

37:40

37 minutes, 40 seconds

Yeah.

37:41

37 minutes, 41 seconds

When you have a child who can't regulate and they can't, you know, put on a shirt because it's got a tag on the back,

37:49

37 minutes, 49 seconds

they've got tactile issues or they've got auditory issues, they there's too much, you know, in a classroom of other

37:57

37 minutes, 57 seconds

kids, there's too much noise. Those parents are always trying to compromise or get the right food.

38:03

38 minutes, 3 seconds

Yeah. I wrote a book called Help for Sensory Challenges just so parents could help their kids

38:11

38 minutes, 11 seconds

reinform their body. How we heal is we get new information coming in. Not just

38:19

38 minutes, 19 seconds

our filter saying ah but we give ourselves new information like I'm squeezing myself because

38:29

38 minutes, 29 seconds

proprioception often helps someone feel that they exist

38:36

38 minutes, 36 seconds

and propriception you get in the birth canal you get pressed as you have to

38:42

38 minutes, 42 seconds

rotate and come out but a kid born C-section doesn't get that propriception

38:49

38 minutes, 49 seconds

A baby stuck in the birth canal could dissociate and not realize they even made it through.

38:59

38 minutes, 59 seconds

So you could have a kid who's a little lost.

39:03

39 minutes, 3 seconds

You know, they're nice and kind, but they're like kind of lost. Yeah.

39:09

39 minutes, 9 seconds

Because they haven't come all the way back and survived that terrifying experience.

39:18

39 minutes, 18 seconds

and put it into context so that then they know the brain goes, "Oh, that was my birth was a moment in

39:26

39 minutes, 26 seconds

time. It's not a forever tragedy." And especially if there was chemicals, then you've got the brain in influenced

39:35

39 minutes, 35 seconds

by chemicals early on and the chemicals take over because that's what they're designed to

39:42

39 minutes, 42 seconds

do, those pain chemicals. And they, you know, they dissociate a kid So you've got lots of ways to heal is

39:50

39 minutes, 50 seconds

what I'm trying to say when you can. So for those parents in answer to your

39:56

39 minutes, 56 seconds

question, I would say get get my book because it has very specific stepbystep

40:05

40 minutes, 5 seconds

things you can do. A mom came to me with her three kids and I finally realized I need to write a book here so that

40:12

40 minutes, 12 seconds

parents are not stuck with just having to go to the expert. They can actually

40:19

40 minutes, 19 seconds

understand what's happening and add layers of new input so that you're

40:26

40 minutes, 26 seconds

working with the pressure weight and pressure. Then you work with tactile with the skin and then you can work with

40:35

40 minutes, 35 seconds

uh auditory is there bilateral crossing of the brain stem you can work with visual these are

40:44

40 minutes, 44 seconds

the things that I help parents understand you know it's not hopeless don't don't

40:51

40 minutes, 51 seconds

think you have to keep accommodating for to your child help build a resilient child

40:59

40 minutes, 59 seconds

because it's not fair to for a child to grow up thinking the world's going to accommodate to them. Yeah. Yeah.

41:06

41 minutes, 6 seconds

That's a good point. That's a good really good point. Getting getting those children prepared for, you know, adulthood, which is, you know, a huge big job of parenting. And I'd love to

41:14

41 minutes, 14 seconds

talk about nutrition and the nervous system. Um, especially with healing, you're talking about resilience there and how important

41:21

41 minutes, 21 seconds

that is. And at True Hope, we are always talking about the vitally important role of correcting nutritional deficiencies

41:28

41 minutes, 28 seconds

that so many people have and dealing with things that are root cause

41:35

41 minutes, 35 seconds

preventative um approach. How do you see physical nourishment and the nervous and

41:42

41 minutes, 42 seconds

nervous system regulation working together in supporting um emotional resilience and ultimately healing?

41:51

41 minutes, 51 seconds

Well, I would say it's the primary foundation that if you know we have people who have

41:59

41 minutes, 59 seconds

survived all kinds of difficult things and still done well and so we don't want to say it's always this always that.

42:09

42 minutes, 9 seconds

But we do know that many obese children sometimes it's there because they're eating obesly but it could be

42:18

42 minutes, 18 seconds

that they their a generation ago or the grandparent generation was in a starvation system.

