When You’re The Healthiest Person You Know and You’re Not Well with Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by the lovely Kiara Orbe, who is a trauma-trained integrative health practitioner. In this episode, we hear Kiara's healing journey. She realized through her journey and helping her clients, that trauma and nervous system healing was a huge missing piece for herself and her clients. Kiara talks about what somatic experiencing is, the difference between trauma and stress, and how to find 3 glimmers✨ each day.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The difference between implicit and explicit memory
• What is a somatic experiencing?
• Dissociation is a protective state
• What does it mean to complete these fight, flight or freeze responses? 
• Trauma  vs. stress
• Trauma is generational
• What is a glimmer?

---

---

ABOUT GUEST:
Kiara Orbe (NTA, FDNP, RCPC, SEP) is a trauma-informed women's integrative health specialist, passionately melding nutritional therapy, advanced functional labs, and profound somatic techniques to pave the way for comprehensive healing. Specializing in aiding women grappling with chronic fatigue, digestive troubles, hormonal imbalances, and systemic dysregulation, Kiara’s methods are deeply rooted in her personal health odyssey. This journey illuminated the intricate bond between her emotional and physical being, revealing their inseparability. Trained with the NTA, FDN, RCPC, and The Embody Lab, Kiara empowers women to overcome chronic issues and lead fulfilling lives.

WHERE TO FIND:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiaramariewellness/

***WORK WITH CHRISTA***: https://www.christabiegler.com/fss

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead; if your practitioner is recommending this, they are stuck in 2010 and not evolving
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

EPISODE SPONSOR:
A special thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode. Get a discount on any of their products. Use the code lessstressed10

---

---

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: When humans are under stress, chronic stress, perceived threat, perceived stress, our body will start excreting these stress hormones. And the problem is in today's society, we are not living in our animal bodies because we're humans and we have thinking minds and we aren't deactivating from these states of stress.

[00:00:24] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So the majority of us in today's society are living at this low grade level of survival.

[00:00:31] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:01:01] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Today on The Less Stressed Life, I have the lovely Kiara Orbe, who is a trauma informed women's integrative health specialist, passionately melding nutritional therapy, advanced functional labs, and profound somatic techniques to pave the way for comprehensive healing. She specializes in aiding women grappling with chronic fatigue, digestive troubles, hormonal imbalances, and systemic dysregulation.

[00:01:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Her methods are deeply rooted in her personal health odyssey, which illuminates the intricate bond between emotional and physical being revealing inseparability, she in her business and in our program, the embody lab, she empowers women to overcome chronic issues and lead fulfilling lives.

[00:02:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Welcome to the show Kiara, 

[00:02:02] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: thank you so much for having me, Christa. I'm excited to get into this conversation. 

[00:02:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, we were just having a chat offline about this topic that we're about to experience is essentially leapfrogging healing. Yet. It's not always viewed as sexy or it's viewed as. Like you said, or before, like when I'm ready and so sometimes readiness is forced by desperation.

[00:02:31] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I find. And so I wonder if your story, I don't know your story, so I can't wait to find out here in one moment. I want to know if your story was rooted in desperation and tell me what led you down this path of somatics. 

[00:02:49] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. When is it not rooted in desperation? I feel like that's very rare for me to come across a case where someone was just like, yeah.

[00:02:57] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: I was just curious. And I think actually I have one client that's like that. And that's amazing profound where you're like a step ahead than everyone else. But I feel like we, we all reached this space of alternative medicine when all else fails, unless you were raised this way, but again, like needle in a haystack.

[00:03:15] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So I've struggled with digestive issues all my life. Like I very much remember being embarrassed about digestive discomfort as a child. It just worsened throughout grade school because the prescription for that was to just take anti acids which of course made everything so much worse. In 2016, everything just came to a halt.

[00:03:40] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Eventually, the symptom silencing methods were no longer working and everything was just getting louder and louder. And I was forced to reach out for help. 

[00:03:52] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So I sought out help from water Western medicine, which, of course only took me so far. And I'm actually so grateful to have had a nurse practitioner who referred me over to functional medicine. I feel like that's very rare. That's not. Yeah. Something that's often heard of.

[00:04:06] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And I'm so grateful for her. And that of course led me down the path and all the rabbit holes in within the functional medicine realm. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like, how do people not know about this information? Like this is life changing life altering. So I dove deep and I was like, I want to make this my career.

[00:04:25] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So I became an FNTP. And then eventually added on labs to my practice because I wanted to support women at a really deep level. And I was helping women with swapping out certain foods and dietary changes and lifestyle changes. And then all of a sudden it just hit me, I was like, something's missing because these women are the women who are chronically stressed and burnt out.

