Real Life’s Adventures in Living: Quieting the External and Internal Noise – Allowing Us to Re-Awaken to Our Bodies Messages for Healing – Part I with Guest Amy Stein | EP 041

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:00:06

Welcome to Mastering life's adventures, an educational podcast about tapping into your true self, the soul, your soul, the substance of your life, to discover what life's ups and downs are really about, and how to have a greater sense of purpose, peace, joy, and fulfillment. I am Dr. Judith holder and your host, Coach psychologist Delos seeker, he enjoys diving into the connections between spirituality, psychology, wellness, and your everyday life's adventures. All comparing and polishing you like the fast is a magnificent diamond to be your best self. If you're craving more from your life, you are in the right place. Come let's journey together and transforming what you know. And to who you really are mastering mice adventures begins now.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:01:00

Hi, I'm back. And we're here to talk with a special guest, who I've been fascinated with her area of specialty because it's so much an area that I'm delighted in actually was grazed. And in terms of this holistic approach to healing. What we're going to be talking about today is quieting the external and internal noise, allowing us to we awaken to our body's messages for healing, is this might sound delightful, that we can be able to find ways that are natural, that allows us to move into our healing, but she's going to share more about herself. And we're going to talk more about her journey. And then later talk about what she does. I like to welcome Amy Stein to this episode of Real Life Adventures.

Amy Stein: 00:01:48

Thank you Welcome. Basically, how I got here was that I always had messages being sent to my body, right? But we're taught in our society that the messages are wrong, that they're not real, that we just need to push them down and ignore them because they don't exist. And we're taught that if you can't see something, it means it's not there. It's not real, it's not valid. It's all about we have to see it to believe it. And so throughout my childhood, the messaging was, you're making this up, this isn't real. I wasn't seen, I wasn't heard. It wasn't believed by people in the medical community by my own family. It was that these messages that my body was given me were not real. I was just pretending because I didn't want to do certain things, right, I wanted to get out of activities. I didn't want to go to school, I didn't want to go to certain places or be around certain people, but they were very real to me. And they manifested themselves and headaches and stomach aches and growing pains in a lot of fatigue and exhaustion. I was that kid that throughout high school was in bed by 830. Because I was just so mentally, emotionally physically exhausted, and everyone would make fun of me. But I was just could not stay a week, even as an adult, I, you know, would go to bed at 830 Still to this day, because that's what I need. Because my body tells me and I've now learned to listen to that.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:03:04

I was just gonna make a comment when you were talking about this whole notion that we're not being listened to, and not being heard. And as if they think they're in our body. They're not in our body. Even as a child, you want to be heard because you knew something was not right. That's similar to the soul. The soul wants to be listened to the soul wants to be heard. But guess why? Ignore it saying no, no, no, it's something else going on. But that urge of the inkling that the soul is trying to give to us. We're always trying to figure out is something out here, then something that's totally internally within oneself. So your topic on this, the quieting the external internal noise is right on target. Sure more.

Amy Stein: 00:03:58

Yeah. And exactly. It ties it right in, right. Because we're taught to always look outside of ourselves for the answers. We're not taught to trust the body's innate intelligence. We're not taught to trust that intuition. We're not taught any of these things in our society. But back in the day that was all taught. And it was it was the what was revered. There was ritual around it, right. For 1000s of years, there was ritual and reverence around trusting that inner knowing trust and intuition. And people like me were revered, the highly sensitive people were the shamans, the medicine women, we were the ones that kept the tribe safe. We knew when weather was coming in, we knew what plants were safe to ingest or make medicine from we knew where the animals were gonna go, right. Like we had this, this connection to Mother Earth and the innate intelligence that is mirrored in herds awesome yard in us. But now in modern day society, there's all this noise. And there's all this reliance on technology and the logical thought, right? And so the mind is just part of the body, but we give it this extra credence that the mind knows better than the body and so we live In disconnection, and we're surrounded by everyone else's expectations, judgments and beliefs of what our lives should look like, of how we should live our lives of how we should go about what we do, right? When you meet somebody, they ask you, what do you do? Not Who are you, it's what do you do. So we're so focused on doing and not being, and the soul is crying out for attention.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:05:26

