[00:01] Valerie Hwang Beck: Rise, Renew, reconnect.
[00:04] Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where every episode ignites hope and healing.
[00:09] I'm your host, Valerie Huang Beck and I'm on a mission to help you embrace your unique potential and become the vibrant visionary you knew you were meant to be.
[00:27] Valerie Hwang Beck: Alright everyone. Welcome back to from the Ashes. So today I've a very special guest. Her name is Elizabeth Stauder and she's a somatic transformation coach and neuroplasticity expert who helps people heal from trauma,
[00:41] illness and burnout by combining the quantum with the ancestral in restoring wholeness for mind, body, spirit, healing. A huge mouthful and I really want to dig into what all of that means.
[00:53] I'll let her explain in a second.
[00:55] So she blends neuroscience with what she refers to as soul retrieval, another term I'd love to dig into to help others reclaim their wholeness in a way that's deeply embodied and lasting.
[01:06] So Elizabeth has been quite on quite the rocky road herself and she has survived a near death experience from a vaccine injury that left her navigating months of chronic illness and disability.
[01:18] And she had to rebuild her body, her nervous system and her sense of self from the ground up. She's been through a whole lot and now she's taking all of that and putting it into the foundation of her work and how she helps the world.
[01:29] So now she has her online collective called the Body and Soul Sanctuary where she teaches people what she calls somatic alchemy.
[01:36] So yes, we have a powerhouse in the room. Welcome, Elizabeth.
[01:40] Elizabeth Stauder: Thank you. I love hearing all your enthusiasm, the words I used.
[01:46] Valerie Hwang Beck: No, it's great.
[01:47] And really excited to dig into the conversation because you always have great and deep insight not only into just healing, but understanding what it means to live.
[02:00] Yeah. And we vibe on a really,
[02:03] on a level that I don't get to,
[02:06] to experience a lot of the time. So I'm happy to have you here.
[02:09] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah, thank you. It's really delightful to be here and I just want to say I love the healing and the, the living like together that you just put in that sentence, like to me at this point they're the same thing.
[02:22] Yeah.
[02:24] Valerie Hwang Beck: Absolutely. And they're, you know, it's, it is the life journey.
[02:28] Right.
[02:30] So let's get into your from the Ashes story. And I know that having talked to so many people like there is really no one like rock bottom per se. There's always like, something that leads up to it.
[02:43] So I'll let you choose the starting point, and then we will go from there.
[02:48] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah, that's dangerous when you're talking to someone who works in the quantum and. Well, actually next generations. You want to go back?
[02:56] Valerie Hwang Beck: Okay, I'll. I'll pick then,
[02:58] since it's so glaring. To me,
[03:01] the one. And the one that really kind of started you off on this journey is that vaccine injury.
[03:07] So let's start from there.
[03:09] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah,
[03:10] it's like, what level should I answer the question?
[03:13] But I think, you know what's coming to mind in this moment.
[03:16] It's so funny. My voice is cracking.
[03:18] And that started about an hour ago, and it doesn't happen very often.
[03:22] And this morning, I just actually released stones from my liver for the first time.
[03:28] So intentionally.
[03:30] Intentionally.
[03:30] Valerie Hwang Beck: Okay.
[03:31] Elizabeth Stauder: And my acupuncturist yesterday told me that the gallbladder holds ancestral patterns. Okay. So.
[03:39] And I had a dream last night about my family.
[03:43] So what's kind of coming to me to say about the vaccine entry is that I could talk about the physical experience itself, which was extremely painful and scary,
[03:56] essentially, like, it triggered a neurodegenerative disease pretty immediately. An autoimmune response that was, like, very similar to anaphylaxis, but almost like. I don't know how else to describe it, like, neurological anaphylaxis, because it was through all the nerves.
[04:12] And I didn't actually need to get an EpiPen or anything, but it was,
[04:17] like, similar feeling in my body all around.
[04:20] But,
[04:21] like, the choice to get the vaccine was very interesting because it followed a dream of, like,
[04:28] not having a voice.
[04:30] So I'm like, just going with the fact that my voice is, like, talk about that part of it today,
[04:35] like,
[04:35] in the middle of COVID and everybody having all of these different opinions,
[04:39] I dreamed that I had something to say, to try to make it all, like, all of the, like, verbal warfare stop. But it wouldn't come out of my throat. And I was, like,
[04:52] stuck in the dream.
[04:54] And I literally had people, like, in my own household, in my own, like, intimates that were on opposite sides of the sort of battleground of opinions about the vaccine and everything that went with it.
[05:07] In the midst of all that, my father actually died in the COVID ward,
[05:13] and he was on the verge of retiring and was really healthy, but had an underlying inflammatory condition that just completely ballooned as soon as he got Covid and.
[05:25] And he was in the hospital for six weeks.
[05:28] And I think half about. About half that Time on the ventilator in a coma. And then he was passed very suddenly and shockingly.
[05:35] And I went to get the vaccine the day afterwards,
[05:39] not in response to him dying. I didn't know he was gonna die that day. That was when my appointment happened to be.
[05:45] So I actually also went in the middle of this, like,
[05:49] my body still processing his spirit literally being, like, out of his body and crossing the veil at the same time that I took the vaccine.
[05:59] And so there's a lot there. There's a lot there.
[06:02] But we'll just say that maybe to answer your question about how I recovered,
[06:07] like, it required not only months and months of, like, deep regenerative body practices and nutrition and things to, like, reverse the toxicity. That was like, getting my organs on the verge of organ failure,
[06:22] but also a lot of deep spirit realm traversing in ancestral work and, like,
[06:28] also work around my. With my father and his spirit.
[06:31] So it was all very tied together because all these things happened at the same moment.
[06:35] And I can't remember what the third part of your question was, but.
[06:39] Valerie Hwang Beck: Oh, it's okay.
[06:40] This is just a process of unpacking, and we can take it as slower, fast, and we can go in as many meandering roads as we would like.
[06:48] Right?
[06:49] Yeah. So all is. All is well.
[06:52] I didn't know that your father had passed from COVID That's. Yeah.
[06:58] And. And then, like, you talk about all of these,
[07:01] the. The warring voices.
[07:03] I definitely felt that during the pandemic as well. It's like, a lot. There was just, like, a lot of irrational fear going around, and it had real consequences in both directions.
[07:16] I want to hear how you saw all that was happening, how you're processing that in the moment. Like, was.
[07:26] Did you have more of, like, an emotional reaction or, you know, were there things that were just, like, what was going on through your head as all of this was happening?
[07:35] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah, I know. It's so interesting because I still remember my brothers and I had, like, this online forum where we were posting updates for the community about my dad during it process, which we didn't know whether it was going to be a recovery or a death process, but we were just in it,
[07:54] you know,
[07:55] because he had quite a wide community. And so we were,
[07:58] you know, taking time. Like, we were taking shifts. Each of us would take shifts, like, on call with the hospital and also, like, on sharing with the community what was going on with him.
