The Everyday Entrepreneur Podcast
#18: What The P-Word And Managing Stress Have In Common
Episode Summary
This week I’m chatting with Muse Lokajickova, a licensed acupuncturist and a bodyworker who helps women find ease, health, and power in their pelvis cycles so they can live to their full capacity.
You may be wondering, how do pelvis cycles and women’s health fit into a business podcast? The answer may surprise you! You won’t want to miss this episode - Muse shares her unique business journey and gifts us with 3 simple steps (yes, for you, too, my male listeners!) to calm our precious nervous systems when we’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed.
Episode Takeaways
What does it mean to be in our body? Free and having full agency. Our life force is present in all of us.
It’s difficult to process emotion in the moment, thus all too often we disconnect from it.
Step #1 - if you are feeling stressed or emotional is to ground yourself, literally imagining yourself being connected to the ground with your life force.
Step #2 - be aware – in order to be aware of your internal states, we need to keep deciding over and again that it is okay to go through things that are hard.
We have to be okay with not always feeling awesome.
Every person’s body has a distinct way of communicating when something’s not at all right.
When you feel that something is not quite right, you’ll notice that something is contracted. Just exhale.
Grounding ourselves is a way to connect to our true selves and be in the moment.
Instruction lives in our DNA – we can’t access it if we are stress balls and cutting ourselves off.
Step #3 - when you are overwhelmed with emotion - get out in nature and plug in your nervous system to the greater network of nature.
If we can connect with nature, our body and nervous system can be reminded there is always hope, there is always the seed of hope in every leaf, in every twig, in every seed in the soil, it’s all around us.
Bonus Step - celebrate the fact you caught yourself being stressed out. If you caught yourself in that moment once every day, that’s going to add up and make a huge difference.
We don’t always have to be living in the start of zen – it’s not possible.
Every time we notice our body and decide we are going to let go of our breath, it builds resilience. It is a medicine we can make for ourselves that amplifies itself.
In closing, it is really important we guard our personal time before we go to sleep and when we wake up in the morning - we need unplugging time – no tech and consuming media. Just be still.
Remember…
When you feel overwhelmed with emotion or feel stressed, help is on the way. The first thing to do is calm your nervous system. You can do this by grounding yourself and connecting with your true self, being aware of the emotion you are feeling, and getting out in nature plugging in your nervous system to the greater network of nature.
You Don’t Want to Miss…
03:01 – A little bit about Muse
05:25 – Muse’s journey to entrepreneurship
22:20 – Being guided by your heart in business
28:31 – How to operate from our true selves
47:51 – Work with Muse + summary of the 3 steps
Chat With Me and More Free Resources At…
Create a compelling business idea in 6 steps with my Free Business Action Guide
Website - http://hollyknoll.com/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/hollyknoll/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/consult.hollyknoll
Email me – holly@hollyknoll.com
Find Muse At…
Website – www.medicineofthefeminine.com
Instagram -
Holly Knoll:
Hey, Muse, good to see you.
Muse:
Hey.
Holly Knoll:
Thank you for joining.
Muse:
Thanks for having me.
Holly Knoll:
Yes, thank you for being here on The Everyday Entrepreneur Podcast. You are one of my favorite Everyday Entrepreneurs if I will. Just for the audience and the listeners out there, you and I, we met this past summer in 2020 through a membership group that we were both in for business owners, and we formed a little pod of other business owners and I really just loved getting to know you and learning more about your life, your business, and that's what I'm so excited to have you share today with the listeners. I think you have such a cool story, so let's dive in.
Muse:
Thanks.
Holly Knoll:
Tell us about you. You're in Brazil right now and I've always been really fascinated by, wow, I have a friend that lives in Brazil. And our seasons are always opposite. So when we're talking, it's cold for you or cooler for you. It's hot for me and vice versa. Right now it's February and I'm in a sweater and you're in a sundress.
Muse:
Yep.
Holly Knoll:
So just tell me about really your journey. Back us up to you graduated college and what did you do next in your career? And how did you get to where you are today with your business?
Muse:
Well, okay, I have taken a very non-traditional path. I was very, I still am, very rebellious in a lot of ways. I want life to be awesome. And the ways that I find it not awesome in culture and the way that we've structured society, sometimes I'm just like, "Oh, no way, I can't do that." So I actually didn't go to college. I graduated high school, and I was 17. I had gone to community college for my last year of high school. So I graduated with college credits at 17, but then I did not go to college then because I saw all the people older than me going to college and just getting drunk and partying. And I was like, "That's stupid."
Muse:
So I just started working. I just started working random jobs. I moved to Cleveland, which was the nearest bigger city to where I grew up. And I worked at the Art Museum, I worked at the Children's Museum, and I just needed to get out and be independent. But I very soon realized that there is a huge gap in women's health care or female-bodied healthcare because I got into my first serious relationship at 17 and 18, and I was totally dissatisfied with anything I could get from the gynecologist basically, like the information I could get about my body, the options for birth control, and my rebellious self just believed there must be a better way.