So true. So very, very true, that we have gotten so far away. Like, we're miles away from the core of who we are at times. And the core of who we are, actually wants us to have quiet time, still time, something I talked about in episode four, or five. And that's that stillness allows us to tune into that light and love that the soul so much needs around it, to support it. And this highly sensitive nature, you're so right on target is that the highly sensitive nation can feel things that others people can't feel, since things that others cannot sense. And those are the qualities of the soul too. And so when we're closer to our soul, sometimes it feels as if that means we shouldn't be, because we haven't all these frequencies that revealing in vibrations that we're feeling, but it does mean the soul needs to be protected, certainly. But I'm fascinated by when you talk more about this, as a child, having to have these sensitivities. And somehow you stay true to yourself. And was that due to illness, or was that due to other complications or what?

Amy Stein: 00:06:44

So I stay true to myself now, but as a child, I didn't because I felt I was labeled different as a child, you don't want to be labeled different or weird you want to fit in. And so I conform to society's standards of what it meant to look like, you know, to, to not be seen to not be heard to not complain. And because I realized that every time I would express my needs, they were not met, or they were not believed. And so that affirmed in me that what I was feeling was not true, right. So it made me more disconnected from my body, it did not feel safe to be in my body, because I couldn't trust the messages it was giving me because the outside external message was this is wrong, this is bad, you are different. You're not being listened to, you're not being believed. So this must be it must be you, there's something wrong with you. And so at that point, my child of the 80s, nobody was talking about highly sensitive attributes, no one's talking about what it meant to be an empathic person. It was you need to fit in you need to comply, you know, you grew up in a belief system and a programming and that is affected by the culture and society you're raised in. And this is, this is an inherited beliefs, right. So like you, Bruce Lipton talks about, this is all done before age seven. So you're not aware of this process. It's just what you know. And so then as you grow older, and these beliefs are challenged, it triggers you, because it's your fundamental belief of how the world runs. And when it's when it looks different. It looks scary. And that's bad, right? We're taught that different is scary in our society, it's bad to be different. My body was not giving up on me. And so as I continue to grow older, and have more life experiences, and I had more incidents where my body was talking much louder to me, I still didn't know what it meant, right? Because the body can speak a language we don't understand. And I didn't have a way to connect back to it. Again, it was just all this external noise and internal noise. This is not right. This is this is wrong, there's something wrong with you stop doing this, that believing this, you need to conform, you need to be like everybody else. And so I was always at a battle, the disconnect, and a battle between myself between the mind the body and the spirit, because my mind the internal dialogue was telling me something different, that my body was telling me and I didn't know which one to trust, because society was telling me to trust the mind. It was love it again. Right? And the mind is just part of the body, right? But it's logical. And we assign logic as what is true. But that's not true. That doesn't need to be true either. But that's what we're taught. So like, when you grew up being taught these things, it's really hard to change that idea. So I was taught, if there's something wrong with you, they go to that you go to the doctor, they fix you, but throughout my childhood, that's never happened. I never got fixed by the doctor. It wasn't believed. And that pattern followed me throughout adulthood. And it culminated when I was working as a medical researcher, and I was working with chronic pain patients who were geriatrics. I was in my mid 20s. And I begin to resemble my 70 year old patients was like what is going on here? This is crazy. I'm 25 years old how my resembling 75 year old people and for me working with them, I could see how the system was broken. I had to advocate for them. I could see that they were not hurt. heard, they were not believed they were not listened to. They were not seen as people. And they had 15 minutes to explain to the doctor, what was wrong with them what wasn't working. And then when I was stuck in that dynamic myself as the patient, I thought, This is crazy. This is so wrong. How is this system still working? Like I don't understand. And so it made me realize that there was something that needed to change. I didn't know what that was at that point. But I had that voice still talking to me, it was like a whisper, it was no longer, you know, it was like, This is not right, you need to go a different way. But I didn't know a different way. Because again, we're taught to go just this one way. And what I learned was that one day does not work for people with chronic disease and chronic pain fails every time. You know, you're given a medication for the symptoms, but the symptoms are messages from the body. And when you're giving those medications, many times the symptoms get louder, or you have more symptoms, because the body is telling you this is not working. Or we're not taught that. When that happened to me, the doctor said, Just take more medication. And I'm like, There's something wrong with this, like, this does not make sense to me. And so I was on that merry go round for about three years of going to doctor to doctor, doctor, now I live in New York, you throw a rock, you hit a doctor. So it's not like I didn't have the access to health care. You know, there was plenty of doctors, I saw all the top specialists in all the fields, because again, no one looks at the whole picture, right? They don't look at the root cause they don't look at the body as a whole. They just want to manage your symptoms. That's what doctors are taught to do to manage symptoms.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:11:37

