#404 Resolving Pain, Anxiety and Unprocessed Emotions with Nicole Sachs, LSCW

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I’m joined by Nicole Sachs for a juicy and mind-blowing convo that just might change the way you think about your symptoms.

Nicole is a total powerhouse when it comes to helping people heal chronic pain, anxiety, long COVID, and all the mystery symptoms that make you feel like a walking question mark. We get into her story of being diagnosed with a gnarly spinal condition at 19, how she healed without surgery, and what that has to do with repressed emotions, a dysregulated nervous system, and a little tool she created called JournalSpeak.

We’re talking science, soul, and the sneaky ways our bodies try to keep us “safe” by holding onto stuff we were never meant to carry. If you’ve been spinning your wheels trying to fix your pain, fatigue, gut issues, skin flares, or anxiety, you are going to want to take notes on this one.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Why your pain is real even if it’s not coming from where you think
• How your body uses symptoms to protect you from emotional overload
• What the emotional reservoir is and why it keeps overflowing
• Why some people feel emotionally frozen and how to safely thaw
• How to rewire your brain and regulate your nervous system with JournalSpeak
• Why self-compassion is not fluffy—it’s freaking necessary for healing 

ABOUT GUEST:

Nicole Sachs, LCSW is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and creator of the JournalSpeak method and The Cure for Chronic Pain platform. A direct student of Dr. John Sarno, Nicole has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world heal from chronic pain, anxiety, and other mind-body conditions without medication or surgery. Through her books (Mind Your Body, The Meaning of Truth), podcast, courses, retreats, and practitioner training program, Nicole teaches the science and soul of self-healing with compassion, clarity, and a little bit of sass.

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.yourbreakawake.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolesachslcsw

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead.
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

WORK WITH CHRISTA:
I've streamlined my proven method to help you get to the REAL root of eczema and food sensitivities—without the overwhelm. Join the program at christabiegler.com before doors close!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Everything is a choice, but what I'm saying is if you are too afraid to look at the things that I'm asking you to look at, that's okay today, but I want you to know that on the day it hurts worse to have your symptom. There's another way to look at it.

[00:00:15] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:45] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:03] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. Today on the Less Stressed Life I have Nicole Sachs, who's a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and founder of The Cure for Chronic Pain, a global platform helping people heal from chronic pain and anxiety without medication or surgery. A direct student of Dr. John Sarno, Nicole developed the Journal Speak Method and has worked with thousands through her books, courses like Freedom From Chronic Pain and Freedom from An Anxious Life Podcast, retreats and Practitioner.

[00:01:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Training programs She teaches annually at the Omega Institute and continues to inspire a worldwide audience to reclaim their health through emotional expression and mind body healing. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:39] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:40] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah,

[00:01:41] Christa Biegler, RD: so last month I was at an event for business owners and there was another.

[00:01:45] Christa Biegler, RD: person who is a very similar type of colleague to myself, and she did a lot of health blogging and we were going through the lunch line and she just really wanted to talk about your work, about chronic pain and how she was. Feeling a little disillusioned in her current work because she had this back pain and she read your book and she resolved her back pain, and she's I just feel really excited about the nervous system and all these things.

[00:02:10] Christa Biegler, RD: And that was fun because that is something I've had Dr. David Hans come on the show a couple times sometimes I'm surprised. Do you know him? Okay, cool. Course I figured. Yeah, I figured you did.

[00:02:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Just excited to have another angle or you on the show and on the way home from that event I. Started your audiobook, so I made it halfway through that. And I love how you're a little bit spicy, so I'm I want you to share a little bit. Let's open up, that's the story of how you arrived here. You jumped on the schedule right away, so was thankful for that.

[00:02:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Just 'cause it's so great to get this out there. But tell us about. Your story first and how you got into this work you offer a little bit. I do see that Dr. Sarno was also into, he was maybe in the same general realm of medicine. Dr. Hanscom is actually a no longer a back surgeon, but a former back surgeon, and you're a psychotherapist.

[00:02:59] Christa Biegler, RD: And I'm, I'd love to hear all the pieces of the story about how you arrived at what, where you are now, essentially. 

[00:03:07] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes. So it starts as many of us do in the world of healing and wellness, which is, I came in as a patient of it. I was 19 when at college my back went out so completely that I couldn't walk.

[00:03:21] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: My parents brought me home and I underwent all the tests. And I still believe in the medical model and being tested. So I am not saying that people shouldn't go to the doctor. But when I went to the doctor, I was diagnosed with something called degenerative spondylolisthesis, which is a pretty significant, in my case, abnormality of the lower spine.

[00:03:42] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And of course, it makes complete sense that all the doctors figured that was the reason for my tremendous back pain. So in my orthopedic surgery consult, they suggested that spinal fusion surgery would be the eventual, thing that I would probably be presented with. Having said that, at 19, they were like, you don't need to do this now.

[00:04:02] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: All you have to do is stop your travel, stop your exercise, stop sleeping in, certain positions. No more riding in the car for more than an hour because of the destabilization and the likelihood that you'll have biological children is slim to none because of the weight of the baby on the back.

[00:04:20] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So just that, just those small adjustments to life. As a good luck. Yeah, joy, peace. And I'm not saying that they were at all flippant about it, but it was really just the most shocking and life altering diagnosis that you could imagine for someone that young. And so essentially with enough.

[00:04:39] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Steroids and muscle relaxers and Tylenol three with codeine. It was like 1990. Thank God it wasn't stronger opioids. I was able to move from acute pain to chronic pain, meaning I was able to walk, I was able to return to college with a handicap thing on my car, drive to my classes. Like it was a different life.

[00:04:58] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: It was a different situation, but it was what I was given. Yet still there was an inkling in me, a curiosity that I couldn't place where maybe this wasn't the end to my story. I was like just too young. And like you say, I'm a little spicy, like too rebellious I think in my mind to be like, this is done and done.

