Vibrant You

Trauma and the Nervous System: A Whole Body Healing Approach to Mental Health With Somatic Experiencing with Amanda Huffman

• Bindi Stables • Episode 50

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Text Bindi!

Trauma is not stored in your brain. It's stored in your body.

In this week's episode, I'm chatting with Amanda Huffman, LCSW, SEP. on a whole body healing approach to mental health and trauma release.

Amanda is a Somatic Psychotherapist and Integrative Nutrition Specialist with over 20 years of experience. Her passion is to journey with others as they heal from trauma and complex PTSD. She also owns a 13-acre organic farm that will soon be a trauma healing retreat center.   

In this episode you'll learn:

  • What is Somatic Psychotherapy (and how it differs from conventional psychotherapy) for trauma healing and mental health
  • Why conventional therapy might be keeping you stuck in your trauma for years
  • "But I don't have trauma?! I haven't experienced anything that traumatic..." (This might surprise you... you have.)
  • How to know if trauma or past emotional experiences are contributing to your physical health concerns
  • The role of the nervous system in emotional release/trauma healing (and how we can learn to regulate it!)
  • The missing link to healing trauma (it's not learning how to calm your nervous system...)
  • What exactly is the vagus nerve and what practical tools to support it for optimal physical and emotional wellness?
  • Your mental health starts in your gut! The gut microbiome, neurotransmitter, and mental health connection

Links:
Amanda's Website
Schedule a consultation with Amanda

Social Media:
Facebook @thefunctionalpsychotherapist
Instagram @thefunctionalpsychotherapist

Retreat Farm:
Facebook @SugarCreekFarmRetreat
Instagram @sugar_creek_farm

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

I’d love to connect with you on IG: www.instagram.com/bindistables

Visit my website for more resources and ways to work with me: www.bindistables.com

Bindi:

Welcome to the Vibrant you podcast. I'm your host, bindi Stables, and here we talk all things wellness and vibrant living. You'll learn about integrative health, functional medicine, holistic biohacking and enjoy raw and real conversations on personal growth, mindset and motivation. Optimize your body and mind and become the happiest, the healthiest, most vibrant. You Enjoy the show. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vibrant you. I am here today with Amanda Huffman, who is a somatic psychotherapist and integrative nutrition specialist. Her passion is to journey with others as they heal from trauma and complex PTSD. Amanda is also building an amazing 13-acre organic farm that is being built as a trauma healing retreat center. I'm so excited about her mission in this. Today, amanda and I are getting into all things somatic healing psychotherapy, a functional and mind-body approach to vibrant physical health and mental, emotional well-being. Thank you so much for being here today, Amanda.

Amanda:

Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Bindi:

Of course. Well, I would love to hear Amanda tell us your story. How did you get to where you are today, doing this amazing work that you now do?

Amanda:

Yeah, it's been an interesting journey. I was trained as a psychotherapist down in Austin, texas and, you know, really became friends with a psychiatrist there. He was really interested in functional medicine and he worked a lot with children and was looking for a way like how do we help people with mental health without putting them on pharmaceuticals? And so, you know, he and I would have all these great conversations and you know, gut health and microbiome and you know this was like 10 years ago but it really kind of set me off on that path of wanting to learn more. So when he got the training and the you know, integrative nutrition because I wanted to be able to talk to my clients about that and how important diet is and exercise and possible supplementation if they need it it's kind of grown from there and I think really like kind of like a hyperdrive.

Amanda:

At the end of 20, I guess it was 2021 now and my dad was diagnosed with cancer and so I just went down the rabbit hole learning all that I could about the microbiome and it's really actually very interesting with his type of cancer how the gut starts to shift and change and people you know, people don't know how significant it is. It's like people can be. It can take like an immunotherapy drug and not respond at all to it. They can do work on their microbiome, take the same medicine and then suddenly it works and they respond to it. And so that's kind of like what really kind of threw me all into this and I wanted to learn as much as I could, you know, for him, to help keep him healthy, but also for my clients.

Amanda:

And you know, just came full circle. I always had this vision of like I want to do a retreat center and I wanted to have a little therapy cal running around and this like just kind of dovetailed with it. So well, because it's like the importance of organic food and, you know, toxin free living and all of that just started to come. So here I am, I'm back in Kentucky and you know, on 13 acres and we're building as quickly as we can to get it set up and growing food and just what was out there yesterday planting seeds. So, you know, excited to see it grow.

