Missing Witches - Witches Found： Lise Lønsmann - Reconnecting with Aliveness to Smash the Patriarchy

00:00:00.000 When we're connected with our aliveness, we go out and smash the patriarchy,

00:00:04.100 which is why scaring us into not feeling our bodies is helpful for the system of patriarchy.

00:00:09.520 Because then we stay frozen.

00:00:12.220 Embodied rituals, reconnecting with aliveness, it's absolutely a sacred process. 1.00

00:00:18.160 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:24.320 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:25.800 welcome witches welcome deep breath welcome rainy day gray sky welcome all the pollen in the air 0.57

00:00:36.960 and welcome especially to our guest today somatic practitioner long-time choreographer

00:00:46.880 and dancer someone who's been helping me in such a kind and profound way

00:00:52.780 Let me just welcome Lisa Lonsman. Welcome. How are you? Also, who are you today? With the caveat, as usual, that we're not obliged to be the same person we were five minutes ago.

00:01:08.020 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. I appreciate deep conversation and spaces that hold deep conversation. So thank you for offering that.

00:01:22.780 I am also a tiny bit tired, and there's pollen in the air, so I'm a little bit sneezy and sniffly.

00:01:31.600 And I also feel really tuned in because, yeah, I'm here for this talk.

00:01:38.240 I feel grounded.

00:01:39.680 Thanks for sharing a good example of being willing to sort of be in our bodies first.

00:01:46.420 I find that hard.

00:01:48.600 It's something that I've worked on a lot, but it's such an exciting space for thinking about magic and activism and art practice and calling in the world we want to be in.

00:02:00.020 And it's sort of counterintuitive to be like in my body to try to work into the world.

00:02:06.280 Can you talk about why that is?

00:02:09.340 Why does being in our body feel so revolutionary somehow?

00:02:14.720 love that question my short answer would be patriarchy because we've been taught not to be

00:02:25.740 in our bodies it is revolutionary because it's the opposite of everything we see and feel around us

00:02:32.620 the expression of coming home to our bodies is often very connected with deep longing and you

00:02:40.120 know a journey of not being in our bodies people might think that someone like me holding space

00:02:46.820 for body work must be like such an embodied person must have such a deep history with being in the

00:02:52.020 body which is partly true and also i came to this work because i'm an expert in disconnection in not

00:03:00.860 being in my body in running away in dissociating i think that's why it feels so revolutionary

00:03:07.280 is because most of us live very mind-based

00:03:10.080 and the body is often something foreign

00:03:13.340 that we don't understand.

00:03:14.620 A lot of us are afraid of the body,

00:03:16.220 afraid of connecting

00:03:16.920 because it feels like there are things here

00:03:18.840 we don't know how to handle, how to meet.

00:03:21.860 And again, this is a lot less about us

00:03:23.740 and a lot more about the systems around us.

00:03:25.680 I'm sure there are other times in history

00:03:28.980 where we were a lot more in our body all the time.

00:03:31.460 I'm sure there are other cultures

00:03:32.540 than the one I'm living in

00:03:34.000 where people are more in their bodies.

00:03:36.280 Checking in with yourself

00:03:37.220 being present being slow moving being in nature is part of everyday life whereas in western culture

00:03:44.720 it's something we have to earn and find little pockets of being with the body on our to-do list

00:03:51.060 so it's a different kind of relationship with the body so that's why coming into embodiment practices

00:03:58.940 being present in our body actually checking in with ourselves can feel so big and so revolutionary

00:04:03.640 because it's just so different from everything most of us have been taught.

00:04:09.860 Can you talk about how you started to notice

00:04:14.120 that you had a relationship with your body that you wanted to change

00:04:18.260 and how we can notice?

00:04:20.400 I think some of us don't even notice that we're not noticing our bodies,

00:04:24.820 to borrow an expression of yours that you use in your work.

00:04:27.420 Can we notice what we're noticing?

00:04:30.460 Yes.

00:04:31.720 Notice what we're noticing.

00:04:33.640 And how did I start to notice? I think there's a two-part answer there. Intuitively, I've kind of always known, but I've absolutely not had the language for it.

00:04:45.300 i started dancing when i was 11 danced all the time when i was a teenager wanted to be a dancer

00:04:55.040 never became one but moved into teaching choreographing and through all of that i was

00:05:04.200 kind of known like in my circles of friends and students of like a dancing person right

00:05:12.720 and I would assume that a person dancing would be in their body looking back I'm like I absolutely

00:05:17.480 was not and I can see how many of my students and colleagues were not we were dancing and moving

00:05:23.240 to have a way of being in the body but we didn't have the language to say this is what I'm longing

00:05:28.960 for help me practice this so so in that way I knew there was some disconnection but I couldn't put it

00:05:37.100 into words I had no idea that it had to do with trauma I knew nothing about the nervous system

00:05:42.100 I didn't look at my relationship with my body as a healing one.

00:05:47.380 If nothing had interrupted that, I think I would have just continued on that forever and been like, sure, I'm such a dancey person.

00:05:54.240 I'm such a body connected person without actually being in the body.

00:05:59.160 Getting older had something to do with it.

00:06:02.080 After teaching, I started teaching dance and movement when I was 17.

00:06:05.520 At that point, I would argue most of us are not really that connected with our body because of our culture.

00:06:10.360 I had a quite panicky relationship with my body at that time.

00:06:14.440 My relationship with dancing was very perfectionist, which matched the people around me.

00:06:21.120 Very striving to reach goals and what can I make my body do and I want to get better at this.

00:06:28.620 So very, yeah, about how things looked and how to perform.

00:06:32.880 Then as I got older and had been teaching for about 15, 18 years,

00:06:39.100 a part of me was like, there must be more. I can't keep teaching the same kind of repetitive

00:06:44.520 student copying the teacher, which is very Western, traditional kind of dance teaching.

