Episode 21: Reconnect with your body to heal pelvic pain – with Paula Hindle
What if healing pain wasn’t just about treating your body – but learning to truly listen to it?
In this episode, Sam sits down with Vera Wellness physiotherapist Paula Hindle to uncover how reconnecting with your body and regulating your nervous system can transform your healing journey.
Paula shares her deeply personal story of loss and resilience, explaining how it shaped her holistic approach to physiotherapy, and why the mind-body connection is key to recovery.
🎙️In this episode, we explore:
🌿 The nervous system’s role in pain and healing and how recognising your states can help you find relief.
🌿 Moving beyond labels and why chronic pain is more than just a physical issue.
🌿 Creating safety and connection with simple tools to calm your nervous system and rest deeply.
🌿 Transforming adversity into purpose and how challenges can spark personal growth.
If you’re ready to move beyond the pain and reconnect with your body, our live online Heal Your Pelvic Pain course is now open for enrolment.
Heal Your Pelvic Pain is a 9-week program, led by Vera Wellness gynaecologists Dr Peta and Dr Thea, alongside physiotherapist Paula Hindle, which combines evidence-based practices to help you:
✨ Understand the root cause of your pain so you can take control of your healing journey.
✨ Calm and rewire your nervous system so you can shift from constant stress to feeling grounded and supported.
✨ Reclaim your relationship with your body and rediscover its capacity for joy, pleasure and connection.
The course begins on Monday, 17 February 2025 and we have an Early Bird rate available until 1 February.
Use the code EARLYBIRD100 at checkout for $100 off the full price of the program.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
💻 Polyvagal Theory by Dr Stephen Porges – The science behind the nervous system.
🧘♀️Guided practices such as yoga, meditation, and somatic techniques to reconnect with your body.
💚 Our Heal Your Pelvic Pain online course is open for enrolment until 14 February 2025.
We would love to hear from you.
If you have any questions about you’d like us to answer on a future episode of the podcast, please email them to hello@verawellness.com.au or contact us on Instagram @verawellness.com.au.
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Episode transcript:
E21: Reconnecting with your body to heal pelvic pain – with Paula Hindle
[00:01:00] Sam: Welcome to another episode of Women of the Well. And today I'm here with Paula Hindle. I'm Sam Lindsay-German.
Paula: And I'm Paula Hindle.
Sam: And it's really nice to have you here, Paula. Paula's one of the physios here at Vera. We've had Brooke on, who's talked about what she does, but in a little nutshell, what do you do here?
What's your physio role here?
Paula: My physio role here, so I mostly see our pelvic pain patients, and I would say probably the difference is maybe looking from a nervous system lens, so incorporating a lot of nervous system regulation, holistic tools like yoga and meditation and breathing and things like that.
Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. That's wonderful. So today coming on and talking to us, we're going to be focusing on that nervous system work that you do and particularly in the way that you are able to help your clients [00:02:00] with their nervous system through the tools that you have learned personally, as well as those that you have, you know, done study for as well, I'm sure.
So let's just go straight there. Yeah. And tell us a bit about your story and really how it is that you move from being, I don't really know how to say it, but when I think of a physio, I think of, you know, the, the people that I sort of go see and they sort of pull your leg around and go, Oh yeah, that looks like you need to do these couple of exercises and that's that.
And I head off with some exercises. How did you move from being that sort of physio and what sort of physio were you at the beginning into a much more. Heart led, heart centered, nervous system, knowing physio.
Paula: Yeah, it's such a big question. I think, um, you know, if I think back to when we studied, it was so much about the systems of our body and the physical side of our body, which, when I think about it today, just [00:03:00] makes no sense at all.
And I don't know how, unless it's a really distinct, clear, I sprained my ankle at basketball training last night, for example, and even then we still need to look at the whole person. But how we can be treating a limb or a body system without looking at the whole body, the mind, the spirit, the environment that we're living in.
I just don't think we can get anywhere. So how did I get to this point? You know, I think back when I first started, it probably was, I had an exercise background, so it probably was much more of a physical perspective. Although I was probably fortunate in my sporting background to be involved with some amazing sports psychologists at the time.
So mindset was a big thing for me as well. And I have always carried that with me. As a teen, which I'm very thankful for because I think I thought that was quite normal to have [00:04:00] those skills back then, but I've come to learn that it's not.
But I then had a very big life changing experience of being married to a beautiful man who ended up with, I call it a terminal mental illness, where he ended up taking his own life. So I had the experience of living with someone who was very unwell, physically, mentally, I could see, I could see his. His body physically respond to the state of his mind, which was really interesting. So it became very apparent to me that you can't separate the two.
