Episode 10
The Intersection of Mindfulness and Trauma Recovery
Today’s dialogue delves into the profound impact of holistic psychotherapy, as we engage with the esteemed Hannah Zachny, the founder of Heart Wide Open Wellness. Hannah elucidates her journey, illustrating how her diverse background in physical therapy, yoga, and psychology culminated in a unique approach to mental health that integrates mindfulness and bravery. A salient point of our discussion centers on the innovative modalities of EMDR and brain spotting, which Hannah employs to facilitate healing from trauma, emphasizing the importance of understanding how trauma manifests in various aspects of life, including relationships and physical health. Moreover, we explore the critical role of community support in the therapeutic process, highlighting the necessity of addressing individual trauma to foster healthier interpersonal dynamics. Join us as we uncover the intricacies of these therapeutic practices and their potential to empower individuals to reclaim their narratives and lead more fulfilling lives.
Takeaways:
- In this episode, we delve into the intricacies of holistic psychotherapy and its profound impact on mental health.
- Hannah Zachny elucidates her journey from a yoga practitioner to a holistic psychotherapist, emphasizing the integration of mind, body, and spirit.
- The importance of community in healing is highlighted, as Hannah discusses how group therapy enhances individual recovery processes.
- We explore the significance of trauma-informed care, acknowledging that everyone may carry some form of trauma throughout their lives.
- Hannah shares her insights on modern therapeutic practices like EMDR and brain spotting, and their effectiveness in treating trauma.
- The discussion stresses the necessity of self-love and awareness in overcoming personal barriers to living a fulfilling life.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Heart Wide Open Wellness
Transcript
Hello everyone, this is Shobhna and welcome to the busy free Mind Podcast.
Speaker A:Here we explore mental health from all angles and bring you honest conversations to help you understand yourself better and live a more grounded life.
Speaker A:Today we are joined by Hannah Zachny, the creator of Heart Wide Open Wellness in Folsom, California.
Speaker A:Hannah is a holistic psychotherapist who blends meditation, mindfulness and bravery in her work.
Speaker A:She has trained in emdr, brain spotting, kep therapy and much more.
Speaker A:I'm so excited to learn from her journey and the meaningful work she does.
Speaker A:Let's get started.
Speaker B:Hi Hannah, how are you?
Speaker B:Hi Shabna.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker B:Thrilled to be here today.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker A:Hannah, please share your journey into holistic psychotherapy and what inspired you to start Heart Wide Open Wellness.
Speaker B:Such a big question and I love answering it.
Speaker B: rriage family therapist since: Speaker B:So an athlete.
Speaker B:My undergrad was in pre med.
Speaker B:I thought I was going to go into physical therapy and then just over life's course of time, I just realized I was really building a mind, body, spirit, lifestyle and I had the background from the medicine and then I decided to go and then I had the spiritual kind of wellness from the yoga and then I decided to go back to school after I had my three kids.
Speaker B:They were very, very young and went back to grad school to do psychology after doing some of my own work.
Speaker B:Which is much why, to answer your question, much of the answer is those three things that started to just inform how I lived my own personal life.
Speaker B:Also when I had kids I, I had heard others say this and for me it was very true as well, that there's no time to heal like when you have your own children.
Speaker B:I just knew that it was imperative that I didn't pass on anything that I needed to clear house on internally, my own trauma, my own issues.
Speaker B:And so I decided to go to therapy myself.
Speaker B:And in that process I worked with some therapists that were very gifted in their fields and they were trained in brain spotting.
Speaker B:And brain spotting was barely a thing back then, but that was introduced to me some somatic practices, even some somatic archaeologies using essential oils, you know, very holistic approaches that are now becoming trendy, but way back then were a little bit off the map and off the radar, but they felt very homey for me.
Speaker B:I think just from My decades at that time of yoga experience and just being a little bit more open minded to that, they felt like they were intuitive to my body.
Speaker B:So I received them very well.
Speaker B:I felt a lot of healing in that.
Speaker B:And immediately I put myself into a program to do psychology as a master's degree so that I could pass on what I was learning.
Speaker B:And I'm still very passionate about the field.
Speaker B:And here I am.
Speaker B:I worked independently for over, well over a decade.
Speaker B: And then in about: Speaker B:There's a certain, in my opinion, there's a very important place for individual work.
Speaker B:And when you're in a very traumatized place or if you're working on single incidence trauma, that does require intensive trauma work, sometimes that is better done one on one.
