Moving Out of Trauma: Learning to Listen to the Body with Dr. Jen Lee
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It can feel completely discombobulating to have physical symptoms, one after another stacking up, all the while experiencing overwhelm, stress, anxiety and past traumatic memories popping up in the review mirror. Between trying to manage the daily demands of life and taking care of oneself, while dealing with the past that has been creeping back up, life can be exhausting. And you’re not alone. I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Jennifer Lee of L2E Physical therapy and talking about listening to the body, caring for it and how she helps people who are experiencing chronic pain and past trauma.
Listening to the body is a crucial aspect of our health and well-being, and yet we so often don’t slow down enough to do it. The human body is a complex and sophisticated system that is constantly communicating with us, but we often ignore or suppress its signals. Whether this is because of our busy lives, the demand of work, school, family and friends or because it can be uncomfortable to face after pushing it down for so long. We tend to prioritize external factors such as work, relationships, and other obligations over our internal needs and neglect our physical, mental, and emotional health. However, by learning to listen to our body, we can improve our overall health, prevent chronic diseases, and achieve a more fulfilling life. And who doesn’t want that?! But it is definitely clear, we have to make time and space for it.
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How Dr. Jen Lee Works
Dr. Jen Lee is a physical therapist who uses her hands to connect with her clients' energy and heat level, providing a non-invasive treatment approach that puts the body in a relaxed and efficient position to promote healing. Dr. Jen’s work is based on scientific principles such as polarity, magnets, and quantum physics, which demonstrate the link between the body and the mind. She emphasizes the importance of processing emotions and listening to the body's symptoms to prevent physical pain, dysfunction, and disease.
Dr. Jen believes that emotions can contribute to chronic pain conditions and that emotional release is a crucial part of her work as a physical therapist. Dr. Jen's expertise is in the release of the body's greatest restrictions, taking her into the organ tissue, the nervous system, and often into unprocessed emotions that stay trapped in the physical body. Her approach is to the see the body, the person, as one integrated system and incorporate someone's past and full medical history into her care. This enables each patient to not only feel better, but to understand why they present as they do and how their individual history plays a part in their body, their symptoms, their anxiety that day.
Dr. Jen uses applied kinesiology to talk to the body and allow emotions to be heard and validated, which can lead to their release from the system. She encourages her clients to identify and become familiar with the physical sensations associated with their emotions, as these can reveal deep-seated traumas that are held in the body. By learning to validate and honor these feelings, individuals can release their emotional tensions and ultimately achieve better physical and mental health.
I can say from a first hand experience Dr. Jen’s method works. Dr. Jen was kind enough to allow me to experience an intro session with her and feel the difference in my own body. When she used her listening skills, I found that I also could tap into my body and see where it wasn’t aligned. She used non-invasive tools to measure where I was at and then used different techniques to help my body shift and feel more aligned. Afterwards, I could feel a difference physically and mentally and she could see a difference in the measurements that were taken from the beginning of the appointment.
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Listening to the Body and Caring for the Self
So often, what is needed is to quite shoving down the emotion, thought or experience but to allow ourselves to notice it in the beginning, middle and end. This is important, because if we don’t allow the emotion to completely move through, there is no end and we get stuck. There is such power in listening to the body and allowing it to guide us towards a more balanced life. I encourage and invite you to honor your body's messages to see what paths of healing, growth, and self-awareness might be waiting for you. So, take a deep breath, connect with your body, and listen to its wisdom. If you are curious to learn more about this idea of expereincing an emotion from beginning, middle and end, I encourage you to check out Burn Out: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle a book by Emily and Amelia Nagoski!
We hear so often we need to take better care of ourselves, listen to our bodies, practice self-care, but what does any of that actually mean in real life? Dr. Jen and I discussed how practicing awareness of the body and our emotions in the present can help us to progressively heal. The practice of mindfulness, meditation, yoga and breathwork can help in our ability to become more aware of our body's sensations, thoughts, and feelings without judgment or reactivity, which is where the healing work can begin. Over the last decade or so, the research has shown that mindfulness can help us develop a more compassionate and non-judgmental attitude towards ourselves and others, reducing negative self-talk and anxiety. By practicing mindfulness regularly, we can train our brain to respond to stress in a more adaptive and less reactive way, leading to better emotional regulation and self-awareness. We also know that mindfulness, sometimes, can be more difficult for trauma survivors, bringing up more awareness in triggers which can be overwhelming as most trauma survivors spend their time living in fight or flight mode. If you identify with this, I strongly recommend you look into trauma informed mindfulness, to help you both be aware and care for yourself during those times while also learning mindfulness as a skill for emotional regulation and self-awareness. Click here for a link to the podcast page where you can sign up for our newsletter and get a free trauma-informed mindfulness workbook.
Living in fight or flight mode can be harmful and can really have an impact on the body. Often times, people with autoimmune or gut issues have struggled with those symptoms for a good chunk of their lives and have other physical symptoms that manifest in different ways. This is where Dr. Jen’s work really comes in, as the emotions that have been pushed down for so long come up as chronic pain and physical symptoms that are all interconnected in the body. What I found so interesting about this conversation with Dr. Jen was the re-affirming knowledge that the body, mind and heart are all inter-connected and all need to be cared for. Autoimmune or gut issues, may indicate that a person hasn’t felt a true sense of safety in some time. People who live in fight or flight mode may not see lasting benefits from treatments such as massage, chiropractic, or acupuncture, as they are not addressing the underlying issue of feeling unsafe in their body. The first step towards healing is getting to a place where the person can feel safe in their body, calming their nervous system down to allow for exhaling and healing.
EMDR Therapy Phoenix - Kandace Ledergerber.
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How EMDR Therapy and Physical Therapy Can Go Hand in Hand
What was really cool about the conversation I had with Dr. Jen is that different healing paths can go hand and hand. When I start with any client, I spend time with them discussing what they want to achieve in therapy and how they want to feel at the end of therapy. We then start to develop resources, which are tools they can use to ground themselves back into the present when experiencing overwhelm or stress. Then we start to peel back the layers to look at what themes or beliefs have been running rampant from these past traumatic experiences and what memories are tied to those beliefs. And then we start to process them with EMDR therapy. Dr. Jen offers additional support and healing so that while a client is working through EMDR therapy they can also feel a release physically from symptoms and gain that extra support and balance. If you’d like to find out more about Dr. Jen’s work you can link to her website or find her on Instagram.