And certainly through his journey of seeing psychologists and even going down the path of some integrative therapies, it was really obvious that we couldn't just treat his brain or his mind. And that things from his past had an impact on [00:05:00] his wellness, food, his environment, his thoughts, his belief systems.
There's so much there that impacts wellness. And so from that experience of him dying by suicide, it really impacted myself as obviously just a person, but as a clinician. So when I did go back to work after that experience, I really would see patients walking in as a whole person and would start to look at them thinking what else is going on for you?
This can't just be neck and shoulder pain because you're a new mum or pelvic pain because there's something wrong. physically in your pelvis. There has to be more going on. And I just intuitively started asking more questions. What's going on in your life? Is there stress in your life? And for many women, it was actually just giving them a chance to be heard and to speak.
Because [00:06:00] so many women, and particularly women who have just had babies, for example, Life's often not about them, so to turn up to someone who is willing to sit and listen to them and hear about what else is going on in their life without being rushed was huge for them. So you could start to see it's not just something physical going on.
Sam: That must have been such a big shift. Did you go back to working at the same place or did you change the place you were working? Because it must have been, I'm just sort of thinking, even in terms of how long it was. It was that you wanted to spend with patients because I feel like that's one of the biggest things I notice here.
Time is not one of the, it's not, there's no rush here. Everything's slowed down to allow for that sort of building a relationship with the clients. And so how did you go about that? Do people sort of push back a bit?
Paula: Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, I took quite a long time off work after my [00:07:00] experience. Yes. And. I'm so grateful that I did because it allowed me the time to actually heal myself. And that was the time that I did things like I went and did my yoga teacher training and became a health and wellness coach and just did a whole lot of integrative therapies because I needed to work out what was going on with myself and intuitively knew that I could be better than I was in terms of having gone through the experience I went through, I, it was trauma.
Obviously there was traumatic responses and you know, I wasn't sleeping. I had all this fear inside of me. I had fear of the dark fear of life. Just there's so much going on and talk therapy wasn't enough for me. And I would keep turning up to different things and think this isn't helping. Like there's gotta be more.
So that's why I spent time. doing all of those different modalities like yoga, for example. So then, yeah, I did, [00:08:00] uh, I was working for myself at the time. So I actually closed my business. So when I did go back to work, I was working in another clinic. So to answer that question, no, there was absolutely not enough time.
You know, it was like half-hour sessions. I couldn't possibly work like that. And in the end, that was part of the reason I left there. Not that I saw that there was anything happening anywhere else at the time that I wanted to change and go to a different practice. I was just. I was a bit against just the way people were being treated in general.
So I almost didn't want to be a physio anymore. I didn't want to treat in the healthcare environment anymore because I just saw it as broken and it didn't work. And I didn't want to be part of that. No. So I probably went back to to my first degree as an exercise physiologist and coaching again and doing things like that.
And then Peta came across, came into my orbit and recruited me to come and work out here. So to suddenly have, you know, an hour [00:09:00] or 90 minutes with a patient where there's just so much space, we can take them outside into nature, which is just so healing. It was totally different. It's a totally different experience.
And even then I'll sometimes have a little sneaky look at my watch and think, oh wow, 90 minutes is up and I'm still not where I want to be with this patient. There's so much time we could spend coming up with a way that we can start to move towards healing.
Sam: Yeah, that's so special to be able to give that time. So going back to this shift that you made, which I think is entirely understandable. I mean, one of the things that strikes me is yes, you must have felt the system wasn't working because it didn't work for your husband. And therefore, if you're in a system, it's very hard when you can watch that that has not helped.
And so then you're sort of dealing with your own grief, dealing with your own trauma, [00:10:00] and knowing that the system that you have trained so hard in is not going to be able to help you.
Paula: Yeah. It's very frustrating when you are a resourceful person and you have tried to look down so many avenues and there just don't seem to be answers and a lot has changed since then.
That was just over 10 years ago now, 11 years ago, but particularly back then, uh, there just, wasn't enough out there enough treating practitioners that really have an understanding of the nervous system, the mind body connection, which seems ridiculous. Yet you turn to something like yoga and it's all of the ancient wisdom traditions that have been telling us that of course there's a link.
So you definitely feel let down by the system. But it's so incredible to see now that we [00:11:00] are starting to have practitioners who are trained in nervous system regulation and there's places like Vera that we can work in now and we can refer patients to where the whole person can be treated. We can be looking at what's happened to you as a child.
What experiences have you been through as a teen? What's happened to you since then? Even going back through a whole timeline of your life. to see what has led you to this point. What has put your physical body in this state? What has put your mind in this state? What are your belief systems? And all of that contributes to wellness.