Speaker B:But then once you start to get a little bit established in your recovery of whatever that looks like for the individual, there's, you know, we do a lot of our work, we're social beings, we do a lot of the work that we do so that we can take that back into our relationships, so that we can take that back into our communities.
Speaker B:And so I felt like that was a missing part in therapy.
Speaker B:And so I started doing some groups, doing women's intensives, parlaying that into Kundalini yoga, psychology retreats that I do internationally, and then building out a team.
Speaker B:So now Heart Wide Open Wellness is continuing to grow.
Speaker B: t the beginning of this year,: Speaker B:We have two almost licensed clinicians with us right now and then three.
Speaker B:One clinical doctorate student and two associate therapists.
Speaker B:And we are having the time of our lives.
Speaker A:Beautiful journey.
Speaker A:Hannah, how do you help clients step into the life they desire most with confidence and purpose?
Speaker B:I love this question because this is truly my goal for people.
Speaker B:Some of the wording I say is I.
Speaker B:It's my desire that you live your biggest, most beautiful life as soon as possible.
Speaker B:Because as we all know and as we get older, it goes quicker and quicker and healing is available.
Speaker B:You know, is there complete healing?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know that I have experienced that or that any of my clients have experienced complete.
Speaker B:But life certainly can be bigger and more beautiful and safer in so many ways.
Speaker B:I think the biggest key to that is one, having training in the modalities that are very important.
Speaker B:So here on this team, everybody is required to have EMDR and, or brain spotting and additional trainings as well.
Speaker B:And to be able to support somebody in that way.
Speaker B:Because trauma is a part of, I think, of being a human.
Speaker B:You know, it isn't just reserved for certain segments or experiences.
Speaker B:Just I.
Speaker B:Lovingly tease that, you know, if you survive childhood, you probably have trauma.
Speaker B:And so, you know, acknowledging that and working with somebody who's very trauma informed is very important.
Speaker B:Secondly, I would say that it is very important to work with clinicians or teams that give you actual tools and help you have insight into your own self regulatory skills.
Speaker B:Because at the end of the day your therapist isn't going to be there with you when you're having a breakdown on a Friday night.
Speaker B:So you have to have somebody that's going to be aware of that and that wants you to thrive on your own, is willing to do whatever it takes to find the specific individualized tools that, that the client needs.
Speaker A:Yes, Hannah, you are, you are specialized in many things that I couldn't even pronounce.
Speaker A:There was a big list.
Speaker A:But you are specialized in brain spotting and em.
Speaker A:EMDR therapy.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:What is the difference between these two therapy and how do you help people heal their brain using this therapy?
Speaker B:Yeah, so EMDR has been around a little bit longer.
Speaker B:It has had some more efficacy and more studies done to prove its effectiveness, I guess.
Speaker B:But they both wonderfully.
Speaker B:And I am being a true holistic practitioner.
Speaker B:You know, I believe the science is really beautiful and I absolutely love it to back things up.
Speaker B:But also what works, works.
Speaker B:So EMDR is better known, although brain spotting is becoming very, very well known.
Speaker B:And brain spotting really is just almost an offshoot of emdr.
Speaker B:So EMDR eye movement desensitization, reprocessing, which is why we call it EMDR because that's a mouthful, is really that using some of the eye movement so you can look right, left, you can do that by having a finger literally waved in front of your face like I'm kind of doing on the screen.
Speaker B:Or it could be a laser light that you would watch that the light moves and you can watch it.
Speaker B:It also can be triggered by holding pulsers that will vibrate one hand then the other.
Speaker B:So that just kind of informs your body of different movement on each side of the brain.
Speaker B:All you tap your legs, you can tap your shoulders, you can do it yourself, or you can receive the bilateral movement through I guess an external source, like example music.
Speaker B:Headphones can have bilateral programming in it.
Speaker B:So when you're wearing the headphone it'll kind of Vacillate from right to left, and then it helps trigger right, left hemispheres.
Speaker B:And what that does is that when we experience something that's too big for us, we often freeze, fight, fawn, and it just gets it's stuck energy.
Speaker B:And we can actually have stuck energy in our brain as well as our bodies.
Speaker B:We're more familiar with inflammation in our knees and our joints.
Speaker B:But inflammation can also happen in our brain.
Speaker B:And so when that happens, we can start to connect the right and left hemisphere by getting that kind of.
Speaker B:It's almost like fascia for the brain that it'll.