42:26

42 minutes, 26 seconds

Yep.

42:27

42 minutes, 27 seconds

And they got the nut they got the epigenetics of I need to hoard my food in my body.

42:35

42 minutes, 35 seconds

Yep. And so when you start to give new information with good nutrition, it can break up that idea.

42:45

42 minutes, 45 seconds

It's like, oh, my epigenetic says I have to hoard. However, I'm actually being nourished with good nutrition.

42:55

42 minutes, 55 seconds

And that dissonance starts to produce health. It starts to let go the

43:03

43 minutes, 3 seconds

emotional trauma of the past and rebuild a nutritional foundation. I know for

43:10

43 minutes, 10 seconds

myself, my mom was on diet pills when she was pregnant with me. So that basically flooded my system with amphetamines.

43:19

43 minutes, 19 seconds

Wow.

43:19

43 minutes, 19 seconds

And lack of nourishment because she was dieting.

43:24

43 minutes, 24 seconds

And so I was born three pounds four ounces. I was a little thing. And then when you add nicotine on top of that,

43:32

43 minutes, 32 seconds

you know, that gives you that excitation depression flow that nicotine produces.

43:39

43 minutes, 39 seconds

And uh for me, it was when I really paid and I remember in my 30s I got exposed

43:47

43 minutes, 47 seconds

to eating uh spir we ate healthy as a family. So that was good. We had vegetables. We had, you know, we had our

43:55

43 minutes, 55 seconds

proteins and our vegetables and when and I was I'm old enough that there was still some nutrition in the

44:02

44 minutes, 2 seconds

food back in the you know I was born in 1954 and uh

44:11

44 minutes, 11 seconds

for me at age 31 I got exposed to u I found the company light force spirulina.

44:21

44 minutes, 21 seconds

I found the spirulina food and that's an algae that has it's part animal, part al

44:27

44 minutes, 27 seconds

part plant and I paid attention to my nutrition and I've been eating that every day since my 30s.

44:38

44 minutes, 38 seconds

What I noticed when I got the right balance in my system is I could focus my brain. I used to have trouble going into

44:48

44 minutes, 48 seconds

a grocery store and getting overwhelmed by all the choices or even into the public library. I'd get

44:54

44 minutes, 54 seconds

overwhelmed by all the, you know, information living on the shelves. And once I had that nutritional base, I stabilized.

45:06

45 minutes, 6 seconds

It was it was fascinating to observe that, wow, I feel different.

45:13

45 minutes, 13 seconds

And I think when you get the right nutritional base, it definitely produces new sensory input.

45:23

45 minutes, 23 seconds

It's nutrative input that is, you know, guiding the nervous system.

45:30

45 minutes, 30 seconds

So we need that healthy fats. You know, we need like in in my work, I teach a

45:36

45 minutes, 36 seconds

lot of movement and sensory awareness as part of healing. And I studied for

45:45

45 minutes, 45 seconds

decades with a brilliant woman, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, who developed the ability to teach us how do you feel your muscle system?

45:57

45 minutes, 57 seconds

How do you feel your bone system? like a living mind of the muscles, mind of the

46:04

46 minutes, 4 seconds

bones, mind of the fat and that awakened healthy fat that mileinates your nerves,

46:14

46 minutes, 14 seconds

you know, and if we're not getting the right fats in our body, how do we keep nutritionally able to have that supportive system?

46:24

46 minutes, 24 seconds

Absolutely. Yeah.

46:26

46 minutes, 26 seconds

Yeah. You um you mentioned so many amazing things there. What really stands out to me is the fact that when people are in a stressed sympathetic state,

46:35

46 minutes, 35 seconds

it's a massive challenge for you to maintain optimal weight because your your energy, everything is going towards

46:43

46 minutes, 43 seconds

that fight, flight, freeze situation and you know, you're literally not in a rest and digest um space. And if you are your

46:53

46 minutes, 53 seconds

body is in a calorically stressed position, you are going to be more susceptible to let's just say bad foods.

