with Irene Lyon

Whether you’re struggling with chronic fatigue, anxiety, or physical pain, Irene and Mitch share the tools you need to start your journey of nervous system healing today. By listening to your body and learning to regulate your nervous system, you can unlock the path to deep, lasting wellness.

0:03 — Introduction

Mitch: All right, everybody. Welcome to the show. I am your host, Mitch Webb. This is the Rooted Conversations podcast. So, if you’ve been listening to me, you’ve heard me and Magda, you’ve heard Seldon, you’ve heard Louise. And we’ve mentioned this lady multiple times. We’ve been singing her praises for good reason. So when it comes to nervous system education and teaching others how to heal their trauma, she’s the good. Okay. So her courses have reached over 25,000 people from all over the planet. I can personally say they changed my life and over the past year I’ve mentored with Irene and I can tell you she’s the real deal. I gave away the name without saying it. So, so please join me in welcoming Irene Lang to the show. Irene, thank you so much for being here.

Irene: Hey, Mitch. Oh, you’re so welcome. It’s good to be here. Yeah. Long time in the in the in the making here. I think I’ve been following you since for four years now. And like I said, we just got done with a year in SPT and that has been a wild ride. It has. Yes. Yeah. You’ve seen you’ve seen my full gamut pretty much. So, no. No, no secrets anymore.

Mitch: That’s right. And I’m excited to to share with the audience to to promote some of your courses to let them know that they’re coming up. Share our experience. Share what we’ve seen for other people, who it’s for, who it’s who it’s not for. And I think the best place to start is is really from the beginning. And I know you were in exercise physiology. You’re on a different career path. Yeah.

1:44 — How Irene Found Nervous System Work

Mitch: And then you said like, “Hey, this isn’t enough.” and you wanted to be able to help people more. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Like what got you into this nervous system stuff?

Irene: Yeah. So, there’s sort of two origin stories one could say. Um, yeah, you’re right. I I studied exercise physiology. We call it in Canada. Um, so everything from pathophysiology to fitness to rehab, biochemistry, you know, hooking up people to V2 max tests and all that stuff. So that was my I mean technically four years, but I think I took eight years to do that degree because I did practicum, I took some time off. So yeah, I was like kind of on a train. I thought I was going to do med like that. It’s a premed degree, but uh when I got into the hardcore sciences, I’m not I I respect math and physical chemistry, but I am not a brain when it comes to that. And I I knew I would not pass the MCAT. I just I knew it, the medical entrance exam. And it was fun. I wasn’t like attached to it. So, um, for whatever reason, I kind of went down the route of more fitness, rehab, nutrition. I was really big into sports nutrition. So, I was working, um, in Whistler, which, you know, up in BC here at a ski resort, working really good. Like, it was a great job. There’s some colleagues of mine that are still working there, you know, 25 years later. Spot, shout out to Meadow Park Sports Center. And um I I had been injured in my early 20s. I won’t go into that story cuz that’s like forever, but injured through sk ski racing, playing soccer, and had multiple surgeries, knee surgeries. To this day, I’m still, you could say, recovering from them. It’s a constant upkeep to avoid knee replacement, that kind of thing. Um and I got introduced to Feldon Christ. the Felden Christ method and that changed my life. Uh it restructured my body, my function, my pain. I was in so much we could say acute pain from these surgeries and accidents. So it was like a godsend. Loved it. Was like I got to study this. So did that in ‘ 04 to07 and then was practicing Feld in Christ while still doing fitness and I was in some really great fun fitness worlds. had an opportunity to work with the Canadian downhill ski team a little bit. I’m still connected to that world a bit through a best friend of mine. So, it was like really cool stuff. But then um I was with clients in the summer of ‘ 08, 2008 in Whistler and I started to see I don’t know if it was cuz I was becoming more mature in my practice or I was just you know people were coming into my door into my studio with severe problems. And the way it was in the Whistler Valley like everybody had a physio, everybody had a massage therapist, everybody had a chiropractor. like you you there were so many health care providers because of the sport and the injury and what got known is if the chairo physio massage and acupuncturist can’t help them send them to Irene. nice, you know, and and so I would see these people fulfilled in Christ and I definitely helped a lot of people the way I got helped from it. But this one summer I had a couple clients, there were three in particular that just weren’t getting better with Feld and

5:27 — When Clients Weren’t Getting Better

Irene: Christ work. Um, and I was stumped. I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on here. or like one guy had fallen off of a cliff um onto some rock, had a backpack on his back, but a year after he was still in pain. So, I would work with him and he he was super keen. Um but then like a week later everything would just tighten up again. So, we know what that is, right?

Mitch: His system was still in shock. Yeah.

Irene: Never processed the fall, the impact and all the things that come with that. Uh, I was also working with a woman who had been um I believe she had been uh crushed by a horse when she was a kid. You know, lots of people that ride equestrian like that those are big animals, you know, like you can get thrown off of a horse, all these things. And so she was still having back problems. One woman, horrific story, had been caught in a propane explosion in the back country. Yeah, I get shivers still thinking about that. and had to her her partner had to pull her out of the back country with thirdderee burns. So you can’t even imagine that trauma. Yeah. Um and so that’s a whole other type of trauma because of the burning to the skin, the the motor neuron, the nerves, the pain receptors. Um and so these are people that I’m like I’m not I literally was like I didn’t know what to do and I was trying to help them. So one thing led to another. I came across Peter Lavine’s work somatic experiencing and it was sort of like the same moment with me with felon Christ years before um cuz I had experienced felon Christ for the first time in 2001 and so it wasn’t until ‘ 04 that I decided to study it. So it took that long.

