Transcript
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Welcome to the Holistic Way podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host Nikki aka Dominique, founder of the Holistic Body Club, Holistic Body Coach and Yoga Teacher.
Speaker: I hope you'll join me weekly as we discuss a holistic approach, fresh perspective and non-negotiable self-compassion.
Speaker: Understanding is empowering and self-kindness is the new sexy.
Speaker: It is my mission to introduce to you new ways to work with your mind, body and emotions rather than against them, to create long-term results with more ease and fun.
Speaker: Hello soul friend, welcome to another episode of the Holistic Way podcast.
Speaker: Today I want to give you an update on my holistic body journey.
Speaker: I had a look through all of my episodes lately and I realized that I had done an episode on my holistic body journey that was in February 2023, so more than a year ago, a bit more than a year ago.
Speaker: And I just realized how many things have changed
Speaker: transformed and shifted since then and I thought it would be very interesting to give you a little bit of an update from that side.
Speaker: So if you've listened to previous episodes, I think it's episode 19, I shared about a difficult time, why I hadn't done any podcast episodes in over a year almost.
Speaker: And I gave you more insights into the updates from my life in general, my business.
Speaker: But today I want to give you insights into the changes, the shifts that I had when it comes to my holistic body journey.
Speaker: And as I start this episode, I want to start by saying that this is an ongoing journey.
Speaker: So that's something that I realized.
Speaker: Your holistic body is not something you just achieve.
Speaker: a physical transformation and then all is good.
Speaker: It's a ongoing constant connection, reconnection to your body, actively listening every single day and it doesn't just stop one day.
Speaker: It's also nothing to be scared about or scared of because it's
Speaker: gonna become just a natural part of your life and your lifestyle.
Speaker: So like I said, I had a really difficult phase last year.
Speaker: I don't like the work dark night of the soul, but I was really at a place in my mental health that was very, very low.
Speaker: I did not have a lot of hope.
Speaker: I didn't know what I want.
Speaker: I didn't know what was wrong.
Speaker: I didn't know what was happening.
Speaker: In that time, I realized how important my mental health was.
Speaker: but also in connection with movement.
Speaker: If you want to have more details on that aspect of my past, feel free to go back to episode 19.
Speaker: I go a lot more in depth, but it is important that I mention this for the sake of bringing to you this part of my holistic body journey.
Speaker: So in that time when I didn't feel well mentally, I didn't feel well physically, I didn't feel well in my body image, a lot of things were connected and were very low.
Speaker: The things I had learned about food freedom, they stayed.
Speaker: I didn't necessarily have any troubles with emotional eating or sugar cravings more than a normal diet.
Speaker: a craving you might have for something sweet after dinner or after a meal.
Speaker: But I stopped doing any kind of movement that had an impact on my mental health and it was kind of like a downward loop.
Speaker: And it made me realize, and it's funny because we know these things.
Speaker: We know it's important to move for our mental health, that the body and the mind are connected.
Speaker: But in that time, it was very difficult for me to take any action whatsoever other than just...
Speaker: wither away and that's a very loose term I use but it was challenging that's the best way I can I can put it and in hindsight I had so many great learnings and I realized that this was actually so necessary and that some things had to crumble for me to realign to what I actually want to realign to who I actually am and
Speaker: But I know that when you are in this phase, oh my God, it is so challenging.
Speaker: And it reignited that knowledge that movement is so, so, so important, not only for the physical aspect or the physical results, but for a healthy mindset, a healthy mind.
Speaker: So I want to say that that was kind of the first spark of
Speaker: that led to a chain of events that I will uncover, that I will talk about in this episode.
Speaker: In, I want to say, middle of last year, I started to recover, I started to return to myself, I...
Speaker: started to become more of me and I started to go back to my business and I rethought my whole business and the way I want to serve people and at the same time I decided to invest in
Speaker: my own holistic body coach.
Speaker: So I worked with Tara Brunette and I think I spoke about her in the first episode about my holistic body journey.
Speaker: I even had her on as a guest to speak about EFT and I decided to invest in a Voxer coaching support container.
Speaker: And it was incredible.