Speaker B:And starts to release and connect in a way.
Speaker B:And so the stories that were stuck, the cognition that leads to the pervasive thinking of, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I can't, I can't protect myself.
Speaker B:Whatever that individual is facing that's associated with a certain memory, it can start to wash. And you can create distance from that memory, and then you can have clear choice and a little bit of freedom from those perpetuating thoughts.
Speaker B:So that's kind of what how EMDR does it.
Speaker B:Brain spotting was kind of found in that process is some clinicians were watching, doing emdr and they would notice that the eyes would get stuck.
Speaker B:Like, rather than go right, left, they would get stuck, say, one direction.
Speaker B:And so using that as reverse kind of information, they found that when the eyes were on a certain place, that there might be validity.
Speaker B:Trust the client.
Speaker B:The client stopping with their eyes over there.
Speaker B:What is the client telling us?
Speaker B:Because our bodies know how to heal.
Speaker B:So they used that to, to learn that when our eyes are stuck in a certain eye position, it's actually putting pressure on the optic nerve, which allows into a certain part of the brain which releases that stuck energy or stuck memory in, in the brain.
Speaker B:And that once, if you just kind of sit in that eye position for a while, it's not necessarily where your eyes were looking while you were traumatized or while something was happening.
Speaker B:It's just where your brain correlates that it's another avenue to be able to heal the brain.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Such a detailed explanation.
Speaker A:Can you, can you share a moment when a client had a back breakthrough when brain spotting or emdr, that would have happened with regular talk therapy.
Speaker B:Gosh, those are so many.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I absolutely love talk therapy.
Speaker B:You know, I preface that because I also love trauma work.
Speaker B:Talk therapy is very useful in the sense for grief work.
Speaker B:It's very important for us to be witnessed, to be able to hear ourselves say things that we wouldn't say otherwise.
Speaker B:It allows us to accept them and to move forward and to sometimes make choices and decisions that we wouldn't otherwise.
Speaker B:That being said, our brain is very smart.
Speaker B:It wants to protect us from being hurt and it will shield us from what's right in front of our nose.
Speaker B:So when you do brain spotting, emdr, ketamine assisted therapy, we do psychedelic assisted therapy at our practice as well, your brain goes into a non ordinary state.
Speaker B:And when you are in a resourced position, which is very important to us to not do this, we only do these practices when our clients are ready for them, when we give them tools to be grounded, to be in, feel in their bodies, to be in their own skin.
Speaker B:And then their brain will let go and they will be able to access things that they wouldn't have been able to in just talk therapy.
Speaker B:So what happens, to answer your question of breakthroughs that happen that wouldn't happen otherwise, there's just light shined in a different angle.
Speaker B:Like, oh, I never saw that mom was actually trying to help me in that circumstance, or I never saw that I had a choice to leave, or I never saw that.
Speaker B:So it could.
Speaker B:Because we could become so stuck in our viewpoint and we build a whole narrative and lifestyle around that that it really frees that up and allow it.
Speaker B:I think freedom is probably one of the bigger words.
Speaker A:So how do you connect these modern therapies like brain spotting, EMDR and all with physical practices like yoga?
Speaker B:You know, I think they're all.
Speaker B:Not everybody relates to yoga.
Speaker B:I certainly do.
Speaker B:I think it's beautiful practice.
Speaker B:Yet.
Speaker B:And I don't know that everybody needs to do specifically yoga.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But I think movement in your body is very important.
Speaker B:So you know, working.
Speaker B:And the other beautiful thing about movement is if you think about walking, it's right, left, right.
Speaker B:If you're bicycling, it's the same.
Speaker B:Swimming, it's the same.
Speaker B:So just bilateral movement can continue to help the ongoing work that we do with EMDR or brain spotting or any of the modalities.
Speaker B:So that is just an important thing.
Speaker B:And then yoga, we do have yoga on our, on site.
Speaker B:I teach yoga at my retreats.
Speaker B:We definitely incorporate that and more so these days Kundalini yoga, because it has a lot of repetitive kriya practice which works the right, left hemisphere.
Speaker B:So those are really good to support the work that we do.
Speaker B:But so is just sitting outside in nature and watching the birds, right?
Speaker B:Or going to the waterfall and putting your feet in the water.
Speaker B:So you know, we incorporate A lot of other holistic supports, but yoga is definitely one of them.
Speaker A:So can trauma show up in unexpected ways, like in relationships or physical health?
