TRANSCRIPT 🔗
speaker-0: Hello, I'm Eric Mallory, host of the Shameover Drink Last Podcast, and I'm here today with Natasha Romwall. I am so excited to have you here and thank you for being here, Natasha. How are you? I'm good. It's my
speaker-1: My pleasure to be here. I'm excited for our conversation.
speaker-0: Yes. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do?
speaker-1: So I am an embodied integration coach, which means that I, well, the way that I'm defining it as it, the understanding of it evolves and unfolds and becomes clearer to me. What I really do is I help mostly women, mostly that middle age area, reorient the way that they are showing up to their lives. That isn't Yeah, oftentimes there's there's something that happens, there's some catalyst that throws us off our game. And I think that it's, by design that that often happens at midlife because we've been pushing for decades and trying to make things work and oftentimes running from a survival state of the nervous system. and that it's just not sustainable to do that. And so by midlife, it's like You gotta stop and take
speaker-0: Yeah, just
speaker-1: a look and something's not right. And but but what I find is that the way that we are culturally is we're always looking at things as an external understanding of it. And so we're trying to fix things and we're trying to control them and we're trying to check the boxes and do all the things. to make ourselves feel less uncomfortable with the reality of what's going on. And what I'm finding and what I think is so beautiful about the work that I'm, obsessed with is that it's this invitation to actually, get really honest and really understand how you've been showing up to your life. in ways that are no longer aligned or not serving you, maybe they've never served you. And seeing that there is another way of being in your life. And so embodied integration is really about understanding all those different parts that factor into our human experience so that we can really be in the experience of being human. And that's the stories of the mind, it's the emotional energy in the body. it's the survival mechanisms of the ego and really importantly it's a spiritual anchor. And I I find that whether people come to me with a clear faith, something that they believe in or not, it eventually gets to that point. Because I think if we're trying to do life without a belief in a greater purpose, It is really hard to withstand being a human because this shit's tough.
speaker-0: Wow, that is fascinating. And one one thing that really stood out to me, as you're describing this, because I feel like it's so similar with the people that I work with and the work that I do is so much of this is external factors that we're trying to control and fix. And the only thing that we can actually control is us and what we do and our thoughts. Yeah, can we necessarily control all of our thoughts? No, but we can decide what to do with those thoughts and how we respond to them.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's like this this destroying an illusion that we've been running on. that tells us if we just do it properly, if we just make the right choices, if we're just good enough, then we can control the outcomes and we can keep ourselves safe because ultimately that's the thing. We want to feel safe and we wanna buffer ourselves and our loved ones from any impact. And but that's that's an illusion. We can't do that. Life is always going to bring ups and downs and it's inevitably going to have unsafe moments. And so as you said so perfectly, when we focus on the internal landscape, what we're doing is we are refocusing on that where we do have some agency, which is growing our resiliency and our capacity. for that inevitable bumpy ride of being human, which is incredibly empowering, versus just being at the, being a victim of circumstances and thinking that we can somehow shape them into turning out a particular way, which despite years and years and years of evidence, somehow we still think that that's gonna happen. And it doesn't work that way.
speaker-0: Well, I would love to dig into this, and I'm sure that you could talk for hours, if not days, on it. But one thing that I have seen, which I truly believe is why most people drink, is our inability to be uncomfortable. And we are only making things worse, like technology, as we know we have lived through more technology advances in our lifetime than any other generation before. But just, I joke, but you can't see someone at Target or any other grocery store standing in line for one minute without being on their phone, just scrolling. there is nothing besides mindless activity going on. And to me, it's just making our inability to be uncomfortable, to sit with discomfort, to have any not great feelings present. And on the flip side, sometimes we don't know how to feel good too, so it's on both sides. But how do you even start to scratch the surface with people there because it sounds like so much what you do as well is being in that discomfort and actually starting to allow yourself to be in it. Yeah.
speaker-1: what you're saying is so important. And I think, what's what it's making me think about is how we've always had this thing about us as humans where we're trying to distract ourselves from discomfort, right? And so we would turn to alcohol, we turn to food, we turn to shopping, we turn to sex, we turn to whatever the thing is. but now we have this permanent distraction in our pocket. that we can grab at any moment that
speaker-0: And it allows us to do all of that.
speaker-1: allows us to do all of those things. And so yeah, that that thing that is already very human has been exploited to the extent where you have to be really, really deliberate, really, really aware, and really, really committed to break that addictive relationship with distraction, to to make to make it more general. And yeah, so I think what you're saying is incredibly important.