[08:08] And I. I still remember, like,
[08:10] you know,
[08:11] there was. There was a lot of mixed feelings for me, but I remember being really rooted in my somatic and nervous system awareness that I had cultivated,
[08:23] because I even remember, like, just being in this profound moment of just sharing one of those updates, typing it out, like, feeling the shock, I guess, would be the emotion, like, in the field,
[08:34] and, like, being able to tune into my physical body, though, and, like, still feel my breath moving in and out,
[08:42] feel my, like, hips on the chair, and feel this feeling of like,
[08:46] something in me was fundamentally okay and in balance despite, like, the wildness of what was going on.
[08:53] And I still remember that moment because it was like,
[08:56] the last moment of that before all of, like, with the onset of the vaccine, the capacity for that took a few years to come back.
[09:06] But I remember that because in my work, it's like part of what we're doing is restitching, like, where something kind of like where the fabric got torn, so to speak.
[09:15] And I just. I think part of why that was really important for me, too, was because in healing all of it, like, I had to separate out the parts because they were so close together.
[09:28] Like, what's the vaccine? What's grief? Like? What's also the. The like, confusion of just, like, an ending of a. A relationship, too, was happening at the same time. Like, a lot of things were falling away.
[09:39] Huge, huge things were falling away all at the same time.
[09:43] The process of death itself, like, of my body, my father leaving his body and going to the spirit realm was. Was actually a peaceful experience for me.
[09:52] To answer your question of how. What was going through, how I was feeling,
[09:55] there was something about receiving the vaccine that felt, in a way, all opposite to that,
[10:02] and also the way that that warring energy between people felt opposite to that. Like, it. It felt somehow the antithesis to,
[10:13] like, a healthy relationship with death and crossing, if that makes sense. And I couldn't have necessarily named that in the moment, but I was deeply feeling the clash of all of that in my body and my emotions.
[10:26] Valerie Hwang Beck: Let's backtrack a little bit. Have you always been a healer, or did you have a. An alternate path before you found that?
[10:34] Elizabeth Stauder: I've always been a healer, but I've never been out of the closet. Like, I think it took a long time to come out of the closet. So I would apply my sensitivity in other ways,
[10:46] like through teaching children for schooling and through writing and creative pursuits and through just communing with the natural world and doing rituals and lots of those kinds of things.
[10:58] It took me a long time to come out of the closet and say, like, this is my identity,
[11:05] like, in the world. Yeah.
[11:07] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah. And so you were a teacher beforehand.
[11:10] Elizabeth Stauder: Okay. Among other things. Also an interpreter. I interpreted for, like, Latino patients at the hospital. Okay. And students at the school. Yeah. For their families.
[11:23] Valerie Hwang Beck: All right, so you have quite the methodology, and there are certain terms that,
[11:28] you know, you use for your methods that probably people don't. Aren't really familiar with.
[11:35] I want to allow you to express your process in the way that resonates with you.
[11:42] So I'll start with the.
[11:44] How did you come to. What is quantum? Right. What is combining quantum, ancestral, and what does that mean for you? How did you find that?
[11:53] Elizabeth Stauder: I mean, for me,
[11:54] at this point, they're all the same. But I use the terms, I think, to help other people braid the deeply, like, felt and known indigenous wisdom that I believe we all carry in our DNA.
[12:08] With some of the new research that's coming out in science, that is actually kind of showing in more left brain ways the accuracy of the things that our right brain already knows.
[12:21] So the neuroplasticity part,
[12:24] which is powerful and really shows through it actually, like, shows the science of it is possible for someone to experience something that might happen, like in a very shamanic or animus kind of way, where they, like, have a dream, for example, and something in their life changes because of a communion that they've had with their psyche in some way.
[12:49] You could say.
[12:51] Yeah, I just think it's. It's so. It's so powerful. Especially even when you think about.
[12:56] I like to sort of visualize, and I'll often have my clients almost like, imagine as we're doing the work, like,
[13:02] as if by training our attention in certain directions,
[13:07] tending the inner tree inside of us. Like, if you think of like the. Like the nerves and like the. The big nerves and then the smaller nerves, almost like branches of like a tree.
[13:16] And. And you're like, pruning some and you're fertilizing others.
[13:21] You're. You're literally like, shaping the way that that tree is experiencing life.
[13:27] And.
[13:28] And then that tree is literally the thing that's taking signals in and out from what you might call your body into the world. And every relationship out there,
[13:38] the quantum talks about the possibility to, you know, essentially change.
[13:44] Change your timeline or change your life or tra. Change yourself, even your identity.
[13:50] Right. And it doesn't.
[13:51] And. And to be able to do that in ways that even can befuddle the left brain's thinking about linear time.
[14:00] Right.
[14:01] And I think when you just go in there and think of time as just like strung across this great tree. And there's pieces that are maybe stuck or calcified because they haven't been given what they need to grow because they have trauma or something.
[14:17] If you give a little water or a little something,
[14:20] it's suddenly going to branch out in a direction that there wasn't something before.
[14:24] And it can literally feel like you're. You're jumping time, so to speak. Like as if something that was stuck like 20 years ago or even a couple generations in your family ago has now given something that it needed.
[14:40] The tree now changes. You now change. The whole. The whole field changes.
[14:44] Valerie Hwang Beck: Okay, so I'm going to feed that back to you because I talk a lot about how we can choke our own energies in certain aspects of our life because of conditioning or trauma, whatnot.
[14:56] Where,
[14:57] and this is my language,
[14:59] we have limiting beliefs from childhood because of something that happened where we don't allow ourselves a certain aspect of our energy to flow. So, for example,
[15:09] I know that I have issues with the flowing energy of joy.
[15:14] Like, that has to be something in my mind that has to be earned rather than is something that is just innately a part of who I am.
[15:23] And so because of that, it actually chokes that flow, and that affects all the other aspects of my life in ways that I don't really get to see until it becomes a problem.
[15:33] Yeah, right.
[15:35] And so don't worry. I'm. I'm honest. I'm working on it.
[15:37] Elizabeth Stauder: I'm so passionate about it. I know you are, but that's just my natural response.
[15:41] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah,
[15:42] but so I want to tie it back because obviously you have used this framework and this ability to channel energy to heal you,
[15:51] and a lot. There was just so much going on at the time.
[15:56] There has to have been one, like a deep equin. Equanimity and ability to zoom out. Right.
[16:04] And then also being able to look at these things without so much of the partiality, you know, having opinions about it, just being able to see what it is.
[16:14] So let's ground it in for our audience. I want you to describe, if you were willing to just, you know,
[16:22] how that process was for you, what was going on in your body and your mind,
[16:26] and then how did you use your system to navigate that?
[16:30] Elizabeth Stauder: Beautiful question. Thank you for asking. And you're accurate about that how? I mean, I had to zoom out immensely.