Mitch: Mhm. And I think that’s a good reminder for anyone working with people in the trauma healing world is like it can take people some time to come back around to go h maybe I should look maybe I should look into that. Right?

Irene: And this is this is back to it sounds you know corny but everybody’s on their own path and you have to find the things when they’re meant to land in your lap. And even then you might not be ready for it. So I studied that 04 to07 got into the SC world in ‘ 09.

Mitch: Okay.

8:00 — Discovering Somatic Experiencing

Irene: And I just went full steam ahead. So the reason I got into the original trauma training with Peter’s work was to help my clients. I had no fracking clue what I had to work with. Like none at all. Like and in some ways it one could say that that was a blessing cuz I didn’t know what I was about to unravel. And so I got into that training and within honestly Mitch within a year, not that a year is a year of training, but within like two segments of SE training, um, so like within eight days of training, which is two segments, I started applying immediately what I was learning with my Felden Christ clients.

Mitch: Oh, that’s interesting. I only stopped you right there. So, so much of this resonates with me. your your story, you know, I feel like with me, you know, it’s pain to purpose and so you you were injured. You’ve been skiing your butt off and getting after in the back country and paragliding, dying in the, you know, like plummeting to my death from 10,000 feet, [ __ ] like that. Oh yeah. And when you when you when you run that hard, you’re you’re bound to bang the body up. And and so it sounds like everybody in in the Whistler area is doing that. They’ve got their chiropractor, they got the physio, they got their osteio, they got their massage person. I’ve got all those. I I totally understand that. And you start and so you get into felon Christ and you’re working with the body. I I totally understand what you mean about having injuries and it unwinding like I’ve there is no stretching method or recovery modality that you can do that can un unwind the fascia and the muscle like Felen Christ does. Yeah. And so you started working with the clients. You’re applying that. And it sounds like everybody in the village if they couldn’t get help they came to Irene. That makes a lot of sense. Yep. What’s interesting to me is that you had these clients that you couldn’t help. They’re already outliers. And then you go into and you find SC, you know, you said 2001 is when you first got exposed to felon Christ. 2004 is when you’re studying it. 2008 is clients. You’re helping them. 2009 SC.

10:34 — Combining Methods in Practice

Mitch: So here’s my question. Did you is that when you started taking the nervous system and the trauma world and applying that through the felt in Christ lens like combining the two?

Irene: No, I didn’t. No, I would say that at that point in ’09, if that’s what you’re asking. Yeah. So, I’m still in Whistler. I’m still working at the gym. Uh still doing Feldon Christ classes or classes at the gym, workshops, and private practice. So I’m doing all those things and I started my SE training. Uh I would I was integrating the SE concepts and principles but I wasn’t necessarily doing full-based somatic trauma work until one specific client came in who had frozen shoulder. I actually wrote about her um on a long form blog post called Grace. So if someone just looks up the not her real name, Grace and my name, you’ll find it. She was the p first person that I applied one could say principles to to her situation. However, it took about a year to get to that point because her system was in so much fear and so much terror. And I was just kind of, you know, waiting through the waters trying to figure out. So I was still doing Felen Christ with her. Mhm. But I was going so slow.

Mitch: Yeah.

Irene: Like the first session I had with her, I still remember she went to lay down on my Felen Christ table and the first observation was she just held her breath. And so what did we do for like I don’t know two three sessions we worked on her moving her body from vertical to horizontal and not holding her breath.

Mitch: I’m doing that now with I’ve realized I hold my pelvic floor and everything that I do. So I’m squeezing everything in and I’m learning oh I can move without doing that. So I totally get what you’re talking about.

Irene: So that’s how we started working together. And then you know I would go to another SE segment of four days. I’d learn another little bit of something and then I’d apply it. And so, you know, this is where um this is a whole other conversation, but there are a lot of people learning um and I’m generalizing here by the way, SE, and they don’t have people to work with immediately because they’re not in some form of practice. Mhm. And from my experience, and you’ve probably seen this in your SPT training, unless you apply immediately, the education and the knowledge just fizzles. Yeah. You you have to start practicing, right? It’s not enough to just learn the theory and go do a little practice session in your pods and then go and and then expect that you get it. You don’t get it until you apply it. So, I was in a really cool position and that I was already working with people 5 days a week. Um, and I understood the physiology because of my training in exercise science. Mhm. So there was so much of a base that I had that I was I I felt confident working with people cuz I had been working with people since 1997 in the fitness world in university. Um, and then of course there’s my background working in an animal hospital working with dogs and cats. So that that also was there. So there’s like all these little pieces that were kind of contributing to my ability to see these patterns. Um but yeah, I mean the Whistler was I had to move. We had to Seth and I had to move because I couldn’t I could not start a practice there with the SE model because people were just so not interested um in working on their traumas.