00:06:51.980 And I was slowly moving into more embodiment without really knowing that that was the way

00:06:59.800 I was going. And that really clicked for me, working with students who were older, who wanted

00:07:06.640 to go deeper. I changed my structure from teaching in front of the class with everyone around me,

00:07:12.940 looking at my back and copying me, to standing in a circle. And that really changed the whole

00:07:19.380 dynamic of how we were relating to each other, how we were relating to the movement, the body

00:07:26.420 work, how we were speaking to each other. That was the beginning of my embodiment journey. The

00:07:33.200 thing that really clicked it into place for me was a cancer scare about five years ago that

00:07:38.540 intuitively clicked me into exactly the thing you mentioned which was body first. I was sporty

00:07:44.460 right so there was the awareness of landing in the cancer scare with shit this is real like there's 0.98

00:07:50.520 no time to waste here so I clicked into a slower pace for the first time in my life of just deeply 0.98

00:07:57.880 listening to what are the next steps what is needed and this could be real like this could be

00:08:05.080 the end of my life right thankfully it wasn't it was just a scare it was months of symptoms and

00:08:10.660 you know exams and an operation and and it just clicked me into listening to my body

00:08:18.720 in a way that i hadn't before so that led me to somatics first as a client doing somatic

00:08:28.760 healing with a practitioner and then into doing the training and taking that with me into

00:08:34.800 my professional practice

00:08:37.040 and for folks listening are practices or movements or thought experiments

00:08:50.020 that can help us start to question our relationship with our body

00:08:58.600 when you say question what do you mean exactly there yeah i guess what i mean is like

00:09:06.880 You know, you identified that there was times in your life where you wouldn't have said that you were detached from your body.

00:09:13.440 You were living a very physical life. 0.66

00:09:16.000 I think for a lot of us, we're going fast, trying to survive, hustling hard, maybe squeezing in a fucking YouTube workout whenever we can without having to get to the point of cancer.

00:09:32.400 is there a way of checking in to start to notice am I numb or detached in some way 0.64

00:09:42.560 am I not listening somehow that's what I mean by questioning

00:09:46.060 interesting you brought up so many things there survival one of the really important core practices

00:09:55.100 of the way I approach somatics is non-judgment rather than saying am I listening which can

00:10:02.380 be a judgment of like I'm probably not so probably should be it can feel like pressure if someone is

00:10:07.580 like listen start listening now right our body is kind of in the same way when I start working one

00:10:12.000 on one with someone in sessions the first thing I start with is not listening because if we've

00:10:17.160 lived a whole life not listening to our body we can't just start listening that somatics is very

00:10:22.860 different from talk therapy so we don't go straight to talking to the thing that is painful

00:10:28.560 someone might come in and say it's really painful to me I feel like I'm not listening to my body

00:10:32.320 I don't listen to my boundaries. I don't know when someone else is overstepping them or I'm

00:10:38.640 overworking or my days are too long or I'm running too fast. We don't go straight to that. The first

00:10:43.600 thing I do is work on what's called somatic resourcing, doing things that help us be connected

00:10:51.280 with the body before we start practicing the listening. This could be anything. It could be

00:10:59.980 movement it can be going into nature it can be yoga some of the things a lot of us are already

00:11:05.140 doing but if we're doing them without an awareness of the body without a slowing down if we're

00:11:11.560 ticking them off it's like i need to do the daily walk i need to do my breath work i need to do the

00:11:16.380 thing if we're doing it with that intention there's a different connection with the body

00:11:21.320 whereas if we allow ourselves to slow down and notice what are the things that actually fill me

00:11:26.300 up and they might be quote-unquote silly things right they might be things like doing puzzles

00:11:31.960 for example that might be like oh I think it's more important to go for the daily work because

00:11:36.100 I should do that and then puzzles I can do if I have the time that's the mind and the conditioning

00:11:40.400 of like this is how we schedule our days right whereas part of listening to the body for example

00:11:46.220 can be noticing what makes me happy what makes me joyful can I do more of that it might be very

00:11:51.660 simple things like hugging your child or watching a sunset things that you might already be doing

00:11:57.420 so the invitation for when i work with new clients is how can you deepen that can you stay

00:12:04.540 two minutes longer with the sunset can you breathe in the air on a spring day and pause for a moment

00:12:12.160 in your busy day before you move on to the next to do thing can you slow down can you connect with

00:12:17.060 things. It can be looking at flowers. It can be making your favorite thing for dinner. It can be

00:12:25.700 having a conversation with a good friend, but really noticing how do I take it in? How does

00:12:30.060 it land in my heart? How does it land in my body? What is making me feel alive? Somatics at its core

00:12:37.160 is about aliveness, noticing what makes me feel alive in my body, not just what the culture has

00:12:44.220 taught me that I should do to survive. So aliveness, as I see it, is the opposite of

00:12:50.860 survival. When we're in survival mode, we don't think about aliveness. We don't prioritize

00:12:56.100 aliveness. Doing that puzzle or taking five extra minutes to play with our kids is not

00:13:03.880 in our priority list because it's not what we've been taught. So shifting that, which is the shift

00:13:10.760 that happened for me with the cancer scare and I completely agree with you I wish for all of us

00:13:15.440 that we don't need something big as a cancer scare and for a lot of us it takes something

00:13:21.800 big like that to shake us out to disrupt the freeze response of not noticing what's happening

00:13:29.120 in our body not noticing how we're feeling about things so the good thing for me was that it shook

00:13:34.340 me out of my usual pattern and it awoke me to noticing the little things noticing how i remember

00:13:42.320 myself walking through the halls of the hospital because there were so many exams and it's a huge

00:13:47.740 hospital so i had to walk around a lot i remember slowing down just walking slower and being like

00:13:53.580 if this is the time you have what will i do for the next six months it wasn't from a stressful

00:14:00.140 point of like how do I fill the days it was if this is truly my time what is important it really