Muse:
So I did my own research at the Cleveland Public Library, which is an amazing library and they have a ton of books about the women's health movement in the '70s. So I learned a ton about our cycles and how to avoid or achieve pregnancy just by tracking our cycles and DIY gynecology and I got super into it. So in my early 20s, I was already a few years into that DIY study and I had other people around my age coming to me asking me questions a lot.
Muse:
And then I got a bodywork treatment and massage from one... Okay, let's see. At that time, I was mentoring with a professional midwife, actually, who taught gynecology at the midwifery college at one of the midwifery colleges in Oregon, where I lived because I had already moved out of Ohio [crosstalk 00:03:52].
Holly Knoll:
But somehow you left Ohio and went to Oregon?
Muse:
Yes, Yes, Yes, I did.
Holly Knoll:
Okay.
Muse:
And she told me about this massage that repositioned the uterus and is useful for any kind of pelvic health problem, and I went and got this massage, and it was just so mind-blowing. I felt so different in my body right away. My uterus had been tipped to one side, and I had never had painful periods or anything, but it just blew my mind. I could tell immediately that this was a super-powerful technique. So I went to massage school for a year to be able to provide this kind of bodywork and then I practice as a bodyworker for 10 years and then I went to school, but I didn't get a bachelor's, I went straight to get a Master's in Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.
Holly Knoll:
Forget the bachelors, just like fast track yourself straight to just what is it you need to do the things you want to do? Yeah.
Muse:
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, if I could go back, I would have gone to college right out of high school for writing and journalism, photography, art. I would have done something like that. But at the time, I was just really disillusioned with everything basically. I'm less anarchist now but I [inaudible 00:05:08] my rebellious ways. So anyway, I got into my profession doing hands on pelvic health care, just from my own desire to have more agency in my own health. And then as I started practicing in my bodywork practice as a licensed massage therapist, and then as an acupuncturist, I just continued to see how much need there is for us to understand our body and have a lot of tools available to us beyond the tools that are also helpful that we can get from the gynecologist.
Holly Knoll:
Question for you. So what made you decide that it was Chinese medicine that you need to go get your masters for versus maybe a traditional route of like, I want to go to med school and be a traditional Western medicine doctor. What was it about the Chinese medicine route that appealed to you and why did you Why did you go that way?
Muse:
Well, when I was in massage school back in 2005, I started taking some of the Chinese bodywork classes. And my teacher was so amazing, and just did a wonderful job explaining the poetry of Chinese medicine, and exploring how the human body is a reflection of nature, that all of the movements of nature also exist in our body. And when there is illness in our body, we can also understand how to take care of that illness and come back into balance by studying the movements of nature.
Muse:
It's also one of the oldest medicines that we have a very extensive recorded history for. So I was really enamored or enchanted, I would say, with that greater cosmology view. And also, I to this day, have never worked with an MD, who I have just thought was so awesome. I'm sure there are so many.
Holly Knoll:
[crosstalk 00:07:00].
Muse:
I'm sure there are so many awesome MDs, but I personally have never found one who's really inspired me. And I've tried to get assistance with a few different things in my life from Western medicine, and this is not to diss Western medicine at all, or conventional medicine. There's so many important powerful life saving tools. We need Western medicine, but there's a lot of big gaps, like how to really create vibrant health, and sustain vibrant health, how to attend to our nervous system and our emotional health and the calling of our soul, calling us to what we're here for.
Muse:
Like our physical health, it's not just physical, it's tied into everything. So I just don't see conventional medicine addressing that yet. So med school only teased my attention because I think it'd be so cool for me to be an OB/GYN.
Holly Knoll:
Yeah, I'm inspired, I would want you for my doctor, yes. Well, then I think that Western medicine in my experiences as well have been... I get my hopes up, "Oh, this is going to be a great appointment, I'm really excited to meet this new doctor." I always walk away feeling a little totally unsatisfied because they have 10 minutes to spend, you're under pressure, you have to get everything out immediately. There's no time to really form a relationship or have a discussion or brainstorm.
Holly Knoll:
And also, I feel like it's so reactive, there is no proactive. How do you achieve vibrant health to your point earlier? What are practices and things that people can be doing to stave off disease, versus like, "Oh, you have a disease, now we need to react to it." It seems to be a very much in a reactive mode from my personal experiences, and the physicians I've seen, versus like let's talk about what are your goals? Where do you see yourself kind of like a career chat, but this is the health chat.
Holly Knoll:
Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years? What kind of lifestyle do you see yourself living? How can we make sure that you're doing all the right things to stay healthy, like I'm in my 40s now, I'm sure the precautions and care that I need to be taking with my body is different than it was 10 years ago when I was in my 30s. And so I just haven't found that yet in my experiences with an MD.