Sam: Absolutely. And so when you went on that journey of going and doing your yoga teacher training, is that, was that the first time that you'd really sort of moved towards a more spiritual life? Had you always been spiritual? Do you think that the trauma that you went through losing your husband and being a mum whilst that occurred, I mean, you know, that's a lot [00:12:00] too to have to hold that space.
Do you feel that was what, I mean, it's interesting to turn to spirituality. That's a time when some people will turn against things like that. And so the draw to it and how you found that that supported you at that time. Can you talk on that?
Paula: Hmm. That's so interesting. I think after my husband died, I felt a deep need to connect to something.
And I grew up in a family that was Catholic and going to church. I didn't feel connected to that. I actually feel like even at one point I tried to even go into a church because I just felt like I needed something and it didn't feel right to me. So I think there was something inside of me knowing that that was a missing piece for me, that I, you know, an outsider could look at me and think, oh well she's well, because I look fit, and I was fit and strong in that sense.
Although I would argue that I wasn't [00:13:00] physically well. And I definitely wasn't physically well. I had a lot of symptoms. I had constant gut pain. I was very underweight at the time. I was having heart palpitations. So there was a lot going on in my physical body, which is a manifestation of how I actually was.
But I could be eating well and exercising and doing all those things and even trying to sleep well, but there was still something missing. And I think me even becoming aware of that in and knowing that there's something is that spiritual side of me wanting to come out and connect. So yeah. I can't really remember, to be honest.
I think it may have even been my sister in law that had suggested that I do my yoga teacher training because she had done it, and we were just talking before that you know her as well. But I had gone to a few yoga classes, and funnily enough, I think it was even the day before he died, I randomly took myself to a yoga class.
So again, there was something inside of me that knew that that's what I needed. It was like a calling towards it. [00:14:00] Yeah. Yeah. Love that. And incredibly powerful, because I still to this day remember. Days after it happening, I had that yoga teacher's voice in my brain telling me to just breathe. And breathing isn't always the answer when it comes to nervous system regulation, but something took me to yoga that day before.
And I had her voice in my brain helping me. So I think just a few of those things led me and I just ended up on my computer one day, Google searching and ended up down in Melbourne a few months later on a very deep immersive yoga teacher training and didn't turn back from that.
Sam: Yeah. And so when you think now about your understanding of how it is that you approach helping people, can you talk about people that you meet who are going through pelvic pain, the way in which you obviously, you know, Are able to ask [00:15:00] them certain questions that get them to open up to some of the things that they've been through and How many times is it that you can see the links to say pelvic pain or other?
Pain within the body or other things that people are women particularly are coming presenting with have come from these spaces of trauma and how your own experience has helped you to understand that. I mean, you already talked about how you noticed in yourself, people would think you are well, but you obviously quite good at hiding some of those manifestations that were occurring.
Paula: It's interesting. I often see in our patients by the time they've come to us, they've often been to other healthcare providers. Maybe they've. been given labels or diagnoses or multiple of a lot of different conditions that they're told they have, which they've identified with, but still they're in pain.
So I often find by the time they come and we give them space to [00:16:00] talk and unpack and almost say, what do you think is wrong? They also have this deep knowing that there is more. I really believe that. I have a deep belief that we all know what we need. And I say that to women straight up, and very often they'll say, but I don't know what I need, and I say, I know you don't think you know what you need, but I think by the end of this session you may be able to start to answer that question, and very often they do, because we just need to guide them back to that knowing, and I learnt that from my teacher. She was very helpful at guiding me back. And when I look back, I didn't know that's what even took me to yoga teacher training. So we all have that inner knowing of what we need. And I often say to my patients, I know a lot of things, but I don't know what it's like to live in your body.
So we need to work together and I can help to guide you there, but I need you to help me. So we can work it out together. [00:17:00] So once we start to have discussions around what have they experienced through life, when was a time in your life that you have felt your best? Who were you with then? What were you doing?
What were you doing for work? You know, what were the situations in your life that led you to feeling well at that point? And what has happened since then? And what is happening now that's changed? And once they start to really look at all that and look at the timeline, they really get that understanding of, wow, it's not just something physical wrong.
And it's experiential too. Like if we can, in one session, maybe do some kind of nervous system regulation tool and we see a change in their pain on the spot, they automatically know, well, there's something in this. Whereas if there's something wrong at the level of the tissues. That shouldn't change on the spot like that.