47:02

47 minutes, 2 seconds

And what's worse about that is like the food companies know that and they actually prey on that. They prey on that whole system, that whole structure. You

47:11

47 minutes, 11 seconds

know, they chemically manipulate to keep us in that stressed state. So we buy more, consume more, and we have to repeat that because there's no there's

47:18

47 minutes, 18 seconds

no there's no actual nutrition in these foods. So we have to eat more and more and more and more for that more neurological fix rather than a um physical sessation.

47:28

47 minutes, 28 seconds

And the great example of that is when people go on vacation and they don't eat brilliantly or they don't they might

47:36

47 minutes, 36 seconds

drink a little bit too much alcohol. It doesn't actually affect them as much as it would when they do those things at home when they're in their normal environment. They're on vacation.

47:44

47 minutes, 44 seconds

They're by the beach. They're by the pool. Their nervous system is relaxed.

47:48

47 minutes, 48 seconds

Therefore, their nervous system is in a completely different situation. Their biology, their digestion, they're actually able to engage these systems really well. I

47:57

47 minutes, 57 seconds

know so many people that go to like Italy and France eat their faces off and they come back lighter than they went there. It's a very very interesting

48:05

48 minutes, 5 seconds

phenomenon. And I think that when you're able to use, you know, like a pro like some of our products, especially the Empower Plus, which is this 37

48:13

48 minutes, 13 seconds

ingredient broadspectctrum micronutrient that's giving you the foundational requirements that you need, that your brain needs, especially to, you know, do

48:21

48 minutes, 21 seconds

all of its incredible functions. And when you take on that foundational piece and you start giving your body that on a

48:28

48 minutes, 28 seconds

consistent basis, then your brain works better. you're able to actually engage your your parasympathetic nervous system

48:35

48 minutes, 35 seconds

a lot a lot easier. You can get there and you're end up making better choices.

48:39

48 minutes, 39 seconds

Um, and your biology isn't working against you because we're not in this um World War I, World War II caloric

48:47

48 minutes, 47 seconds

starvation mode. We're in the complete opposite of that where, you know, I could be five minutes, I could be in three or four different um uh fast food

48:56

48 minutes, 56 seconds

restaurants eating my face off, you know. So, we're not in that stage anymore. But if people are chronically nutrient deficient, it's harder for

49:04

49 minutes, 4 seconds

their brain to, let's just say, make better choices without going like too deep into the um neurological aspects of of the brain signaling and brain

49:12

49 minutes, 12 seconds

chemistry. But I think a lot of people can relate to that. You know, they have a busy day at work and then they get home, kids are in bed, and then 7 8 9

49:21

49 minutes, 21 seconds

10:00 is like, you know, where a lot of people consume a lot of their calories, and they're not in the not best possible forms. Everyone's got an example of

49:29

49 minutes, 29 seconds

that, I think. And that's just that's just the way that our body kind of like works once it's in a relaxed rest state.

49:35

49 minutes, 35 seconds

That's where it's going to shift and and and engage differently. And I know that you were your work incorporates

49:42

49 minutes, 42 seconds

neuroplasticity a lot. We've talked a lot about that on on the show, which is really interesting. And the brain's, you know, incredible ability to to change,

49:51

49 minutes, 51 seconds

and it's uh it's able to do that so well.

49:54

49 minutes, 54 seconds

But for someone who's like struggled with, let's say, anxiety, um, trauma for decades, what gives what gives you hope

50:02

50 minutes, 2 seconds

that healing is still possible in those situations?

50:06

50 minutes, 6 seconds

Well, first off, if they're looking for healing, you know, if they if they're still like, "Oh, I know there's something that this

50:14

50 minutes, 14 seconds

should be different." And I've seen people totally find

50:21

50 minutes, 21 seconds

the ease in their parasympathetic system once they have the right support to not

50:29

50 minutes, 29 seconds

carry the panic, the life or death threat that was from a moment in time. One example of this

50:38

50 minutes, 38 seconds

woman is doing brilliant healing. um she you know her she was way up in the

50:45

50 minutes, 45 seconds

mountains in Canada and her her parents had a little cafe there and and so they

50:52

50 minutes, 52 seconds

were very you know no resources just people would have to hike there to get there and what happened is she got a high

51:00

51 minutes

fever. Her mom was working. The mom comes back to check on her baby and the baby's in this high fever and the mother

51:08

51 minutes, 8 seconds

is like grabs the baby and races down the mountain. So if you've ever had a high fever, you're kind of delusional anyway.