You're making a point, because in ancient times, medicine was a holistic approach your Vedic medicine, there was holistic physicians. And one of the things just as an aside, and my back, I have two family members that are physicians, they're holistic, they're indies, but holistically, and make sure they got the additional training that would allow them to be more holistic in their approach to things. But nowadays, we are so focused on the effect, and not the root cause of what's going on, then we treat the symptom. But as one of my family members say, that's a symptom, not the cause may be in the in the heart, or the cause may be in the lower back. And you're having a symptom in the foot, like a genie in the foot. And so this lack of awareness that are not all physicians, but physicians do tend to be more technically oriented, as opposed to holistically oriented will, will sometimes just go down that path, because it's the easier path, the technical path to go down. But the soul is the same way. The soul is saying, I don't want you to to the ego personna is what is the the technical aspect of this of the soul. And the ego persona is saying, Well, everyone else is doing it. So why not you do it. It's like, but the soul says, I'm not everyone else. You know, I want you to listen to the innate wisdom that you're talking about in terms of the body, the innate wisdom and the intuition of the soul, who will try to still continue to talk and guide us. And last, we totally shut the door, put it in the basement, or the attic and shut the door. Is that what you're saying is you still have these noises of these Inklings that are going on within you, that allows you to be able to say, the spirit is still with me. I'm still knowing that there's something more I just don't know. What. But somehow you got to the one

Amy Stein: 00:13:35

that happened. Yeah. And that's the things, as you said, like we're all different. We're all unique, right? We all have different experiences. We all have different symptoms and needs. And so what is not taught again, and what is not addressed by Western medicine is that there is inherited trauma, there is trauma from childhood. We all go through childhood, in one way or another with experiencing trauma doesn't mean it's a big T trauma, right? But it can be a small t trauma, you're human, you're going to experience it. And so to say that you had a blissful ideal childhood where all of your needs were 100% met by your caregivers is not accurate. There's no one that can say that. It's just not realistic because your parents are human too. They're not robots, right. So when your needs are not met, a wound is formed and the body is designed to heal but it's also designed to keep you safe. And so in order to keep that wound healed, it forms a protector and we all have them so that could be the audit that could be the victim. That could be the aggressor. That could be someone who's a people pleaser codependent that can be a perfectionist. That can be someone who wants to numb out like there's so many different ones, right? I could list 25 different ones. We all have aspects of them. Some of ours are more predominant. So for me, I was a perfectionist, but I was also people pleaser, that wanted to be liked. I didn't want to be labeled different, right? But I also knew that something wasn't right and so it got to the point where I was so sick of being on that merry go round and not getting answers, not getting diagnoses, not having the doctors talk to each other not having, you know, not being heard or listened to not being seen as a person, it was just a 15 minute appointment, my body was just treated as parts as separate. And so the universe or your Higher Self source God, we you know, whatever you believe in, whatever you ascribe to your soul's purpose will lead you to certain paths that are more aligned with where you need to be right for what you've signed up for in this life and this journey. And so as you talked about, like if you leave the door open, but the whispers may get a little louder, so the I kept getting pulled in indications to go towards plant medicine, as you said, it's been around for 5000 years, or your Vita traditional Chinese medicine, indigenous medicine, they are not alternative because they are the original medicines. The alternative medicine is Western medicine. It's only been around for 250 years, if that right like and it's because of John D. Rockefeller, he wanted to standardize everything to make more money. He was in the oil industry, he saw petroleum can make drugs, oh, I could standardize it and make money. So he got rid of the naturopath he got rid of iron VEDA, he got rid of indigenous medicine, he got rid of acupuncture, he got rid of homeopathy. But all these systems worked in that they treated the body as a whole. They didn't just look at symptoms, they treated the body as a whole. And they balanced it in natural ways, right. So we're all energy, everything is energy. And so the body is designed to keep us in balance. And that's what all of those systems do. They bring you back into balance in natural ways.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:16:41

