SPEAKER_01: 0:07

It doesn't always feel like courage, what looks like courage to other people. For me, it feels like survival surfaces.

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

If I'm surrounded by thinkers, by lovers, by actors, by integrity, then I really do think that I know who I am.

SPEAKER_02: 0:22

It's indescribable when you're being who you are and you're living your purpose and not expect the end of my life because it's like I didn't live the life of my list.

SPEAKER_07: 0:30

And I feel so comfortable in the unknown and so comfortable in that uncertainty that every fortune of it is going to be okay.

SPEAKER_06: 0:38

This is the Inner Rebel podcast. Welcome to Inner Rebel. This is a very exciting conversation today. We have one of my best friends, Carrie Montgomery, here with us. Hi, Carrie.

SPEAKER_05: 0:59

Very excited to be here.

SPEAKER_07: 1:00

I am so excited that you're here. And before we started, you just asked how I am, and we're gonna talk see, I can't even talk a little bit more about that. A little bit about the nervous system today. And I feel really stressed and really dysregulated. So I think it's perfect that we're all together right now. How are you? I love that. I'm fabulous.

SPEAKER_05: 1:20

Okay, I'm doing great. Good. I had a voice lesson this morning. I'm like doing great. It is my most favorite activity in life that I do. And it's so regulating and so expansive. It's like a creation portal for me.

SPEAKER_07: 1:34

So when you say voice lesson, is it like singing?

SPEAKER_05: 1:36

It's actually, I have a stomatic voice coach. And um, yeah, Brooke Wolf, she is we are creative soulmates. It's really cool. And so we do a session a week and it allows me to tap into my body as um a creation portal, not something that needs to be healed. And I've been on like my healing journey for a long time, like 30 years. And it's changed the game for me being able to like look at it from creation instead of fixing.

SPEAKER_07: 2:05

Yeah. I don't know, Melissa, if you want to segue into an intro, but I want to dive into that and what that means. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 2:12

Do we pause or do we dive in? Let's pause and we're gonna dive in because this is what happens when we start talking. We just want to dive in. So before we get any deeper, because you know that's very easy for us, let's share with our community who is here with us. Carrie Montgomery is the founder of Luminara Leadership Lab, pioneering a revolutionary approach to leadership transformation through the integration of neuroscience and nervous system optimization. Through her signature program, she helps visionary leaders create sustainable success by sourcing their power from safety rather than force. With a proven track record, including 176 million in real estate sales and revitalizing New Mexico's film industry and a sought-after personal branding business. Carrie guides multi-passionate founders and personal brands to scale their impact while maintaining deep well-being. Carrie is incredible. Carrie is one of my, like I said, she's one of my dearest friends. And I think our friendship transcends normal what I historically have viewed as timelines and normal friendship. And I was telling Jess before you popped on a little bit of our story, but our relationship and the relationship that we've cultivated in an intimate group of friends has really transformed what I now see possible in friendship and how fun it is to actually blur the lines between professional and personal and what's possible when we get to really collaborate with people that we know on such a deep soul level. And the safety and the love and the support in which we can provide each other in our whole lives has really changed my life. And I know it's changed your life. And so I know that we're going to be talking about the nervous system today and your healing journey, but this is a big part of it. This, what we've been cultivating inside of our friendship, has been a deeply nervous system healing experience for us.

SPEAKER_05: 4:05

It's really up-leveled the standard I need in friendship. It like rewrote the script for me.

SPEAKER_06: 4:11

Yeah. Yeah, same. So I just got full body goosebumps. Literally up to the top of my head. Catingles. I've I've catingled myself. It's not like peeing your pants, but it's better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 4:25

I cat tingled. There's so many questions that I have. And I know that Melissa has some very specific questions for you too, but before we completely drop the ball on the seed you planted, I would love to share with our audience what it means to experience your body as a creation portal.

SPEAKER_05: 4:44

Yeah. I mean, our body is made up of energy. And we've been programmed in society to operate within these structures and confines of success. You know, you need to perform this way to get this output to build this family structure so that you can have this kind of wealth to then have this kind of business. And it's crushing to the soul a lot of times. And it's crushing to how the body performs. For me, I got out of the gate very young at 18, having a really crazy medical crisis and breaking my back and having a spinal fusion. And then it was 20 years of insane medical experiences to the point where I almost died. So I was always trying to fix that. I got into healing at 18 years old. I got into energy work and I was always trying to fix stuff. I'm naturally a creative, like I'm born to be a creative, but I lost all that life force in the effort to heal, to make myself perfect for society so that I could earn the right money, fit into the mold, have the right family structure. And all of those things I don't have, right? Like I don't have the family structure, I don't have the children. But what I do have is my sovereignty, my sanity, and my creativity. And that's like all that I actually need. And everything else will rise from there. But you can't create from the imprint of fix without putting that out into the world, as this is broken and it needs to change. And things in the world you need to change. But again, the source has to be from this like organic body open driven way to create. And the body needs to feel safe to be open. And that is the most primary thing to do is create safety first before any release. It's so scary to release when you've got no resources inside. You're like, let's do a huge somatic release, and then you're on the floor, totally like, I can't handle what just happened to me. And in another kind of meltdown, because you've actually not resourced any safety in the body first. And I was on a somatic journey for almost 30 years or 25 years until I found this type of nervous system regulation work that gave me boundaries to operate within that were safe for me to bring that into my system so I could feel what safety felt like. I had no idea what it felt like.