51:18

51 minutes, 18 seconds

Yeah.

51:19

51 minutes, 19 seconds

You know, you're in a very strange state. And then her mother raced down the mountain to get help and bring her

51:27

51 minutes, 27 seconds

baby to a doctor. And every time she crossed the stream, she dunk the baby in ice cold water to cool her off. So when

51:35

51 minutes, 35 seconds

you think of a nervous system pattern, you've got high temperature delusion, quick shock, cold, back and forth in the extremes.

51:49

51 minutes, 49 seconds

And then there's the the you know the sense like will this ever end? Am I going to die? The fear the mother had.

51:56

51 minutes, 56 seconds

Is her baby gonna die? And then you know luckily they got to the hospital but the mom had to hitchhike with her baby to

52:05

52 minutes, 5 seconds

get to a hospital and the first car was too slow. She got out. The second car ended up being her friends and they

52:12

52 minutes, 12 seconds

deliberately drove fast so they'd get a speeding ticket and then the policeman stopped him and realized what was going on and led him to the hospital with the

52:21

52 minutes, 21 seconds

siren. So what we're thinking about is not this person specifically. We're thinking about the nervous system. Yeah.

52:30

52 minutes, 30 seconds

We're thinking about extreme exposures to inputs.

52:35

52 minutes, 35 seconds

So high fever input, ice cold water input, spatial dynamics of changing cars

52:43

52 minutes, 43 seconds

and speeding fast, and then auditory input of a police siren,

52:51

52 minutes, 51 seconds

you know, and then they got medicines that helped reduce the drug, reduce the fever, and she survived. She's bright

52:59

52 minutes, 59 seconds

and brilliant and all of that, but she's had to learn to stabilize

53:06

53 minutes, 6 seconds

all of that existential and learn how to identify it. Oh,

53:15

53 minutes, 15 seconds

that's what it was. This is why I go into high arousal. This is why I go into depression.

53:22

53 minutes, 22 seconds

And you know a nutritional foundation can help interrupt the swings that will happen in the nervous system based on emotions.

53:34

53 minutes, 34 seconds

I think you have to do in addition to nutrition. It's very helpful if you kind of look at the psychological

53:42

53 minutes, 42 seconds

imprints and put them to rest. But if you're just doing that and not building your nutrition, you're working too hard. Yeah.

53:54

53 minutes, 54 seconds

Yeah. Well said. I'd love to finish off with kind of like a bonus question just to kind of get people um thinking about

54:01

54 minutes, 1 second

um what they can what they can do especially when they're in like struggling situations. And so if someone's listening and they feel stuck, um perhaps they've tried therapy,

54:10

54 minutes, 10 seconds

they've tried uh medication, I don't know, they've tried meditation, they've tried everything that they've been recommended, um and they've tried these

54:18

54 minutes, 18 seconds

different approaches and they and they still feel overwhelmed with what they've experienced. What would you, you know, what would you want them to know about

54:26

54 minutes, 26 seconds

their capacity, their own ability to heal and um have hope?

54:32

54 minutes, 32 seconds

I would say that don't give up. First off, don't give up that there's a there's something and a way for you to

54:41

54 minutes, 41 seconds

heal because so often you start going to all the authorities and it doesn't work and you paid a lot of money and you're still miserable. That's not helpful.

54:51

54 minutes, 51 seconds

Sometimes people have to slow down and rest their cheek against their own distress.

55:01

55 minutes, 1 second

It's helpful to have guidance. You can have a good therapist supporting you to do that.

55:08

55 minutes, 8 seconds

But when you come into relationship with your distress, not in a way to try to get it away or fix it, but what's the hidden story in there?

55:19

55 minutes, 19 seconds

Why does this keep happening? Is maybe my soul is saying, "I want you to listen. I have to tell you this because I need your help.

55:31

55 minutes, 31 seconds

And it learning to kind of slow down and trust that you can find a hidden story is really important.