[16:40] I was deeply in every single day in, like, the deepest existential questions.
[16:47] And I guess you could say I was faced with the task of integrating the healthy longing of the body to be alive and be healthy with the part of me that was completely already at home in the universe beyond a body in order to survive.
[17:08] It was. It was.
[17:10] It. Honestly, it would have been easier to not. Like, it would have been easier to just be like. I would like to just fade out into that.
[17:20] That feels so much more peaceful because inside of my skin and bones, like, what was happening was basically a war zone of sensation, of inflammation, of.
[17:34] Of swellingness, of tissues rigidifying, of not being able to breathe, like,
[17:40] even loss of motor capacity, like, all kinds of things.
[17:44] I think I had to first kind of give up any part of me that wanted to survive out of panic or fear. Like, I have to survive. I had to completely let that part of me die.
[18:00] And I had to come from this seat of my soul and be like.
[18:06] Like, what's it gonna take to survive if that's what I meant to?
[18:11] And really, like, listen. Like, really listen, you know?
[18:15] And it wasn't clear for a long time.
[18:19] There was this period where I felt like I was starting to listen from that soul with that other part having died. And it was still lots of weeks of not knowing which way was I gonna go?
[18:29] Was I gonna die or not?
[18:32] But there was something that I understood that I was learning about listening.
[18:36] And in my training, we practice listening when we feel well in our body and in our nervous system, so that when we feel really unwell, like, when we have waves of.
[18:48] Whatever the trauma or. Or dysregulation might be,
[18:52] we can still find a way to, like, listen from that place,
[18:55] regardless of that.
[18:57] And this was relentless.
[18:59] Weeks and weeks of it. And so I just kind of was like.
[19:03] I just, like, strapped on my. Whatever, my soul's seat belt, black belt, and just like, okay, I'm gonna listen, you know?
[19:11] And I still remember a moment,
[19:15] and I'm. This is, like, one of the only scenes I've written in the book that I'm working on about this at the moment, but because it was so simple, but it was so profound.
[19:25] I remember a moment where I was in the bath, and I remember it was the first time I had the capacity to actually, like, look at the wall and have it be something that was comforting to me because it was simple and it was not moving or vibrating or like a black.
[19:43] Like, that was a degree of. It was like being in psychosis. I mean, and it was like, just a wall, and it was just the right color, and I could touch it, and it wasn't like,
[19:53] playing tricks on me.
[19:55] So this kind of gets a little bit into the heart of the Trauma, because it was ultimately,
[20:00] beneath a lot of. It was, like, a feeling of betrayal or unreliability or unsafety. In this moment, the wall actually was safe and reliable,
[20:09] and I literally leaned on it and felt my body have its first second few seconds of relaxing a niche. Like,
[20:21] it was like this little tiny doorway, you know, And. And. And to me, the message was,
[20:27] like,
[20:28] even though there's a tiny breadcrumb in a storm,
[20:31] like,
[20:32] just keep training your. Almost like that metaphor of, like, the house of demons, and there's like, a. Like, a door of light at the end, and just keep walking through the demons and, like, you'll get there.
[20:43] And when size started to sort of track those breadcrumbs, and at first, it literally felt like climbing, like, up a rope, and you have, like, no energy.
[20:54] You literally, like, if you let go, you're gonna die. And it would have been easier to. But, like, it took, like, just, like,
[21:00] so much effort.
[21:01] So much effort.
[21:03] And I needed, I think, to rewire my relationship with effort that it could be positive.
[21:09] Does that make sense?
[21:11] Valerie Hwang Beck: But can you say more about that?
[21:14] Elizabeth Stauder: Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah.
[21:17] So,
[21:17] you know, when we talk about, like, the survival states of the nervous system,
[21:21] sometimes, sometimes not everyone realizes that freeze is not the opposite of fight or flight. It's actually when fight or flight is so intense that, like, and you've lost the capacity to do that.
[21:36] And so it's kind of like fight or flight trapped inside of, like, a stillness.
[21:41] In a way, you could say that's what was going on in my body was. I was literally frozen. Which is funny with the ancestral healing because my name.
[21:50] I am named after the younger sister of my mom's mom, who died in. By drowning in ice when she was a child. So, anyway, interesting backstory, but my body was completely, like,
[22:04] out of energy, completely drained.
[22:07] And yet inside my body was a freaking wildfire going on all the time. And so the trick,
[22:16] you could say was to.
[22:19] In little bits at a time, like, start to, like,
[22:22] free that energy out of my body.
[22:25] And so that meant actually letting myself feel the full intense force of not just emotions of fight or flight, so, like, rage and.
[22:37] And terror,
[22:38] sheer terror,
[22:40] but also, like, letting my body.
[22:42] You could say one. One thing that freeze does. And a lot of us,
[22:46] most people in our world today, have this chronically, even if they're not sick. Like, to some degree,
[22:52] our nervous system and our body knows when we should leave a situation,
[22:56] flee, or when we should have some confidence and confrontation or a boundary.
[23:02] But whenever we don't,
[23:04] whenever we don't let our body have the boundary or walk away,
[23:08] fight or flee.
[23:10] Like, it just. It doesn't go away. It gets, like, compressed inside us as this intense energy. Right.
[23:16] When I say rewire my relationship with effort and. And I guess it also meant, like,
[23:22] taking away the part of me that thought badly of myself for all the ways that I wanted to run away and have boundaries and be ****** off about everything.
[23:32] That wasn't really a reflection of my soul and that wasn't in alignment for me in my life.
[23:38] So to actually learn to fall in love with my nervous system's panic and rage and be like, oh, this is wise.
[23:46] Like, it's really turned up because it's been so shoved down and I haven't known how to listen. And I haven't known how to,
[23:53] like, even going to get the vaccine was me listening to a voice that was not really my intuitive voice that thought it knew better for me, what was good for me than I did.
[24:04] And I listened.
[24:05] Does that make sense?
[24:06] Valerie Hwang Beck: Oh, 100%. I really love how you say to fall in love with panic and rage.
[24:12] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[24:17] Valerie Hwang Beck: It's something I feel like I. Even recently, I've actually fallen in love a lot more with my rage because I realized that I was silencing myself to make other people feel comfortable.
[24:33] That's a pattern,
[24:34] right. And it's a pattern of denying yourself.
[24:38] And it's actually something that I see in a lot of people,
[24:42] and it doesn't serve them because it creates a muted existence and they don't even realize it.
[24:49] Elizabeth Stauder: That's a great word for it, a muted existence. Yeah.
[24:53] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah. What did this. So, you know, what did that open up for you? What did that give you access to that you didn't have before?
[25:01] Elizabeth Stauder: Oh, my gosh.
[25:02] It felt like a backlog, an archive of channeling, like, information,
[25:08] guidance, like, just came, like, pouring through me when I let the lid off of that.
[25:15] Yeah. And I had a practice of.
