195-SYNCPodcast_JennSchaefer

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today, I’m joined by my friend, Jennifer Schaefer. This is not really her first time on the show. Actually, we did an interview with my mastermind members, uh, my life coach, Amy Snow, Greg Ivey, and Jennifer Schaefer were all on my I’ll make sure I link that up in the show notes where we talked about just the power of masterminding, but I think that’s how Jen and I got to know each other was really just through this network marketing company that we were originally both part of from there.

[00:01:26] Jenny Swisher: It moved into masterminding together. And, eventually she wound up teaching yoga at my, my yoga studio back in the day. So we’ve just kind of remained connected and remained friends over the years. And recently in the last few years, she’s really starting to develop an amazing brand around helping people emotionally process and this idea of trauma, which we actually haven’t had on the show for quite some time, we did a series of episodes on, on trauma, uh, back in the day.

[00:01:53] Jenny Swisher: And it’s exciting to have this topic resurfaced because to be honest with you. The more I dig into my own personal journey, the more I’m realizing the importance of it. So I think, you know, I’ll share a little bit of pieces of my story along the way, but I’m so excited to have Jen here. We’re going to be talking about all kinds of things today.

[00:02:10] Jenny Swisher: We’re going to be talking about emotional memory. We’re going to talk about generational healing. Like this is, this is such good stuff, my friends. And if you’re listening and you’re thinking, ah. I don’t know if this is for me. I trust me. It’s for you. It’s for everyone. So, all right, Jen, well, welcome to the show.

[00:02:25] Jenny Swisher: I would love for you to just sort of kick us off by telling us more about who you are, what you do and how you got to doing what you’re doing.

[00:02:31] Jenn Schaefer: Oh, thanks, Jenny. It is really great to be back and, and sharing with your, your community. And I just want to say thank you so much because I listened to your podcast and it is so helpful, especially to all of us women who, you know, have.

[00:02:46] Jenn Schaefer: Have the cycle and, you know, to sync up with it, which brought me to thinking about how, hormones and anxiety kind of link up. So, I will just share like back in the day, this was probably 10 or 12 years ago. I. I was experiencing anxiety and panic attacks and all that. And I know that that’s something that you’ve also experienced, um, went to the doctor and the doctor just said, Hey, you know what, I’m going to give you some medicine.

[00:03:11] Jenn Schaefer: And I, I was like, well, you know, at that time it made a lot of sense, but then I got on the meds and I was like, Oh, now wait a second. I don’t think I want to stay on these forever. There must be another way. And so I found my way into life coaching and learning a technique called regenerating images and memory, which we can collaborate with our emotional operating system and release anxiety.

[00:03:35] Jenn Schaefer: And I’ve also found that this is a technique that works really well with trauma. Yeah. Yeah, too. All sorts of things

[00:03:45] Jenny Swisher: well, one thing that I want to say just as we kick this off, right, is I was just telling Jen before we recorded that, um, when I launched this podcast, it’s like one of those things where I was not confident launching it.

[00:03:55] Jenny Swisher: I was like, who’s going to want to listen to me? I don’t have a lot to say. Like, you know, how am I going to find people to come on the show? Like I had all these concerns and. Truly, if I had to say the one thing that has changed me the most in the last two years, it’s been this podcast. It’s been because of people like Jen, people like other trauma informed therapists and, and experts and doctors and functional wellness experts that I’ve been able to interview in this capacity that have, has led me to some aha moments.

[00:04:22] Jenny Swisher: And I was telling Jen that the biggest transformation I’ve seen in myself since launching the podcast has been in this area of understanding The mind and the emotions. I know a lot of my listeners are people who are what I call female fitness enthusiasts. Right? Like we’re maybe home workout people or maybe we’re gym goers, but we embrace the idea that we can become better in our fitness and in our physical health.

[00:04:47] Jenny Swisher: And so we’re doing, a lot of us are doing all the things, we’re eating healthy, we’re avoiding inflammatory foods, we are exercising every day, we are, you know, some of us are even journaling and we’re focusing on gratitude and all these things that we learn about sort of that are pivotal for helping us live our best life, right?

[00:05:04] Jenny Swisher: But what I’ve really come to learn here in the last couple of years is all of that is very surface level. And if we can go deeper, if we can go deeper to the experiences that we’ve had. The emotions that we’ve experienced that we maybe never took the time to sit in, if we can really, like I said, go deeper, it can be very, very transformational.

[00:05:26] Jenny Swisher: Now, I want to start this off with just a brief story, which is my listeners know that I’m recently encountering this migraine journey again, right? Migraines have crept back up for me. Um, well, vertigo has been creeping back up for me as well, which is not fun, but I was referred to by a friend, a local naturopath who actually came to my house and she brought her massage table to my house, right?

[00:05:47] Jenny Swisher: So she was like, I’m willing to come to you. I know you can’t drive right now, so I’ll come to you. So she came to me and it was a, I don’t know exactly what all she did. It was a combination of different things. There was cranial sacral work. There was a little bit of massage. There was all kinds of stuff, right?

