In Conversation with Janina Fisher: Wisdom Between Colleagues; Insights For Us All

In this tender, wise, and delightfully expansive conversation, Janina Fisher reunites with longtime colleague, author, hypnotherapist, and teacher Nancy J. Napier—whose book Getting Through the Day shaped a generation of trauma clinicians and clients.

Together, they explore the evolution of their work across four decades: implicit states, parts, SE, hypnosis, spirituality, multidimensionality, and the deep privilege of accompanying clients back into their wholeness. Nancy shares the origins of her “future self” and “alternate self” work, her grandmother’s teaching of the rain cloud of knowable things, and how ideas emerge collectively across time. Janina reflects on why naming, noticing, and staying with implicit states is at the heart of healing.

Whether you’re a therapist, a client, or someone who loves Nancy’s or Janina’s work, this episode is a warm, soulful exploration of healing, wholeness, and what it really means to grow over a lifetime.

• Implicit states are young body–mind states Nancy and Janina describe implicit states as pre-verbal, deeply embodied experiences carried by young parts of self. The clinical task is to help the adult nervous system stay present with those states, not become them.
  

• Naming and noticing implicit states is itself an intervention The “noticing brain,” a term Nancy adopted from Janina, helps clients observe rather than drown in their experience. Noticing activates regulation, calms the amygdala, and brings more presence online.
  

• Spirituality belongs in the therapy room Nancy shares how many clients historically had no safe place to speak about their spiritual lives without being pathologized. Both she and Janina affirm that spirituality and trauma work naturally intersect.
  

• Future selves and alternate selves offer new templates for living Nancy’s “future self” and “alternate self” processes emerged from teaching, intuition, and synchronicity—what her grandmother called a “rain cloud of knowable things.” These practices help clients embody new possibilities, not just think about them.
  

• Love and gratitude as healing frequencies Nancy frames love as a universal healing frequency and encourages daily gratitude toward the body and its “community of non-human entities,” as well as toward protective parts. Janina echoes the importance of thanking parts that helped clients survive.
  

• Implicit healing changes how we grieve later in life Nancy shares how metabolizing an early implicit state of “I’m shattered” transformed her later grief over losing her cats—shifting from overwhelming, childlike collapse to grounded adult mourning.
  

• Trauma therapy requires active guidance and co-regulation Both clinicians push back against overly neutral, hands-off models. They emphasize that trauma clients are “lost in the trauma world” and need the therapist’s nervous system, structure, and guidance to find their way out.
  

Nancy J. Napier, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in private practice in New York City, specializing in trauma resolution. She is author of Recreating Your Self: Increasing Self-Esteem Through Imaging and Self-Hypnosis; Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children; Sacred Practices for Conscious Living, and co-author of Meditations & Rituals for Conscious Living.

She also has recordings of guided meditations on subjects including accessing your optimal future self, mindfulness, healing wounded child parts, and healing shame, to mention a few that may be downloaded from iTunes and CDBaby.  She also has training videos for professionals on Vimeo.com Videos on Demand. In addition, she posts a monthly audio guided meditation on her website, www.nancynapier.com, as well as on her YouTube channel, along with “Videos on Multidimensional Living”, as well as videos from talks given on issues related to spirituality. 

In this intimate, wide-ranging conversation, Janina Fisher and therapist, educator, and former child refugee Linda Thai explore what it means to live, work, and speak from a body shaped by war, displacement, and structural oppression—while also becoming a “celebrity” in the mental health world. Together they name the “mental health speaker celebrity industrial complex,” the imposter parts that never quite go away, and the quiet cost of being placed on a pedestal while still longing to feel like you truly belong.

Linda shares how her refugee history lives in her nervous system as future-oriented survival strategies—like always carrying her passport or mapping exit plans in response to the current political climate in the U.S.—and how the wilds of Alaska, dogs, and the rhythms of land, seasons, and subsistence living have slowly helped repair her sense of safety and synchrony. Janina reflects on privilege, boundaries, and learning to let in applause and appreciation, while Linda names humiliation as a core, often unnamed wound in the experience of being “othered.”