SPEAKER_06: 7:07

It's such a loaded conversation because I think about safety in the layers. You've experienced safety in friendship. You're learning to find safety in boundaries with family. And these are all external things, but like safety in romantic partnership. And then, and but ultimately it comes from within, but it's a co-creation within your external environment.

SPEAKER_05: 7:30

So this is probably the most loaded question, but how and like sorry, and with wealth, like safety with earning, right? Like I've had the highest earning year I've ever had in my life this year, and I'm the safest I've ever been. And so it's just like really reinforcing that it comes from within. And I always thought the inner work was there for me, but the imprint was so dysregulated, miswired, defunct, off track that I had to really work on what those imprints are. And so we can talk about that too.

SPEAKER_06: 8:05

Yeah. Well, I would love for you to share a little bit about the co-creation of safety. So you've been doing it simultaneously inside of yourself with lots of support and mentorship, and then the role of relationships to help reinforce that safety that you've been establishing in yourself. So can you kind of unpack if someone's like, what does safety mean and how do you actually create that inside of yourself and your your life?

SPEAKER_05: 8:31

Yes. Okay. So I'll go into the felt sense and then the science. Okay. If you have not truly felt safety in your own body, you have no clue what that sensation is. You have no clue what a new baseline is. You have no clue what it's like to not have constriction where it's like holding you so tight. And you're like, I just gotta push through this stuff, right? Just gotta push it out. But you're literally coming from the wrong way in, right? Like you're trying to push through something with force. And it's not about that. And I'm like the first to be forceful. Like I love to like get into things, but it was working so against me. And so in my neurosomatic training, we do applied neurology, somatics, neuropsychology, and bagel toning. What we really look at is the map inside the body. If you were to look at the nervous system as an input-output structure, the job of the nervous system is to take in information from sound, taste, touch, thoughts, images around you, relationships, money problems, all that input data. And then it makes a decision and it creates an output. If that's the only thing you learn today that could revolutionize your life, just thinking, I am actually a computer and it's input, interpretation, decision, output. The output is based on a scale of what your threat bucket is. So it could be overwhelm, dysregulation, pain, fight or flight, freeze, fatigue, anxiety, depression, skin rashes, bowel issues, right? I'm not talking about long-term disease states. I don't want to go there. I don't want to go to cancer. I want to talk about like chronic symptoms in the body. That is your nervous system, the language of the body saying, Hi, hello, something's not right. I'm not okay over here. I need some attention. And we're like, okay, keep going. Let's go to work. Yep. Okay, let's go take care of that person because I'm a really good fawn responsor. Like, I'm really good at that. I'm really codependent. That's been my deep work. I will put anyone in front of me and I don't have a partner and I don't have children, and I will put every single person in front of me. I consider myself selfish to put myself first because I don't have all the other things. And it's like the only way you can get other things is to put yourself first, not other people. And so in the self-help world, a lot of times I say go out and help others. But if you're a fawner and you're codependent, it's really freaking dangerous because your moral value is equated on how other people will treat you and respond to you. And that is detrimental for your well-being.

SPEAKER_06: 11:06

And I think it's like almost every woman.

