[00:00:00] Anat: It's a journey to self-love choosing to cross that bridge to slay that dragon it's experiential people like, what is it to love myself?

It is to recognize that no one will save you, but you, and you have to be willing to fight for the life you want. You have to be willing to show up and give it your all and double down. This is a type of language I use with my clients. I'm like, you got to double down right now. You have to be willing to deal with the discomfort of the unknown. Because the comfort, the familiar, is the old way of being. And so it's stepping every day into the unknown. It's feeling the discomfort this is unfamiliar. But again, the more you do it, the easier it gets. And next thing you know, you're there.

[00:00:54] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.

Welcome back my guest today is Anat Peri. She's an Inner Child Healing Expert who has devoted her life to empowering people to heal past traumas, overcome major life obstacles, build confidence, and create lasting change. She blends traditional healing arts and modern psychology with somatic and inner child reparenting practices to solve the root cause of your major life challenges and conditions for the life you truly want to lead.

Her approach to healing and personal growth isn't just informative, it's profoundly experiential and leads to true transformation. With over 18, 19 years of experience and 10, 000 plus hours of focused training, she's become a master at supporting people like you to break through limiting beliefs and reclaim their power to create the lives that they've always dreamt of.

And we had such an amazing conversation. We talked a lot about the common signs that someone might benefit from inner child healing. We talked about how to integrate traditional healing arts with modern psychology. And also explains the difference between somatic and inner child reparenting practices and how they can benefit clients.

It was such a wonderful conversation. I enjoyed our time together and I think you will as well. Take a listen.

Anat, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited for our conversation.

[00:02:50] Anat: Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:53] Aneta: I was trying to think back, were we introduced by Brenda Winkle?

[00:02:56] Anat: Yes, we were.

[00:02:58] Aneta: And of course, Brenda and I are in the same mastermind and you know Sam Skelly too.

[00:03:01] Anat: I do. Yeah, we've known each other for years.

[00:03:05] Aneta: It's such a small world. I love going, wait, how did I meet this person? Because it's so cool. The people that you get to meet through our connections.

[00:03:13] Anat: I know. All of us healers help each other out, helping the world.

[00:03:18] Aneta: There you go. I love it. So for those that maybe aren't as familiar with you, tell us just a little bit more about your background. I shared in your bio, all the wonderful healing work that you are doing and your specializations, but how did you find yourself in this space?

[00:03:32] Anat: Well, I'd say ever since I was a teenager, I was the one that my friends came to for advice. I'd probably give them different advice now, but whatever it was, it created peace of mind. So there was always an interest in the world of self-development and psychology and helping people in that way.

And I studied business and finance because I didn't want the eight years of schooling And self-development found me in my mid-twenties. So I'm about almost 20 years into this journey. And what led me into it was my relationship with my mom and my healing, my struggles. And obviously in the back of my mind somewhere, I think my soul knew that like I was destined to work in this space.

And it took me about eight years of trying different things. I mean, you're talking back in like the mid-2005 to 2010. Instagram wasn't around, people didn't know about breath work and somatic healing and all these things. And a lot of it was mindset work and NLP work, which is part of the equation.

But I didn't realize for many years that I was just trimming weeds. That I wasn't getting to the root of it. And like eight years in, I was still struggling. My life still looked like, I was very codependent in my relationship. I struggled a lot with spending time with myself.

I needed to escape constantly this hollowness, there was this feeling of emptiness inside of me. And I was codependent with my friends, codependent with my boyfriend. I was lost in my career. I was always struggling to take care of myself. It's so weird to say now because I feel like I am a completely different person.

But I had a lot of awareness it was like, here I am doing all this self-development and I have awareness of my challenges. But it's like, I can't make those shifts. And, it was 10 years in that I hit my rock bottom living in New York City, 40, 000 in debt, left a five-year relationship, moved to California with 2, 000 to my name.

No job, no car, no home, no plan. One best friend there. Practically gave my parents a heart attack. And I just knew that my heart wanted to be in California. That's all I knew. I knew nothing else in my life. I was almost 33 years old, and I was clear that whatever I'd been doing wasn't working for me, wasn't enough. It humbled me.