Mitch: I can I can totally understand that. I mean I see that now. But it it’s like once you same thing with me I’ve been helping people and I really understood that everything was individual. Everybody’s different. I had my way of doing things that was more you know here do my sequential state of things. Let me show you how to how I did it. And then when you when you learn this nervous system stuff you’re like oh and that’s one of the first things I learned from you is I got to meet the moment. And now once I look once I’ve learned the nervous system and learned to listen to my body to my intuition now that informs everything that I do. So I just see everything else as a tool and the opportunity presents itself when you’re really with that patient holding that space that they have everything that they need and not contributing to their old patterns of

Irene: let’s just force you right through this thing. Mhm. And I just realized I didn’t fully answer your question um about the Feldon Christ. At least I don’t think I did because the part that’s hard to understand and I’m still trying to figure out how to communicate this.

15:40 — How the Neurosensory Exercises Were Developed

Irene: The course that I’ve created or the exercises I’ve created, let’s talk just that. The neurosensory exercises, those have only been possible because of my felon Christ training.

Mitch: I agree. Yeah, I’ll get that.

Irene: So even though um the principles of Peter’s work, Kathy Kane’s work, Steven Trell’s work because if we look at say SPSM, smart body, smart mind as a curriculum, it has those it actually has four methodologies in one. But it was my uh it was my um apprenticeship knowing how to teach movement at the Feldon Chrysian level. detailed movement, motor, sensory, motor details, small I mean you know such small movements but also big movements right of the spine and pelvis developmental movements you know reflex movements um understanding the muscles and the whole organism. It was that training and of course teaching hundreds and hundreds of people over many many years that that allowed me to take the theory from Peter, Kathy and Steve’s work and teach a lesson that was a essentially just pulled out of the sky or out of my system. So I was kind of computing the theory of their genius along with the Feldon Chrysian. I look at it like an equation, like an algorithm, like that way. And I’m putting them together like a puzzle. And so that that’s kind of the part that I think was the magic or is the magic in how the in how the neurosensory exercises are taught. And it’s so hard, Mitch, to convey to someone that is this isn’t just a guided meditation, right? And yeah, you’re doing this small stupid movement with your pelvis and head, but it’s all the other things I’m having you pay attention to that make the difference. And until a person experiences it, it’s hard. And then the other thing that’s difficult, you know, cuz I follow comments that come through our YouTube channel from time to time and and I get it. Some people are like, I did Irene’s course and it was stupid. Nothing happened. It was too basic. But then you have another person who like heals fibromyalgia from the same course. And so it’s like, well, what’s going on there? And I think this is where it becomes a challenge. Not a problem, but it’s a challenge. Someone is so so functionally frozen and guarded in how they sense their their internal organs, their spine, their head, their pelvis, their thoughts are like in a prison. their system is like in a cage, you know, if they’re so armored in their protection because of their trauma and they’re there because they want to heal trauma and then they’re trying to do this tiny little movement method that I’m teaching. For many, it’s going to be too subtle to get into that.

18:56 — Why the Work Can Feel Subtle

Irene: But the thing is, and you know this, it’s like if someone is morbidly obese and they have to lose 250 pounds, they’re going to walk at, let’s say, every day for 30 minutes, you’re not going to see a lot of change. Mhm. Because there’s so much excess there that we have to burn through. And we know this. And so it’s kind of it’s like that’s like a parallel to working with the nervous system that has been so guarded, so functionally frozen. so maybe emotionally tormented from childhood that yeah, you’re going to do maybe one of my lessons or even maybe 20 of them and be like, “Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening.” And that’s where I say, “God, I get it.” And you got to just keep going. Not in a way that’s like, you know, you know, elbow grease going, but you’re maybe going to have to shift things a little bit. And then this is of course where you have to ask for support and help and understand that this is actually kind of normal for some of us. So it’s like it’s a there’s no oneizefits-all. There’s no cookie cutter approach as we know. But there are some basic principles that hold true from what I’ve seen to all humans. And that is we don’t want to be stuck in disregulation. The question is what is it going to take to get under that dysregulation?

20:22 — Orienting, Connection, and Attunement

Irene: And I mean, I remember the first time someone guided me through orienting, Mitch. I thought they were an idiot. I still remember where I was sitting. I was in a little room at a Chinese medicine school in Victoria, British Columbia. I was visiting the SE training to see if I wanted to do the SE training. And here’s Irene, you know, in her I don’t know how old I was, like late 20s, um, functionally frozen, very physically capable and fit and smart. And this therapist is just getting me to look around the room. And you’re you’re used to skiing down mountains 100 miles an hour. You’re like, “What is this?” And there’s nothing to look at because it’s literally a treatment room in this in this um you know school of acupuncture. So I don’t even remember if there was any windows in this room. And I don’t want to say this was this person’s fault, but it also shows that SE isn’t like let’s just orient. And that that’s the other part. It’s about connection. It’s about attunement. It’s about asking the right questions at the right time. But the funny thing is that even though I thought this was stupid, something still I still knew, well, I want to learn this because I want to help my clients.

Mitch: I didn’t understand the utility of that for me. So, let’s pause right there. Yes.