Muse:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. Yeah, same. It's a limited model in modern medicine, and it's what we call in Chinese medicine, the attacking and purging school of thought, where it's like we identify the thing that's wrong, and we're going to attack it and fix it which was in the long history of Chinese medicine, it was a part of the development of Chinese medicine to have that kind of orientation. And I do not remember which era this happened in, but it was while ago.
Muse:
But, yeah, I hope that in our lifetime we see mainstream modern medicine become more holistic, treating the whole person. And I think it's possible, especially with the new findings and epigenetics, scientists and researchers are finding that trauma really is carried in our body intergenerationally, which is huge. It's not just the physical illness, it's emotion. It's our mental constructs, our mental narratives. It's all of us. It's everything.
Holly Knoll:
Passed down from generation to generation. Lucky us. So, okay, let's back up. All right, you're in Oregon, you finished Chinese medicine school, and you have your masters.
Muse:
It was a bodywork school in Oregon. Then I lived in New Mexico and opened a private practice there. That's when I started my private practice in 2008. And then I moved to North Carolina to do my Master's in Chinese Medicine.
Holly Knoll:
Oh, okay. Oh, so many things to unpack here.
Muse:
I'm a [crosstalk 00:11:15] fellow.
Holly Knoll:
So many things to unpack. Okay, so bodywork in Oregon, and you went to New Mexico, and opened your own private practice, what type of practice did you open and why did you feel like you wanted to do it there and at that point in your life?
Muse:
Let's see. Okay, so 2008 I was three years out of bodywork school, and I had worked for a couple different places when I lived in Portland, Oregon, which were okay. But I again, I'm a rebel. I don't like anyone to tell me what to do.
Holly Knoll:
Amen, sister.
Muse:
I'm not a great employee, honestly. I mean, when I am fully on board to help someone with something, I am the VIP assistant. Oh, my goodness. And every single wedding that I've helped put on, an event have helped put on, I am on it. But for an extended period of time, I get bored, I get restless, I need to be doing my own thing, which I think at that time, I don't know if I could have put my finger on it, but it was to explore what's possible with hands on medicine, what's possible within bodywork, not just massage as a relaxation technique, but how can we use our hands to invite healing, true healing that occurs on all levels?
Muse:
So my practice was very focused on pelvic health because right out of massage school, I went to study that uterine moving massage that actually came from Belize. And so I was practicing primarily that and then shiatsu and tui na so those are from the Orient, Chinese medicine [crosstalk 00:12:51].
Holly Knoll:
What is shiatsu and Tui na? I've heard of shiatsu, but for those out there who don't know, including me, what are they?
Muse:
So shiatsu is a bodywork form from Japan and tui na comes from Mainland China. So there are a lot of variations within these two broad terms. But there are bodywork modalities that work with the channel systems of the body. So in Chinese medicine, we look at the human body as a collection of basically currents that flow through us. There are well springs and riverbeds, there are waterfalls, there's places where our life force is moving through us with different frequencies and different volumes.
Muse:
So tui na and shiatsu are both, they're less like gliding, oily kinds of massage, and it's more about putting pressure and rocking and percussion, and specifically we're traversing these channels. The channels are where all the acupuncture points are. So if anyone listening has had acupuncture, any acupuncture point lies on a channel.
Holly Knoll:
Okay.
Muse:
So we're tapping into say, the stomach channel system, which governs not just the stomach organ, but everything that the stomach governs. So the stomach is said to be the general of the rotting and ripening of food. So if we receive food into our stomach and the stomach processes what we eat into usable chi or lifeforce.
Holly Knoll:
Oh, fascinating. And, okay, of course, now I'm like, "I want to go down this path. I want to learn more." Let's continue with your journey. And you were in New Mexico then you decided to go to North Carolina to get your masters and what made you decide to do that and take that next leap? I'm guessing... Yeah, I'm not going to guess, what made you decide that and take that next step?
Muse:
Well, back when I was in massage school, I fell in love with Chinese medicine and I was ready to try to go to acupuncture school then. I was ready to go get a Master's or a Doctorate in Chinese Medicine then. But my teacher said, "Hands on medicine is the first medicine, hone your skill of touch first, so that when you use needles, your needles can be an extension of the skill you already have in your hands." And I'm so glad that he really impressed that upon me. And also, I don't think that I would have had the patience or wherewithal to make it through a four or six year program at that point, honestly. A little too revved up in that point of my life to sit still for that long, basically.
Muse:
So, by the time I actually did go, it just felt like, well, if I'm going to do it, I need to do it. And at this point, I could have already done it and finished.
Holly Knoll:
Yeah, right.
Muse:
I already thought about it for enough years-
Holly Knoll:
A year ago, you wish-
Muse:
... that I could have done it a couple times already.
Holly Knoll:
One of my favorite quotes, a year from now you will wish you have started today-
Muse:
Uh-huh (affirmative), yeah.
Holly Knoll:
... with pretty much anything. Okay, so you're there and how many years of schooling does the semesters take? How long [crosstalk 00:16:10].
Muse:
It was four years.
Holly Knoll:
Okay.