Bindi:

Oh, I love that. Thanks so much for sharing, and I so agree with you just on the importance of all of these other factors when it comes to our mental and emotional well being. So let's get into that. When we think of like conventional psychotherapy or counseling psychiatry kind of in the traditional sense, it's very one sided. I'd love to hear what is somatic psychotherapy and how does it differ from traditional or conventional modes of psychotherapy.

Amanda:

Yeah, it's very different, right. So, like my training right out of grad school was all seated seated psychotherapy, talk therapy, you know, analyzing. And one of my very first jobs right out of grad school was in a psychiatric hospital and you're seeing people come in that have these histories of trauma and you know they would come back and they would come back because the medication just wasn't helping the level of depression that they were suffering from or anxiety. It was kind of crazy how it happened. I had a friend go hey, there's this training coming to Austin. It's called somatic, experiencing, like you want to do it, and I was sure why not? I had no idea what I was signing up for in the beginning. So my experience was founded by Peter Levine and if anybody's interested in it, he would be the person to look up, read his books, watch him on YouTube, all that stuff.

Amanda:

But it's very different in that we're working with the Vegas nerve, right. So you know our understanding is that trauma impacts the body. We have survival energy that can get stuck and, as we work with movement, even touch at times that we're helping the body release some of the survival energy. So you're increasing coherence in the system and you're helping vagal tone, which then has a positive effect on everything in the body. Right Digestion, inflammation, you know, you name it. The Vegas nerve is probably somehow affecting it.

Bindi:

I love that insight and we'll get all up into the Vegas nerve and what that is in a moment as well.

Bindi:

But yeah, I just so appreciate this really holistic perspective. You know, conventional kind of psychotherapy just feels so one sided and I've been there too and it has its place without a doubt. It definitely has its place. But I know that when I was younger and really struggling with mental health issues, anxiety and depression the first kind of mode not the last resort, but the first thing was just medication. You know it's on all kinds of medications and it just kind of numbed me out.

Bindi:

There was never a question of like, well, what's your diet like or how much sunlight do you get. You know, no testing for nutritional deficiencies or gut health or heavy metals, any of these heavy metals, huge pathogens, you know, gut based pathogens that have a huge impact on our mental health, our hormonal wellness, you know. So I just really appreciate seeing people like you in the world that have such an integrative and holistic approach to vibrant mental well being. So you mentioned trauma. So let's get into that. What is trauma? And I'd love for you to share a little bit more of, like the big T traumas, the little T traumas, and why this work that you offer is so important for literally everyone out there.

Amanda:

Yeah, you know, I think there's a big misconception about trauma. You know people, they think of very specific things that are like really major events, and one of Peter's best quotes is that, you know, trauma it's not in the event, it's in your response, right? So, like, you and I could go through the exact same event and I may have been terrified, right. And so that trauma, the response in me, that survival energy that comes up. If it doesn't have a discharge afterward, it can get stuck in my system, right, where you might go through the same event and maybe there was the presence of, you know, an empathic other, there was some sense of safety for you, and so it doesn't embed in your nervous system the same way, right? And so, you know, trauma can be big, it can be really little.

Amanda:

A good example of small T traumas a client that came in many years ago and he was like, you know, I don't really, I don't have anything come into mind today.

Amanda:

You know, I'm not sure what to work on. So we just tuned into the body to say, like, let it lead us through, and what came up was, you know, being two years old and being trapped. One of his brothers trapped him in a sandbox and he couldn't get out. And so there was this desire in his body to push right, to feel the successful completion of getting, you know, the top of that sandbox pushed off of him. And so, like you know, you're not gonna land in therapy as an adult and be like I have this trauma from two years old, like you don't think about it again. But the body memory will stay there and sometimes when we tune into the body it can emerge and it's like, okay, we can work through this or otherwise. He may not have ever thought about bringing it in as a top. So that might be the example of a small T trauma. Right, you know it's not an event like a catastrophe that we would think of.

Bindi:

Yeah, wow, so powerful and what a powerful example. I'm sure that so many people can relate more to that. You know, I think, like you said, just the word trauma not many people would identify with that. Like, oh, maybe you haven't had any major catastrophic things like war and famine and you know physical abuse or assault, any of these things, but the little T traumas are just as impactful, right Cause it's what happened in your system. I think one of my my favorite kind of definitions of trauma is any event that is beyond our capacity to cope, that leaves us feeling helpless, hopeless or out of control and like, when we look at that from that definition, it seems to me like everyone has experienced trauma in their life. Are you of that belief? What do you think?

