[00:00:01] Welcome to Exile and Rising.
[00:00:04] You are seen, you are heard, and here you belong.
[00:00:12] If you have been exiled from your own land, your country, welcome.
[00:00:20] If you are stateless, a refugee, undocumented, waiting to be deported, welcome.
[00:00:32] If you're indigenous to a land that was stolen from you, welcome.
[00:00:40] If you're a survivor of war, genocide and forced displacement, welcome.
[00:00:48] If you have faced the genocide of your dignity and identity because of your ethnicity, race, religion, the language you speak, the accent you carry, or your inherent value and beliefs, welcome.
[00:01:13] If you have been exiled from your own home, from your own community, your family, and if you never had a place at a dinner table, welcome.
[00:01:29] If you're an immigrant who arrived in a foreign country with just one bag and a few dollars, or if you made millions and still feel unworthy to take up a space, welcome.
[00:01:45] If you have been exiled from a communist country or still live in one, welcome. If you know what it means to live under surveillance, censorship, in a culture of obedience, welcome.
[00:02:05] If you have worked and labored in silence, exploited, underpaid and stripped of your rights while fearing retaliation or deportation, welcome.
[00:02:22] If you were born into exile, if you carry the trauma of a homeland you never knew, and if you witness your father and your mother being silenced, being submitted, and being invisible only to survive, welcome.
[00:02:46] I am Anna Mail, host of Excellent Rising.
[00:02:51] I survived three wars, statelessness, multiple displacements.
[00:02:58] Today I work as a somatic therapist specializing in PTSD and trauma recovery. I am founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center.
[00:03:09] For years, I have worked with survivors of war, systemic oppression and complex trauma.
[00:03:17] And I know this trauma is not just something that happens. It shapes how we breathe, how we move, how we take up space, how we work, how we socialize, how we make money, and how we allow ourselves to exist.
[00:03:38] This podcast is not about surface level healing.
[00:03:43] We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals. Here in exhale and rising. We are going to the depth and the core of the trauma and what it really means to heal. When you live in exiled body, we will talk about what it means to rise, to transform, to heal, to move from wound to resistance, from trauma to resilience, and what it means to finally take a space.
[00:04:24] If this speaks to you, please pause now.
[00:04:28] Subscribe and share and review after.
[00:04:32] Let's begin.
[00:04:37] As you tune into my voice for today's talk, I invite you to hear the voice deep inside of you.
[00:04:46] A guide that has walked through the darkest tunnels and emerged m alive and present in this moment.
[00:04:55] A guide with monumental resilience to survive. I am Ana Mael, a somatic experiencing therapist specializing in PTSD and trauma recovery.
[00:05:07] I have lived through and survived three wars.
[00:05:13] I hope that my lived and professional experience can serve as a valuable companion in your journey to discover, honor and welcome your voice, your guide to the main stage of your valuable human existence.
[00:05:34] Let's begin.
[00:05:37] We want to love ourselves. We want to be kind to ourselves. We want to be gentle to ourselves.
[00:05:45] And yet it's not fully happening.
[00:05:49] So let's discover what might be the reason for trauma bodies for people with live trauma with ptsd.
[00:06:00] Before we start to be gentle with ourselves, before we start to love ourselves again, we need to, uh, learn to be with ourselves and to be ourselves.
[00:06:15] And by learning, I mean we need to make sure, our system needs to make sure that we are safe enough that we can be ourselves and that it's safe enough that we can be with ourselves.
[00:06:38] So when you're living in a, uh, place of survival, we do survive by paying attention to what is outside, outside of our bodies, outside of ourselves, not by what is inside. In survival, you abandon yourself.
[00:06:57] You have to abandon yourself.
[00:07:01] So there is a clear disconnection between your survival brain and the rest of your body and your soul, your heart, your sense of self, being internally connected and having internal locus of control would mean you might again be harmed, abused, or you might get killed.
[00:07:35] So that is a luxury for trauma body.
[00:07:38] It's a luxury to be with yourself. It's a luxury to sit with yourself.
[00:07:44] You cannot afford that.
[00:07:47] And of course that kind of system learned not to be gentle with yourself. It just couldn't. It couldn't. It didn't have enough time to feel safe enough, uh, and to move external locus of control to internal locus of control.
[00:08:10] So how do we heal? How, how do we start with this?