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And, one of the reasons that I really felt aligned with your podcast is because of the way that you speak about the nuance of people's relationship with alcohol. And then it's not always a full-fledged, non-functioning addiction, but it And one of the big facets of my work is talking about areas in our life where we've gone on autopilot. And so, in my own, I I've never really had an issue specifically with alcohol, but I have fallen into that category of just drinking because it's just that's just what we do. And, as I've gotten older and I've noticed that doesn't feel as good in my body, or I've noticed this is something I've become really aware of is situations that are really boring or sometimes just intolerable in terms of me not wanting to be there.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: And then alcohol just being the fix for that moment. And as I'm, getting older and as I'm getting more deliberate and, cultivating my awareness about Who am I? What do I want? What am I doing? Am I choosing correctly for my desires? Am I in alignment? Da da da, all these things. I'm recognizing that I don't have to be in situations where they're not fun without alcohol. Why am I choosing to continue entering into those situations, those relationships, those contexts? if there isn't another thing there that makes it worth staying in that. so that's been a really, really big piece. So again, the awareness I think is huge. And I've often said that I think it's really, 80% awareness, 20% is work. but in terms of the effort, it's reversed. So it's like it takes about 20% effort to gain 80% awareness, but it takes 80% effort to do 20% of the work. But the awareness piece is really important because as long as it's below our conscious awareness, it's driving the bus, and we don't even realize that it is the thing that is behind our behaviors. Once we have the awareness, as you spoke about before, that's when we have choice to do it differently. Yes. so awareness is a big piece. Recognizing where we're on autopilot is a big piece. And then the other one is really, and this is connected to to awareness. But recognizing how much our pacing is out of alignment with when it is a, a reasonable and healthier way of or healthier pace of being human and being in our human life. And that again takes intention and we have to be very deliberate. So a big part of what I help people do is slow down. Slow down.
speaker-0: is so incredibly important because the pace that we are at, especially as Americans. I was just on vacation in Italy and obviously vacation mode very different anyway, but the amount of stress, the amount of time I was on my phone, the amount of time I was scrolling, all of this was almost nil. And I'm like, the the pace that we're at is just it's not realistic. It's not something that is sustainable by any means. And I even have a good friend in London who is out here visiting this summer. And he he's an entrepreneur, business owner, just him, no business partners, anything along those lines. And he's like, You guys work yourselves to death. it is insane. And he has a very successful, thriving business. He's like, you don't have to be on call 24/7. and it's just so yeah, let's dive into that. how do you help people slow down? Because I know anyone listening to this. knows that there are areas in their life that they absolutely need to figure out simple ways to help them slow down.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And it's it's really somewhat nuanced from person to person because what I do is I help people come back into an experience of the body. And in order to do that, we have to slow down. We can't experience the body if we're not slowing down and becoming really present. to the felt experience, the direct experience of being in our body. And where different people fall on the spectrum of their capacity to do that is all over the map. Some people who are quite good at it, they can fall into that, one session, we're guiding, we're in there, they're experiencing something, something cracks, and they're just like, this is a this is a really Amazing thing that I have been denying myself.
speaker-0: I would be
speaker-1: Well, there's some there, I've I've had people where it's taken months and they still can't reliably go there. And it's just because because of the journey that they've had, yeah, it just doesn't feel safe. Being in their body is not a safe place to be. And so asking them. to deliberately inhabit that experience is actually incredibly challenging and incredibly triggering. And so for in those cases, what we're doing is we're just moving slowly back and forth, in and out of the a state of, trying to tap, sorry, tap into a place inside our body that feels still, feels supportive and growing our capacity. with that experience, that feeling of being in the body. So it is very nuanced from person to person. but there are a couple of foundational practices that I rely on. The first one is breathing and just breathing, we all do that already. Yes, we do. However, a lot of us are breathing at a very shallow level. We're breathing up here in the chest area, and learning how to really Engage in a deeper breath pattern to regulate the nervous system and also to be able to access emotion and feeling in the body. This is a really, really important piece. So breath is something that we definitely use. It's for me, it's the carrier of our awareness. It connects us to any meditation practices that we want to do and it connects us to any embodiment practices that we want to do. And another foundational tool that I use is resourcing the body. And just on that note, I have actually a free guided audio that I'd love to offer to your listeners, which is guiding them into this practice of resourcing. So for people who are unfamiliar with the idea, or for people who just, want to cultivate this. habit, this tool, it's a it's a really great resource. So if you're able to to share that with your listeners, that would be
great. Absolutely.
speaker-0: Yeah, so what what does that mean? ev just overall? Because I'll definitely be including that in the show notes.