[00:05:17] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So as I went through my life, I was now in graduate school and my mother came across through watching the Rosie O'Donnell show on tv. All these kind of hilarious. Synergy. Pop culture. Pop culture, like hilarious synergies of life. And and she, Jeanette Barber, one of Rosie's producers had been in a motorized wheelchair.

[00:05:36] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And my mom was watching the follow up episode where Jeanette was running the New York marathon. And they were like, what changed for Jeanette? And the answer was Dr. John Sarno. And so I started looking into MINDBODY medicine. I started looking into his work. I started understanding that the premise was not, that the pain was in my head or that I was making it up or being hysterical or sensitive in any way.

[00:05:57] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: My pain was real and excruciating, but through the lens of mind body medicine and the brain science behind why we feel anything at all. The theory was that. When your nervous system is dysregulated and when your body is in fight or flight and continues to be, so the pain signals that end up getting sent to your body are sent as a means of protection and distraction because pain slows us down and it allows us to take care of ourselves.

[00:06:23] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So just through understanding Sarno's theories, I was able to just have like a toe in the door, a pinprick of light. Something that said, maybe it isn't that you are, inextricably. Damaged and this is the fate. My story is long and we have so much to talk about. I'm not gonna get into the details and the minutia of it.

[00:06:43] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: It's all in the new book, mind Your Body. But the point is that I found this work and I was able to rewrite not only my own neural pathways through doing the work, but my conception of. The way the body functions and how much more complicated it is that it might present itself to be. And I moved through my education.

[00:07:06] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I became a licensed psychotherapist, and then through eventually meeting

[00:07:10] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: with Dr. Sarno and learning through him what this nervous system regulation is about, what it is. To have an emotional stimuli cause a physical reaction. I learned this, created the tools I created and then I ended up just making it my life's work to teach it and to help people all over the world.

[00:07:30] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And it is astonishing. What happens when people understand the power that they have, first of all, to affect their physical and emotional health because we are such a disempowered society when it comes to physical healing and then to know that they can do the work. It's pretty amazing how people change.

[00:07:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I have a quick question about your journey. Were you already on the route to becoming a psychotherapist? I know this work changed the trajectory of your life, but were you already in route to that field?

[00:08:00] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I 

[00:08:00] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: was a psych major in 

[00:08:01] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: college. I certainly knew that I wanted to pursue something in the field of psychology, but by going through this myself, it crystallized the root and the specialty that I wanted to do.

[00:08:14] Christa Biegler, RD: Cool. All right. So you just opened up that can of, when you have a dysregulated nervous system, how is the body reading that? Can you walk us a little bit more through the mechanism of how repressed emotions manifest as physical symptoms? And I think you brought up a good point that I didn't bring into my notes was that you, pain is real.

[00:08:34] Christa Biegler, RD: It's not in your head. And if we accidentally misconstrue that very important point at the beginning, then. All the rest of nothing else gets trusted. Lost. 

[00:08:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, exactly.

[00:08:44] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: All is lost. It's really funny. Just a quick note. So when my book launched in February, I was invited to come onto the Today Show, which is a terrifying experience 'cause it's live TV and you get four minutes.

[00:08:55] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And I remember as I was preparing for it, I said, no matter what I am asked i'm like a politician. The first response to any question is. The pain is not in your head, you are not creating it. You are not at fault for it. You are not overly sensitive, hysterical, like immediately, I must say.

[00:09:13] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But the solution is not in altering your physical body and I will help you to understand that. But you're right, Christa, the doorway through, which is always to make people understand you are experiencing pain so excruciating potentially, or stomach issues. Destabilizing or migraine, so blinding or long covid.

[00:09:34] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So fatiguing or all these things that you're experiencing are so extreme that you might not be able to function in life? My parents had to carry me physically. I did not walk on my own feet when I left college that day, and it was. Humiliating and it was terrifying. , You're right, the number one thing people can hear so that they are invited to identify in, not identify out of what i'm teaching.

[00:09:59] Christa Biegler, RD: For sure.

[00:09:59] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yeah. So having said that, here's a little kind of, just a tiny bit of a lesson on the brain science. There are certain functions of the human body that are unconscious, things that we all celebrate that we don't have to control, meaning I. Heartbeat, circulation, respiration, things that are happening unconsciously in your body every day that you never think about, and it is part of the functioning of the reflexive systems of the human.

[00:10:31] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: There is another one that people don't often think about, and that is the protective function of our fight or flight response. So I like to tell the story of I was in London when I was in my twenties and I was all having fun and distracted with my friends, and I stepped out to cross the street. I looked.

[00:10:48] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: To see if the traffic was coming and I stepped out to cross the street, and by the time I jumped onto the curb and felt the double decker bus whiz past my face so close, I tr I truly almost felt like my nose touched it. I had no memory of jumping back on the curb because obviously as an American I looked the wrong way of incoming traffic.

[00:11:09] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And so what I like to tell people is. Your brain and your nervous system operate with cat-like reflexes and protect you. Without asking your permission or your opinion, you remove your hand from a hot stove. You haven't thought about it. It's, oh, like that. It's in an instant. So the same exact unconscious.

[00:11:31] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Effects that your circulation, respiration, heartbeat are having on your body. So is this fight or flight response? Okay, so take that and put it on the side burner. We are human. We are here to feel big. We have relationships. We have relationships that go back to childhood. And then we have our day-to-day relationships.

[00:11:50] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And then we have a relationship with our personality. The hardest. Harshest voice, the inner critic, the perfectionist, the goodest, the codependent, the one who is always holding yourself to an impossible standard. So these are all relationships with self, with current people, and with our memories from upbringing and all that stuff.

[00:12:09] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And they live inside of us in what I like to call the emotional reservoir. It's under the cover of darkness. We are not. Thinking about these things on a moment to moment basis in the same way we're not thinking about getting our heart to beat, but they're there when that emotional reservoir threatens to overflow, when it's just one too many things.