[25:20] And I'll say it as a caveat, that part of what happened as well is that. Well,
[25:26] two things. As I listened to that inner voice and was able to parse it apart, even though it felt so tiny compared to all the noise.
[25:35] One, it led me to find physical resources in the world that were actually supportive of reversing the injury.
[25:44] Um, and most of those things were things that were ancestral and anti.
[25:48] Like, they were much more regenerative and not in the sick care system, but in the system of, like,
[25:54] undoing all of that.
[25:57] And the second thing that happened was I was able to.
[26:01] I Mean, the only way I can really describe it is it felt as if I was just thrust into a shamanic,
[26:09] like, awakening, like a. Like a. Like a. Like an initiation of sorts where,
[26:14] like, every time that I would go into.
[26:18] I wouldn't. Like a meditation. It would. When I say that just, like, even closing my eyes or even just sit, like, being a little bit less in pain, like, getting in the bath was usually where I would do it with the salts, and that would kind of take the pain away enough for me to not just be in pain.
[26:35] And in that moment,
[26:36] I got. First of all, I got a lot of visitations from what felt like energies that were helping me heal and had messages both for me to apply in the outer world, but also ways that I could start communicating with my symptoms.
[26:52] And I discovered that sometimes it was a matter of, like, needing a resource or a remedy. Sometimes it was a matter of needing to retrieve something more energetic or psychic that had gotten lost and that I needed to bring home to my body.
[27:09] And sometimes it was something that I had swallowed that was toxic,
[27:14] that was energetic or psychic, and that I needed to purge and I needed to.
[27:20] To move it out of my field so that I could have that energy flow again.
[27:24] And now it's so wild because I feel like I'm surrounded all of the time with, like, so many helpers.
[27:31] They're just, like, following me everywhere.
[27:36] Valerie Hwang Beck: How does this relate to setting healthy boundaries?
[27:41] Elizabeth Stauder: Oh, my gosh.
[27:43] I mean,
[27:44] in so many ways, even down to the science of, like, what happens on the cell membrane and the mitochondria and leaky gut and the tears in the fabric that we stitched together to get rid of the.
[27:57] Well, to. I wouldn't say get rid of the trauma, but to integrate the trauma so that it's a gift.
[28:04] What I've learned is that true unity, consciousness and connection happens when our boundaries are intact.
[28:13] Quite the opposite of enmeshment. Like, when we're. We're fully sovereign and fully.
[28:19] You know, and people use that word. And I. Sometimes I think they're using it the way that I'm talking about, but sometimes people are using it almost like, as a.
[28:26] Like a hyper independence. And that's not at all what I'm talking about. Right.
[28:30] But there's a way that when we have healthy boundaries,
[28:37] they're not calcifications. Like. Like in a way, like, rigidity is actually something that doesn't have a boundary that's trying to re. Overcompensate. And it's been so bombarded that it just turns into rigidity.
[28:48] Healthy boundaries are soft and porous and fluffy and juicy and yummy.
[28:54] And they actually invite resonant connection and nothing that's really in support of us, like in our empowerment.
[29:04] Like whether it's a physical thing or an energetic thing.
[29:09] Would want to like move through a boundary without a kind of a recognition process and a process of honor, a mutual co. Honoring and. And co communing, a recognition of the.
[29:21] The divine and the respect and the other being. And so I think in a way the boundaries are like this. Our boundaries are like this. This thing that keeps us not only physically intact, like literally.
[29:32] Right. Because if our physical tissue boundaries break down, like we. We get sick and die. But like, from a spiritual and psychic perspective, it's what allows us to really commune in deeper and deeper experiences safely with the universe.
[29:48] Valerie Hwang Beck: Okay.
[29:49] I would love for us to dig a little bit into that because I don't think a lot of people distinguish between the rigid boundary and the,
[29:57] the healthy.
[29:59] I don't want to say fluid, but it's just like living one.
[30:02] And the way that I could see it in the body is like, let's say you have necrotic or like some autoimmune skin thing where, you know, maybe like psoriasis, that's technically a boundary, but it's rigid.
[30:17] Right.
[30:17] As opposed to like having a healthy skin boundary boundary, where it's like letting in all the good things and letting all the bad things out, like it's actively discerning, whereas, you know, with the psoriasis, it's actually just blocking.
[30:30] Elizabeth Stauder: You described it so perfectly, right there. Active discernment versus blockage. Those are very different, right?
[30:37] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah.
[30:38] Yeah.
[30:39] And do you see this?
[30:40] Like, I'm sure you work with this with your clients, right? Or even with yourself. Like,
[30:45] what is one way that people might have a too rigid boundary as opposed to one that's actually healthy?
[30:52] Elizabeth Stauder: Well, I think there's a lot in how you just use the term discernment there. Right. Because a healthy boundary is.
[31:01] Is not one that is always fixed the same way in, across all circumstances, in all time.
[31:09] Like that to me is more of a blockage.
[31:12] It's like compartmentalized from.
[31:15] Because what we're experiencing is.
[31:18] Is a flow.
[31:20] Some moments I'm breathing in and some moments I'm breathing out. Some moments I'm having a certain experience.
[31:25] Some moments I'm feeling awake. Some moments I'm feeling asleep. Some moments I'm digesting my food. Sometimes there's a movement to our life.
[31:33] Right. And so a healthy Boundary is tracking those movements, like, automatically, which our autonomic nervous system was designed to do. It's tracking those moments and responding appropriately in accordance with.
[31:47] With what's happening in every moment.
[31:49] A rigid.
[31:50] I wouldn't even call it a boundary, a block.
[31:53] It's kind of outside of that stream of time, like, living experience.
[31:59] It's not present.
[32:00] It's just kind of, like, based on something that maybe happened or. Or didn't happen at some point in the past. And so it kind of like it closed something or.
[32:13] Or opened something that should be closed. It did something that was rigid and stayed that way.
[32:17] And it's not really able to sense what's happening right now anymore. It's still reacting to whatever happened before.
[32:27] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah, absolutely.
[32:28] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[32:29] Valerie Hwang Beck: Okay. I wanna ask another question that might be tough to answer, but it's gonna be an important one because I think a lot of people are gonna have it, because this comes up every time.
[32:39] Because for some people, your recovery may seem like a miracle.
[32:43] And we talked previously about how health means to love life and how the decision is actually what reversed the disease.
[32:55] That is so.
[32:57] It's profound, but it's also.
[32:59] It can feel out of reach sometimes, right?
[33:02] Elizabeth Stauder: Totally.
[33:03] Valerie Hwang Beck: So in your best way, can you describe, like,
[33:09] how the change transpired in your body first and, like, why you think it was that decision or that choice that actually made the difference?
[33:18] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah, I love this question.
[33:20] And I want to acknowledge, too, that it fully felt like this miraculous thing that I had no.
[33:28] You know, it felt way, way, way out of reach for me at one point, too.
[33:33] Like, I know what it feels like to be in that position.