[00:06:02] Jenny Swisher: But as I’m laying on the table, she, she starts out, it was a one hour session and it was literally just, she goes, I want you to just start talking to me about, and she would give me a topic, right? Like, tell me something about your, or tell me something about, um, your relationship with your husband or tell me something that’s not going well, something that is going well.

[00:06:19] Jenny Swisher: Right. And so I just started talking and by the end of the hour, she’s working on me, you know, she’s doing traction on my neck. She’s, you know. Working on my hips, mobility, all these different things while, while I’m talking, I was an emotional mess by the end of that hour. I was crying. I was like, I don’t even know where, you know, it felt like therapy in a whole new way.

[00:06:41] Jenny Swisher: And so it was so interesting because she told me as she was leaving, she’s like, you’ll be emotional today. Like that’s, you need to feel it and you need to sit in it. And if you need to take a nap, you take a nap and that’s just, what’s going to happen. When I started that session, I had a monster migraine.

[00:06:55] Jenny Swisher: Like I was literally like ready to go to the hospital. It was ridiculous. The painkillers were not working by the time she left. And by that evening, I had such a sense of calm and peace. And I was like, it was just a totally, it was like a transformational experience. And so I say that because like I said, if there was anybody resistant to this idea of.

[00:07:16] Jenny Swisher: Stillness and going inward and seeking, you know, your traumas at all. Like it would not have been me, but I’ve kind of been forced into it. Honestly, in the last couple of years, I’ve been, I’ve kind of been gently nudged, uh, whether it’s a God thing or what I’ve, I’ve been nudged in this direction. So this is good timing for this conversation, because I know that there are people listening.

[00:07:37] Jenny Swisher: I get questions from women daily that are like, I’m doing all the things. And I’m, I feel like I’m being held back. Most likely, most likely. The emotional piece of this, the trauma piece of this is what’s holding you back. So let’s start there and just maybe Jen, you can share, you know, obviously you were probably drawn into this maybe based on your own experience or what you were seeing people.

[00:07:57] Jenny Swisher: So I’d love to hear more about that for sure.

[00:08:00] Yeah.

[00:08:01] Jenn Schaefer: So I love that you were on the massage table and you were feeling it and all of, because all of our issues live in our tissues, Jenny. All of our issues live in our tissues. And so they build up, right? The hormone secretions, the stories, the emotions. And like you said, if we don’t feel them they’re going to bubble up and they’re going to eventually give us a nudge or knock us over because we need to pay attention to them.

[00:08:30] Jenn Schaefer: And so let’s talk a little bit about emotional memory, right? The issues live in our tissues because of there’s an emotional memory there. We haven’t allowed ourselves to feel the emotions. And emotions are really dynamic. They, they move through, you can think about energy and motion, emotion, they move through the body until they don’t.

[00:08:50] Jenn Schaefer: And so things that can stop us from having an easy emotional flow and wellbeing, um, is experiences in our life, you know, and our experiences. Are emotional. They’re a sensed feeling of what’s happened. I think you were talking earlier before we hopped on about the feeling that you had a happy memory, right?

[00:09:18] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. I was telling her about how I’m going to blame it on hormones, but whatever it is, whatever this is, it’s, I think, I think it’s perimenopause, but whatever’s causing these migraines to come back. Is also bringing back anxiety and I’m sure a lot of anxiety is coming from just the pain itself, right, like waking up every day, not knowing, am I going to have the headache?

[00:09:35] Jenny Swisher: Am I going to have, you know, what’s going on? And so when this all started for me in the summer, uh, we were on vacation and that’s a horrible place to be when you’re not feeling well. It’s on vacation when your kids want to go to the beach and you’re miserable, right? So I was living in this like panic attack.

[00:09:51] Jenny Swisher: Like I felt like I just was living in this. Entrapped feeling. and I called my brother and he’s, you know, he was a psychology major and, he and I have a lot of shared, you know, traumas from our childhood. My dad was diagnosed with cancer when we were very young and, he’s really been able to navigate this.

[00:10:09] Jenny Swisher: Well, he’s been able to kind of move in the direction of his traumas and his emotions, but way more so than I have. And so I just reached out to him and in a sort of a desperate moment, I was like, I can’t calm down. Like, I’m on vacation. I want to enjoy this with my kids, but I’m miserable. I’m happy. You know, I feel like I’m in a panic attack.

[00:10:26] Jenny Swisher: And he said. He’s like, okay. I, and he walked me through this exercise. Basically he had me sit somewhere steady. He had me plant my feet on the ground. He talked me through, you know, feeling my feet on the ground and how supportive they were and how I wasn’t going anywhere. Right. Like I was safe in that moment.

[00:10:43] Jenny Swisher: He talked me through like, what do you see in the room? Like, show me what you, you know, what, tell me about what’s in the room. Do you see a lamp? What color are the walls? So the first thing he’s doing is distracting my brain from whatever my brain is trying to process and think about. From there, we went into some breath work where he guided me through, like, counting, you know, four counts in, four counts out, that kind of thing.