Speaker: The amount of shifts that have happened for me in such a short period of time is insane.
Speaker: And I remember the potency because I never thought about doing containers like this.
Speaker: But it was so powerful and I remember within like probably a week or two I was like feeling well what am I doing now?
Speaker: Like we solved everything, like I feel just like everything has integrated and I finally have unlocked the next level of my dream body.
Speaker: And she then was like, well, wasn't that the point?
Speaker: And I was in that moment like, oh, yes, I just didn't realize that it would happen so fast.
Speaker: And I had so many shifts, so many beliefs that we transmuted together that it really...
Speaker: kind of catapulted me into the next level of my holistic body, really reconnecting to my own body, knowing that this is my dream body and it is done, it is done, it is done, and that everything I do every single day is taking me to become more of my dream body.
Speaker: And I have to take you back a little bit for context.
Speaker: And I can't, for the love of God, I cannot remember when that session happened.
Speaker: But I had a channeling session with my mentor Nina.
Speaker: We channeled my soul messages.
Speaker: And one of my soul messages was, it blew my mind, I didn't understand it.
Speaker: The message, the soul message that, or one of them, that I'm supposed to bring down to this earthly plane is heal the mind, heal the body.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: It made no sense whatsoever to me because I had just spent the last, I don't know, five years, I don't know how much money on mindset work, you know?
Speaker: I, in that moment, and I can't remember, maybe it was 2022 probably.
Speaker: And in that moment I thought, you know, whatever, I am just gonna leave it at that.
Speaker: I know that holistic body is my purpose.
Speaker: This is one of the sole messages.
Speaker: I'm just going to trust that at some point it's going to become clear and understand what they meant.
Speaker: And I completely forgot about that message until I want to say autumn.
Speaker: 2023 where it finally clicked and remember what I said I realized when I was down when I was feeling depressed and anxious how important movement was how important my body was and I don't know if it was like one event but I realized what it meant that you had to heal the body and then the mind would heal too
Speaker: It was just like a slow domino and one domino tumble and the next slowly and the next and the next and finally everything made sense and that's when I found the last missing piece not only for the Holistic Body Club but for my own journey.
Speaker: And what's the most interesting is that actually everything had prepared me for this and my work the way I have done it before, how I taught the holistic body before and how I was already creating the holistic body club.
Speaker: it was already preparing me for this and it just clicked into place in a different way and that's when I become to realize that the belief, the premise, the value that I live by and that I live by in my work
Speaker: is the body is the compass.
Speaker: My body is the compass.
Speaker: And that's what all of my work is founded on.
Speaker: This is what I practice every single day.
Speaker: And I say practice because it's an internal practice that we will practice for the rest of our days.
Speaker: And I want to go deeper into what that means in a moment, but I just want to take a step back and speak about this tendency that a lot of us have to intellectualize our emotions instead of feeling them.
Speaker: A lot of us, and that means me included, we spend so much time in the head and not in the body that there's almost like a disconnect.
Speaker: And if like me, you're neurodiverse, maybe you have ADHD, you will even more so spend so much time in your head and overthinking
Speaker: and trying to make plans and analyze things and add to that the fact that most of us have been told and I've heard everywhere and read about and it was all about mindset, mindset, mindset, me included.
Speaker: I got down that rabbit hole as well.
Speaker: It was all about mindset.
Speaker: I thought I could change my life just with my mind just to at some point realize mindset could only get me so far.
Speaker: if my body was not on board and I realized that I had to kind of shift the paradigm and not saying mindset work is not important it has a place and it has a role but the body is the compass not the other way around
Speaker: And it was exciting and it was stressful at the same time because it just meant that everything I've learned in the past
Speaker: was about to shift that I had to enter a new reality with my body, my mind and my journey.
Speaker: So I understood that the body was the compass and the body was the leader and the body always had the answer.
Speaker: So I thought about my own situation with
Speaker: endometriosis for example and while there's medical studies and research that's done but they're still not sure where exactly it comes from why so many suffer from that condition I realized that my body actually knows
Speaker: my body knows why it's doing this, my body knows why it can't get rid of these herds, and I'm not going to go into detail with endometriosis on this episode, but my body knows.