[33:37] And one thing I didn't share about, like, when I decided to listen from that soul seat, you could say,
[33:45] is that I knew that the first step I needed to take before anything was just to listen to the stories of people who had achieved that miracle of healing their body from, you know, like, had miraculous healings.
[34:00] And I do think it's a miracle, actually. And I think. But that. Because I define a miracle as not. It's not something like taking a pill and then it gets better.
[34:09] A miracle takes work.
[34:11] Actually,
[34:12] a miracle takes work.
[34:14] So that's something I really want to say. A miracle takes work,
[34:17] which doesn't make it any less miraculous and amazing,
[34:20] But I knew that I needed to listen to the stories of people who had undergone. And that's why, for example, when I chose to work with a nutritionist,
[34:29] there were several physical things that. That helped me recover. And one of the main ones was a total Overhaul of my microbiome.
[34:37] A complete microbiome reset of two years, actually.
[34:42] And part of why I was drawn to work with the nutritionist that I chose was because she also.
[34:47] She was one of those amazing miracle stories and had been sick from age 18 to like, 30 and bedridden and couldn't even, like, lift a book. Like, she was so weak.
[34:58] And now she's like, fully long wait list and like, travels the world and lives with indigenous tribes and is writing research on how to, like,
[35:08] restore,
[35:08] you know,
[35:10] these amazing things in our bodies based on indigenous wisdom and science,
[35:14] which is a beautiful combination.
[35:18] And I think there's a key in what I just said there about a miracle takes a work that was part of the mindset that had to go together. Because I think there was a split for me where I thought, like, miracles happen passively and hard work is also just completely fruitless because I'd been working so hard for my whole life.
[35:37] I was definitely one of those, like, oldest child, straight a valedictorian type people who was very successful intellectually and all of this stuff. And so it was especially hard for me to have.
[35:50] Be so disabled. I could barely. I couldn't even vacuum my own house because it was like. Then I had to ask questions of like, well, where's my worth coming from if I can't even.
[36:02] Not only can I not do stuff for other people,
[36:05] I need other people to feed me and I need other people to clean my house and drive me places.
[36:12] And so it really forced me to see the way that I was looking at my worth. And so this is more the identity piece, how I was doing it based on, like, how I was performing for others and this kind of sense of doing giving that was not actually coming from what I would now consider true generosity,
[36:37] but, like, from a sense of, like, creating an identity that was worthy of being alive and on the planet. Because there was, like such a deep trauma around, like,
[36:46] how delightful it is just to be.
[36:49] Be and be a body and be a woman and be a being on the planet and just like, take pleasure in that,
[36:56] you know?
[36:58] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah. Cause there's a lot that you had said about this miracle takes work that I think people sometimes try to bypass.
[37:06] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[37:07] Valerie Hwang Beck: The thing is we all need. We all need some kind of miracle.
[37:12] And what I mean by that is that we all have deep lessons that we're meant to live in, to unravel in a lifetime that can seem impossible.
[37:22] It seems completely against your nature. And what you were saying about you were brought up to be like, the, the poster child. Right. Like very high achieving and all of that.
[37:31] And like when we believe that this is who we are,
[37:36] oftentimes it's that identity that on the other side of it, like on the other side of breaking that identity is a huge lesson and that we're meant to live. And I don't know if I'm making sense right now,
[37:49] but part of life is to,
[37:52] to learn the lesson that we are not that.
[37:55] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[37:57] Valerie Hwang Beck: So actually you shared with me something earlier in a previous conversation and I would love for you to tie this into it and we're going to go like real deep then.
[38:06] But you talked about how you were born C section.
[38:10] Right. And then you'd leak. You, you tied that in with one leaky gut. And then also this not trusting yourself. Right. I want. Can we tie all of those pieces together?
[38:22] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah, for sure.
[38:24] I loved that. That was like one of the questions on the intake of that nutritionist that I worked with.
[38:30] And she had that understanding. And I learned previously like years ago from another film. You know, it's interesting that like the theme of regeneration has been following me since well before that.
[38:41] And so I don't think that it's an accident but,
[38:46] but I still remember like it just like that moment of catching that film. It was like way back in college or something where they were talking about how hospitals had forgotten,
[38:56] you know, or didn't realize, I guess that it's so important that when a baby passes through the vaginal canal,
[39:04] they're picking up bacteria that they smell and that wipes on their face and that is what sets their gut microbiome and helps that transition moment from being like nested in the womb, in the plasma into breathing the air and being in this environment with all this new bacteria.
[39:21] They have to like the va. The ****** is like the bridge of those two worlds that helps the baby like, oh, this is what's happening. Orientation. Like, yes,
[39:30] mapping, you know.
[39:32] And so, you know, some, some places that are more, you know, aware of this will actually take a swab in a, in the case of a C section and take some vaginal juice and put it on the baby's face.
[39:44] But you know, in my case and a lot of, in the last few generations in particular,
[39:49] more C sections were happening really like a lot like kind of like the way people get antibiotics way more than they need them to.
[39:55] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah.
[39:57] Elizabeth Stauder: So,
[39:58] so,
[39:59] you know, I,
[40:01] I also developed some kind of stomach infection when I was 11 months old and had to be weaned cold turkey. And I say that I like,
[40:10] like wailed for like five days and had to be switched to formula.
[40:15] And so you could say part of what that reframed for me as well was a recognition of, oh, this makes sense. Like a lot of medicine people had worked with were like, your situation is so complicated because it's.
[40:27] There's a lot of like, like something negative, but your body won't just get rid of it, it's like holding onto it. And there's this underlying malnourishment that like I couldn't get to the bottom of this underlying.
[40:41] It was like the root was not actually the poison,
[40:44] the poison was on top of the root, which was this like actually more of a vacuity, a missing, like something that should have been there that wasn't like,
[40:55] like a probably what would have given me the proper boundaries in my gut,
[41:00] you know, my proper boundaries coming into the world and my first experience being human.
[41:06] And you know, there's a lot more I could say about that. But you'll have to remind me what the other part of your question was. How this ties into not trusting self.
[41:13] The what? Not trusting self? Yeah, I mean the feeling almost of like from so early in life you could just imagine, like the way I've imagined it sometimes is if going through the birth canal was an initiatory experience that teaches you that a miracle is work.
[41:33] And it's not. Not work in the sense that like all these things have to come into gear, like these flexing muscles and this like bones of the mom's pelvis moving and like the direction of the body.
[41:47] Like it is a miracle because we don't have to control that. Like something greater than us is showing everything where it needs to go and like putting the force behind it.
[41:57] Right.
[41:58] But it takes work in the sense that like one has to be like engaged and present and feeling safe.
[42:06] And that's so funny. People often don't think like having to work is, well, what if safety actually had this inherent kind of work in it that was like, yes,
[42:15] I want to live. Like, yes, I want like the choice to live. Which comes back to that question,
[42:21] which comes back to our will too.
