Episode 117 | Why Ignoring Your Pain Blocks Your Nervous System From Accessing True Healing with Somatic Expert Jakob Gričar

[00:00:00] Dr. Katie Deming: Hello, I'm Dr. Katie Deming, and this is the Borne Hill Podcast where we share practical tools and knowledge to help you create conditions for true healing in your life. Let's welcome to the show Trauma-Informed Transformational Coach and somatic expert Jakob Gričar. Is that right? Did I pronounce it

[00:00:18] Jakob Gričar: Uh, yeah.

[00:00:19] Dr. Katie Deming: Welcome to the show, Jacob. It's nice to have you.

[00:00:21] Jakob Gričar: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited for this conversation.

[00:00:25] Dr. Katie Deming: Me too. So, you know, Jacob, we've all been told that healing is [00:00:30] about mindset and that if we just think differently, we'll feel differently, but your work turns that idea upside down. Why do you believe that true healing begins in the body, not in the mind.

[00:00:42] Jakob Gričar: there's, um, a part of my story, and I'm sure we're gonna at some point at least touch, touch on that a little bit, is I used to have a chronic skin condition and I realized at some point after processing that, working through that healing, that trying all these different healing [00:01:00] modalities, that it was really, it was stemming from unresolved trauma and stress.

[00:01:05] Jakob Gričar: And as soon as I dealt with that through the level of the body, things started changing as well in the body. Right? So when we have all these symptoms in the body, it's almost unfair to say that they all happen in the mind. And this is the neo pop psychology thing that is starting to come up right now, which is, yeah, just work out on your mindset and your body's going to heal, right?

[00:01:26] Jakob Gričar: Which. Somewhat, it's somewhat true, [00:01:30] but it's missing a core concept. And that's also the reason why majority of the therapy doesn't work. People would sometimes do 10, 20 years of talk therapy, but if it doesn't get to the root cause, which is the traumatic imprints that are stuck inside of the body, things actually don't really get fully resolved.

[00:01:47] Jakob Gričar: So the, the way I look at that and the way I believe, in terms of the body itself, is the body keeps the score. Not just inside of the body, but in the mind body matrix, which is our nervous system. [00:02:00] So when something happened, when we felt unsafe, again, trauma isn't what happened. It's how you responded inside of that space of dysregulation.

[00:02:10] Jakob Gričar: So when your nervous system carries an imprint, then that imprint reflects through all these different ways. A part of that is the mindset. So the imprint in the nervous system is actually where a lot of, things in the psyche stem from. It's hard to resolve things in the psyche when the nervous system is dysregulated.

[00:02:28] Jakob Gričar: So then through the [00:02:30] psyche, you know, there's all these beliefs that get created or the imprints or the injunctions and all of these end up coming back into the body, creating stress, and then ultimately like creating symptoms. So when we look at changing the mindset. That really works in many cases, but I think the thing that goes even deeper than that is working with the body and the nervous system, because oftentimes when we resolve that, then the mindset follows and then the symptoms go [00:03:00] away.

[00:03:00] Dr. Katie Deming: This is really interesting because when was in Western medicine and then I left in 2022 and started an integrative practice. I had no idea.

[00:03:10] Jakob Gričar: Okay.

[00:03:11] Dr. Katie Deming: I literally, all I knew was that what I was doing before was broken and that I wanted to step out into this new space, and I didn't really want to have like formal training because I wanted to feel into what was true for me in my practice, but one of the [00:03:30] things that I found, so I found that, that healing and when I, when I speak of healing for cancer, I'm talking about people who heal naturally, right?

[00:03:37] Dr. Katie Deming: They don't do the things that, you know, Western medicine would say. You have to do this to heal. These are people who have healed without doing those things. The very first thing that I identified that needs to happen is that you need to have a calm, nervous system. That is

[00:03:51] Jakob Gričar: Yeah.

[00:03:52] Dr. Katie Deming: first thing that I learned. So I love this. This is absolutely aligned with what I just know from my practice that you can't [00:04:00] do any of the other work. You can't make progress until you have a calm nervous system.

[00:04:04] Dr. Katie Deming: So I love that you're starting here. Beautiful.

[00:04:08] Jakob Gričar: all healing happens in the ventral be state. So when you are in an activated state, when you're hypervigilant, when you're in like the sympathetic activation, when you're triggered, right? There's none, none of the healing can occur. If you look at the, the deeper states of our nervous system, we've got the rest and digest, which is the social engagement.

[00:04:28] Jakob Gričar: When we connect with other [00:04:30] people, when we digest, when we sleep, those are the, the parasympathetic states, right? But then the really deep, profound, like healing actually happens when we go even beyond that. When we go deeper than that. That's why every, like, majority of us at this point, right? wherever you look on the internet, you know the importance of sleep, you know the importance of getting eight hours or nine hours even of sleep.

[00:04:52] Jakob Gričar: because it's where the regeneration happens, right? And the same regeneration is not gonna happen in an activated system. So that's [00:05:00] why a lot of, I work with a lot of, high performers and entrepreneurs and people who are up to big things in the world, but they often do all these big things at the expense of their health.

[00:05:10] Jakob Gričar: With so much stress just running the show, and then you just stress layered on top of that because of the traumatic influences that they're running the show. And then the body never actually gets to heal, never gets to process. So the first thing that has to happen is to create a calm in the nervous system, to create a space of [00:05:30] regulation to move somebody into the parasympathetic state.