[00:11:01] Jenny Swisher: And then he said, I want you to think about a positive, happy memory. And I was telling Jen that my body instantly went into fight or flight. Like, I could, it’s almost like my brain wouldn’t let me go into a safe, happy place. It was, it was trying to keep me safe, but it didn’t want me to go there. And so he said to me, well, one of the things that I always think about when I’m in one of these moments is, You and dad dancing at your wedding.

[00:11:26] Jenny Swisher: It was such a happy memory. And so he started, you know, describing that moment, which then pulled me into emotion. It pulled me into emotion, which then I was able to get out of the panic over the headache, which is what started the whole thing. And so long story short, I was telling Jen this story before we started, and I’m glad you asked me to share it because, I experienced not only with that naturopath on the table, but I’ve also experienced in a very fight or flight moment, What it’s like to harness that emotion in a different way and to really take it and say, okay, let me release something here because obviously my body is trying to, it’s just taught with, with tension, right?

[00:12:06] Jenny Swisher: Like, let me release whatever needs to be released. And so, yeah, I think there are so many benefits to just understanding that the body keeps the score, right? And I’ll link up the book in the show notes. This isn’t the first time. I love that book. It’s called the body keeps the score. It’s a very dense book, but if you haven’t read it, add it to your to do list because Jen’s absolutely right.

[00:12:24] Jenny Swisher: The issues are in our tissues. And the more that I journey forward into understanding my migraines and understanding, um, what makes me, me, the more I’m realizing that it’s, it’s my experiences that make me be, it’s my experiences that, that lead oftentimes to physical pain or anxiety and emotional pain or whatever that might be.

[00:12:44] Jenny Swisher: So, yeah, so, so tell us more about just this emotional operating system and how we can kind of work with it, um, to, to, I don’t, I don’t know if the word overcome is the right word, but. To kind of just work through, what we’ve experienced.

[00:13:01] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. So I like what you were sharing too, Jenny, about, um, you know, your mind was creating a story around whatever that was.

[00:13:10] Jenn Schaefer: It could be a good memory. It could be a traumatic memory. And our mind is, is part of our emotional operating system. So our mind works in a way that wants to support us and also like save us, protect us. So we have a whole brain experience, right? The left side of the brain is so afraid of feeling that it kind of overrides sometimes the emotional aspect.

[00:13:37] Jenn Schaefer: And we start to push away the emotions. And it’s like, if we push away the emotions, it’s like a river, right? So our emotions flow through us. And if we’re pushing them away, then it actually kind of dams up. And then we start having symptoms, you know, and symptoms can show in a way that is physical or mental.

[00:13:57] Jenn Schaefer: So we can have like actual body physical, like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and autoimmune issues and, and that sort of thing. We can have, more of a mental health response, like anxiety, depression. That sort of thing, but our, to bring the left side, the right side of the brain together and to dip into the body, the felt experience.

[00:14:20] Jenn Schaefer: So when you were thinking about the memory that you had about dancing at your wedding, you know, like that could be a logical, that could be very, um, up here in the, in the head sort of a thing. But when you drop down into the body, there’s actually a felt experience. Did you feel that when I’m curious if you felt that when your brother brought that memory up or if you were just thinking, Oh,

[00:14:48] Jenn Schaefer: great.

[00:14:48] Jenn Schaefer: I enjoyed that.

[00:14:49] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, no, I mean, like I said, it, it released, like, I felt like I was just bottled up, like I was a Coke bottle, right. That hadn’t been opened yet. I felt like I was just ready to explode in some way, like shaking up when, when, when that memory came up, it wasn’t instant calm. It was literally like the top had come off and it was just like, so I mean, I started crying.

[00:15:11] Jenny Swisher: I started, yeah, like reliving flood. But, and it was almost like I took the anxiety and turned it into an emotional release, if that makes sense. That’s kind of how it felt. Absolutely. And there have been moments since then where I’ll be like in sort of a miniature panic attack or anxiety moment. You know, coming off of like an eight day long migraine or something, where I go back to, like, I have to retell myself.

[00:15:34] Jenny Swisher: It’s interesting because sometimes I’ll go, I’ll try to go back to that memory to try to recreate what, what happened in that moment. And it’s not quite the same. So having to kind of dig deeper and say like, what’s another, what’s another good memory? What’s another thing to kind of give myself that release?

[00:15:49] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. So the interesting thing about, the technique that I, that I share is that you drop into the body. And like you were going back to the other memory, what the body needs is, is actually what’s happening presently in the moment. So we find in our body where the energies are of whatever it is that we’re experiencing.

[00:16:09] Jenn Schaefer: And you may have symptoms or feelings of emotions that come in and come through. That just kind of surprise you. I know like panic attacks, especially can be very surprising. I’ve experienced those and they aren’t necessarily related. Sometimes they are to our thoughts. And, and all of that, but what’s happening in our body is it’s giving us that nudge.