Speaker B:All the time.
Speaker B:Yeah, all the time.
Speaker B:And that's why here, even if somebody wants to come over and work with couples, it is my requirement that they also have trauma training.
Speaker B:Because you can be coming up with an argument, a stuck point in a relationship, and you're working on the couples therapy, but there's actually unresolved trauma in one or both partners.
Speaker B:And so they're really not fighting with each other, they're fighting with this old trauma.
Speaker B:So to be able to have a clinician that's aware of that, that can separate it, say, hey, let's pause couples therapy for a little bit and let's do a little bit of individual trauma work and then let's come together and see if this problem still is there and.
Speaker B:Or if we can deal with it differently.
Speaker B:That's what we do.
Speaker B:And nine times out of 10, it is a perfect solve.
Speaker B:So, yeah.
Speaker A:What is the number one thing that usually people holds back from living the life they really want?
Speaker B:I'm sure there's a lot of things I could say to that, but what comes to mind right now is that people will say consistently, almost anybody.
Speaker B:And I've even caught myself saying this, I don't have time to deal.
Speaker B:Like, I know that there's something I need to work through, right?
Speaker B:But if I let myself, it's like you get to that point where I know I need to heal this one thing.
Speaker B:I know I need to forgive here.
Speaker B:I know I need to let go here.
Speaker B:I know I need to surrender here.
Speaker B:Whatever it is, when you get to that point of really knowing that usually time has passed and whatever it is you need to release is pretty big.
Speaker B:So the faulty thinking that I think people get stuck in moving forward in it is I've delayed addressing this for too long.
Speaker B:Now, if I was to step into it, it's going to take me out, it's going to take too long.
Speaker B:It's going to take too much money.
Speaker B:There's not anybody there that's going to know how to help me.
Speaker B:It's going to ruin my life in the interim.
Speaker B:I don't have, you know, I don't have the space, time, bandwidth, support to be able to heal this.
Speaker B:And almost always you can get through it quicker than you think you could when you really let yourself free to feel it.
Speaker B:Additionally, there's a little undertone of I'm not able to feel it.
Speaker B:I'm not brave enough, I'm not capable enough.
Speaker B:But when people just really are.
Speaker B:And this is why I think it's good to work with somebody who is a little bit of your cheerleader and can say, you know, I've got you and this is why you're ready to do this and I'm here with you.
Speaker B:And then with that support, people often move when they would have not allowed them to on their own.
Speaker A:Wonderful.
Speaker A:So the self love really enough to heal deep emotional wounds, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker B:And I would say that self love, for me, I think that would be dependent on the definition of self love.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But for me, the definition of self love is allowing the the highest part of you or the most spiritual part of you, or the part of you that connects with spirit, whatever that means to you, that is allowing to give you that love.
Speaker B:So it's really reaching into something bigger than what you typically access and that will always hold you and always heal you.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Learning how to access that and to keep connected to it is the trick.
Speaker A:You work with clients who have social anxiety.
Speaker A:In today's world of constant online comparison, what's one piece of advice you give to help people build confidence and reconnect with others?
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, I think it's really, really, really important to limit social media and to be a steward of what you bring into your, into your awareness and into your field.
Speaker B:So if there are consistently pages or sites or whatever you're looking at that are, that are making you second guess yourself, I just delete those, don't follow those for a while, you know, and I also think limiting your time with that is very important because there is a bit of truth to.
Speaker B:We see the highlight reel on social media, we don't see the reality.
Speaker B:There are some people that do show more of their reality and then even that sometimes isn't always what we want to see or what we need to see.
Speaker B:So, you know, comparing is never beneficial.
Speaker B:And just reminding ourselves that the only person that we should be comparing ourselves to is the version of ourselves that we were five minutes ago.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Beautiful.
Speaker A:People used to say that when you are trying to reduce your body, you don't have to see the people who is working in the gym.
Speaker A:Rather you should see the healthy version of yourself back five, six years ago and try to attain that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It's like that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think that that is another practice that is missing from our society is to just one with one another to say, oh my gosh, you are so good at this, or I've Seen you grow so much in this area of your life, or look at you showing up like that when you wouldn't have done that before, you know, and for us to do that for ourselves, to review even on a daily basis, like what did I do today that was a little bit braver than I have done in the past, you know, and to continue that as a pract, because we build on it.
Speaker A:What role does movement, breath, work or meditation play in mental health?
Speaker B:My gosh, so much.