speaker-1: Yeah, so really coming back into a connection point with the the sensations that we experience in our body, right? There's so much energy, there's so many different textures and archetypes and images and our sensory experiences that can can connect us to that as well. And once we start to Feel into the direct experience of the body, all of a sudden we get all these new data points and we start to recognize that we actually understand our needs a lot better than we may have recognized previously. And so when we're, externally validating our lives and relying on experts outside of us to tell us what to do in order to be good, be right, be okay. if we want to start internally referencing our life, which is the point, we need to be able to understand the full picture of who we are. And that really, really includes our intuition and all of the yeah, information and data that's coming through. in the experience of being in our body. So this this resourcing practice is really about learning how to put our focus and put our awareness fully 100% or as much as we're able to inside the body. And it's for most people, myself included, we've lived up in the head. We're living conceptually from the thinking mind. So this can be a really foreign concept to a lot of people. And so this This resource that I'd love for you to share is a really great first step to access that.
speaker-0: No, absolutely. And this is it's so important because I've realized with myself, even through years of doing this work, just more recently, how disconnected I've been with my body. Cause I'm a huge believer in talk therapy. I will do that my whole life, but I was like at a point where I just couldn't get past things. I'm like, well, I'm not able to get in my body. That so I've been doing a lot more nervous system regulation work and somatics and that type thing. And the reason why I bring this up is All of us are very different with how and where we feel things. And that's why, as you're saying, which it sounds like is exactly what this does, it's knowing how that shows up for you. Because for me, it might be like in my stomach or in my throat or chest, I start feeling something like spicy, or it might feel like a color to me or something along those lines. And that might mean that I'm excited or that I'm anxious. But if I don't know the difference, that's very telling because. Sw something that could be, no, this is actually good. This is your body saying yes. I feel it more as, I assume it's anxiety because of how it feels. And then I'm just like, I'm not supposed to do this, So it's like knowing where things are showing up, what it looks like, how it feels in your body, yeah, and allow you, that's essentially our intuition telling us yes or no. this is a yes, this is a no. and it has been so transformational for me in my business and life in general, just this past probably three or four months that I've been doing it. Because I know now this is actually a yes, where before I was like the the guy who I started working with doing this, she's like, what does a yes feel like? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, what does a no feel like? And very quickly I know exactly what a no was, but I'm like, I don't know what a yes is. But it took me figuring out that difference because it can be a slight difference.
speaker-1: I love that for you. I really, I really do love that. And yeah, there's there's there's so much that I can pull on from that. but okay, let's keep going with our conversation because I think that there's gonna be more coming through.
speaker-0: well, and with on that note, with intention or intuition, I should say. one thing that I've definitely realized that with drinking, not only myself, but so many of my clients, they are very disconnected from their bodies, which again is why we're starting like we've been doing a lot of this work more recently. But when you drink, it paralyzes all of that. So you can't be in tune with your intuition. And A lot of bad things happen when we're drinking. a lot of times, if you look at really bad shit that's happened in your life, was alcohol involved? I'm not blaming it on anyone or anything, but if alcohol was present, you you shut off your intuition. You shut off, so many of those things other people do as well, So even if you weren't drinking, but it just made me realize, my gosh, I I'm a lot more intuitional than I realized. And in tune, but my drinking had shut that off that I wasn't, and maybe that was part of it is I didn't like being so open to things and in tune with things, So the being able to get back to that has been a really incredible experience. And especially if you want to be able to drink mindfully, you have to be able to drink intentionally. And that means being in touch with everything that's going on. That's how you're able to stop at, two or three or whatever that number is. So you don't just keep going. You have to be able to be in tune.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I I think you're naming it perfectly that it's shutting down all of that connection to intuition. A lot of the women that I work, their their go-to may not be alcohol, but they have still been in some survival performative state. And that as well keeps them up in the head and disconnects them from that intuition. And yeah, we're not really, we're not really fully. ourselves until we can tap into that. and that that information. you you framed it as a yes no and making that really clear. And I think that's such a beautiful example of how much more connected you can be to yourself in in your choices and how you're moving forward. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: sometimes that that is a lot. And I I know we both work with very high functioning, high achieving women, pretty much mostly midlife women. and it's I think that that is one thing that we all
have in common is that sense to always be performing, always be on, and we are just so overwhelmed and exhausted. I think we know we're tired, but we don't realize to the extent of how. exhausted we are, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. yeah, and I think that that's another reason why the slowing down becomes such an important piece. Because when we actively understand, okay, in order for me to do this work, and frankly, everyone's coming to this work because they have a particular thing that they want to change. And so that might be a relationship with alcohol, it might be something else. And that's the impetus. So I'm coming into this work because I have a real motivation to shift and change something. Erica and Natasha, they're telling me that I need to slow down in order to do that. I need to get present. And through the process of facing the challenge, what that looks like for them in order to get to the place of slowing down, what we're doing is we're nurturing our self-understanding. We're really understanding the mechanisms that had us speed up in the first place. And so it's it's the process of coming back to a slower state where the magic is. Because
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: the self-understanding is what leads us back to intentionality, what leads us back to agency, what leads us back to making the choices that serve us in our life moving forward.