[00:16:32] Jenn Schaefer: It’s like, Hey, there is something here that I need you to, to sit with me and explore. And so one of the greatest things that we can do is, you know, come into our body with curiosity, using our imagination, uh, to explore the energy that’s there. Work with it from that aspect, instead of just up in the brain, we actually come down into a body centered experience.

[00:16:59] Jenn Schaefer: And it seems a little illogical, but we’re dipping, we’re dipping beneath the logic to dissolve the root cause. And so that’s interesting that you shared that because there is a, there is a difference. Yeah. And creating safety. So, uh, your brother did an amazing job of creating safety for your body to respond in a positive way.

[00:17:22] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. And I think it’s, I mean, it’s important to sit, to share here too, for my listeners, in case you’re new to the show and you haven’t listened to any previous episodes, right? Like I know for me in 2020 and one of those initial interviews with a trauma informed therapist, I probably sounded like I had no idea what I was even talking about because I didn’t.

[00:17:39] Jenny Swisher: I, I said to her on the show something like, well, I’ve never experienced trauma because in my mind it was like trauma was. It was gun violence or it was something that, you know, a car accident or something. And I, I had never had any sort of big T trauma and he informed me like, no, oh no, we’ve all had traumas, big T or little T.

[00:17:58] Jenny Swisher: Right. And so, and now I’m learning like just through these experiences that I’m having with the naturopath, with these different things, I’m learning like, well, actually those, what I was deeming non existent. Was actually quite big, right? And so, how can people start the process of, learning? I mean, I guess, I, working with someone like you, obviously, would be fantastic.

[00:18:17] Jenny Swisher: And I’d love for you to tell us more about, like, how to harness these emotional memories. But I guess the first stop here is in the awareness piece. Like, how can people become aware? Of how their traumas have shaped them.

[00:18:30] Jenn Schaefer: Absolutely. And I like what you said that, you know, trauma isn’t necessarily have to be something huge and big.

[00:18:37] Jenn Schaefer: It really truly is how we experience our emotions, how we experience the events that are happening. And 70 percent of adults in the United States have experienced some type of traumatic event at least once in their lives. That’s 223. 4 million people. And so we’ve all had some form of trauma that maybe you digested it is another way to look at it like digesting and processing those emotions and sometimes we don’t.

[00:19:08] Jenn Schaefer: So, the best way to do it is to, we could practice Jenny, if you’re open to do a little exercise. Sure, sure, let’s do it. Yeah. So, um, yeah, just go ahead and, um, close your eyes, Jenny, and just kind of breathe into your body.

[00:19:29] Jenn Schaefer: Big breath in through your heart, big exhale out through your hands.

[00:19:36] Jenn Schaefer: And as you follow your breath inward, you’re just going to sense what’s calling your attention and it could be an energy, a sensation, could even be a thought.

[00:19:49] Jenn Schaefer: What are you noticing?

[00:19:52] Jenny Swisher: Well, every time I do breath work, I notice that my very resistant To letting go. So my, my body, like the muscles in my body and my brain want to hold on. One time I did a breathwork activity like this and it’s almost like it was like instant heart racing. Like, I don’t want to give up control is the, is the issue.

[00:20:15] Jenn Schaefer: So noticing where that is, that energy of, I don’t want to give up control. Notice where that lives in your body.

[00:20:23] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, just, I mean, opening my hands takes intention, right? Like, mm, like they want to hold on.

[00:20:32] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah, noticing that holding on energy, where does that show up the most in your body right now? Shoulders. Mm hmm. Yeah. Notice how much space that energy is taking up in your shoulders. It may have a color, a shape, might be a cloud or a blob.

[00:20:52] Jenn Schaefer: What’s forming in that space in your shoulders

[00:20:57] Jenny Swisher: sort of feels like a brick, like a, like a heavy brick.

[00:21:03] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. So go ahead and Jenny, move your awareness inside of that heavy brick, looking back at you. Let me know when you’re there. Yep. Yeah. And from that perspective of the brick, go ahead and speak to Jenny, whatever wants to be spoken.

[00:21:22] Jenn Schaefer: Jenny, what I want to say to you is,

[00:21:25] Jenny Swisher: um,

[00:21:26] Jenny Swisher: I don’t know, really, I guess.

[00:21:29] Jenny Swisher: I don’t know. Just, I mean, just feel sort of heavy, I guess. Yeah. Uh, I mean,

[00:21:39] Jenny Swisher: I just keep coming back to like, it’s okay to let go, which has been a resurfacing theme for me.

[00:21:45] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah.

[00:21:47] Jenn Schaefer: And so what’s happening with the brick now?

[00:21:50] Jenny Swisher: Sort of wiggling, moving. Yeah.

[00:21:56] Jenn Schaefer: Is that wiggling fast or slow? Slow. Yeah, so just imagine wiggling with it nice and slow.

[00:22:05] Jenn Schaefer: How does that feel?

[00:22:06] Jenny Swisher: A lot like the vertigo has been feeling. But

[00:22:13] Jenny Swisher: yeah, just a little looser. Yeah.