21:49 — Bringing the Methodologies Together

Mitch: So, I’m just going to summarize a little bit and and this is why I I decided to to work with you, why your work resonated with me is because you talk about bringing these four methodologies together. So, I’m new to this world. I’m real. I read The Body Keeps the Score. I’m realizing there’s stuff in my system. A local men’s group, one of the guys pulled me inside, said, “You’ve got trauma.” I’m like, “What?” You know, and and I was always just like you wanting to help as much as I could. And I’m doing some of the similar things. It’s nutrition. It’s exercise. And and what I saw is I started learning who Peter is, who Kathy is, what polyagel theory is. Felt in Christ. I was not aware of until I met you. But I saw that you pulled them all together and I’m like, “Okay, well the thing that upsets me is like in Whistler, you’ve got someone who’s banged up. They’re working on themselves. They’ve got all these people. They’re not talking to each other. Um but they do need all of those things probably, right?” Yeah.

Irene: And so when we have an an illness or something’s wrong with us, let’s say we’re unhealthy, um everybody’s got an answer for you. Yeah, everybody wants to sell you something and everybody really everybody it’s like if you’re a a hammer, everything’s a nail, right? And this is going to fix it. This next diet, this next no doubt, whatever it is. And I love that you you bring all that together because it it’s not one thing, it’s all the things. And it’s you get the education, you get the connection to your body, you’re getting Q&A that you can ask, you’re getting a community and this stuff will start to come up and it’s your job to kind of use this course as a alakart and learn intuition, learn to follow your impulse and then it’s like it just kind of starts opening up for you.

23:48 — Mitch’s Experience With the Work

Mitch: Yeah. If you try to use, you know, speaking of slowing down, if you try to use the way that we got here, that’s what got me to the dance. The thing that made me never stop, never quit when I had anxiety and gut issues and can’t sleep and you know, all these things. My my never stop, get up when you get knocked down, push through anything mentality saved my life. and it it got me to find this course and this information, but damn, when you start to unpack this stuff. Um, it’s it’s what got you here is not going to get you to the next thing. And I think it’s really interesting, too, that the first time you did orienting, it was boring for me. The f I uh this is how it happened to me. I I get the 21-day course. Yep. I like I do anything, I run head first into it. We’re on a plane flight to Florida. It’s two hours. I did three days of education. It was learning. It was like it was the biology of stress, you know, little small pieces of that. Not quite as extensive as it is in smart body, smart mind. And I couldn’t stop because I’m like, “Oh man, this is me. This is me. This is me.” Um, all of this trauma and all this stuff was out of my awareness. like I’d be walking down the road sobbing, not knowing why because it hit my system. And so I land and so Irene says, “I did orienting and I didn’t feel anything.” Well, I land after reading three chapters and I can’t sleep for two or three days. Now, I think maybe a more less conditioned to push through person would say, “Man, this is too much. This isn’t right.” Same thing with you. This isn’t right. This isn’t for me. But I was like, just like you, oh no, there’s something here and I have to keep doing this. Like I’ve never I’ve done all the, you know, limbic stuff, uh, Jonas Spenza stuff, you name it. Nothing ever hit my system like this. And so kind of the next thing that kind of goes into is just how my system blew up. That’s when I got to learn after doing three days in a row that I need to slow down. I need to tie trade. I believe you have a story that really I think informed the way SPSM is set up and the pace and the intention. Can you talk about that a little bit?

26:17 — Functional Freeze and the Need to Slow Down

Irene: Yeah, I I I how do I say this? Um my so when I was in my SE training uh it was um towards the the more advanced levels which by the way even the advanced levels I was not nuanced in my ability to sense. I was again athletic and very skilled kinesesthetically, but I didn’t know how much functional freeze I was in. And people confuse functional freeze with like just being this people pleaser and and that I wasn’t that person. I’m like one of the most selfish people I know. Like I’m very good at boundaries and these sorts of things. So functional freeze is a it could be many things. So, you know, I had good relationships and all these things like I didn’t have brain fog. I’ve never had brain fog. Like, so I had a very different kind of way of being. And so, in my later SE modules and trainings, uh that’s when the the the childhood stuff started to to pop through. And I won’t go into the full story cuz it takes a a while to share, but that was the that was one could say where the I got cracked open and I was like, “Oh, fuck.”

Mitch: Yeah, I have a lot that I have stored and I had no idea. And then I went and did some work with my surgeries and anesthesias in a master class that brought more stuff up and it was just too much. It was like in a matter of maybe Mitch, I’m totally guessing, but it I’m actually being generous, maybe 4 months, but it was probably actually more like 3 weeks when I think about the fact that I was in California with my car. That’s the only reason I remember these things is I remember the time that all this started happening was one of the times that I drove down to California and I literally like started in SoCal and then the last place I ended up that I remember everything starting to kind of unfold was in Oregon. So yeah, that’s a you had a burning desire to learn. Is that correct?