Sam: No, absolutely. Okay, so, because we're getting into a place where [00:18:00] you can start to demonstrate some of the things that you do, but before you do that, let's just unpack what it is that you're talking about. So we've said nervous system quite a lot, and normally I'm, Really quick to jump in and I know that in a number of episodes we've talked about the nervous system, but in this one particularly Can you just explain for us in simple English the different stages of the nervous system or the the states that we can be in and How it is that we might? Experience that and almost recognize that within ourselves
Paula: Yeah, sure. So the brain and nervous system, I think it's important to start with understanding that our brain and nervous system are always scanning for danger.
So that's the job of our nervous system, which is amazing. And we, we need our body to do that for survival. Most of us at some point through school will have learned about fight flight, but what we know from the work of Steven Porges and polyvagal theory is that [00:19:00] we Uh, always moving between different states, and all of these states are good.
We need them all. The main thing is that we don't get stuck, but we ideally want to spend most of our time in what we call the ventral vagal state, which is our social engagement system where our brain and our nervous system are perceiving that we're safe. So when we're in that state, we feel connected to other people.
You know, our muscles feel nice and relaxed. Our mind feels present. We're in the present moment. And that's when our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual body is functioning at its best. So we want to be in that state for most of the time.
Sam: So that's the eventual. Ventral vagal state. Ventral vagal state.
Yeah. And that's where we can talk about being in this, uh, sort of communicative, happy, chatty, I'm relaxed, like we are now. We're not really looking out for dangerous things right now. We feel quite comfortable in each other's presence. therefore [00:20:00] our heart rates are regulating. Yeah.
We're breathing slowly, those types of things. Yeah,
Paula: Absolutely. So then if our brain starts to perceive danger, whether it's real or just perceived danger, may not be a threat, but our brain is perceiving threat for some reason, we will usually then move into the sympathetic mode, which we've all been in before, we can all relate to it.
And we need that state of our nervous system Because we need to be able to do something to move away from the threat. So, it's that mobilized state where our heart rate will go up, our respiratory rate will go up, our muscles will tense. We mobilize glucose so we can either fight or flee. So we know the fight, flight, we've all heard about that.
So, it's a state that many people will recognize that they feel like they're in all the time. They feel like there's that urgency, that rush [00:21:00] sensation. They need to be doing all the time in their mind. It might feel very busy, like a monkey mind that's constantly going. It might feel like an anxiety. And in our physical body, it feels very tense and rushed.
So that's that state. And usually the way we want our body to work is if a threat does come, we want to move into that state so that we can actually do something.
Sam: Yeah,
Paula: and then return back to a ventral vagal state.
Sam: So this would be akin to if, as we're sitting here, if suddenly Thea started running up the path shouting, Get out!
Get out! Get out! You and I would see her, and the right response for us, and we might just look at her and go, Oh, I hope she's okay. But, because we're so relaxed right now, but the right response would be for us to go, Panic, okay, Let's get ready and get ready to go drop everything go see what's going on get ready to either hide or run Absolutely, or move something very [00:22:00] heavy, whatever it is.
And then say she then suddenly goes. Oh, I was wrong. We should be able to sort of go. Okay, and we'd have to look around us. We'd have to re center ourselves and just check that she's not lying, that there is actually no perceived threat that the dinosaur or Dante has in fact run the other way and, and we're okay. And then we maybe have a chuckle. We would laugh, potentially, because that would be a natural kind of nervous system thing to do. And then we might come back to this, this space, but it would take a little bit, but not too long, maybe.
Paula: Yeah, absolutely. It's, so it's understanding that our neurobiology changes, so our brain is perceiving threat, our biology changes so we can respond, and then we need the biology to come back.
So, if we didn't jump up and rush to Thea and do all the things. And we sat, which is what many of us [00:23:00] do. So to give an opposite example to that, we might get an email come through from our jerky boss and it makes us go, Oh no, they're going to reprimand me or, you know, whatever it is. Yeah. But we don't actually move.
So that cortisol is just marinating through our body. Yeah. And then we carry on. Yeah. That's when it becomes a problem because we're still sitting in that biology of sympathetic state.
Sam: Almost like we're ignoring it. So that would be if we saw Thea, but we just thought, we don't want to go there. We'll just sit here and just ignore that that's happening.
Paula: But we'll be tense in our body. Cause we'll be like, Oh, Something's happened. Tied in the chest. They're not actually responding.
Sam: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. And that's called So that's the sympathetic state.
Sam: Yeah. That's still all the sympathetic.
Paula: Yes.
Sam: And that's where one of my [00:24:00] teachers always talks about, we spend a lot of time in there and then on top of that we have a dealer on every corner who's consistently giving us coffee and sugar.
So we wake up each morning, we're on a time you know, time constraint. We're trying to get the kids to school. We're trying to get to work. We've got deadlines. We've got emails. We grab a cup of coffee, which fuels the system into driving even more energy through it. We get some sugar, heightens everything even more.