For clinicians, this conversation offers both personal and clinical wisdom: how we think about refugee and immigrant clients, how we recognize non-human relationships and nature as sources of attachment and regulation, how we soften the “white gaze,” and how we bring more heart, soul, and judicious self-disclosure into our teaching and therapy spaces without losing our professional center.

• Imposter syndrome doesn’t just “go away.” Janina and Linda normalize imposter feelings as lifelong companions—especially for those who did not grow up with a gut-level sense of belonging—and explore how purpose and mission can coexist with ongoing self-doubt.
  

• Humiliation as a core wound of othering. Linda names humiliation as a central, under-discussed wound in collective experiences of racism, xenophobia, and being cast as “unwanted,” beyond the more familiar language of shame, self-loathing, or harsh inner critics.
  

• Refugee trauma as future-oriented survival strategy. Linda describes always carrying her passport and planning an exit route as trauma-shaped, future-oriented strategies that live in the present—illustrating how political conditions can re-activate refugee terror and planning.
  

• Privilege and the “mental health celebrity industrial complex.” Janina reflects on learning about privilege through collaborations on implicit bias, and both she and Linda unpack what it means to be visible, admired, and sometimes de-personed within a conference culture that elevates “names” while blurring boundaries.
  

• Nature, Alaska, and more-than-human attachment. Living in rural Alaska, hunting, fishing, gardening, and tracking the seasons helped Linda reconnect with cyclical rhythms after trauma’s disruption of internal and interpersonal timing. She highlights the clinical importance of including pets, land, and non-human relationships when asking about clients’ support systems.
  

• Dogs, nervous systems, and attachment in the therapy room. Both clinicians note how the presence of dogs shifts nervous systems—Janina’s clients become more regulated, and Linda can often read a client’s attachment style more clearly from how they interact with their dog than from formal checklists.
  

• From deprivation-based needing to wholehearted wanting. Linda shares how years of “I don’t need anyone” survivalism gradually transformed into an ability to want and need people from a place of joy rather than deprivation—an arc that mirrors many trauma survivors’ journeys.
  

• Softening the white gaze and taking in warm, soft eyes. Linda describes how “white gaze” can trigger performance and appeasement parts, while intentionally orienting toward “warm, soft eyes” changed her experience of audiences. Janina, in turn, reflects on consciously softening her own gaze as a white clinician to communicate safety and respect.
  

In this heartfelt and insightful conversation, Janina Fisher, PhD sits down with Licia Sky, somatic educator and co-founder of the Trauma Research Foundation, to explore the living wisdom of the body and what it truly means to “listen within.”Together, they trace how Western culture’s disconnection from embodiment has shaped therapy — and how reclaiming a felt relationship with our bodies changes everything. Licia shares how curiosity, movement, and breath create safety and connection in the therapy room, and why therapists must first cultivate an intimate relationship with their own bodies before guiding others.Through stories, laughter, and grounded wisdom, Janina and Licia illuminate the subtle dance between mind and body, the courage it takes to feel, and the healing that emerges when we meet ourselves — and our clients — through sensation rather than story.Key Takeaways (for YouTube, Spotify, Apple):Why “the body keeps the score” is only the beginning — and how to truly access the body’s language How therapists can model embodiment through self-attunement and curiosityThe difference between talking about emotions and feeling them in the body How simple actions — standing, sighing, breathing — can shift state and restore connection The power of vulnerability, mutual regulation, and relational presence in healing workWhy grief, shame, and love all live in the body — and what changes when we listenLicia Sky, Co-Founder, Trauma Research Foundation: https://traumaresearchfoundation.orgBio Licia SkyLicia Sky is the Co-founder of the Trauma Research Foundation. She is a somatic educator, artist, singer-songwriter, and bodyworker who works with traumatized individuals and trains mental health professionals to use mindful meditation in movement, theater exercises, writing, and voice as tools for attunement, healing, and connection. She is a regular instructor in trauma healing workshops at Cape Cod Institute, Kripalu, and Esalen. For the past decade, she has been teaching expanded awareness in workshops to clinicians and laypeople around the world.