28:38 — Irene’s Story and the Creation of SPSM

Irene: I was unsatiable. And so this is the issue is because of similar to you, I wanted to learn and I’ve always been like that for some reason even though I didn’t do well in school. Um I just wanted to learn. So my system blows up. The way that it blowed up blew up at that time was skin rashes. I just exploded with what looked like severe burns. People would have said it was eczema, but when you look at the photos, it was not eczema. It was way more than that. And what we know now is I was expelling all these chemicals that I had been exposed to in utero as an infant and throughout my uh childhood and teenagehood years working and living in an animal hospital. That’s a whole other story. So um at the time I just thought, “Oh, I just have to like treat this with cortisone and all these things.” But of course, I also knew I shouldn’t cuz I had before and that wasn’t good. Chances are some of what was coming out was topical steroid withdrawal, which is a real thing. It’s nasty. Um the images that a person would find online of people going through that are are even beyond what I went through. So that starts unfolding and that put me into about two years of one could say hell. like it was terrible. I really couldn’t function. So, that happened. I got a ton of help. That’s when I met Seth. Everything shifted and then my system, it’s almost like I hit a rock bottom and then I had to rebuild. Mhm. But in the process of rebuilding my body from about 2012 to to literally today, all of the shock traumas from my sporting career and being an athlete have been coming out. Mhm. in the form of chronic pain, um, numbness, uh, I mean, in this moment, I’m dealing with something in my shoulder still from a a skating accident on a lake that left me unable to open my mouth for weeks. Wow. It was so bad. Like, the tension was so bad. And so these things because I was so packed up and frozen in my 20s um just the storage of these things. And so my here’s the thing, my story is quite unique in that not only did I have chemical trauma uh and I had this really strange environment growing up, I was an athlete and I had so many injuries. And we know like I’ve worked with like professional gymnasts for example. Holy cow. Like the amount of stored shock trauma that those athletes have where you’re constantly falling and getting back up and you’re ne you never are allowed to cry. You’re never allowed to shake anything out. Um I don’t know the stats, but I I know the few people I’ve worked with, they have chronic illness in their 50s, right? Um, so that’s a whole other story. So to go back to your question about titration and how I created SPSM, I created it as vast as I could so that it wouldn’t be a five-year course because as we know, some people need years to go through the the content.

Mitch: Yeah.

Irene: You know, some of your peers will say, “It took me five times to go through the whole curriculum.” Um, and some people will say, I did the whole curriculum as you laid it out and it was too much. So, even if we say to people, go slow, take your time, our performance ways of being brought up, if I got to be the good student and got every get everything done and get all my homework in and I got to get straight A’s, that can also influence how a person goes through the program. But I’ve laid it out such that there’s, you know, four lessons a week. Not all of them are practice. Some of them are small. Some of them are theory. But we also say this is the suggested way to go through it. But if you have to do this one lesson five times over the period of a month, do it.

Mitch: Yeah.

33:04 — Why Education and Practice Matter

Irene: So if I go back to what happened with my system, and again this is so hard for people to grasp. Nowhere in the SE training are students taught how to learn to be with their sensations or to it’s assumed that you know how to do that. And again, it’s not to [ __ ] on them. It’s just it it wasn’t developed in that way. It was about the methods, the theory, the protocols, um safety of course, you know, there’s a lot of assistance to the ratio of students. Like all that is great trying to set this nice container, but you don’t know where anyone is at in terms of what they’re able to take in. And do they? Yeah. So, so go if I go back if I backstep, I wanted to create something that was born out of seeing my clients. So, fast forward to 201 I don’t know 12, 13ish. I was pretty much fully doing what we would call SE and somatic touch work, working with early trauma. And what was happening was I was spending way too much time, Mitch, explaining basics to my clients. And I’m, you know, working out of Vancouver, British Columbia. I’m not charging a small fee to see people hourly cuz rent, you know, and so a person can’t pay me $200 an hour for me to sit there with a piece of paper showing them graphs and, you know, it like this is not coste effective. It’s not time efficient. So, I started doing workshops in my office where I would teach the biology of stress.

Mitch: Mhm.

Irene: Um, the basics and then I would record audio. I mean, it’s a godsend that my husband is a sound engineer and a musician cuz he knew how to, you know, do audio and fix it up. And so, I would record what was like a filled in Christ lesson, but it wasn’t. It was just a tracking sensation. Body environment, the weight of the body orienting that all the things that are now the neurosensory exercises that you know so well, you and your peers know so well. And at the time I like put them on CDs and I gave them to my clients and that was their homework. And what was very clear to me is those who did that homework and came to a workshop to learn the theory did a little better.

Mitch: Yeah.

Irene: Like and it also showed me that they were really interested.

35:48 — Who Smart Body, Smart Mind Is For

Mitch: I think so I think that goes into our our next question of like who it’s for. But yeah, it’s it’s like I want to kind of summarize that again too. It’s I think it’s so important. It’s so interesting how the way you came to this and your experience, how it shaped everything because if you look around now uh at healing modalities, it’s it’s Amazon Prime, right? It’s it’s breath work. It’s shaking. It’s Yeah. Um starving yourself, punishing workouts. And the the guys and gals that I work with, they’ve they’ve u they’re special forces guys. They’re professional athletes. They’re, you know, single moms that are trying to do three jobs and be fit and raise the kids and do the the the CEO work. And you know, they’re so used to overriding, pushing through, doing whatever it takes. They’re they’ve learned all the bio hacks. They’ve been maybe they’ve learned the nutrition, but it’s this it’s this force. And um when we get to this work, it’s just so different. We really got to slow down. And and that can be that can be so hard for people. And I love when I’m working with clients, I want them to go to Smart Body, Smart Mind for the same thing you’re talking about. It’s the education. They have to It’s going to save them time. It’s going to save them money. They they learn a language. And in the meantime, I can check off the boxes of the other foundational stuff that we know has to happen. You know, there’s got to be good nutrition. There’s got to be good sleep. There’s got to be good water and connection to the earth and sunlight. And so, it’s a whole bunch of stuff to do. And and like you said, to to spend $200 an hour with me to hold your hand and educate you. I think it’d be a whole lot better if you’re doing Smart Body, Smart Mind, because it’s all there. And then get on the phone with me and start to learn. Most of my clients are coming to me from smart body, smart mind going, I’ve got this massive education. They really understand and now we got to take the journey from here into here. And and yeah, it’s just it’s saving a lot of time by by doing that. Absolutely. And I so I was thinking about this the other day because I was watching a piece of video that my editor created where we were taking lots of different stories from your peers in SPSM for a nice little video, you know, marketing montage thing. And I the thing that really stood out because people will say, well, who’s your ideal client? You know that, right?