SPEAKER_05: 11:09

I know it really is. I'm like, I don't know any exceptions to that, do you? I really do this work for women. I work with men also, but I really think that women have had enough boundary violations that we don't know when they've been violated and when they've been bypassed. So when you have a sense of safety in your own body, getting into your nervous system and feeling that sense of safety inside your nervous system, you know when they've been bypassed. You have a very clear trigger to be like, oop, that's not okay. So the practices that I do are very simple, small doses of drills. It's not this like big somatic process, right? That we're all like, let the heart open, free the vagina, like whatever it is. Free the vagina, push it out. Exactly. But if you have no safety, and I have done all those things, like I've done Mama Gina's, I felt very unsafe in there because I didn't have the safety of my body to be in that open of an environment. And so the drills are about rewiring your brain. So we have these little neurotags, it's like a marker on your brain where a sense will go by, or someone's voice, or you see something, and it activates one of those tags. And that tag is attached to the past that sends a signal to your body, physical, mental, or emotional. And so you might be having like a very visceral response to something very benign and it makes no sense. It could be an emotional flashback, physical experience, mental thought. So those three things can happen because you're activated by the tag from the past. So the goal with doing applied neurology is breaking down how the body functions and gets triggered. We're actually erasing these neurotags. We're rewiring wires together, fires together, right? We're literally rewiring those synapses so that you can experience threat, go do three really small drills and feel safe in your body because that threat isn't the real threat. It's just a trigger of threat. So I'm trying to make it as simple as possible to break it down. It does kind of get a little bit messy in the expiration process because you gotta track the triggers. You need some guidance, you need someone accessible to you, you need to know what drills to do. And so this is where it makes my work like a real art with people and really showing them the pathways and the deficits inside their body.

SPEAKER_06: 13:52

This is why everyone needs to hire you. I like believe that. And every time someone talks to me about anything, I'm like, have you met my friend Carrie Montgomery? I feel like you should talk to her.

SPEAKER_07: 14:05

And I'm making it accessible too, which was has been an issue.

SPEAKER_05: 14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 14:09

I know you said that you're trying to make this as simple as possible, but I would like to even simplify it a little bit more so.

SPEAKER_05: 14:16

Yeah. Because you're really new to this. So I'm I'd love for you to really break it down, like to my language.

SPEAKER_07: 14:22

Okay. Well, I'm new to your work. Yes, but I'm not new to this world. But a lot of people that's what I mean. Yeah, but a lot of people are. And I was just thinking back to when I was in my 20s. And would any of this make sense to me back then? Because we normalize anxiety, we normalize the boundaries being crossed, we normalize all of these things as though they're just normal functions that society tells us to that's right. Yeah, that's right. It's really not okay. So I'm not even sure I would have been able to recognize what unsafety in my body actually felt like. Absolutely. Or what that language even meant and what it meant to be safe, because I wouldn't have known that there's any other way to be. Now I do. But how could we frame this for people who are like, what are they talking about? So that you can identify some of the things, even a trigger, like what does that mean to them so that they might relate to what we're talking about?

SPEAKER_05: 15:17

100%. Okay. So I'll just say that the way I learned that I was unsafe was I had to lose everything. Me too. Like the bottom of the barrel moment, I was living in another country. I was in long COVID with autoimmune conditions, a lot of other complex things going on in my life at that time. Came home to America for a three-week visit for my family. I hadn't seen them in three years. This was like end of 2021. And then I had an injury where my spine blew out finally after 25 years of this battle. And then I blew out my knee and I had to have emergency surgery, and I couldn't go back to Spain. I had to leave everything in my life there. And I tried to fall into my partnership that I was in, and he was not the person that he actually had shown up as. He was a completely different person, and it was very scary who he was on the other side once we were really together. I flew from LA on crutches in a wheelchair, and I got to my parents' house, and I was like, I need to stay here. I am not safe anywhere. Like, I am petrified of the world right now. I need to be here. And I'm very fortunate that they are very loving and open-armed and that they could welcome me in. I do not want anyone to experience that kind of pain. So I had to learn a really hard lesson and lose everything. That surgery was not covered because I was on travel insurance and they decided that I was traveling into the country to have surgery, that it was not valid. And so I ended up having to pay cash for that surgery in America. Like you can see the financial destruction, the unwellness, all of the things. Like that's how I had to learn that I was not safe. And that is not okay because I've actually been in the healing world for 30 years. And the fact that was something that I didn't know all the way through my journey, that a lack of safety was the undercurrent of my whole entire life. And our world right now is not safe. A hundred percent is not safe. The political situation that's going on in the world does not feel safe to anyone on every level in every country. The collapse of structure does not feel safe. It's not safe right now. It doesn't feel safe. And the only way for you to create safety is to do it internally. And it's really like the world needs to understand what safety feels like to then know how to filter out things that are absolutely not okay.

SPEAKER_04: 17:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 17:53

And if we can do that one person at a time, our world will change. Yeah. I can't change everyone. I cannot change weapons of mass destruction, but I can help people feel safe. So it's a hard answer to say, like, what do you look for? Right? If you have anxiety, you don't feel safe. That is the root. Like you are in a threat overload. You have a bucket that your container of your body is holding and it is overflowing with threat. There is too much input, and we need to change the input. And that does not start with things outside you. It starts with little things inside yourself.