And that just consistently goes through the day. And there is little or no time when we do any of that deep breathing or pausing. Yeah. Or even sitting quietly with someone who we can regulate with.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. And that's another way. So when we move into that sympathetic state, we want to discharge the stress hormones and co regulating is a beautiful way to do that.
Sam: Yeah.
Paula: Or it might be after we know Thea is fine and everything's fine, we might sit together again and we might even embrace and hug. That's a beautiful way [00:25:00] to bring that nervous system back down again from that heightened mobilized state.
Sam: Okay, so that's when we're in that ventral state. We've looked at the sympathetic state.
Paula: Yeah.
Sam: What else can we be in?
Paula: So we can also then move into the dorsal vagal state. And it's very common for people to move between sympathetic and dorsal vagal. So we've said sympathetic is that up regulation of the nervous system where we're mobilized. Dorsal vagal is when we go right back down the other end into more of a collapsed state.
So it might be that you get home and you collapse on the couch, doom scroll through your phone, start to really numb out. Our mind can feel really boggy. And our physical body can feel really lethargic and heavy. Our mind can almost be, what's the point? It's that sort of state. Yeah. So I find a lot of people shift between those two [00:26:00] states, never actually come back down into that beautiful ventral vagal social engagement system.
It's that busy, busy, busy, fight, fight, collapse. Get up, coffee in the morning, busy, busy, busy, rush, rush, rush, rush, collapse. So when we're in those states, our physiology is never actually really coming back to baseline.
Sam: And I think this is one of the big things for me. It's a really big aha moment of understanding why we're struggling to experience wellness.
So let's just talk about physically. Um, what is happening when we're in sympathetic, but also in that bagel dorsal state, tell us what's happening to the body.
Paula: So everything is slowing down. So if we think primitively, if we were out being chased by a predator and we don't think we can get away, we are trying to play dead essentially.
So everything [00:27:00] is slowing right down into a preservation mode. As a protective thing. So in all of these nervous system states, our body, our brain and nervous system are trying to keep us safe, which is amazing. And I think that's really important for people to understand that our body is amazing. It's not working against us.
It's just that what we need to do is to learn how to shift between those states, which involves recognizing when you're in those different states and knowing what tools can shift you back.
Sam: Yeah.
Paula: That's what a resilient nervous system is. It's not one that's calm all the time, which is what we hear on social media.
You just need to be calm. You just need to breathe. You just need to be calm. We can't live calm all day. You would never get anything done. So we want a nervous system that we can be aware of and be aware of each of the states. know if it's appropriate to be in that state and know how to shift between the states.[00:28:00] And that's true wellness.
Sam: Yeah. Okay. And so in that the body, if we are not moving through those systems, then lots of the parts of the body, like our digestion, like the way that the blood's flowing through all of our limbs. I mean, even to the brain, all those things are limited, which means that we're actually, that's why we're feeling so unwell. Yeah.
Sam: And that's why things are just not. Perceived to be not working correctly for the body. Yes, but actually the body, as you said, is doing what it needs to do. It's doing what it's doing to protect you. But it's very hard to function when we're in that state. And actually the body is saying you can't function.
That's right. It's giving us messages. We shouldn't be functioning right now and forcing it to function by taking that coffee, which is then just yeah. Compounding. That's right.
Paula: That's right. And when we're in Sympathetic or that dorsal vagal state. There's always that component of our brain and nervous system is [00:29:00] detecting danger So when we're in those states, uh, we're constantly trying to protect against something And it increases our inflammation, which is amazing because again If you think about when you're in that sympathetic state, our body is releasing all of these incredible pro inflammatory cytokines to protect us But if we're in that state all day, we don't need that.
So suddenly we have this massive amount of inflammation in our body, which we don't actually, you know, it's because we're in that stress state. So what we need to be doing is calming back down so we can get rid of some of that. Yeah, which is, but the thing is rest isn't, you know, it's seen as something that's lazy, right?
It's not something that we're encouraged to do in our culture, which is crazy. Yeah,
Sam: it's true. But even, you know, when we say rest, I'm not entirely sure that many women know how to rest or even, you know, so when you, let's actually, cause I think it's a really good thing to, [00:30:00] to talk about. If you were saying to someone, I need you to actually work on rest, what is it that you're asking them to do?
Paula: So if you think of that from a nervous system lens, it's actually coming down into the dorsal vagal state. But it's blended with the ventral vagal state. So this is where it's simplified to say the ventral vagal, sympathetic and dorsal vagal. There's also blended states. So for example, if we were to go and compete in a sporting event, we need to go into that sympathetic state because we need to get arousal through our body to actually do things.