[00:05:33] Jakob Gričar: And then, and only then the body can actually start going through the process of healing.

[00:05:39] Dr. Katie Deming: Beautiful. so, you know, I have ways that I work with people in calming the nervous system, but I'm curious to know like what are the ways that you do this with people? What are the simplest ways that people can calm their nervous system?

[00:05:55] Jakob Gričar: So the simplest ways would be the ones that we all know, but [00:06:00] majority of the people aren't doing them right. So meditation, deep breaths. just like creating spaciousness in the body. There's 4, 7, 8 breaths. There's the becoming aware of like the, the space that's surrounding you. So, for example, naming a couple of things that you can see, a couple of things that you can hear, a few things that you can smell.

[00:06:20] Jakob Gričar: a few things that you can taste. And with that, you're orienting yourself to the present moment. Majority of anxiety, all of the anxiety lives in the [00:06:30] future. Majority of, you know, dysregulation, rumination, blame resentment lives in the past. So if you orient yourself to the present moment, that's already a powerful tool.

[00:06:41] Jakob Gričar: Then it's the, the breath. The breath is one of the biggest things that you can use to regulate yourself. then there's also a few exercises that I like to show to my clients. for example, basic exercise by Stanley Roseberg, which I'm not gonna describe here, but everyone can Google it or search it on YouTube.

[00:06:59] Jakob Gričar: But also [00:07:00] just kind of like the basic ways to start regulating the nervous system. Now, an important thing inside of this is that when there's a traumatic imprint that hasn't been dealt with, then it doesn't matter how much you're trying to regulate yourself, because you're always end up hitting the block inside of that, and there's gonna be a trigger in your surrounding.

[00:07:25] Jakob Gričar: Suddenly you're back in that imprint and you're acting in all these dysregulated [00:07:30] ways and you don't know why, right? And how many people are in a relationship and their partner would say something and suddenly they find themselves just like losing it and acting in the ways that they don't recognize, right?

[00:07:43] Jakob Gričar: And they're like, I don't know who I was. I totally lost myself. And that's that traumatic imprint running the show. So when we talk about regulation, I think what's important to mention, this also the excavation that's gotta happen before the regulation takes place. And in a lot of the work that I do, really deep somatic [00:08:00] trauma work is take going into those deeper spaces, processing the traumatic imprints that are there, and then seeing how regulation just naturally occurs at the other side of it.

[00:08:11] Jakob Gričar: it's our natural way of being, coming back to the Venture Vegas state.

[00:08:14] Dr. Katie Deming: I love that. maybe you can define what is somatic work? You know, like I think a lot of people hear this term, but then they don't know, well, what does that actually mean?

[00:08:25] Jakob Gričar: Yeah, and it's very normal because when something [00:08:30] gets popular, when people see that something works, they tend to take it and then Instagram comes over, right? And then we have the pop psychology terminology just being thrown around all the time. So somatic pretty much just means being in the body,

[00:08:43] Jakob Gričar: working with the body. So that's why we can use somatic in front of almost every, everything. Somatic parts works, somatic breath works, somatic movement. Obviously movement is in nature, already somatic. But in the ways that I'm using somatics, I'm using the term as using [00:09:00] our body as a porter to get to this deeper traumatic imprint.

[00:09:03] Jakob Gričar: Process them and create a sense of resolution. So it's similar to somatic experiencing, for example, by Peter Levine. My mentor is Judith Johnson, founder of, psycho Neuro Energetics, one of the pioneers in somatic work as well. She's 83 years old. And, um, yeah, what we do is we track sensations in the body.

[00:09:23] Jakob Gričar: So a client would come with, for example, a relationship challenge, or they would come with some pain in the body. So it [00:09:30] doesn't matter if it's a relational challenge, if it's a work challenge, if it's the edging on the burnout, right? if it's constant fear or looping in the mind, or if it's pain in the body, regardless of what it is, we go into the body and we start tracking sensations in the body.

[00:09:46] Jakob Gričar: Oftentimes when we listen deep enough, we go past these gross sensations, like pain and, um, you know, tension. And we move into the subtle ones, which are [00:10:00] heaviness or just kind of like this, this heavy or um, tingling or pulsating. And when we get to those sensations, they often open up a body position. So we notice that the body becomes heavy and the body wants to curl up in the bowl, or we feel like we're collapsing, or we feel like jittery and anxious, and that often triggers a memory and that memory.

[00:10:23] Jakob Gričar: Generally happens to be between four to seven, eight years is where most of the people [00:10:30] go. And that's where, for example, um, there's a memory of we wanted to express something but our parents told us to shut up. Right? Or there was a case of like molestation or physical abuse or there was a case of, being separated from a parent or something like that.

[00:10:45] Jakob Gričar: And when that happens. The nervous system remembers that because we're not resourced as children to protect ourselves to consciously and cognitively understand that there's a di different meaning. So if we're separated from the [00:11:00] parent, the child at five years old is not gonna be thinking. That's totally reasonable.

[00:11:04] Jakob Gričar: My dad has to go to work. That totally makes sense. No, the child starts feeling unsafe and I'm alone, and if I'm alone, it's gotta be because of me, therefore I'm unworthy. Right. And then you have this belief, I'm unworthy running the show 30, 40, 50 years later. So what we do is basically we go into those memories and we create a safe space for all of that to be brought up.