Amanda:

Yeah, you know, we often say like trauma is too much, too quick.

Amanda:

Right, it's anytime your system is overwhelmed.

Amanda:

You know there's also the other end of that where there's like not enough, like when we're looking at neglect, you know. But in general, like you know, trauma is when there's too much happening too quickly for your system to adjust to it and there's a sense of overwhelm that comes online right, and so, like you know, our nervous system, it can't move us into action, like we want a motor, we want to move right, and so, depending on the severity of our response to the trauma, you know, we might try to run, we might try to fight, and if we don't feel like we have that capability, then we go into kind of like a tonic immobility or a collapse or a shut down type response and that's where things can get really stuck for people. And so a lot of somatic work is like helping them tap back into it just enough that they get to feel the impulse that the body would have wanted to make right. So we're giving the body a completion to something that it didn't get to do when the event happened.

Bindi:

Powerful. Yeah, I can imagine just the healing and the therapy and that of kind of closing the circuit right, closing that something that feels still open and alive and dormant in the nervous system, and kind of giving it that closure and that resolution. So what would you say, I mean, if so many people have experienced some sort of traumatic event in their life, and whether that's a big T trauma or as simple as one thing that came up in my somatic experience? Work was a time that my mother was late picking me up for my ballet class and the studio was closed down and they closed the lights and they didn't know I was in there. And you know, it's just that she was late. I was totally safe but she was late and I was afraid that I was lost and what was I gonna do?

Bindi:

And at the time, you know, felt really big to me but I just kind of swept it under the rug as a seemingly unimportant life detail. But that it's really impacted, you know, abandonment, fear of abandonment, these types of things from such a seemingly small event. So let's get into how we hold and store these life events in our body. I love the quote or the saying that we have of. We hold our issues in our tissues. So how might someone know if they are holding on to trauma or emotional experiences from their past in their body? How would they know?

Amanda:

Oh yeah, I think most people are gonna land in my office saying, you know, they're struggling with depression or anxiety, right, so those are gonna be the two most common things that bring people in. You know, it might also be like a lack of sleep difficulty in relationships where they're repeating some type of pattern right Like. So you have this event, you know, in the ballet studio that brings up some fear of abandonment, and then you might see that start to kind of play out relationally over and over again. And in the somatic work we might work with the theme, but we're simultaneously also working with, like, what happened in your physiology and what does your body need to do right now to find relief?

Bindi:

from that event and I imagine too some of these other classic signs of, like you know, visible or notable mental health experiences anxiety, depression, low mood, you know some cognitive things, all these things I imagine too physical pain. Or even, you know, working as an integrated health practitioner, I see all the time women with like severe period cramps or a lot of digestive issues. You know that's really rooted in just like nervous system dysregulation stemming from trauma and all these things. So I so see the value and the importance of releasing from the nervous system.

Amanda:

So the clients that land in my office may not know that right off the bat, right? So, like, I'm assessing them for, like, how is your sleep? Do you have IBS? Because we know IBS and depression or mental health issues are significantly related, right? So, like, I'm looking at physical pain and all those type of issues that they might think are unrelated, at least in the beginning. It's also interesting now because I think those issues might show up more in your work with people. They might come to you and bring up these topics, right, and then you're adding in the education around the trauma component. Thank you for being here. I'm having to do a lot of work to educate my clients on. Hey, let's look at the physical health, right, like, how is your sleep? Right, how is your brain fog? Are you getting enough movement during the day? Now? Are you drinking enough water? You know all of those physical manifestations of trauma or the way that trauma leads to inflammation in the body or the dysregulated vagus nerve.

Bindi:

Yeah, so true, and that's why we need people in both of our industries, because people are coming in from different angles, whether it's hormone issues and chronic gut issues, and then we inform them like, hey, 90% of this is actually coming from your nervous system and what's being held in your body, what's keeping you in fight or flight. And then from your side, people are coming in hey, I feel more anxious than usual, I'm just feeling really low and you're like, hey, you know, there's this whole they're kind of physical side to it for us to work on. So I just love the synergy of kind of these two industries and how functional medicine, both in a mental health space and physical health space, really merged together. So I'd love to hear more about the nervous system. So you shared about the vagus nerve. What is the role of the nervous system in really holding trauma and how do we start to regulate or release that trauma from our nervous system?