SPEAKER_06: 18:30

This comes up a lot on this podcast, this complete collapse of our lives. And so I also want to bring it back to, you know, if somebody hasn't experienced that, because I don't want people to be like, oh my God, the only way for me to know what it is is to like have my life collapse. No, but I have like some practical examples from my life, like public speaking. So if you're afraid to speak in front of people, you don't feel safe, right? One silly example was like I was with a group of friends last weekend who I love and they were playing Pictionary. And I was terrified to fucking draw a picture in front of this group because I didn't want to be judged. I was tracking it and I was like, oh my God, this is wild. These are dear friends. And then I got a thing and I had to draw a dolphin and I like freaked out and no one could guess it. And I was like, this is the worst thing. Like I, it was such a simple thing, but it was like, I didn't want to be in front of the room and screw up because I didn't want to get judged. And I was like, is it these people? Is it me? Would I feel this way in another group? These are just some small examples of what it looks like in a day-to-day thing. We all are dealing with this. Like if you're feeling a strong sense of overwhelm in your life, if you're feeling burnout, like these are really practical examples that I think so many people are feeling. And it's one of the things that you've supported so much in the Nova is this is how to do it. So your body can just feel relaxed, where you can feel confident to be yourself, where you feel like you're not trying to hide anything, where you feel like you can speak when you need to. And so to me, safety is the journey to authenticity. It's the journey to being able to actually show up in the world in a way that feels true to you, which is a loaded sentence, but where you don't feel like you're trying to mask, hide, pretend, earn, prove, like all these things that we do to manipulate our belonging so we can just feel love and like we're ourselves. And so there's just, it's like there isn't one person that listens to this that is not navigating this on some level, whether your life is fucking falling apart or you're like, I actually don't like public speaking. Yeah. It's like everything in between when your body like closes up, gets super tight, or you feel like you may die if you have to do that thing.

SPEAKER_05: 20:38

I think it's also like if we look at capacity as a scale, right? Like what you can handle, the more that comes at you, the less you can handle if you're not regulated, if you don't have that like nervous system ninja way of being. So if you look at that whole input-output model, and then if you look at output also as a scale, there's like the pain, fight or flight, and then there's performance. Performance is like my balance is really good, my hormones are operating well, I'm sleeping really well, I'm communicating well. If your brain is firing on all cylinders and your body's up to the charge, like, yeah, I feel alive. You're doing good. Like you're doing really, really good. If you are experiencing symptoms in your life of chronic pain, anxiety, depression, migraines, things that we pathologize. Does that make sense? You don't feel safe. I spent 30 years looking for answers to medical conditions. And in the past five years is how I've learned that all of that, if I had known this 30 years ago, my life would be so different. But one surgery set off a level of dysregulation in my body that was almost irreversible until now.

SPEAKER_07: 21:54

So maybe we can talk about what safety feels like. Yeah. Like a warm cuddle puddle.

SPEAKER_05: 22:02

Like you're melting. It's so interesting. I actually it feels so different for me. Like it's different for everyone. Yeah. So for me, oh, let's talk about it and what each of our safety feels like.

SPEAKER_06: 22:12

This is a fun exercise.

SPEAKER_05: 22:13

Yeah, this is a great question. So my center channel is like online. This is where I can feel from like my root to my crown, we're talking chakras here. So running up the body, I can feel my center channel feel really aligned. And like there's like a hum in it, right? Like it's like, uh here we are. And that's why singing works so well for me because I'm toning, I'm working with all of my channel. I'm toning my column to create that frequency and that harmony, right? My pain symptoms are really low. I'm not like, eh, I got this really weird kink in my neck and shoulder, and like my hand really hurts and my foot's aching, right? Like I know that when my pain is signaling, I'm dysregulated. I'm not safe in my body. And so for me, it is like this it's a harmonized channel in my center. I'd love to know what it feels like for you guys.

SPEAKER_06: 23:10

Yeah, Jess, what's yours feel like?

SPEAKER_07: 23:12

Wow. I'm trying to feel back into what it feels like because right now I don't feel it. And I even articulated it to my partner this morning. I said, I feel off-center. Okay. I feel off.

SPEAKER_05: 23:26

Can we just do something really quick before you do this then? Yeah. Can you just do a rotational assessment? So just take a deep breath in. I love when Jess gets to practice.

SPEAKER_06: 23:34

Somehow always happens where it's like, Jess, let's do this live.