[00:11:28] Jakob Gričar: Once it's brought up, [00:11:30] there's often a somatic response that comes with it. So that's why, and it's not prompted, it's not like forced, like for example, in breath work, some you, you need to force the breath, right? but here it's like the body does whatever the body naturally wants to do to release.

[00:11:45] Jakob Gričar: And sometimes that's a lot of crying. Sometimes that's screaming, sometimes that's shaking and it just naturally occurs and it processes through the body. And, and on the other side of that. Generally people start coming back to themselves. It's the [00:12:00] easiest way to put it. Or maybe another way would be suddenly recognizing that there's a connection to higher power, which is, um, you know, in our venture VA state, we tend to feel connected to everything.

[00:12:13] Jakob Gričar: We tend to feel that feeling of unconditional love.

[00:12:15] Dr. Katie Deming: Beautiful. Well, and you know, wondering.

[00:12:21] Jakob Gričar: you said it could be relational, it could be physical pain. Like I'm thinking right now, because I, my practice is prolonged water fasting

[00:12:29] Jakob Gričar: [00:12:30] Mm-hmm.

[00:12:30] Dr. Katie Deming: I have several people in my water fasting program right now who have extreme pain they can't take anything.

[00:12:38] Dr. Katie Deming: Right, because you're water fasting. and then they're just present with the pain. Even if it's not related to like a trauma, how, how would you approach someone like that? I'm just thinking if, this is one of the real challenges in my practice right now is physical pain, people who experience physical pain and there's, you know, the water fasting makes them be fully present now with the [00:13:00] pain and they haven't had to do that.

[00:13:03] Dr. Katie Deming: Right. They've been able to, whether it was take medications or distract themselves or whatever, and now it's like fully present and they can't sleep. They can't focus on anything other than it, I'm wondering. you have thoughts about that, like how, how do you, how does it work with physical pain like that?

[00:13:18] Jakob Gričar: So many thoughts about it. That's my favorite place to be. And I, I say that as somebody who used to really distract myself. I used to find any ways that I could to numb. Right? And if [00:13:30] we look at the nature of addiction. We often look at addiction as like, that's not me, right? That's them. Or like, you know, I'm not doing substances, therefore I'm not an addict.

[00:13:39] Jakob Gričar: But the addiction essentially is a nervous system regulation, strategy and addiction can be addiction to social media, to food, to, going out and connecting with friends. It can also be addiction to, personal development, which I'm assuming a lot of your listeners are into, right? It's like, how can I like learn more or consume more?

[00:13:59] Jakob Gričar: All of [00:14:00] these are the ways that we tend to numb from the things that we avoid feeling. And behind all of that generally is some form of pain. So even with heartbreak, for whoever is watching this, or with you, if you've ever been heartbroken, like you know that it feels like physically somebody is ripping the heart out of your chest, right?

[00:14:19] Jakob Gričar: And that physical pain is often why people turn towards substance. That's why, you know, when there's a breakup, you go out with your friends and you drink 'cause you wanna forget about it, or you try to find another [00:14:30] partner really quick so you don't have to think about it. But if you just be radically present with that pain in your chest, oftentimes again, as I was sharing, it's gonna take you really, really deep and it tells you a story.

[00:14:43] Jakob Gričar: And I remember when I was going through one of the most hard shattering breakups, uh, year, exactly a year ago actually,almost, almost to the date. Maybe a little bit longer. it was, I, I, I sat with the pain, and I remember I couldn't sleep. It was just so much pain in my [00:15:00] chest, and then I, the story started unfolding and it wasn't any longer about the other person.

[00:15:08] Jakob Gričar: It became about my childhood when I was so deeply seeking love from my parents, and they were so busy working to try to keep us alive. And I remember just like being heartbroken in those moments and that pain of longing for love, that then manifested in, you know, seeking different romantic partners and all of that.

[00:15:26] Jakob Gričar: And the reason why I share that is because physical pain was there. [00:15:30] And oftentimes if we're just really, really present with the pain, not just being present with it so that it goes away, but being present because it's there and it's trying to show us something and welcoming it, it starts telling us a story and a memory.

[00:15:46] Jakob Gričar: So majority of the people who have, who are experiencing a lot of physical pain do have certain traumatic imprints, and that pain is just trying to communicate. Now when you deal with things, you can deal with them really [00:16:00] quickly, right? If I have, for example, the breakup, if, if I take that breakup because I sat with it, because I processed it,I was three weeks in different processes around un uncovering different things in my psyche.

[00:16:12] Jakob Gričar: This is no longer in my body, but let's say that what I did was pushed it away. And drank it away, or smoked it away or numbed it away, or Instagram scored it away, or even personal development it away, you know, what would've happened is that those whispers [00:16:30] of pain would then become screams and that then manifests, in my opinion, from my philosophy, that manifests as chronic illness

[00:16:37] Dr. Katie Deming: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:38] Jakob Gričar: manifest as cancer, that manifest as, you know, different disease.

[00:16:41] Jakob Gričar: I say that as somebody who used to have an autoimmune, and it was the same kind of like digging into where is this coming from, where is that dysregulation that ended up like untangling it. So for, for your specific case, I, that's why I love fasting as well, and I feel like fasting [00:17:00] with a very specific intention to connect to a higher power and to also like.