But because it's organized sport, there might be umpires, referees, we're safe. There's people in our teammates, for example, it's keeping us in that ventral vagal state. So it's blended between sympathetic and ventral vagal. When we think of rest, proper restorative rest, we're in the dorsal vagal state where [00:31:00] we're calm, but there's also that ventral vagal component, which means our brain's perceiving safety.
So our nervous system is coming down into that down regulated state safe and we're safe. Our brain's perceiving safety.
Sam: I, yeah, this is really interesting to me because the way that I can relate personally as to why I always struggled with this is when I was a child. I was not really allowed to rest very much.
So if my mom caught me doing something, I would be told off, uh, not being productive. And so I would always be slightly on edge if I was resting. And as soon as I would see like her car pull up, I would jump up, you know, to do something, which is an indicator that I was never actually turning off and I didn't feel particularly safe.
And it took me a long time to recognize I was still doing that, okay. married with my husband. So when, if he was out and I decided to, oh my gosh, [00:32:00] watch something on telly, which is something that was really a no, no for me as a child, I would have been really told off for watching telly in the daytime. I would literally jump up, turn it off, go and act as if I was busy and have this huge rush of energy going through my body because I was so stressed that his response, which of course it was nothing about him and all about my own personal childhood stuff.
But it just, I think that that is such an important thing to understand because many, many people do that, I feel. Sort of pretend they're resting, but have one ear out in case anyone catches them. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah,
Paula: it is interesting. And there's a concept called neuroception, which is our brain perceiving what is going on.
And often that's not in our conscious awareness. So, we might be thinking that we're resting, but our brain is actually on alert going, Oh no, actually I might get caught, I might get caught [00:33:00] resting. So we aren't quite in that blended state, are we?
Sam: No.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: And I think that word safety is so fascinating to me.
How do we find that if we haven't been able to find it? So how, how do you help your clients to find it? Oh,
Paula: I mean, I'm going to give the annoying answer and say it depends. It really depends. So, and this is where there's so many different, um, tools that we can choose, but it can be as simple as saying, when are the times in your life where you have felt safe?
So we're bringing awareness to that, but it might be as simple as a technique called exteroception, where we might be, if we're sitting together here now, I might just get you to bring awareness to the different things in this room. So you might start scanning the room as if you've never been in here before.
And start to [00:34:00] actually name things because when we do that, we're actually getting our brain to go chair, light, all of those things. I'm guessing this because this is not always the case, which is interesting and I can give an example of this. But if you're looking at these things in this room, your brain's going, well, that chair is safe.
That light is safe. So our brain starts to settle into the present moment. Whereas for some people, if we go straight to a breathing exercise, that might make them panic. So, and again, that's interesting because it's the thing people will say to do. Just breathe, just breathe, they say.
Sam: And I think what's important there is that.
The way that you have identified it's coming to the present moment because most the time What's causing us to be in high alert is something that's come from the past or a fear of something happening again in the future This is a very yogic term, but it still is very important in this It's very rarely actually [00:35:00] in the present moment if we're in the present moment Fully here, able to identify that there is no threat from you.
Sam: There is no threat from the sofa that I'm sitting on. The room is safe and I can see all the doorways. Then I know that I can actually sit for a moment and let go.
Paula: Yeah. And then once you have really perceived that and you've brought awareness to it, we try to map that state, which means we want our brain and our body to remember it.
What does it feel like in my mind? What does it feel like in my body? That's really important because that's what we want our brain to remember as the new normal.
Sam: That's when I always say, so it's important to let yourself know that you can always come back here. Yeah. Now that you've found it. Yeah. This is a place that you can come back to. And I. I feel like that's it. It's, it's for me. Sometimes it's about creating a place in your home that you can consistently go to and feel [00:36:00] safe. That becomes a safe space in your home, which is why I particularly like having my own meditation space. And I encourage people to have things like that, or even just, um, a safe sofa area, a nook, that is your own nook.
Bedrooms can be that for us sometimes, but not always. And so it's finding places that we can start to train our body to almost take a sigh out when we enter into them. And I feel that's one of the things I really try and do at my yoga space at home, actually make it a place that when people walk in, they go, Oh, it just feels calm here because it's, it's a safe space.
Yeah. So, and safety is something that I feel we struggle to find in our world at the moment. And I think that's because there's so much happening all the time. So much noise, so much interruption. We just really never know what's around the corner. And guarding safe spaces is really
Paula: [00:37:00] important. I think safety is so important to wellness.
Absolutely. And I think that's where having that. I call it the sacred space, your sacred space and your daily practice where you can come home to safety in your body every day.
