Dr. Lilia Graue is a treasured colleague and friend who is both an experienced Mindbody Medicine Practitioner and someone I found as an ally in the unique challenges that people of size face in accessing supportive care on their journey with pain. This episode she shares her personal pain recovery story as well as some research on weight stigma, dieting, threat physiology and how to approach creating corrective experiences in healing. Dr. Lilia Graue is a physician, psychotherapist, and mindbody healing mentor. After living with chronic pain for more than a decade, she found freedom through an integrative mindbody approach grounded in neuroscience, mindfulness, and compassion. Today, she supports people living with chronic pain, fatigue, long COVID, and other persistent symptoms to reconnect with safety, vitality, and agency. She also mentors fellow practitioners—therapists, coaches, and clinicians—to create trauma-integrative, relational, and sustainable healing spaces. With over 25 years of experience in medicine and psychotherapy, Dr. Graue’s work prioritizes consent, curiosity, and co-creation, honoring individual context, systemic influences, and the power of genuine relationship in supporting long-term change and healing. She works with people globally in both English and Spanish. Originally from Mexico City, she currently lives in London with her husband and the two adorable rescue cats who own them, Ziggy and Lupito. In addition to her work, she loves spending time in nature, baking, reading, traveling, and enjoying live music.
Dr. Lilia Graue is a treasured colleague and friend who is both an experienced Mindbody Medicine Practitioner and someone I found as an ally in the unique challenges that people of size face in accessing supportive care on their journey with pain.
This episode she shares her personal pain recovery story as well as some research on weight stigma, dieting, threat physiology and how to approach creating corrective experiences in healing.
Dr. Lilia Graue is a physician, psychotherapist, and mindbody healing mentor.
After living with chronic pain for more than a decade, she found freedom through an integrative mindbody approach grounded in neuroscience, mindfulness, and compassion.
Today, she supports people living with chronic pain, fatigue, long COVID, and other persistent symptoms to reconnect with safety, vitality, and agency. She also mentors fellow practitioners—therapists, coaches, and clinicians—to create trauma-integrative, relational, and sustainable healing spaces.
With over 25 years of experience in medicine and psychotherapy, Dr. Graue’s work prioritizes consent, curiosity, and co-creation, honoring individual context, systemic influences, and the power of genuine relationship in supporting long-term change and healing. She works with people globally in both English and Spanish.
Originally from Mexico City, she currently lives in London with her husband and the two adorable rescue cats who own them, Ziggy and Lupito. In addition to her work, she loves spending time in nature, baking, reading, traveling, and enjoying live music.
Dr. Lilia Graue's website - https://liliagraue.com/
Take her in-depth mind-body assessment - https://liliagraue.com/in-depth-assessment
Sign up to her newsletter! - https://liliagraue.com/enchanted-loom
She also has a couple of spots open for her 1:1 mentorship programs:
Reclaim Your Life - https://liliagraue.com/reclaim-your-life
Replenish Your Practice - https://liliagraue.com/replenish-your-practice
Research mentioned in the conversation:
Physiologic Responses to Sensory Stimulation by Food: Nutritional Implications by RICHARD D. MATTES PhD, RD - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002822397001016
What’s Wrong With the ‘War on Obesity?’ A Narrative Review of the Weight-Centered Health Paradigm and Development of the 3C Framework to Build Critical Competency for a Paradigm Shift by Lily O’Hara and Jane Taylor - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244018772888
Coming to terms with fear by Joseph E LeDoux - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3939902/
Fear conditioning as a pathogenic mechanism in the postural tachycardia syndrome by Lucy Norcliffe-Kaufmann... - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10200284/
TCCEP57 ===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Curiosity Cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker hypnotist, trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder. Fat human on planet Earth. Here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity, so you can feel more, better, more of the time in the body you have today, and build the rich full life that you want to live.
[00:00:39] A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey. But always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:57] Deb: Hello, my feelers and healers. It is Deb, your host of the Curiosity Cure podcast. And I am, I do I say this each time? I'm so excited for this conversation because I am so excited for this conversation. I'm having a conversation with my friend and colleague, Dr. Lily, about weight stigma and neuroplastic symptoms about how messages around our bodies can trigger threat physiology, which helps perpetuate neuroplastic symptoms in our bodies. So we're gonna have this conversation, an invitation into both practitioners and healers themselves, starting to think about how these concepts about what our bodies are expected to be and look like. Any kind of past experiences with weight bias. How they show up in our bodies now, the stories that we tell and believe about our bodies and our ability to experience pain recovery.
[00:02:14] So I'm looking forward to sharing this conversation with you, and it's going to be one among many because she is a person whose counsel and wisdom and expertise I lean on quite a bit. So I hope you enjoy listening. Thank you so much for listening to the Curiosity Cure.
[00:02:38] Hi. So first off, I like to invite people to introduce themselves to the audience so that people get to know you the way you want them to know you. That makes me happy. I'm so excited that you're here. We're gonna have a great conversation.
[00:02:55] Lily: Thank you. I never really know how to begin introducing myself. Perfect. The reason is that. There's so much to say, I think on one hand. And then also there's always this question, do I start with a personal, do I start with a professional?
[00:03:12] Do I start with a blend of the two or
[00:03:16] Deb: Totally. Yeah. Here I will make it simple. Let's start with the professional. Okay. Your name, your titles of which you have many, and then we all just jump right into all the other stuff.
[00:03:33] Lily: All right. Awesome. So I'm Dr. Lilia Graue and my friends call me Lili. And that's the way I like people to call me.
[00:03:42] I am a physician, a psychotherapist, a mindfulness and compassion based program facilitator among other things. And my current passion is helping people break free from. Chronic pain, starting with the idea that chronic is forever. Mm-hmm. And also other symptoms that are hard to pin down or have received conflicting diagnoses and find hope again and reconnect to their liveliness and step into the freedom to do what brings them joy, what they love, and to be in the world with greater ease and wellbeing.
[00:04:27] And I also support fellow mind body practitioners who really want to do impactful work while keeping their sanity and thriving personally. And these two worlds intersect quite often, as you and I both know. And yeah. On the more personal side, I currently live in London.
[00:04:53] I'm originally from Mexico City where I lived for most of my life until early 2024. And I live with my husband and the two adorable rescue cats who own us, Ziggy and Lupito, and they came over from Mexico City with us.
[00:05:10] Deb: Amazing. Thank you. The, first thing that I wanna reflect is, the way that you shared that is such a reflection of who you are, which is filled with so much generosity.
[00:05:22] Um, oh, thank you. And then what everybody wants to know is how are the cats adapting to London?
