Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Welcome back to part two of The SIBO Doctor podcast and let's jump right back into it. So, all right. So the freeze response, do you think it also shows up maybe not in an example like that, but when somebody has had, for example, a very stressful childhood or not just childhood, but stressful life. I mean, growing up is probably the biggest source of our, I would say ongoing and experiential trauma because it's so formative, right? If you're raised in an environment that is highly stressful, things will happen to you. Either you take on parts of that stress or you dissociate or whatever.

So I'm trying to tie it back into the hypothetical listener out there that notices that they have a lot of stress, that try to meditate. They try to do some of the things that are out there for people to help them calm down. So whether that's meditation or all the different... I hear this all the time. "I meditate, I do this, I do that. And still I'm not sleeping well, I'm constantly stressed out." Can you talk more about what might be going on there where people are actively trying to regulate their nervous system, but they're just not successful?

Rupda:

Yeah. Look, there could be a few variables there. So a blanket statement for everyone listening might be a bit delicate, but certainly if you're listening and you can identify with this, then maybe something to look at. If we're doing all the practices and we're doing everything we think we should be doing and we feel that we're still in that stress, let's say, or unable to relax. And when I say relax, I mean, fully relax, where we just feel safe and at ease and our breath is... You know, Nirala. And we don't have to reach for something in order to do that and I know that myself over time, yeah, that would become my MO. So-

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Reach for something like alcohol or drugs or...

Rupda:

Medical marijuana, whatever the people reach for today. Fair enough.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

And sometimes it's not just medical marijuana. It's just regular marijuana and other drugs. We shouldn't laugh, but that is the reality, especially-

Rupda:

It's the reality. And look, and if you're listening and you're one of those people, look, I empathize because it is a stressful world today. You're not only dealing with your immediate surroundings and your work environment, your family environment, but you're also dealing with the collective environment and there's a lot going on. So how do we create the inner balance with the outer chaos? It's not easy. And so Nirala's question was, how to find that real rest, even if we're doing all these practices? And one of the things I sometimes say is, have you really looked at and allowed yourself to feel the pain of what happened to you so that you can release?

Yeah. What that guy did in Rwanda, what Peter Levine, his work started with veterans, people who came back from war and he really worked with how to get them to release, but they had to acknowledge what happened. Yeah. Even if they didn't know entirely the story, some kind of willingness to go there and discharging the nervous system. And what I do is that pendulation, we go to the trauma vortex where all the stuff is going on. And then we come back into the healing vortex and we rest digest and we do that little bit by little bit, titrate, and then we create a certain relaxation in the nervous system that helps people to self-regulate.

Now, I'm going to say, for sure there's definitely, if the body is not able to rest, there's definitely still something going on there. And I'm also going to say from my own experience that anytime I do any kind of release work, it has helped me to not have to reach for a bottle or to not have to reach for something that creates instant regulation. We used to say instant therapy or instant resource, because if I just pick up a glass of wine, "Oh yeah, there I am. I'm relaxed." And that relaxation is priceless, but how can I get to that where I can do it by myself? Yeah. It's very empowering because if I'm on a plane and it's shaking, or if I'm in the Himalayas or wherever, that I have the inner resources, not just the outer resources. Yeah? And that is a wonderful feeling because then I can find it in there.

And yes, it's not easy to do that. I became a client to this work 20 years ago and then once I started to see how it helps me in my own regulatory systems, especially being around certain people who are my trigger people, then I realized, "Hey, I've got some work here to do. I've got some homework to do." And that's what I did. And I started then teaching this work. And I know from my own experience and helping others that I have seen people come take it another step further.

So what you do, Nirala, and how you help people with their SIBO and gaining their digestions just to metabolize and to actually come back into balance, in kind of conjunction with what I do, especially if they need it. I mean, they might not always need it, what I do. That gives them the full, complete kind of circle because it asks them to acknowledge what has happened and to discharge through the nervous system. And then it also, you can only do so much if you make a perfect house for someone and they keep busting holes in it and it keeps falling apart, then like, "Hey, we need you to help us out as well." You need to be part of that support.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

You mean the person needs to acknowledge-

Rupda:

Acknowledge it. Yes.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Yeah. Can you talk a bit more about the... I'm just fascinated with how we discharge. So discharging could be exercise, I guess, right? Could be, let's move into the resources section so that people can feel like, okay, they're walking away with some idea and not just are left with, "Okay, well I'm traumatized and I'll always have to live with it."