[00:04:50] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And it's not so easy to make a lifestyle change. From that space, when you're tired and burnt out and you are given a list of things to do and accomplish in order to heal the way you want to feel. And then I related it back to my own journey, which came back to the most pivotal aspect, which was the emotional and psychological aspect of healing.

[00:05:15] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: I feel like trauma was definitely something that was not only. In my own childhood, but in generations past as well. And that was really illuminating for me and the symptoms that I was experiencing that my ancestors had also experienced. So I just got super curious about the whole world of trauma and nervous system healing.

[00:05:38] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And decided I wanted to also incorporate breath work into my practice. Very somatic practice in and of itself. And I was trauma informed, but I really wanted to be trauma trained to work with trauma. Not only help individuals cope, but also help them resolve the trauma. Within their nervous systems and complete certain responses that didn't get a chance to complete.

[00:06:02] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So I'll get into that when we talk about somatic experiencing, but that is like how I landed in this space and how I'm now supporting women who really struggle with chronic illness, chronic hormone imbalances, gut issues, et cetera, and weaving in the emotional, psychological, and even spiritual aspect of healing.

[00:06:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So I want to hear there's a Slight missing piece for me that I want to understand before you had that kind of epiphany and practice where you're like, there's something missing in the way I'm helping my clients. And you reflected back on your own journey when you were working on your own health issues, had you been doing already some emotional psychological had you already done some healing in that space that allowed your other healing to go better?

[00:06:47] Christa Biegler, RD: My point is, had you already had exposure to this previously or where was that in the timeline, 

[00:06:52] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: yeah. Yeah. In 2017, a lot of familial trauma was Exposed to me and for the first time ever, I was like, oh, my gosh, I make sense. And then I started to dive deeper into certain books, such as the work of Eckhart Tolle and Dr.

[00:07:09] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Joe Dispenza started dabbling into that world. Myself, but it really wasn't. It was more like emotional healing, not just trauma in and of itself. So I had already done some work there and that that's really where I was like, Oh, this is where I really need to pay attention to because I had already learned about the gut brain access and the connection there between the mind and the body and the changes of your gut microbiome.

[00:07:40] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And there's this like bi directional pathway between the two of them. And I was really struggling with anxiety and depression basically all of my life and had also really struggled with gut issues, as I mentioned earlier. So I knew there was something else missing for me because I was eating so perfectly.

[00:07:57] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: I was the healthiest person that I knew, but like what, why wasn't I getting better? If anything, I was feeling worse and worse by trying to further perfect all of the lifestyle regimens. Eating so perfectly missing out on certain life experiences because I was trying to be so perfect, which was the trauma talking to write the perfectionist tendencies.

[00:08:21] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And so it was like, okay, something is off here. Like I shouldn't have to try this hard to be healthy. And so there was just a lot of inner wounding. And yeah, that needed to be paid attention to first. 

[00:08:35] Christa Biegler, RD: I wrote down I was the healthiest person I knew because Your story so often, and I'll tell my clients this, I'm like, Oh, I feel like we were the same person.

[00:08:44] Christa Biegler, RD: But so I literally have so many people that could have spoken some of those same words that you just spoke, right? 

[00:08:52] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. 

[00:08:52] Christa Biegler, RD: The difference is that you caught that at that time, right? It's gotta be it's revealed to us at some point, I hope, right? Otherwise we just keep searching in the same place.

[00:09:00] Christa Biegler, RD: When you talk about trauma and you talk about generational trauma, yeah. There's something to this unrealized trauma, and maybe this is if this is just not a topic where we need to cover, but I can't help but think about this because I don't know solid stuff about this.

[00:09:17] Christa Biegler, RD: There's something about, hey, your trauma goes back like three generations, whether you really realize it or not. Will you talk about that if you know what I'm talking about? 

[00:09:24] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah, you may have seen the photo. I don't know if you have, but it's like a pregnant woman and she's carrying the baby and then the baby has the ovaries that it's already been born with.

[00:09:36] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So we carry not only our mother's experiences, but our grandmother's experiences. And so that's something to really start having conversations about when you're ready to, that's what I did in 2020 was I started having conversations with my mom about, what her pregnancy was like and what her childhood was like.

[00:09:57] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And how her mother's pregnancy was like with her, and it was a joke and tell my clients that I came out the womb anxious because that was my general baseline. You can relate it back to stress hormones being passed down to the fetus. There's prenatal stress. And so my mom was someone who was like, chronically stressed, basically all of her life.