Exactly. And when we're more in balance, we can be also more tuned to our soul. And when we're more in tune to our soul, we can start seeing the lessons that are soulless, needing to go through. And so we now join, and those lessons and learning it not react or overreact or shut ourselves down or get so moody or down. It's like, no, the soul is learning. And the question has to be is, what can I learn from this experience? What can I learn from this situation that is in front of me? What can I learn from this family member that is testing me. And so that's the same thing that is happening. So it's like a parallel process of this internal noise that's being created. And it's to keep you off the path, keep you out of the natural ways of healing oneself, and therefore you can't be quiet enough to be able to listen to yourself, and to start to distinguish between what is my ego and what is my soul needs going forward. So that's an interesting path that you've been on to to have that discovery and the awareness that, you know, Herb, ology has its place, and it actually can allow the body to heal, along with the other elements she talked about, but it also allows the quieting and having greater inner peace. Your thoughts about that?

Amy Stein: 00:18:06

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we were so confused, because we're always looking for someone to do the work for us or to tell us what to do. Because we're so disconnected from that soul's purpose from our intuition. So we're kind of like lost and we just want to, you know, tell me what to do. Give me the magic pill, give me the magic protocol, but doesn't exist. And so when you work with plant medicine, you can witness the innate intelligence that exists in each plant. Each plant has its own wisdom. Each plant has its own properties for healing and the body recognizes it because it is a natural creation. It is not artificially created in a lab, it does not have chemicals in it. It is a natural creation. So as I began to study it more I always had grown my own food when the summertime, but I didn't understand that every single plant that was put here has a medicinal purpose. So I was fascinated by this. So I kind of just like went down that rabbit hole and I started taking herbalism courses. I started training, I got a lot of books out from a library because it was free. Right? So anything that was free I did. And it was fascinating that I learned that the weeds what people believe a weeds are actually more potent than anything I could grow myself. So I don't put them here. They like dandelions, Clover, levers. They're all supportive to the body. Especially if you look at traditional Chinese medicine, like we're going to spring you want to support the organs of detoxification, your liver, your kidneys, right, the lymph system. All of those do that. And they all are growing in the spring. So like when I talk to people who are like I'm having these issues, I'll say to them nine times out of 10 If you go outside that plant is growing in your backyard, because Mother Nature puts it there knowing that you need it. But because we're so disconnected to being so respecting Mother Nature, to respecting that she has an innate intelligence that she has a wisdom that we can't control that we don't understand, doesn't mean it's not right. It was she was here before we were, and she will be here before after us like she will survive this because she is resilient. And so that was another lesson I took from her is that I began to watch how she responded because she doesn't react, she responds, and she adjusts. And she continues to build her resilience. So as much as we damage her and pollute her and abuse her, she still survives. And it's time to thrive. Yeah. So how can I bring that into my own healing. And that was, when I began to die with the moon cycles, the cycles of the seasons and understand like, when she rests, I should be resting. So we're still in winter, it's a time for rest, right? Spring is a time for rebirth. So things you know, you start to move your body again, you start to get things moving in a different way. But to be mindful of that, to be mindful with not listening to what other people think I should do, or listening to what my body is telling me to do. And then I'm validated by seeing the exact same thing and Mother Nature. Alright, so even though we're in winter time, and I'm in a cold climate, and it looks like nothing is happening, there's a lot going on, that we're just not aware of, because we don't see it. Right. But if you pay attention, you can see the buds are growing on the trees, you can hear the birds have come back, I know that there are worms under the ground working, I know there's mycelium running, I know that the tree roots are talking to each other, I know that there are seeds that are getting ready to Germany, like all these things are happening, just because we don't see them doesn't mean it's not happening doesn't mean it just stops. So even in times of rest, there's still things happening, the body needs rest, in order to heal. So if you're not prioritizing your sleep, if you're on screen so many hours a day and not giving your mind the time to rest. The mind is not designed to be on a screen so much as it is, you know, it's it's exhausting, it's overwhelming to the whole system. And that is when you just create more levels of disease in the body, right, it's more stuck energy, it's more levels of trauma. So it's it's this understanding to reconnect back to