Amanda:

Yeah, so the vagus nerve is a long nerve that connects to your brain stem and runs essentially down your spine into your abdomen and it's the 10th cranial nerve. It really has a huge impact on so many systems of the body. So if something's dysregulating it it could be trauma, could be heavy metal exposure, it could be a virus, but regardless. Now the vagus nerve has been impacted and that might mean again the synergy here. This person struggles with IVS, this person's struggling with depression or possibly both. So what we're looking at with somatic work is like how do we work with the vagus nerve in a way to improve vagal tone? When our vagal tone is better, we're gonna get better sleep, we're gonna be able to be dysregulated but return to our baseline functioning quicker. So we're working specifically with how trauma may have impacted it.

Amanda:

And again we might go into some type of event that someone needs to work through and they need to feel a successful completion to that movement. If I was in some type of event where I wanted to run but that was inhibited, in this type of work is we're tracking body sensations and really tuning in to what the body wanted to do. There might be you might start to see it kind of show in the feet. First right Someone might notice more energy in the legs and we're helping the body fully come online and engage in that movement in a way that helps the person feel like the release and the discharge of that stored survival energy.

Bindi:

Okay, that's so powerful. I love that. One of the things that I love about just nervous system regulation and the understanding of the nervous system is I used to really have this belief that a healthy, balanced nervous system was like calm all the time, and I've really learned that it has nothing to do with being calm all the time. A healthy nervous system is not always calm. A healthy nervous system is flexible. It has the capacity to go to a fear response, anxiety response or whatever it is, and to be able to regulate and kind of come back. So tell us what are your top tips for a flexible nervous system and to really develop that vagal tone? How do we help people get into that?

Amanda:

Well, first of all, I would say, thought of somatic practitioner, right, because, like, part of what's so powerful about somatic work is that you are there with an empathic other who's going to be with you and help lead you through it. So there might be some movement that you make that you might not be aware of, but we would be aware of and we might help you engage in that movement a little bit or a little bit more, and your system is going to feel the presence of someone's state, and so that's really important in the work that we do. Now, we do have stuff that can help people like I'll teach people things between sessions if they're feeling dysregulated doing certain things like the VU are you familiar with the VU? Okay, yeah, these type of things can, and I'll demonstrate it for you here in a minute. But these type of things can help, right, there are like techniques, but really the beauty of somatic work is that it's not so much of a technique, right, we're not trying to help people just get to a regulated state. We're actually sometimes even like I love the analogy of the snow globe where we're kind of perturbing the system a little bit so that we can bring stuff up in a way that we work through it and then, as things settle down, your system settles in a more coherent way.

Amanda:

But between session there are some things that do teach people, the VU being, I think, peter's favorite. Every time I've seen him do a demo with someone, he's always had them VU, which is just really easy. It's breathing in and you're gonna VU. You'll make a deep VU sound out that sounds like a fog horn and he talks about feeling it down here, right, so you wanna try to feel it as low as you can not up here, which would be like an old sound. If you feel the vibration here, yeah, so you would VU all the way out and then you don't breathe in, you just wait, and you wait for the body to breathe in on its own right and then you just pause and you would sit with that for a moment and notice what shifts and changes in your body. I usually do it twice. It always feels like the first time is a warmup for me, so you could do it two or three times.

Amanda:

Now, if you're somewhere where you can't VU right, because it does require, some people feel weird doing it. I'll also show this to people where you just stand with your feet like shoulder width apart and you make this movement here, right, so you're getting the bilateral stimulation. But the body loves rhythm, right? So we're getting a little movement. We're turning the spine, so we're also stimulating the vagus nerve through the movement. So there's two ways to do it.

Amanda:

You can gargle it's another way to stimulate the vagus nerve pressing the tongue against the roof of the mouth, and another thing we call exploratory orienting. So if I'm somewhere where there's a lot of people around and I might be feeling a little anxious, I'll just let my eyes soften and just kind of slowly look around, let the eyes lead the neck, and as you turn the neck you're gonna stimulate the vagus nerve and you just look for something that grabs your attention, something colorful, something new, something you haven't noticed before, right. And we're just signaling to the body like, hey, we're safe right now. Right, if we're not safe, we don't explore. And so if I'm exploring my environment, then I'm telling my body hey, it's okay right now.