[00:10:20] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And she had a lot of complex PTSD. She fled her native country because there was war. And there was also an earthquake going on at the same time. And there was also infidelity involved with her parents and all of that, like all of those stories that didn't have a chance to. Be heard, be witnessed because we also have to think about our parents and the generation that they came from.

[00:10:42] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: They didn't really have access to what we have access to right now. The different books, the different podcasts, the different mentors, teachers, coaches, trainings, et cetera. They coped in the ways that they needed to write. My mother survived. These experiences was very much in survival mode so that I can have the opportunity to resolve these conflicts that Again, didn't have a chance to be heard or witnessed and a lot of their generation would just sweep everything underneath the rug.

[00:11:10] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So those experiences still very much live within our DNA. And are being expressed because of also the chronic stress that we are being exposed to on a daily basis whether that's constantly being on our laptops or our phones or, just living in modern society in and of itself can feel very stressful.

[00:11:27] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And it's not running away from the saber tooth tiger, but our bodies, our nervous systems are perceiving this as and it's still the same thing. Your body's not able to recognize the difference. So with that being said, there is something that is also called implicit memory. And this doesn't really have words.

[00:11:48] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: In comparison to explicit memory, which does, this is going to differ in how we resolve these conflicts because the explicit memory can be spoken about. You can talk about this with your talk therapist, but implicit memory can't really be resolved. And so that's when we begin to learn about the body sensations which is your body's primary language.

[00:12:12] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And that is what somatic experiencing is. 

[00:12:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Yesterday when I was interviewing someone about emotions stored in the body. He said the words, your subconscious cannot speak for you. It doesn't have words. And so I just wrote implicit memory. It doesn't have words. Subconscious doesn't have words. Are these 1 in the same? 

[00:12:30] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. The implicit memory lives in your subconscious. Yeah. 

[00:12:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:12:34] Christa Biegler, RD: I was going to ask you if you could speak to these experiences being stored, as you are living inside of your grandmother before you were even born. Okay. But in a way, I think that implicit memory somewhat explains that I think if you want to expand any more on the science there, because these are concepts that I think are becoming slightly more mainstream, but they're still sometimes outside of our.

[00:12:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Newtonian brain thinking a little bit. 

[00:13:01] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah, it is such an abstract concept. And I think there's still a lot of research being done on this. And that's why I think a lot of people may be even skeptical of even exploring, like the body keeps exploring what, like how not something that we can actually see.

[00:13:20] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So it's more of, so like moving with faith that I don't know if that's the right word. And just having the belief that, yeah, Oh yeah, that, that makes sense. Like, how could it not? So you get into the implicit memory. And as again, I mentioned earlier and how that could be expressed through your DNA.

[00:13:39] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And when humans are under stress, Chronic stress, perceived threat, perceived stress. Our body will start excreting these stress hormones and the problem is in today's society, we are not living in our animal bodies because we're humans and we have thinking minds and we aren't deactivating from these states of stress.

[00:14:06] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So the majority of us in today's society are living at this low grade level of survival. Protection protective states and when we're stuck there, we're not living in a state of connection and we can be dissociated. We can be here, but not here at the same time. That makes sense. So in regards to the science, I don't necessarily have a concrete answer for that.

[00:14:33] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Because again, I do think that it's still being researched. I'm going to say there are a few books that are like digging into the science aspect of it, but I'll have to get that to you later. 

[00:14:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. And I have a question to follow up from some of the things you said there, but it's going to fit in after this one.

[00:14:47] Christa Biegler, RD: You said this slightly different before you talked about how things get stored in the body. So let's talk about what is a somatic experiencing. 

[00:14:56] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah.

[00:14:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Probably one of the most underrated nutrients I use in practice is potassium. Low potassium can be a huge factor in energy, relapsing gut issues, thyroid function, and even regulating blood pressure. Now your blood test for potassium will look normal most of the time. Otherwise you'd feel faint and maybe like you're going to pass out, but your tissue levels of potassium will decline with an increase of the stress hormone cortisol.

[00:15:22] Christa Biegler, RD: Big picture. I find it's just really hard for humans to get enough food based potassium in their diet, unless they live in a tropical place. And I'm usually recommending my clients get at least 4, 000 milligrams of food based potassium per day. That's why I really commonly recommend Jigsaw's Pickleball Cocktail to help my clients.

[00:15:41] Christa Biegler, RD: It's one of the only electrolyte products on the market with a hefty dose of potassium at 800 milligrams per scoop. When most electrolyte products only have about 200 milligrams. Making it really hard to reach those high doses of food based potassium I recommend per day. Plus, it's automatically the best choice if my client is dealing with swelling, which can be related to imbalances of sodium and potassium in the tissue.