In this rich, relational conversation, Janina Fisher sits down with somatic psychologist, yoga teacher, and trauma expert Dr. Arielle Schwartz to explore how embodiment can transform the treatment of complex PTSD and dissociation.

They trace Arielle’s path from early work with adjudicated youth and community mental health into somatic psychotherapy, EMDR, and private practice—and how Janina’s work on structural dissociation and parts has deeply influenced Arielle’s clinical lens. Together, they question the long-standing emphasis on “event-focused” trauma treatment and instead highlight the power of working with implicit experience, the nervous system, and everyday triggers.

Across the conversation, Janina and Arielle explore:

• How yoga, somatics, and Buddhist-influenced training at Naropa shaped Arielle’s clinical foundations
  

• Why classic EMDR protocols can inadvertently harm highly dissociative clients—and how integrating somatic awareness changes everything
  

• The shift from processing events to working with the effects of trauma: implicit memory, nervous system patterns, and parts
  

• Structural dissociation, protector parts, and the inner conflicts that keep clients stuck (“I want closeness / I’m terrified of closeness”)
  

• Why “resource-heavy” work, safety, and widening the window of tolerance can reduce the need for intense memory processing
  

• The power of simple language—like “notice”—and why some clients can’t even tolerate the word body
  

• Proprioceptive practices (contact, weight, boundaries in space) as safer gateways into embodiment for highly traumatized or dissociative clients
  

• “Embedded relational mindfulness” and how a therapist’s own embodied presence can prevent burnout and compassion fatigue
  

This episode is especially relevant for:

• Therapists working with complex PTSD, dissociation, and highly defended nervous systems
  

• EMDR clinicians wanting to work more safely and somatically
  

• Somatic, parts-oriented, and body-based practitioners refining how they talk about “the B word” with clients
  

• Anyone curious about how neuroplasticity, parts work, and somatic mindfulness intersect in trauma recovery
  

🎧 Settle in, notice what happens in you as you listen, and join Janina and Arielle in this grounded, embodied dialogue about what truly heals in trauma therapy.

https://drarielleschwartz.com/

Dr. Arielle Schwartz, PhD

Renowned speaker, author, and esteemed clinical psychologist, Dr. Arielle Schwartz has been widely recognized for her research and clinical advancements in trauma treatment, which have shaped the landscape of trauma recovery and elevated the standard of care all across therapeutic settings.

Dr. Schwartz promotes a strength-based, embodied approach to trauma recovery that emphasizes self-driven healing to facilitate post-traumatic growth. Drawing on the principles of EMDR, somatic psychology, mindfulness-based therapies, and relational psychotherapy, she developed Resilience Informed Therapy—an integrative model of care for facilitating recovery from childhood trauma, PTSD, complex-PTSD and Dissociation.

Dr. Schwartz has been teaching therapeutic yoga since 2008, and she is the author of Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma Recovery, a widely referenced guide to applied Polyvagal Theory for trauma recovery. She has also authored numerous books covering extensive research and guiding techniques in trauma treatment.

https://drarielleschwartz.com/

www.resilienceinformedtherapy.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5LUxnXbReV7I5cEzvb46sQ

https://www.facebook.com/drarielleschwartz/

https://www.instagram.com/arielleschwartzboulder/

In this warm, candid, and deeply human conversation, Janina Fisher sits down with her longtime colleague and friend Deb Dana, the clinician who has brought polyvagal theory to therapists around the world. Together, they explore how understanding the nervous system transforms clinical practice, therapeutic presence, and even how we move through our own lives.

Spanning more than two decades of shared history—from Sensory Motor Psychotherapy trainings in Portsmouth to the early days of Deb’s work with Stephen Porges—this dialogue weaves personal stories with practical wisdom. Janina and Deb speak the same language: relational safety, parts, states, regulation, and the powerful ripple effect of ventral vagal connection.