[00:12:30] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Or in the case of long Covid where it's a global pandemic where we all go into fight or flight the same time, whatever it be. Your nervous system will make that decision. That is the pulling the hand from the hot stove. That is the jumping out of the moving traffic. It does not give you a sense of what's happening, but what it does is it scans the landscape.

[00:12:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I. It sees a predator, and in this case, the predator is your overflowing reservoir. Where you can't take one more thing and then it decides to protect you without your permission. So what happens is if you have, a proclivity for migraines, maybe your mother got migraines and you grew up watching her in bed, or since you were 10 years old, you had one incident.

[00:13:13] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: That's a neuro pathway that has been already tread. When you are in a state where the reservoir is overflowing, and let's say you are scheduled to go on a work trip and that work trip will put you in the position where people that are at least in your perception, judging you or holding you to a standard, you're not sure if you could fulfill or you're struggling with your body image and you don't know if you can wear the clothes you need to wear or you're feeling guilty because that means you have to leave your kids, right?

[00:13:39] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: All of these are potentially huge factors. The reservoir overflows, the nervous system senses a predator, so it sends protection. You get a terrible migraine. It's not your fault. You're sick, you call in and you cancel the thing that's gonna put you in place of a predator. And what I like to say in my work is I call this.

[00:13:59] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Safe in the Unsafest way. Sure, your systems, your primitive systems think you're safe, but you're missing your life. And I teach people to put a ladle in the reservoir and to dump it down. I teach them the mindset management tools. I educate them on the brain science. I teach them that self-compassion is literally a verb.

[00:14:20] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And if we do not know how to do it, we will be overflowing ourselves unnecessarily for a lifetime. And. It with those facets. I help people literally rewrite their brain. I watch people do what I've done for myself, which is go from disability to running marathons and living their lives and having children and getting married, and it's astonishing what we can do if we know Yeah, we have the power.

[00:14:44] Christa Biegler, RD: And although you focus on chronic pain and anxiety, as you're speaking. I've had lots of people talk about this topic from different angles. Not exactly the same, right? But how does emotion get stored in the body and how does it manifest? And it can manifest in autoimmunity and pretty much every other symptom possible, right?

[00:15:02] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes.

[00:15:02] Christa Biegler, RD: I'll never forget how. I had a lovely client. She was also a therapist and we got into doing, she loved coming to breathwork sessions and she said, my nose just stops running after years of running when I'm doing this breathwork. And it's like we learn the most through the experience.

[00:15:18] Christa Biegler, RD: And so we can be a little skeptical probably before, I'm sure you wade through rivers of skepticism. A lot in your daily work, and it's

[00:15:27] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes, ma'am.

[00:15:28] Christa Biegler, RD: A little bit of a challenge. And another thing and maybe we don't need to highlight this too much, but you're describing this very tangible daily experience of how this reservoir gets more and more full.

[00:15:40] Christa Biegler, RD: And the challenge to me becomes that this is, becomes the normal. To where it becomes unconscious. And so for a very long time, I've been a little bit obsessed with the concept of unconscious stress, which I think is similar to what you're interested in too, right? Unconscious stress might look like pain.

[00:16:00] Christa Biegler, RD: It might look like anxiety, might look like everything else, right? And on this exact note. You say in your book and other places, you need to feel it to heal it. And so as we deal with this longer and longer, sometimes something that happens, we become a little bit emotionally hard, or we like to avoid emotions.

[00:16:18] Christa Biegler, RD: What feedback, what advice might you say to someone who says, I can't feel anything, or someone that's been avoiding emotions for decades. Where do they start? What do they do? 

[00:16:29] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: You know what I like to tell people is your nervous system, and I know that we're like personifying it, but it's actually help helpful conceptually to do has the mentality of, let's call it a rescue puppy or kitten that you're brought back from the shelter.

[00:16:45] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Okay? It is going to take. Time and it's going to take safety for it to be convinced by you who it thinks doesn't know what's going on, that it doesn't have to go into these moment to moment protective measures. And so the reason I liken it to a rescue puppy or a dog that you bring home is you might bring home that rescue dog and you are full of love and light and all you wanna do is hug it and have it in your bed and whatever.

[00:17:14] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: All of a sudden it goes under the bed. Why does it go under the bed? Because previously it's been made to feel that it's been unsafe danger. So if people say to me, I can't feel anything, I say, that is totally normal. You have gone into freeze. You've gone into a place where it is not safe for you to feel.

[00:17:30] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So what would you do with that dog that comes home after abuse or after years of feeling like there was no safety and I know what to do. It's consistency, it's patience, and it is confidence. So you sit on the floor and you have the treat in your hand. Are you gonna go and drag that dog out from under the bed?

[00:17:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Not likely that it would work, but if you sit with the treat in your hand. On the first day, maybe nothing happens on the first however many days, depending on the level of trauma and the years of freeze. Maybe nothing happens, but little by slowly, that dog is gonna come out and sniff your hand and run away, and that dog is gonna come out and grab the treat out of your hand and run away.

[00:18:11] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But I promise you, it won't be long with patience and consistence and confidence that dog is gonna take that treat and then get in your lap. And then get in your bed and get in your heart and get in your life. And then it doesn't change. Once you rewrite the neural pathways and you learn how to drop into your experiences and you learn that you are finally potentially at long last safe with you after maybe you have been made to feel unsafe by the adults in your life as a child or by the relationships, there is a self to self relationship that is built through doing this work that no one can take away from you.

[00:18:45] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And that is what I say to people, which is. This is a new paradigm. Ground yourself in the fact that breathe, hold your body with your hands. Know that this is gonna maybe take a minute, but you have the power to rewrite this story and your actual neural pathways. 

[00:19:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So let's talk about whether you can rewrite neural pathways through types of writing exercises.

[00:19:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Or maybe you can introduce us to journal speak. 