[00:16:07] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm a potassium evangelist, and Jigsaw's Pickleball Cocktail is one of my most used tools of the trade. You can get a discount on any of Jigsaw's amazing products, including Pickleball, at JigsawHealth. com with the code LESSSTRESSED10. That's three S's, LESSSTRESSED10. 

[00:16:27] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Somatic experiencing is again, another abstract concept. But it's actually been around for decades. It was founded by Dr. Peter Levine. He's been doing this work since the seventies and he's incredible.

[00:16:39] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: If you haven't read waking the tiger. Or healing trauma. Those are two excellent reads that I feel like the everyday person can understand. So really easy to digest. Soma means of, or relating to the body. So a somatic experience is an experience of the body. As I mentioned earlier, your body's primary language is sensation and Going back to what I said earlier about how most of us are living in a dissociated state when we're dissociated.

[00:17:13] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: We're not here, we're not present with what is in happening in our bodies right now due to a variety of factors, primarily stress. Traumatic experiences, stressful experiences that are going to dull the senses. We're very much living in this. Cerebral brain area. Because again, we're humans and we have problem solving mind.

[00:17:36] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So we're going to really live from the space and we completely forget that we have a body. And so this work is about learning your body's language sensation and about 80 percent of our body's communication is non verbal. So there's a lot that's happening within our nervous systems. That we may not be aware of until we actually learn how to be in our bodies and trauma creates disembodiment.

[00:18:08] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And I'll use the word trauma interchangeably with stress because not everyone may resonate with that word. But we've all experienced stress in some capacity and I'll get into what trauma actually is in just a second. But. This work is all about creating a sense of embodiment. So coming back to our bodies again, learning our body's language, experiencing the Soma, experiencing our body sensations, images, behaviors, emotions that may surface as we're exploring our nervous systems.

[00:18:39] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And Dr. Peter Levine talks about how. Humans and zoo animals are the only two animals in today's world that do not get the chance to complete these fight, flight or freeze responses, but animals in the wild do they're not being domesticated. They're not being told. No, they're just operating from their primal survival instincts.

[00:19:07] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: If an animal in the wild is being chased by a cheetah, it's going to enter a freeze response in order to protect itself. And so its limbs go stiff. You may notice some very shallow breathing and all of a sudden the predator is not interested anymore and it may take a few moments, but that other animal may start to deactivate from that stress that freeze response by slowly starting to shake tremble and then there's a deep breath and then it comes up and out of that freeze response and then it starts to mobilize again.

[00:19:43] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And move and run, but it did it, it did what it needed to do to protect itself. And same with us humans, we do the same thing. We enter these protective states, but we're not quite sure how to come up and out of it because again, we haven't been taught. We don't have the resources. And so that's what somatic experiencing teaches you.

[00:20:04] Christa Biegler, RD: When I think about the sum of, I think how we. Land here is resonance, right? Like, how do you do these things resonate with someone? So you're using words like dissociation. And I think I heard this a different way. An example that really resonated with me one time. Tell me if this is dissociation. I think it is, but it was, Oh, do you just struggle to have memories of certain times of your life?

[00:20:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause you've blocked them out. And I used to think my husband will say, don't you remember blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I do not remember that no memory of this. And I'm like, am I going to die of a brain tumor? 

[00:20:46] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: I know. What does that mean? I get that often. And I think, yeah, when we enter protective states, that's not a state of peace and harmony.

[00:20:55] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Our body's excreting stress hormones. That's going to block and impair memory and cognitive function. And dissociation is a protective state. And I hear this often about women who, because I primarily work with women they don't have memories of their childhood. And, they may have lost a caregiver or someone really important or something really awful happened in their childhood.

[00:21:19] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And so their little nervous system. Did what it needed to do in order to survive and block all of that out. I really don't remember any of my childhood. That makes so much sense and your body remembers. You don't need to have that explicit memory in order to be able to work with it, resolve it and complete it.

[00:21:41] Christa Biegler, RD: I want to offer one other way, cause I'm always thinking about how do we explain these things. Because I'm a big explainer, but I'm like, oh, how do we make this concise? So it like makes sense for people. I bring this one up all the time, so if you listen to the show, you're sick of me saying this, but I had this other guest one time who said, oh, the brain doesn't know what to do with emotion, so it stores it in the body.