Amanda:

So there's a handful of things you know. Maybe people at home can give it a try and see what they notice. What I will say is somatic work is really subtle, so it's not like we're taking people from a level 10, you know, two at two, right, we're taking you from a 10, two and eight. But over time what we're doing is we improve vagal tone. It's just improving your baseline functioning right. Or like if you take a medicine like a benzo, a Xanax, it's gonna take you from a 10 to a two, but you have to keep going back to it and in the meantime it's also just regulating the gut microbiome. So we know it's not good, right, but these things are more subtle but they have more long-term effect on the body.

Bindi:

It makes so much sense.

Bindi:

I love that and thanks for sharing those practices.

Bindi:

Yeah, so one of the coolest descriptions I think that I've heard and one of the differences between conventional psychotherapy and something more somatic and body-centered is it's kind of like this you know, conventional psychotherapies a really top-down approach, right, it's very heady, right.

Bindi:

It's kind of talking about our experience and sharing it from a very cognitive heady space and hoping that you know, from talking about it and processing it up here in our mind, that you know it will have a trickle-down effect into our body, our physiology and our nervous system.

Bindi:

And what I love so much about the work that you do is that it's really this bottom-up approach, right, where we're actually going into, where this trauma, where these somatic experiences are held in the physical body, in the nervous system, even I would say in the organs and the tissues of our body, and really releasing them from their source, from their origins, which has an upward effect, you know, and changes our cognition and our mental, emotional states from that really bottom-up approach. I love that you shared as well the importance of working with a practitioner in this, because it is deep work and it is important and you know we can Google all of the practices for vagal tone and gargling and singing and chanting and all of the things. But yeah, I think that just the empathetic other that you mentioned and having someone really skilled and guiding us into those places where we feel safe is just so, so key. So I really appreciate you sharing that.

Amanda:

Yeah, yeah. I think there can be a misconception that like oh, I feel dysregulated, let me go regulate myself. But sometimes we need the energy from the dysregulation to provide the movement out of the trauma as we work with it right. The idea is like let's bring enough energy in the system to get it moving so that we can go over the hump and let the energy go right, not just constantly trying to shut it down, shut it down, shut it down.

Bindi:

I love that. That's a really important distinction because it's easy. I imagine, that for a lot of people it's easy to kind of just numb out. Actually, you know, in trying to regulate their dysregulated state, to just go into shut down or numbing or avoidance around it.

Amanda:

Have you experienced that or noticed that in your practice, oh, all the time, all the time, even clients who don't come in looking for somatic work. There's this idea of like I feel this way and I want to get rid of it. I have this thought and I want to get rid of it. Right, and sometimes it's like, well, what you just told me would be dysregulated. Of course you're dysregulated. Let's normalize that and then let's work with it. Right, let's validate the dysregulation instead of just trying to shut it down all the time or to change. You know, I just want to change myself and not feel and not think or not be bothered by X, y and Z, and it's like what you're bothered by, anybody would be bothered by.

Bindi:

I think you know, you want to help people feel yeah.

Bindi:

Yeah, I love that Help people feel. I feel like that's such a essential piece of living a really vibrant life, you know, is not to just have two modes of happy and calm, you know, but to have the capacity and to feel a level of safety and being able to experience a full emotional rainbow feeling sadness and rage and disappointment and fear, you know and to have the flexibility to experience those things, harvest the fruits of those, because I'm of the belief as well that there's no bad experiences, there's no bad feelings, I should say, you know, anxiety is not bad, fear is not bad, anger is not bad. It's our relationship to those emotional experiences that, you know, have a lasting impact or it's just a fleeting moment of an emotional state.

Amanda:

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, like as you were saying, I was, like Peter says, all the time like our healthy aggression is our ability to say no, it's our boundary right. So when people split that off and they don't want to feel anger, they think anger is bad, you know, are wrong. In some way they split off the ability to say no. That doesn't work for me, that's not okay with me, and we want to restore that healthy aggression, we want to restore our ability to have a protest and that is a vibrant anger right, like that's what we want.

Bindi:

I love that vibrant anger that's such a beautiful word vibrant anxiety, vibrant fear. I love that. It gives it a sparkle, doesn't it? And reminds us of the power inherent in the full rainbow and the full spectrum of what we're supposed to feel as humans. So I love that. You shared that. So I'd love to hear more about the gut microbiome. This is another big piece in functional mental health. Tell us about the impact of the gut microbiome and our mental health, our neurotransmitters. What's the gut brain connection? Yeah, you know this is.