[42:23] How uncool would that be if we were just here as slaves and not as like,
[42:29] I want to be here, like, like I'm choosing life. And so I guess I kind of just thought, you know, because my experience was such that my mom labored for so long and was like I couldn't, like the story was like that I couldn't fit cuz her pelvis bones Were,
[42:46] like, not opening or something.
[42:48] So it was like, trying, but it was like, literally a block where I was like, hit your head against.
[42:52] I can't get through here. So you could play the whole thing out. But, like, there's something in there about, like,
[42:59] how.
[43:00] And I tell my clients this all the time is like, something happened in the environment that was not our fault. Yeah. It was not my fault that my mom's phones wouldn't open.
[43:09] And maybe the reason they wouldn't open was because she was, like, in a cold hospital bed with fluorescent lights and cold fingers and didn't trust the doctor even. And then why was the hospital like that?
[43:19] Well, because of the way that we got astray and how we do med. Like, you know, you could trace it back, but, like, something was not safe, and it wasn't my fault that that was the case.
[43:28] But it made it so that I felt, like,
[43:31] blocked in coming into life.
[43:34] And the only way out was like,
[43:37] oh, the doctor will just cut me out. And I didn't, you know, I got the experience. Like, oh,
[43:43] I mean, this is so funny as I'm saying it, I'm thinking, like,
[43:46] almost like a.
[43:48] Anticlimactic is the word. It was like, well, I made it into life, but, like,
[43:52] ah.
[43:54] Really wanted to go, like,
[43:55] through the natural way.
[43:58] So here being like, I need the natural way to get through this freaking disease.
[44:04] I'm not going to the doctor.
[44:06] Valerie Hwang Beck: Well, I. I think we could actually tie this back in a way to the comment that you said about rewiring your relationship with effort, because one of your earliest experiences as a human was that your effort,
[44:18] in a. In a way, was challenged.
[44:22] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah. And in a way, it was like, I was. I was given two options.
[44:27] Either you work really hard and you never make it,
[44:31] or you don't have to work. Don't worry, someone will just do it for you.
[44:35] And neither of those is like, what a true,
[44:38] like, true secure attachment in the world is.
[44:42] Is like, I am with you unconditionally at your side,
[44:46] and I know you can do it, and I'm going to help you muster that deep inner motivation.
[44:52] I'm here for you. I love you unconditionally, and you got this.
[44:57] And I'm going to help to help you work through every obstacle to get that satisfaction of making it through this tunnel and through whatever the challenge is, whether it's a birth canal that's literal or anything in life.
[45:13] Right?
[45:14] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah.
[45:15] Okay. So there are so many threads that I want to pull on so that we can weave because, yeah, it's it's all really rich material and it's just this ability to look at things from this huge perspective and see that it's all connected.
[45:33] So I want to bring the conversation to this, like, because, because you know that I've done research on ayurveda and autoimmune.
[45:42] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[45:42] Valerie Hwang Beck: And then this idea, I think that has come up again and again talking with patients with autoimmune and this ties back to also this like lack of trust in self is that there is a disconnection with their self esteem.
[45:59] That on the micro level is when like, you don't trust yourself to do the right thing or you don't,
[46:09] you don't value yourself. And so what the body end up doing is it stops recognizing self as friend and it will attack your own selves. Like this is there's literally mechanisms in your immune system that are supposed to tell you to differentiate between self and not self, and those go haywire.
[46:28] In the case of autoimmune,
[46:31] you had mentioned previously how there in your life there was kind of like this latent desire that you had to grapple with to not live and how there was a lot of shame around that.
[46:43] Elizabeth Stauder: Yes.
[46:44] Valerie Hwang Beck: And how like you can't pretend to love life. That's what you've told me before. You can't pretend to love. Like you actually have to.
[46:50] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[46:51] Valerie Hwang Beck: What was your process for that?
[46:53] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah. Well, and thanks for bringing me back there because what I forgot to say with the whole birth experience was that when we're young and we don't know better,
[47:04] our, our, our brain's job is to like make sense of why something happens. And so even if the,
[47:09] there's a trauma or something in the environment that's off,
[47:13] we internalize that. And we, we, we believe it's us. Like, we believe it's my fault that dad left or that mom hit me or that so. And so was me.
[47:23] And we don't necessarily think in the words it's my fault, but it's actually safer to stay intact and believe it's your fault than to believe that you were wronged by someone who's your caretaker when you're an innocent child,
[47:41] which is a pretty big deal.
[47:42] And so the hard work becomes.
[47:45] And this is where falling in love with the rage and the terror comes in.
[47:49] You have to actually stop digesting what's not yours,
[47:55] stop making things your fault.
[47:58] You know, to me, the degree to which I was doing that was so,
[48:02] so unconscious.
[48:04] I think I told you, like, I didn't even realize that A part of me wished I was dead. Like, I was so ashamed that a part of me would think that.
[48:12] That I convinced myself that no part of me felt like. Wished I was dead. Not until I was like.
[48:18] Like in pain and not sleeping and all of these things were happening. And I had the thought, oh, if I had. If I could take a pillow right now, I would.
[48:28] The temptation would, you know, before would have been to be like,
[48:31] oh, my God, no, I don't believe that. Like, shove that down.
[48:34] But from this place of listening, from the seat of my soul was like, oh, my goodness, that's in there.
[48:40] That's in there.
[48:41] And at the time, it was like,
[48:44] I don't think right away I connected it to something that was pre vaccine. I just thought of it was because of what I was experiencing. But. But at least that was a starting point because I was like,
[48:55] I believe health is,
[48:57] you know, to be health, healthy physically in a body while incarnate,
[49:02] I have to want to be here 100%.
[49:05] And so if there's a part of me that doesn't, like, we need to listen to that and not in a shady way anymore, but, like,
[49:12] honestly,
[49:13] what information is there here?
[49:16] And what I decided to do was actually what it. What it led to.
[49:22] I was already receiving help,
[49:24] but it led to me just from a place of deserving, which hadn't been there before,
[49:29] like,
[49:30] asking for more help. Like, I'll. I need like,
[49:33] three or four sessions of help every week of some from some kind of healer and like, for indefinitely amounts of time. And, like, I will spend.
[49:42] I don't care that, you know, about.
[49:45] I will use all the money that I have on,
[49:47] you know, things that are gonna support me, and I won't feel bad about asking for this and that and all these different things. So there was this, like, turning around of shame for needing to.
[50:01] Oh, I had the thought that a part of me wishes I was dead. That means I need to actually open my field wider to receive more because I'm not receiving enough.
[50:14] Um,
[50:15] which is kind of so wild now that I think about it, because in a way, it was like I was actually, like,
[50:21] softening that rigid boundary,
[50:23] so to speak, that block, you know,
[50:25] I had to be brave and open my field in order to actually attract the supports that were actually gonna make a difference for me.
[50:37] And if I hadn't opened that field,
[50:40] I probably would have died.