00:14:06.800 shifted all of my priorities into how am I feeling how can I make myself feel good feel safe how can

00:14:14.860 I do the things that matter the most and let go of the rest this wasn't this very intense cancer

00:14:20.420 scare moment after that when I was over there is a part of me that came back to real life I still

00:14:28.400 had that really deep tuning in which is helpful for me at the same time it's really hard to

00:14:35.260 navigate all of these things when we're living within systems that are not

00:14:38.740 supporting this most of us don't have bosses or even partners or friends who say how you're

00:14:46.780 feeling should we just slow down do you want to just check in how you're feeling or do you have

00:14:51.540 the energy for this there's a complexity to connecting with the body when we're in environments

00:14:57.820 that don't invite it so it does take a lot from us i don't think we need to have a health scare

00:15:03.920 necessarily it does take commitment because it's about lifestyle connecting with the body is about

00:15:11.240 living in an embodied way and we need to want that right we need to want the deeper connection

00:15:18.460 if i'm talking to someone who's not interested in connecting deeper with the body

00:15:22.420 who don't see the value of felt aliveness I'm never going to convince them I'm also not going

00:15:30.240 to try but I'm never going to convince them that connecting with the body feeling your feelings

00:15:36.240 being able to navigate the world from the body is helpful because they're going to live from a mind

00:15:42.300 focused place and I will let them somatics is so different from everything else it is a practice

00:15:48.660 of showing up constantly for the little thing that's where I start with clients with the little

00:15:53.440 things so that slowly we become more resource because what happens when we resource somatically

00:15:59.660 when we connect with the things that make us feel safe make us feel alive make us feel connected we

00:16:05.780 build our capacity and when we build that capacity we can start tuning into the body whereas if we

00:16:12.940 start before we resource there are many parts of us that are going to say how do I listen maybe I'm

00:16:17.700 listening wrong what do you want me to do all of our trauma is gonna show up all of our insecurities

00:16:24.560 if we are dealing with not trusting ourselves which a lot of trauma survivors are if you're

00:16:28.980 not trusting yourself yourself you're going to be convinced that you're probably listening wrong

00:16:33.240 you're probably doing it wrong maybe your perfectionism shows up maybe you're like oh

00:16:37.500 other people are better at this or if you have relational trauma you're going to be wondering

00:16:42.800 what the practitioner or therapist is expecting from you you're going to be like what should i

00:16:46.960 answer because they're asking me what i'm feeling in my body should i just say i'm feeling good

00:16:52.000 i'm feeling scared we navigate from our trauma pattern rather than from what's actually happening

00:16:58.000 in our body in my approach i start with the resourcing because we want to start with creating

00:17:02.280 safety creating safety in our bodies creating capacity in the nervous system so we can actually

00:17:10.280 listen this is somatics is so much about untangling from the systems our conditioning says

00:17:17.880 don't listen to yourself disconnect be productive help the system the systems are about helping the

00:17:25.440 systems not taking care of ourselves that shift from would the systems need from me to body first

00:17:34.500 healing first care first that's the biggest shift

00:17:38.800 can you talk about trauma patterns and how they show up in that mind-body relationship

00:17:47.900 they show up in many ways the work i do is somatic trauma healing all of us have

00:17:56.360 different relationships with our bodies different relationships with ourselves and

00:18:03.520 most people that I work with in one-on-one sessions show up with childhood trauma trauma

00:18:10.420 can be different things we all have different experiences but when there is something in our

00:18:16.740 past that made us feel not safe which is the case for a lot of us

00:18:21.880 when we didn't learn what safety feels like not just from the mind like I'm okay nothing is going

00:18:32.060 to harm me but in a felt way let's say you grew up with alcohol abuse or drug use around you

00:18:39.980 that kind of unsafety like no one is the adult here no one is holding safe space no one is

00:18:48.020 setting clear boundaries there is adult problems going on that i have to navigate as a child right

00:18:54.740 that kind of unsafety is very felt, is very visceral. Unless we interact with that and heal

00:19:02.620 that as adults, even in our 40s, 50s, 60s, all the way through our lives, that is going to be there,

00:19:09.440 that felt sense of unsafety. It doesn't mean that it shows up only when there is alcohol abuse or

00:19:15.120 drug abuse in the room. It shows up in all of our relationships. If there's any kind of

00:19:21.500 unsafety, if there's any kind of confusion, if there's any kind of activation, anything that

00:19:28.400 is triggering us, that is going to show up. I think it's also really important, most of the

00:19:35.440 clients that I work with, their main childhood trauma is often the trauma of emotional neglect,

00:19:43.940 which means not the things that happened to you, but the things that didn't happen.

00:19:48.920 if you have parents or caregivers who were in present either physically present they might

00:19:57.080 have worked a lot so they might not have been there you might have been on your own a lot of

00:20:02.480 the time or if they were there in the room but they were not mentally emotionally present they

00:20:10.200 were caught up in their own mental health issues or challenges their own relationship issues there

00:20:17.380 might even be if it was a dysfunctional family with a lot of fighting or dysfunction between

00:20:22.540 the parents, that might have played out while you were in the room, right? And those things really

00:20:26.940 affect our body. So let's say you were in a family where no one gave you the emotional attention and

00:20:33.480 safety that you needed. You might have a tune to, oh, I need to take care of my siblings. So you

00:20:38.000 might have ended up being the caregiver of your siblings when you were eight years old, right?

00:20:42.780 the way that affects our body and nervous system is we slowly start tuning out of ourselves and

00:20:49.100 into others focusing on what can i do for others how can i take care of others we do that slow

00:20:55.280 disconnection of i don't matter we don't think about checking in with ourselves because no one

00:21:01.220 held the space of saying how are you doing today how are you feeling what do you need from me either

00:21:05.800 directly in language or by showing it in action actually being present actually tuning in

00:21:12.220 One of the things core to safety in childhood is attunement, being able to attune to a safe, stable adult, someone who is emotionally solid, someone who is there to guide you, hold you, protect you.