Amanda:

This is where I'm just loving this part of practicing now, because so many people are coming in and they're complaining of, like IBS or sleep problems or hormonal issues. You know, before I just didn't know enough. You know it was like, okay, like in one ear and out the other, and now we have learned so much about how like they are. I mean they're just one in the same, right, like when you're looking at depression and anxiety and even like bipolar and schizophrenia, we're looking at some type of physiological disruption. Here Most people think is like it's all happening in my brain. Right, there's something wrong with my brain that needs to be fixed. But really, like, more information goes from the gut to the brain than goes from the brain down, right, so 80% of information travels upward. So if something's going on in your gut, in your microbiome, with your vagus nerve, it's going to travel, you know you're. It's going to go via the vagus nerve up to your brain and possibly inflame your brain, right, so, like you know, we can talk all day long. But if you have, you know, too much heavy metal in your system, like your depression might not ever get better, right, like if you have Camp LeBac during your system. There was an amazing not I don't know if you call it research, but there I don't remember what year it was, but there was a community that had a lot of flooding, essentially like cow feces washed into their water supply, and all of these people like 80%, huge number of them developed panic disorder within like the four, five months after. And the community was like what's going on? So they started doing some testing and found out that they'd been exposed to Camp LeBac, which causes panic disorder. Right, so we can do all the talk therapy, we can do all the SE and it might help your vagus nerve, right, but if you have this bacteria in your system, you know, things might not get better.

Amanda:

So we really have to look at things more holistically. Right, let's look at it all. Let's, you know, find out if you have heavy metals affecting your vagus nerve. Let's find out if you have an underlying Epstein, you know, bar virus, yeah, let's look at it like nutrient deficiencies. You know, now, not everybody has the you know, finances able to, you know, run all the lab work that would be ideal to run, or maybe even fun to run, you know. But we can at least start doing stuff with diet. It's like, okay, we can't run the test, but maybe we can take you through some you know, specific nutritional protocol that will help you with your ability to detox. Right, let's add in a red light sauna. Let's do these things to support the mental health while we're also doing the talk, therapy and the somatic work. So it really really is integrative in that way.

Bindi:

Yeah, that's so important and so fascinating. With the bacteria that you mentioned. It's something that I see a lot in my practice as well. It is a lot of these pathogens, like you said you mentioned Epstein bar virus and Campylobacter, and even toxoplasmosis is another one of blood parasite that causes suicidal tendencies and mold toxicity I mean here in Bali, you know. I don't know if it's damp in Kentucky, but I know parts of the US and even Texas is so damp and mold toxicity is a recipe for just near inflammation, causing depression, low mood, feelings of isolation. It's just we know too much now. You know there's just too much science and data out there for us to deny the connection between toxicities and nutrient deficiencies, gut-based pathogens, hormonal imbalances and its impact on our mental emotional state. So such an important connection. So you mentioned about nutrition. You mentioned, you know, red light therapy. What are some other kind of commonly prescribed practices or self-care things or just overall tips for someone to support their overall mental emotional health?

Amanda:

Oh gosh, you know, sleep for me is number one, right, like let's look at your sleep, let's talk about what's happening with that and let's try to work on it. I think probably most people are deficient in magnesium, so that's usually an easy and cheap supplement that we can add on magnesium and L-theanine. You know, if there's something going on where the trauma is disrupting the sleep I have clients that have night terrors, they're afraid to go to sleep we will start to do work on that in session. We will add a practice in before bedtime to help them kind of settle into a sleep state, and then we'll add on the supplements as well, you know. So I'm always looking at sleep number one in the end.

Amanda:

If depression is the biggest complaint, then absolutely exercise. Right, it seems to be the hardest one to get people to engage in, though. Right, they'll buy a supplement, they'll do some of the somatic exercises, but when I talk about real exercise, it's just like okay, you know, like getting them into a routine can be difficult, you know, but exercise and strength training can be the most powerful treatment for depression. You know, our body wants to move, it doesn't want to be stagnant, it wants to move. Those are the two most significant also look at like social connection, I think, the quality of friendships, the quality of connection.

