How to Connect with Your Emotions
with Dona Airey on The Healers Café with Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND

 

In this episode of The Healers Café, Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND, chats with Dona Airey  with an MA in Psychology and MA in Early Childhood, Psychotherapist in Clinical Social Work, certified in CranioSacral Therapy,  Jin Shin Do Accupressure and Body Therapy  with Clinical Social Work Private Practice.

 

Highlights from today’s episode include:

Dona Airey (06:39):

There are a few things. One is terminology. I mean, in the mental health fields everything has a label. Everything has a description. Everything has a diagnosis that is very limiting and I found that what about the body and what about how the body affects our emotions? And I thought, and what about, what about ,when you have a thought and all of a sudden you have a stomach ache, what do people think that they don’t even address that with conventional mental health.

 

Dr Manon (11:25):

And neuro transmitters are made in the gut, or 70% of them anyway. So if we’re, if our gut is in dysbiosis, it can’t create, the neurotransmitters that we need in a healthy way.So it’s definitely a cycle where the body is intimately involved in all of our States, not just fear and not just anxiety, but wellness, all our happy hormones, everything.

Dr Manon (15:27):

And even when you look at the, the evolution of the fascia, which was the saran wrap bubble wrap , but when you had an operation, you just took it out and discarded it without understanding how complex it is and how it’s really our living matrix that puts everything together that signals, you know, biological, physiological signals, as well, as chemical signals for all our neurons and neuro-transmitters to work. I mean, it has free nerve endings, which impact us and how we hold trauma in ourselves and our body in our actual body, not just as a thought So I’ve learned more from experience and then later found out that’s true.

 

Dona Airey (16:51):

One thing I want to mention before that is there’s a process called brain spotting. And I think that’s a good explanation sort of, of what happens also in that in the limbic system is where we house our memories and trauma. And so if, if something happens as a child, let’s say, and or any age, and we don’t deal with it. And so I can encapsulate it in that limbic system, not moving, not doing anything. And the process of brain spotting is to get the eyes to wherever we look in our eyes reaches a different spot in the, in the limbic system. And so what we do is we find the spot to look at dealing with a certain issue or trauma or something.

About Dona Airey:

With an MA in Psychology and MA in Early Childhood I taught in Early Childhood Programs, Started a Montessori School. 

I followed my path to becoming a Psychotherapist by getting my MSSW in Clinical Social Work which I did for 32 years until right now.  I I also was certified in CranioSacral Therapy and Jin Shin Do Accupressure.  I practiced Body Therapy for  15 years in conjunction with Clinical Social Work Private Practice.

I am passionate about helping people connect to their emotions.  In my 40 years of working with a milieu of people with many difficulties and pain, I noticed that maybe 95% of the people I have worked with had some kind of adverse response to emotions.  Either, they were afraid of them, tried to control them, hide them, ignore them, over or under reacted to them.  My belief is that we function as a whole when each: mind, body and spirit are developed and functioning.  The emotions are part of our physical body and yet many people are not aware of the elements of them.  My mission is to facilitate and teach people to befriend and utilize emotions to be integrated with their body and spirit.

LinkedIn  |  Website  | 

 

About Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND:

Dr. Manon is a Naturopathic Doctor, the Founder of Bowen College, an International Speaker with an upcoming TEDx talk in Jan 2021, and the author of the Amazon best-selling books “What Patient’s Don’t Say if Doctors Don’t Ask” and “A Healer in Every Household”.

 SOCIAL MEDIA:

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About The Healers Café:

 Dr. Manon’s show is the #1 show for medical practitioners and holistic healers to have heart to heart conversations about their day to day lives.