And, It was then that I started exploring other things. I started just letting myself be guided by God, by the universe. I don't know what's best. So bring me to whatever you think is. I was led to yoga meditation and plant medicine. And eventually, my mentor, who has been a body-mind psychologist for over 40 years.

And when I came to him, he said, You're different. You're here for the finishing touches. You have a lot of awareness. I'm like, exactly. Please, trimming weeds is exhausting. It's better to not know than to even know at that point. And in the four months that I worked with him, I experienced what real transformation was.

Which is not a walk in the park on a beautiful sunny day, but more of a walk through a burning forest and there are lots of dragons to slay. Meaning I felt things I never wanted to feel before. I grieved, I cried, and I went to the depth of my childhood pain. And on the other side of it, is the level of freedom that I experienced.

I never thought was possible. And I wanted that for other people. I deeply knew at that point, that this is what I want. I want people to experience what I have now overcome because I've been struggling for so long. And so, yeah, about six months later, I started my business training camp for the soul and originally was just looking to work with people on one or group program, just help people.

And two years in, I had clients say to me, this is incredible. I want to learn from you. I want to learn to do what you do. And four years later, I started my certification program. And so now I not only help people heal from their past traumas and find their resiliency but also train other coaches and healers in my method. And I pinch myself that this is where I'm at 12 years after hitting rock bottom. So,

[00:08:15] Aneta: Isn't it interesting when you can look back because when you're in the middle of the pain and going through the grief and everything that you

we’re going through, it's so hard.

You said you hit rock bottom. And sometimes when we find ourselves in that place, that's so painful. And the mind isn't necessarily helpful at that point. How did you know that it was time to do something different? You said you left New York. You're like, okay, what I'm doing is not working. I need to try something different. What was that knowing? Was that a deep inner knowing?

[00:08:50] Anat: Absolutely. I mean, I think the only thing that was keeping me in, I had been miserable at that point for about six months, probably, eating half a pint of ice cream. And I don't even have a sweet tooth. Every night I'm like, eating half a pint I don't even have to, so I knew it was hitting like this level of depression and dissatisfaction.

And that the only thing that was keeping me there was my relationship. And so yeah, when that came to an end, I remember going for a walk with a friend of mine and I'm like, okay, what neighborhood do I want to move to? Because my boyfriend and I lived together. We were together for five years and I was like, I don't want to live in New York. I don't want to be here anymore.

I've been wanting to move to California for years. I mean, 10 years is when I fell in love with San Diego and said, one day I'll come back to you. And so it was a deep knowing that I had no clue, anything else that my heart desired at that point, but that I knew. And we broke up two days later and I was like on a plane three weeks later, never looked back

[00:09:54] Aneta: Do you feel now that that relationship had to end for you to step into this next level?

[00:10:01] Anat: A hundred percent. And it ended because. I found a note, an exchange between him and some other woman. And I remember being on the one hand, so heartbroken when I found it. And on the other hand, I got in the shower. I bawled my eyes out and I said, Anat, but now you can let go. You've known this isn't it for so long, but the codependency just kept me there.

And I was angry. I was bitter for a while. And then a part of me also wanted him back. Like he was just like, twisted thoughts here, and within two months of being in California I just realized it went the way it went because I didn't know how to love myself If I loved myself the relationship never would have gone that long or been that way I mean it got to a point where it was there was no passion. There was no love there we were just going through the motions

[00:10:59] Aneta: Yeah. It's so hard when relationships, especially ones that are so long, even if it's not perfect, it's hard sometimes to unravel lives that have been kind of quilted together over some time. And so you quickly were like, I know where I'm going. Because you had that inner knowing from before that you wanted to go back to San Diego. So would you describe yourself as someone who's taken risks like that before or was new?