Rupda:

No. You don't. Absolutely not.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Well, one example I could maybe give, and this was probably one of the most powerful examples for me personally of discharging the nervous system. So when I was eight, as I've mentioned before, I was in a really pretty severe burn, large parts of my body were burned. And you're a kid, you're eight years old, you just adapt and you're so in the moment, you just deal with what's in the moment. So I was in the hospital for three months and had a lot of rehab, et cetera. And so 30 years later, all of a sudden, I can't even talk about the event without tearing up, without crying, without feeling really activated and just like, "What's happening?" 30 years have gone by, I was fine. I could tell people, "Yeah, I burned my legs, blah, blah, blah." And all of a sudden, I couldn't talk about it anymore.

So I did a session. I did only one session with a mutual colleague of ours who was working with somatic experiencing. And that's how I really became very interested in this topic because I was like, "Wow, this is so powerful." So there I was in the one session and he basically... We were going through this whole experience and he made me relive that experience of I was on fire. It was the seventies, so it was all plastic clothing, this nylon clothing. I was completely on fire and I was rolling down this hill and I had put myself out and I was taking stock of what was happening. And then what I recall, my memory is my mother coming and being completely freaked out, understandably so, but that is when I started to really become very freaked out.

And he said... This is when I started to notice, "Okay, now I'm really scared and I'm really feeling very frightened." And the therapist said, "What do you want to do right now?" And I said, "I just want to run away. I just want to run away." And in that moment, I could not stop my legs from moving and they were moving simulating in slow motion this running away motion. And for 30 minutes, I was sitting in my chair and my legs were just discharging. And from that moment on, I never had another story. I can talk about the accident, what happened, blah, blah, blah. But it was a really powerful experience of how past trauma can kind of cycle back into your life and affect you in ways that you don't even know. So this also, I think serves as an example of what somatic experiencing or that type of trauma work can do in terms of discharging really specific energies around a particular event.

Rupda:

And I want to say that it might've felt like it came back, but most likely that trauma was still living in your nervous system. And it might've been not as obvious to you until this particular session happened for example. Yeah? I worked with a patient also who had a horrible, traumatic upbringing in her environment, witnessed things that were happening to one of her parents. One parent was attacking the other parent. And so the dream, every time she was dreaming, she could not run from the situation and she wanted to run. She was very, very little and she just wants to run, run, run. And in the session, I helped her to run for the first time. And by even setting up a whole visualization, she's at a starting line, I'm going to set off the gun, I'm going to count down three, two, one, and you just start running.

And then she just ran and ran and ran. She was running across a desert and just ran and ran. I did the visual. Now, at some point I wanted her to feel like she can come to a completion for her. Because I said, she's like, "I can't stop." And then I said, "Okay, so who's a resource for you?" She said her grandmother. And I said, "Okay, imagine now you're running towards your grandmother. And when you get there, you just embrace her." And she got there, boom, and she embraced her. What was beautiful, so visualization, release. What was beautiful is, the body responds as if it's actually happening. It was a discharge in the nervous system and I worked with her for a long time. That never was an issue for her again, it's gone.

And this is why I was trying to say earlier, the moment we're willing to look at it and talk about it, the stuff that Peter Levine's been doing, Bessel van der Kolk's doing, and this guy in Rwanda I was talking about doing, they all can see that the moment we do inner work and a little bit of investigation, examination, I'm doing it for years with people and I see the result. And so that's one way to release, the visualization release. Or you can say it's guided meditation, that's a beautiful way to release where you can get a visualization of what I call a corrective experience. Yeah?

So in my own personal story, for example, my mother's conception of me was not the most ideal conception. I'll leave it at that and your listeners can make up whatever they want. And let's just say that that has maybe an impact on me because at birth I was given away and I didn't have the natural resting on my mother's chest. I didn't have breast milk either. So I then could go back through the guided work and go back and have a corrective experience and change the whole thing. So there was music and colorful and people I love were around the situation and I was held and I was wanted and I was loved. And all of a sudden, all these feelings started coming up and it was so much more empowering. And those things were knocking on my self worth. And then the moment I changed the story and say, "Hey, you are wanted, you have a right to be here. You are safe to be here. It is okay to be here." Then it updates my operating system, my nervous system and I create relaxation.