Speaker B:And we just know this more and more and more.
Speaker B:So I'm a big fan of nervous system regulation and how it is imperative that we are more in our parasympathetic more than we are in.
Speaker B:A stressed out state.
Speaker B:And our brain works better, our heart works better, our blood flow, we, the circulation works better, nutrients go to our organs better.
Speaker B:So our whole system, mind, body, spirit is so much more efficient.
Speaker B:And that when it's more efficient it allows us to be in a higher frequency, higher vibration.
Speaker B:Meaning our cells actually do vibrate at a different frequency and we're at a different frequency.
Speaker B:We can a higher likelihood to access the emotions that we desire more like gratitude, love and joy.
Speaker B:When we are in a non healthy state and our cells are literally not moving as fast, they're just more stagnant, they're more in the vibration of grief, despair, depression.
Speaker B:So it's not lost on me that if you want to feel better emotionally, you need to feel better physically and that that correlation is absolutely hand in hand.
Speaker A:How do we know that I'm in a higher frequency?
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:Like where's that answer to that?
Speaker B:I would say before I answer the question, that there's also a time to not be in that high vibration state.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So I, I think it's very.
Speaker B:Again back to quickly to that comparison.
Speaker B:We don't want to just be always think that not feeling amazing is a negative thing because there's a time to move through rough spots, right?
Speaker B:There's a time to be in grief, there's a time to feel, you know, jealousy is a, an emotion that none of us want to live there.
Speaker B:But it's, if we use it correctly, it can be an informant as to what we're really desiring and what something we need to heal or something that we need to be celebratory for somebody else or something that's just like, oh my gosh, I didn't know I wanted that so bad.
Speaker B:You know, so it can be a gift.
Speaker B:If we stay there and we let that turn into bitterness, then we could Go, I guess downward if we're looking at a frequency scale.
Speaker B:But if we use that awareness of jealousy in a.
Speaker B:How can I learn from this?
Speaker B:It could take us upwards if we looked at a frequency scale.
Speaker B:So to say where you are is not that it's negative ever, it's just how can you use it and allowing yourself the grace of processing when you're at the state that you're at.
Speaker B:Because we're all going to experience the whole, all of them.
Speaker B:But I would say that, you know, we know when we're a little bit higher vibration, you know, little, little ways you feel calm.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It's a mental satisfaction.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:You know those days when you walk out the door and you hear the birds and you just jumped in and hear them?
Speaker B:Or the day that you catch the sun on your cheek and you can really feel it, or the music just sounds better in your car?
Speaker B:You know, I think when you're really present, I think all of those examples are just being really present and being able to be in joy in the little moments, then you know you're getting close.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker A:So if someone only had five minutes a day for mental wellness, what would you have them to do?
Speaker B:Five minutes.
Speaker B:You know, I think, I think breath work.
Speaker B:I think doing some sort of.
Speaker B:Whether it's just slow deep breathing with awareness of the inhale and the exhale, whether it's doing more of an energetic fire breath or priming type breath that really gets your blood flow moving, but something that activates and moves stuck some energy through your entire body.
Speaker A:What advice would you give to someone who feels stuck in their personal or professional life?
Speaker A:They want to move, but they are stuck in their mind.
Speaker A:What advice would you give them?
Speaker B:I would say first of all, congratulations for acknowledging that something needs to be changed.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That's for acknowledging that something isn't working.
Speaker B:Because the minute we recognize that, it opens the doorways of possibilities to how different could it be.
Speaker B:So to know that you have already accessed the in between and that you have everything you need to withstand the void of the discovery.
Speaker B:So knowing that you have just opened that door and that the answer is waiting for you on the other side and to celebrate knowing what you don't want is so, so much information to direct you towards what you do want.
Speaker B:I think where people get stuck is they identify what they don't want and then they don't know exactly where to go next.
Speaker B:So they keep returning to what they already know doesn't serve them.
Speaker B:And to be brave enough to be without to be in the unknown, in that void in between.
Speaker B:Space is where a lot of the answers lie, right?
Speaker A:Thank you, Hannah.
Speaker A:That concludes my question and I really love how you explain explain the what is that?
Speaker A:EMDR therapy, which is really new.
Speaker A:We never talked in our show.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for the beautiful explanation.
Speaker A:And viewers, if this conversation brought you insight or comfort, please like share and follow the busy freemind podcast until next time.
Speaker A:Take care of yourself and we'll see you in the next episode.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:Thank you.