Speaker: My body knows exactly what mechanisms and what it's trying to prevent, and why it cannot do certain things, why it cannot break down other things, why it has too much of certain things, what it has too much of and what it has not enough of.
Speaker: And it was kind of an aha moment.
Speaker: My body at any time knows.
Speaker: And add to that the fact that
Speaker: in a situation my subconscious mind and my body and I use these terms like kind of interlinked because there's so many physical actions that happen in my body that I'm not aware of that are happening the subconscious mind so rather than seeing them separately I see them very intertwined and interlinked so when I
Speaker: I am triggered by something, by a thought, a situation.
Speaker: It's my body that's reacting.
Speaker: My mind's not even realizing why I'm reacting, why I'm suddenly feeling this, why I suddenly feel like it's not safe.
Speaker: And you can also equate it to intuition if you want.
Speaker: But then I had to ask myself, as someone that's so overly in her head and that easily intellectualizes every problem and every emotion instead of feeling them, how do I access the wisdom of my body?
Speaker: And I went down the rabbit hole and I practiced different things and I found and created different techniques to access the wisdom of my body and bypass my conscious mind.
Speaker: And as someone with ADHD, like I said, with a hyperactive mind, I don't think my mind ever is quiet or shuts up for longer than maybe two seconds.
Speaker: Bypassing the conscious mind is not always easy, and I've had to find ways to adapt for myself that work for me.
Speaker: And this is something that I go deeper into in the Holistic Body Club, where I have a whole module about accessing your body's wisdom, the subconscious mind, for people that
Speaker: have the tendency to overthink or question things a lot that for me and my clients works like a charm and I just want to give you a little information or like a little key
Speaker: is we've been told to meditate a lot of the time and access intuition and maybe even channel by being still, the body being still, so we could slow down the mind and access this state of hypnosis if we want.
Speaker: Well, I notice for myself that I need movement.
Speaker: I need repetitive movement.
Speaker: So if you've seen any of my latest reels, you'll notice that when I do tapping, I always move.
Speaker: I cannot...
Speaker: sit still and access the wisdom of my body because my conscious mind just takes over so that's just a little wisdom nugget for you if you've been trying to meditate in stillness and it hasn't worked then maybe try moving meditation it's going to be a game changer
Speaker: So let's look a bit more about what it means to let your body be the compass, because I believe there are different layers to that that are key.
Speaker: So the first layer is that emotions, trauma, beliefs, they're not stored in the mind.
Speaker: They are stored in the body.
Speaker: And there's different studies that have shown that there's no storage for these things in the mind, but that they're actually stored in the body.
Speaker: So it's important that we restore that balance in the body as well, right?
Speaker: If something is stored in the body, why would we just access the mind to unlock that thing, that belief, that emotion, that trauma that's stored in the body to kind of heal it?
Speaker: So the first layer is to say...
Speaker: We need to use different tools that allow the energy, the stuck energy that's stuck in the form of emotions, of beliefs, of trauma, and that then transmute into physical symptoms a lot of the time if they're not processed over the course of multiple years.
Speaker: So we need to find techniques, tools, ways
Speaker: to get the energy moving in the body and remove those things in the body.
Speaker: Yes, it's important to use mindset to have a clear vision and have an idea on where we want to go and have conscious beliefs that we want to
Speaker: adopt that are a supporting belief that is a supporting mindset but the healing needs to happen on the physical level with different somatic practices
Speaker: What I found is that my work in the last few months has evolved quite a lot.
Speaker: So I find tapping is a great way to remove the energies in the body.
Speaker: I, like I said, use it a lot of the time while walking when I do it by myself.
Speaker: But I also get my clients more and more to use movement to allow the body to express in the way it wants.
Speaker: So let's say you have an uncomfortable emotion of shame that is sitting somewhere in your hip, for example.
Speaker: What does your body want to do?
Speaker: How does your body want to move to release that emotion of shame that is stuck in your body?
Speaker: and through the work inside the holistic body.
Speaker: There are different steps to get to that place where your body can actually instantly tell you where it is stuck and to be able to listen to that body.