[00:22:01] Christa Biegler, RD: Which I thought was like, oh duh. Thanks for saying it so simply. And then the other statement I saw that I loved related to somatics was, so often we are taught and I've been, this just keeps replaying in such different, cool, deep ways in this show lately or in interviews, so often we're like top down thinking, tell me about it.

[00:22:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Talk therapy is tell me what happened. And somatic experiences, like, how did that feel in your body? Yeah. So I was like, Oh, thank you. It's like that one. Landed differently, right? For me, it's we just are so out of touch with what's below our head so often because our whole culture is very think do problem solve.

[00:22:39] Christa Biegler, RD: As you said, so you mentioned completing animals have the chance to complete these fight, flight or freeze responses. Will you talk about what that means for humans when they're not completing these responses? 

[00:22:52] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah, if we don't complete the response, we're stuck in that fight state. And so then you might have a person, and this is.

[00:22:59] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Where we get into personality and behavior and everything, you may just know someone who's just easily angered all the time, or that's their like initial go to response. And we just say, oh, that's just who they are. And is there something that happened in their past? That may have left them stuck in that state of fight.

[00:23:22] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Did they want to fight, but were they not able to, I think about this when you're dealing with someone, you're working with someone who didn't get a chance to fight back when they were being sexually abused. And so now they take it out on everyone else and they're angry at the world, right?

[00:23:42] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: That may be someone who's stuck in a fight state. Someone who's stuck in a flight state, always adding more and more to their to do list. They are running away from their emotions. They are avoiding being here now. They are just always like on the go. And then someone who's in a freeze response.

[00:24:04] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: There's called tonic immobility. So there's not really a lot of life happening. This person may be doom scrolling. This person may be avoiding going out. They don't feel like going out. They're just like in this law state, not really inspired, not really taking action at all in their life. And so somatic experiencing 

[00:24:26] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: is an opportunity gives them a space and opportunity to complete these responses so that they can come more into a state of connection. Harmony. This is referred to as the window of tolerance where we can tolerate daily stressors in our lives. We experience these emotions because we're human. This doesn't mean that we don't get angry.

[00:24:46] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: This doesn't mean that, we don't feel stress, but we have the capacity to tolerate it and deactivate from it. We're not easily shot out of our window of tolerance. And unfortunately, this is what happens when we experienced trauma, our window of tolerance narrows. So we become less resilient to stress and we're easily sent out of that window.

[00:25:07] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And we feel anxious, chronically and angry and. All the time, or we feel shut down and tired all the time. That's like the, it's, I can get into polyvagal theory, but it's called dorsal vagal shut down collapse. Just this feeling of chronic lethargy. 

[00:25:28] Christa Biegler, RD: When someone is working through processing these traumas, we'll talk about trauma versus stress shortly.

[00:25:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Do they have to identify the unprocessed event or just the Emotion. 

[00:25:40] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. Good question. That's, what's really beautiful about somatic experiencing is that you don't have to even get into content. I always tell my clients that when we start working together, we don't get into content for a while.

[00:25:53] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: If absolutely necessary. And that's, we get into content. When we want to complete a survival response, if the memory is there again, as I mentioned earlier, the memory doesn't always have to be there, but. Again, it's about how your body remembers it versus the event itself. Because you can't really change the event, but you can change how you responded to the event.

[00:26:16] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Does that make sense? 

[00:26:18] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I'm thinking about I wrote this down, when they're living at this low grade level of survival, which I feel like is very common. And so one of the places this shows up for me in practice, that's a challenge because as you dig, I think this probably happened to you too.

[00:26:34] Christa Biegler, RD: You dig in and practice and you just like the root of everything just keeps going back to stress. And it's yes. Yes. If you like tap out your adrenals and this is your thyroid's not going to work and then you're gonna have so much motility and you'll have recurring grout issues for a variety of reasons.

[00:26:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And, my issue is around this is that I think the most toxic form of stress is the type we're unaware of. And how can you be aware of something that you're constantly doing? And I often share this really big epiphany that I had once upon a time where if you met the women in my family, you'd understand why I talked so fast and I didn't recognize it as a stressor as a problem, but my cortisol, my blood, like the speed of my blood flow and blood rate.

[00:27:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Was quite quick as I would jump from thing to thing. So it took me a really long time to realize that stupid thing that I was doing all day long. So it's a low level stress. It was a low level state of high stress. So the concern I have is like, how do we increase our awareness of our stress state one cover that we've got this low level survival state going on?

[00:27:37] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. I don't think it's until someone. Something happens and you're like, Oh, like you take a minute and you're like, Oh, that's interesting. And I think approaching it with curiosity is really important. Cause if it's judgment or shame, that is the trauma talking. And so the curiosity, the inquiry, the self inquiry brings like this gentle awareness to the pattern, the behavior, whatever it is.