38:31 — The Common Thread Among Successful Students

Irene: Yeah. And I think it can be confusing because people might go and be like, I don’t understand it. There’s people who their sleep is improving, their lupus is improving, autoimmune, fibromyalgia, anxiety, they’re getting off of their meds, uh their relationships are better, they’re not phobic of various things. Their OCD is improving, their ADHD is improving. How can one thing do all these things, right? And so the one reason is of course we’re working with the nervous system at the peripheral level with movement and internal awareness and the environment and the education. But the one thing that was super clear, all the people had hit rock bottom. I hate to say it, but that’s true. And they all had bingewashed my YouTube channel to some degree. Mhm. or they had watched a podcast that I was on and then they found the next podcast. And so there’s two things there’s two things to that equation. It’s uh rock bottom desperation, but also this rapid desire to learn and understand their body. Mhm. I’m pretty certain, Mitch, and I’m putting this out there, but I’m pretty certain the reason this works for people is when they have those two things. Because if you are not interested in learning about your body, this isn’t going to work. And the reason why is it’s not I’m not as you know, you know, SPSM isn’t giving you a sheet of when you have this sensation, do this. When you have this emotion, do that. Right? when you can’t sleep, do this movement or do this sound. The person that wants that, I will say there’s no shame in that because possibly your upbringing of learning about the world has been very rigid. And that again, that’s fine. We can change that. But those that have that curiositybased, I want to know more. I want to know more and I want to understand so I can to use that that um that what is it proverb or whatever like you got to learn how to fish not just give the fish you’ve got to learn how to fish so essentially by learning more and more and getting more interested in the language of your nervous system as you’ve said as you just said you become your own medicine this tagline because you’re you’re you’re listening to what actually your body needs. But it can take some time to get to that. But you need to have this just desire to keep going. So the people oddly that were the go-getters and the type A do quite well when they can shift that gear into their healing. But then you have to then really step it back. It’s a different gear that you have to find.

Mitch: Yeah, exactly. And so that that literally was just the last week that kind of came to me. I’m like, this is

Irene: this is the thing. These are the things that these people have in common. It’s not that they have fibromyalgia or depression or anxiety. Yes, that’s true. But the actual key theme that is universal across the biggest stories of success is this dog godness of just like I have to figure this out. Um, it’s the unwillingness to accept anything less than what you know you’re what’s cap what you’re capable of and to have got your ass kicked for so long that you’re kind of willing to do anything.

Mitch: Yeah, that’s that’ll get you there. And then you got to see that and grieve that. Like I I see a lot of my guys and girls, they’re so upset that they’ve pushed so hard for so long and shut down, whether it was in war, after an accident, and they are shaming themselves so much for being burned out, but they’re willing to do anything. It’s like and they they really want to learn. Is is it my gut? Is it my supplements?

Irene: Is it this thing that I’m doing? It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. It’s much bigger than that. Yeah.

Mitch: It’s it’s your nervous system and it’s fried because of this. But that’s what the education can do for me. Like I was I kind of hinted at this earlier when I got in. I didn’t know what trauma was. And I remember

Irene: you

Mitch: Yeah. You have so many videos and it just kept pulling me in. Like I I remember walking around the neighborhood and just sobbing. You know, I wasn’t sleeping and um it was like, “Hey, if you haven’t slept, check out this video.” And it talked about cry it out. And I’m like, I I don’t even know what that is. But for some reason when you say that in smart body when you introduce these new smart body smart mind you introduce these new topics without having any understanding of what that is and just having the desire to get better. The system is like I mean it’s grasping at it knows and that’s where you start to listen to your body and you get to kind of follow that. When you start following the impulse instead of doing what this person or that person or this person says, I get I get chills all over my body. It’s like that’s what we we’ve been waiting for you to pay attention and respond to me and quit responding uh relying on external resource and that’s why it’s so beautiful because it gives you layups. Like you don’t have to search or or stride or force anymore. You kind of just got to show up.

44:18 — Learning to Listen Instead of Following a Formula

Irene: You do. You have to show up and you have to listen. You know, there was once a student, an SPSM student, um had created her own notes from going through the course. Um and I don’t know the history of this person, but and I saw it. They they had this beautiful I don’t it might have even been a spreadsheet of like when this happens I go to this lesson in this lab and when I go to this this and I and and some of my team was like oh this is great you know people are always asking for this and I was like absolutely not this is for that person and that’s wonderful no because what’ll happen is if I give this to the the wider community of SPS BSM, they’ll then go to that like it’s a holy grail and follow it as opposed to not listening to listening to their system like, “Oh, I’m feeling a little tight. For some reason, I keep having this desire to go to the joints lesson.