Amanda:

If people don't have that available, I can refer to colleagues and do group therapy, especially like post COVID right. So much of the world is still online. A lot of my clients still work from home and they're isolated and it's like we need to get you out around people and around other nervous systems in a way that feels safe for you. So those are three of the major things that you know I can check off right off the bat with people. You know cutting out sugar, you know again, if they're willing, that can be a hard one, sugar and processed foods kind of thing. And then we go down the rabbit hole of specific stuff. So if we need to do gut testing or genetic testing, all of that stuff can get added on, you know, as we're helping them shore up their daily practices with sleep, exercise and nutrition.

Bindi:

Love that those are such essential pillars, whether that's for our physical health or mental health. It's just those three. Literally, if someone just dialed in those three areas, their just wellness would explode, you know? So such great advice. Well, my dear, I think that's a wonderful spot for us to start to wrap up. So I've got three little rapid fire hot tip questions for you. Are you ready? I think so. Okay. Well, tell us what is the number one thing that people can do to improve their wellness?

Amanda:

today. Oh gosh, the number one thing to improve your wellness. Well, I think I think I hit on it. I would say it's sleep first. Number one would be sleep and exercise. Yeah, so that would be number one and two. And then, if there's trauma, if they know that there's a history of trauma, then to find a somatic practitioner and get help on that journey.

Bindi:

So agree 100%. And what is your personal number one secret to living a vibrant life?

Amanda:

Okay.

Amanda:

So for a vibrant life, I would say there's a practice I started years ago that I really love, and in that liminal space between Christmas and New Year I'll print off a calendar for the next year and I keep it running less. I don't call it my bucket list, I call it my intentional joy list and I'm always adding to it when I run across new things. But I'll sit down in that week before New Year and I'll look at, like what do I wanna do this year? Like big stuff, small stuff, things that cost money, things that don't cost money, and I'll pick one thing for every month and I write it at the top of that month. So I'm really intentional about doing something new, something that's that I feel passionate about, something that really connects me to joy. And it's been a practice that, like at the end of the year, you know, I can look back and just see, like all of these little things that I did along the way that made that a great year in the midst of all the other stuff that may have happened to.

Bindi:

Oh, I love that. Such a beautiful practice. I do something similar.

Bindi:

I have a joy menu and I've got like things I can do on a daily, weekly or kind of one off basis of just things that I know light me up and it does make a big difference just in, of course, my mental, emotional health, but just how overall, how I feel about life and to know that I'm not just like living balanced and good, but that life is great and you know our capacity to touch that deepest level of joy, I think is really what makes life worth living. So I love that you shared that. That's so great. And tell us what is the number one book that if the entire world read this book, the world would just be a happier, healthier, overall, better place.

Amanda:

I have to pick just one.

Bindi:

Impossible question.

Amanda:

I don't know, it really is. My favorite book is called Sabbath by Wayne Muller and it's about a rhythm of rest in life. It's just a beautiful, a beautiful book I recommended to a lot of people. Now, if we're looking at trauma and mental health, there's a book called Healing Developmental Trauma by Larry Heller. He was one of Peter's first SEPs and really helped Peter develop the SEP program and that was a big game changer for me personally and for the way that I practice. So I think, your audience would enjoy it.

Bindi:

Yeah, okay, I haven't read that one either of them, so I'm going to look them up and I'll link them up in the show notes for people to connect with as well. Beautiful, well, amanda, tell us where can our community find you online? What's the best way to connect with you?

Amanda:

I have a website. It's Amanda J Huffman. I choose FFMATN, so, amandajhuffmancom, you can find me on social media. I'm trying really hard to do a better job this year. I'm not on social media a lot. I'm like it's been my goal to put out more info and it's the functional psychotherapist both on Instagram and Facebook. And then, if they want to follow the development of the farm, it's Sugar Creek Farm Retreat on. Instagram or.

Bindi:

Facebook Amazing, and I'll make sure we link all of that up in the show notes so people can stay connected with you and learn more about your work. And I just want to say thank you so much, amanda, for being here today, for sharing your wealth of knowledge with us and for all the amazing work that you do in the world. So thank you for that.

Amanda:

Thank you, thank you for having me.

Bindi:

Thanks so much for listening. If you loved today's episode, please spread the love by subscribing and leaving a review. Or if there's someone in your life that you think could benefit from this conversation, please share this episode with them. I would love to hear from you over on Instagram at Bindi Stables, or visit my website, bindistablescom, to connect and work with me. Thank you so much again for being here and I'm celebrating you in this journey of becoming the happiest, the healthiest, most vibrant you.