[00:05:30] Lily: Yes, of course. Currently they're doing well, it's summer. We've been having a glorious summer, very much unlike the last one, and there's been lots of sun, so the cats are happy and their window just perched watching passers by and everything that's going on outside the window and really enjoying the sun and up to their habitual mischief.
[00:05:58] And they've had a hard time honestly, especially at the beginning. It was a huge change, and I think cats are really sensitive creatures and it was a really hard change for me too. And so they sense that as well, and they respond to it. And then the winter was really, really hard on all of us.
[00:06:20] There was this, I call it the permanent twilight during daytime, and then just so much dark. So many hours of darkness in the day, which I'm really not used to. But one of the things that we all love at the place where we currently live is the quiet. Our home in Mexico City was noisy and here the insulation is fantastic.
[00:06:47] So we don't hear the neighbors, we don't hear the cars outside. It's wonderful. And especially Ziggy enjoys the quiet, as do I.
[00:06:54] Deb: Thank you. Now everybody will be able to, listen to our conversation knowing that the cats are well and happy and adjusted and enjoying the summer in London. Yeah. So like so many people, who do this work, I think everyone, except for Dr. Clarke, right, has come to this work through their own experience. And I believe that that was true for you. Yes. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe you knew it before and then you had an experience and then it became even more important. I'm wondering, however much you wanna share about that, and I know it's always hard to condense Yes. A lived experience into a story that we tell, but we know that stories help people heal. Yeah. So I think that it's always really important and especially as somebody who is trained as a physician to then be able to come to this work, which is, somewhat countercultural, somewhat paradoxical, still very much based in science and now this growing field of medicine.
[00:08:08] Yeah. So I would love for you to share your own personal story, um, yeah. With my
[00:08:15] Lily: audience. Thanks. Thank you for that question. And as you were asking it, I was wondering where to begin, and I think I'll go some years back. So when I chose a career, I was between math and medicine, and I think math would've been the easier choice for me, the more natural one.
[00:08:39] There's an order to math that I love and there was a clarity to it and everything felt so intuitive. And with medicine, from the time I chose medicine, I, I wanted to go into something connected to what is known as mental health as well. And so something in the behavioral sciences and there was so much to figure out so many questions.
[00:09:07] And it was the opposite of math. It wasn't neat, it wasn't straightforward. There were a lot of mysteries and that's one of the things that drew me to it. And the other thing that drew me to it was my own personal story. There was a lot to heal and I was trying to make sense of many things. And so I went into medicine and then I was at the, I was, I would say in the middle of my second year, which was the equivalent of what most people know as pre-med.
[00:09:39] So basically tons of studying, tons of textbooks, tons of lab work, and tons of lectures. And it all felt really dry, sort of, and, and also there so many of my lecturers were more about, so this is the way it is and you have to learn it. And I, I'm always someone who asks questions and endlessly curious. And I was like, okay, but, but where did we start to get to this?
[00:10:10] How did we come about this formula? Where does it come from? I need to understand. And they were No, no, that's for the mathematicians to figure out. You just have to learn it. And I was like, no. And I don't wanna be that kind of doctor either the the kind of doctor who just says, this is the way it is and you need to get on with it.
[00:10:30] And I was having a real crisis in terms of my vocation and wondering, is this really the place for me and is it's going to allow for the kind of medicine that I want to practice? And so I, I got out my box of mementos, which is where I kept my comforting things and I came across this card. Who, it was gifted to me by one of my teachers in high school.
[00:10:54] Lovely, lovely man. And he was my lit teacher. And it was a postcard with an image of the Buddha of compassion. And I started to get really curious and I started studying and learning about Buddhism. And that's what led me to the decision to stay in medical school because the, one of the tenets of Buddhism is that we're in this precious life to cultivate compassion towards ourselves and others.
[00:11:26] And I thought, what better place, what more privileged place to do this than medicine? And so that's the reason I stayed and that's what kept me going through the hardest times of the internship. And, you know, many, many challenges. And this is where my path towards mindfulness started really. And at the time, for me, it came from a spiritual tradition in the form of Buddhism and I started meditating.
[00:11:53] I had been introduced to yoga years before by my mom, and that became actually the path that saved my life and quite literally. And it really nourished me in ways that what I was finding in medicine or elsewhere in my life did not, but it was always something that was hidden. It wasn't something I shared openly with many people because at the time in Mexico City, it was like I was, you know, a weirdo, which I've always been in many different ways, but that was one of the iterations of my weirdness and being different from my culture and.
[00:12:41] My family was Catholic. I was raised Catholic, and so there was this big clash in my family and my friends just thought I was quite mad. And so it, it was this practice and this tradition that really nourished me and kept me going and really inspired me and gave me meaning and purpose. And I thought there was such deep healing in there and it didn't feel possible to integrate it explicitly into the work that I did.
[00:13:11] So for a long time there were these two parallel paths. My overt professional path in medicine and later in psychotherapy, and my own personal healing path that had a lot to do with spiritual tradition and a mind body tradition, mind body practices really. And then fast forward some years I, after I finished my master's in psychotherapy, I did training in medical family therapy and started studying more about mind body medicine.
[00:13:48] But back then and in the places that I studied, for some reason there wasn't any allusion to the neuroscience of pain and healing and neuroplasticity and the way it's being talked about now and, and then again, fast forward some years in 2011, I hurt my back. I injured myself. I tried any and every kind of conservative treatment.
[00:14:14] Nothing seemed to work. Even my most conservative doctors said, okay, we think it's time to explore surgery. So I had surgery. There were complications from that surgery. So I had a year and a half later. Second surgery and this bit involved not being believed by my surgeon that there was something wrong and I felt it really clearly, but he was insisting that no, you know, you had back surgery, you'll never be good as new.
[00:14:43] So get used to it. You learn to manage it. And there was indeed something, so they had placed a spacer between two of my vertebrae and the spacer had been displaced. And that was causing problems, which was what the second surgery fixed. And by then I developed persistent pain in my lower back and it was labeled as SI joint dysfunction.
[00:15:10] I was told it was a really common complication from back surgery. And throughout this process, as I was pursuing different alternatives to really. Heal the pain that was lingering. A dear friend of mine took me to this course for something called Theta Healing, and the long story short of that is it was something that did not resonate with me at all.
[00:15:38] But the course was packed and there were all these people searching for answers in the spiritual realm that they weren't having answered by their physicians or their healthcare providers. And they were very much open to an integration of that. And so I thought, Hmm, there's some signal here for me that maybe it's time to actually integrate the practice.