[00:17:07] Jakob Gričar: Release and rebuke these things from the body to like, you know, really, uncover everything that is hidden is even more powerful. When you go into those spaces and you're like, not just fasting for the sake of fasting, but fasting for the sake of completely dissolving all of the traumatic imprints in the body can be really, really powerful.

[00:17:26] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, well that's what I see. It's interesting 'cause everyone [00:17:30] comes to me because they want their tumor to go away,

[00:17:32] Jakob Gričar: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:32] Dr. Katie Deming: 'cause there's the whole Mitophagy thing that if you fast for longer than seven days, the body will start to use disease tissue. So that's what they all. Come to me for, but what's interesting is I'm like, I know that's why you came, but that's really not like why I am so excited that you're here.

[00:17:48] Dr. Katie Deming: And what I see, because exactly what you describe is emotions come to the surface. Things are much easier to release. They don't have Their drug of choice, of

[00:17:59] Jakob Gričar: [00:18:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:18:00] Dr. Katie Deming: whether, you know, because I have 'em off the internet and, limit their screen time and they're, you know, not working.

[00:18:06] Dr. Katie Deming: So they're, you know, stuck with themselves. And what's interesting, I love actually the way that you described that is because this is the way that I talk to them about the ones who have physical pain is that, you know, yes we're here for the physical healing and to eradicate cancer, but. The healing of the cancer actually comes from a healed human being.

[00:18:27] Dr. Katie Deming: And so what we're really doing here is we're [00:18:30] connecting with our authentic self, with our source, and releasing all of that baggage, the trauma that we've accumulated on this journey. And so you can use that pain to become more present. So I'm glad that I'm, like, I'm not off base with, that's the way that we've been approaching it.

[00:18:48] Dr. Katie Deming: And I have other coaches, like I have an emotional release coach who works on techniques around that. But, that is my experience. The ones who are able to use the pain as a way to go in and to become even more present with [00:19:00] what's underneath there, it's beautiful, but I also realize it's really hard, right?

[00:19:05] Dr. Katie Deming: People come into the fast. It's hard to fast and then to be in this physical pain, some people are just looking to me like, how do you take this away? But I know that the healing doesn't come from taking it away. It comes from being able to be with it and dissolve it.anyway, I, you just confirmed at least what I've been doing so far.

[00:19:25] Dr. Katie Deming: So I, I feel better.

[00:19:27] Jakob Gričar: Yeah, and it's a, it's an interesting, [00:19:30] paradigm of being with something because you want it to be gone, right? Because what you resist persists. And what I've learned through my journey with chronic illness is it wasn't sitting with, its so that it would go away. It was radically falling in love. With the skin disease that I had, right?

[00:19:51] Jakob Gričar: So if I can fall in love with my quote unquote condition, if I can like meet it, welcome it, talk to it, you know, [00:20:00] allow it to be here for as long as it wants, then it actually ends up going away because then it feels mad, it feels heard, it feels experienced, and it opens up the story of like where this is actually coming from.

[00:20:12] Jakob Gričar: But if you're being, for example. With grief, we, we know that, you know, in order to be with an emotion, you have to like feel it all the way through. Very cliche, but it's also true. But if you're only with the emotion, because you know that it's gonna go away [00:20:30] at the end, you're not really being with it.

[00:20:32] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah.

[00:20:32] Jakob Gričar: So it's being with the pain, but not being with the pain.

[00:20:36] Jakob Gričar: So that it goes away is just being with the pain. Just be with it. Just allow it to be there. Experiencing the world as it is, and something that is interesting in like the transformational coaching space is what is transformation? What is growth? Growth is really just the discomfort that you don't run away from.

[00:20:54] Jakob Gričar: The more discomfort that you can be with, the more you grow. So can you look at the pain as [00:21:00] the biggest opportunity for your growth and then just welcome it and want it, and then life becomes like series of wanting challenges and encouraging challenges and welcoming challenges, and then suddenly you have a much beautiful life.

[00:21:14] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, well that is how we grow. We don't grow when everything is calm and stable. We grow when there are challenges. And I love that you said that too, because that is also my experience is [00:21:30] that.with the fast, what I find and what's interesting is I think what's beautiful about fasting is literally. You don't really need to do it because it happens naturally for them because they're just being present with what is. But this exact idea of not wanting the cancer to go away, but just surrendering to what is in this moment. And if the cancer is here, it's here as a teacher, let's be with it. Let's just welcome whatever it's bringing for [00:22:00] us. Because if we don't learn to do that, exactly what you said, we're resisting and then that's gonna persist and that's what's creating the dis-ease in the body.I'm finding that I think our work overlaps so beautifully. It's, it's

[00:22:14] Jakob Gričar: Yeah.

[00:22:15] Dr. Katie Deming: similar. yeah. So I, you know, I'm, I'm curious like, how for you let's take your skin condition

[00:22:22] Jakob Gričar: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:23] Dr. Katie Deming: were like. How, how did you work through that on your own to come to the place where you are now with [00:22:30] doing, you know, what is your story of, of moving from this place of illness into using this in your work with somatic practices?

[00:22:37] Jakob Gričar: I dealt with a skin condition when I was about 10 years old and going all the way until I was about 13, 14, and. As a teenager, having face and neck and arms full of rashes, um, basically really affected my sense of self-worth and the ability to be with other kids.