00:21:31.660 We need that as children, right? And if we don't have that, we disconnect from that attunement to ourselves. We don't think it's safe. This is survival strategy.

00:21:42.220 It's adapting to the group we're in, the family system, and it gets us through childhood.

00:21:47.740 It's a smart way for a system to make sure that we're still a part of the group.

00:21:53.420 So we're not an outcast.

00:21:54.680 We're still part of the group, but we do it by abandoning ourselves.

00:21:58.200 And then when we're adults, not like we magically come back to safe attunement, safe relationship,

00:22:06.560 we still have that disconnection.

00:22:08.400 so we end up in relationships where we don't listen to ourselves we don't listen to our

00:22:14.140 boundaries we don't even know what healthy boundaries look like we don't know what a safe

00:22:19.120 person looks like we don't know what emotional safety looks like and we don't know how to attune

00:22:23.880 to it so it's a little bit like being lost because we're like oh i guess this is just how it is

00:22:28.960 relating to others it's always a little bit unsafe i get hurt i'm confused it's as good as it gets

00:22:34.540 because we don't know there's actually something we can do this is why when we're showing up trying

00:22:41.160 to connect with our body our trauma is going to show up for a lot of people our trauma is going

00:22:45.760 to show up and tell us that it's not safe to connect with the body that is something

00:22:50.800 we should not do because we don't know how to do it we don't know that connecting with ourselves

00:22:57.440 and connecting deeper emotionally both with ourselves and with others is something that

00:23:03.320 is safe something that can be practiced something that we can learn because we never had the

00:23:09.880 environment to practice that and to experience what it feels like so this is one of the ways

00:23:15.360 that trauma can show up and is often in the room that resistance of like sure I would like to

00:23:20.020 practice this but I don't know how to do it and a part of me wants to run away this is how connection

00:23:25.760 can feel like a false sense of safety

00:23:29.940 because disconnection feels like what we can handle.

00:23:34.240 It's a coping mechanism, right?

00:23:35.960 Trauma is often, I would say, almost always in the room.

00:23:41.920 Sometimes it's right up front

00:23:43.760 and sometimes it's just on the edges,

00:23:46.840 but it's still there whispering.

00:23:48.720 This is part of what we practice in somatic healing,

00:23:51.080 noticing not just the let me connect with the body

00:23:54.520 because that sounds so simple, but all the things that are standing in the way of connecting with

00:23:59.240 the body, this is what we explore. And the core thing is that we explore it slowly, little by

00:24:07.020 little. We create that safety. So it's not going in and saying, let's connect. Now you have to feel

00:24:13.660 good about your body. Now you have to feel good about being emotionally present. We do it little

00:24:18.480 by little by not shaming any of the survival patterns that are there. This is why non-judgment

00:24:23.980 is so important because I will never pressure a client. A lot of my background in holistic

00:24:31.080 healing had a lot of toxic positivity of feeling good about it or saying you feel good about

00:24:36.360 it. Every time someone asks me, how are you doing today? A part of me is like, should

00:24:39.560 I answer, come really feeling, or should I answer the toxic positivity version? Trauma

00:24:44.200 is often in the room.

00:24:46.540 Yeah. It feels to me these days like my references are often deriving from playing with a six

00:24:53.420 year old it feels like bubbles you know when you have bubbles on top of bubbles and they're all

00:24:57.380 sort of reflecting and iridescent I feel like every time I identify a pattern it's the same

00:25:06.500 pattern and now it's just the same pattern from another level of the bubble I'm beating myself up

00:25:13.120 about beating myself up about beating myself up let's take a breath yes can you lead us in taking

00:25:18.020 and breath i feel like for our listeners and myself even talking about the way trauma bubbles

00:25:25.840 is probably doing things to our bodies so what do we do what do we do oh that's the big question

00:25:36.000 i never start with a question because it can feel like a lot of pressure right like what do i do i

00:25:40.840 I get it. I get the longing for it. Can you just give me the roadmap? Can you just tell me what to

00:25:50.560 do and I will do it? I would like to get an A plus on this conversation, Lisa. Yeah, that's how I

00:25:56.580 walked into my first many months of somatic sessions. I walked in just wanting to please

00:26:02.780 the practitioner and get it right. And it was by doing that slow resourcing, that slow connecting

00:26:10.000 with the body and not chasing the results not going for i want to feel better and it needs to

00:26:16.540 happen soon but staying curious it's so core to stay curious to slow down for some people it

00:26:26.420 sounds less exciting we live in such a world where the coaching industry is so successful

00:26:31.860 because it's about fixing the problems i can help you fix these problems in three weeks or three

00:26:37.700 months i can help you fix this thematics is almost the opposite i'm never going to promise you

00:26:42.720 like i can help you heal your trauma in two months or two years the body remembers everything which

00:26:49.860 can feel like a lot right we move through life and our bodies are with us the whole time of course

00:26:55.980 they're going to remember what happens it's so important to be in relationship with the body

00:27:01.240 with our trauma with the pressure with the self-judgment the now it's showing up again

00:27:07.480 now it's showing up again and i just want to fix it like if that was in a session i wouldn't invite

00:27:13.460 you to pause to slow down to resource this is why for example we breathe right we'd invite the breath

00:27:23.100 slowing down invite curiosity maybe i would say i'm curious about that pressure about the urgency

00:27:30.820 to fix the problem what does that feel like in your body we would start by noticing what's

00:27:38.300 actually present in the body you might say something like it feels like i have to run

00:27:43.780 to fix things like it needs to be fast because there are things i need to get out of the way

00:27:48.080 or you might say it feels like a pressure in my chest or you might say it feels like i can't

00:27:54.660 think clearly when you ask me the question i'm not sure how to answer it's just really confusing

00:27:58.300 I don't know what I'm feeling.