[00:16:03] That, for me, has been so supportive and so healing in an explicit way, but I need to find a secular way to do that because. Again, still this religious perspective was not very welcome in some spaces, especially in my culture and my context. And so I went into the mind, body world in terms of mindfulness, the mindfulness based stress reduction training, mindfulness based cognitive therapy.
[00:16:35] And by then I had been practicing for several years in the field of eating disorders. And so I also trained in mindfulness and compassion based approaches for healing the relationship with food and eating. And so I started doing that for many years and it was an amazing thing. It was a wonderful thing to be able to integrate the two parts that have been going on.
[00:17:04] Kind of like in separate silos and to really invite all of me into the healing work that I was doing. And I have to say that people were super open to it in ways that I hadn't imagined. And then around 2015, I think I did further training in mind body medicine. Again, no mention of the neuroscience of pain recovery, which I think is really fascinating.
[00:17:35] Deb: And I just wanna pause there. I'm so curious why, I mean it, does it feel like the Boulder Back pain study is like that first transformative piece of neuroscience that really like is breaking through things or was it just like people didn't really believe pain recovery is possible? Except for Dr. Sarno who didn't do any research.
[00:17:59] Lily: Yeah, that's a really good question and I don't have the answer for that. I do know that some of the people in the mindfulness world were talking about how it was possible to recover from persistent pain using mindfulness and, and they said something that I still remember.
[00:18:16] I was at a lecture and they said, so the trick is that you can't use it to make the pain go away, which I find fascinating because right now we're talking about outcome, independence and doing the practice to transform the relationship that we have with pain and with our symptoms. I still don't know how not to want to change it.
[00:18:44] I think we need to make space for the desire for it to change and step away or step aside from a fixing mode. Right.
[00:18:55] Deb: That's where so many of these nuances come through. But as a hypnotist, I understand language is so powerful. So when you're in a training and a whole series of practitioners are coming together and the first thing they say is, you can't get rid of this pain.
[00:19:11] This training and this work isn't going to cure people's pain or resolve cure is, I know, you know, can we cure pain? Pain as a human experience, but like can't resolve pain? Then that just filters into people's perceptions and
[00:19:30] Lily: Yeah,
[00:19:31] Deb: sets this limiting belief about what's possible for people.
[00:19:36] Lily: Absolutely. Yes, and I think that was probably one of the nuances in terms of language, and I know I've heard Howard Schubiner address this numerous times in terms of how we call an intervention matters, and there was a lot of talk about pain management, not I would say at that time, any that I heard about pain recovery.
[00:19:59] And so I, I will say my mindfulness practice was very supportive through the years that I was in pain. And it didn't make a lot of difference in terms of the actual level of pain. It did help a lot with my overall state and my overall wellbeing and how I could allow my experience to be what it was. But there wasn't a lot of hope that it would ever change.
[00:20:28] And then, so I had a third surgery and I was sort of managing, going on with my life, continuing my practice, and working, traveling. I was limited in many ways. Socializing was challenging. Sitting for long periods was challenging. I did extensive research as to the places where I was going and the beds and the mattresses and the chairs in Mexico City.
[00:20:56] I would, I would bring my chair with me everywhere and my pillow with me everywhere. And then the pandemic came and lockdown started and I lost access to the things that were helping me manage my pain. And I found myself in bed again. And then three different friends separately recommended, curable. And I thought, okay, there has to be something here because it's just weird that three friends from different places in the world who don't know each other. One was in Hawaii, one was in Canada, one was in the uk, are recommending this to me. So I'll give it a try. And then I started exploring it and it was more of a meandering through something that I wanted to familiarize myself with from a place of curiosity.
[00:21:49] And I heard Alicia Batson say in a podcast, if there are some things you know about yourself in terms of perfectionism and intensity and wanting to do all the things perfectly, don't invite that into your recovery process. And I took that to heart. And I also heard Laura Sego say.
[00:22:11] Ask yourself a question, if this would bring maybe 10 or 30% of a difference to your life, would you take it? I was like, hell yes. And so I started exploring and within a month, I think I experienced my first pain-free day in 10 years. And I was like, this has to be witchcraft or something and I need to learn more about this.
[00:22:37] So I kept going with my own recovery, and a couple of months later I joined a curable group. By the end of the group, which is I think the end of 2020, I was pretty much pain free. There was a lot of the work that was ongoing. When we hear these recovery stories, it's this neat package of, oh, and then I was pain free and everything was perfect for the rest of time, which is pretty much a fairytale.
[00:23:04] Not my experience, it was more of a, okay, wow. Now I know this is possible and I am experiencing pain-free days, and I know the work that I need to keep doing to reweave these neural pathways to address the many things that were hidden below the pain and are now starting to surface. Some of them welcome, some of them, not so much, and many of them really challenging in terms of refiguring out my boundaries with myself, with other people that I cared about, with many people I encountered in different spaces.
[00:23:42] Looking at the places where I was under functioning and there were tasks that were calling for my attention, even though they were not necessarily things I enjoyed or looked forward to doing, but part of being a grownup in the world and. And so after that I started to really study more and learn more about this whole new world.
[00:24:08] And I've had this experience, I would say several times in my life by now where I find something and I think this is the missing piece and now this is complete and there's never completeness. Two days later I'm like, oh, but there's this other thing too. And, and I'm a lifelong learner and I think that pretty much all humans are, and it just depends where we want to direct our learning.
[00:24:36] Intentionally. Deliberately. I will say, this was another one of the pieces that was important for me to integrate. I did several trainings with several amazing people and then I started working with Lin, which is where I met you and other amazing people doing wonderful work in the world and it's been quite the journey personally and professionally and just meeting amazing people along the way and creating together this space for narratives and stories that are more nuanced and complex and that have real depth to them.
[00:25:14] It's really frequent to want these very neat, clear cut stories and endings. And also in the world of social media, there's this pull to have these mic drop moments and this sense of completion in a really short snippet, which is again, not my experience in terms of being human and healing.
[00:25:40] And I also think that it's amazing that we have increasing content out there so that more people can find their way to whatever combination of practices and approaches will help them make sense of what's happening in their bodies and minds and spirits and find freedom and wellbeing.
[00:26:02] Deb: Oh my God. I'm just like taking all that in because as you were sharing your story, I'm hearing and experiencing all the in-between spaces, that experience of being in pain and then finding curable was such a long time. Yes. You were living your whole life and having pain is this constant companion.
[00:26:26] Yeah. Without anybody really saying, Hey, it's possible for this to shift. You know, they were telling you it's possible for your relationship with pain to shift, which is powerful in and of itself.