speaker-0: Absolutely. So how are so if someone was just getting started, what are some ways that you would encourage them? I know connecting with the breath is one thing that it sounds like both of us do. And I know I'm one who has really not been able to get the whole meditation thing. I focus more on mindfulness and whether that's mindful breathing or but sitting there for too long just does not work for me yet. I keep trying, hoping one day it's gonna click in. But I always say even one minute is better than nothing and connecting to your breath for that one minute if you can multiple times throughout the day, but even just starting one minute a day where you are entirely focused on connecting with your breath through box breath or something along those lines. Is that something that you would encourage as well? Or how how kind of do you recommend people start out? obviously going into it with being very overwhelmed, very whatever. just exhausted and just knowing that they need to change, but don't know even where to start.
speaker-1: Yeah, I think the stillness piece is really important if we can work in a little bit of quiet and stillness to start the day. so sometimes distancing ourselves from the phone as we were talking about before, and just giving yourself a little bit of breathing room in your in the start of your day before you're on your phone. but I think what you said was really important about your relationship with meditation and that approach to stillness. I I believe in meditation. I think it's a fantastic practice,
but I also think that a lot of the nervous system regulation tools that we have focused on have been more suited to a masculine energy of approaching our our presence and our ability to to be still and our ability to reorient in all the ways that we've been speaking about. and something I've really been leaning into lately is a more feminine focused nervous system regulation, which is really connected to presence through pleasure. That I think is a really, really beautiful way for a lot of women who have maybe found practices like meditation inaccessible or really challenging, or just too much of an ask for where they're starting. Pleasure is on the other hand a really lovely way to move into this orientation. And that can start with the five senses and just slowing down, tasting more, being more aware of smells, infusing your life with smells that you really love. touch and feel, and the the fabrics that you're putting on your skin and the lotion and feeling the water and the lather of the soap when you're taking a shower. it doesn't have to, you don't have to go out of your way and, necessarily book a full day of pampering in order to to feel into that. Although I will say that I have a a day retreat coming up in a couple of weeks. And that is the focus of it, where we're going to be a bunch of women and we're all focused on sensory. sensory delight and rest and pleasure and receiving because that's a really big part of it as well. Yes.
speaker-0: Very hard, especially as females. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah. But if you can't, get away for a day retreat, for example, there are you can still invite that presence through pleasure into your everyday activities and just again slowing down enough to actually feel. what it is. And it's twofold because what is that doing? It's really reminding us that this is our life. And we're here to be experiencing our life. We're not just rushing through the moments in order to check the boxes to continue getting further into the, linear future as we understand it. This is our life. So let's slow down and let's be in it. through the sensations and senses sensory experience rather of the body. Yes. And and then, life just becomes that's that's how we reorient the way that we're showing up. Because we start to understand, how precious it is. we return to gratitude. and then in those moments where life is challenging, Because face it, it's not gonna always be bubble bath. we have this repertoire that we can lean on to help us withstand those moments. Yes. And we can we have more access to gratitude, we have more access to recognizing the things that we're grateful for, even in the most difficult moments. And those can be game changers in how we move through. The difficult things that we have to experience.
Erica+ShameOver: All right, if this conversation hit home, please go and take my free drinker type quiz at shameover.me slash quiz. It will show you exactly why you're reaching for a drink and what to do instead. Thanks for listening to ShameOver, the Drink Less Podcast. I'll see you next week. And as always, don't forget to like and subscribe so I can keep doing what I'm doing. Cheers. Did you know that ShameOver has a drinking tracking app? Yeah, it's true. It has been something I had worked worked on for a while. It has been essentially in beta test mode, but it is ready for you. So if you want free access, go to the link in bio right now. You can get it. Again, it's free. It will help you not only track your drinks, but you're gonna start noticing why you're drinking, when you're drinking, what is going on behind and underneath the drinking. So If you really want to transform your relationship with alcohol, that is one quick and easy way to start doing it today. It is a web-based app, so if you go to the app store and search it, you're not going to find it. So again, make sure you're going to the link in the show notes to get it. And I can't wait to hear what you think. Cheers.