The Embodied Jewish Woman with Rena Reiser

In this episode I interview Pessy Schwartz about Cyclical Living

This special episode is a recording of a class I gave introducing the ins and outs of embodied shifts.

In it you will learn:

• What makes Focusing different from other somatic approaches.
• Why Focusing is so effective
• The importance of the state of our autonomic nervous system in behavior shifts
• How to predict if your attempt at behavior change will stick or not.

I also guide you through a short Polyvagal-Informed Focusing practice.

I introduce you to my upcoming training, SHIFT - Learn to facilitate embodied change. Learn more about the program and register at https://renareiser.com/shift.

In this episode I interview Esther Moskovitz about her journey back to dancing, and now leading women in a combined dance and journaling workshop. We also discuss embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This episode is from an interview with Parenting Coach Blimie Heller. Blimie is one of my all-time favorite interviewees and this is my 3rd episode interviewing her. Blimie and I have changed so much over the course of the last five years from the time that I first interviewed her. In this episode we talk about the ways we've changed in our approach to our work. We also talk about a major tool in creating a compassionate approach to viewing ourselves, our clients, and our children.

Below are some points we cover:

Being able to spend time with shame.

The significance of having a second person witnessing our discomfort and helping emotions shift.

The philosophy of Non Violent Communication on seeing the beauty in unpleasant emotions.

Does being divine mean we only embrace the positive?

The gift of presence and being triggering - realizing that you don't have to do something about it.

Needing to fix each other

Having needs vs being needy

Creating compassion for our children.

Seeing the need in resistance from parents and clients.

Genuine compassion doesn't feel like work.

Blimie wanted to clarify that she exercises caution when sharing her feelings with her children so as not to make them feel responsible for her feelings. Also, sometimes, she doesn't share her feelings at all and simply processes them with someone else. She only shares her feelings with them when she is 100% clear inside that her children are not responsible for her feelings and only if she believes it will in some way be beneficial for them to know.

Join Blimie's upcoming Essentials Course which starts on July 3rd! https://www.blimieheller.com/essentials

Join Rena's Embodied Jewish Woman Circle for July which is now open for registration! https://renareiser.com/circle

This episode was from a live Q&A that I opened up to my e-mail list. The questions were amazing and covered a spectrum of topics that relate to regulation and creating change in our lives.

Here is a brief overview of some of the questions and answers:

Q 1) How do we help our children regulate?

The importance of regulating the child within us.

Being regulating and not doing regulating.

The power of mirror neurons.

Q 2) Is being triggered another way of saying dysregulation?

The process of being triggered and/or dysregulation.

Q 3) How does dysregulation relate to concepts of Intuitive Eating?

Regulation can replace Intuitive Eating without the cognitive construct.

Q 4) Can sharing our state with our children have a negative impact?

The importance of not leaving internal struggles internal.

Ways we can relay our state to our children.

Finding ways to meet our needs in less than ideal situations.

Q 5) How does one balance regulating themselves and others?

Changing your trauma story.

Being honest about your own needs in a dysregulated environment.

If you like what you heard on this podcast, explore some of the other ways you can work with me at www.renareiser.com, including lots of free resources, all there to help you live life from a more embodied place.

This episode is from a live event I did in my community. The topic of the podcast is How To Fight Fair in Marriage, but the tools I share in this episode can be applied to all aspects of life. As a child of divorce I always feared that a fight meant the end of my marriage. I give my five rules for fighting fair.

Here are some of the topics I cover:

• Remember the 80/20 rule - take the 20% that will make the 80% difference for you.
• Here are my five essential ingredients to fighting fair:
  • Needs
  • Parts
  • Felt-sensing
  • Nervous system regulation
  • Neuroplasticity / visualization

• Fights can be an opportunity for growth when fighting is fair, an opportunity for understanding each other's needs more clearly and truly being there for each other.

Download my free Tune In Journal to tune into your needs and create lasting change at www.tuneinjournal.com.

Last month I sat down with Miriam Campbell, a speech therapist and a social worker.