[00:26:38] Curable was also my gateway opening to this work. Transformative, weird, also kind of like, what kind of magic is this?
[00:26:48] And that changed my whole body work practice. From that moment I was like, I have to know everything about this because this is a game changer.
[00:26:58] One of the things that was so exciting for me when I was working at Lin was having access to so many compassionate and smart providers, doctors and therapists of which you are both, people who are doing this work, right?
[00:27:18] Like it as a coach and a hypnotist. Like I am an outlier and I was a body worker before that. So I live in a certain space and it was really powerful to receive training and supervision from people who are more embedded in traditional western medicine because the potential of impact of this work is, is vast.
[00:27:43] And I was like, I don't want to go to medical school or even become a therapist, but I also don't want to stay where I'm like over there in the weeds trying to yell and be like, this is a real thing. So what I loved is this collaboration that we got to have. I got to peek on the inside of how you guys did work.
[00:28:10] And one of my most favorite things about meeting you is that your knowledge of understanding weight stigma, working with people in eating disorders, like I felt like I had a particular kind of allyship with you.
[00:28:25] Mm-hmm. Because I, you know, my background is in fat liberation work. And you know, that often is a thing that, people just kind of look at you and, and like pat you on the head and are a little bit like, that's nice, but you know, that being fat's really bad for you and like, okay, whatever.
[00:28:43] Lily: Yeah.
[00:28:43] And I would say that that is one of the better responses that we get, quite sadly.
[00:28:51] Deb: Good point. Yes. That is a better response than you're gonna die or you're a terrible person.
[00:29:00] Lily: Yeah. How dare you say these incredibly harmful things. And there's such bias, and as I was hearing you say this, I think this cross pollination and this cross nourishing is so important because every kind of background comes with biases and we stop seeing them
[00:29:23] Deb: a hundred percent.
[00:29:25] Lily: And especially those that are just so embedded in our culture. Then just magnified by training in a certain field, like medicine or therapy or physiotherapy or body work or yoga teaching. And it's really useful to have these prisms to look through together so that we can help each other understand and become aware of different things.
[00:29:59] Deb: Yeah, I definitely felt like an internal shift and which helped me feel more connected to what we were building, because I was like, oh, somebody else understands the framework at health at every size or, frameworks that are impactful in medical care having a weight neutral approach mm-hmm.
[00:30:24] And you are helping my working group and I with our presentation for the association for the treatment of neuroplastic symptoms. And I'm really excited to be able to have that audience and Amy and I just realized we're one of the like only seven presenters who are presenting to the whole group.
[00:30:43] Lily: So exciting. I got chills.
[00:30:46] Deb: I know. I was just like, well, aren't we fancy?
[00:30:48] What that means to me is like these people who are already understanding of MINDBODY medicine, we all agree on a certain set of concepts that they're really interested in understanding better weight stigma. And how informing people about weight stigma will help people help their clients more.
[00:31:08] Yeah.
[00:31:09] In whatever body size they're in. 'cause weight stigma is not only in an experience that people in larger bodies have. Yeah. But it absolutely has an impact on our physiology and also on this pain recovery journey.
[00:31:22] Yeah. Um, none of that was a question, so I guess my question is like, my little pivot is, I want us to talk about specifically these ideas, right? It's almost like, like we've talked about mind body medicine and the possibility for pain recovery as our general topic. And now we're gonna specialize and talk about this part because you and I are uniquely qualified to talk about it.
[00:31:53] Let's just start with why is it important for either people who are on their own pain recovery journey or providers of any kind who are helping people, why is it important for them to understand that weight stigma, anti-fat bias, that these things play a role in the recovery process.
[00:32:19] Lily: Yeah. That is such a big question and there are so many threads that I want to bring in. I think I will start by picking up on something you said earlier, that what we say has an impact and our words matter and the worlds we create through language and through the authority that we hold in whatever capacity we're intervening in a person's life has a real impact.
[00:32:53] And when we tell someone what is or isn't possible for them, then we're creating possibilities and we're canceling others. And this links to the notions of what we know. As placebo effect and nocebo effect. And I think I'll put a pin on that and circle back to it later. There is another thread that has to do with trauma and threat physiology and what it is like to live as a fat body in the world that we live in.
[00:33:34] What it is like to grow up with a certain experience of embodiment and with a certain image that is read to have certain attributes and to be linked, to be assumed, to be linked to certain behaviors. And this, there's an article by Taylor and O'Hara that I love because they address something that they called the Adipophobicogenic environment.
[00:34:02] So there's. A lot of buzz around the fact that we live in a world that increases the likelihood that we're fat and that that is a bad thing. And because we live in the culture that we do, we take that as a given instead of questioning it and troubling it. And what we found through research and an understanding of threat physiology is that when we inhabit a body that is the target of stigma, discrimination, marginalization, that has a real impact on our experience of safety, dignity, belonging, and on the access that we have to positive experiences of embodiment.
[00:34:46] And when all of that is messed up, because we live in a world that is so full of weight bias and weight stigma. Bodies that are larger in size, bodies that are fat are the target of all of this. And they start to lean towards less access to positive experiences of embodiment to desire and agency and pleasure and liveliness and love and acceptance.
[00:35:20] And when we're at war with our own body, because of the effect of the culture and also our body minds are responding in real time to those signals of threat and rejection, then that in itself causes the inflammation. It's not that fatness causes inflammation and disease. It's that the rejection, the fear, the hatred towards fatness is bringing about those outcomes.
[00:35:53] And I think I'll go back to the pin on the placebo and placebo effect because when we tell someone, oh, you won't be free of pain unless and until you lose weight, then they're creating that reality for them. And I'm going to say this in no uncertain terms and the research is there and the lived experience is there.
[00:36:17] Anyone can be free of pain without changing their body size, their body weight, and without dieting. And in fact, I would argue that dieting actually increases our likelihood of being in pain because it increases the activation of threat physiology. And it's really difficult to say these things really clearly and straightforwardly because then people jump to the conclusion, oh, are you saying that what we eat doesn't matter?
[00:36:47] Deb: Right. That's such a leap. You're like, yes, we're saying just lay around and only eat donuts. That is exactly what we've just said. I was like, what is wrong with your hearing?
[00:37:01] Lily: And I think it's because we live in these worlds of absolutes. Yes. The all or nothing, the dichotomy, the binary. We have a really difficult time creating third and fourth and fifth possibilities to this A or B. And also it's really difficult to have these conversations and invite all of the threads and the nuance that are embedded in that because for some people it might be possible to make some changes.