[00:28:06] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So that you can actually meet it. Work with it and you'll start to notice more and more how it comes up. And I wish it were as simple as don't do that anymore. I think our lives would be miraculously changed if that, okay, I just won't do it anymore. And this is why somatics is amazing because I think we all need to go within our nervous systems, explore it, and really learn how to slow down.

[00:28:42] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And this is not something that we can talk our bodies into doing. It's something that needs to be felt through our nervous system. If that makes sense, our body needs to feel safe enough to slow down. And so if it's stuck in a flight response, say talking fast, maybe a little bit of a flight response, a flavor of it talking ourselves out of stress is not going to be, it might work for a little bit.

[00:29:12] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Until it happens again, and you're like, Oh, shoot, there it is again. And then we start to get annoyed with it and frustrated by it and maybe start to shame it and judge it. So working with the nervous system is the integral part in changing that behavior so that it can be felt on the inside and naturally our personalities or behaviors or patterns will start to shift.

[00:29:38] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Once we do that. 

[00:29:40] Christa Biegler, RD: Can you give us a. Okay. Something that will help bring this, make this tangible and visual on what it looks like when someone is doing somatic work to process through these low levels of stress state. Can you like just slightly walk us through it if someone is okay, I'm my curiosity is piqued Kiara, but I don't get it.

[00:30:04] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Like somatic experiencing in general. Would you want to try a little bit of a practice? 

[00:30:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Sure. Let's do it. 

[00:30:12] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: All right, so I'll just invite you, you can do this with your eyes open or closed, whatever feels most right for you. So I invite you to notice your body resting on the chair beneath you, maybe noticing your sitz bones and the pressure that they're making contact with the chair.

[00:30:32] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And I'll invite you to notice your breath. There's no need to change it or manipulate it unless it would like to.

[00:30:40] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And I'll invite you to notice. What's happening inside of your body? Is there anything you can name such as a sensation, a color, an image, any emotions that are here? 

[00:30:54] Christa Biegler, RD: My brain wants to think. 

[00:30:57] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. Okay. So the brain is active and 

[00:31:00] Christa Biegler, RD: I have an interesting sensation in my hand that I don't currently have a name for. 

[00:31:06] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Okay. Yeah. There's a sensation in your hand. Is that your right hand that you just, yeah. Okay. Okay. So would it be okay to notice both of those things? I'm simply noticing there's no need to fix or solve anything right now, giving that full permission.

[00:31:24] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And what is it that you notice now? 

[00:31:28] Christa Biegler, RD: My brain wants to quiet, it's not fully quiet, but it's like it relaxed a moment. 

[00:31:34] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. There is a subtle shift and noticing that.

[00:31:39] Christa Biegler, RD: Did you ask a second question that I missed there? 

[00:31:42] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: No. I was just saying, noticing that there was a subtle shift.

[00:31:45] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And how's the sensation in your hand? 

[00:31:49] Christa Biegler, RD: I'd say less. I've moved on to feeling like I'm just nestled into a little comfy cloud. 

[00:31:56] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Nestled into a comfy cloud. Beautiful. So we'll just pause there, Christa, and you can come up and out. Just wanted to give you a little taste. That could go on for literally an hour.

[00:32:08] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And it's beautiful work. And so just to give your listeners a little bit of a taste of what somatic experiencing is and that's very like surface level. There's a lot that can be unraveled within the session, but you notice that maybe there's a little bit of low grade stress there and low grade stress.

[00:32:27] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Of course, like we're humans, we're thinking like, that's not an issue at all, but just to put some perspective into that example, the little bit of low grade stress did shift a little bit once we just presenced ourselves with it, gave it full permission to be here, were curious, we were explorative and naturally organically that shifted to you being nestled in a little cloud.

[00:32:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes. Very much. So we've. Use the words trauma and stress a little bit interchangeably today, but maybe we should instead and trauma is a word that gets used and people resonate or don't resonate with it, depending on what their experiences or education has been around that. So can you talk a little bit about trauma versus stress?

[00:33:20] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. Trauma. Obviously has been very trendy. I feel like the nervous system space has gotten an uptick in awareness in recent years, which is amazing. And I don't think that we have a clear definition of what trauma is. So Dr. Peter Levine defines it as not in the event, but it's what remains on the inside.

[00:33:45] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: It's what we hold on the inside in the absence. of an empathetic witness. So two individuals could experience the same traumatic event and be impacted entirely differently. So one person may have had an empathetic witness, Whereas the other person may not have so this is why working with someone or even this is why we feel so much relief in our nervous systems.