[00:22:17] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. So noticing that little looser,

[00:22:20] Jenn Schaefer: is it changing or staying the same in your shoulders or is it moving someplace else?

[00:22:28] Jenny Swisher: Shoot. It’s just sort of rocky. Like Like a teeter totter. Yeah.

[00:22:35] Jenn Schaefer: And how does that feel now that it’s just rocking like a teeter totter?

[00:22:39] Jenny Swisher: A little less stiff, a little more fluid.

[00:22:44] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. So noticing that less stiff, more fluid.

[00:22:50] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. And when you’re ready, you can come on back into the room. That’s just where we start. Yeah. We start with exactly what’s happening in the body. Right.

[00:23:02] Jenny Swisher: Present moment. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I think, You know, 1 thing is, is interesting is, well, this is 1 thing I want to learn more about for sure is, you know, so I.

[00:23:16] Jenny Swisher: Not to go too in depth on my current journey, but I’ve shared here on the show, I’ve recently been working with a muscle testing doctor, and then I’ve got this naturopath guy, everybody on board trying to figure things out for me, and the resounding response is always the same, which is how much I hold on to in my sacrum, which is an interesting one.

[00:23:34] Jenny Swisher: Um, interesting. I’d love to hear your perspective on that because, you know, it’s funny cause my, my regular doctor the other day, she goes, girl, you need your chakras balanced. And I was like, I wish I knew, but you know, just this, this idea of like where we hold on. I mean, it just, it brings me back like you, even you just asking me about like the brick in my shoulders takes me back to my first yoga experience.

[00:23:58] Jenny Swisher: And then I was dealing with chronic pain in my twenties. And I remember I went to my first yoga class and, uh, I could, like, we would go into downward dog and I would not let my head hang, you know, we would go into a forward hole forward fold and, and I would be like holding on, you know, and my yoga instructor kept saying like, let go, like she would come over and actually like push my head down.

[00:24:21] Jenny Swisher: And I’m like, I can’t let the head. What do you mean? Like, that would mean I would, what happens if my head falls off? You know, like I got to hold on. I’m definitely noticing a theme for myself when it comes to this issues in the tissues. My shoulders and my low back and my sacrum are the two places that my body just, it’s never fully released.

[00:24:40] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. Yeah. It would be fun to, to do a session, a big full session to, to see what, what comes out. So I was working with, this is interesting. I was working with a woman and, she had a lot of control issues. And so she came to me and she’s just like, Same thing. Like I can’t let go. I have to micromanage everything.

[00:25:01] Jenn Schaefer: Um, and do all this stuff and it’s really exhausting. Well, come to find out in her session, she went back into a memory when she was in utero, uh, being born. And so there was this squeezing and holding on really, really tight. And she was able to regenerate that experience. And move through the growth canal and come out, uh, in a place of freedom and safety.

[00:25:29] Jenn Schaefer: And then she went on and did some other work along with that. Um, and so today she’s like, you know, I have these situations in my life where I usually feel that tension that lives in her body. She’s like, I don’t feel that anymore. I don’t feel that anymore.

[00:25:49] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So my question to you then is how far back do our memories go?

[00:25:54] Jenn Schaefer: Well, uh, I’ve, I’ve worked with people who have gone back, generationally. So we were talking about generational healing and, um, it goes, I’ve taken some people back to, I don’t even know how far, uh, their imagination brought them back into places that was like, you know, early 1800s even. Wow.

[00:26:17] Jenny Swisher: Oh, yeah. When we were talking and you said that generational healing can go back 14 generations.

[00:26:22] Jenny Swisher: That’s right. Incredible. I have an episode that I’ll link up in the show notes with Lily Correll, where we talked about the study on mice. I know that’s a good one. The good one. And it’s, I mean, you can correct me, uh, you know, when I, when I share it, cause it’s been a while since I heard it, but basically.

[00:26:37] Jenny Swisher: Uh, the, uh, a group of mice were exposed to the scent of cherry blossom, I believe, and then they were given electric shock after they were exposed to the scent. And after, I don’t know, two times or something, I don’t know the exact number, but after just a couple of times of this, the, the mice brains basically reprogrammed to scent of cherry blossom equals electric shock, right?

[00:26:58] Jenny Swisher: And they could, they could measure brain waves to see the fear and the trauma experience. And what was interesting is the offspring of those mice. Who had never been given electric shock were just exposed to the scent of cherry blossom, and they had the same trauma response in the brain, right? So this is what we mean when we say this intergenerational trauma.

[00:27:20] Jenny Swisher: Um, I’ll also share here something that Jen and I were talking about. My youngest daughter who was born with lip and tongue tie. She was born the unhappiest child on the planet. Like, we have no single picture of her the first two months where she’s not screaming. But of course, I would be screaming if I couldn’t eat either, you know, and she, she really couldn’t eat well.