[00:37:34] In a way that is health enhancing, wellbeing enhancing agency, enhancing in a way that honors their needs and the world they're part of. And for some people it's not for many reasons, and when we assume that it is a matter of choice, we're also judging and we're also canceling possibilities for resilience and resourcefulness and other avenues.
[00:37:58] And one of the things that really excites me about this world of the neuroscience of pain and recovery and healing is that it's a complex situation. And because there's such complexity, we can go in through numerous different pathways and that will draw the strings and other aspects so that we do not need to tackle anything and everything.
[00:38:27] We can tackle a couple of things. The things that are most accessible, most supportive, most respectful, and that will enhance our wellbeing as a whole and support our nervous system in accessing different possibilities for healing. If somebody finds their way to changes in terms of their relationship with food and eating that are supportive, or their relationship with movement and possibilities that are accessible for them, that will enhance their health and their wellbeing independently of whether their body size changes or not.
[00:39:09] That is not the target and it's not a requirement, and I think.
[00:39:17] We had a previous conversation about this and something that I find fascinating is that we are surrounded by people who are revolutionaries in their field. They have tapped into incredible courage and grit to really go counterculture on the conventional knowledge about pain and what is possible.
[00:39:43] They're challenging many diagnosis diagnoses in ways that are extremely controversial, and they're still taking it as a fact that fatness is a problem that needs to be solved. That quote unquote, obesity is a real thing that is. Like that is just knowledge that is true and fixed and everybody needs to get with it.
[00:40:08] And we were having this conversation and you were saying, well, that's the thing. It hijacks your critical thinking weight bias and diet culture hijack your critical thinking. And I think that is so true and we're so afraid to challenge something that is so embedded and ingrained in our culture that we're actually not challenging what we need to challenge.
[00:40:33] Yeah,
[00:40:34] Deb: There's this quality of punishment that comes along. There's like an edge of cruelty in so much, so many interventions around obesity and fatness that , somehow we as a culture, don't wanna let it go. And I'm sure that's all woven into white supremacy and lots of different legacies of cruelty and othering bodies.
[00:41:02] And, one of the things that when I work with clients around having positive self regard and outcome independence around movement, one of the things that often gets triggered is this intense shame of this narrative that they've done something to themselves, right?
[00:41:19] That there's this intense blame and shame that's happening. And, um, where am I going with this? Think it's like that is often reinforced by medicine. And even, in therapy land and I just shared with you interacting with somebody who's asking what is your weight protecting you from?
[00:41:47] And I was just like, wow, what a really leading and terrible question to ask.
[00:41:55] Lily: Because there's assumptions underneath there
[00:41:57] Deb: full of assumptions. Yeah. And this is what we're swimming in. Like I often am imagining when we're doing work together, there's these threads that are woven in and often and are invisible.
[00:42:12] And when we pull on them , you have to start to kind of separate out. Internalized weight bias. Right. And, and all of these things from our self-concept. Yeah. Numerous people, including people I've interviewed on this podcast, have achieved recovery at higher weights than, they had been before.
[00:42:40] Yes. And so I, I am one of them. Yes. I'm one of them. And Rachel, who is on my podcast, is also one of them. And many of my clients. Right. So, I think it's essential to, to name that Yes. Because we are inundated with the idea that you need to lose weight.
[00:43:00] Like losing weight is the precursor of the equation to reducing pain. Yeah. Yeah. And also the NOI group. Has a video about osteoarthritis and again, fatness is this unexamined, assumptions and they kind of like toss it off. They have an entire training about how to re language sensations, and yet they uphold this mistaken belief.
[00:43:30] It's as if this work, we're exempt from it. Like our bodies are so vastly different and divergent from everybody else's body. And I'm just like, that can't possibly be true.
[00:43:46] Lily: No. And ah, there's so much I wanna say here. Okay, I'll try to weave in a fewer threads. One of them is, so in this field, in the mind body field, we talk a lot about being trauma-informed.
[00:44:02] And I think that's super important to understand that I would have to say pretty much all humans, at least everybody I know has been through some kind of adversity or traumatic experience. And especially when we read the literature on chronic pain and other persistent symptoms and what we call functional symptoms or medically unexplained symptoms, the percentage of people who've had a history of significant adversity is high.
[00:44:36] And so we need to assume that anybody who comes in the room might have had an experience of trauma and that we need to treat them with, and I find it fascinating that there's highlighting of this kind of special treatment when I think it would be the kind of treatment that I would want every single human to be offered, which is kindness, respect, compassion, curiosity, really wondering and asking what their story and their experiences instead of making assumptions.
[00:45:10] That's sadly not the baseline, at least for the healthcare settings I've been in as a patient. But if we truly want to grow our ability to be with people in a way that's respectful of nervous systems, we need to assume that they might have been exposed to a certain kind of experience. And almost everybody I know who's lived in a fat body at some point in their lives has been the target of discrimination and stigma in medical settings.
[00:45:42] And has had to lesser or greater degrees, really traumatic experiences in healthcare setting. And so we really want to in mind body language or PRT language, create corrective experiences and create an environment of safety and trust where healing can truly happen and people can really thrive. And I've had experiences on both ends. So when I first injured myself, I lived in what would be described as a thin and fit body.
[00:46:19] And then as pain prevented me from engaging in movement in the way that I was used to, my body started to grow. And pretty much every healthcare professional I encountered told me to really watch my diet and lose weight is a kind of all encompassing solution apparently. But also, and this really worries me, if something that was meant in a neutral way, and it's not neutral, it has a very real impact.
[00:46:56] I had an experience of being under anesthesia and in the middle of a procedure and having my surgeon in that moment say that I needed to lose weight. And I've heard other people describe the same kind of experiences of being under anesthetic and having that happen.
[00:47:19] I really can't conceive how somebody could think that that is a good thing to do or a desirable thing to do, or good medicine.
[00:47:30] But it's not a case of a rotten apple. It's a case of a whole medical culture that has been really permeated by these ideas about fatness and of course in interconnection with the culture. And then I've had also amazing corrective experiences. So I think I've shared with you before when shortly after I came to London, I broke my knee and I encountered a medical setting in which I was terrified of facing a new healthcare professionals because I was absolutely sure that they would target my weight, make assumptions about ways in which I eat or exercise or about me personally, and not offer me other kinds of
[00:48:24] interventions that were really what we're being called for. And I have to say, I've been really pleasantly surprised by my medical encounters here. Nobody has made any mention of my weight in any kind of way. It's always been addressing the exercises that I need to do, what my levels of stress are, what challenges I'm having, hydration, sleep.