[00:19:10] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes. So one thing I say about rewriting our neuro pathways one of my favorite meditation teachers is Sam Harris. I don't know if you know of his work, but I'm huge fan. And what he says when he talks about meditation is, it's funny when people say meditation rewrites your neuro pathways because.

[00:19:27] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Everything rewrites your neuropathways. Our brain is plastic. We are learning and growing and changing until the day that we die. And so there is always room for making space and for, let's call it improving the way it feels to live in this body and in this world. So having said that, what happens when you practice, journal, speak?

[00:19:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Is that there are three facets of my work. Believe, do the work in patience and kindness for yourself. Under the umbrella of believe is simply what you said at the beginning of this conversation. You need to know you're safe. You need to know that this is based in science, that this is not some, weird new age kind of concept.

[00:20:09] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And so the first third of my book. I am teaching brain science. I'm linking to studies. I am teaching you mindset. I'm telling you stories of people who have completely moved beyond their skepticism so you can invite yourself into the process. So that's believe. And then under the umbrella of Do the Work, I created a tool throughout my own recovery called Journal Speak.

[00:20:32] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And essentially, if we are going with the theory that we are. Being essentially paralyzed in anxiety, pain, and symptoms from this overflowing emotional reservoir, we simply need a vehicle with which to bring it down. So when I was doing my own journey through chronic pain, one of the things that Dr.

[00:20:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Sarno told me is. One of the easiest ways to figure out what's in your reservoir is to journal. And I was like, okay, so you're telling me my crippling back pain is going to be alleviated because I journal. Like I truly was the biggest skeptic, the most, otherwise person. So I always say, don't worry if you are.

[00:21:10] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I was like, I understand that. And so I thought that was like really ridiculous and too light and too, easy to be true. So I started journaling and I remember it felt like a whole lot of nothing. It felt like I was playing my tapes. I was like, woe is me, my childhood, my overcritical father, my overwhelm with having little kids.

[00:21:31] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I was just spilling out what I already knew. And as I just so happens that as I was writing about the topic of motherhood and I was writing all the things that were true on it, on the surface, I'm really tired. I have two babies in diapers. I have two babies in cribs. I got pregnant with my second, sooner than I expected.

[00:21:50] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I'm overwhelmed. My husband, at the time works all the time. I feel alone, right? So these are all very normal things and they were true. But I'm writing this and I'm like, this can't be. What I'm looking, this can't be the dark stuff in my reservoir. And I remember having a moment that I definitely have to label a spiritual experience because it was so not from here.

[00:22:14] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Like it wasn't just in like my head. It felt bigger and a line came into my mind and I felt like it was too horrible to say, and then I felt like it couldn't possibly be true. But it didn't matter to me. I decided to replace my fear with curiosity and just freaking go. And I wrote the first line of journal Speak ever penned, which is, I hate being a mother.

[00:22:40] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I hate this. I'm failing at it. I'm doing it wrong. My children aren't the children I ordered up. They look different and they act different. And it was the most immature, hysterical. Unthinkable rant and I just, I don't know what came over me. I just let myself do it. And when I started to realize, as I let it out and let it out and it started flowing out of me is it really quickly morphed.

[00:23:07] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And so first all, I was like, wait a second. I don't hate these children. But where's this hate coming from? Where's the hate? I had a very rage-aholic father who took up all the space in our house for anger. And so my mother and I'm an only child, we're very sort of people pleasing and not quiet.

[00:23:27] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I'm not quiet, never have been, but. Soft and wanting to fix and wanting to be the solution. And I had rage inside of me that I had no connection with, and I started to rage. I started to rage on the page at my parents, at their bad mistakes and at my own, personality that formed from being so at the will of their, decisions and the life I had to lead.

[00:23:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And then the journal speak turned in on me and I was like, you're all, the self-loathing started to come out. What a failure you are. It was wild. It was a wild ride. But what happened was, as I was working through this, I arrived at something in a million years I never would have known is true. And it was really a moment of compassion for myself.

[00:24:14] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And it was a realization that when I was young, let's call it 10, 12 years old, I made this very quiet pact with myself and it was these people, these parents of mine, they're a mess. They're never gonna take you where you need to go, but one day. If you study hard, if you're a good girl, you're gonna get out of these people's houses.

[00:24:34] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: You're gonna get into your own, and you are gonna be the perfect mother, and you are gonna have the perfect family, and it is going to heal the wounds of this little girl. And I had no idea that was going on for me, and it landed like such. A bomb of truth in me that I felt like I was failing and I hated parenting because I was trying to fix the wounds of a 10-year-old who is suffering.

[00:25:03] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And spoiler alert, for those of you who are not yet parents, that's not the way it works. You don't make the perfect life and erase your past. You live in what is. And oh my goodness, did I realize what I had been doing unconsciously to myself. And I cried and I ripped it up and threw it away. I was like, this is a rant I never wanna look at again.

[00:25:26] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And I woke up the next morning and my back pain was 80% gone, never to return. And I was like, okay, I'm onto something here. And then I just called it journal speak in my head. I didn't share it with anyone else. And I just went ham on all the topics in my life, on my body image, on my relationship, on my friendships, on my money issues, like blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:49] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And over the next, and I don't ever give it a timeline 'cause everyone truly is different. I called Dr. Sarno and I said, you're never gonna believe it. And he's try me. And I said, my back pain of a lifetime is gone. I am free. I haven't had back pain. I don't understand what's going on. And he's this is what happens.

[00:26:08] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: He said, you got to where you needed to get the emotional reservoir down. Your nervous system is not switching into fight or flight and sending the pain signals. That is the way it works. You've regulated yourself. And I was like, hot damn. I wanna share this with the world. And he started inviting me to NYU and I would come and lecture with him and share my insights, my journey.

[00:26:28] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And that was over several years. And I was at that point licensed as a psychotherapist, and he started referring clients into my practice and I built it from there. I wrote my first book in 2012. I rewrote the whole thing for a second edition. It's called The Meaning of Truth.