So, that's another kind of release of the tension of the old story of how it's held in my nervous system. Other releases are... Well, one way for tracking your body, tracking your body from when it is in stress versus in relaxation and learning to have a sense of the edge. So it's really what I'm asking is to have a relationship with your body. When do I feel like, "Oh, I'm going into overwhelm. Oops, I'm going into shortness of breath." And whatever the situation is you're in, if possible, of course we can't always, if you're in customs standing at line and all of a sudden there's chaos around you, you can't always get out of a situation, but if possible, that you step out of the situation and you take a few breaths. Breaths are always help for self-regulating. If possible, to know your edge when you feel you're going into stress, it's really good to track your body.

And what do I mean by track your body? I mean by its sensations. Do I feel expansion in my belly or a tension in my belly? Do I feel relaxation in my shoulders or tension in my shoulders? Do I feel relaxation in my jaws or tension in my jaws? And your body never lies. So you can always do a check in. And now I can do it to the point, if somebody wants to start a business with me, I can go to, "When I sit with this person, does it create relaxation or stress?" I mean, that's how much we can rely on the body for being really present. But we have to be associated, we have to be present. When we're disassociated or not here or numbing out, then it's really hard to listen to the body. So it does take some willingness and determination and commitment on our part.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

So, okay. So resources are basically tracking the body, seeing where you hold tensions, what about-

Rupda:

Resources are... Just to be more clear, resources are things like friends, dance, music. Anytime you listen to music you can create a relaxation, depending on the music you're listening to of course. So resources are more like sports where you're not overdoing it of course, not extreme sport.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Exercise, you mean.

Rupda:

Exercise, swimming. Yeah. Resources can be nature. Nature is one of the biggest-

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Ah, big one.

Rupda:

... resources in the world. Just walk outside. And if you're an animal lover, for me, my dog was one of my biggest resources. My dog's not even alive today and is still my resource. Yeah. I only have to pull the image of that dog when I feel in that edge and then it can help me get back into the parasympathetic. Rest and digest. So resources are things that create relaxation, imagery of my grandmother for example. I only have to think of her and it creates a relaxation.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

So a resource in that sense is something that brings you out of the current situation and brings you more into a place of imagined safety or a... Yeah. So it's not just the discharge. The discharge is the exercise, the music, the this, or I often tell my people, just feel your feet on the ground. When they get into this really activated state, often it is good to kind of land back to feel themselves again in their body, although what you've mentioned before is this whole aspect of people not feeling safe in their body.

Rupda:

So wait, that was when I was talking about the freeze response and when I work with someone who doesn't feel safe in their body, I titrate. I go step by step. Meaning if I'm walking with, let's say a woman who has had a strong story in her past around that, I will slowly, slowly, "Is it okay to have your hands?" And I'll ask her to look at her hands. "Are they your hands? Do you feel associated to your hands?" And she might say, "Not my left one, but my right one, I do. And not even my whole, just my pinky." And then we just go step by step, titrate because we don't want to over flood her system. We want her to feel safe that she can be in the body. "Is it okay?" I often ask them to look left and right, get the vegas moving, "Wow. I'm safe." "Oh yeah. You're safe? What tells you you're safe?" Get her to do [inaudible 00:18:08].

But just to distinguish release work and resource. They are overlapping of course, but release work might be, for example, if you're a little boy and you've been physically abused by a father and he's punched you and he's repetitively punched you. If he punches you once a week and you're too young, because you're seven years old, to fight back. That little boy is going to probably have some charge in his system. Now of course the fear is that then he grows up and he ends up doing the same.

So what I might do with the individual, who's now a grown man, is I might say, "What did you want to do when your father was repeatedly hitting you?" "I wanted to fight back, but I couldn't. I was powerless." Okay. So I might hold up a bloody pillow and say, "Okay, Jonathan hit the pillow and do some of the release work." So you complete what was incomplete in your nervous system and bring it to closure. Boom. Unbelievable. And he doesn't even have to hit at rapid, no, I can even ask him to do it in slow motion. It's just to complete what was happening in nervous system, and finally it can discharge. Or, "I just wanted to kick him." I say, "Okay. So imagine you're kicking him." He could do it in slow motion. Finally he completes that movement.