00:27:59.960 There's not one way that it shows up in our bodies.

00:28:03.220 It shows up different for all of us, depending on where we are in our journey, what kind

00:28:08.360 of tools we have, how much fear we have about connecting with the body.

00:28:12.580 All those patterns of judging ourselves, pressuring ourselves, rushing ourselves, wanting to do

00:28:19.500 things a specific way, they're part of the somatic process.

00:28:22.860 and I think that's important to know that it's not just about connecting and feeling good and

00:28:29.060 getting good at knowing yourself a core part of the process is not judging when you're showing up

00:28:33.540 including when it is self-judgment or self-pressure so the process is to not judge that and notice

00:28:40.340 well how am I being in relationship with this and from there when we're thinking about

00:28:47.900 how am I being in relationship with this can we come into more profound relationship with each

00:28:58.000 other I love that question yes this is one of the core reasons why I love somatic so much

00:29:08.980 when we're not feeling that safety that groundedness in ourselves and we are not

00:29:15.520 coming back to self-connection to tuning into ourselves we're also meeting others differently

00:29:20.820 we're meeting others on our survival level in our survival patterns that's why our relationships

00:29:31.580 can shift profoundly when we start moving out of those survival patterns and into felt safety

00:29:39.620 in the body when we actually feel deeply connected with ourselves in a way that is not based on

00:29:48.080 self-judgment or shame or unworthiness trying to achieve or prove something in the world when we're

00:29:56.760 actually connecting with ourselves from care comes back to that revolutionary thing you asked

00:30:03.560 throughout sadly in the world we're living in care it's quite revolutionary somatic trauma

00:30:09.320 healing is a lot about coming back to care caring for yourself if we have a trauma pattern

00:30:15.420 that made us not like ourselves that is going to feel counterintuitive we're going to be like yeah

00:30:24.420 i don't care that much i don't want to care that much about myself i feel this so much i'll be

00:30:30.580 worthy of care when i i just have to get this good grain first do my groceries and eat only organic

00:30:36.600 save the people in my community and vote properly and and and then i'll be worthy of care

00:30:42.320 exactly and again let's take a breath there i would mean that the curiosity rate

00:30:49.120 and say what does it feel like in your body to listen to that list there is no judgment there

00:30:55.180 is no right or wrong maybe you're like that feels good that feels like that's what i need to do then

00:30:59.940 that's where we start noticing what is your body remember if your body remembers i need to do this

00:31:05.900 long list of things to feel worthy then that's how we live our lives and it doesn't mean until

00:31:13.260 you love yourself you can't love someone else i don't think that's true i think it's all a practice

00:31:17.760 and it's all in relationship with each other but i do think that the more we practice caring for

00:31:24.860 ourselves loving ourselves with no agenda that also shifts how we're showing up in relationship

00:31:32.020 if we do have an agenda we also have an agenda in relationships right if we're people pleaser

00:31:36.680 we're going to show up differently right that's the fawning response if we're always going to do

00:31:41.620 what the other person wants us to do unconsciously right if we're just showing up wondering what they

00:31:47.180 want so i'm just going to do that because then i will be safe it's a false sense of security right

00:31:52.840 if we're always going for that we're going out of our bodies rather than being present and saying

00:31:58.120 listen this is who i am not by demanding things but by being who we are for example i am someone

00:32:04.880 who deeply appreciates creativity in a relationship if you're in the fawning response you might

00:32:10.860 completely shut down that creative part of you because you're sensing that your partner is not

00:32:17.120 that interested in creativity and then you become someone who's like yeah when i was young i was

00:32:20.980 created but now it's not really something i do anymore where actually you come back to a place

00:32:26.380 where you feel safe and healed and worthy you're like i'm deeply creative and there isn't space

00:32:32.780 for it in my relationship that's a different issue but if we don't have that capacity in our body in

00:32:38.820 our nervous system we're not going to bring that up we're not going to go into session and say

00:32:43.040 I don't feel there's space in my relationship for my creativity I would like to work on that

00:32:51.100 we're going to go in and say I feel I'm not a good enough partner and I feel like my partner

00:32:55.820 is probably disappointed because they would probably want to be with someone who's a better

00:33:00.280 person but I'm just me so I feel like I have to do more things to live up to even earning my space

00:33:06.260 in the relationship right but it's the same situation it's the same thing that's going on

00:33:11.040 but it's a different perspective on it thinking about creativity in particular it connects to

00:33:18.780 this other question i have about magic witchcraft something i find really exciting about doing

00:33:28.060 somatic work thinking about change from inside the body is this is the kind of like what i call

00:33:37.120 magic like really juicy stuff that makes me excited I like working with plants and oils

00:33:43.820 that's fun I like chanting to Hecate I love all of those parts of magic the kinds of magic that

00:33:52.480 I feel have been like really life-changing to me have come from body and relationship and I wonder

00:34:00.040 how you think about those words magic witchcraft those have meaning for you does your work connect

00:34:07.100 to those absolutely this i'm laughing because i'm like where do i start with this

00:34:13.460 for me rituals means embodied rituals i don't do i mean that's again that's who i am but here you

00:34:27.440 with the body and relationships i love doing rituals on my own they are always embodied

00:34:35.000 even in small ways i also love doing rituals with others there is something truly magic

00:34:41.720 and truly like that's where my witchiness really comes out with the coven feeling we can get

00:34:47.380 together even if it's three or four people but being in circle with others bring in what in a

00:34:54.980 witchy context we call magic which i would also argue could be called many other things the

00:35:01.200 witchiness, the rituals, the healing, it's all part of unraveling from patriarchy, right? It's all

00:35:07.780 part of coming back to finding our voices, speaking up. It comes back to aliveness. To me,

00:35:14.920 witchiness and magic isn't as boo-boo as it sounds to most people, because it's really about

00:35:21.040 empowerment. It's really about coming back to, are there things I can do? How do I change this?