[00:11:26] Anat: I think growing up being from another Country moving here when I was seven my parents both being entrepreneurs, I was used to change and the unknown. So yeah, I feel like Risk is my middle name. So taking that leap into the unknown was not a problem for me. I studied abroad in high school and college. I was always used to new experiences.

[00:11:57] Aneta: You said you spent about four months with your mentor and healer and you did the work and you knew you wanted to do this and help other people. So tell me a little bit more about how you're able to blend the healing arts and psychology, somatic and inner child practices. What does that look like? What would people experience working with you?

[00:12:17] Anat: Yeah, it is about the body and the mind working cohesively together. There are stages to healing. There are five stages to healing. And what I found over the years before working with him was like, I've been skipping the middle stages here. I've been focused on just mindset, or I see people that are focused on just the somatic.

and they need to be working together. We need both. There's the exploration of how things are happening in your system, in your nervous system, and how to work with your nervous system. That's, to me where we need to start always is in the regulation of that. Stage one is becoming aware of what it is that we're experiencing.

In what ways are we protecting ourselves from that experience? What defense mechanisms do we have? What safety strategies are we using? Who we learned it from. So it's like starting always with exploration and then leading to understanding, like, [00:13:20] what is the emotion and sensation that this is bringing up for me in my body?

You know, stage two, the acceptance of it, acceptance being that there's nothing to change, nothing to fix. I think as a society, we've learned to compartmentalize what is okay. What's not okay? Like, it's okay to be happy, joyful, excited. But if I'm sad or I'm angry, like there's got to be something wrong instead of just knowing that these are just waves of emotions that come up for us and learning how to ride those waves.

So, a big part of first this somatic experience is learning how to feel our feelings all the way through. I find that most people don't know how to feel their feelings.

[00:14:10] Aneta: And we've been taught to eliminate them or to suppress them. We're taught, don't cry. Why are you crying? Don't have an outburst. From the youngest of ages, we've been conditioned to not trust what our bodies are telling us to feel.

[00:14:24] Anat: Yes, so we suppress, we resist, we try and fix. And what's happening in those moments is that we're not working with our nervous system, but our nervous system is working for us. And it's always listening for safety or threat. And when we say, I don't want to feel this, or what's wrong, something's wrong, like when we react that way to an emotion that we're experiencing, we're telling the nervous system this is a threat.

And so the nervous system says, okay, well, let me protect you from this and it puts you in this bubble of protection called fight, flight, freeze, or please. It puts you in a heightened state. A lot of times I hear people say I feel anxious, I'm like Anxiety is not the feeling it's running from the feeling.

What are you running from? And so what's happening is that we're not feeling and therefore we're always being in this state where we are protected from it. And then people wonder why they're stuck in survival states all the time. Because we've told ourselves that we're in survival. Those things are a threat.

And so the opportunity and the importance is that we learn to work with our nervous system. and let it know that whatever we're experiencing is safe because it's your nervous system that needs to process it, that needs to metabolize it, digest it, and discharge it.

The beautiful thing is that once it learns to do that, it's not that you never feel these feelings again, it's that it happens and your nervous system, it's programmed in there. It knows what to do and it moves through you instead of getting stuck. So we may not experience it as a trigger. We just express it. Experience it.

So one of the ways to start to work with the nervous system is to identify the sensations because sensations are the language of the nervous system. So when we speak in sensations, we're neutral. We're not saying good, or bad. We're just saying, well, I feel this in my throat or my chest.

It's heavy. It's constricted. There's a relationship there. Everyone can relate to that. It's not good or bad. And so right there, you're already working with the nervous system. You're speaking its language. You're saying, yeah, hey, come walk through this door with me. Feel this with me.

Here are the sensations that are here. And that's the start of saying, this is safe. It is safe. And then you want to give it data. And this is where, like, imagine that you're on stage and it's a one woman, one man show and you have to act out, fully express whatever it is that you are feeling.

I am disheartened, or I am sad, or I am annoyed. And you can't tell the audience with your words that you have to be it. You have to embody it enough that people sitting would be like, wow, she's disheartened. And so what that requires is for us to use our whole beingness to express it.