SPEAKER_05: 23:38

This is great. So just take a nice deep breath in and out. Okay, cool. So I'm gonna teach you the rotational assessment. This is the language of the body telling us where your nervous system is actually at. So I just want you to look left and look right and mark how far you can turn. So actually with your neck. So you're gonna turn look left and look right. And just feel how much you can rotate. Okay, so that's pretty good. So come back to center. Isn't that? Yeah. I have a bad neck. Okay. Yeah. But you can notice as we do some drills, you will contract or expand. Okay. Like I can do one drill and it will literally not allow me to move my neck because it takes me into dysregulation. I can do another drill and I turn into an owl. Okay. Okay. So we're just gonna start with tongue circles right now. So you're gonna take your tongue between your lips and your teeth. So just put them above, like up above. And then you're gonna circle around your mouth, trying to reach around your mouth as much as you can. Yeah, great job. Circling around. Good. So just go five in one direction and then five in the other direction. Good. And just like notice your toes, notice your fingers, continue to breathe. And once you've done five both ways, you can stop and just take a deep breath in and out. Good. And I'm gonna have you reassess. So just look left and look right. Okay, so more. Yeah. Yeah, left definitely felt a lot more. Great. Okay, cool. So let's do another one. You're gonna take your hands. This is more proprioceptive. So that was interoceptive. I'm working with the vagus system. This is proprioceptive. So telling your body where it is in space. So I'm just gonna have you start by turning your hand. I'm gonna tilt my camera down right now. Okay. So hand is over, under, up, and down, right? Just start like that. And then I'm gonna have you slow it down and you're gonna open and then as you rotate down, you're gonna close the fingers. As you rotate up, you're gonna open the fingers, one, two, three, four. As you rotate down, close, one, two, three, four. Yeah. Try to go big finger. What's this finger called? Pointer. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06: 25:47

Pointer finger, pointer, finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky, right?

SPEAKER_05: 25:51

And then flip it over, pointer finger, ring finger, you got it. Pinky. Then you find a flow where it turns into like a figure eight. Your thumb just kind of like hangs out on this. So just slow it down. Yeah, so just slow it down until you feel like you can get the rhythm. And then you don't have to speed up as I'm speeding up, but what I'm just gonna show you is that as you speed up, you're telling your body, you're reinforming the map of your body in space right now. Okay. So I'm just gonna have you put your hand down on your leg and take a deep breath in and out. Great. And then just do a rotational assessment. You're gonna look left and then look right. Yeah, great. Better?

SPEAKER_07: 26:38

I think so.

SPEAKER_05: 26:39

Great. All right, so let's do one more. Tell me where the tightest part of your body is like the most constriction you feel. It's kind of a war between my forehead and chest. Your diaphragm and chest. My diaphragm, yeah. All right. So I'm gonna have you cross your left ankle over your right ankle. Okay Oh, oh, your feet were not on the floor this whole time. Yeah, they were on my lap. Yeah, yeah. Which is great information to know. I'm gonna ask you in the future to actually put your feet on the floor because it helps your body know you're you're up floating.

SPEAKER_03: 27:15

Right?

SPEAKER_05: 27:16

Okay so okay, so left ankle over the right, right hand on left knee, left hand behind your head. Okay. You're gonna rotate towards your left elbow really gently, right? Just yep. And then you're gonna take a nice inhale to extend the spine up, and then just exhale to let the shoulders go. Good. Yeah, just let them relax. Great. So this is not too strenuous, and just look towards that left elbow. Great. And I'm gonna have you inhale, expand into the back side of your right rib cage. One, two, three. You're gonna hold for five, four, three, two, one, exhale for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, three, two, one, two, hold, five, four, three, two, one, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, three, two, one, hold, five, four, three, two, one, exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. So you feel that pressure relief valve happen. Come back to center, just take a deep breath in and out. Good. And then just turn your body towards me so I can see you head on, like your whole body. And I'm gonna have you assess look left and look right. Yeah. Oh, my right is so much better. Isn't that wild?

unknown: 29:04

Oh.

SPEAKER_05: 29:04

Yeah. So that was that one is a very powerful. You're innervating the diaphragm, and so that's where the vagus nerve like runs right through. And so it's like doing a squeezing out of a towel, but we're doing it very gently, but we're using the breath to do that, and then you're releasing it. And so you might have felt like a little bit of the rush of oxygen to the brain. You can increase the intensity of the breathing and make it really like kind of a wild experience.

SPEAKER_06: 29:34

So thank you. Thank you. So now what is safety?

SPEAKER_07: 29:39

I know just to give you a different access point, right? So, what I'd say, I don't know why I feel like I have to give context to this, but what I'm just sort of finding interesting in my life right now is that I did a really good job creating safety within a set of conditions. So I had a similar experience. To you, in losing everything, to really have to do my healing work and really discover that in myself and built a life that created a lot of space for me to do this work. And in that context, I feel calm and very centered and strong, like a sense of no matter what comes up, I have the inner resources to handle it. Self-assurance. Self-assurance and the space to really be with my feelings so that I'm not in reaction, that I can really hold whatever is coming up and allow it and feel safe in it, and then make conscious decisions. What I'm noticing right now is outside of that context, and I guess the context is just a lot of spaciousness and time. I need a lot of time in my routine.