Speaker: Instantly, because it's not something that most of us can and I couldn't for a very long time.
Speaker: And I'm still practicing and learning more ways for myself, but also for my clients.
Speaker: So we can have that direct communication with the body.
Speaker: The second layer I...
Speaker: spoke about that in different ways in different episodes
Speaker: And I want to go a bit more in detail maybe now.
Speaker: And that's that the body has the answers to your desires.
Speaker: So I said before, at any moment, at any given time, your body knows what it needs more of, especially when it comes to desires for your health, for your physical health, for your mental health, for your body, for your symptoms.
Speaker: Your body knows what it needs.
Speaker: why it has these symptoms.
Speaker: It knows why it's out of balance and it's doing everything it can to come back to balance.
Speaker: But maybe there's some energy jam or the mindset is not in the right place or we keep doing the things that it actually doesn't need because we ignore its messaging and
Speaker: So on a physical level, if you want to transform your body, you need to understand why your body is expressing that symptom, whether it's weight, whether it's pain, whether it's cravings or emotional eating.
Speaker: We need to understand why the body is expressing it in this way.
Speaker: What it actually needs to resolve it is
Speaker: I want to give you a specific example when it comes to diet and I don't mean diet in the word of diet to lose weight but a diet the way we eat an elephant has a diet a dog has a diet we humans have a diet that we tend to want to
Speaker: have certain rules to follow because they give us a sense of safety of what is okay to eat and what isn't but the problem is that these rules are made by the mind because maybe we're told that carbs are bad and sugar is bad and we need more vegetables and stay away from soy or whatever
Speaker: But the problem with that is that it's a decision that's made with the mind, but not with the body.
Speaker: But your body every single day might need different things.
Speaker: So today it might need more protein, tomorrow it might need more carbs, maybe it needs more magnesium or whatever.
Speaker: And the mind will never be able to grasp that accurately.
Speaker: and it is individual to every one of us and I think that's the problem with these trendy common diets is that not all of the bodies will work well on that not all of the bodies will need that and that might shift over the months that might shift over the years that might shift as things happen in our lives like pregnancies or challenging times
Speaker: or whatever so here again the bodies the compass and i know it's scary because rules give us a sense of safety of security of control but you will find so much more results
Speaker: and transformation when you allow yourself to surrender to that innate wisdom that your body has
Speaker: And the third layer that I see to that value, that my body's the compass, is about working with the nervous system.
Speaker: And if you've listened to the previous episode, I've spoke a lot about the importance when it comes to manifesting, why the nervous system is so important.
Speaker: And also on your holistic body journey, your nervous system being regulated is key.
Speaker: We tend to be stuck either in flight or fight or freeze.
Speaker: And especially when we struggle with food, when we struggle with our body image, with our body, we are under constant stress.
Speaker: from morning to evening, from the moment you need to choose what to wear, when you see yourself in the mirror, and then you need to pick out your breakfast, and then you need to have lunch with your co-workers, and then there's a stressful meeting at work, and then a co-worker says something about your dress or your weight.
Speaker: And it goes on like that until you go to bed.
Speaker: So when we struggle with emotional eating, with body image struggles, we are subject to so much more stress than the, I want to say, normal person, that this is something we need to work with.
Speaker: The nervous system will be key and there are different techniques that we can use.
Speaker: I shared some of my favorite in the last episode, but really working with your nervous system and the more you become connected to your body, you will be able to tell, okay, now my nervous system is in flight or flight or now it's in freeze.
Speaker: And remember, there's nothing bad.
Speaker: It's normal for the nervous system to go from one side to the next, almost like a slider.
Speaker: Something happens, we activate it, we are getting ready to take action, and then we calm down, and then something happens, and we relax a bit more, maybe almost...
Speaker: not freeze but you know we fall asleep, we're a bit lethargic and then we pick up so we want to move between the two.
Speaker: What is problematic is when we're stacking stress above stress above stress and we can never return to baseline but you can with different techniques teach your body to return to safety
Speaker: And to find that resilience again.
Speaker: And that happens when you let your body be the compass to let you know, okay, we've been in freeze for a bit too long.
Speaker: We've been in flight or fight for a bit too long.