[00:27:38] Jenny Swisher: So, Anyway, long story short, we struggled for the first couple of months, I mean, we were going to myofascial release therapy and chiropractic appointments and doctor’s appointments, just trying to figure out what was going on and every time we would put her in anything where she was restrained, like a car seat or, you know, stroller, anything really.

[00:27:57] Jenny Swisher: She would lose her mind and it would be screaming for an hour. And so, you know, everybody told us, Oh, you know, kids that have lip and tongue ties, they don’t like motion. They tend to be motion sick. Okay. Maybe that’s what’s going on. So we thought we’ll just get this corrected and then she’ll be fine.

[00:28:12] Jenny Swisher: Well, we had the surgeries done. Nope. Still not fine. Still doesn’t like to be restrained. Still doesn’t like the car seat. And when I was interviewing Lily Correll on the podcast, I sort of had an aha moment because she, she shared a story about. a mother who had had a, a car accident, a pretty serious car accident with a baby in utero and how that translated to trauma with the baby and stress with the baby in life.

[00:28:34] Jenny Swisher: And so it made me remember that Sutton’s birth mother had been in a pretty significant car accident when she was, I think it was in her first trimester of pregnancy. And so we started to think like, Oh, well, this is such an aha moment. Maybe this is what’s going on. And so one thing that Lily taught me in that episode was.

[00:28:52] Jenny Swisher: Just as we have the ability to, um, create trauma, we also have the ability to reverse it and to create that sort of neuroscience idea of retraining the brain. So we started doing something with Sutton from a very young age, like less than a year old, where we would put her in, we would get her in the car seat and we would play music in the car, like happy music.

[00:29:14] Jenny Swisher: She loves her older sister. So my, my oldest would get in the car and do a silly dance and kind of take, take her mind off of it. And I was telling Jen that now she’ll be three this year. She loves the car. She loves to go on rides. She always has to have music. But we’ve retrained the brain. Right. And so it’s, it is so, so powerful.

[00:29:30] Jenny Swisher: It’s interesting when you say that, cause I’m like, well, I don’t, I don’t think I, I don’t know if I could go that far back to remember anything beyond. Childhood, but maybe, you know, if you can let your imagination go, maybe, maybe you can tell us more about generation. Jen, tell us, tell us what you’ve experienced.

[00:29:45] Jenny Swisher: Tell us, tell us what, you know.

[00:29:47] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. So, generational healing. So the neuroscience shows us that we can go back into an emotional memory and there is a window there where you can regenerate it. And so if you think about,

[00:29:58] Jenn Schaefer: like, uh, uh, your cell phone, right? If you If you hold on to the icons and they jiggle, you can move and change and delete and update and then you can relock it in.

[00:30:11] Jenn Schaefer: And so there is, um, there is a window of time where you can go into these memories that you may or may not know. It could be a very unconscious memory and regenerate it. And so, yeah, 14 generations back is amazing. It’s absolutely amazing that it goes back that far. Right. We have the ability. We have the ability with our emotional operating system.

[00:30:35] Jenn Schaefer: You know, um, the mind, the body and the brain working as a team can go in and change, change the past, really change the emotional past. Yeah. So we’re not triggered.

[00:30:50] Jenny Swisher: Well, it’s, it’s interesting because, kind of staying on par with this, me sharing a story of the different people that I’m working with right now, right.

[00:30:58] Jenny Swisher: The recurrent theme is, has been the same, which is Jenny struggles to let go, and it’s funny because this. This one particular doctor that I’m working with right now, he’s been the one that’s done my muscle testing and homeopathy and all kinds of stuff. He, the very first time we met, it also triggered an emotional response for me because he started asking me questions about traumas.

[00:31:22] Jenny Swisher: And so obviously this is a recurrent theme that keeps coming up. And in my initial session with him, um, he, I just felt like he had this way of reading me like so quickly and so well, and he said to me, he goes, I have a question for you. He goes, what happens if you are in a week long migraine and. What happens if your husband has to take care of dinner and school pickup and kids and he goes through all this and I saw the look of fear in my eyes, you know, probably responded immediately.

[00:32:00] Jenny Swisher: And I looked at him and I said. He’d probably take them to McDonald’s. He started laughing and he, he goes, he put his hand on my knee and he goes, would that be the worst thing? And I was like, for me, yes, that would actually be the worst thing. Um, and so anyways, like he’s been reminding me along the way, right?

[00:32:20] Jenny Swisher: Like. It’s okay. If you’re down for a day, it’s okay. Like you don’t have to be like the life will go on. And, you know, maybe you’ll even feel better the next day if you rest. So I’m noticing a lot of different, you know, themes, for myself. And it’s interesting because I think back to like, people will ask me all the time, like, well, why are you in health and wellness?

[00:32:39] Jenny Swisher: How do you stay so motivated? You know, I don’t struggle with motivation when it comes to my fitness, nutrition. I just don’t. And I realize that that’s less than 1 percent of people, but I really think it’s because like I am motivated out of fear. Like I am motivated out of fear, which the fear then comes from the traumas that I’ve experienced.