 Follow us on social media! https://www.facebook.com/thehealerscafe

 

TRANSCRIPT

Dr Manon (00:01):

So hello and welcome to the Healers Cafe. And today I have with me Dona Airey and she is a coach of emotional paradigm. She has an MA in psychology in early childhood education, and she taught early childhood programs. Started a Montessori school. she says” I followed my path to becoming a psychotherapist by getting my master’s in social work and clinical social work itself”. And she did that for 32 years is now retired from that. Also certified as a craniosacral therapist Gin Shindo acupressure, and she practices body therapy for 15 years in conjunction with clinical social work private practice. So welcome. And I’m really looking forward to our talk today.

Dona Airey (01:01):

Oh, I am too. I’m looking forward to talking to you because I’m so interested in what you do and you know, how, how the two of us in some ways think alike in that all the answers are in the body and learning how to listen to the body. And of course my focus is on the emotions. In fact, I have officially a name now. My business name is transforming within and then with the little byline of move towards unique metamorphosis. And so many people don’t know why I started this about 10 years ago. And I found that with all the people that came into my office, I would say seriously, 90 or 95% did not know what to do with their emotions or how to utilize them or what they were or were afraid of them and all those things. And so I began forming a way of teaching people about emotions so that they could begin not only feeling comfortable about them, but utilizing them through the body. And of course the opening of emotions are pre-verbal when we’re born, we can be angry. We can be sad, we can be afraid we can be joyful. And so I really make a distinction between emotions and feelings.

Dr Manon (02:37):

I was just giving a lecture this morning and that’s what I was saying, there is a difference and in our country or society, we confuse emotions ….and… feelings. What are your emotions? no. To me feelings are an interpretation of emotions. Is that how are you doing that?

Dona Airey (03:00):

That would be a way of saying it. When I describe it as the feelings are emotions and behaviour and learned beliefs and all the other things that kind of, we think of as emotions, but the emotions are physical feelings, are everything including the physical,

Dr Manon (03:23):

Right? Yeah. Like that’s why I feel like it goes through an interpretation. There’s a slight distancing from what you’re saying, emotions a pre-verbal there, there is no interpreter at that point, which is part of why so much trauma happens when you’re younger. You can’t make sense. Right. So they just are there, you know, but before we dive into that, I would love to know what brought you personally on this path. How did, how did you get interested in this? And did you always know that you’d be doing this kind of work?

Dr Manon (04:02):

In some ways I grew up with a father who was a Presbyterian minister, however he did………….and hypnosis and touch for health and cleaned all his vegetables. One of the funny things and see, he made us make our eggnog with the shells. because he said, that’s where all the nutrients were. So I kind of grew up with, odd things. And in fact it was funny when I decided to go to high school, I said, you know, a lot of people have something to hang on to when they’re they have a church or they have a program or they have a belief with other people, but how many people are out there alone without a support. And so that’s really how I decided to become a therapist is I wanted to help people that didn’t have other ways of helping themselves.

Dr Manon (05:07):

And so I grew up sometimes embarrassed by my dad. And so I was going to be a very, straight therapist and, you know, be very clear and distinct. Well that lasted a couple years maybe before I started my Gin Shindo training and bodywork and then craniolsacral So in fact, in my first office, I had it in a divided. I had a massage table on another side of the screen and then my therapy practice. So not only I didn’t stay very long with, you know, not including the whole body for health. So that’s kind of how I got started in the therapy and then with bodywork, because I’m so interested in it. And so most of my 32 years I was doing, you know, what’s the understanding and training and education with both bodywork and with, psychotherapy and mental and emotional healing.

Dr Manon (06:23):

And so what for you was inadequate about what you described as conventional therapy, what was missing for you that led you elsewhere?

Dona Airey (06:39):

Well, there are a few things. One is terminology. I mean, in the mental health fields everything has a label. Everything has a description. Everything has a diagnosis that is very limiting and I found that what about the body and what about how the body affects our emotions? And I thought, and what about, what about ,when you have a thought and all of a sudden you have a stomach ache, what do people think that they don’t even address that with conventional mental health. And so it was just very limiting for me in that I couldn’t talk about the body. I, in fact, in the eighties it was odd to even include hypnosis, which is kinda my first step into 

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