00:35:26.940 how do I co-create how do I bring me into this context which in a patriarchal context is all the

00:35:34.040 things like this is all the things patriarchy don't want right so to me yes I do lots of rituals

00:35:41.580 the people who are working with me either in session or in circles they know this most of

00:35:47.360 them love this because it's one of the ways we can resource like embodied rituals any sort of

00:35:52.060 ritual is a way of resourcing. When I say embodied rituals, it's because we can also use rituals to

00:35:58.640 escape. We can use anything to escape, right? We can use anything as our drug of choice. We could

00:36:03.120 also, you know, chant forever. And by doing that, avoid to actually feel into our bodies. So

00:36:10.840 for me, it's important that it's embodied and it can be in little ways. One of the most important

00:36:16.140 things I have learned is to do tiny rituals. On the days where I'm tired or the seasons,

00:36:20.480 I always have big plans for seasonal rituals.

00:36:23.660 They almost never happen because I don't have the capacity for them.

00:36:26.840 And then I'm angry with myself and I'm like, I should have done this ritual.

00:36:29.540 And then I'm like, oh my goodness, it was four days ago.

00:36:31.440 That is modern life, right?

00:36:32.540 That's the reality for most of us.

00:36:34.820 And I so appreciate this somatic principle, core principle of titration, of doing a tiny

00:36:41.680 little thing at a time.

00:36:43.840 Sometimes I do a tiny ritual.

00:36:45.800 Sometimes it's one minute.

00:36:47.080 my core of every ritual is a candle sometimes it's breathing while looking at a candle sometimes

00:36:55.640 it's putting a candle by the window sometimes it is humming or singing while sitting with a candle

00:37:06.060 for a minute or two if I have more capacity if it's one of my good days or good seasons

00:37:10.700 I move so I move I still light a candle one of my favorite embodied rituals is to turn off the

00:37:16.920 lights in my home and then dance by candlelight I dance very slowly so it's very slow very tuned

00:37:24.060 in very intuitive very moving with whatever the ritual is so let's say it's a grief ritual if

00:37:31.280 there's some sort of loss in my life like if someone left me in relationship or if something

00:37:38.080 didn't happen the way I had hoped for it if there's a big loss of hope a loss of connection

00:37:43.960 a loss of relationship I like to do grief rituals to process that grief and movement is one of the

00:37:50.160 ways to be in relationship with the grief it doesn't make the grief go away it doesn't change

00:37:55.720 the loss itself but it helps us find a way to meet that grief and for that grief to be alive in us

00:38:04.740 rather than it being stuck and being something that holds us in place it's something that we can

00:38:10.580 move with be in a conversation with i like the maya embodied approach i like to call it a

00:38:18.040 conversation with the body that's part of what i do in rituals really listen to what is present for

00:38:22.980 me and go with that in the ritual so i'm quite intuitive if i have a lot of energy and big

00:38:29.400 feelings. I walk and make walking part of the ritual. I go sit by the sea, listen to the ocean,

00:38:37.760 bring in nature whenever I can. If I'm lower capacity, I stay at home. I make it a few minutes,

00:38:44.000 truly honor it. It's good enough to do a two-minute grief ritual. That's okay. Then another

00:38:48.900 day I can do another kind of ritual, but to make it part of my life so it doesn't become

00:38:53.200 performative or something to check off the to-do list. That's one of the things I love about

00:38:58.100 rituals that it can be magic and healing at the same time i think it's wildly empowering i think

00:39:04.980 it's one of the things that is scaring the shit out of patriarchy i think they don't even know

00:39:08.560 what to do with it which is why it's labeled as weird it's because it actually helps us

00:39:14.420 connect with our inner power aliveness what changes when we connect with aliveness

00:39:19.860 is our feeling of having agency when we're connected with our aliveness we go out and do

00:39:25.960 things we go out and smash the patriarchy which is why scaring us into not doing anything scaring

00:39:33.560 us into not feeling our bodies is helpful for the system of patriarchy because then we stay

00:39:39.160 frozen we do nothing embodied rituals reconnecting with aliveness it's absolutely a sacred

00:39:47.080 process and it is a process it's not something to learn and then move on with our lives it's an

00:39:54.100 ongoing process. I think it's empowering to think about this idea of titration, of like

00:40:03.000 small things accumulate, small things make big change, make deep riverbeds within us.

00:40:14.860 One pattern I notice is that we have so much grief in our culture, in ourselves, personal and collective grief.

00:40:32.220 It's so terrifying to truly look at that grief, to look at planetary grief, climate grief, global inequality, violence, injustice.

00:40:43.020 We have to keep going and not look closely at it because it's so massive and overwhelming.

00:40:52.900 But grieving it a little bit at a time can be enough, maybe, even though it doesn't feel like it'll ever be enough.

00:41:04.140 Exactly. This is built into the system.

00:41:06.400 The systems, by design, are trying to overwhelm us, and it's working.

00:41:14.120 The last few years have been horrible to witness on a global scale.

00:41:18.920 We're being moved closer by people's phones being there, so we can see what's happening much closer.

00:41:26.780 Our nervous systems are not built for this.

00:41:28.980 It's too much to take in.

00:41:31.500 Some people in the systems know this and use it to overwhelm us.

00:41:35.080 Some people are not that aware, but they're just playing into whatever their role is in the system. And it still overwhelms us, right? When there's a massive wave coming at us of too many horrible images, too many big questions, too many things that are unsolvable, we move into a massive collective response.