[50:42] Right. And so as much as it feels like in those moments where we're feeling so terrified that we. What we want to do is pardon more the ironic thing is to open more, but with discernment and compassion,
[50:55] because that opening then also let me eventually have the nourishment I needed both physically for my body and energetically in my life to have the strength to purge the rage and the terror and also the physical toxins and heavy metals and dysbiosis and all of the things that were physically in my tissues too.
[51:21] So it's kind of like in the nervous system work. I really appreciate this differentiation because a lot of people understand the importance of moving things and moving emotions and energy, but they don't recognize that when someone is in freeze,
[51:36] the reason they're not moving those things is not because they're stupid. It's actually because they literally don't have the energy in their cells to move it. And so trying to make them move it is actually just gonna like freak their body out more.
[51:50] And the toxins are gonna go deeper in the tissues and the. And the hard emotions are gonna go deeper inside.
[51:55] And so there's this need for almost like going back into the womb and like restitching the birth trauma, right? Like feeling warm and spacious and surrounded and taken care of unconditionally.
[52:08] And then from that place of like nourishment and safety,
[52:11] then there's the capacity to like get real, like targeted and be like, no more you, no more you. Like goodbye. You know, like, do the that work.
[52:22] Valerie Hwang Beck: Do you have a process for people to go back into the womb space?
[52:26] Elizabeth Stauder: I mean, one of the first. So the first part of the journey I take people through in the sanctuary,
[52:34] we go around the wheel and like the stages of a plant and the first stage is the soil, like before you even plant the seed,
[52:42] which is really akin to being in the womb in nervous system language. It's basically actually the deep work of just regulation,
[52:51] which. Which means like able to be like when I was talking about the boundaries, like we're able to be in the flow of the present moment and feel safe. Basically.
[53:03] We're not holding ourselves back or running forward.
[53:06] I'm intuitively, I'm always invoking. I'm often invoking that state in like sessions,
[53:13] whether I'm saying it or not. But it's really beautiful now. Now working with a group and having a curriculum for the first time to have that actually be an explicit phase on the journey.
[53:24] And it's the first phase really.
[53:26] It's going back into the soil, going back into the womb and remembering that birth rate because we weren't meant to have like anytime that we've had a rupture from that.
[53:36] And I would say even any medical as birth probably has some fragment where that was,
[53:41] you know, split.
[53:43] And so for restitching that fabric, it's like,
[53:46] how can I go back and retrieve that feeling,
[53:51] realize I am worthy of feeling that? Like, and actually not only that, but like that feeling is meant to. Was. Was meant to propel me into life and not be interrupted by trauma.
[54:02] I was meant to like carry that feeling forward into each new developmental stage.
[54:08] Because each stage like buoys the next. It's not supposed to be a severance from. From the stage that comes before. It's supposed to be like a. A stepping stone that buoys the neck.
[54:17] And so one of the ways that we do that in my sanctuary group is by sometimes it could be like visual. Visualizing the being in the soil, but it could also be like being in the womb or it could also be like being in an ocean of stars.
[54:31] And it's so unique for each person. Like what associations will bring them into that felt sense.
[54:38] Um, so that's always unique. But the important thing is that feeling of just being warm and,
[54:45] and buoyed and like there's nothing that you have to do and you're so loved and protected, like infinitely.
[54:51] Valerie Hwang Beck: That feeling when I hear you speak, it's. I just realized like, I think a lot of people do need to visit that, but like, we're just really unaware of it because this is not something we think to do because we don't even think that we remember.
[55:05] Elizabeth Stauder: Right. Our nervous system does. Yeah.
[55:10] Valerie Hwang Beck: I was actually the opposite of you. I came out so fast that I was born in the car. I don't know if I told you that.
[55:16] Elizabeth Stauder: Wow. No, you haven't. You're a firecracker.
[55:21] Valerie Hwang Beck: So basically like they were stuck in traffic, but it. And the. The hospital wasn't even that far. I'd say it was probably like 5, 10 minutes tops to get on a normal day to get to the hospital.
[55:33] And I think there was some traffic because it was rush hour.
[55:37] But yeah, I came out.
[55:38] Elizabeth Stauder: Wow.
[55:39] Yeah. That's interesting too that they're like. That's a whole nother one thing I remember from my training in birth and the nervous system and, and retracing trauma inference that we had a.
[55:51] A colleague of mine and a midwife talk about how whatever the circumstances was,
[55:57] you can trace it to just like patterns we have in life.
[56:01] You know, like for example, like if someone had like a. Got twisted around, like they're getting in situations where they feel twisted around, or if someone Was like,
[56:11] you know, if someone was delayed, like they feel delayed and early, if someone was fat, like, there might be a feeling of like, you have to like you're, you're. You're ready to burst before the thing is there for you to like, catch you.
[56:25] It's like so wild how whatever that was in print follows us through life.
[56:32] Valerie Hwang Beck: I think it's something definitely to like just meditate on a little bit more because I don't really know off the top of my head exactly like what that means for me, except that I know, you know, there are certain things that I know about myself when it comes to effort actually that perhaps are connected.
[56:47] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah. Well. And the beautiful thing, you know,
[56:50] with the neuroplasticity and the message of neuroplasticity and the quantum and rehoming yourself and soul retrieval and all of that is that it's all plastic and changeable.
[57:01] And I think that knowing that gives the safety to go into these hard places that are.
[57:08] That are like, that can like start to put the body into a state of like, oh my God, like I don't want to go there because it's scary.
[57:16] But when you, when you have a certain sense of grounding and when you've re achieved that feeling of unconditional love and protection,
[57:24] you can then safely like revisit like. A lot of those journeys that I took in healing myself,
[57:32] you know, were very Jungian.
[57:34] Meeting demons and meeting like weird things and like having encounters to transmute them.
[57:41] But it was all very safe.
[57:42] I knew that I was doing it from the seat of this alchemist, this witness, this like transmutive force, that you're free to be curious about things if you know that you're not defined by them.
[57:58] Right. Which is part of retrieving the self worth and the self sovereignty and the boundaries is that you don't feel pulled around anymore by things. You realize that you can communicate with them.
[58:09] You can talk to your demons, you can talk to your inflammation, you can talk to your liver.
[58:14] Have relationship with things that were previously really painful or scary to you.
[58:20] And you can be like, huh,
[58:22] what do I need to do to repair this relationship? Just like we would repair relationships with other people in our life, like repairing with our inner parts and repairing with our organs and the parts of our body ecosystem.
[58:35] So this is like deep repair work.
[58:38] And it could be very empowering. And I just love how knowing that we can do that,
[58:44] it takes away a lot of the fear of like looking at the really challenging things. And, and because you know that you can rewrite it, right?
[58:54] It becomes safe to see, like, oh, wow, that was really a not great birth experience.