[00:48:52] But the most beautiful experience I had was with my physiotherapist. So I'd been working with him for months and he'd never ever mentioned my weight or food or anything of the sort. And then we were mid session one day and he said, oh, and we really need to watch how you're eating. And I noticed my body immediately clenched.
[00:49:16] I was just bracing for impact. And what he said next was, we need to make sure that you're eating enough, and especially eating enough protein because you're rebuilding your muscle. And I told you this before, I'm Mexican, and if we'd been in Mexico, I would've jumped and hugged him and kissed him immediately.
[00:49:38] I had to restrain myself because we're in England.
[00:49:43] But every time I think about that, I just feel such love for him and such gratitude.
[00:49:52] And then in another session, he addressed it again and said, okay, so how's your nourishment? Are you hydrating yourself? Are you sleeping? What are your stress levels? But there was still in my body, this, this clenching when he started to say it, even having had that experience with him previously, because it's, it's just this imprint from years and years of certain kind of experiences in healthcare settings.
[00:50:20] And the second time he said it, it was like, oh, okay, here comes that relief again. And that gratitude and that softening, and that has been so incredibly healing to, for the first time in my life, at my highest weight, have somebody respond to my fat body in a way that is affirming and nourishing and respectful and kind, which again.
[00:50:47] As I share this, it makes me sad that this is an extraordinary thing because I just wish that that was our ordinary, that that was our normal for all of our bodies to be met with that positive regard and care and attitude of nourishment. Mm-hmm. And, and love really.
[00:51:12] Deb: Yeah, absolutely. There's a way in which it's like I've learned how to take care of myself and navigate it and like I can feel that kind of vigilance coming in and so it's like I know how to work with it, but I am mad and resentful that I'm like left alone to have to like, go into these vulnerable healthcare settings and encounters, having to do all of this work to scaffold this sense of safety, to show up there, to then be like, oh yeah, I'm coming here despite, yes. Like Im coming here for my own care despite having to navigate these dangerous waters.
[00:51:54] Lily: Yes. And adding extra layers of labor
[00:51:57] Deb: Yeah. To
[00:51:57] Lily: what is already an incredibly challenging experience.
[00:52:01] Deb: Yeah. And I feel very competent in these skills that I built, but like, uh, it's taken, we're talking about decades of experience. Yes. And I still have to you know, put it on like putting on.
[00:52:18] Sunscreen. Right? Like preparing myself to go somewhere. And it's that's that kind of vigilance, is having an effect on my physiology. And, I'm just like, I don't know. They could make it better.
[00:52:33] Lily: Absolutely. And speaking of having an effect on your physiology, it's also making so many of the people that I work with receive food in ways
[00:52:45] Deb: mm-hmm.
[00:52:45] Lily: That are causing symptoms.
[00:52:47] Deb: Mm-hmm. Oh, say more.
[00:52:50] Lily: So when our culture has conditioned us to believe deeply that we must be doing something wrong, or that there must be something intrinsically wrong or broken with our bodies when we're fat. And there are these assumptions that we're eating in certain ways, we're moving in certain ways, or not eating in certain ways or not moving in certain ways.
[00:53:15] Our relationship with food can become really fraught and really fearful, or really combative or really restrictive. And all of these forms are different manifestations of constriction and of fear contracting, fighting, and that's the physiology that's being engaged. When we approach food and we eat this fearfulness, this rejection, this making an enemy of parts of us or all of us.
[00:53:53] And when we're in those states, rest and digestion are not really the most likely outcomes. And so we're not really taking in nourishment and metabolizing it in the same way. And, you know, we could go into a whole dissertation on the neurobiology of that
[00:54:15] Deb: but Seven hour podcast. I love it. No, but Right. These concepts are not just things that are in our head. No. Right. The nervous system is not just a pathway for anxiety. These nerves innervate and communicate in our bodies what it's time to do essential necessary activities like digest food.
[00:54:42] Right.
[00:54:42] Lily: And the connection of our nervous system with our gut
[00:54:45] Deb: Yeah.
[00:54:45] Lily: Is so deep. So vast that why would we wonder why somebody is developing these digestive symptoms? Yeah. That seem to make no sense. And instead of telling them, oh, you need to change your diet, right. Or, oh, you need to eat less, which is just enhancing that same fear, right.
[00:55:11] In their relationship with food. Let's get curious. So what has your relationship with food been like throughout your life? What is it like right now? What are the things you would like me to know? What are the things you would want to ask? What possibilities can we explore together to invite a more expansive and nourishing relationship with food and eating and body in ways that truly support you?
[00:55:42] Deb: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:44] Lily: And ask for consent. Is it okay if we have that conversation?
[00:55:53] Deb: Threat, physiology, powerful concept. I feel like it's not well understood. Mm-hmm. How do you describe that to your clients and patients? Or do you, or do you just hold that in your mind and when you're talking to them, but maybe like I wanna tease out a little bit more so people can start to understand what threat physiology is and means, and how they can start to explore like their own triggers.
[00:56:29] Lily: Right. So I think it depends. It's not that I offer a class on this.
[00:56:37] Deb: When are we offering a class on threat physiology?
[00:56:42] Lily: We can have that be our next conversation. But to touch on some of the aspects that I think are important to understand is when we talk about the way that symptoms with a neuroplastic component come about, we always talk about fear, but the thing with fear is that the way we understand fear culturally.
[00:57:05] It almost makes it as something in our conscious awareness like, oh, I'm afraid of sitting down, or I'm afraid of squatting, or I am afraid of eating something that smells funny. And the thing is, our brains are so incredibly amazing at learning and making associations about pretty much everything. And they can make really logical associations and they can make really wild associations and, and they're, there always is an underlying logic, which is not the logic of our cognitive mind, but the logic of our survival mechanisms.
[00:57:54] And so whenever we experience two things in a close association and one of those things threatens. Our life, our health, our integrity, our dignity, our safety, our belonging. We try to find explanations to that. And so we associate anything that is proximal to that experience. And so, for instance, if somebody experienced a migraine after looking at a flashing light, then the brain comes to this conclusion, oh, flashing lights equal migraines.
[00:58:32] And so then it is likelier that in later exposure to flashing lights, there will be another event of a migraine because the brain has learned to make that association. Or if I experience pain while sitting down, then my brain will learn to associate chairs, benches, couches, any kind of sitting surface with danger, and I will experience pain.
[00:58:58] Interestingly, not necessarily when I sit down, but even before, and there's a fascinating example of this in the research about pots. So postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and POTS is a really common diagnosis in the mind, body world. And so they did this study, they designed it with two groups of people, one group of people who had been diagnosed with pots, another group of people who had not been diagnosed with pots.
