095 The Body Keeps the Clues

In this episode, we explore how your body holds subtle (and not-so-subtle) clues about your needs, history, and healing. From nervous system whispers to tension patterns, your body carries messages that your mind might overlook.

We talk about:

• The difference between intellectual insight and somatic knowing
• How emotions, memories, and unmet needs can be held in the body
• The power of Breathwork in gently releasing stored tension
• Why muscle doesn’t just speak to strength—it can hold the weight of unprocessed experiences
• The importance of support, co-regulation, and compassionate integration

This isn’t a trauma deep-dive, but a heartfelt reflection grounded in personal experience and trauma-informed breathwork.

If you'd like to receive support as you walk the path of reawakening your senses, you're welcome to book a free Clarity Call → https://www.carlykillen.com

Mentioned in this episode:
📖 The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk → https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score
📖 Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine → https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/se-master-classes-public-programs/uk-alternatives-april-2023
 

Thanks for listening to the Strong Bones Coach Podcast

If you'd like to get in touch to ask a question about today's episode or to find out how you can get support from my coaching, reach out on the following links:

hello@carlykillencoaching.com

https://www.instagram.com/thestrongbonescoach

Thanks for listening to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast!

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit—your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
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🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

Carly: 0:37

Hello, and welcome back to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast with me, your host, Carly Killen. Now, today we are slowing down, tuning in, and coming back to the wisdom that lives in the one place we often overlook our body. But before we dive in, a gentle notes. This episode touches on themes of trauma and stored emotional experiences. So if that feels tender for you right now, please take care in choosing whether or not to continue. You are always in choice here. So let's get started. So you've probably heard the phrase, what the mind forgets, the body remembers, but what if we took that one step further? What if we treated the body not as a problem to fix or a vessel to manage, but as an instrument of wisdom? Because that's what I'd like to explore today. In the pace of everyday life, it's easy to get stuck in our heads, constantly penciling in tasks, making plans. Chasing progress, and yet in doing so, we forget something vital. The body's a sensory organ. It's constantly speaking to us if we're quiet enough to listen. So why do we ignore our body signals? Well, if you're anything like me, if probably grown up with some version of Mind Over Matter, we've learned to override tiredness. To keep going when our stomach is in knot to treat discomfort as something to push through. And when it comes to our health, we've often been taught to measure and manage to track restrict, correct. But what if our body isn't just a problem to solve? What if it's actually been trying to help you all along? Now you see when we look at. A history of trauma, both big T and small. T is not something that just lives in our thoughts. It lives in our tissues. As be Vander Cook's work reminds us. Trauma can leave. Traces not in story, but in sensation, in the way that we breathe, hold ourselves, react sometimes without even knowing why. And in one of my other readings of Peter Levine, the book Waking the Tiger, which I really enjoyed reading as part of my breath light course. He explains a lot about how animals in nature think things like deer or antelope prey animals, they're able to instinctively shake off stress. Once a threat has passed, they don't hold onto it. But as humans, we often do, instead of shaking off and listening to our body. A threat is over. Sometimes we freeze and stay frozen, not knowing how to instigate our movement again and move through. Maybe we fight and feel the need not to stand down. We prepare ourselves for constant attack, but perhaps we flee and keep running even years later. You might notice this as constant procrastination, feeling the need to change, location yourself, your body, clothes, relationships. These can all be patterns that continue to run all because we haven't been able to run through some vital processes earlier in life. But this is a protective energy even though it does get stuck in our system and it doesn't just go away because time passes and it's not just the big things. So when I do say trauma, I want to be clear. We're not just talking about those major life-threatening events. Trauma can be anything that overwhelms our system. Anything that we weren't able to process or move through fully, it might look like being ignored or dismissed. It might feel like not feeling safe to speak up or always being the one who holds it all together. And when these things happen repeatedly, the nervous system learns a pattern. The protective pattern fights flight, freeze, fall. And