Muse:
It was four years, and two and a half of those were full time clinical practice, practicum, I should say. And it was a good program. And I worked as a body worker that whole time. So it's really interesting, because I started from scratch in New Mexico, I didn't know anyone. And within a few months, I had what I felt like was a full schedule. So I was seeing between six and 12 people a week, which is a pretty big span. But for just starting out as a body worker, that's awesome.
Holly Knoll:
Hey, that's great.
Muse:
Yeah, and then I had a very consistent practice until I moved to Asheville and the same thing happened again, it was just a few months before... And again, I moved to a place where I didn't know anyone. So I didn't know anything about business, and I wasn't intending to be an entrepreneur or a business owner, until a couple years ago, I just thought, "Oh, I'm just a practitioner." I didn't even register, but I was running a business. But over time, I definitely learned some things like to take a lot of time and craft wording on our website that feels like it really represents the essence of what we're doing.
Muse:
I would just brainstorm ideas of how to generate more clients, and then I would do them, I would put in the time to do them. Like I once wrote a bunch of professional invitation for referral letters to different holistic, or medical practitioners telling them about my practice and what I could treat. And I think I yielded two responses from that mission of maybe 26 letters. But I still had a big wave of incoming clients. And that was back in New Mexico when that happened.
Muse:
And I realized, oh, it matters that I really put in the work with my heart, that I'm really putting it out there what I'm doing and calling people in, and maybe the exact marketing technique I'm doing isn't going to yield the results, but the results will come because I'm still putting in the effort.
Holly Knoll:
So another quote that I love, too, is don't be disappointed by the results you didn't get for the work you didn't do. And just you saying that and before we started recording, we were talking about your most recent launch, which we'll get to more about your business in a minute. But you have a business now that's flourishing, and in a time of COVID, hands on work is nearly out of the question, probably and I'd love to hear more about how you're handling that.
Holly Knoll:
But you're still able to have a thriving, prospering business because you're doing the work and even without some of the traditional ways of reaching out and building your business, you're doing non-traditional ways because you're non-traditional, and you're still building a business. And so I think for listeners here, people listen to this podcast because they want to start a business, they want to learn how to start a business, what's worked for other people, what's not worked for other people.
Holly Knoll:
And I love that you've said that is you put your heart into what you are doing, and it sounds like you were guided by your intuition to send these letters and to really just rather than using your head so much, you've used your heart to grow your business. Tell me more about that. How else have you infused this in your business other places?
Muse:
Well, all of my work, hands on and now distant is around how we can fully inhabit the fullness of who we are. And we can find our way into that by connecting with our body, like actually inhabiting our physicality. So a lot of my guidance comes from my body. I was just telling you before we were recording, but I just launched a course for the second time. I've never launched anything, I just did my first two launches in the last six months. And I don't love launching because there's a difference between work that's challenging, and really kind of grindy to get through, but it's really rewarding, and it feels like the right thing to do.
Muse:
And then there's just when our nervous system is like, "No, that's bad. I don't want to be around... No." Right now I'm getting messages from my nervous system, I don't like this launching model that's so big in entrepreneurial world, especially an online business world. So I don't exactly know what to do with that information, except that well, I want to investigate other models.
Holly Knoll:
Noticed, yeah.
Muse:
This is my business.
Holly Knoll:
It's so interesting, because over the past week, I keep getting messages in different ways like, be in your body, listen to your body. I heard it yesterday when I was doing my Peloton workout from my Peloton teacher, I just heard it from you. I had an intuitive reading yesterday and the woman said the same thing to me. And so clearly, I'm supposed to, I think this is our messages that I need to be more my body if I were to take something from all this. And if probably listeners out there have heard this phrase as well, but what does it really mean to be in your body? Does it mean you have to sit in meditation 24/7? How do you know when you're in your body and why is it that important? Why does it matter?
Muse:
Well, when we're in our body, we're free, and we have full agency. So fully inhabiting our body to me means literally our life force is present, our consciousness is present in all of us. Like as we're sitting, each of us can just turn our mind's eye internally and see like, can you sense your belly? Can you sense your pelvis? Can you sense into your pussy?
Holly Knoll:
You dropped it, the P word!
Muse:
I work in pelvic health.
Holly Knoll:
Yes, I've heard you and read many, many posts. I am not afraid of the word, I love it.
Muse:
I've learned about the nervous system and how to inhabit our bodies through doing hands on work with people's pelvises. It's like when and... Okay, let me see, this is such a huge ball of wax here.
Holly Knoll:
Big question.
Muse:
So many of us cut off our sensing and our emotional feeling from our pelvis because a lot of things are really painful. Life is really painful, we've all experienced things that are really hard, traumatic, even. And if we're not able to process all of that emotion in the moment, we disconnect from it, and we just wall that material off into one area and often gets locked somewhere in our body that then we don't have full access to.