Speaker: We need to regulate.
Speaker: And do these practices daily.
Speaker: And it's not something that you just do once.
Speaker: Most of my work is not something you just do once and it's gone.
Speaker: Sometimes there's techniques that can have really quick shifts.
Speaker: But they will have other layers sometimes.
Speaker: And it's an ongoing practice.
Speaker: Like I said, my holistic body journey is an ongoing journey that I will be on for the rest of my life.
Speaker: I would also like to give you a few examples of what it means for me in real life to let my body be the compass.
Speaker: So the first one is when it comes to movement or exercise and I do that a lot with my yogis in my yoga classes is making the difference in an
Speaker: maybe a bit more intense pose.
Speaker: When is my mind telling me to give up when the body is actually fine to hold it for longer?
Speaker: And on the opposite, when is my body telling me not further, that was enough,
Speaker: I'm hurting, this is going to end in an injury.
Speaker: And the mind's like pushing, no, we can do this.
Speaker: I can get deeper into that pose when the body's actually been screaming, stop.
Speaker: for a while and it is a tricky nuance to find and it takes practice but I invite you next time you do any kind of movement whatever it is whether you want to go for a run whether you practice yoga can you make the difference between when it's your mind telling you to give up or to push and when the message is from your body saying
Speaker: You can go a bit more or that's enough.
Speaker: And I always invite you to let the conscious mind get to the back because ego will always have something to add and will always want to be better than the neighbor or think, oh, I can't do it.
Speaker: So when the body's like, no, we're fine, dude.
Speaker: Just something to try out the next time you do any kind of movement or exercise.
Speaker: The next thing I want to give you a real example about is sugar cravings and I want to give you a real life example of that the other day.
Speaker: It was actually three weeks ago anyways.
Speaker: I felt I was experiencing more cravings than usual.
Speaker: So yes, sometimes I enjoy some chocolates, some sweets, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: But I felt like it was more a craving from my mind rather than something that was really aligned and that felt good about having some.
Speaker: And I decided to tune into my body.
Speaker: I did a practice where I connected with my body and asked my body, what is this about?
Speaker: What are these sugar cravings about?
Speaker: What are they covering?
Speaker: What are they fulfilling?
Speaker: What purpose are they serving?
Speaker: My body pointed me towards a void, an emotion that was uncomfortable.
Speaker: And I took the time to work through that.
Speaker: And I haven't experienced these cravings again.
Speaker: So do you see how I let my body be the compass rather than get into my mind and, oh, you're so weak, like you're a holistic body coach and now you're having a craving and da-da-dee-da-da-da.
Speaker: But I just went, okay, what's this about?
Speaker: Because I knew this was not aligned behavior for my body and for myself.
Speaker: So I went in and I got an answer from my body.
Speaker: And there's another thing that I want to add about this story because that was very interesting.
Speaker: So I had these cravings, I asked my body what it's about, I got an answer and I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker: and the next moment my mind came in and ruined it.
Speaker: I don't want to say it ruined it, but it was, it got involved and it said, well, we've been over this, that's just made up, that's all in your head, that can't be true.
Speaker: It made me realize how many times that happens
Speaker: or happened to me in the past and probably happens to a lot of women out there where your body tells you, gives you the information, maybe even you asked or maybe not, but you got information from your body and your mind goes, nope, that's not true, I don't believe you.
Speaker: How that creates an even deeper disconnect is
Speaker: And there's nothing wrong with my mind.
Speaker: That's just the way it is.
Speaker: The mind will always want to have things to add and it will try to protect me in ways that are a bit weird and it will always have something to say.
Speaker: But we choose when we let the mind take over or when we continue to let the body be the compass.
Speaker: So in that moment when my mind was like, it's not possible, you're making that up, da da dee da da da, I was like, mine, thank you so much for your opinion.
Speaker: I don't agree, go back to the back of your mind, go to the back seat, we've got this.
Speaker: I choose to trust my body and I choose to follow that intuition, that wisdom from my body.
Speaker: And it was resolved within a few minutes by doing some tapping.
Speaker: So remember, your mind is important and it has a job.