[00:26:44] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: In 2016, started my podcast, the Gear for Chronic Pain by my YouTube channel, and so much has transpired since then. And Mind Your Body, which I wrote this past year is the culmination of 20 years of best practices. So the book that you are reading right now is the proudest thing I've ever done in my life because it shows you exactly how to heal yourself.

[00:27:05] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And that's what I want for the world.

[00:27:07] Christa Biegler, RD: I was like, we could just end right 

[00:27:09] Christa Biegler, RD: there. It's so beautiful. Very slam dunk. For sure. I wanna ask you some questions that were coming up for me. As you were going through this. It would be so easy to get frustrated, and I think there's probably like a little bit of stubbornness in this, right?

[00:27:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Where it's do we sometimes. Do what Dr. Sarno says, like out of, I don't know that this is gonna work, but either I'm stubborn or I don't know what else I'm gonna do or whatnot. I wonder how long you journaled before you landed on unpacking what really needed to be seen or spoke into the world and how does journals be differ from what maybe Dr.

[00:27:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Sarno was some of his guidance for you also. 

[00:27:48] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Dr. Sarno and I were super close, and I guess he was in his late seventies by the time I met him, and then through his eighties, and he died when he was the day before his 94th birthday.

[00:27:57] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: He did this for a long time and he used to say to me, I'm the doctor. I can tell people medical stuff. He's but you explain it better than me. He used to tell me push me in front of him on the stage because it's really. Medically based psychological work. So the word psychological can be a deterrent because people then think you're saying the pain is in your head.

[00:28:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah.

[00:28:20] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But all it means is that, okay, so here's, I spoke at a conference last week and this is how I opened it. Raise your hand if you've ever had a stressful day and gotten a headache. Okay. Almost every hand in the room goes up. Almost everyone's had an overwhelming, or just been too much and gotten a headache.

[00:28:35] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And I say, okay. Keep your hand up if you ran to the emergency room for a CT scan, 'cause you thought you had a brain tumor. And everybody laughs and puts their hand down and I say. What I'm teaching you, you already believe, you already know that emotional stimuli cause physical reactions. People know that stress causes a headache.

[00:28:52] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: People know that if you panic, you can break out into hives. People know that when you get bad news, you lose your appetite. Everybody believes that your emotional state, your psychology affects the way your physical body responds. And I always make a joke and I'm like. What happens when you're really moved or when you're really sad what happens?

[00:29:12] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And everyone's looking around. I'm like, water falls out of your face. An emotional thing happens to you. And a physical reaction of tears like we know, I. But when anything becomes chronic, the emotional and psychological connection to our physical body is thrown out the door. Because chronic pain is an epidemic of fear and meaning.

[00:29:34] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Because we are desperate now to not make our future this dark fear of I'm not gonna be able to walk, I'm not gonna be able to eat the food I want. I'm not gonna be able to get to my kids' recital or game. I'm not gonna be able to fulfill myself in my career. Because of my. IBS my migraines, my fibromyalgia, my fatigue, my skin disorder.

[00:29:55] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So many things. My flares of autoimmune disease are connected to what I already know that, you know is true. My prescription is knowledge journal Speak is a tool people journal speak and when they finally just give up and stop wanting to be other than they are and stop wanting for an easier solution.

[00:30:16] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: We are a take a pill society and we are not to be blamed for that. We have been told by every structure in our society that there's a fix for that. Get this, take this pill, get this procedure, get this surgery, and unfortunately. That is definitely not true, and I'm not saying pills can't help and surgeries can't help, and procedures can't help.

[00:30:38] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But if the root of chronic conditions is in this dysregulation and this chronic fight or flight, which I know is the capital T truth, you aren't gonna be able to circumvent that. You can't keep your hand on a hot stove. Maybe some people if they practice, but like it's not exactly desirable. So your body is gonna take care of you in that way.

[00:31:01] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So when I talk about journal speak, what I say is. The first recipe, the first ingredient in the recipe must be your buy-in you. Listen, I will teach you, I'll teach you from my heart. I will teach you with hundreds of interviews on my podcast that I started in 2018. So there's hundreds of episodes you will hear from people with every symptom you'll hear from people with every walk of life, gender, socioeconomic, place on the planet.

[00:31:30] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And you will hear them say exactly what you think, which is, this is impossible. It'll never work for me. This is crazy. Don't tell me the pain is in my head. They say all the things 'cause everyone starts in the same place. You will hear me teach them and then you will hear them tearfully. Thank God for the pain because they are so grateful that it opened them to healing themselves.

[00:31:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: It's incredible. So there is no timeline for journal speak and there is no. One way to expect it to go, but there is a recipe to do it. And I teach it. I teach it in on so many platforms, and as you said in the opening for people who want to really be handheld, I have courses, I have memberships where I teach people in myself.

[00:32:14] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So there's so many ways to take this and learn it, but once you do and you practice the tool. I liken journal, speak to going to the gym. So it's like if you had no idea, okay, this is like a little, we'll play a little fantasy game. Let's say you had no idea that you had any power to change your body. You didn't know that human beings could lose weight or build muscle.

[00:32:37] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: You had no idea. So I come to you and I go, oh my God, I have such great news for you. You're not stuck here. You actually have the power. You can exercise, you can change the way you eat. You can change the way you live and you can change your body. And let's say that person was like, that's nuts.

[00:32:52] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But then they believed me. Now I took them to the gym and I say, this is a gym. These are things that people do to exercise here as a personal trainer, this trainer, whether it be a course or me or a book, is gonna teach you how to use this gym. Great news. You have the power, and there are instructions on how to do this.

[00:33:10] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: If you go to that gym and you watch people work out. Every day for the rest of your life, your body will never change. You have to do the work Journal Speak is the work. I teach you how to do it. People will have all sorts of circuitous roots to getting to willingness to getting over their resistance. I write about that too, but when you get there and you just surrender and you show up every day and you do your journal speak, and you rip it up and throw it away, this is like blowing your nose into a tissue.