Muse:
And I find this all the time and the pelvis, all the, all the, all the, all the time. And not surprising, I see people who are coming in, or coming to me, not coming in anymore, because I don't have an office at the moment where I have received people onto my treatment table. But I work with people all the time who are coming to me because there's something wrong, like there's some imbalance in their pelvis.
Muse:
So our job is why? How? How is our life force not flowing all the way through our route? We can just ask, do you feel alive in your whole body? Do you feel connected to the lower half of your body? Do you feel connected to the ground? I like to say being grounded is a literal, tangible experience. It's when we literally are connected to the ground with our life force, like we are human beings on the face of the earth. We actually exist here, not in our head, not invading the many challenging things that we have in our life, but we actually are with them and it takes practice and it's not easy, but it is so liberating to be able to develop our emotional literacy and work through the things that have really hurt us so that we can unlock the places in our body that are no longer holding our essence. Does that make sense?
Holly Knoll:
I love that, it does. And I'm going now to a place of thinking of times when I know I'm not in my body. Times of high stress or being anxious about something that might or might not happen in the future, worrying about something that I need to get done that I have no idea how to do it or I don't have the time to do it, or the energy, but I know all the shoulds or whatever, any kind of worrying any kind of not being present. I guess if I were to generalize, times of high stress.
Holly Knoll:
For many of us, especially for the past year, operating in high stress has become the norm. So are there ways that you could recommend that or ways to catch ourselves when we're in that moment to just stop and be aware, and then turn that situation around so we are more grounded, and we are more in our body, so we can make our decisions and operate from our true self versus this heightened state of stressed out self. I think the first step is just being aware, and when it becomes the norm, how do you break the cycle and just become aware like, "Oh, my God, I'm doing it"?
Muse:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Holly Knoll:
It's so hard.
Muse:
It's a muscle that we have to work out. It's not a light switch that we just switch and we're like, "Oh, I'm just super present now."
Holly Knoll:
No, no.
Muse:
It's something that we get to work with-
Holly Knoll:
Because now it works that way.
Muse:
... over and over. So just acknowledging, okay, because we can... Okay, if we're going to start to be aware of when we're not feeling so connected, we have to be okay with not always feeling awesome. Like there's this myth in our culture that we should always be feeling awesome, but we aren't ever. It's not really possible. There's this huge stigma against feeling depressed or anxious or sad or grief. Oh, my gosh, God forbid, we feel grief or express grief. Wow, I remember, I watched a A Star Is Born-
Holly Knoll:
Yes. Oh, God.
Muse:
... when it came out, and I was so wrecked by that movie. I stumbled out of the theater and just broke down on the sidewalk sobbing. I was just like, "There's so much pain in the world, how are we going to be okay? How are humans going to be okay?" And I was just feeling all of it because I practice crying, like I can cry like that, I can move some grief. But I have to really work to embrace that over the years. And it was so disturbing to this woman who walked by. She did not know what to do. She was like, "Are you okay?" She was beside herself.
Muse:
So anyway, just to back up, in order to be aware of our internal states, we need to just keep deciding over and over again, that it's okay to go through things that are hard, and it's okay to feel things that are hard, because it's just the only way. And then once we are on board with that, each person's body has a really distinct way of communicating when something's not all right. Our nervous system will tell us.
Muse:
For me, I feel tightness in my throat, I feel a pit in my stomach, I start to sweat, I feel my breath get kind of stuck up in my chest, my breath doesn't move all the way through me. For some people I know like they start to feel pain in their jaw or their shoulders start to scrunch up. And I think that the shoulder scrunching and neck pain and pain around the back of the head and headaches, those show up when perhaps we haven't caught the big emotion in the moment. Like we weren't able to realize like, oh, there's something really happening right now that I'm responding to. And then a little bit later, we start to feel really wacky in our body. So I think everybody listening can think about the ways that your body tells you that you're not feeling awesome.
Holly Knoll:
I feel it in my stomach for sure. This goes back to the day before art class. I had a horrible teacher at art class, and I used to stomach ache every day before class because I didn't want to go the next day or every night before. But even now, any time I've dread or anxiety or just feeling just stressed out beyond belief. Yeah, it's the shoulders, but I think, where I feel it in my body is in my gut. And so that sounds to me like the first step if someone wants to just be more aware, like a quick reality check, let me get back in my body is just to notice how you're feeling physically. So then what?
Muse:
Yeah, so anytime you notice that something is contracted or holding, just exhale. Anybody who's taken yoga, when I say that will start to do yogic breathing, that's not going to be the most helpful thing.
Holly Knoll:
Ojai breath.
Muse:
It's an amazing technique and it can be very regulating, but it's also a way of controlling. So we might use that kind of breath, where it's like, we're inhaling and exhaling, we're really trying to make everything very even. That might be helpful if we're in a situation where we don't feel safe to really feel our emotions fully. But we do need to feel our emotions fully. Feelings are fulfilling, and what is buried alive never dies.