[59:01] But look at what it's done for me now. Like, now I help people go through birth canals in their life,
[59:08] and I feel like a midwife that it's like, I know exactly ingredients you need to feel like that that miracle and that effort are integrated,
[59:18] you know?
[59:20] Valerie Hwang Beck: Yeah, totally.
[59:22] Okay, so since we're kind of rounding about our. Our time,
[59:26] I want to tie a couple more ideas to finish this off.
[59:31] One is that you talked previously about embracing the Healthy Rebel,
[59:37] and that has to do with, like, feeling really alive.
[59:39] And then I want to integrate that into the question of what is your future vision? Because having been able to transmute this traumatic experience multiple times and knowing that you have agency, you have choice,
[59:58] and that your effort does matter,
[01:00:01] what is the future vision that you have now for yourself that you didn't allow yourself to have before?
[01:00:09] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah. Okay, so I'll answer the first question first about the Healthy Rebel.
[01:00:14] And it's so interesting. And I. And I remember, like, when that nutritionist I talk about, she talked about going to these tribes where they're still living pre colonially. Like, there are a few places in the world where people still have not been influenced by modernization.
[01:00:30] And for them,
[01:00:32] there's nothing rebellious about living fully in a way that is in sync with nature, Nature's rhythms and codes and their primordial wildness. Right. Like, it's just who they are.
[01:00:44] But the reality is,
[01:00:46] you know,
[01:00:47] and this comes to the piece about not internalizing the trauma,
[01:00:50] but being really aware that, like,
[01:00:53] the environment has lost.
[01:00:56] I. I use the term soul loss to talk about trauma as well. You could also talk about it as, like, the loss of rhythm with nature, the loss of our wildness, the loss of our primality, you know, our primal nature.
[01:01:09] And the loss of that primal nature has created systems that behave in ways that are essentially traumatic. Like, ways that don't make sense to the body or the nervous system, which is still tuned to nature's ways.
[01:01:26] And so when one starts to wake up out of freeze and come out of numbness and come alive and come into their healthy vitality in their body,
[01:01:37] one starts to feel kind of like you're waking up in a little bit of a dystopian reality, a little bit, like there's a lot of beauty at the same time.
[01:01:46] Like,
[01:01:47] the beauty of the natural world and of your life and your body.
[01:01:51] Like now when I go into a store with, like, fluorescent lights and, like, lots of Plastic packages.
[01:01:57] It feels so weird. I want to get out of there as soon as possible because I'm like.
[01:02:01] Like, this is like.
[01:02:03] Nature would think of this as, like, a fungus that's, like, hidden in the dark, that needs to get aired out, just coming into this building.
[01:02:09] Like, what is this?
[01:02:11] The whole thing about being a rebel is just that. Not like, yeah, I want to be a rebel. I never wanted to be a rebel. I was like, the shy girl who was, like, terrified of rocking the boat.
[01:02:22] But I can't not be, because when you are. When you're choosing to wake up and be in your primordial nature and be wild again and be embodied and be sovereign and have your healthy boundaries intact and all of this,
[01:02:37] you. You automatically start to look different than a lot of culture. And so that's all I mean by being. It's like,
[01:02:44] it kind of puts you in a position of being a rebel,
[01:02:47] you know?
[01:02:48] Yeah. My vision for the future, there's a lot of it that is.
[01:02:52] It's personal, and there's a lot of it that's impersonal. And I think they blend together beautifully because Healing, healing some of the deep safety and relationship attachment patterns. Like, there's a real longing for me to start a family and have a child while I'm still able to.
[01:03:13] And to. And to have every area of my life reflect this regeneration that I've been doing in my body from the ground up.
[01:03:23] So. So the way that I've rebuilt my own tissues, I'd like to have enough of, like, the heavy metals cleared. And I'm like. Like, I want to have a body that's like, yeah, I want to have a baby.
[01:03:35] I can handle that.
[01:03:37] And I also want to,
[01:03:39] you know, find a partner who is in this, like, healthy,
[01:03:45] not, you know, this healthy,
[01:03:47] wild, rebelling.
[01:03:50] What's the verb of that? Like, rebel rebellion in the world simply by,
[01:03:55] like, thriving and loving.
[01:03:58] So it's a combination of loving life and also stewarding what real, like, regenerative wildlife is meant to look like. So creating oases where that's happening.
[01:04:11] For me, I really envision it, like, building a sanctuary on an actual piece of land and a homestead where the soil is being rebuilt, where people can come and learn about regeneration of their bodies or of their lives or the things that I'm doing online now.
[01:04:25] But that just reflects. And I'm probably. Lots of things that I can't foresee, but that will just be surprises.
[01:04:31] Like, now I see my life as fertilizer for the regenerative paradigm,
[01:04:37] basically.
[01:04:38] On the earth. So whatever shapes that takes, you know.
[01:04:42] And I just know too, that because this is the way that I've seen it works like the universe wants my personal healing in the same way that it wants my,
[01:04:54] like, service to the world. And those two things,
[01:04:58] I just trust that they'll continue to weave.
[01:05:00] It feels like flowering, I guess. You know, you can be a rebel just blooming and being, like, so stoked to be a force of life,
[01:05:10] you know.
[01:05:12] Valerie Hwang Beck: To just embrace life and like, actually enjoy it and be present. Yeah. It's actually rebellious in a sense. Yeah.
[01:05:20] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah.
[01:05:21] Valerie Hwang Beck: So there's one more question. Cause I. I said I would have you cover. It is just very simple. What is soul retrieval?
[01:05:28] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah,
[01:05:29] I mean, I feel like in many ways we've been talking about it already.
[01:05:33] Bringing home to yourself the ways that parts of your true self were lost due to trauma.
[01:05:42] And it really transcends. I think it also points to the fact that the more, like, dystopic our world has become,
[01:05:53] it's,
[01:05:54] you could say, a loss of its awareness of its own sacredness,
[01:05:59] you know, and so soul, to me there, you could talk about soul as actually being the part of ourselves that continues after death, but you could also talk about soul as being the animating force in life.
[01:06:13] Like, it's what makes something alive,
[01:06:17] you know? And so retrieving the soul of a thing is also akin to retrieving its. Its choice for life and it's also worthiness of self.
[01:06:29] Valerie Hwang Beck: Well, thank you, Elizabeth, for being with me today and for spreading your wisdom with us.
[01:06:35] Elizabeth Stauder: Yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation.
[01:06:38] Valerie Hwang Beck: Valerie, thank you.
[01:06:43] Thanks for tuning in to from the Ashes. If this episode sparks something in you, I want you to know your evolution matters and we're rooting for you all the way.
[01:06:52] For coaching, community and resource to help you rise into your full potential,
[01:06:56] Visit intrepidwellness Life and check out what we have to offer.
[01:07:00] If you love the episode, please leave a comment, share it with a friend, or tag me on Instagram. Ntrapidwellness, Val,
[01:07:07] because I'd love to hear what resonated for you.
[01:07:10] Until next time, keep rising.