[00:59:28] And what they did is they exposed both groups to a tilt test, which is thought to be like the gold standard for diagnosing pots. And basically what the til table does is you're lying down and you're strapped to that table, and then the table starts stilting until you're standing. And then they measure the difference in your heart rate when you're lying down and when you're standing up.
[00:59:52] And I think it's above a 30 heartbeat per minute difference. That's diagnosable. Don't quote me on this. I'm really sorry if I got it wrong for the podcast. Go research it people. Anyway, point being, what they did was they told people before they were starting the tilt, oh, now we're going to start the tilt.
[01:00:12] And what they noticed was that for people who had been diagnosed with pots, their heart rate went up when they heard that the table's going to be tilted before it was actually tilted. And it doesn't mean that if I asked these people, are you afraid of standing up? Every one of them would say yes. Some of them might.
[01:00:32] Some of them might say, well, every time I stand up I feel funny, or I faint. Or, you know, I, my heart starts beating like really, really fast. Some of them will say, well, not really. Like, I'm not afraid of standing up. It's just that I feel really bad when I stand up. But the brain has learned to associate.
[01:00:51] The tilt or, or changing posture with threat. And so there's this neuroscientist, Joseph Ladu, who talks about the importance of terminology, again, language. And when we say fear, there's this implicit assumption that there's something that we're consciously afraid of. So he invites a distinction between fear and threat.
[01:01:18] And threat Physiology is something that goes on below the level of awareness where our nervous system is responding to something, it is sensing as dangerous or threatening. And here there's also mechanisms of what we know as predictive coding or predictive processing, which is basically our brain's best prediction of what's going to happen based on previous models of learning.
[01:01:44] And this is one of the things I love about mindfulness, that it helps bring this present moment awareness and attunement in a way that helps us update our models and create more accurate predictive coding. So it helps us learn. Anyway, I got to real there, but, so coming back to threat physiology, if someone has been told that gluten is the devil and it's pro-inflammatory and it's basically the worst thing that anybody could eat because it just causes inflammation in your body, then your nervous system is incredibly smart and it has evolved to respond to threats in this way.
[01:02:30] So it's likeer that when you're exposed to gluten, it will trigger bloating and inflammation and it will create the experience of brain fog. And it's not because of gluten is bad. Because you have an allergy to gluten, it's because this sensitivity has been created or brought about by way of threat physiology.
[01:02:54] And when we tell someone, you know, gluten is an amazing nutrient and protein and humanity evolved through millennia of eating wheat. And wheat was what was eaten in many of the amazing civilizations that developed in history. And our bodies have evolved to digest it really, really well, and especially if we enjoy it there, there's interesting research about that.
[01:03:24] If we're enjoying food that is culturally relevant, we absorb nutrients better and so our bodies will respond. In ways that are like yummy and nutritious and health enhancing and supportive, and the bloating will go down, the brain fog will go down. And it's not as simple as just saying it one time.
[01:03:48] You and I both know that. But what I'm trying to say is again, what we create through story, through a language, through belief will activate mechanisms at the level of our neurophysiology that will then trigger our immune system towards pathways that can create inflammation of the kinds that causes symptoms or of the kind that helps us heal.
[01:04:19] Because inflammation also is necessary for healing. And what I think is really important is to help us shift and radically transform the way we think. About what is really causing our symptoms and what can help us heal them and create a peaceful, loving, exciting, pleasurable relationship with food and eating and our bodies in ways that will interrupt those pathways of threat physiology.
[01:04:54] Does that make sense or did I just like jumble things up?
[01:04:57] Deb: Oh, no, that made so much sense. I think people who listen to this podcast hear me talk about associations and predictive coding a lot. So I think a lot of that language will be really familiar and this just expands on that.
[01:05:10] Cool. Those studies just crack open my brain and are like, right, we are walking around selling people these ideas. I just think about the impact of wellness culture, which is like this hyper controlling, I know. You know, I was just like not very pleasure oriented.
[01:05:31] I think that, one of the appeals of dieting is this feeling of control that people get. Mm-hmm. And the frustrating thing sometimes for people doing mind body work is that it's not prescriptive. Yes. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, there is no strict do this, don't, you don't get this really
[01:05:52] Lily: strict, weird kind of diet.
[01:05:55] Another interesting research, so it's been reported in literature that the weirdest most out there diets will bring about the more noticeable immediate effects in how a person feels transiently and then they'll lose power. So what we're talking about here is placebo effect. Again, if I remember my pharmacology teacher describing this event where there was this woman who had these really mysterious symptoms along with high blood pressure, and so they devised this mechanism through which they told her to create this very complicated ritual to take her medication.
[01:06:43] So she had to stand in a particular part of her house with hibiscus water, jamaica, which is like very traditional in Mexico, and take a number of sips of the glass with her pain medication while she was reciting some kind of a phrase or other. And that made the intervention so powerful and it brought about an effect that they hadn't been able to accomplish by medication alone.
[01:07:15] And so this is just one example. I, I really don't know what the long-term outcome of that was, but I do know that in terms of studies that they've done with diets, the weirdest diet will be very impactful in the short term. So when people get on a really strict elimination diet, they often will report in the first couple of weeks, oh, you know, I feel so much better and my brain fog is gone.
[01:07:40] And, and then what happens is they start feeling more restricted. It will impact their socializing. They start developing more fear around food. The symptoms get worse again. Then you know, the next,
[01:07:56] Deb: and then they often will restrict more. That's how people end up only eating like two things. Yes. Which just breaks my heart.
[01:08:04] Yes.
[01:08:06] Lily: Yeah. And in the same way that we need to allow our body minds to habituate to any kind of change when somebody has been restricting in such a way, we need to allow for the body to habituate to a greater exposure of different foods and different amounts. And digestion will take place in a way that's often more noticeable.
[01:08:35] And this I've seen in people who I've worked with who've had a number of food sensitivities, and I've also seen this in people recovering from restrictive anorexia nervosa. So an eating disorder and what happens is that somehow they're more, I would say, more attuned or differently attuned to the normal sounds of digestion or the normal changes in our abdominal shape as we're digesting or our bowel movements and just the presence of food and our digestive tract.
[01:09:15] And it will take a while to really code that or reprocess it as, oh, normal digestive events. Desirable digestive events that are part of being in a human body, eating food, metabolizing, doing digestion and eliminating.
[01:09:35] Deb: Yeah, it's, there's something that's so powerful when we just describe and normalize like the process by which being human is loud and weird and messy.
[01:09:48] Yes. And, and
[01:09:49] Lily: smelly. Smelly.