Muse:
So if we do not feel our feelings, we will continue to carry them. We will carry that baggage in our body, in our nervous system. And we want to be free of that so we have connections, we can connect with our creativity, like what we're really here for. So exhale, just make big sighs. When we have a lot of [crosstalk 00:31:41].
Holly Knoll:
Traumatic sighs in the middle of the meeting. Oh, don't worry, guys, I'm just feeling my body right now.
Muse:
I can't even tell you the number of randomly commented to me, "You sign a lot." And I'm always like, "Well, I'm feeling a lot of things."
Holly Knoll:
So anybody listening right now, just take a big breath and just sigh it out.
Muse:
It's so good. I mean, we literarily [inaudible 00:32:06] in a four way and turn on the fan.
Holly Knoll:
And look at us laughing and having a release about it.
Muse:
Our breath ventilate emotion. It's so simple. But it's not easy, because we have to feel the emotion to actually move through it. But it's worth it because on the other side, we are liberated from that baggage of just carrying around the emotion that we didn't feel.
Holly Knoll:
So I feel like we just talked through a tool. So I'm all about the tools and takeaways here because I want people to walk away with some value, which of course. So it's important to grow into our bodies, because... How would you finish that sentence to feel grounded in our bodies.
Muse:
It's important to ground into our bodies, because life sucks if we don't, literally.
Holly Knoll:
Okay, and because it's a way to bring us into the present moment and connect with our true self.
Muse:
Yes, we can feel who we are, what we're here to do, how we can do it, and what are the logistical steps that I need to take right now in my day? How can I live to my fullest right now and later and after that, too? All have that instruction lives in our DNA, it's in us, we can't access it if we're just stressed balls, and cutting ourselves off from all of our trauma, basically.
Holly Knoll:
So when we're feeling that stress, and we know we need to ground down and get back into our bodies, we then notice where we're feeling that contraction or tightness in our bodies, right?
Muse:
Yeah, there's always a message in our body. When we are in a contracted emotional state, the body will always show us. So what are your body's indicators? That's the clue. That's the invitation to just let go with your exhales and go outside. Go outside. Plug in your nervous system to the greater network of nature.
Holly Knoll:
What if it's seven degrees? I mean, I'm feeling a little challenge to go outside these days, how can I work around that?
Muse:
Put on some good girl long underwear pants.
Holly Knoll:
Warm clothes. I know. And I think for people that live in cold climates, there is something called like the winter blues and the seasonal depression because there's less light of course, but then it's supposed to be in this single digits the next five days. I'm like, "Geez, that's a bummer," but I know how important it is to get outside.
Muse:
Yeah.
Holly Knoll:
So yeah, even short amounts of time will work, I'm guessing, right?
Muse:
Yes, definitely. And just on a very logistical note, merino wool, merino wool is how to not be cold.
Holly Knoll:
Totally.
Muse:
[crosstalk 00:35:05] merino wool under layers and socks.
Holly Knoll:
Long underwear silk, oh my God, my mom bought me some, and I was like, "Silk, it's like the thinnest material ever, what do you mean it's warm?" Oh, oh, it's warm. They're my favorite, favorite, long underwear that I wear underneath anything when I ski or go anywhere. So all right, Muse, so get outside, and then exhale.
Muse:
It poured in for the entire month of November a year ago here and you know what? I walked my dog twice a day, every day, and I'm so glad I had a dog because if I didn't, I would probably be really resistant to going outside, but it helped me so much. It helps so much to be in nature. All of us, wherever we are, even if we're in a very urban setting, there was always wildness, there's always nature around us. And even when we're feeling our worst, if we can connect with nature, our body, our nervous system can be reminded that there is always hope, there is always the seed of hope in every leaf, in every twig in every seed in the soil, it's all around us.
Holly Knoll:
Okay, so notice the tightness and tension in your body, get back into your body by taking a deep breath and just sigh out. These are simple tools-
Muse:
Lots of big exhale.
Holly Knoll:
... get outside, lots of big, big exhales-
Muse:
Lots of big exhales.
Holly Knoll:
... lots of big exhales that might be the title of this podcast.
Muse:
[inaudible 00:36:33].
Holly Knoll:
Lots of big exhales. Like even going into the bathroom, shutting the door for five minutes and just doing that and getting into nature, like all super simple tools that are totally free. But I think it begins in the awareness because so often, I just am not aware. I feel like I'm not aware, I'm just dealing with what's right in front of me, and I probably have a heightened at times, although I work very hard at this. There are times when I have a heightened state of stress that just becomes like, "Oh, this is normal. This is how I should feel, or this is not a normal feeling when it's not."
Holly Knoll:
And so I think just capturing that moment, and celebrating, I always like to add a celebrating step to, like celebrate the fact that you caught yourself being stressed out once a day. If you caught yourself in that moment like one time every day, that's going to add up and make a big difference. And so we don't always have to be living in the state of zen, although maybe that's the holy grail possible.
Muse:
No, I don't think it's possible.