SPEAKER_05: 30:58

What's your human design?

SPEAKER_07: 31:00

I am a two-five generator on the cross of service. And stillness, ironically, is my main number. 52. Really? Are you on the cross of service? No. The cross of healing? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Of course you know that. So stress is the shadow, right? A lot of life is being thrown at me right now. And I'm not given that kind of space to really be with myself to feel grounded. There's a lot of pain around me right now.

SPEAKER_05: 31:32

Co-disregulation.

SPEAKER_07: 31:33

Yeah. And I don't feel in control of my schedule. And I'm noticing in the midst of that that I no longer feel okay taking pauses.

SPEAKER_05: 31:44

Because your system says it's not safe to pause right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 31:48

Like doom, doom, doom, one thing to the next. And I woke up this morning and I'm like, oh no, I am so off balance right now. I do not feel safe in the feelings coming up right now. I don't feel like I have the spaciousness to be with those feelings. I get into overfunctioning mode, I get into codependency, I get into perfectionism. You're such a good high performer. Yeah. So I'm I guess my question, and I do want to come to Melissa and find out your safety. But my question is when life gets intense, right? What is it that we can do? Because sometimes circumstances are out of our control. How do we maintain that safety if we're no longer able to keep the, you know, the sovereignty?

SPEAKER_05: 32:36

Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So that is why I love this work. You can do tiny drills over the day, the course of the day. You can prime yourself in the morning with just a few drills just to make contact, right? Just to have that internal, like, I'm giving you a moment. I'm giving you what you need. You have an assessment tool that will let you know how constricted or how open you are. So you're talking to the language of the body, not to your cognition. Your cognition will tell you anything it wants to hear. And your protectors will come in and give you any reason to continue moving at the pace you're going, right? Over functioning. So when you have that level of awareness of like, oh, right, I just need to do like a handful of drills as I'm making my coffee, brushing my teeth, getting dressed. That is how I integrate it. Now there are times where I'm like, I need to take 30 minutes and blow through some real stuff, right? Like, but I've also learned how to spend that time because I've built the safety to spend that time. But when you're in this high performing mode, it is very hard to downregulate. And so the oxymoron is that space is the one thing that you need. Right. Like that is it. But the drills become part of survival and the lifestyle until you get some sovereignty back and some inner awareness and some safety to say, oh, I need to go handle that emotion.

SPEAKER_04: 34:09

Right.

SPEAKER_05: 34:10

Like I actually need to go deal with that emotion. That emotion's running me right now. I had it with anger recently, and Mo is on the inside know of that. And it really had me like hardcore. And I was like, I feel like I might die right now. And I didn't realize that I was suppressing anger. Like I was not on board with it. I was just suppressing it and being like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And then it caught. But what I was doing all along was my drills to bring the conversation between my body and my brain back to a place of awareness, safe cognition, safe activation, safe engagement with the world. So your body needs to know where it is in space, how it's interpreting the insides, and what the language between the brain and the body is. That is what it's asking for when you're in overfunctioning mode. And so if tiny little drills over the course of the day can do that, and I'll share the on the go video that I have. It's literally like you could do it in your car, like safely do it in your car. I'm on the go. I will do drills when I'm in transit in the car. Because that is a moment that I get back to myself. I try not to do calls anymore when I'm in the car. I try to give myself those moments, right? We're in an overfunctioning world. We're in a high demand world. There is too much pressure. And so it is our job to squeeze those moments in with the drills.

SPEAKER_07: 35:39

Because then I or maybe this is an assumption, but I'm assuming that then if we're able to regulate in the midst of that chaotic state, we can actually make better decisions. We can actually hold our boundaries.

SPEAKER_05: 35:54

We can because you're safe to hold your boundary. I had no boundaries first. Yeah. And you're not bottlenecking everything through a filter that's a broken filter, right? Because that's what's happening when you're dysregulated. The filter to the world is broken, but it's not clear, it's not an open channel. It's like zigzaggy jaggedy. And so what you're working towards is building like how clear can this channel be? Mo.

SPEAKER_06: 36:20

Yeah, what's your the word that came to me was trust. That's how you feel safe. And it yeah, self-like trust or trust. It's like Yeah, I agree. Which I think is sort of what you were speaking to too, is that, and I think of all of the moments where you've held me carry around like you know, like Monday of this week. Um, I love you. It's like just deep trust in myself, trust in the circumstances, trust in that I'm held, trust that it all will work out. It's like less of future panicking or blaming. Like I get really like, I need a victim. Like realized that this week is like I need like somebody to blame this person.