Sam: That is part. Can you talk about that? Because obviously everyone knows I feel quite strongly about doing something every day, but for you, what do you do and how did that help you in some of the hard times that you've been through?
Paula: Oh, that's such a big question. What do I do? I. It's not the same every day, actually, which is really interesting because like you, when we do yoga, we learn about the sadhanas, the 40 day sadhanas, but I almost need to, I'll always go and sit on my yoga mat. And if that is all I do, I just sit there and ask myself, how am I and what do I need?
That will be like the minimum that I would [00:38:00] do every day. And that's what I often suggest to my patients. That they can sit down and go, how am I right now? Because that could even be mapping their nervous system state.
Sam: What do you mean by that?
Paula: Uh, how's my body? How's my physical body? What am I feeling in my physical body?
What sensations? I prefer to use the word sensation to paint. So what sensations am I feeling? Am I feeling tension or collapse? Am I feeling brain fog or busy? Like what is going on right now?
Sam: Does it get easier to communicate to that to yourself over time? Because even as you're saying that I find sometimes those things are quite hard.
You know, when you sort of go, how are you? I think this is a very woman thing. How are you feeling? We all go fine. We try not to here, but you know, generally we might say fine, because it's actually very hard to name how it is that we're feeling. So is that a bit like a practice, a daily practice, getting used to [00:39:00] finding words?
Do you have words that you help with? Give your clients to practice with because I always remember I would give out things like needs inventories and feelings inventories. Do you do that? I find it because we don't even have the vocab.
Paula: We're not taught this. No, no, we're not taught this. And I think I'm going to botch this up because I can't remember.
Brené Brown talks about how people on average have like three or four. Emotions that they can label, which is insane, isn't it? Like basically happy, angry. That was two of them. I think happy, angry, and maybe two others, but you, you can get something called the wheel of emotions, which is really helpful. So even to sit with that each day and to be able to point at which one you're feeling.
And it's so incredible how helpful that is to be able to go, ha, I'm feeling resentful or I'm feeling jealous. Or it's getting to the word there's underneath the big emotion. So we have been trained to go, I'm angry, but anger isn't actually the [00:40:00] emotion. That's what we're sort of explaining here, but most of the time it's something else that has bought that state.
Anger to be being presented. So it's, what is it? it. Is it that most of the time actually for women, it does seems to be resentment because they tend to have been doing something they don't want to do. And so it's actually getting an unpacking back to what it is that you're actually feeling. And sometimes it could just be tiredness.
I know that just that state of tiredness, but continually pushing through. We'll bring up a state of resentment, which will then manifest as anger. Cause that's when we flip our lid and so, and then we start struggling. So yeah, it's powerful to actually, yeah. Even just sitting for a moment each day and saying, how do I feel? Is that the same with mapping? I can't nervous system. And is that going through the day and thinking what state am I in now?
Paula: Yeah. I mean, I'm still [00:41:00] learning. I'm sure you can say the same, you know, I don't, this is an ongoing thing. Yeah. And, you know, anyone that's done yoga, it's like, Oh, there's layers and layers and layers.
Yeah. But you definitely get better at, I can definitely in the moment go, Oh, I can feel that my heart rate's going up, or I can feel this, or I can feel that, which is great. It can also be overwhelming because you then have to go, Oh God, what do I do about it? How do I, how do I bring that back down? So all of that is a process.
But I think if you can at least start that one time on your mat. As a starting point. And then the more you get better at doing that, the more in the moment you can be in a conversation with someone and they ask you to do something and you can feel your whole body close and say, no, and you can recognize it and go, I might get back to you on that.
And for the first time you've possibly set a boundary, you know, instead of just going, sure, resentment kicks in. [00:42:00] That's wellness, that's part of wellness.
Sam: And that's what we're talking about when we, the phrase, I just want to make sure that we actually cover this. But if we're talking about a window of regulation, is that understanding how we can actually work within our own tolerance, get to a place where we can actually move from one state to another.
And I just love the way that you just described and recognizing that that's us creating a boundary.
Sam: Which maybe for some women, I remember one of the exercises I did on one of the courses I was doing where it was a boundary exercise and it was doing a boundary exercise that I realized I have no boundaries and it actually put me into a complete vague or collapsed state.
I literally started like having a, because I was just like, Oh, I can't even, this is too much. I've never, I've never considered that I can create my own personal space. Wild. So yeah, these are all. Big learnings, aren't they? Yeah.
Paula: And they're
Sam: continual, hey?
Paula: [00:43:00] Yeah. Yeah. They're continual. Absolutely. Yeah.
Sam: Do you find that you Learn your most sitting with the patients that come to you and listening to their stories and
Paula: oh so much.