[01:09:52] Deb: And you know, there's, again, I think it's this byproduct of both like capitalism and white supremacy, this kind of washing away of this very kind of humanness of our reality where like anything that seems aberrant gets labeled as a problem and that we're seeking to eliminate.
[01:10:16] I remember working with a client who had a lot of pain and it was around feeling terrified to poop. This thing that we do to survive. And we do every day. Yes.
[01:10:29] So we really worked on that fear and there were so many controlling compulsions that were going on, and I was like, the last thing you wanna do when you're pooping is try to control, right?
[01:10:41] Like, when you're literally sitting on the toilet, the most useful thing is to relax.
[01:10:47] Lily: Yes.
[01:10:47] Deb: Like there's just not much that you need to do. Like the more ease you can bring to this experience, like the happier everything will be. And so it's so much of that like, moving away from tension and fear and control, which is often where we're trying to create and claim agency by fixing, fixating Yes.
[01:11:10] Controlling. And all of those impulses make sense. They absolutely 100% make sense. And of course, it's hard to say like, don't do that. Right. It's like practicing ease. Mm-hmm. And pleasure and all of those things. So now I'm just rambling.
[01:11:29] Lily: You said something right now that I think is so important.
[01:11:31] That is, living in a body, in a living body is messy and it's hard. And being confronted with our own fragility and mortality is really, really hard and aging and, you know, things going in ways that we did not want them to go and just, just flowing with that is a practice. And some days we have more resources and we might feel more skilled at it.
[01:12:01] And other days we're just trying to hold tight because that's the best we can do. And. I think to offer ourselves grace for the fact that it is hard to live in a body and and experience pain and illness and mortality. You know, it's really, really challenging stuff.
[01:12:24] Deb: There's that beautiful compassion again.
[01:12:28] Hmm. The thing that people are always so frustrated with, they're like, do I have to do, I have to have
[01:12:33] Lily: compassion.
[01:12:35] Deb: I need to treat myself kindly. When I'm working with clients, start to really, really lean on the gentle neuroplasticity, right. We are creating change, but also we're gonna do it with this lens of gentleness and compassion and humor.
[01:12:54] Often I get so much resistance around it, people are like, Nope, I wanna get it done. And I was like, yeah,
[01:13:00] Lily: I know. Give me the list. Give me the list and I'll do it.
[01:13:04] Deb: It's like, ah, sorry. Yeah. I, I love that.
[01:13:08] Lily: Sorry, not sorry.
[01:13:09] Deb: Yeah, I mean, sorry, not sorry. Right. Because, because how we approach doing this work, like anything else is what we, is the learning that we're perpetuating through our whole system.
[01:13:20] Lily: Yes.
[01:13:21] Deb: Um, so what, like, I al what I always love about you is the answer is often. It depends. Let's be gentle. Let's lean deeply into curiosity. There's no right answer. There's many avenues in which I say to people and what I love about these interventions is like there's so many different ways to create safety.
[01:13:48] Yes. That there's not one right way. And also then it generalizes out into people's whole beings in a lot of ways. Yes. And it's like, yes.
[01:14:00] Lily: And that sometimes even that for me is not an absolute yes. Because, you know, depending on what our context is and our life story is and what we're experiencing in this moment.
[01:14:17] Safety might not feel the most resonant or attuned or possible or accessible option.
[01:14:25] Deb: Mm-hmm.
[01:14:25] Lily: And you just named so many of the things that we can lean into. There's curiosity, there's compassion, there's humor, there is courage. Yeah. There is connection, there is expansiveness. There's so many things that we can choose as what to focus on.
[01:14:51] And again, I don't think that it's an absolute, it's more of how can we cultivate a little bit more of this in this moment? How can we access a little bit more of this in this moment? And it starts with a relationship. Yeah. It starts with showing up for ourselves and each other with grace and kindness and an invitation for the messiness of being human. And I know that that can be deeply uncomfortable and unsettling, especially when we've come from backgrounds or experiences where we needed to be very much in control. Or when we needed to present as being together and composed. And there's gender conditioning and cultural conditioning and so many additional threads to that, but yeah.
[01:15:42] Deb: Mm-hmm.
[01:15:44] I wish I could reach through this screen and give you a hug. Oh, me too. But talking to you and listening to you explain these concepts feels like a hug. It's like there's a deeper level of nourishment that I feel like I connect to, um, that really. That feels so powerful and healing. So thank you.
[01:16:07] Lily: Thank you, Deb. I've really, really enjoyed our conversation and I'm looking forward to many more.
[01:16:13] Deb: Yeah, me too. As most of my conversations go, there's like a lot in it, right? It is very rich and nuanced. There's threads for every body who listens to this. So my invitation for anybody listening, whether you're a practitioner or a person on this journey, is to open your ears and your body and just notice what resonates, what lights you up, what helps you feel more possibility? For your own aliveness and your own healing process. And then just like follow that thread because we dropped a lot, we dropped a lot of knowledge, we dropped some research and I'm gonna link to that 'cause some of that is stuff that we've got going on in our slides for our presentation.
[01:17:03] We've just dropped a lot of nice things to think about for people to start to incorporate in their own work. And so, speaking of work, how do people either work with you or find out about things that you have that they can, you know, listen to or participate with?
[01:17:23] Lily: Yeah.
[01:17:24] Before I go there, can I share one last thing?
[01:17:26] Deb: Oh my God, of course.
[01:17:28] Lily: So there's, there's something that I've learned from my dear friend and mentor, Lucy Aphramor. And they, they always say that it's, when we do this work, it's the work of love. And it's not about being right, but about being kind and being loving and really inviting that sense of possibility of what will be most supportive for someone.
[01:17:51] And I think that very often in the field of medicine and allied disciplines, there is such an emphasis on needing to have the answer and needing to be right, and to speak true, and we want to offer something useful. So for providers out there listening, just lean into the possibility to let go of a need to be right and instead, yeah, open your heart and feel into what would be the most loving, supportive way to show up for somebody.
[01:18:29] And yeah. As far as how to get in touch with me or explore working together, that kind of thing. The easiest way is my website. It's liliagraue.com, and I think we're gonna have it in the podcast notes or send me an lilia@liliagraue.com or follow me on Insta.
[01:18:59] Deb: Thank you so much, Lili. We will absolutely have to like, have another conversation at some point.
[01:19:05] Yes. In the future, we'll pick another tasty topic to explore about. Yeah. Mind body healing and neuroplastic symptoms. So yes. Thank you so much. Thank you
[01:19:16] Lily: so much, Deb, for having me and for being such an amazing host.