[00:22:57] Jakob Gričar: And I attended, like I started [00:23:00] isolating, I developed insomnia 'cause I was scratching myself all night. I would bleed when I would wake up because of all the scratching and, um. Developed insomnia and then also developed depression. And when I was about 14 years old, I got into personal development.

[00:23:16] Jakob Gričar: It's a long story how my parents were not that into it. but I found a book that led me to another book that led me to another book. And suddenly I was reading about Hypnosis meditation, Buddhism, Hinduism, and started meditating. [00:23:30] And at 14 years old, meditating about two to three hours a day, um, that's what really brought me into this space of looking inside and looking into the mind, looking into the thoughts, looking into the belief systems, and then eventually also looking into the body.

[00:23:45] Jakob Gričar: And it was the Buddhist practice of Vipassana. There was the tracking, the sensations in the body that actually allowed me to fully be with first the condition itself. Then over time I started really seeing all the [00:24:00] ways that I can meet it. Not just being with it, but actually loving it, caring for it, you know, appreciating it.

[00:24:06] Jakob Gričar: And within a couple of months of doing that, my skin disease went away. So that was when I was 14 years old. and. That created a lot of rage inside of me. 'cause I've been to every me western medicine doctor that was, you know, in the proximity of our house when I was growing up. so eventually I was like, you know, have the system and I need to go.

[00:24:29] Jakob Gričar: So I ended up [00:24:30] traveling the world. when I was 18, I left, I left the country that I'm from, which is Lavinia. Went through homelessness, went through a lot of adverse experiences, ended up in India, studied yoga and specifically Jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge with the, with the Hindu in the ashrams.

[00:24:46] Jakob Gričar: Then moved to the Amazon, worked with indigenous people for close to two years, on and off, with plant medicine. So went really deep into that space. Then eventually worked in the retreat spaces, opened up two retreats, got into [00:25:00] facilitation space, was teaching yoga, leading workshops, working with so many different healers, everything from sound healing to alternative medicines, to stem cells, to biohacking retreats.

[00:25:12] Jakob Gričar: and then eventually I met one of my mentors, Judith Johnson, a few years ago, and she's one of the pioneers in somatic work. And as soon as we met, we connected, we met through, one of my business partners and, um, she just started putting her life's work with into me. And I would talk to [00:25:30] her every other day, sometimes like weekly on calls and ask her questions, how do you work with people in, in car accidents?

[00:25:36] Jakob Gričar: How do you work with people that are your, these, how do you work with people that are dead? And she just, at some point she was like, Jacob, I think you should just come over to my place and just, you know, spend a week with me. So I stayed a week with her in North Carolina and in that one week I learned more about somatics than I did before that in like the entire coaching certification program.

[00:25:56] Jakob Gričar: Um, which then led me to spending three months with her, [00:26:00] rerecording her entire modality and like really being deeply mentored by her for the next two years. And then, um. Bringing that into the work that I was doing at that point, I was working with a lot of high performance. I was doing high performance coaching and then bridging high performance with somatics was a totally different thing.

[00:26:17] Jakob Gričar: 'cause it's no longer about how can I achieve in the world and how can I, you know, just like hustle and like do more. But it's also like, what can I remove and like move out of the way and excavate. [00:26:30] So that the doing actually happens from who I'm being and I'm no longer chasing something outside of myself to fill the void that can never be filled.

[00:26:38] Jakob Gričar: but yeah, it was, it was through a lot of like illness and adversity that I got stood adopt a lot of different transformation and mindsets, and then just being so grateful to have the privilege and the blessing of being poured into by mentors and elders.

[00:26:54] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, that's a beautiful story. And, and you actually did that nicely. It's a very long story that you made [00:27:00] very short, but what a privilege to have a mentor like that who can pour into and really, you know, for her is passing the knowledge forward Right. To the next generation. 'cause she's in her eighties now, right?

[00:27:14] Jakob Gričar: Yeah, she's 83.

[00:27:16] Dr. Katie Deming: Wow. Yeah, so that's, that's beautiful. And so, you know, my listeners, many of them are healing majors so I'm an oncologist and that's a lot of the people who listen to [00:27:30] my, podcast. I'm wondering. Thinking about somatics and healing physical illness, like you just described that with the skin condition, but like where does someone start who's looking to heal illness and using somatics as part of that?

[00:27:49] Jakob Gričar: Yeah, the depth to which you can go inside of yourself, I would say, is determined by who you have in your corner. And I'm still a very [00:28:00] big fan of, you know, mentorship. I have a business mentor, I have Judith in my corner. I have a lot of people who I have for different things. And whenever I'm in a process, and at this point I've held for hundreds and hundreds of clients, so I can process myself through almost everything as well.

[00:28:20] Jakob Gričar: But sometimes I don't want to, you know, and I just, I just call one of the people who I have in my corner as my somatic therapist, or I call my mentor Judith. so I'd say the best [00:28:30] place to start is by not doing it alone. Finding somebody who can guide you in the places that you probably wouldn't go on your own.

[00:28:37] Jakob Gričar: Because if you were able to do it on your own, you would've probably done it already. So that's kind of like the perspective through each and coming, through is because a lot of people are saying, I did that already, or I did that. Obviously hasn't worked for you, right? So, um, you might just need a different perspective or somebody to actually hold you in it.