SPEAKER_05: 37:06

That's the fight response.

SPEAKER_06: 37:08

Yeah. I realized that. I was like, oh my God, I always need someone to blame for what's happening inside of my body.

SPEAKER_05: 37:14

It's so funny. We've had this conversation for like a year, but this is the first time. I realized that this week. And we you went deep in that and look at the amazing stuff that came out from it.

SPEAKER_06: 37:24

And I've been in major, major high performing mode. I mean, I made a list on Wednesday of like all the things we've accomplished. And there's a part of me that doesn't even want to be proud of it because I'm like, oh my God, is this me just being like, must perform, must perform, you know. Like I don't even want to like celebrate my overfunctioning anymore. But when I feel safe, I feel trust. And then, you know, what that looks like of how I show up in the world is I feel alive. It's almost like you can have like an orgasm with your life because you're in your creativity, you're in your flow, you can be calm inside of chaos. It's like I always speak to like being the eye of the storm. It's sort of what it feels like. And I'm a really incredible leader, I'm an incredible visionary. When I'm in regulation, like the speed to which I can make shit move is fucking crazy. But I noticed the difference between force and trust. And that's sort of my dysregulation regulation in my body. I love that.

SPEAKER_05: 38:20

Yeah, I want to just like riff off of one thing really quickly because Jess said the word calm and like that's her knowing. And I just want to clarify one thing like regulation does not always mean calm. It really means like you have agency to move in and out of states. Right. And so while calm is like definitely a desired state, we sometimes need to get activated to stay safe in a situation and then be able to come down afterwards. So it's more modulation. Like that is the skill of how do you ride the waves so that you stay autonomous and sovereign.

SPEAKER_07: 39:03

I want Melissa's answer.

SPEAKER_05: 39:06

Because I think it was perfect.

SPEAKER_07: 39:08

I think it was the perfect articulation of it. Yeah, it was so good.

SPEAKER_06: 39:10

But I understand, I do understand what you're saying. One thing I think is interesting is too, is if you don't have like a tracking, like an aura ring or something to track, this is how I can tell. I can like peg the days that I'm dysregulated. Because if we look at Monday, this is the day that I like freaked out up with Carrie. This is high stress. I literally could not come down. Can you explain what we're looking at? So it's a it's uh a daytime. So it there's a graph that is the Aura Ring app and it tracks your if you're stressed, engaged, relaxed, or restored. Wow. So it like literally maps your stress points throughout the day. I need this. And I love having the data because I can feel that feeling in my body where I just like I can't come down. Like I just feel tight and I like look at this and it's like, oh, well, it's probably because and it tracks for time. So it'll track like your whole day until you're like asleep. And I'll look at it, and these data points are on the top of the graph at like maximum stress, and I'm not coming down too engaged or relaxed. And so if I'm having a day where I'm like more, let's call it normally functioning or more regulated, it might look more like this, where it's kind of up and down and up and down. And that day, Monday, what it felt like at the end of the day, I literally came home from an event and I like turned all the lights off in the house and I got into bed and closed my eyes and was just like, it's so intense. And so to me, the visual representation of the modulation of like you can have these points and then your body can come back down. But probably what you're feeling today, Jess, it's like your graph would probably look like mine, where it's like, I was in a state of stress for eight hours and 15 minutes. The day that looked normal was like two and a half hours of stress and like two hours of regulation or restored. And so it's fascinating because I mean, I love the tool of like your assessment is really a more objective way of looking at am I regular.

SPEAKER_05: 41:05

It gives you outside feedback.

SPEAKER_06: 41:06

Totally. Like so the feedback of a ring, or you I know you have another tool too, which we can share in the show notes, is like having an actual tool that objectively is like this is what's happening in your body. The data is so good. It's so good. And then then I become kind of addicted to my sleep and really protective over sleep. Because if you're not restoring during the day, then you need to be restoring at night. And so then you can track your sleep. And anyway, so it's just fascinating because no matter when you restore, you have to restore. Right.

SPEAKER_05: 41:34

And like if I don't restore at night very well, that's where my deep trauma is. And I've been working on it a lot. And it's been, yeah, it's been the work. It's been the work.

SPEAKER_06: 41:43

So I know we need to wrap up, but I want Carrie as our final question, which is normally our first question. We do things so normal around here. Fuck the rules. What is your relationship to your inner rebel?

SPEAKER_05: 41:56

Oh my god, I didn't know that's what you were about to say. Um, so I spent a long time shaming her for living the alternative lifestyle, right? So I would like shame her a lot. And in this past year, I've really learned to respect the path that she's taken and kind of get into the kink of it of like, yeah, this is kind of cool. Like, whoa, okay, so what actually really does feel good? Let's go there. And why are we playing by these rules? And so I tried to be like a good girl in society and it doesn't really work for me, right? Or anybody.