And Peter Levine works in those completion cycles. That's one way of releasing, as well as tears and laughter and screaming and so on. And resources, which can of course overlap with that, but resources might be like walking in nature, doing yoga, listening to music, meditating, hugging, contact, consensual contact.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

[crosstalk 00:00:19:52].

Rupda:

That's important. That's important. Certain friendships and things like that. Yeah. I also want to say another thing, because you said we're going to do resources. Resources are in itself a whole thing, but this is a list of a few things they can do. Another thing you can practice in your life is choice. And it's a way I work with people is giving choice, because if you had a dominant person in your life growing up or it can happen in school and it can happen in different environments, where you didn't have choice, it makes us create a whole thing around powerlessness. And it can create contractions, restrictions, and your nervous system tenses up. Choice creates a sense of freedom. I have choice. So often when I work with someone, I say, let's say I'm working with Nirala and I say, "Nirala, do you want to do this or do that?" Now I've created a choice for her. Instead of saying, "No, Nirala, you have to do this." And that can create relaxation, anything that creates relaxation is what will support you in your trauma healing and help you to self-regulate.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

I think that's... Because a lot of people talk about those resources, but I think the powerful message really here is that maybe one of the reasons you can't relax and you still feel tense, even if you meditate, even if you do all these things, is because you haven't properly or you haven't discharged that stuck or pent up energy from the nervous system. I'm talking to the general listener who may be resonating with some things that were being said here, because I know I talk to people a lot and there's so many amazing people out there and so many people that I've seen that really have prioritized their health, that are doing all kinds of things. They want to get better. They do all the yoga. They do all the meditation. And they still have such a hard time and I just want to be able to give them some tools.

And I think this is helpful in that, now they have something to focus on like, "Okay, how can I find ways to discharge this energy?" And I think personally, I think it's a really powerful, more maybe streamlined way to work with somebody like Rupda, than to try to, I don't know, take up kickboxing or something, which is probably great, but it doesn't resonate with a lot of people. So something, or maybe even there are a couple of books that I often recommend in relation to somatic experiencing, which talks about this discharging and that is by Peter Levine, Waking The Tiger, which talks about this whole phenomenon of stuck energy in the nervous system. And I think he also wrote Healing Trauma, that book, but neither of them sadly give you the steps because he was a firm believer in working with a therapist and working with somebody like you who's trained in that type of modality.

Rupda:

Yeah. And working with a therapist would then allow you to talk a little bit about the event of what happened. And then the therapist can essentially create an environment for you, especially in your nervous system where it can have a release. And there's a quote from Peter Levine that says, "Trauma originates as a response in the nervous system and does not originate in an event." So trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event. So essentially we continue to hold it, we're not like the animal in the wild shaking it off. We continue to hold it in the nervous system. So this is why I can work with so many people and they don't even know the details of the event. I just know something happened because my body can't rest, for example.

So yeah, this is why the work that I was trained in doing, it was really a life changer because you and I grew up in an environment where release work was part of the backdrop of our upbringing. So I had done so much release work. I had hit the pillow and screamed at all the people in my life that had overstepped my boundaries and faced and cried all my traumas and all sorts of things. But I had been missing this piece where, how to self-regulate, how to actually discharge it in the body from a really constructive and conscientious way of doing it that completes the cycle and the story or that has a corrective experience, that teaches me to self-regulate. And this is why now I teach this work and I also do one on one work with people in this because it's so powerful. And so it was really a game changer for me.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

And getting back to this aspect of, I think it's powerful also for people to really start tracking their body a bit more because I think that gets glossed over, just like, "Okay, tight shoulders, tight neck or something," but really this clenching of the jaw. I notice I start to just shake a little bit when I notice I get activate. It doesn't even have to be necessarily a negative stress, just I notice that's what happens. I just get more tight or tense and I breathe very shallowly. That's what happens to me. And then when I relax and this is often something that you probably observe and I observe in my patients, when there is a profound relaxation, all of a sudden we hear gurgling in the stomach, we hear just all kinds of noises that are coming from what I would say is a good migrating motor complex response.

And so, yeah. But tracking the body to start noticing what happens to you when you either think of something or you're basically anticipating something happening. A lot of people are pre-worried about something. I'm a big worrier or used to be, and then starting to really tune into what nourishes you, what gives you nourishment? And I shared before on something, some platform, about what I realized for me was nature. Nature has always been my sanctuary.