[00:08:15] By slowing down.
[00:08:17] By slowing down and making sure you are at a safe place. So ideally, we want to, uh, be removed from possibility of threat.
[00:08:31] Right. Your survival brain needs to know two things.
[00:08:37] Location of the threat and the time.
[00:08:43] If there is no threat beside you, your chances just way higher.
[00:08:49] If you live with someone or if you're in the midst of displacement, if you're in the midst of the war, if you're with someone, um, who is abusive to you, you can remove yourself for a couple minutes or you will know. In the midst of the war, we know, we usually know when is the next attack. So when we have this glimmer of peace, and by peace, I mean nothing is going to kill me in the next 10 minutes, that's your safety. You're locking yourself in that safety of five minutes.
[00:09:38] If you're leaving someone who is abusive, secluding yourself into your bedroom, taking a walk.
[00:09:49] So you're locking yourself in that safety. So that's your safety. Meaning the threat is not above me, behind me, right from me, left from me, in front of me. Okay, Second thing for the survival brain, what's working is a time survival brain needs certainty. Survival brain cannot go and say, huh, huh, let's do this, retreat and let's just meditate.
[00:10:31] You know, Survival brain needs.
[00:10:34] Am I going to be in this state by moving, even by moving my eyes from outside to inside for two minutes? 10 minutes? 15.
[00:10:50] And you're not starting with 15 minutes. No, you look around.
[00:10:58] Number one, you look around so your survival brain in the reception can scan possibility of a threat.
[00:11:09] So let that happen right now. It's a safe place. I'm at a safe place.
[00:11:19] Time.
[00:11:21] I will allow my eyes and my awareness to move inside of me bit by bit.
[00:11:34] Bit, bit, bit. Start with two minutes, start with 20 seconds. We have many people who are just good at 17 seconds. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. 17 seconds is a lot. And enough and enough for your nervous system to start to be by yourself and with yourself.
[00:12:06] This is how we befriend our biology back. Okay?
[00:12:15] And then you tell yourself, right here, right now, I am safe.
[00:12:22] In this moment, right here, right now, I am safe.
[00:12:29] Even if you're in the midst of the war. We had many moments in between then, ah, we had this ease, ease by not being in a hyper vigilant state.
[00:12:46] Right.
[00:12:49] There is a break between bombing.
[00:12:54] This is our nervous system restored, replenished. And then what do we do next? You pick up one body part and this is how you befriend your body part.
[00:13:06] Your loved life story of that body part to be witnessed. You honor that body part and you respect that body part. That body part, including your soul, including your heart, survived for a very long time.
[00:13:30] And it has many stories to tell you.
[00:13:35] And you be yourself and you stay with yourself by knowing every single story of your body parts.
[00:13:52] And this is not abandonment, but for a survival brain to take a leap to move from external locus of control to internal locus of control, it requires a uh, trust.
[00:14:12] And that's something trauma survivors don't have. They don't trust, they don't trust. So be easy with yourself. And this is how you get to love yourself by um, respecting what you went through by respecting every single story you had to live in your body, in your mind, in your survival brain and still being here in this moment and wanting to feel better, wanting to feel alive because you deserve this.
[00:15:02] If this episode spoke to you, to your mind, to your existence, and if you feel these stories needs to continue being told and tools for trauma healing shared in this community, please support and donate.
[00:15:22] There is no studio, production team or polished edit.
[00:15:27] It is just me and the mission to support you on the path from Exiled to Rising.
[00:15:36] You can donate at the link in the show notes.
[00:15:43] If you're ready to take Healing Journey deeper, join me in the private excellent Rising Premium membership. There we will go into deeper dives, unfiltered discussion and extending conversation you won't hear anywhere else.
[00:16:01] You will get exclusive insight and advanced tools in somatic trauma healing shared in each episode with practical takeaways and summaries. There you can take actionable steps for your healing or you can take them to your own trauma therapist.
[00:16:20] Subscribe to Exile and Rising Premium, where survival turns into self mastery.
[00:16:28] Link is in the show notes and if you want to ask a question, share your story or your insight, I would love to hear from you. Leave a voice
[email protected] link is just below.
[00:16:46] I am Anna Mael and I will meet you again in this space where we will together a move from trauma to resilience, from wound to resistance, from Exile to Rising.
[00:16:59] Until next time, stay well.