Holly Knoll:
Right. I don't know how unless you live in a room and don't have to deal with it, even that would be stressful. I can't describe this scenario. But yeah, small wins, baby steps, catching yourself in a heightened state of stress, or anxiety or whatever it is once a day, that would add up and become habit for me, right?
Muse:
Yes, every single time we notice our body, every single time we decide, "I'm just going to let go of my breath over and over again. That's all I'm going to do right now. I'm just going to go outside and take a short walk," it builds resiliency. It's a medicine we can make for ourselves that amplifies itself. It multiplies itself within us because it gives us more bandwidth to encounter, to navigate things in the future because we exercise that muscle. We did a good workout.
Holly Knoll:
We did a good workout. Okay, well, wrapping up, I want to get back to North Carolina and then understand how did you get to Brazil? Okay, so you're in North Carolina, did you have a private practice there?
Muse:
I did.
Holly Knoll:
What did you work with?
Muse:
I worked full-time while I was in school.
Holly Knoll:
Okay.
Muse:
I had a very structured calendar, I had every single possible treatment availability slot marked out in between my classes and clinic shifts, and I saw as many private clients as I could, and then I took really good care of myself on my one or two days off.
Holly Knoll:
Yeah, I imagine that was a lot for you to take on, going to school full time and [inaudible 00:39:32]. It's a lot.
Muse:
Yeah.
Holly Knoll:
So then what happened next? How soon after that did you decide to move to Brazil?
Muse:
Well, when I graduated, I graduated with my masters in 2016, and I had a feeling I needed to do some more travel, and I've always been really in love with the Portuguese language, specifically Brazilian Portuguese. I have been to Brazil in 2010 for three months and I traveled around and I loved it. So it was kind of in the back of my mind, but I had just gotten out of school, I was ready. I took my board exams, I got my license, I was more focused on practicing. So I practiced for a whole year full-Time when I finished school. But then Trump got elected and I just couldn't [inaudible 00:40:28].
Muse:
I was like, "I can't be here." And that also was on a nervous system level. It felt so stressful for me to have a known verified sex predator and just all around asphalt being in this position of power, doing so much damage and amplifying everything. It just felt so heavy and inundating that I was like, "I got to go."
Holly Knoll:
Yeah. Fuck this.
Muse:
And then I [crosstalk 00:41:00].
Holly Knoll:
You asked about swearing on the podcast. I'm like, "Anything goes," and I feel like this is F this moment.
Muse:
Yeah, and just, oh.
Holly Knoll:
I know. And speaking of nervous systems, I think a lot of Americans... Pre-COVID, we've lived under a heightened state of stress. My friends and I have talked about this. We have lived under a heightened state of stress for four years because of the 24/7 news cycle because of Twitter, his access to being able to broadcast and spew evil and just waking up and be like, "God, what happened last night?"
Holly Knoll:
And so I think that, although it feels small at the time, like reading or hearing a quick soundbite or a story about what he did, I think that weighs on us, and you add that up and it compiles and compiles and compiles and all of a sudden we're just living in this state of like, "God, what next?" And that is so draining. And so I hope everyone this year can take a collective sigh, the whole world. I feel like the whole world has exhaled with the exception of a few, not even a few, but a lot of people don't feel the same way, but we won't talk about them.
Holly Knoll:
But I think just like looking at 2021 as a new slate and time to exhale overall is yeah. And so back to your story, back to you Muse. Okay, so you were one of those people who actually said, "I don't want to live in this country," and actually moved.
Muse:
Yeah. Okay. I mean, for anyone who's aware of Brazilian politics, Bolsanaro is at least 100 times more dangerous and more vital than Trump, which is hard to imagine, but it's true. And so it's not like I came to some Eden, but it is actually paradise because I live in a very rural area in Rio de Janeiro State. I'm three hours from Rio de Janeiro City, but it the culture is very different here. I still feel the weight of his administration here, but it's not so incessant everywhere all the time.
Muse:
I think if I was still living in New Mexico, I might have had a similar experience in the Trump presidency as I feel here, where I'm far enough removed from kind of the hubbub. And the infrastructure in Brazil is weak. It's very malleable. So local communities really depend on each other in a way that doesn't exist in the US. So in a lot of ways, it doesn't matter who's president here because when it comes down to it, each local community is helping one another survive, which I love. But just to say, there's definitely...
Muse:
I'm feeling a lot of levity from the shift in US politics now, even though I'm still here where economically, and the healthcare system things are rough here for sure.
Holly Knoll:
And you mentioned you met your husband. I know he's Brazilian babe. So you guys met after you decided to move down or had you already known each other before?
Muse:
Well, I met him near the end of my first three month visit. I always would come in three months stints because that's what my passport allows. So I met him at the end of 2017 the first time I came to this region, and I came right back. I went to the states and I was just there for a few months and I came right back because I really felt connected to the land here and to community, so it was that second visit that we started dating. And then by the third visit, I decided to move here. So the forest visit, I actually moved here. Over two years dating long distance.