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:22:11

that, when you're talking about these different layers, it reminds me of what I've talked about density, repeat creating this level of density in ourselves unknowingly, energetically, that is creating it. So some people think he is like, they're from Missouri, you need to show me something. The reality is, there's so much as you're making mention to the unseen aspects that are taking place and live in the wintertime, for example, as you're making mention of that needs to be attuned to. And we don't realize our screens are distractions. on mobile devices are distractions. How much we want to run to a game and watch it, if we're doing it consistently and on ongoingly is a distraction. Because I think one of the issues that we are challenged with in our society, which also challenges our soul, is we're challenged with the fact that we don't like quiet time. We don't like to be with ourselves, or by ourselves. And so the soul says, Well, if you don't like being with yourself, or by yourself, I gotta get to know me. How are you got to get connected to me, and then resulting in feeling empty, feeling bored, but we're not realizing that there's so much interconnections that you're really making reference to, and doing this quietness that the body needs and wants. But we're too much busy trying to do something, as opposed to just being in being settled into the joy of who you really are.

Amy Stein: 00:23:46

Yeah, in our society, we're rewarded for doing, we're not rewarded for being we're not rewarded for rest. It's a competition of how much you can do and compare it to somebody else. Right, that makes you feel good, makes you feel better. Oh, I'm so busy. Oh, I don't have time to rest, or we don't have time to get eight hours of sleep. Like you were like a badge. And that contributes that disconnection. You know, like the screens? What are you visually ingesting? And how is that just connecting you more? Because you're you're listening to someone else's opinion. You're not asking is this actually how I feel? Does this actually resonate with me? I actually really believe this. This this really stand true for me, right? It's all like this person said. So that's why I have to believe that still, it's still that external validation. Rather than does this feel good to me and when it doesn't feel good, we don't want to feel that so we numb out. We play the game we binge watch, we scroll social media, we numb out because we want to escape from what we're, we don't want to feel. We don't want to feel the emotions. We don't want to feel the sensations. We don't want to hear the thoughts. But as you say, like that's the intuition trying to get your attention. It doesn't feel good all the time because you're not used to doing it. So it feels bad. It feels really different and We label different as bad. But I invite you to just have curiosity. Have you know Dr. Kim duramo is a big energy medicine practitioner I've studied with for many years. And she'll say when these things come up, whether it's pain, whether it's an emotion, whether it's ruminating thoughts. So rather than to react to judgment to expectation to should write this should be this way, or try to control it to ask what's right about this, that I'm not getting to express that curiosity, of how can I reframe this differently? To see it in another way? Right. So my body is not happy today, there's a lot of weather, as I told you before, like we had a rough morning, there was a lot of chaos. And I couldn't let that gets me right. But instead, in the times that it was a little less chaotic, I went back to my breath, I went back to techniques with energy medicine to bring my you know, my system back into balance back into a calmer, more grounded state. So I could show up for this interview. So I could be at my best. So I could I could give the message that needs to be heard today. Right? Rather than I wanted to curl up in a ball, right Oh, programming, just go back to bed and don't come out right like that, or just yell and blame everybody else for what's going on that I can't control. That would be old programming of what I would normally do. But it doesn't serve me. And I know from doing this work and showing up for myself for years now that I won't feel good doing that right in the in the, in the moment, it might feel better to take it out on someone else. But then I'm gonna go into a shame spiral, you're gonna feel guilty. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm just going to just ruminate about it. So I could stop it and do something that's going to resource me instead, what's gonna make me feel better? How can I build my resiliency in this moment?