Our body language, our facial expression, what sounds would you emote? And what happens when we do this is that we are letting that feeling, that emotion, take up space. We're letting it express itself. And it's giving so much data in those moments to what it feels like that your nervous system can metabolize it.

And, you know Harvard University did a study that you can move through an emotion in 90 seconds. The reason that most of us don't is because we're not feeling the emotion. We're not riding the wave, so to speak, your emotions are like waves in the ocean. They come in waves, and if you learn to ride them the way that I just described by expressing it with your whole being, I've seen this with many of my clients, yep, within 90 seconds, it passes and either you make it to the shore of possibilities, the land of possibilities I like to call it, or it uncovers the next wave that's underneath that, which you then get to do the same thing with.

So I think this is such a key part is first that we remember how to feel our feelings. I'm in Maui right now. And my nieces live here, my brother with his daughters and his wife. And it's so beautiful to witness my three-year-old niece because I'll see her ride the waves of her emotions where she'll completely, she's got big energy and her sister will take her bike or something and she'll come in and she'll just like, And you see her, she's using her whole body.

She's on the floor. There's facial expressions, there's sound, there's hand movements. It's not like she comes over to Mom and says, Mom, I'm angry. And that's what's happening with us, is that we're talking about it. We're thinking about it. We're not using our whole self to express it.

And so I loved witnessing her, and I'm just like, counting. And I'm like, yup, not even 90 seconds, less than 90 seconds. And suddenly, she's happy playing again. So, this is what we get to remember.

[00:21:10] Aneta: Yeah. How important is it for us to feel and then be able to acknowledge what it is that we're feeling? Is it important to just ride the emotions and to feel it or is it to feel it and then be able to say? Wow, I'm really angry about what just happened.

[00:21:32] Anat: Absolutely. I think that's part of stage two acceptance. Acceptance is happening. I am feeling this way. A lot of times there's resistance to even that. So it may happen before the wave or after the wave, but the acceptance of it is what helps to move it through. It's the same thing that children need.

They need acceptance. They need validation. An acknowledgment. We need to validate and acknowledge exactly what is happening because it is what is happening. Anything else is a resistance to it.

[00:22:13] Aneta: What happens when we resist for a long time? What happens in the body? Is that when disease sets in or can't set in over time or we just find ourselves stuck?

[00:22:25] Anat: I believe that that is where disease happens. Because again, your nervous system is constantly committed to working for you. And so in those moments, it's like, threat, okay. Let me protect you. And by protecting you, it's putting you in that sympathetic state in that fight, flight, freeze, please.

And when you're in a sympathetic state. When you're in a heightened state. You are not in a state of rest or digestion repair, so your body is not repairing, it is not even digesting and receiving the nutrients it needs from its food. It is stuck in survival. And so imagine years of being stuck in that. Then of course there's no time for you to recover. And you're susceptible to more things happening, more disease.

[00:23:26] Aneta: And then we're prescribed medicine sometimes to just mask whatever it is that's happening. And you can see why these things become chronic illnesses.

[00:23:35] Anat: Yeah, exactly. And I believe that at the core root of healing from all of that is learning to feel our feelings. Learning to be human. To be whatever it is that we are being in that moment that we're experiencing in that moment.

[00:23:59] Aneta: Yeah, for sure. What happens after acceptance?

[00:24:03] Anat: So what happens once you move through acceptance, you've moved through the somatic experience of it, which is great. But this is where it's so important to tie it into the mind and the subconscious and the programming that's there and the beliefs that are there. Otherwise, you could have a lot of great somatic experiences, whether it's in breathwork, or in plant medicine. Or just some people that are just really good at expressing what they're feeling, but are constantly hijacked by their mind, by their beliefs. They haven't changed the script. Everything you learned, you learned by the time you were seven years old. From predominantly your caretakers, mom and dad. So it's not who you are.

It's what you learned. The good news is if you learned it, you can unlearn it. So it's a script. It's inherited beliefs and inherited behaviors. And we're sponges until we're seven years old. So we don't question is this good? Is this bad? Do I want to believe this? Do I not? We just take it on as like, this is the way it is.