[00:28:56] Jakob Gričar: And I know for myself, all the things that I was going through that [00:29:00] Judith was holding me through, for example, in the somatic sessions, I could have probably taken myself to a, probably around 40% of the same depth. So I just wanna frame that before I go into the actual answer is, what I'd recommend.

[00:29:17] Jakob Gričar: Yeah.

[00:29:17] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, I think I, you know, this is a really important point too, because trauma plays an important part in physical illness. that is the one thing that actually [00:29:30] now I know is truer than anything else, is that emotional trauma is. Like, I would say 90% of illness. I mean that, and that's pretty bold as an oncologist who was practicing traditional medicine to come out and say that.

[00:29:46] Dr. Katie Deming: But that is really what I see. And the one thing is that you need people Okay. Who know what they're doing in this space, because this is the other thing too, is if someonehas trauma and then their [00:30:00] healing illness, you can actually re-traumatize yourself and make the process worse. And actually, that's one of the things where I've become very cautious about the techniques and the tools that I use for people who are healing illness. Because the last thing that you want is to re-traumatize and kick up all of this stuff that can just complicate an already traumatic experience of being sick, right? They have a history of trauma, and then now they're sick, which is a trauma, and so you can really get yourself into a [00:30:30] bad spot. So it is really important to have people in your corner that can guide you in these ways of healing so that you don't end up harming yourself, you know, and, and being in a worse spot than when you started.

[00:30:42] Jakob Gričar: Yeah, and it wouldn't really be trauma informed from me to say exactly how people can start doing it on their own just because of that and exactly what you shared right now. because it can retraumatize you if you don't have the capacity to resource yourself [00:31:00] when you're inside of that space. So. What happens in the somatic session is that we bring all of it up on the surface in a safe space.

[00:31:08] Jakob Gričar: What that creates is a healing vortex because your body wants to heal, your body naturally wants to move towards healing, but there's also trauma vortex, which is, I love to speak in metaphors and analogies and stories, and if we look at, for example, in relationships. Somebody who had an abusive father, is likely going to look for a man who's going to be [00:31:30] abusive in her relationships because the psyche, it's not neurosis, it's just the psyche's way of reenacting the same situations so that it finds a different result.

[00:31:40] Jakob Gričar: Right? So what I wanted to confirm is that I'm worthy, right? I'm worthy, I'm good enough. I can be loved just for who I am and because the way that that was shown to me that it's not true through abuse in childhood, then I look at the same level of abuse to show me something different.[00:32:00] but that's generally not how it works.

[00:32:01] Jakob Gričar: That's not gonna happen, right? So then like the person finds herself in, or himself in the same relationship over and over and over and over again because psych is way of wanting to resolve it. So that's what Retraumatization is. So you find yourself in the same situation bringing in like these deep, vulnerable parts of yourself, but in a way that it's not safe in the place.

[00:32:25] Jakob Gričar: That it's not safe. And when somebody attempts to bring their own [00:32:30] traumatic things up on the surface, but not having the ability to resource themself, it can create retraumatization. so I would say when you ask that question, how can somebody start? I would say what I shared in the beginning is starting with the breath, starting with regulation first.

[00:32:45] Jakob Gričar: So the more you can learn to regulate yourself, the more you start building the ability to resource yourself. I would say doing that before bringing anything else up is really important. So that's the ability [00:33:00] to, if I'm activated, how do I come back to calm? If I'm dysregulated, how do I move myself back to venture VA to the regulated space?

[00:33:09] Jakob Gričar: Right? If I'm triggered by my partner, how do I like calm myself down? So when those practices become like. Really, ingrained and like natural. Then I would say you can start touching something deeper, but not going straight into that. And the biggest, the biggest learning or the biggest ability that somebody can do [00:33:30] in terms of somatics is just learning how to track sensations.

[00:33:33] Jakob Gričar: And that's also like what a lot of Buddhist meditations are based on. Vipasana, for example, is tracking sensations in the body. Now what sensation is not. And that's where most people go when I say, what do you notice in the body? They're gonna go like, oh, it's just like a lot of frustration because that person said that to me and that person said that.

[00:33:52] Jakob Gričar: And it's like, Nope, that's not what you're noticing in the body. No, that's all in your mind. So it's also a lot of my work [00:34:00] is bringing people back to the body. Right. So what are you actually noticing when you think about that frustration? That frustration's there, what do you notice? And the sensations are heaviness, tension, tightness, lightness, tingling, pulsating, heaviness, density, heat, cold.

[00:34:18] Jakob Gričar: So all of these describe sensations and it's really important for somebody to get in touch with, like actually noticing what's happening in the body.

[00:34:25] Dr. Katie Deming: Beautiful. I'm wondering if there are any [00:34:30] misconceptions about somatic therapy that people, I'm just wondering 'cause it's like one of those things where, In my space. There are definitely things that are misconceptions that people it's this way with natural healing or whatever, but it's quite the opposite.

[00:34:46] Dr. Katie Deming: And I'm wondering if in somatics, if there are any things like that where most people, they think about this and then they're like, oh, they have this misconception about somatics or not, maybe not.

[00:34:54] Jakob Gričar: I'm not sure, I think I'm so deep in it that I dunno what people are talking that are not in it.[00:35:00]

[00:35:00] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah.

[00:35:00] Jakob Gričar: so I'd be curious to actually like, look at that now that you mention it. but I do, I do see something inside of it that I also wanna speak to, which is. Just getting caught up in the trap of needing to always process something.