SPEAKER_06: 42:39

Right, like I didn't work for anybody.

SPEAKER_05: 42:41

I was like, oh, you must play by the rules and get a normal job and do these things and have benefits, right? And I can shame myself out of like why I shouldn't be living the life I do and I shouldn't be an entrepreneur, all these things, right? Instead of actually really loving this creative spark and spirit that is so from another planet and doesn't fit in the system here at all. And the more I love her and the more I play with her, the more fun and the more freedom I experience. But I couldn't do that until I understood my own boundaries and what felt safe to me. And I could express those. And it when you can learn to express boundaries, you can be as much of a rebel. And I would say the biggest takeaway for me, and we can leave it with this, is that my wake-up moment in my business was I knew I was here to do really big things. And the first week into my business had a major medical collapse. Five years in, I had another major medical collapse. And I realized that I didn't have the nervous system to hold the vision that I was experiencing. And I committed what's that like? I committed my life's work to it five years ago. And I have just made every decision for that so that I can feel in honor of myself, my spirit, the things I would know that I came into this world to do. And you just have to take one step at a time, create safety along the way, and build that capacity so that you can live the vision of the rebel that you truly are, because the system is not meant for you. I boom.

SPEAKER_07: 44:22

Love it. Mic drop. Love it. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie, so much. I know that we could just keep going and we'll have you back again. But thank you so much and for sharing your tools and your gifts with us. I really appreciate that very much. I feel a lot better.

SPEAKER_05: 44:38

Yeah, it's it is like a little bit of a warm hug, right? Like once you get that fuel supply to the brain, that's what it was, right? Your brain was like, and so we just got some fuel supply. I would actually go recommend that you eat right now just to give yourself a little bit more fuel supply. The brain needs glucose, it takes a lot to function.

SPEAKER_07: 44:58

It does, it does, and it was such a good reminder, like the right reminder at the right time. I'm so glad of the space to take. Like I know what that sense of safety feels like, and to prioritize it. To put it, make it number one right now. I think.

SPEAKER_06: 45:15

We'll use the word devotion.

SPEAKER_07: 45:17

Devotion.

SPEAKER_05: 45:19

So bad.

SPEAKER_06: 45:19

It's one of my favorite words like over the last year. It really always lands because it's like it's it's like that deep spiritual commitment to the things that you care about. Like, I'm devoted to cultivating safety in my body. I'm devoted to and it's so much better than like dedicate. And you know, these like stronger, more masculine versions of like just fucking yeah, that they're more in alignment with that all or nothing mentality, you know. Like sometimes I think we get wrapped up in in that side of of our commitments and so that devotion of like, I'm devoted to this, so I'm gonna take how long did that take? I mean, Carrie did three drills, it's five minutes. You could even do the tongue circles and then like get on your next one.

SPEAKER_05: 45:58

You can actually do the tongue circles and the hand movement together. It takes a little bit of practice, but when you start layering the Yeah, you saw Jess trying to do the hand.

SPEAKER_06: 46:07

It's like it's like pat your head and rub your tummy, Jess.

SPEAKER_05: 46:11

It's called stacking. So you can actually stack drills together to increase the effectiveness of them. And it's all of a sudden you're like fucking efficiency. I love efficiency.

SPEAKER_06: 46:19

I love efficiency.

SPEAKER_07: 46:20

Efficiency.

SPEAKER_06: 46:21

All right.

SPEAKER_07: 46:22

Yeah, I know I do know that we have to go, but I also just want to put in that I love the reminder also that it's not our fault that society is what it is that we all into myself. Like I was shaming myself because I'm like, I know this work and I've been doing it for so long, and I got into such a healthy place. How did I let certain things knock me?

SPEAKER_05: 46:44

Dude, you are in war with society, like every day is a battle against the way the world is set up because it's not working for our system, and so finding the sovereignty in that of like, I don't need to berate myself, I didn't do anything wrong. The whole entire ecosystem is not set up for your success. To meet it with grace and to like love on that part that part of safety is gentleness and compassion. So it's yeah, like there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, and when you can get into so there is like a state in the regulation process where you can get really into the cognition and you start to like crack codes where you're like, oh wait, I've had this belief system that has literally put me in prison for most of my life. And then all of a sudden you're like walking without that belief system anymore, and then you become superhuman. Okay, it's wild. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 47:39

To being superhuman. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06: 47:43

That's the name of the how to be superhuman.

SPEAKER_05: 47:47

No big expectations here.

SPEAKER_06: 47:49

Yeah, no, no crash. All right. Love you, Gary. Thank you, Gary. Talk to you soon. Bye.