00:41:55.940 we see this playing out now this is from a trauma-informed perspective this is why

00:42:01.340 a lot of politicians a lot of so-called leaders are not speaking up against things

00:42:06.660 because they don't have the capacity to do it they don't feel safe enough in their body in

00:42:11.680 their nervous system to name the freaking thing that's happening right in front of all our faces

00:42:16.380 so they are playing the avoidance game right they're not naming the things they're not speaking

00:42:23.680 indirectly this is trauma responses right the so-called leaders the people in so-called power

00:42:30.060 they also have a trauma background if you don't feel safe in your body if you have a hurt inner

00:42:37.500 child who's running the show it's gonna show up it's not gonna be leadership from a grounded place

00:42:44.660 from a place of care collective care it's not gonna be from a place of wanting to create peace

00:42:52.740 right it's going to be from a place of disruption of chaos and that's going to play out on a big

00:42:59.700 stage this is also why somatics is helpful because we cannot hold it all we can't and we're not

00:43:06.140 supposed to it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything or there aren't actions we can take

00:43:11.060 but it's really important to feel those boundaries in our bodies of not having to hold it all if we

00:43:18.740 have a trauma pattern where we did have to hold it all where we were the ones holding everything

00:43:23.640 together in our family watching things like what is happening now play out on a bigger scale can

00:43:29.760 be terrifying deeply depressing because we can feel we're back to being five years old and being

00:43:35.900 like oh my goodness I'm holding all the things that I have no idea how to hold and you're not

00:43:41.320 supposed to hold but you don't know that as a child and this can come back even if we're not

00:43:46.300 aware that overwhelm can completely set the tone of what we're doing if we're not resourced if

00:43:52.980 there isn't that flexibility in our nervous system if we don't feel empowered if we don't

00:43:57.720 feel alive we're not going to go out and take action not because we're horrible people or

00:44:03.540 because we're lazy but because we don't know what to do we end up doing nothing which serves the

00:44:08.880 systems it's big complex small steps absolutely matter this is why i say that embodiment work is

00:44:17.400 also quiet rebellion right tending to yourself caring about yourself tending to your closest

00:44:24.900 connections that is absolutely rebellious as fuck i love this about embodiment work that it's not you 0.93

00:44:33.840 No, it's not the self-help, not wanting to make yourself a better person so you can achieve all the goals in the world. 0.84

00:44:44.080 It's creating actual connection, coming back to our humanity, which is so freaking hard in our systems because they're so dehumanizing.

00:44:53.840 coming back to actually caring out of care not out of some hidden agenda but because care is

00:45:00.940 actually sacred and important and core if we don't care

00:45:06.100 we don't survive it's deeply sad that care is revolutionary but it is and yes small steps can

00:45:17.920 you imagine if you bring in one or two small breaths during your day but you actually do it

00:45:23.140 almost every day that's still a lot and that small change right then maybe someday you might

00:45:29.980 mention it to your child who's freaking out and you might be like how would you feel about taking

00:45:34.520 a breath together I'm just gonna sit here and do it with you saying I'm just gonna go for a two

00:45:38.480 minute walk in the garden before I come in and do dinner because I need it but those kind of small

00:45:43.680 steps accumulate over time and it absolutely matters one of the reasons why embodiment work

00:45:50.080 can feel so overwhelming is because we think it has to look a specific way it looks like getting

00:45:56.600 something under control including ourselves which again is patriarchy

00:46:02.720 connecting with the body is not about getting control of our feelings or learning to control

00:46:11.160 or moods it's about being in a caring relationship with ourselves

00:46:16.400 okay i want to talk about lying on the floor now because that's not about being in control

00:46:23.800 this is a story about how sometimes i make things up

00:46:28.000 lisa and i were talking in a group context a while ago and what i remembered her saying

00:46:37.880 was something to the effect we're talking about trying to advocate for ourselves in medical

00:46:45.320 contexts yeah and how that can be really deeply anxiety inducing depending on where your trauma

00:46:54.300 is and trying to stand up for yourself i had an experience of having

00:47:03.840 really violent full body drenched the sheets multiple times a night hot flashes

00:47:09.880 so I couldn't sleep so my mental health was suffering asking other people in the same

00:47:15.160 situation with chemically induced menopause people sending me research document on a drug

00:47:21.680 that was not designed for hot flashes but was successful because we can't use hormonal drugs

00:47:27.120 reading academic papers on it taking it to my doctor and nurse practitioner and being dismissed

00:47:32.760 I'm feeling so devastated, so frustrated. And I remember Lisa saying something to the effect of like, if you have to lie down in a doctor's office to get grounded and be able to speak for yourself, lie down, do what you need to do, like be on the floor, be in the room.

00:47:54.640 you have to help me like whatever body I am in you can't dismiss me just because I'm panicked or

00:48:03.420 because I read something on the internet that wasn't true you have to meet me where I'm at

00:48:09.120 just last night I lay on the floor again and it helped with some spiraling pain I spoke to Lisa

00:48:18.020 about it and she was like yeah I don't really remember that conversation going that way but

00:48:22.340 that sounds useful and I do like lying on the floor and I wonder if you would talk about ways

00:48:29.060 we can somehow it feels radical to land or like small radical disruptions of our body in space

00:48:35.800 as a way of claiming our right to take up space I love the lying down on the floor in the doctor's

00:48:45.160 office I wish I could do that and I think I'm in a place not where I can on my good days

00:48:50.060 I'm in many medical situations that are anxiety inducing.

00:48:53.440 For patriarchal reasons, medical professionals are not really trained to listen or be in

00:48:58.520 relationship with the patient, which seems wild to me.

00:49:01.880 It's not the person's fault.

00:49:03.240 This is their training.

00:49:04.680 If we show up with anxiety, their trauma is also going to show up, which is why they stop

00:49:10.500 listening and we panic more and they stop listening even more.

00:49:14.080 So lack of relationship.