And so now the opportunity in stage three is to get to the root of like, who modeled this to me? Where did I learn this? Is this mom's energy or dad's energy? And in what I teach in my work, mom represents an extension of self. Mom is the role model for everything self, because at one point you did see mom as an extension of yourself.

You were connected by the umbilical cord. And so there's an instant knowing of recognition of, wow, mom is me. I am a mom. And so we look at mom for everything related to how we view ourselves, treat ourselves, and take care of ourselves. And we either copy or we rebel or we create a way to survive. And so getting to explore, where did I learn this belief?

Whose energy is this? And starting to unlearn that, just to re-parent that. The same thing with Dad. That represents everything that's not the self, which means others, the world, how to show up in the world, and how to be in relationship with others. And so depending on whatever you're struggling with, whatever the belief is, [00:26:40] you get to explore that.

And sometimes it's a double whammy. Sometimes it's mom and dad. And then I always say, start with mom, start with looking at what mom modeled here and what you needed here from her because that's the foundation. Your foundation is yourself. You can't step out into the world with others until you have a strong foundation with yourself.

And so getting to the root of it is that exploration of what is in the subconscious here. What was modeled to me? And then moving into stage four, which is the reparenting and rewiring. Learning to then give yourself what you need. To edit that script, to give yourself a whole new possibility of how you want to show up in the world.

You become the editor, therefore you become the creator. You step out of constant survival. We don't even realize how much we're stuck in survival. And we see generations of patterns of the same patterns. And that's what it is. Nobody ever looked and questioned it. What's at the root of this? And giving themselves a chance for something new and clearing out, feeling the feeling first.

Somatically we're energetically making room for something new. We feel it. And so then it becomes easier to look at the subconscious and reprogram that there's repetition that's required in that. Which is stage five. Stage five is integration. And integration is the most important stage because it's where lasting transformation happens.

It's easy to have sometimes these powerful releases and experiences, but to integrate them into your life every day, to bring them into practice, it's on average an 18-month journey. Especially when you're shifting big areas of your identity. This is the main character in the movie of your life.

It's going to need some practice. And so I always remind my clients, you are crossing a bridge here. Sometimes it may take 18 months. You may take two steps back or fall off. Expect that and how quickly can you recognize it and get back on track and move forward, but recognize that that's the stage that you need to double down on the practices and the behaviors that align with this new way of being.

[00:29:26] Aneta: How important is it to be prepared to know that? Do people sometimes come in to work with you or maybe with others, and they just expect they're going to have two sessions and suddenly they're good? They're going to clear out to other inner child healing. Or do people know that it definitely will take, as you said, it could be like 18 months,

[00:29:45] Anat: Come on. We're a society of quick fixes. Deliver everything

[00:29:49] Aneta: Right? That's why I asked.

[00:29:51] Anat: So I think it's a constant reminder and I mean, I think even for myself, like just as humans, we need to remind ourselves that certain things come easy. It comes easy once you learn how to feel your feelings, how to ride the waves of the ocean of your emotions, it's easy.

That's easy, but to bring it into practice, to choose, to change your habits and every day wake up and choose that over the default to have to bring consciousness to it, it's something that constantly I need to remind my clients and this is, I think where you get to experience self-love.

Because in the moments when you witness yourself fall into an old pattern, something that you learn, you get to practice having compassion, patience, grace, and space for yourself. So, self-love It's a journey. It's a journey to self-love choosing to cross that bridge to slay that dragon it's experiential people like, what is it to love myself?

When I share the story of myself from 12 years ago and how I used to think and how uncomfortable I used to be being with myself, like literally spending time, spending an hour with myself, the amount of discomfort I felt to now I'm like, people, can you leave me alone? I want a day to myself. It's night and day. It's so foreign.