And so for me to be able to, and I understand that not everyone has this capacity to leave their current place or apartment in New York City or wherever you are and just move to nature. But if you have the ability, finding out what really nourishes you. Maybe you need to be more with people or maybe you need to have more animals, or maybe whatever it is for you where you feel you can breathe and you can just be who you are. And for me, that was nature. And for me to move here to one of the most beautiful places in Australia and to have that, that was just a profound experience on every level, because I felt I could relax in a much more profound way in a way. So nature was always a big draw card for me. Yeah.

Rupda:

Yeah. And to add to what Nirala said, if for some reason you're not able to go to nature, then you can take the outer resource and create an inner resource with meditation. A lot of my guided meditations and there are many out there that you can navigate to their place in nature and imagine being there and the beautiful thing about the body is, it can respond as if it's real. It can create a relaxation in your nervous system. Of course, ultimately, to be able to be in nature, that would be the ultimate goal. And if we can't, if I'm in an office and I can't for example, or whatever situation you might be in, then that's the possibility that we can create the inner resource.

And the body, as much as it might appear that it's working against us when we really feel sick and there's a lot of people out there who are chronically sick and we hear you. The good news is that the body can also, given the right environment, the right tools, the right understandings, and also our determination to really talk to our bodies, because it's talking to us. So start, as Nirala was saying, start giving it a positive, nourishing response. "I'm with you. I'm here. I'm present. I will take care of you. I will not abandon you. I will hold you. You're safe. I will talk to you as though I talk to someone I love." All the nourishing things that you want to say and it will create rest and relaxation.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

That's a really good place to start the process of wrapping up.

Rupda:

Yes.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Okay. So let's go over the resources. The resources are all the things we mentioned in terms of getting in touch with your body, starting to track the body, starting to identify what really nourishes you.

Rupda:

Finding the edge of when you're stressed and overwhelmed, knowing that edge, have a relationship with your body.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Have a relationship with your body. I think that's powerful. And if you feel called to or resonate with what we talked about today, where can people find you and your workshops? Because I know because of COVID you do a lot of things online now, I know that most of your workshops were done in person, but where can people find you?

Rupda:

Right now, well, of course they can go to rupda.com. R-U-P-D-A. And right now there's two things offering online. There's the 4th of September, we have Sexual Healing to Trauma Healing. That's a three day workshop.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

And that's online?

Rupda:

And that's online. Yeah. And then we also have Spirit of a Woman, which is just for women. And that is, of course we also explore the issues around trauma, shame, but in the environment with women, which is of course particular languaging and particular landscape when we work with women and there's a support field and that's a very powerful workshop. And that's happening on the 20th of September. And both are on the website so you can find out more.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Wonderful.

Rupda:

There's one thing I just want to say to your listeners as a quote that I have on my website and there's a quote that it helps me to keep reminding myself which is, "Your ability to trust in life is in direct proportion to your ability to relax." And you can flip that quote and say, "Your ability to relax in life is in direct proportion to your ability to trust in life." So the two really go hand in hand and when we start living more in trust, it's such a supreme way of living. It creates relaxation. It creates joy, aliveness, passion, gratitude. And by the way, gratitude is a big, big, big release and big resource. So me and Nirala often go for our country walks together in the forest and we talk about how thankful we are just to be grateful to be alive.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

Yeah. Wow. Powerful way to end. Thank you so much Rups.

Rupda:

I love you Raly. We did it. It's great.

Dr Nirala Jacobi:

And yeah, go to the show notes for information of how to work with Rupda. I also just want to remind listeners that what we talked about earlier with adverse childhood events causing microbiome disruptions, and general stress and anxiety causing microbiome disruptions, there is a great microbiome summit. I'm a speaker on this summit. For free you can access it online and we'll put that link in the show notes as well. That is September 7th through, I think, the 13th. So check that out if you're interested in more technical stuff about the microbiome. And until next time, thanks again, Rups.

Rupda:

Thank you so much Nirala.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for listening to The SIBO Doctor Podcast. We hope you find the information in this episode useful in the treatment of your SIBO patients. Thanks to our sponsors SIBOtest.com, a breath testing service with easy online ordering. And QuinTron, the maker of outstanding breath testing equipment. Thanks again for listening.