Sam: Yeah
Paula: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. I think we all see ourselves in each other. Don't we? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely See where you've come. They teach me so much.
Sam: Yeah, that's right.
Paula: And in terms of window of regulation as you were talking about. So things like trauma from our past experiences, pain, all of those things will shorten our window of regulation, which just means it doesn't take much in our daily life to shift out of that ventral vagal state up into sympathetic state or down into dorsal vagal state.
So. The way we go about widening that window is by just slowly putting little bits of stress on ourself, but recovering. That's what's important. We don't want to be in that calm [00:44:00] state all the time. We want to challenge ourselves. But that rest and recovery, like we're talking about that true safety and rest is what we need.
And you hear this with athletes all the time, right? Like think of the top athletes, recovery and rest is just as important as their training,
Sam: which is why, you know, linking this all back into episodes we've done around the cycle. It's why really, if we come back to living a cyclical life, we're going to learn how it is that we can find that space.
Actually have rest around the time when the body is craving it the most and be super active more on At the point when the body is more able to do that and our bodies as women are designed to do that. it's when we're trying to be in that highly active It's a very active achieving zone the entire month that everything starts to go right.
And unfortunately, when we have been through certain things in life, or if we're in a sort of [00:45:00] highly stressful scenarios, highly stressful work, highly stressful relationships, then that's what's happening for us. We never actually have that true downtime. And I think for me, one of the important things is to recognize that sometimes we can feel that the body is relaxing, but the mind isn't.
And I often contemplate that. Actually giving your mind space is a, is a hard thing for women to do, but to, I do it by pretending that, that there is nothing happening. So I kind of pretend sort of bluff my mind a bit and just to give that kind of, well, there's nothing to do. So now you can let go of worrying about everything.
There literally is nothing to do. Everything is stopped. Everything is stopped. Everything is stopped. And, that again, it can be part of that practice, teaching yourself to have those moments, which is when we can use different tools like sound, music, other things that can help us to, to turn off that mind in yoga mantra.
Paula: Yeah, [00:46:00] absolutely. And it's a combination of using what we call top down, which is those mindset practices and bottom up practices, which is the body practices. So hopefully, and I think we have, we have to use both. It can't be one or the other.
Sam: What I love most is coming, driving up when I come to teach yoga and seeing you sitting out under the tree with one of your clients.
I see it with lots of the doctors and the physios here. And of course it's what I do as well, but I absolutely love seeing that. And just watching when you're holding space for them to find safety and rest, whether that's through, I know you do guided visualizations and whether it's just from holding them and listening to the sounds of nature around them.
I just think these moments are, are very, very important in recovery and understanding how we can get back to that space of wellness. So can you just. Share a bit about the course that you're putting together with Peter, Thea, and Brooke. [00:47:00]
Paula: Yeah, so we're putting together a course that is mostly towards pelvic pain, and it's a combination of education around the different factors that influence pain.
Because there's so many, and to use one of Jessica Maguire's quotes, education leads to regulation. So I think it's so important to really understand all of the things that can contribute to pain. But then adding in all of these incredible practices, nervous system regulation tools that bring our mind and body into a state where it can heal.
And it's so powerful. And I really, I like to think of any of those, So, heavy experiences like chronic pain or traumas has opportunities to find growth. And [00:48:00] I feel like when you've had big experiences like I have or pain, what you learn through using these tools is not just getting better from pain or getting your wellness back.
It opens up your entire life and it's something that you possibly wouldn't get had you not experienced. trauma or pain or some kind of adversity. So I think what you get out of these sorts of courses is just this lifelong, incredible skill set that will set you up for an incredible, beautiful, purposeful life.
Sam: That sounds delicious. Is there anything you want to leave us with today? What's your number one piece of advice that you tend to give people?
Paula: I would love all women to really trust and love their bodies because I think our bodies are the most [00:49:00] incredible tool and if we can connect to that innate wisdom that we have, I think life is just Delicious.
It's such a good word. To use your word, I'm going to steal it back. It's such a good word. Yeah, I would love all women to be led back to themselves, led back home. And I think we can do that for each other.
Sam: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your time with us today. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, then please do let us know, um, please reach out and contact us on all the normal ways that you can via our Instagram or via our website.
And we'd love to hear from you on any questions that you have, particularly for Paula or for anyone that you see featuring in our episodes. Thank you.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Women of the Well. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe or follow the podcast and leave a glowing [00:50:00] review so more women like you can find us and get access to empowering and holistic wellness information.
If you'd like to continue the conversation or connect with our online community, visit@verowellness.com au on Instagram. For more resources and information, head to our website, vera wellness.com au.
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DISCLAIMER:
This podcast is for information and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