Core themes in this conversation include:

• How polyvagal theory “completes the puzzle” for clinicians trained in somatic, parts-based, or talk therapies
  

• The therapist’s state as the primary intervention: why being regulated matters more than doing something
  

• Ventral vagal as “an unopposable force” and the surprising contagion of safety and connection
  

• Parts work inside the nervous system: how sympathetic, dorsal, and ventral shape what parts become available
  

• Why clients may fear ventral regulation—especially those with complex trauma or dissociative processes
  

• The dangers of rushing: urgency, sympathetic drivenness, and the pressures therapists feel to “make something happen”
  

• Working with dorsal states without pulling clients out before their system is ready
  

• Trauma-informed communication cues—facial expression, tone, and the subtle signals clients register instantly
  

• Real talk about aging, travel, grief, loneliness, and sustaining meaningful work over a long career
  

• The gift of humor, warmth, and genuine relational presence in trauma therapy
  

• How regulation is a daily living practice, not just a clinical technique
  

This episode feels like sitting with two mentors who let you behind the curtain—not just into what they teach, but how they live it, struggle with it, and return to it again and again.

If you’ve ever felt pressure to “do more” in the therapy room, or wondered how to stay grounded while holding clients’ complex states, this conversation will feel like a breath of ventral air.

Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician, author, speaker, and internationally recognized expert on the clinical application of Polyvagal Theory. She is a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute and an advisor to Unyte. In her work she plays a critical role in advancing the application of Polyvagal-informed approaches in clinical settings.

Deb is well known for her ability to translate the complexities of Polyvagal Theory into accessible, client-centered interventions. Through her Rhythm of Regulation® methodology, she has introduced groundbreaking tools and practices that empower professionals and individuals alike to understand their nervous systems and change the way they navigate their daily lives.  

Deb’s clinical work published with W.W. Norton includes The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Polyvagal Exercises, the Polyvagal Flip Chart, and the Glimmers Journal. Her work with Sounds True for a general audience includes Anchored and The Nervous System Workbook.  

Deb can be contacted via her website www.rhythmofregulation.com

Janina Fisher PhD talks with psychologist Robert Schwarz about energy psychology, EFT tapping, and how curiosity and compassion can guide trauma recovery. Together they explore stabilization, implicit memory, and the healing power of presence in therapy.

Robert Schwarz, PsyD, DCEP, ACAP-EFT, is a licensed psychologist with more than 40 years of clinical experience and a leading voice in the fields of trauma treatment, EFT, and energy psychology. From 2008 to 2024, he served as Executive Director of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP), helping to advance the integration of energy psychology into clinical practice.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Schwarz has organized more than 30 professional conferences focused on Ericksonian hypnosis, trauma treatment, and energy psychology. He has also developed and led numerous educational programs, including ACEP’s Science of Energy Healing series and EFT training initiatives.

He is the author of three books, including Tools for Transforming Trauma and We’re No Fun Anymore: Guiding Couples to a Joy-Filled Marriage, as well as numerous articles and professional publications. Most recently, he launched the online training program Transforming Trauma and Limiting Beliefs with EFT.

An internationally recognized speaker, Dr. Schwarz presents workshops and keynotes on trauma treatment, EFT, and energy psychology. He is known for translating complex concepts into practical, immediately applicable clinical skills within an integrative therapeutic framework.

Beyond his professional work, Bob is passionate about creativity, joy, and human connection. He nurtures these values through music, songwriting, and improvisational theater, and believes they are essential ingredients for a meaningful life.

https://www.doctor-bob.com/

Internationally renowned clinician-researcher Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD joins Janina to trace their shared roots at Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Center and explore how brain science can—and should—change what we do in the therapy room. They dig into why grounding must precede mindfulness for highly dissociative clients, the promise of Deep Brain Reorienting, adapting SMART for adults, and how real-world samples (not just tightly controlled trials) can finally validate the integrative treatments therapists use every day. They wrap with a clear, brain-based take on psychedelics (hello, default mode network) and a hopeful vision for the next decade of trauma care.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• The early days at the Trauma Center—and why a non-blaming, grief-literate clinical culture matters
  