[00:33:38] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: This goes all over the place and it doesn't stay true. So just. Do the work, do you think, I hate being a mother. My goodness. Those little babies that I wrote about all those years ago are 22, 20 and 17, and they, I could cry. They are the lights of my life. They're also the biggest pains in the asses.

[00:33:57] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: They're everything that children are. But it is a delight to know them because I have not raised them through the lens of my dysfunction. I have not raised them through the lens of meeting my needs, through making them be other than they are because I did this work when they were just babies and hating being a mother was the portal.

[00:34:17] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But it never stayed true. But we need to go through those inconvenient portals, those unspeakable portals to get to who's really hurting inside, who really hates a little girl who's terrified of her father screaming at her mother. So she's not gonna hate, she's gonna be a good girl. And these are things when we learn them, they set us free.

[00:34:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah so beautiful. So many conclusion points. I wanna ask you a few more questions to help people get started on this process. So one thing that might come up is that some people think that bringing up old ugly stuff will make things worse. How do you speak to that fear? 

[00:34:54] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes, that is a very common one.

[00:34:56] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So here's what I will say. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to witness it, it still makes a sound. It makes a sound. Maybe it's the squirrel that is going to hear it, but it makes a sound. And what I like to say is your darkest rooms, your hardest moments, your places that you don't wanna look at are trees falling in the forest of your life and your consciousness every day.

[00:35:23] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And if you're not willing to hear it, that's fine. That's your choice. But they're gonna resonate somewhere through your headaches, through your back pain, through your stomach, through your autoimmune, through your migraines, blah, blah, blah, right? You have a choice and the celebration of this moment for you may be for you listening is you have a choice.

[00:35:42] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And I didn't know I had a choice until I learned that I had a choice. And that is what my primary purpose is in life. To lay this teaching at their feet and to say. You actually have a choice as to whether or not you want to live at the whim of that falling tree, deciding where you're gonna feel it, or you get to choose to feel it yourself.

[00:36:03] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yeah, I agree. I. One of my great commonly quoted lines in my work a Nicole ism, as they say is life is a choice between what hurts and what hurts worse. And people always laugh and they're like, super negative, Nicole. And I'm like, no, super relieving because you already knew that. You already knew that.

[00:36:23] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Every choice we make in life, whether it's whether to eat that donut or whether to have that child and everything in between is going to have consequences that hurt and is gonna have joys that make it worthwhile. But everything in life is a choice between what hurts and what hurts worse, and if it hurts worse to feel the dark things that you don't wanna feel, that's okay.

[00:36:45] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: You can have your migraine today. You can choose it and there are days when I do, there are days where one of my symptom imperatives is headaches. I don't get them chronically, I don't get anything chronically. But once in a while when I'm really in a place and I'm really pushed beyond my means, I will get a headache and I will know that I have a choice.

[00:37:06] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I could really like pause my day and go do my journal speak and meditate and whatever. Or I could say. Screw it. I actually just think you need to get through this stuff. I'm gonna take a couple Advil. I'm gonna hope they take the edge off. I'm gonna get through this day. I'm gonna go to sleep. I'm gonna be fine.

[00:37:20] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Everything is a choice, but what I'm saying is if you are too afraid to look at the things that I'm asking you to look at, that's okay today, but I want you to know that on the day it hurts worse to have your symptom. There's another way to look at it. 

[00:37:37] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah you do a great job storytelling in your book to provide proof for belief.

[00:37:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Would you share one or two stories? You shared your own already and I know you talk about your daughter's story in your book you talk about lots of different people. That one really struck me. I don't know that one I just took to my heart. 'cause every time my children say something I'm like, would you like me to teach you this thing?

[00:37:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Would you share one or two stories that have been. I'm sure you love all of the stories, but will you share a couple that will help people get on this wagon? 

[00:38:08] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I didn't know you were gonna ask me this, but it's such a delight. I'm thrilled to answer this question. So the story at the end of chapter one is Ikas story.

[00:38:19] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Now Lika is a woman, I think when she first came upon my work, she was in her early thirties. She got covid. I. The first couple weeks of the epidemic, and everyone can imagine how terrifying that was. I remember listening to the reports coming out of Italy and then New York City and thinking. Oh my goodness.

[00:38:39] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: The terror and the panic of getting this virus that nobody knows where it's gonna go. It could be asymptomatic or it could kill you or anything in between. Yeah. So she got covid. She lives in the Netherlands. I never knew who she, I never met her. She was. Mildly sick with Covid.

[00:38:55] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: She had like covid, not terrible, not having to go to the hospital. And then a few weeks later she started getting severe symptoms that are now labeled as long covid severe chest pain, constriction. Crushing fatigue, terrible headaches, just her entire body felt so ill, but because it was so early in the pandemic, she was not even allowed to walk outside and nobody could help her, and she was alone.

[00:39:22] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: She went from being a world traveler. Her job is that she's a travel journalist and blogger, and she wrote books and she was like completely, obviously confined to her own, but confined to her body. It's a very dark story. She thought she was gonna die. She couldn't even bathe herself for months.

[00:39:40] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: She had to bathe herself with a washcloth in her bed, like really serious. She couldn't walk from her. She couldn't put a bra on 'cause she, it was too constricting. She couldn't walk from her bedroom to her kitchen without having to like really rest. So this is a person, severe symptoms. This is why I love this story, and I love the next story I'm gonna tell you because it's the magic of human connection and of a global community that to me, it like brings tears to my eyes every time she was listening to a Dutch podcast and a woman being interviewed.

[00:40:08] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Once again, a person I've never met was discussing my work for her back pain. And she was saying my work cured her back pain. And then she was saying it all had to do with nervous system dysregulation. And Leeka remembered that one of the doctors that had been trying to help her through this. Months and months of long.