I found Miriam to be such a breath of fresh air. She's honest, insightful, and full of positive energy. We spoke a lot about parenting but also personal growth. I hope you enjoy listening to her as much as I did. Among the things we discuss are:

• The importance of seeing parenting as a process
• How we need feel safety in order to access to higher mental capacities
• Using challenges to our benefit. Turning what feels like danger into a learning opportunity.
• Being able to model for our children / coregulating
• That it's okay that were not perfect - that we're always growing
• What relationships reveal and how they can motivate us toward growth
• Why struggle / discomfort is good
• Having awareness of what my dysregulation feels like in order to plan "what can I do right now?"
• Teaching self-awareness
• Apologizing to children can be good
• The goal of being an 80% parent
• Planning your support ahead of time

Miriam Campbell is a Speech Therapist and Social worker who trains and coaches parents how to support child social-emotional development. She runs course series on Self Awareness, Relationship Skills, Problem Solving, and Emotional Regulation. Her social skills book, Bubble Double is available on Amazon. She can be reached at [email protected], or find her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/skills4connection/ or on her website https://www.skillsforconnection.com. Email Miriam to receive the link to join her free WhatsApp group.

Download Rena's free Tune In Journal and sign up for her mailing list at https://tuneinjournal.com.

Chaya Hinda Allen empowers others by imbuing them with an optimistic approach to life, born of faith and trust in Hashem's goodness and love. For the past twenty-five years, Chaya Hinda has been guiding, teaching, coaching, and mentoring women of all ages and stages ‎‎(from teenagers to great-grandmothers; professionals, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home ‎moms, Rebbetzins, community leaders and more). She specializes in helping them cut overwhelm and frustration, and ‎gracefully navigate challenging relationships and life situations, sharing tools and insights through classes, guided imageries, one-on-one coaching, group coaching programs, trips, retreats and her newest venture, the Chaya Hinda Coaching academy..

When you join her community, be ready to laugh a lot along your path of growth, and to be surprised by how much goodness you discover within yourself.

A few weeks ago my husband and I sat down with Igor Mystelman to record a podcast. Igor and my husband are old friends, but he is also a former Divorce Attorney who has become a very popular couples' counselor. We took this opportunity to discuss different perspectives on relationships and our role in creating positive connections.

The podcast has a great casual and really fun feel. Between the jokes and the shmoozing we cover a gamut of interesting and diverse topics. Among the things we discussed are:

• The work of some early pioneers of mind-body work like Dr. Sarno and Dr. Gabor Mate and how they played a role in our journeys to healing.
• How I discovered Focusing, what it is, and some of the steps of Focusing and how I use them.
• How Igor uses the Imago technique to work on relationships.
• Why top down modalities cannot be the only tools we use.
• Comparing notes about men and women in therapeutic work and what they each need in their healing journey.
• Safety cues between spouses and whether we are hearing the other person - the power of mirroring and true empathy (and me chirping like a parakeet).
• The intersection between working on yourself and working on relationships.
• The importance of fighting.
• How many clients' dissatisfaction comes from confusing strategies with needs.

Enjoy this episode!

About Igor: Igor Meystelman is a Family Law Attorney turned Relationship Coach whose goal is to change the world, one relationship at a time. He is also a host of Dating, Marriage, and Divorce Conversations - Podcast. More information is available on his website: www.relationshipreimagined.com. He can be reached at [email protected]. To learn more about Rena's work, download her free Tune In Journal at www.tuneinjournal.com.

We are surrounded by the mentality of "man up", "grow up", "don't show your emotions", "stop being a cry baby", etc. This unfortunately has led many of us to close ourselves off from our emotional world. What happens as a result is that when we do feel an avalanche of emotions coming, most of us go into either dissociation, disconnecting from the emotion, or getting flooded with the emotion, having it take us over, since we haven't learned how to be with our emotions. This leads to all sorts of chronic pain, and distress in our most important relationships, where we should feel safe to be ourselves, and we don't. So today I'm sharing a somatic exercise called Somatic Tracking that helps us learn how to stay with our emotions, bodily sensations, and felt sense, teaching our systems that it's safe to feel, leading to reduced pain and enhancing our relationships as we show up as our true selves. Disclaimer: By listening to this episode and implementing this exercise you are not engaging in coaching with Rena Reiser and agree to take responsibility for your own health and wellbeing. This segment is part of a longer series of classes offered through my membership program, the Tune In Circle. Read more about it here.

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Download my free "Tune In Journal" and accompanying guided meditation here.

For more information about my 1:1 sessions and group programs, check out renareiser.com.

Join Embodied Dance at renareiser.com/dance.