• Lanius’s pivotal neuroimaging findings that differentiated hyperarousal from dissociation
  

• Why many clients “retain nothing” without grounding, grounding, grounding before skills training
  

• What Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) targets (orienting → shock → pain/affect) and who it’s not for
  

• Adapting SMART (Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment) for adults and how sensory pathways invite language and connection
  

• The case for real-world evidence so insurers cover integrative, neuroscience-guided care
  

• A concise brain-based explanation of how psychedelics may help (disrupting habitual patterns, influencing the default mode network)

• Ruth Lanius:  https://www.ruthlanius.com/

• Finding Solid Ground (program & research) — by Bethany Brand, Ruth Lanius, and colleagues
  

• Sensory Pathways to Healing from Trauma: Harnessing the Brain’s Capacity to Heal — Lanius et al. (new book mentioned)
  

• Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) — Frank Corrigan’s model (overview + training/info site)
  

In this engaging and heartfelt conversation, Janina Fisher, PhD is joined by Tiff Kopp and Clayre Sessoms, senior facilitators of Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) in Vancouver. Together, they explore what it really means to meet trauma with curiosity instead of control — and how TIST helps clients build safety, connection, and self-compassion without retraumatization.From their roots in victim services to their current work as art therapists and supervisors, Tiff and Clayre share how TIST weaves together neuroscience, mindfulness, and relational repair. They discuss how the model honors every part of the self — including those born from oppression, fear, or survival — and how humor, play, and the willingness to “know nothing” open the door to genuine healing.With warmth and laughter, this conversation reminds us that stabilization isn’t the opposite of depth — it’s the foundation that allows deeper work, creativity, and love for all our parts to unfold.

Key Takeaways:

✨ What makes TIST a safe, non-pathologizing approach for complex trauma

✨ How relationship and context restore dignity for marginalized clients

✨ Why curiosity and play are essential to healing and integration

✨ How therapists can unlearn “fixing” and embrace presence instead

✨ The role of humor, creativity, and repetition in building safety

✨ How true healing begins when we can care for even our most difficult parts

Clayre Sessoms, RP, CCC, ATR-BCPronouns: she/theyClayre Sessoms is a relational and experiential psychotherapist, art therapist, and senior facilitator of Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST). Based in Vancouver on unceded Coast Salish lands, she works at the intersections of parts, power, and belonging, offering care grounded in curiosity, embodied presence, and social justice.As a trans, queer, and disabled human, Clayre brings lived understanding to her collaborations and mentorships, centering safety, dignity, and connection over performing calm or competency, or fixing. She invites you to move from self-management toward self-relationship, and from surviving within oppressive systems to cultivating inner and collective belonging. She is the founder of Clayre Sessoms Psychotherapy, a practice dedicated to relational, creative, and justice-oriented care, and co-host of The Living Practice Podcast, where she and Laura Hoge, RSW explore what it means to live the practices that matter most to each of them.clayresessoms.comThe Living Practice Podcast.

Tiff Kopp, RCC, BCATR (she/they) is a trauma therapist and Certified Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) Facilitator who integrates somatic and art therapy with parts work. With more than fifteen years in the anti-violence and advocacy field, Tiff now focuses on supporting people living with complex trauma and providing consultation for therapists developing somatic and parts-based approaches. A queer clinician, Tiff brings an intersectional, relational lens to her work. Outside of sessions, she finds joy in photography, music, dance and time in nature.

Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST): https://janinafisher.com/tist

In this lively and deeply reflective conversation, Janina Fisher, PhD and Bessel van der Kolk, MD revisit their decades-long friendship and parallel journeys through the emergence of modern trauma therapy.

From their early research days in Boston to the global impact of The Body Keeps the Score, they explore how far the field has come—and how much there still is to learn.Together, they trace the shift from “the talking cure” to body-based and parts-oriented approaches, discussing what really heals: mindfulness, curiosity, compassion, and the slow unlearning of shame and self-blame.