Speaker: We need to have the mind because maybe a situation comes up where your body feels in danger, but you consciously know you're not in danger.
Speaker: That's just a physical response from a rehearsed behavior, from a trapped fear.
Speaker: So the mind is here to tell, we're not in danger, like we're at home, we're just making this up, we're having fake scenarios in our head, it's not true, it's not happening at the moment, but then the body leads, the body is the compass, and when the mind comes in and says, it's not possible, it's not true, you're making that up, we let the mind...
Speaker: Be quiet again.
Speaker: Well, not even quiet.
Speaker: It's never going to be quiet in my case.
Speaker: If you have a quiet mind, bless you.
Speaker: I'm so happy for you.
Speaker: I wish I knew what it meant.
Speaker: But the mind will take the backseat again.
Speaker: We choose to prioritize what the body needs before we listen to the mind.
Speaker: so that's all things that i take my client through in the holistic body club and like i said what's interesting is i had the framework for the holistic body
Speaker: before I got that final piece of the puzzle that the body is the compass and I realized that actually everything had been put into place to support that value.
Speaker: So inside the Holistic Body Club, the first module is setting the foundation, finding acceptance and self-compassion for yourself
Speaker: It's about learning the difference between ego intentions and soul intentions and how to transmute them.
Speaker: And then module two to five, they're all about removing the noise.
Speaker: Removing the fears from the nervous system, removing or healing the safety mechanism, these protection mechanism that the body and the mind have put in place to keep us safe from perceived danger.
Speaker: It's working with the emotions and releasing those trapped emotions.
Speaker: It's working with the subconscious mind to remove those limiting beliefs and transmute them into supporting beliefs.
Speaker: And then the last module six, module six is about really tuning into the wisdom of your body.
Speaker: So for most of us, when we're at the beginning of this journey, it's really difficult to listen to your body or to even hear because all the noise is so loud.
Speaker: The emotions are loud.
Speaker: The past is loud.
Speaker: The subconscious mind is loud.
Speaker: All these limiting beliefs and thoughts.
Speaker: And it's difficult to hear your body.
Speaker: So everything prepares you to get to that place where you're
Speaker: you can really just tune into your body and know what it needs.
Speaker: And there's a whole other aspect of the Holistic Body Club where there's a huge library, almost like Netflix, where there's so many different tools and videos that you can use for things that come up on the go.
Speaker: So you experience something, there's probably a resource about that.
Speaker: If there's not, you can always reach out to me and I'm more than happy to create something for you and for the other members because this library is growing every week, every month.
Speaker: So there's new additions and the way I create them is by tuning into my intuition, into what the group, what the members need and create more resources and more content from there.
Speaker: I love the Holistic Body Club.
Speaker: It's my pride and joy.
Speaker: I feel like a mama that gave birth to the most beautiful child.
Speaker: I'm not a mom yet, so that's how I expect to feel when I have a real baby, a human baby one day, times a million.
Speaker: But what I love about this community, about this club, is that it is growing with you and me.
Speaker: And even in the last few months that it has been live, it has been alive.
Speaker: I have grown so much and I'm letting that all flow into the club to really support you as best as I can on your journey to your holistic body.
Speaker: So if that's something that you're interested in, if you feel called, if your heart, if your body calls you to know more about me, about my work, feel free to reach out.
Speaker: Feel free to check out my website.
Speaker: Feel free to check out my Instagram.
Speaker: And to just message me, I am more than happy and excited to have a chat.
Speaker: I could speak about this stuff for hours.
Speaker: So please don't hesitate.
Speaker: Even if you decide to not move along and work with me, that's completely fine.
Speaker: I'd love to have a good chat and I'll be happy to support you in whatever way I can.
Speaker: I think I've been speaking for long enough.
Speaker: So I hope you enjoyed this, that you had fun, that you have learned a few things about yourself in the process of learning about my journey.
Speaker: And I hope to see you in the next episode.
Speaker: Bye, soul friend.
Speaker: Thank you, beautiful soul, for being here with me this week.
Speaker: Don't forget to subscribe to the show and to follow me on Instagram at uniquely.niki.
Speaker: See you next time.