[00:32:59] Jenny Swisher: The main being, you know, my dad was diagnosed with cancer when I was young, he was given two weeks to live and that entire experience, which lasted years. Was an out of control experience. You have no control. Exactly. When there’s a cancer diagnosis, you’re not in control of your health anymore. There’s there.

[00:33:19] Jenny Swisher: So for me, I, I feel like I grew up in this, in this world of just what, what, what if something happens to me? Right. Like, what if, for me, it’s like, if I can control my exercise, if I can control my nutrition, if I can, you know, if I can, if I can do that, then I can be as strong as I can be. If something happens to me.

[00:33:36] Jenny Swisher: But I also wonder what role this idea of generational healing, how that impacts me as well, right? I was adopted at birth, so I don’t know my birth, my birth parents. I don’t know any, you know, biologically speaking, I don’t know any of that, but I’m curious, like what might be there, that also is impacting me, you know, like it’s, it’s an interesting, an interesting thing.

[00:33:59] Jenny Swisher: And now one thing that Lily had said, your perspective on this too, I’ll make sure that I connect you guys. Cause you guys have a lot in common. Um, I love it. She talked about how a lot of times we might relive a trauma that makes no sense in the moment that is triggered by something that happened in a previous generation around that same time of life.

[00:34:21] Jenny Swisher: If that makes sense. So that totally makes sense. The example that she gave was like, you know, if birth mother tried to hurt herself, like some sort of suicidal attack or something when she was 16. And then when I’m 16, I have maybe a similar experience or I go through a dark period of time where there’s there’s stress and anxiety.

[00:34:44] Jenny Swisher: It could be that I’m reliving. That experience from a previous generation, which I thought was fascinating.

[00:34:50] Jenn Schaefer: Think about that. That’s that lends itself to the whole epigenetics and the genome project and all of the issues that are passed down, right? Um, emotional, spiritual. Physical, all of that. Yeah.

[00:35:05] Jenny Swisher: And it is out of our control, right?

[00:35:06] Jenny Swisher: Like, we can’t control what happened in previous generations. Um, but we can,

[00:35:11] Jenn Schaefer: but we can control how we feel about it today. Yeah.

[00:35:14] Jenny Swisher: And do you think this is a really high ambiguous question, but do you think that we would get further as a society and as individuals? If we lived in our emotions longer than we do, like, do you think that we, we push them aside and just keep moving forward?

[00:35:31] Jenny Swisher: What would it look like to actually, you know, motion?

[00:35:36] Jenn Schaefer: I know. And I tell you what, I’m on a mission to help end unnecessary suffering because if, if, yeah, if we feel our feelings and we work through our traumas, trauma is actually the gateway into say, you know, substance abuse, uh, issues, mental health issues.

[00:35:55] Jenn Schaefer: Yeah. All of that if it’s unresolved, then it can build up in our body and our mind and our spirit. And so yeah, I mean, just imagine that was one of the things I was working on project heal bringing this emotional healing aspect into the classrooms emotional safety into the classrooms and teaching teachers admin.

[00:36:15] Jenn Schaefer: Counselors, social workers to help with the students and Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, there’s just, I could talk to you about this all day long. And I think if, if we bring it into the schools and to, uh, working with the children, even as a parent, you know, teaching our children how to express safely. Um, I think it would make a huge difference.

[00:36:39] Jenn Schaefer: Like bullying would go away Yeah. Cause the ACE scores adverse childhood experiences. A lot of these children go to school and they’re dysregulated. They don’t know how to, or, or what to do. And it’s some of it’s just because of the situation that they’re living in. We’ve seen a lot of that in the schools and, you know, helping them to feel resourced and safe.

[00:37:06] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So good. I know it’s, it’s this, all of this is just so, so interesting. And like I said, at the very beginning of this. You know, a lot of us embrace the things that we can control and we assume that our traumas and our experiences and our emotions are something we can’t control. And as a parent now, um, I can say that, you know, my oldest, who’s seven, she’s an observer. She’s an empath. She’s very aware of her surroundings and other people. Um, and she, you know, she’s the one that kind of, I guess, is our challenge, so to speak. You know, my youngest is just like, yeah, who cares? We’re worried about her frontal lobe. Like she’s, she’s a little, a little bit of a risk taker.

[00:37:50] Jenny Swisher: Uh, we think she’ll probably have. Both arms covered in tattoos by age 12 or something, but my oldest is the one who is, is like constantly questioning and challenging. And, um, it’s interesting because I have had, I’ve learned so much just about myself in how I parent her and this isn’t new to my listeners, but when she’s feeling an emotion, whether that’s jealousy or, um, trouble soothing, she sometimes has trouble soothing herself when she is anxious when she is.

[00:38:21] Jenny Swisher: Mad, you know, especially a younger sister. So when she’s living in those emotions, I noticed in the beginning that it was my natural instinct or my inclination to sort of like glaze over that moment and be like, Oh, it’s okay. You’re okay. And just sort of move on. Right. Like, it’s like, you shouldn’t feel that way type thing.