Mitch: Yeah.

Irene: Even though when there’s tightness in the chest, one might think, “Oh, I should go to the mediainum or I should do some vu or some ah or maybe some pel spinal movement, but maybe they’re like, I need to go to the joint lesson. and I need to go to the joint. Well, I’m just going to go and do it. And then they find out that this tightness has nothing to do with this area, but maybe it’s from an injury they had to their ankle joint or something like that. And so that’s that this is the part that if one can get this, that’s the beauty because the curriculum, we know it works.

Mitch: We know it works because we’ve seen it through obviously anecdotal evidence through all your peers, yourself, you know, your good friends now. But we have put it through one study and we saw positive results like at a university research level, which is

Irene: cool. Um, but a person needs to find that for themselves. And I’ve had a few folks say, you know, because we always get feedback, you know, we ask for feedback and people are like, can you make this lesson shorter? Can you make this diaphragm lesson five small lessons instead of one 50inute lesson? I’m like no because you have to learn how to go into something and know when to stop. That’s the tough part. I I have the red, yellow, and green light. I know. But if I give if only I give our these five minute bite-size AI, you know, lessons where it’s just perfect little cookie cutter, you know, cheeseburgers, you know, as opposed to this this this here’s a bunch of things to work with, make your own cheeseburger. I don’t know why that came to my mind, but it’s like you then learn how to do it for yourself. Mhm. And as as someone who wants people to be better, I can tell you, Mitch, there’s this part of me that’s like, h, just make it easier, make it simpler. And it’s like, no, the curriculum has proven that it works.

47:23 — Becoming Your Own Medicine

Mitch: Yeah. I I experienced that myself so many times. I would come to you and be like, Irene, help me with this thing. And it was frustrating in the beginning because you were like, you’re going to figure it out. It’s like we’re holding the intention that you have everything that you need. And it and it’s not that we’re not helping each other. You wouldn’t help me, but it’s like you aren’t taking that power away by giving me the answer, maybe guiding me towards something, helping me process. But when we have that own organic knowledge that comes up and and and it shifts something that maybe has has been stuck for a long time and you did that, it wasn’t like, “Hey, Irene healed me. My therapist healed me.” like damn I am the medicine and when you can trust that that swifts the whole belief system and the opportunities start coming. It’s almost kind of like the post you were saying the other day about we can get real frustrated with the the slowness of this work and when we can start trusting our system. For me, it’s seeing enough evidence that I’ve done this enough time that I put the reps in and I’ve proved it to myself that now it starts to go quicker.

Irene: It’s like children raising children. You know, this is the part that again because humans raise their children all differently, very different than animals in the wild. I use this analogy often. You know, the bears in Montana are raising their cubs just like the bears in my backyard here. There is no difference at all.

Mitch: I can say that except for yes, there might be different berries here, right?

Irene: But it’s the same thing. humans not so much because of culture, religion, practices, trauma, that kind of stuff. And so the the humans that I’ve met who have been given space to explore, but also boundaries and healthy shame, which is a whole other topic. Mhm. Come out pretty good. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, but they know that that they’re own person and they can make choices and they got to work at something a little hard and and figure things out and they were given that space to explore, but they were still given safety. They weren’t given reckless, you know, environments to grow up in. Um, we’re trying to create that. So like if someone comes into SPS, someone is there and they have had a shitty childhood and they’ve got trauma and an illness and all these things, it is not enough to say to that person, you have everything you need. You’ll figure it out cuz the body knows to heal that.

50:10 — Why Support and Practice Still Matter

Irene: That’s another I’ve actually seen that Mitch in the worlds of the trauma. I don’t even know if it’s trauma. Maybe it’s the new spiritual thing. It’s like stop all the biohacks, stop all the trauma healing, stop all the somatic release. You have it all in you. Just stop. It’s like actually no, that’s not going to work. Right. Like just like people saying nature heals. It’s like well my husband lived in nature for [ __ ] 5 years and he healed nothing. Yeah. At that at that biological level. He healed a lot of his spiritual elements and mine. But being in pristine wilderness for Seth in a hot springs resort eating nothing but organic food did not heal his gut. It did not heal his complex PTSD. did not heal his addictions. So that’s the other thing is we need to still give people something but then they need to take it and that’s the part that gets missed in so many other trauma healing spaces is you either just I’m going to go I’m going to get healed at this retreat going to be tapped on the head and everything’s going to be great. Hallelujah. It’s like okay I believe in miracles. I do to some degree, but what happens after that? Yeah. Know and so that is again the curriculum is really structured as good as it can get. I think you know maybe there’s some spelling mistakes in the copy but we’ll that I think most people have found those for us cuz trust me people tell me when there’s spelling mistakes but um but you know the curriculum is there we know it works but a person has to work with it in their own capacity and ask questions. You know this is the other thing we have people there to help answer questions and there’s been tons of questions asked and answered. Um, so again, back to what I said, like it seems like people have to hit rock bottom. If someone is listening to this and they haven’t hit rock bottom, then I say this, do this now. Mhm. Because we all have some form of stored trauma. There’s no shame in that. We have some form of conditioning. This is just life. Um, and better to work on it now if someone has that urge and impulse than to wait until the autoimmune system hits, the cancer hits, the debilitating anxiety, insomnia hits or you know if you are there then this is the time to work on that. You know that it can be worked on and then of course you need that desire to be a student essentially.