Holly Knoll:
Wow. And you've been there now since... How long have you been there this last time? How long have you lived there?
Muse:
I came in September, 2019 permanently and I went back to the states actually to do a couple of work tours at the beginning of COVID. So I landed in Ohio and a week later, everything closed. So it was very interesting timing. Yeah, so just to rewind. Yes, I am one of those people who actually left the country, but I was back and forth a lot. I was also in Europe for several months, so I tried to stay out of the US a lot, but I also was back and forth working up until September, 2019.
Holly Knoll:
Well, Muse, it's been so great having you here. Tell us a little bit about your program and how people can find you online. And if they want to work with you, what are the options right now just from a distance? How could someone sign up for a session with you or enroll in your course or what do you offer right now?
Muse:
Yeah, so I do distance consultations for anything pelvic health related, literally. I work with a lot of people who have already been to a traditional gynecologist and have not been satisfied with the answers that they've gotten or they haven't found a solution yet to what they're wanting. I also work with folks who have had trauma and are wanting to reclaim their pelvic space or deepen an intimate relationship and work through prior sexual trauma.
Muse:
And I do distance consultations through my website, which is medicineofthefeminine.com. And I have a few different options for how to do, how we can start working together. I also just added a super quick 20 minute consult. I'll do a free clarity call for people who think they want to work with me, but we can decide together which option is best for them, but I just added a quick 20 minute consult that people actually just want to ask some tangible questions before they sign on-
Holly Knoll:
Like a pick your brain for 20 minutes kind of thing.
Muse:
Yes.
Holly Knoll:
Nice. Okay.
Muse:
So I have three clarity call and then a paid a 20 minute consult. Both of those are really brief, quick ways to meet me and see if it's the right fit between us. And then I have a course, I have one course called Sovereign Vagina, which I just closed enrollment to yesterday, but I'll have that again soon. And that Sovereign Vagina course is on my website too. It's all about the basic set of tools that I work to give every single female bodied person I work with, so ways that we can take care of our lava, our vagina, our pelvic floor, all the things that I feel like we should know at 16 and 17, 18, 19, 20. Basic user or manual information for our female body.
Holly Knoll:
Which of course, the majority of us who are now in our 40s or late 30s are... Or I don't know, majority of women still do not know.
Muse:
It's never too late, because it's so empowering and it's so liberating. It's going to change all of your future, all of our future, gynecological appointments so that we can have an awesome [crosstalk 00:48:34] gynecologist imagine.
Holly Knoll:
Yes. And have the right conversations. Yes. Well, everyone, go visit Muse's site medicineofthefeminine.com, it's dot com, right?
Muse:
Yeah.
Holly Knoll:
Okay, medicineofthefeminine.com. It's a tongue twister, and book a consultation, get your questions asked, work with her. Now I'm like, "Oh, you do all this?" Now, I have questions. So anyway, thank you for being here. Is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you'd love to mention?
Muse:
I made a note here when you were talking about how easy it is to not realize that we're stressed. It's really important that we guard our personal time before we go to sleep and when we wake up in the morning. It's so easy to get inundated in tech and information, and we're in this age now where we can just keep consuming, we can keep taking in, but we also need to let go and unravel and being still and quiet in our homes and with our families, with our partners, turning off all the screens, I think it's really important to have-
Holly Knoll:
It's a kindle count.
Muse:
I think reading is still taking in. I'm talking about real unplugging time. I think music is probably okay, but even then, we get so little stillness. You don't have to meditate. If that's something we're interested in, awesome, but it's not for everybody, but to have really restful time where we're not taking in media, I think is very, very important for the health of our soul and our nervous system.
Holly Knoll:
All right. Well, it's Friday here. And so I guess that'll be my Friday night before I go to bed tonight. Not doing much anyway these days on Friday nights, but thank you. Light a candle, take a bath. I was going to say, read a book. No, that's taking in. That's always my way of relaxing, but I'm going to be intentional about this and think about what I can do tonight to just really... I think I'll just pet my cat, I don't know.
Muse:
Yeah, I love to just pet my animals and hang out and do nothing. Well, when the weather's nice, we can go outside, and just enjoy the night sky if we have some beauty around us. I like writing too. I should say, I like writing, but I do journal, which is not necessarily something I always like, but I make myself do it anyway because it unwinds me in such a [inaudible 00:51:12] way.
Holly Knoll:
Such incredible messages come to me through my writing. I mean, I found that as my top way of connecting with my higher powers, the higher powers is through writing. I've had some incredible breakthroughs there where I've been able to tap into source that I didn't know existed. And so that's been a breakthrough I've had since October and I'm like, "Gosh, has this always been available to me?" That's a different subject for a different time, but yeah, it's fascinating. So, thank you, Muse, what a treat to talk to you today like this and again, Medicine of the Feminine everybody. And thank you so much for being here.
Muse:
Yeah, you're so welcome. It's so wonderful to talk with you Holly, thanks so much.
Holly Knoll:
You're welcome.