January 01, 2026

89. Speaking to your Symptoms

43 minutes

What if your body is not breaking down, but trying to get your attention in the only way it knows how?

In this episode of Holistically Healthy, host Sydona Tregoning sits down with Dr. Erin Hayford, a Naturopathic Doctor and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, to talk about what really happens when symptoms do not respond to plans, protocols, or positive thinking. Erin shares her personal experience living with chronic illness, including a Crohn’s disease diagnosis, and why being labeled with a condition does not mean you are sentenced to a fixed future.

This conversation focuses on the nervous system and why regulation comes before healing. Erin explains how the body responds to long term stress and unresolved trauma by staying in survival mode. When that happens, symptoms become signals. Pain, fatigue, inflammation, and digestive issues are not random failures. They are attempts by the body to communicate that something is not safe or supported.

Sydona and Erin explore somatic experiencing as a practical way to reconnect with the body without overthinking it. Instead of asking what is wrong with you, Erin encourages asking what your body needs right now. She explains how trauma can live in the body long after the original experience has passed, and why talking alone often is not enough. Healing requires learning how to notice sensation, slow down reactions, and build capacity for safety inside the nervous system.

You also hear why symptom management can sometimes keep people stuck. When the goal is only to quiet the symptom, the message gets ignored. Erin describes how working with the body rather than against it can open a new path forward, especially for people who feel exhausted by doing all the right things with little relief.

This episode is for anyone who feels frustrated, confused, or disconnected from their body. It is for those who sense that healing is possible but do not know where to begin. The starting point is not more effort or more control. It is learning how to listen.

What if the breakthrough you have been chasing actually starts with listening instead of fixing?

Connect with Dr. Erin Hayford