52:48 — Who the Course Is For

Mitch: Amen. Yeah. I mean, you I love the the the becoming your own medicine really spoke to me and it really is, especially those of us that didn’t get the foundational education stuff when we were kids and and we’ve learned to override and force and and uh you know, please other people and abandon oursel in the process. Well, this course gives you the education. It lets you understand how the nervous system works. lets you under it really normalizes a lot of the symptoms and responses that we’re having from our body. I mean, I feel like that’s what I do with most of my clients like, “Oh, yeah, what you’re going through is normal as you’re rewiring your your nervous system and your brain for safety and and that’s only step one.” Um, but but yeah, if you’ve hit rock bottom, if you’re if you’re that person that’s that’s dealt with symptoms and phobias and the the symptoms that shift around and and never really explainable the isms, um, this course is for you. And, uh, it it changed my life. It changes the clients that I work with, their life. I love holding people’s hand through that. Uh, it’s it’s it’s the structure and and attunement that I wish I had earlier in life. and so thankful for this work and I know that uh smart body smart mind is coming up. Can you tell us when’s registration, when’s the course start? Give us the dets on that.

54:13 — How Smart Body, Smart Mind Works

Irene: Yeah, it’s fairly simple. It it we try to run it twice a year and so um September 16th to the 23rd I believe registration is open to new members. Um and then we start the following like Sunday. So, the way the the curriculum works is while we’re together, like I I like to call it it’s like a semester at university. Um the the modules, we call them labs are dropped every week. It’s all on a password protected site. So, each week new lessons are released each, not every week, but um there’s a training call with me. Uh Seth and colleagues do Q&As’s. Um there’s moderation where you can ask a question like on the site and our team answers them. Um, and then the other thing that a lot of times people get confused with is when you join and of course if you’re in good standing and you you you know fulfill your investment with us because it does cost um you get back you go back in and you get to do it again and again and so all the material you’re sort of in some ways purchasing investing in the curriculum. Um, and then you go back and work with it as you wish in your time frame. I would say that like some people like you can go too fast, Mitch, but you can also go too slow. And you got to find that balance. Um because sometimes people will get to say the area that sometimes people get a little squirly with is when they get into the diaphragm lab five because that’s when the real juice starts to unpack and sometimes there’s this oh I think I’m going to have to slow down cuz I’m starting to feel too much and that might be true for some it might be that that means that you should actually go a little bit more. Yeah. But that also determine is dependent on what is that person’s support system. Yeah. Right. So if someone knows that they have to work two jobs, keep their kids going, they’re a single parent, you might not want to unpack so much in one go. Mhm. And so everybody has a different circumstance. And so depending on your time to rest and repair and recover, your speed of going through the program is going to be different than someone who doesn’t have kids, who isn’t needing to, you know, work three jobs, that kind of thing. So I also take into account life. And so because of that, it’s like, yeah, you can start it, maybe you get through two of the labs in the first three months. Mhm. That’s fine. That’s better than most people in general that they get to and then next time we come back in you can do it again but a person can continue to do the work even we’re not in live session because they have access to the site. Um that’s kind of the basics. I mean all the information is there. There’s like a long FAQ list about can this work for this D. I mean, the general answer is when someone asks, “Can this work for this ailment?” The usual answer is yes.

Mitch: Agreed.

57:37 — What Students Can Expect

Irene: Uh, you know, if you’re trying to grow a leg back, probably not. I mean, that seems cheeky, but you know, there’s certain things like we can’t say that we’re going to cure genetic things and that. However, people have gone through with things that they thought were genetic and turned out that they were actually a result of stored up trauma, right? So, everyone’s a little different. Um, but we’ve seen the whole gamut. We’ve seen people like actually one of your peers, uh, such a good story. I actually did an interview with her a year ago, Bernardet is her name, and she just sent me an email last week. She got her bachelor’s of education at like age 58. And the reason she’s doing this now is cuz her trauma was so severe. She could not concentrate in university in her 20s. Like she she couldn’t she could not hold down even a job, school, but she still had this fire in her belly to like be she wants to be an elementary school teacher. That’s awesome. and and I was like this is awesome you know so here’s someone who she came into the work because of physical ailment right that changed severely drastically for the better but then she was able to pursue a career when most people were trying to think about retirement right

59:06 — What Changed for Mitch

Mitch: that very little similar to to me as well I mean um I took two years off I don’t have kids Uh, I was running my own coaching business.

Irene: Yeah.

Mitch: Uh, everything started kind of popping off when I got into this work and doing one-on-one work. Um, it took me 12, it took me six months to go through 21day. It took me a year to go through Smart Body, Smart Mind. Something shifted. I was able to eat food again and exercise right away. Probably within the first one to three months. A lot of my clients are dealing with burnout and shutdown and gut issues. So some some things shift quickly, other things um take time and that’s what the course is always being updated with new information um all the Q&As’s and um the the the teaching that the education that you did the office hour and thinking of the crane cause um you’ve got live community there to ask questions