[00:34:17] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: When we share something that's that may be vulnerable with. Someone else who is really present with us, who's not trying to fix anything, not trying to solve our problems. They're just there to witness, offer their support, and perhaps love. Maybe there's touch involved as well. So there's this co regulating factor involved in that experience.

[00:34:40] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And so healing trauma, comes back to having the presence of that empathetic witness. Trauma itself, as I mentioned earlier, it's not an event. And I think when I first started learning about trauma, there was like big T and lower big T and small T trauma. So big T would be like war, PTSD, sexual abuse, and small T may have been like how your father spoke to you when you were younger or, how you were bullied in school, things of that nature.

[00:35:13] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: The thing is, we don't really get to decide how we're impacted by the trauma of itself in and of itself. Our nervous system decides, because again, it's what we hold on the inside from that experience. So trauma, stress, trauma in and of itself is a very stressful experience. I think all of us have experienced trauma to some extent others more so than others.

[00:35:42] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: But I think that all of us have, no one is walking away unscathed from this earth, right? But we're all impacted very differently. 

[00:35:53] Christa Biegler, RD: So switching gears just a little bit, but not a lot. You were in practice, you were noticing that you're missing, that there was a missing piece And then you arrived at the piece that you had really added the emotional piece of it.

[00:36:13] Christa Biegler, RD: So when you started to add somatic experiencing to your practice, tell us about that transition and how that kind of went down. 

[00:36:23] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah, I think people were confused. That was the initial response. And, not everyone, I think everyone was like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. But even still they weren't sure about what somatic experiencing was, there still is some confusion.

[00:36:38] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And I think that I knew what I was getting myself into, like I was complete, not completely switching gears because it made sense to me, right? Like, how could I not pay attention to the emotional and psychological aspects of healing when the emotional body and physical body are one? Of course. Our thoughts are going to impact how our physical symptoms are manifesting.

[00:37:01] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Of course, it makes sense to me. But I think some people, because again, we are problem solvers and we can be very cerebral and logical and analytical, which is beautiful. We have brilliant minds and they want to make sense of things. And to some people that may not make any sense. Complete sense, like my emotions are impacting my gut issues.

[00:37:26] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: How does that work? And some people may not have access to their emotions because they are so numb. And. This is something that I've worked with a lot in practice. Their bodies are so dysregulated and their emotions may have shut, been shut down by caregivers or people in the past.

[00:37:45] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So they've learned to shut down their emotions and they don't really have access to these things. It can be a little bit challenging for them to even wrap their minds around The concept of their emotions impacting their physical health. 

[00:37:56] Christa Biegler, RD: I'll give you an example, if it's helpful, I'm going to release my, be vulnerable also.

[00:38:02] Christa Biegler, RD: And I may have talked about this on the show, but something that was really interesting for me for over a year was I had this, I was like dabbling and trying different healers as I continue to try to figure out like, Oh, how do I, what are, what's like tools I can use to help my clients? So I'm also going to go trial all these things.

[00:38:25] Christa Biegler, RD: So I had this one person clinician, say to me, I don't remember the exact question, but something like either define or what is unconditional love to you or something like that. And I was like, dumbfounded. I was like, I don't know. Have a hard time holding, cultivating, expressing love.

[00:38:46] Christa Biegler, RD: And so it became quite a quest for me for quite some time. And it's only really been pretty recently that I've been able to essentially feel into that. And that's only really come after a lot of work, I would say, thematic work. Honestly for breathwork and different things, it was like, things were unraveling that needed to unravel.

[00:39:06] Christa Biegler, RD: I sometimes say to clients, I have this beautiful breathwork sessions, and I've got several clients that say I'm always crying in these and I'm like. Awesome. Cause I was like, joke in in empathy with them that I'm like, Oh yes, this is like my years of crying. You just didn't cry growing up.

[00:39:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Like it wasn't okay to cry growing up those were the kind of, that was the family system I was in. And so it's I don't know why we have emotions if we're not expressing them. I don't know why we would have that. And so I would say that's great.

[00:39:33] Christa Biegler, RD: But my point is, it's as I have started to be okay with that, it was very uncomfortable as I've started to be okay with that because it also went to I couldn't give people hugs. I'm like, I'm not a hugger. And like some of the people close to me would say you're like a cactus.

[00:39:47] Christa Biegler, RD: I shared that because, as you said, some people are, may not have emotion access to their emotions because they're so numb. Certainly my parents, especially my father is still very much like that because of his big T is huge T traumas, right? In his life that I'm just starting to, the last time I was with him, he was like, what?