over time, there's patterns almost become the water that we swimming until one day our body says That's enough. Now I haven't quite got time. I'll scope within this podcast to cover all of these elements. So of course I'll leave some resources in the show notes so you can do some further reading if that helps you. But today I just wanted to touch on how we can use our bodies to start to move through this. Perhaps teach as an introduction to how we might bring our sensory organ, the body back into alignment with our mind. Now for me, I have also worn strength as armor. I used to chase strength as something visible. I always wore it in my muscles. When I pushed through in classes, in the way I managed everything, I wasn't trying to look a certain way, not really. I just wanted to feel strong and I wanted that to show on the outside as well. To me that meant looking muscular defined, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the reason behind it was because I didn't feel safe, and eventually that stopped working. That strength that I thought was holding me up was just an armor. It stopped me experiencing the fullness of life, the joy, the sorrow, the grief. These things can all get tied up in knots sometimes. So once I could really acknowledge how my strength wasn't always serving me as much as it was helping me do the things I wanted in life, I was still tied up in knot, my muscles ached. I felt stiff. I felt like I couldn't access the full range of emotions. when I took that time to stop, to pause when I found. In the middle of it all was a softness, not as a weakness, but as an information.'cause all the breaths, I hadn't taken those trembles I wouldn't allow the aches I was ignoring. The stillness, it turns out, can hold a kind of strength. That performance never could. So what about listening to our body and midlife. Midlife truly brings so many of us back to the body, not always gently, sometimes through the symptoms. We'd rather not have the tight shoulders, the stuck breath, the gut, the clenches. When we say yes, but we mean no. But here's what I've come to belief. This isn't necessarily a crisis. Perhaps it's a calling. To return, to re-inhabit, to treat the body, not as something to fix, but as something to listen into. Now, my work as a trauma-informed breath work facilitator, I've seen how powerful this reconnection can be. Um, breath work isn't necessarily magic, although sometimes I think it is. It's not always about tears or shaking or those big cathartic, moments, honestly. This was the part of it that kind of put me off before I understood this more deeply. So yes, sometimes these things happen, but more often I found this in myself and my clients. It's the gentle, steady return that changes things so deeply. A breath that finally lands the softening of your jaw. A grip that slowly loosens not just on the weights, but what we've been holding onto for years. Breathwork can really help create space for that shift. And with a trusted facilitator, whether that's online or in person, that space can become a sanctuary for co-regulation reflection at real embodied integration. So if any part of this is resonating and you're wondering, okay, but how do I reconnect with my body? Here's a few gentle starting points. We can start with body scans, a pause, a check-in, perhaps starting with your feet, noticing what you can sense moving up slowly. What's tight, what's tender? Is there freedom to be felt somewhere? What's calling for your attention? Our body starts us soften when we can listen without judgments. Secondly, we could add in movement with meaning. So whether we are walking, stretching, lifting, can you bring presence to your motion? Can you feel into your hands? If you're holding a weight, can you sense each muscle shifting slowly as you ask your body to move, can you sense the changes in your breath, perhaps as you walk faster or slower? Or what happens when you notice something really amazing, like a new kind of butterfly or a flower, or perhaps when there's a nice little dog that doesn't mind being stroked while you're outside? Mm-hmm. And lastly, try breathing with your body. Can you slowly lengthen your exhale, see where it naturally wants to go? Can you wait for that next inhale just to rise when it's ready, without force, without managing, just pure witnessing. Perhaps this is something you can sense with the whole body and time, to spend time noticing what shows up first. So to finish off, I have an invitation. And it's to reconsider your views on your body. Perhaps your body isn't the enemy. Maybe it's not a mystery to be solved. Perhaps it's your oldest ally. If you've been living in your head, managing, striving, overthinking, I see you, but maybe you don't have to stay there. Maybe this is your season to sense more, not do more. To trust your body's whispers before it starts with shouts to come home to yourself, breath by breath. And if you'd like support on that path, I'm here for you. You can connect with me through a free clarity call, which you can find on my website, carly killen.com, and I'll link in the show notes as I usually do. Together we can explore what presence led support might look like for your next chapter. So I'll leave you there for now. Until next time, stay strong. Take care.