55:43

55 minutes, 43 seconds

And then I think you do need sometimes outer support. What I teach people how to do is to take a difficult situation

55:53

55 minutes, 53 seconds

and put it outside of themselves like in stuffed animals. I do always with stuffed animals with the children or

56:00

56 minutes

with adults. I'll say, "Okay, let's let's put this experience out here and look at it together."

56:07

56 minutes, 7 seconds

So then you're going to put like let an object hold like, "Oh, here's the the car that hit me.

56:15

56 minutes, 15 seconds

Oh, here's the time in the hospital. Oh, here's the back pain." And when you

56:21

56 minutes, 21 seconds

externalize it, the brain goes, "Oh, those are the pieces of the puzzle.

56:31

56 minutes, 31 seconds

Okay, I can, you know, I can it's not lifethreatening anymore. I can organize

56:38

56 minutes, 38 seconds

it and oh, I can get a little bigger than that old experience

56:46

56 minutes, 46 seconds

so I can give myself good messages, not all the life-threatening messages that are bubbling up.

56:54

56 minutes, 54 seconds

So I would say get good health, don't give up, eat well, get your nutrition, make sure you have

57:03

57 minutes, 3 seconds

movement, enough breath and exercise because if you just become sedentary, everything starts to shut down.

57:13

57 minutes, 13 seconds

Yeah. Well said. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Um, thank you so much. Great input. I love that final piece.

57:20

57 minutes, 20 seconds

such a beautiful um way to to to uh give a lot of people who are struggling these days just just a little bit of hope and

57:28

57 minutes, 28 seconds

that's what we tried to do. And you know, for a lot of people who do find us here at True Hope, we're their last hope because they've tried so many different

57:36

57 minutes, 36 seconds

things to get better and then they find they find this incredibly well researched product and their

57:45

57 minutes, 45 seconds

brain and their body shifts and they're able to see let's say they're able to see the light and then they're able to

57:52

57 minutes, 52 seconds

do all these other important things that we've spoken about that that's going to help with their psychological state. So

57:59

57 minutes, 59 seconds

they're able to recognize how important sleep is, how important their diet is, how important moving their body is, how

58:05

58 minutes, 5 seconds

important it is to reach out to um friends and community for support because we are not supposed to be human beings isolated in a dark room on our

58:14

58 minutes, 14 seconds

phones. We're not designed to do that at all. It goes against a lot a lot of years of biology and and

58:22

58 minutes, 22 seconds

cultural evolution. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Annie. really appreciate your insights today and your stories. Thank you so much. Where is the

58:30

58 minutes, 30 seconds

best place people can learn more about you and check out some of your great books?

58:34

58 minutes, 34 seconds

The most simple way is just to go to my website anniebrook.com and broo is b you'll find video

58:43

58 minutes, 43 seconds

resources. You'll find a free PDF library. You'll find classes you can join or even deeper training. And then I

58:52

58 minutes, 52 seconds

also have a free Instagram account with a lot of resources. So if you just have

59:00

59 minutes

little time but you need a quick like, oh that's how I need to remember to think about this well or what I can do. I share lots of tools

59:09

59 minutes, 9 seconds

there as well. And that is just instagram.combrook theapy.

59:16

59 minutes, 16 seconds

So my website or my Instagram. Thanks, Simon, so much and for giving people hope and not just hope, but results.

59:26

59 minutes, 26 seconds

Absolutely. Yeah, I'll make sure that those links are in the show notes so people can find your website, your social media, your books, etc. I've got

59:33

59 minutes, 33 seconds

a couple of books on there that I've got my eye on. So, um, I'll make sure people have got the ability to check those out.

59:40

59 minutes, 40 seconds

But again, Annie, thank you so much for coming on the show. So good. Yeah, you my pleasure, Simon. Thank you.

59:47

59 minutes, 47 seconds

Bye for now. Well, that is it for this episode of True Hope Cast, the official podcast of True Hope Canada. We will um

59:54

59 minutes, 54 seconds

be with you again very shortly. I think a couple of weeks the next episode's going to hit. But until then, we'll see you soon.

1:00:07

1 hour, 7 seconds

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