[00:40:24] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Covid had said something that her nervous system was stuck in fight or flight, but no one knew how to reverse that. So Leeka listened to this podcast and she was willing, which is always my hope, just be willing to open your mind just a little bit more than it had been open. She looked me up. She took my online course.

[00:40:44] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: She started doing the journal speak work. She started uncovering what was keeping her in fight or flight. Over the next few months, she started getting better and better. She was able to take a walk around the block. She was able to ride her bike around her beloved Amsterdam and the canals and the beauty of it, and she found herself totally symptom free.

[00:41:05] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And she was interviewed. By a Dutch newspaper that put out an article about her experience. Once again, I am completely oblivious. I'm over here in the states having nothing to do with this. A man named Gary in a remote village in New Zealand is having long covid to the point where he has become totally disabled.

[00:41:27] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: He has. Such severe symptoms that he's experiencing aphasia, he can't even find words like you guys have to understand that when your nervous system is severely dysregulated, it has the power to shut your body down completely. He is so stricken that he actually decides to live. In a camper on his property because he can't even interact with his wife like

[00:41:49] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: he so needs to even just not even have human interaction. His wife reads the newspaper article about Lika and she comes to him and she says, will you just let me read this to you? 'cause he can't even read, he can't focus, he can't speak on the phone. She reads it to him and something wakes up in him. Now, Gary.

[00:42:08] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Has never heard a podcast before. He is so completely he's like a woodsman and he loves to hike. He's in his sixties. He loves to hike and hunt and fish, and he's oh, what's a podcast? He looks up my podcast and he finds this episode with Lika and he listens to it. The first podcast he's ever heard in his life.

[00:42:29] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: He dedicates himself to the work. Same thing. Gets the freedom from chronic pain course, starts doing the journal speak, and this is before I even had membership communities in places where I'm working with people. So he had no access to me. Does the work heals himself completely. He's back to hiking, fishing.

[00:42:46] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: His entire life is better. And he writes me an email and he tells me this story in an email and I go, Gary, I need to bring you on my podcast. So I bring Gary on the podcast, and now at this point, Gary, who had been this guy with this little small life, has said he wants to change his life. He wants to help others.

[00:43:05] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: So he has now started to spread the word. All over New Zealand and Australia and he's helping people and he's calling people and he's starting this network of people. His son was like stricken with his own chronic things. His son did the work. His son is all better. His son is writing to me and then I had him on the podcast.

[00:43:24] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Thousands and thousands of people around the world have been helped by Gary. I wrote both their stories in this book. Actually, they wrote their stories. All the stories in this book are written in their own words. And this is the incredible power of not only the self-healing that is possible with this work, but our global community and the connectedness of how we heal each other.

[00:43:45] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And it's it blows my mind. I love it. 

[00:43:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, I love it so much. One of my favorite things that I think you also believe very much, I'm guessing, is that I like to focus on how we're all so similar. Yes. We're just actually just way more similar than we are different. And the way I coach. With people. Part of it is to try to uncover some of the unconscious stress.

[00:44:04] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm using a different modality, which is why I'm excited to invite in some of this other work and share it. Also be part of sharing it as much as possible. But when you start to uncover those pieces, you realize we are just humans with these same core emotions that just present different ways.

[00:44:19] Christa Biegler, RD: They just present different ways.

[00:44:21] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: A hundred percent.

[00:44:21] Christa Biegler, RD: And you can't tell someone that it's their problem. They have to come to it themselves. No one could have told you, you were pissed because of the way your dad dealt with his own anger growing up. No one could have told you that. You had to figure that out on your own.

[00:44:36] Christa Biegler, RD: You had to uncover it. You had to excavate it. Yes.

[00:44:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes.

[00:44:38] Christa Biegler, RD: So speaking of excavating. Someone may fear. Oh my gosh. I think this is common too. People want to avoid like the length, like failing, even though that's actually how you get to success is failing. And so in, in order to help someone start this type of work, what are a couple journal speak prompts just to help people get started?

[00:44:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Especially if they're like feeling like they have a blank piece of paper in front of them. Yes. With writer's block.

[00:45:04] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes. 

[00:45:05] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: As I said I'm completely willing to answer your question, but I always answer it with a caveat, which is, I really do think the first prescription must be knowledge. If somebody's listening to this and they're like, I wanna journal speak, you don't want to be disappointed, or you don't wanna be put off because you try to do this thing that you think you understand from listening to podcast, I'm interviewed.

[00:45:26] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Constantly. I've given so many different like talks and lectures and interviews. The first thing I always say is give yourself the gift of learning what I'm really talking about. That's why I wrote the book. Go to my website, go to nicole sachs.com. So much free stuff, so much stuff where you can participate, and make an investment in yourself.

[00:45:44] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But do that first. I will give a journal speak prompt because I will, and because I do think that they're powerful and they make you think, but I want people to know that this is actually something to learn. It would be like if I showed you a bicycle and you were like, that's so pretty and I'm gonna go ride it.

[00:45:59] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And

[00:45:59] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: yeah,

[00:46:00] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: maybe you could, but like maybe it would probably be best for someone to teach you how to do it first. So I have to that.

[00:46:06] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Or drive a car, if a 7-year-old was like, I wanna drive that. Okay you could try. I don't know how that's gonna go. So what I'll say is there are many journal speak prompts.

[00:46:16] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: The book has pages of them. One that I love is, which was inspired by a Tara Brock meditation that I did once, what am I unwilling to feel? What am I unwilling to feel? These are bold questions. Yeah. This takes willingness. This takes openness. This takes bravery and grit. And then I always start with I am unwilling to feel blank, meaning like I write the whole sentence out because it's almost like I'm preparing myself to take this seriously.

[00:46:52] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And then what I say about journal speak is you start like a court reporter. You're not gonna delve into the depth of human emotion right away. So you start by telling the story. I'm unwilling to feel how scary it is that one day my mother will die. Yesterday I was on the phone with her and we just had such a delightful conversation, and I can't imagine a world without her in it.