[00:40:03] Christa Biegler, RD: This guy who's been very numb to me my whole life is crying as he's telling me a story about war. It was like, and he doesn't know what to do with it either. So just sharing, that interesting, just making, I always like to think of yeah, what's an example of this.

[00:40:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Yep. I get it. I get it. 

[00:40:22] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: I get it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Exactly. It's so challenging to just start sharing, like I think of, yeah our, the generation before us, like they again, didn't have those resources. They were taught to numb their emotions. They weren't allowed to express themselves and to start expressing themselves.

[00:40:41] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: It's like, how do I even, what do I even begin? What do I do with these tears? Yeah. And so there's this lack of safety that needs to be established. I don't know. I just think of a safe person and being able to just open up to them and just knowing that you're not going to be judged, criticized.

[00:41:01] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: You're just going to be heard and witnessed. And that's it. And that's what we all need. I think it's just a safe space to unravel all these aspects of us and slowly start. Expanding our window of tolerance so that we can express ourselves in the ways that we want to and feel safe doing. So 

[00:41:25] Christa Biegler, RD: I think that's the most, that's the easiest thing to say as the foundational thing is it's mostly about feelings of safety.

[00:41:34] Christa Biegler, RD: When you are able to observe and access and right get in touch with those. 

[00:41:40] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. When we're working in a somatic experiencing session, we know that we want to feel safe. We want inner safety and feeling 100 percent safe. In your body, especially if you're so symptomatic feels almost impossible.

[00:41:56] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: I work with a lot of individuals who struggle with like chronic fatigue, chronic pain, autoimmune issues like that are very uncomfortable to be with and so finding safe spaces in our bodies. Feels very inaccessible and it's still available just because it feels impossible doesn't mean that it is Your nose can feel neutral Your finger can feel okay to be with it can feel easier to be with usually the extremities are more okay to be with as opposed to The torso and things that could be really activated.

[00:42:33] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: But we find places of relative safety and bit by bit, as we notice those bits of safety and connection, our window of tolerance starts to expand and we start to really savor that safety and that safety can grow. I don't know if you've heard of the term glimmer or that turning into a glow. Have you heard of the Barely, 

[00:42:54] Christa Biegler, RD: barely.

[00:42:55] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Okay. It's like a thing on social media. It's gained more traction, but glimmers are a term coined by dip, dip Dana and a glimmer is anything that brings you delight, peace, pleasure, joy, or even just a little bit of neutrality. that you can be with for at least 30 seconds. And if it goes beyond those 30 seconds, that glimmer may turn into a glow.

[00:43:20] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: And then that grows and expands all throughout your nervous system, your body. And you notice there's this lightness and then your shoulders start to melt and your jaw starts to soften and you feel like love does exist in your body. And that is what ultimately going to help us resolve trauma. Because we have this built in negativity bias as humans, and we are going to be so focused on the negative aspects of life when we're living from that trauma response, and we're living in this beautiful world that can sometimes feel very.

[00:43:58] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Stressful and dark and overwhelming and it is and allowing both the lightness and the darkness to coexist with one another is a practice and it's what allows us to truly experience the human experience. And so getting into the practice of noticing. Maybe three glimmers each day. That's what I would invite your listeners to do.

[00:44:19] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: What are three things that you can notice? Is it the sun shining in through your windows in the morning? Is it your dog and his silly face? Or is it the way The shower water hits your skin. Like the tiniest moments. Can you be with them for 30 seconds or more instead of just skimming past them, which we can easily do in today's society.

[00:44:42] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: That is so go. 

[00:44:44] Christa Biegler, RD: I think that's such a good action step, right? That's often when we listen to podcasts, they say, what can I take? What can I do with this information? And so noticing three glimmers, can you be with them for 30 seconds, allow them to bloom inside of you into this glow as a beautiful.

[00:45:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Beautiful visual can, that kind of makes that to be. Makes that tangible. I feel like we could have kept talking about this for a while, but that's a beautiful place to wrap it. 

[00:45:09] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Yeah. Yeah, I can see. 

[00:45:11] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Where can people find you 

[00:45:13] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: online? Yeah, I'm at Kiara Marie wellness on Instagram and that's pretty much where I hang out.

[00:45:20] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: So you can catch me over there. 

[00:45:22] Christa Biegler, RD: Thank you so much for coming on today. 

[00:45:24] Kiara Orbe, FDNP FNTP RCPC SEP: Thank you so much, Christa.