[00:38:39] Jenny Swisher: Right. That’s what I

[00:38:40] Jenn Schaefer: love. Most people do.

[00:38:42] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. And then you, you start, you know, see this, what I mean, this podcast was meant for me because I start interviewing people like you. And it makes me stop in that moment and say, instead of saying anything, usually just sit next to her and rub her back or sometimes she doesn’t want me to, you know, but sometimes I sit there and I just say, I’m here, you know, it’s okay.

[00:39:01] Jenny Swisher: That’s beautiful. It’s okay to feel it. You know, I think if we can do that more for our children, but also for ourselves. Um, gosh, how much simpler we could make life. I mean, the same thing goes for me with the migrants, right? Like. As much as I want to just be like, I’m fine. I’ll push through, you know, tomorrow’s a new day, whatever.

[00:39:23] Jenny Swisher: It’s also okay to just not be okay. It’s okay to be like frustrated. It’s okay to be upset or whatever, but also,

[00:39:30] Jenn Schaefer: um, It is. All of our emotions are valuable. They guide us into like self care. What do we need right now? And, you know, speaking of young, young ones, I did a session with a nine year old boy who was having anger issues.

[00:39:46] Jenn Schaefer: And after the session, he resourced himself, he figured out what the best way it would be for him to work with his own anger. And a couple weeks later, his dad, you know, held me up on the phone and was like, what just happened here? Like, my son is amazing. He’s doing all of these things. And it was from a 20 minute session.

[00:40:07] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. And he navigated his own way. You just facilitate. Yeah. That’s so cool. Yeah. We have, we

[00:40:12] Jenn Schaefer: can resource ourselves. We can work with them, collaborate with our emotional operating system. It’s pretty amazing.

[00:40:19] Jenny Swisher: So cool. Yeah. My, once again, my oldest, um, like I said, has, has had issues with self soothing and we have tried, I mean, we’ve, we’ve done myofascial release, we’ve done chiropractic, we’re having tonsils removed for better sleep.

[00:40:31] Jenny Swisher: We’re doing all these different things. And, our mutual friend, Jen, we were having lunch one day and I said, uh, Janet, do you have any tips? Cause she’s like the breathwork queen, right? She’s like into meditation breathwork. I said, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get my six year old at that time to meditate.

[00:40:45] Jenny Swisher: Right? Like, so what, what can I do? And she said, have you ever thought about putting a swing in her room? And I said, like, why would I, you know what I mean? And so she showed me a picture of her daughter, who’s a teenager, her swing. It’s like a little hammock swing. So for Ellery’s birthday, we got her this little hammock swing.

[00:41:01] Jenny Swisher: It’s actually in our loft and it has been a life changer, like life changing. We told her like, we got you this swing so that you can swing on it when you want to, but also when you’re feeling upset, when you can’t calm down, when you feel like you’re mad at everybody. This is a good place to go and kind of unwind, and she will immediately go there and swing for like 10 minutes, and then she’s like, it’s like self soothing.

[00:41:27] Jenny Swisher: It’s like been the best, best suggestion ever. So while she didn’t navigate her own answer there. It has been, um, it’s been,

[00:41:33] Jenn Schaefer: she may be getting her own answers while she’s swinging.

[00:41:36] Jenny Swisher: It’s really cool. So I’m going to take you up on the offer, Jen. We’re going to do a session and then maybe we can come back on here for a part two and, and, and ask.

[00:41:43] Jenny Swisher: So tell us, um, before you tell us where we can find you and all that kind of stuff. Tell us just kind of final words. What would be your number one tip for someone in practicing this idea of emotional memory and, and harnessing these superpowers?

[00:41:57] Jenn Schaefer: I would say to get curious, don’t be afraid of it. Get curious.

[00:42:02] Jenn Schaefer: Breathe into it. See what comes forth. You’re safe. It’s possible.

[00:42:09] Jenny Swisher: Awesome. Perfect. Well, tell us where we can find you. Is it social media, website? Give us all the things and we’ll make sure that we link it up in the show notes.

[00:42:15] Jenn Schaefer: Absolutely. Website is revealyourinnerhero. com. And, uh, yeah. Reach out to me anytime.

[00:42:24] Jenn Schaefer: Ask me questions. Uh, email me Jen at reveal your inner hero.com. I love to work with groups and teach this and yeah, so it can change the world. Jenny.

[00:42:37] Jenny Swisher: Yes, I, I believe it will. And I, I, again, this is an area that I’m sort of entering in on my own with my own story, and we’ll keep updating my listeners as well.

[00:42:46] Jenny Swisher: But I, I encourage you, if you’re listening to go deeper. Um, to go deeper into yourself, whether it’s working with Jen or, or following the same activity that we just did here on, on the podcast, looking into this idea of generational healing and collaborating with our emotional operating system. I think it’s powerful stuff.

[00:43:04] Jenny Swisher: So thank you, Jen, for being on here, for taking your time out of your day today to share with us your knowledge and wisdom, but thank you listeners as always. And we’ll talk again soon.