With humor and candor, they reflect on the limits of diagnosis, the evolution of trauma research, the importance of relational attunement, and the shared privilege of witnessing human resilience. At its heart, this is a rare, intimate dialogue between two pioneers who helped shape trauma therapy as we know it—and who remain lifelong students of its unfolding complexity.

Key Takeaways:

• How trauma treatment evolved from talk therapy to somatic and parts-based approaches

• Why remembering isn’t healing—and what actually supports integration• The tension between research, manualized methods, and relational attunement

• Compassion as the antidote to self-hatred and blame• The limits of diagnostic systems and “evidence-based” models• Why curiosity, play, and humility keep the work alive

Bessel van der Kolk, MD – https://besselvanderkolk.comThe Body Keeps the Score – Book on Penguin Random HouseTrauma Research Foundation (TRF): https://traumaresearchfoundation.org

In this rich and deeply personal episode of In Conversation with Janina Fisher: Wisdom Between Colleagues—Insights for Us All, Dr. Janina Fisher is joined by Rui Cang, LMFT, a Los Angeles–based psychotherapist, TIST facilitator, and Sensory Motor Psychotherapy practitioner whose clinical expertise is grounded in her own lived experience as a Chinese-born immigrant and bicultural therapist.

Together, they explore the complex and often unspoken challenges faced by Asian and Asian American clients—from navigating intergenerational trauma and collectivist family systems to reclaiming language for emotion, boundaries, and the self in a culture where those concepts have long been taboo.

Through stories from her practice and her own journey, Rui illuminates:

• The role of shame and compliance in collectivist cultures—and how they can inhibit healing
  

• Why the concept of “boundary” may feel foreign or even threatening to many Asian clients
  

• How helicopter parenting, fear-based caregiving, and emotional withholding create patterns of anxiety and indecisiveness across generations
  

• The cultural value of endurance (zhen)—and how it both protects and harms
  

• The profound attachment trauma that can arise even in multi-generational, tightly bonded families
  

• How enduring racism, war, and displacement have shaped bodies and nervous systems across Asian diasporas
  

• The emotional toll of code-switching, assimilation, and survival-driven identity loss in Western contexts
  

• How language itself can limit emotional expression—and how somatic and parts-based therapy helps bridge the gap
  

Janina and Rui reflect on what it means to offer culturally responsive trauma therapy that honors the beauty and pain of collectivist traditions. They discuss the paradox of Asian family systems that are close-knit and supportive—yet often silence individuality, emotional vulnerability, and self-expression. Rui shares how many of her clients, especially first- and second-generation immigrants, are caught between two worlds: Western individualism and Eastern collectivism—and how therapy can help them reclaim a self that belongs to both.

Throughout the conversation, Rui’s compassion and insight shine. She speaks candidly about:

• Growing up in Beijing in the absence of emotional vocabulary
  

• Training in psychology in China before such programs truly existed
  

• The challenges of doing Mandarin-language therapy with clients whose native culture lacks words like “empathy,” “self-worth,” or “boundary”
  

• Her clinical use of parts language (TIST) to help clients honor their loyal parts, submit parts, and protective parts without shame
  

This episode is not only a profound exploration of Asian cultural dynamics in therapy—it’s also a masterclass in attunement, humility, and the courage to question inherited beliefs.

Whether you’re a clinician working with Asian clients, an immigrant navigating dual identities, or simply someone interested in how culture shapes our inner world, this conversation offers nuance, validation, and a path toward integration.

“Our clients aren’t being resistant,” Rui reminds us. “They’re carrying centuries of survival strategy—and they’re doing the best they can.

https://www.thewholisticconnection.com/

Rui is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a deep passion for supporting individuals and families in healing from trauma. She specializes in PTSD, Complex PTSD, dissociative disorders, and attachment-related challenges, and is certified in both Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, and has advanced training in Attachment-Focused EMDR and Relational Life Therapy for couples.

Rui’s approach is warm, relational, and holistic—integrating mind, body, and spirit. She believes that healing happens through connection, compassion, and the discovery of inner resilience.