[00:32:20] Aneta: And when you start peeling the layers away, there's always so much more to uncover. I find myself constantly surprised the more work I do and the more healing I experience, then I'm always surprised going. Wow. I didn't know that was still there or that's interesting. That's new. It's just constant learning and then choosing differently and healing and being open to what's there and patients to patients with, it's going to take as long as it's going to take.

We didn't create these situations overnight. And many times we're so far, you said, you've been doing this for 20 years. You've been on your journey. I've been on mine for a long time. It doesn't end, I think, until we take our last breath. And the more we learn, then the more I think we're supposed to be sharing it with others and caring people as we climb as the expression says.

So at what point did you say, you know what, I want to do this and I want to help others and tell me a little bit more about the Academy or what do you call the group that you do in the certification program? Yeah. Mastery. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that too.

[00:33:26] Anat: Yeah. I want to touch on something that you just said. Before I share about that, I agree with you that we're constantly growing. We are like a garden and does that garden need tending to yes forever? If you stop tending to it, it's going to grow weeds again.

What I've noticed and I want people to be mindful of is. Are you constantly looking for something to dig? I see people get stuck in or obsessive with thinking that there's always more that they need to seek, that they need to discover. People get hooked on self-development in that way. Like I need to always be digging and looking like I don't think it's enough.

And it's because again, it's easier to do that than it is to integrate. And so I had a client recently that I said to her, I mean, she was married for 28 years and then he had an affair and obviously it's taken her two years right now of grieving and healing from that and she's done so well with me in the four months we worked together.

And I said to her, I go, Deb, have fun. Go have more fun. Start integrating new. Stop thinking that you have to wake up every morning and be the grieving and the sob. Let that come naturally, but make sure you're also integrating the new life that you are creating. And so, that's the message I want to leave the listeners with right now yes, we get to see if there's anything when a trigger comes up, but don't get too obsessive with always thinking that you need the next program and next thing to keep digging and digging.

Look at more of like, what do I want to create today and step into creation. And if there's something that shows up as resistance to that, then go tend to that. So, yeah, okay. That's what I wanted to

[00:35:33] Aneta: I love that. I love that too. That's such a good point. Absolutely. The integration is so critical. And so if people do want to work with you, tell us how they can find you the best way and where you're most active.

[00:35:49] Anat: Yeah, so I'm active on Instagram and if you follow me on there, you will get a message from me within a week because I like to get to know the human. Behind the follower, because I'm a wealth of knowledge and resources I have free resources and I have people I could connect you with. And so, yeah, you will hear from me.

I want to get to know you. So there's the opportunity and the warning in case you don't want that. And yeah, if people looking to work with me, my website, is www.trainingcampforthesoul.com. I have my signature program, which is for anyone who's looking to delve into inner child healing to rewrite their script, and then for coaches and healers and even therapists, I've had therapists who are looking to learn a method.

That gets your clients the deepest results. I have my Mastery Certification Program. And I have some great freebies on my site as well. So if you're looking to connect better with your nervous system, or looking to understand your client’s safety strategies and how to support them to feel safer, lots of great free resources there

[00:37:09] Aneta: Thank you so much, Anat. Will include all those links. And the final question I ask everyone is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?

[00:37:18] Anat: To ride every wave. The ocean of my emotions to be fully self-expressed. And that means also, to feel the bliss, the joy. I think sometimes when you think of feeling emotions and what I shared, and it's like, Oh, feel the sadness, feel the grief, feel the disheartened, feel all that. But for some of us, it's a reminder that we get to also bathe in, the gratitude, the joy, and the peace to allow ourselves to be fully expressed. Ride those waves.

[00:37:59] Aneta: I love that so much. Thank you so much for all the amazing work that you are doing in the world. I just really enjoyed spending some time with you today.

[00:38:06] Anat: Yeah. Thank you, Aneta. Thank you, listeners.

[00:38:09] Aneta: Have an amazing day. And the folks check out the links that will include about Anat services. Have an amazing day.

[00:38:18] Anat: Thank you.

[00:38:18] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.

Episode 106 transcript: Somatic Healing for Lasting Change with Anat Peri

Ardelian Kuzma Group