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:26:51

I just want to circle back around to something you said, just make sure speakers are on the same page. When you say energy medicine you're referring to.

Amy Stein: 00:27:00

So enter. So briefly, energy is everything around us, right? We're energy, the desks you and I are sitting at, like, literally everything you see is energy. It cannot be created or destroyed. But you can change it. And so energy medicine is working with your body in a way that you can move the energy throughout your body in a healing pattern, that you can move this stuck energy that has been there from not feeling sensations, not feeling emotions, that you can work with the body in a healing pattern that works to bring you back into balance that works to restore the energy in a feeling positive way. So I do Chi Gong, I do energy medicine, yoga. I do Donna Eden's energy medicine routine. Dr. Melanie Smith is another she does she's like a mash up of Chinese medicine and energy medicine. Right. So she does a lot with meridians. You could do EFT tapping. There's it's very broad category. But it's it's basically the understanding in layman's terms is working with the body in a way that allows the body to be in balance, and be open to the causative energies that exist all around us and inside of us, and working with them rather than against it. Because in our society, we're taught to work against the body, we're taught to work against the flow of Mother Nature, the flow of energy, but so be less resistant to what is and to be more open to what can be.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:28:31

Yeah, and I also want to add to that everything is energetic, and therefore, sometimes we don't think about that our emotions are energy, being angry, being frustrated, being annoyed, being worried, you know, and I talked about weary warrior type of person, and how that drains our energy. And so, energy medicine is also a form in which allows the person to be able to get their needs met more balanced to acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine or through the five elements are. So it is a form that helps you to get rebalance and be aware of that sensitive, sensitive nature. So I think of energy medicine to as energetically allowing you to be more in tune to who you really are,

Amy Stein: 00:29:18

and what feels good to you. Because what may feel good to you may not feel good to me, right? So I'm not going to do which is just a yoga practice. That doesn't feel good to me anymore. I did that for years, but it's no longer what feels good to me. But Chi Gong feels really good to me. Because it's like a walking meditation. I struggle with meditation. And so if you struggle with something that just means it's not for you, right? And maybe you can go back to an fears and it will it will work right but it's it's not getting hung up on that. Somebody said I need to do this and I have to do it that way. It's the freedom to choose what's best for you is to make the change.

Dr. Judith Holder: 00:29:53

You have the courage and the awareness that we've all been programmed like you said earlier and In that programming, we're not aware of the fact that the stream is going down this way, but you're really a salmon. And you're supposed to be swimming upstream, not downstream, it's where everyone else is going, which is okay, if they want to go that direction. But as you're talking about Amy, you have to be sensitive to what you need and what's gonna be right for your body. And if you're that salmon, we have to be aware of the fact that the beautiful thing about the salmon is the salmon is swimming in its unique way is honoring who it is, is honoring its natural sense of self, and what it needs to do in order to reproduce. And that means going upstream, as we've been talking about, and what do you need to let go of, or modify or eliminate, that will allow you as a seeker, not to get distracted by the internal or the external noise that's taking place, and getting in the way for your hearing the body's messages that is trying to be sent to you for healing, or trying to be sent to let you know, what's up? What's going on that that pain, or that discomfort is for a reason. And what we tend to do is we override that we actually need to be attuned to it. And I appreciate that Amy and her comments that she's made. And I want to say thank you, Amy. And I'd love to have you come back from part two to continue our conversation on quieting the external internal noise, allowing us to reawaken to our body's messages for healing. And might I add the souls messages and our abilities to hear them. Thanks, Amy. Bye for now, everyone.