[00:35:16] Jakob Gričar: And I think that's something that a lot of people that see this kind of work,have the awareness about. It's just like, why do I need to go back into, you know, my traumatic thing? Why do I need to keep processing something? and I'd say [00:35:30] the only reason to ever go back to a traumatic memory is if it's in any way.

[00:35:37] Jakob Gričar: Anyway, affecting you right now, so that it gets processed and it gets resolved so that you can reorient and realign to living your best life. And I don't think life is at all about healing. I think life is about living and healing happening as a byproduct. The view actually aligning yourself to something bigger.

[00:35:57] Jakob Gričar: I think the misconception [00:36:00] maybe that you, you know, I also had this judgment around somatics for a while was, oh, this is all about just kind of like trauma work and we keep digging up more and we keep digging up more. And I think this is coming from the place where, if we look at how we adopted.

[00:36:14] Jakob Gričar: Western psychology or Western psychotherapy was based on like Freudian teachings, right? Which was studying people who were psychotic and neurotic. and at the same time there was like younger right after, right? And there was Adler. And Adlerian [00:36:30] Psychology for example, there's a belief that there's an end to therapy.

[00:36:35] Jakob Gričar: There's an end line. When you reach the end goal and it gets confirmed by the community, you're done. You don't need more therapy. Whereas like the Freudian therapy is like, let's keep digging up more, right? If it's something, if it's not here, then it's something about your mother, and if it's not about your mother, it's about your grandmother.

[00:36:52] Jakob Gričar: So I think this was also the judgment I had about Somatics, which was like, we can always dig up more.

[00:36:57] Dr. Katie Deming: Mm.

[00:36:58] Jakob Gričar: that's true.so what [00:37:00] I find really important is that we don't just do somatic work. For example, in my coaching practice, it's like somatic makes, meets like actual coaching, which is the integration exercises.

[00:37:09] Jakob Gričar: Like what do you do and how do you show up in the world? Like what do you do differently after these peak experiences? 'cause that's all they are. And it's not that, that different to psychedelics, right? Like you are able to have the biggest mind blowing. Eyeopening moments, but actually what do you do with it after, you know?

[00:37:27] Jakob Gričar: And I'd say that is just as important. I know I [00:37:30] strayed a little bit far off the question, but.

[00:37:33] Dr. Katie Deming: No, actually that, that's perfect. I think that that like, and I love that,idea of the digging and digging and digging, because that's the one thing too that I see as people,Are like, why do I have to go back and I don't wanna go back into these things?

[00:37:48] Dr. Katie Deming: And that's actually how some of the therapies that I found have been the most effective in this setting. psych K has been a very effective setting, practice because it works on the [00:38:00] subconscious and you don't actually need to go back and know exactly what happened in that moment. You just have to connect with it, and then you can actually release it in from the subconscious mind.

[00:38:10] Dr. Katie Deming: And I think that. People get scared by that idea. That's, oh my gosh, it's gonna be so deep. And then it's just gonna like be more and more and more and more. And we're just gonna dig and dig and dig and, so I love that you brought that aspect up. And in, in my mind, the, the integration is everything. Like if you don't, and that's actually one [00:38:30] of the things that people come out of a water fast.

[00:38:32] Dr. Katie Deming: Like it is like plant medicine. It's the hard way. You

[00:38:35] Jakob Gričar: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:35] Dr. Katie Deming: it's the hard way of getting that result, but. If they don't integrate it, it's for nothing, and so the integrationI would say even more important than actually what comes through, because if you don't know how to take now has been revealed to you, and then integrate it into your life. It's gone. But then [00:39:00] the other thing about this, and this is a spiritual, principle, is that you can't forget something that you have learned that is deeply spiritual. You can pretend like you forgot it and you can ignore it. But once something is revealed that has like a very deep spiritual, significance. That's actually always there. And then if you ignore it, they go back on with their life, it actually throws them out [00:39:30] of balance because they're not pulling forward what's been revealed to them. And I don't even know if that makes sense, but I know that to be true. And my mentor has also told us that, that when something, be careful what you know. Because once you know it, you can't go back. You can't go and retrograde and pretend like you can, and that's what many humans do. But if you do it, it's gonna throw you off balance.

[00:39:58] Jakob Gričar: Yeah. Yeah. [00:40:00] It's, it's actually the pretending of not knowing is one of the worst things that you can do. And it's also the same with telling the truth, right? And, and hiding. And if. You know, whoever is listening to this, if, if you've ever lied about something, you know what carrying a life feels like in your body is just intolerable.

[00:40:20] Jakob Gričar: Right? And, it's, it's what you can't say that owns you. It what and what you hide that runs you. And in the same way [00:40:30] as. When you know the truth and you know, you know what needs to be done and what's the right course of action in your life, right? You know, you shouldn't be in that relationship. You know that this job is not like fulfilling you and that you're meant for something different, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and you still choose to look away from that and leave not in integrity with what you know to be true.

[00:40:52] Jakob Gričar: That's where a lot of like this disconnect also tends to happen in the psyche.

