Hi everyone, welcome back to The Chai on Life Podcast! It feels really good to say that after the holiday hiatus we've had. The holidays were so nice, and I feel so blessed that I was able to take that pause to fully focus on Hashem, my family and other connections in my life and now feel even more energized coming back to the podcast and all of the conversations and guests I have lined up for this year.

Today’s episode is on somatic healing with Rena Reiser. While we recorded this before the chagim, it feels like such an important one coming back into everything. We had time and space to turn off, to disconnect from technology and the news and reconnect to the things that matter most.

More about Rena:

Rena is a Polyvagal-Informed Focusing Trainer. She trains female leaders and healers to facilitate embodied change in the lives of those around them. In other words, Rena helps them understand how their clients’ autonomic nervous systems impact their behaviors and emotions and how to use the Focusing technique to explore and shift these behaviors effectively.

Rena has more than a decade of ongoing training including Focusing, Polyvagal Theory, Non-Violent Communication, and Inner Child/Parts work that she uses in her own life and that of her clients. Together they forge a uniquely empowering approach that allows clients to shift their behaviors at their source in a compassionate and embodied way.

In this episode, she speaks about why we are so stressed and overwhelmed today, how we can get to a place of menuchas hanefesh, what menuchas hanefesh actually means, exercises we can do to achieve more calm right now, why that may be the prerequisite to other spiritual growth and so much more. She even goes through one of her modalities with me in real time so you can get an idea of how things work. It’s Cheshvan, it’s the time to put all of our spiritual growth into action and this episode is the perfect way to set the stage to get you into the best mental headspace in order to achieve your goals.

To learn more about Rena, you can visit her website at renareiser.com. Check out her own podcast called The Embodied Jewish Women and follow her on Instagram @renareiser.