00:49:15.280 if we had the capacity i love lying down on the floor as an example of disruption only do it if

00:49:22.720 you have the capacity if you're struggling with anxiety it's a lot of disruption care for yourself

00:49:26.940 first disrupt later body first notice how you're feeling if you're feeling resourced to do it lying

00:49:33.560 down on the floor can be helpful in a situation like that it's probably going to confuse the

00:49:38.420 medical professionals right they're probably going to be like i haven't really seen this before i'm

00:49:42.260 not sure what to do with it they might react in a way that's not helpful for you right so we have

00:49:46.920 to know that when we're disrupting most people are not gonna meet us the way we would love for

00:49:51.320 them to meet us right they're probably going to meet us from the mentality of the system which

00:49:57.160 might be like i don't have time for you lying down on the floor or i'm not sure what's happening

00:50:00.700 they're probably not going to say that but they're going to act in that way maybe they're going to

00:50:04.240 call in someone to help a lot of medical professionals are also going to think that

00:50:07.660 You're having some sort of mental breakdown, right, because you are tending to yourself, which speaks to the revolutionary perspective of this.

00:50:15.500 There are many little ways that we can pause, even pausing in conversation, in your everyday conversations with people you're close to, with people you're not close to, including if someone asks you a question.

00:50:27.240 One way that trauma shows up is that we feel like we have to have the answer to everything and have to know.

00:50:33.300 if someone says how do you feel about this or can you help me on sunday doing this often we answer

00:50:39.480 without checking in with ourselves so we answer knowing this is actually not what is best for me

00:50:45.760 but i'm going to please the other person or i don't know what i feel about what they're asking

00:50:50.440 but i feel like i need to give them an answer so even just pausing and saying hmm i'm actually not

00:50:56.800 sure and often we just say or we what we do is thinking right let me think about it for a moment

00:51:02.640 my invitation for clients is always I'm wondering if we can feel into it rather than think about it

00:51:08.080 so not think about the practical details but feel into how am I feeling about this sometimes the

00:51:13.680 hard truth is I feel like I don't want to waste my time on this or I feel like that is the completely

00:51:19.300 wrong thing for me again this is disruptive right you don't have to say things in an honest way that

00:51:25.040 hurts other people you can say something with boundaries you can say thank you so much for

00:51:29.720 that invitation i'm not sure this is the right season for me let me just get back to you let me

00:51:33.680 just feel into that i'll get back to you in a day or two because then we have the space to feel into

00:51:38.420 how am i feeling about this whether it's a tiny you know question or a big life-changing thing

00:51:44.600 giving ourselves time to feel into something slowing down is really disruptive can you imagine

00:51:50.740 being in the boardroom in a corporate setting being like let's just all take a breath let's

00:51:55.580 Just slow down before we move on to number five.

00:51:59.360 People would likely be annoyed and be like, what the hell is going on?

00:52:02.700 This is wasting my time.

00:52:03.860 I have the to-do list, the agenda, the urgency.

00:52:06.400 So it's wildly disruptive to ask to slow down.

00:52:09.860 So anywhere you can ask yourself and others to slow down is helpful.

00:52:14.520 My invitation would be to care for yourself before you start disrupting. 0.58

00:52:20.720 That self-care, attending, somatic practices, going to therapy, being in support groups, being in women's circles, all the things, that is disruptive. 0.96

00:52:35.500 It is disruptive in itself.

00:52:38.040 If we're in disruptive mode first, we're often in a fight response, which is a valid trauma response.

00:52:44.680 But it doesn't put our care first.

00:52:47.600 It can be very helpful to tune into, do I want to disrupt for the sake of disrupting?

00:52:53.260 And is there space for me to care first so my disruption has more direction?

00:52:58.500 One of the ways that I love how somatics can support disrupting the systems is that it

00:53:05.720 can give us direction in our activism.

00:53:09.700 Activism doesn't always have to look like yelling in the street, which is great.

00:53:13.740 I love when people go out and protest.

00:53:15.400 It's absolutely necessary.

00:53:16.860 and it's not everyone who can do that right it depends on where you are what are your resources

00:53:22.920 being able to tune in to care for yourself to create stability calm within yourself so you

00:53:31.140 have more resources to show up in the world can also fuel your activism so it can have a bigger

00:53:37.180 impact that's one of my favorite ways of supporting disruptors because the bigger the impact the

00:53:43.680 better listeners i hope that you will walk away from this conversation taking tiny gentle breaths

00:53:53.620 caring for yourself and feeling loved in the radical act that is lisa if folks want to find

00:54:04.920 you support you work with you which is a really wonderful experience that i recommend how would

00:54:12.080 they go about doing that i have a website lisa lundsman i always offer free connection calls

00:54:18.980 if anyone is interested in working one-on-one i offer a free connection call first for us to meet

00:54:24.380 connect again create the safety first you know feel each other out before committing to anything

00:54:31.360 i'm always open to those conversations because i think that's so important rather than diving into

00:54:36.640 the work and the fixing straight away but being in relationship first and i'm also always here for

00:54:44.320 you know questions in an email or curiosity yeah again being in conversation around healing is i'm

00:54:51.280 very passionate about that so feel free to reach out thank you so much for being here and for all

00:54:58.800 of this gentle non-judgmental wildly powerful insights i feel very called out in a loving way

00:55:10.600 it's not just kidding i don't feel called that it's just i see myself so much in what we're

00:55:15.640 talking about and it is nice to know that even a little titration goes a long way

00:55:22.700 if there's just one thing that people take away from our conversation today

00:55:27.540 it is that there are things you can do

00:55:30.960 you can shift the way things are

00:55:34.780 little things matter

00:55:36.160 it is possible

00:55:38.360 by practicing slowly

00:55:41.500 creating that safety first

00:55:44.680 there are things

00:55:45.780 that can have an impact little by little

00:55:50.020 there is no right or wrong

00:55:52.560 it feels the way it feels and that's where we start that's how you meet yourself being with

00:55:59.760 what is there you must be a witch 0.61

Missing Witches - July 03, 2025

Witches Found： Lise Lønsmann - Reconnecting with Aliveness to Smash the Patriarchy

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