[00:40:57] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, and that's [00:41:00] one of the pieces that was, I knew that I had to leave Western Medicine, that when I had that shared death experience, and I, you know, had that realization like, I have to leave. I knew that if I didn't follow that, that at the end of my life that I would regret that. And I've been around enough people who at the end of their life, because as an oncologist, I've been with thousands of people who've been at the end of their life, knew that was their number one regret. I [00:41:30] hadn't had the courage to be authentic to myself. And I actually think that of all the things that come through for my people who fast, it's that connection to their authentic self and then the ability to express it. I think that is the essence of why we're here, right? We're, we're here to find that.

[00:41:48] Dr. Katie Deming: Who are we authentically by stripping back all the conditioning, but then once you find it, have to actually live it. You know, and that's the hard part. Like I, I mean it was, [00:42:00] you know, it came to me, it was like, you gotta leave Western medicine. And then I'm like, oh my God. if I actually follow this, this is like blowing up my whole life.

[00:42:07] Dr. Katie Deming: I have like, I don't know how I'm gonna make money. And, but that's the where the rubber hits the road. It's like, can I be who I authentically now have seen myself to be in order to live in, you know, coherence with that truth.

[00:42:25] Jakob Gričar: Yeah, and you just can't, not really.it's also a [00:42:30] lot of people that I work with, tend to see the exact point when they knew that things could be different or should be different or that something else is meant for them. Even if you look at relationships. Majority of the people who are in relationships that they don't like and they're unhappy, knew before they got married, you know, that this person is not for me, but something like normally a traumatic imprint was like, no, because all your other partners were toxic.

[00:42:58] Jakob Gričar: Now go with this one. 'cause [00:43:00] they're safe. Right? But they knew that that's not the right person for them. or vice versa, right? Something inside of them were like, no, this is just another, you know, like abusive relationship. But because that's what they were used to and that was what was comfortable, they end up staying inside of that space and people holding to the jobs because that's all they know.

[00:43:19] Jakob Gričar: And because it offers this space of stability, you cannot follow that. Like authenticity is much higher frequency than even love in terms of, you know, the frequency of like [00:43:30] emotion. So.once you really recognize what you're meant here for and like where you should be going or like what your soul is calling for, to deny that instinct is to just slowly die.

[00:43:42] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think that honestly, honestly is part of what makes people sick. You know, staying in that relationship that you know is not right for you, staying in that job, that's not right for you. Doing things that are not aligned with who you are [00:44:00] as your authentic self can make you sick. You know, and so that's the, you know, the first thing I told you was, I know that you need to have a calm, nervous system to heal.

[00:44:09] Dr. Katie Deming: the other three are calming nervous system and then detoxing on all the levels, physically, mentally, emotionally, and then nourishing on all the levels, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. And then the fourth thing is aligning with your authentic self. Like that to me is healing like those four [00:44:30] things. If you can bring those four things together, the body naturally wants to heal once those conditions are met. And I, and I do believe, I've seen so many people at the end of their life regret. Not having, been authentic to themselves that, I don't know this to say that makes people sick, but I can tell you I've seen it enough and I also see it in my practice, that those people who finally come clean with the pieces of their life that are out of integrity and out of [00:45:00] connection with their authentic self are the ones that heal.

[00:45:03] Jakob Gričar: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's coming clean, it's making amends letting go of the resentment. It's forgiving. and in, in my opinion, it's also the connection to higher power, the connection to something that's larger than ourselves, and then also aligning our lives to something that's bigger. And I noticed that for, for me, I was in a constant chase and search of like, you know, the new for me was personal development since I was pretty much [00:45:30] 15 was, it was like, what else can I do for myself?

[00:45:34] Jakob Gričar: What other book can I read so that I am better? Right? It's personal development, developing of self, and I think this whole movement is just so obsessed with self, but when you align to something that is bigger than self, like. To whatever your purpose is to be here, serving others, serving lives, serving God, however that looks right then oftentimes the healing happens as a byproduct.

[00:45:58] Jakob Gričar: 'cause even in [00:46:00] the anxiety is a big one for a lot of people, right? So anxiety that's there. The anxiety just doesn't exist when you're in focus. When you're living the life that is so much bigger and so much deeper. It's like you don't have time to be anxious about that little thing in your life, right?

[00:46:17] Jakob Gričar: What that person said or what people think about you when you, you know, appear on Instagram or whatever that is. All of that just tends to dissolve when like the focus is so much bigger.

[00:46:27] Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, and that's [00:46:30] the one thing that I've found is that, you know, the beautiful spot where we can create much bigger than we can imagine is when we align our authentic gifts and like what's coming through and what we're passionate about. With serving something greater, you know, serving other people, serving the all serving, you know, the planet. That is when the magic happens in my mind, is when you're aligning with that, you [00:47:00] know, connection with something bigger than yourself so that you're using your gifts, your excitement, your passion to bring something that is providing value in the world. I a hundred percent agree with that. I love it.

[00:47:13] Dr. Katie Deming: Well, it's been amazing to speak with you. Where can people find you?

[00:47:18] Jakob Gričar: So heading over to either my Instagram or my website, J-A-K-O-B-G-R-I-C-A R.com, or the Instagram has exactly the same handle. And yeah, feel [00:47:30] free to check out what's going on there. A lot of it is just. Me connecting. So feel free to reach out and if somebody's resonating with all of that and send a message and say, hi, I saw you on this podcast and would really love to connect.

[00:47:44] Jakob Gričar: It's one of my favorite things.

[00:47:46] Dr. Katie Deming: I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure.

[00:47:50] Jakob Gričar: Thank you so much for having me.

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