[00:47:20] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And then just go and maybe it's gonna take you to third grade where you love your mother, but she actually was really abusive to you. Or maybe it's gonna take you to when you were 15 and you were the worst kid and you hurt her so badly and you're so ashamed of yourself that you can't. Even look at, who knows, I'm pulling stuff outta the air.

[00:47:40] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: But the point is there are things in there and once you invite them up, you can dance with them. And I want you to think of it as a dance because it's not. A drill sergeant with a gun to your head. This is a beautiful dance with you and you with the parts of you that have yet to be heard. We are grownups.

[00:48:00] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: We have the power to love and parent ourselves the way we weren't parented, to hold ourselves with compassion instead of criticism because the third facet of my work is patience and kindness for yourself, and I will say. I had no concept. I didn't know what self-compassion was. I would've said it's just some like light stupid thing that who cares, like for many years.

[00:48:22] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And when I started realizing that bailing out emotional reservoir without some concept of a self-compassion practice is like bailing out a boat with a hole in the bottom. Like, how much work do you want to do? And the answer is, for me, as little as possible. So I work very hard. At catching and releasing.

[00:48:44] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Catching and releasing. Like my self-criticism is not going to just stop 'cause I decide. But I can have an intentional practice of noticing it like I do in my meditation, acknowledging it not saying it's fake, like I know it's happening and then releasing it. I see what's happening. I see whose voice that is, that's my father's voice, or that's the voice I created as a result of failures.

[00:49:07] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I perceive whatever. And I can say, that's not serving me. I acknowledge that it's there. I'm going to allow it to go. I'm gonna be okay. Like it's a practice. I teach that in the book as well. It's so important to know that. So really that's one prompt. Another prompt that I love is what's renting the most real estate in my head today.

[00:49:26] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: What's taking up so much space? And then telling the story like a court reporter there. Oh my God. So yesterday my friend said this and I said it was okay, but it really wasn't okay for me. Like you just start writing it and then. I say journal speak is like putting a bunny in a freshly fallen snow.

[00:49:44] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: It's gonna go left, it's gonna go right, it's gonna go back on itself. It's gonna run forward like you might be in third grade and then you're in your future pre grieving. What's gonna happen when your kids go to college and then you're back in your first relationship where your boyfriend was abusive and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:49:57] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Let it go, let it flow, and then destroy it. I'm a really big proponent in destroying your journal speak because it's an exercise. That's why it's journal speak, not journaling. Because if you're free with no one watching to say the most inappropriate, the most self-indulgent, the most pathetic and needy things that you need to say, rip rip delete, move on.

[00:50:23] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Watch. Just you watch how you start to free yourself, how you start to forgive yourself, how you start to forgive others. It's amazing. 

[00:50:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I love it. There's been so many beautiful punctuations in this conversation. So I will punctuate there and ask people, you mentioned nicole sachs.com.

[00:50:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Tell us all the places people can find you, the name of your podcast and the name of this most recent book behind you in case you're listening and not viewing that it's Mind Your Body. 

[00:50:51] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Yes. So my website is nicole sachs.com, N-I-C-O-L-E. Some people think I have an H in my name Nicole Sachs. And the reason I say to go there first is because I think of our website as a hub.

[00:51:04] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: I think of it as like a center of a community where you can find anything you need. My partner Lisa and I created, the brand is called Your Break Awake, so it's also, you'll see if you go to nicole sachs.com, it'll populate as your break awake.com because sometimes you have to break free of old paradigms to wake up to everything that is available to you.

[00:51:26] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: There are is so much there. I have membership communities where I work with people directly. I don't work one-on-one, but I work with the group. I'm teaching at the Omega Institute. I do that every year. The last week of June. So this year our retreat is June 22nd through the 27th. So depending on when this airs.

[00:51:42] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: People might still be able to go to that. Which is an incredible in-person five day retreat of healing. Beyond, I have several courses that are self-directed. So that means you don't have to show up to any community freedom from chronic pain, freedom from an anxious life. And I have a podcast called The Cure for Chronic Pain.

[00:51:58] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: That's. Also linked in the website, totally free hundreds of episodes. I'm active on my Instagram community at Nicole Sachs lcs w I'm all over the place. Mind your body. Dropped on February 4th. It is the comprehensive guide of how to do this for yourself. If you only want to make the smallest investment and get the most bang for your buck, you can start there.

[00:52:22] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Really, there's just so much there. And just explore it with a gentle curiosity. Maybe this can help me. That's what I want for people. 

[00:52:31] Christa Biegler, RD: That's beautiful. I appreciate your work I can't imagine the relief or what the emotion was for Dr. John Sarno to see that what he learned was continued and amplified through your work.

[00:52:45] Christa Biegler, RD: And I know you work with his daughter in your other course. So I just think that is really beautiful of how do we take something and amplify it. So thank you so much for the work that you do, and thanks for coming on today. 

[00:52:56] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Thank you. And I just wanna say thank you for mentioning that about Dr.

[00:52:58] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: Sarno. You may be the first person who ever actually said that to me in an interview and and it really warms my heart because he worked for 50 years at the Rusk Center for Rehabilitation at NYU Medical Center. And oftentimes he was really ostracized because it. The collective consciousness was not ready for what he had to give.

[00:53:16] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: And it is my privilege. And yes, my partner Lisa, and I partnered with Christina. So that's the final thing that I forgot to mention. If you're a practitioner and you are looking to bring this work into your school, your community, your practice, whether it be like an acupuncturist or a doctor, or a nurse or a therapist.

[00:53:33] Nicole Sachs, LSCW: The Sarno Sac solution is also linked to our website or@sarnosacs.com, where Christina wrote the training with us, and we certify you and we give 18.75 CEEs. So it's a really great way to, to bring this to your community also. But thank you so much for having me.