TRANSCRIPT - 164 - Learning to Listen to the Wisdom of Your Body with Keri Krieger

I'm joined by the lovely Kerry Krieger. She is an acupuncturist and a Chinese medicine
practitioner and she is going to be joining us at Exhale the Retreat which is
happening in just over four short weeks now on the 23rd through to the 26th of
October. Kerry is here, I'm just going to let her an
and Chinese Minutes and Practitioner and she's joining us at Exhale and I can't wait
to have Kerry join us because she is going to be guiding us through some wonderful
conversations to deepen our connection to the wisdom of our own body.
So welcome, Kerry. Hello. Hello. Hello. I think this is my first ever live.
Really? I know. Have fun. So exciting so exciting Well,
we've got a few people joining us now. So, hello everybody. Thank you for tuning in
Tonight's just gonna be a nice little fun chat with Kerry because Kerry is joining
us at exhale and you're gonna be guiding us through some lovely Conversations around
how we can reconnect with the wisdom of our own bodies. So yes, if I reflect back
to we caught up back in January now when I was dreaming about creating this retreat
and I was explaining to you my own situation and how we got to here and you know
you've been in and around my life for quite a while now and this is just like the
perfect opportunity for me to be able to bring you into my world and share your
beauty and your wisdom with these beautiful women that are joining us at the retreat
and You know, we just had such a lovely conversation because we really do know that
our bodies have so much wisdom in them, but we just don't always listen to it. We
don't always listen. We don't always know how or we don't know how to translate it.
You know, we feel aches and pains or twinges or gut feelings or stuff goes wrong
and then we're like, what does that even mean? Yeah. So I was very excited to hear
when we had that conversation that you were creating creating this beautiful long
weekend and somehow, here we are already. - I know. It's only four weeks away now,
which I can't believe. Like I'm a pinch myself moment, but like I'd love to explore
and sort of give people a bit of an insight tonight on what it is that they can
expect from the sessions with yourself. What are the kinds of things that we're
gonna be talking Yeah, why is this important and why should anyone actually even
care? Yeah, I know all the reasons and answers to that Which is why I've invited
you to come and share all that with us, but I would love you to kind of give us
a bit of an insight Thank you. Um, oh look, well, I should say that I practice
acupuncture. So I'm a doctor of Chinese Medicine I've been practicing for a good 20
plus years and I've worked in health retreats for a long time within that.
And I've worked and treated with women in the kind of 30 to 55 age bracket pretty
much that whole time.
Treating from a Chinese health perspective, women that are in burnout, dealing with
stress, and then all of the various health issues that kind of become unfortunately
part and parcel of that, whether it's period pain or menstrual health issues,
or difficulty falling pregnant, or the good old peri, which is now kind of on the
tip of everyone's tongue and is being talked about in a lot more places now, which
is wonderful.
And so in the context of this beautiful retreat, and the context really of what I
do most days and the kind of conversations that I'm having again and again and
again with clients, is that we didn't get a healthy,
honest, comprehensive understanding or education of how our bodies work. And I'm not
even talking about fancy names or chemical pathways. I'm just talking about what the
bits are called inside and outside and literally what they do and why they're there.
We really just didn't get a comprehensive education on most of that,
unfortunately. And then as life goes through, you know, like I just turned 50 and a
lot of this I didn't learn until I was in my 30s.
The education we do get is then from the context of pathology and all of the
things that have gone wrong and are going wrong. And whilst that might be urgent
and necessary at the time of whatever's going on, it doesn't actually really tell us
what our body is really trying to say and how we can help ourselves often with
really, really genuinely simple things. Yeah, excuse me,
I do find and you know was my own situation was that it wasn't until my body was
completely screaming at me falling apart that you actually then have to do something
and you're at that pointy end and you're seeing doctors and you're trying to get
diagnosis and you're trying to figure out what's wrong but if you look back your
body has been telling you these signs and communicating with you for years but like
you said you don't always actually understand how to interpret it or what it was
saying or what it meant and you know for myself I've had painful periods and
endometriosis and all sorts of things, right back from my early teens. And it's
layers and layers and layers and layers of that. And eventually your body just goes
enoughs and enough. - Enoughs and enough. - But yeah, that's what I'm really excited
to have these conversations with you because you know, you're gonna bring a very
different perspective to the conversation as well. And I love the perspective that
you're gonna bring because you bring that Chinese element to it. And that sort of
language, which helps us kind of, I think, route it down into something that is
tangible and accessible. So can you give us a bit of an insight into what that
might look like? Absolutely. So talking about that sort of education side of things,
yes, we need to know which bit is connected to what other bit, right? But from a
Chinese health perspective, we have a non -pathological, non -things -going -wrong way to
look at what our body is doing and the optimal way that we can be eating,
moving, sleeping, you know, all of the kind things that we can be doing for
ourselves in a very basic lifestyle way. I think a lot of wellness trends have
again educated us in this kind of hype, big -end thing where we have to sit on a
mountaintop and cancel our entire weeks and only eat green foods on a Tuesday when
the moon is in Pisces. But from a Chinese health perspective, it's about the 80 %
of the things that we do most of the time, which is very boring and very unsexy,
but actually very, very effective. And we get to honour our cycle where we are in
the cycle each months, but also where we are in our cycle of our lives.
So we'll definitely be going more deeply into that in my session so that women can
kind of reflect where they are in their life right now and what that might look
like from a Chinese house point of view. And again, it's never like five things
that you have to be doing, but it is really generated from an inside -out point of
view and the way that we incorporate lifestyle, medicine,
the five elements which might sound a little bit out there, but it is really about
how we interact with our internal nature and how that is explored and expressed in
our whole life. And when we connect with that,
you know the things that I notice as well is that you tend to have more energy
because you're not fighting against yourself. Can you kind of give us some insight
into what that might look like? So and again often we wait because we've been given
a very flimsy education of our bodies and that education is usually from the context
of extreme pain, extreme extreme issues. We don't pay attention to and notice and
act on small things. I'm feeling extra tired this week. Oh, that's right. I'm in
this part of my cycle. Oh, you know, I actually need to eat three meals a day as
opposed to just trying to follow some trend of what I shouldn't be eating. And when
we do pay attention. Just eat that little bit more. Quite often it's actually eating
a little bit more, not a little bit less. Getting to bed, you know, half an hour
earlier, like it sounds so simple, but it is the accumulative effect of those tiny
habits that when you understand your personal constitution from a Chinese health point
of view, you get to put those key things in place. For some people, food is the
absolute tippy top of the list, other people have got a more strong constitution and
can deal with things in a little bit differently. Other people will be sleep, you
know? I'm sure I've definitely had chats with you about my naps.
I'm pretty much a cat in a past life. I can do anything. Give me 10 minutes of
sleep and then I'm back and I'm all yours. I love that. I absolutely love that and
you know and what I'm hoping from the women that are going to be experiencing this
is that they're gonna get a real opportunity to reconnect with themselves because
again this is something that I think has you know influenced us in the way that we
you know we live and that we operate because as women we're you know doing a lot
of things we're running around we're raising families we're running businesses, we've
got you know careers like the way that we are functioning and operating in society
is very different to how our grandparents may have operated and contributed but we're
still trying to do all of those things and still deal with a biology that doesn't
necessarily support that and you know having some understanding to be able to work
with that so that they can optimise their energy and optimise their vitality and
really get reconnected back with themselves so that when we do hear those niggles
and those, you know, that communication from our body, we actually understand what
it's trying to tell us. And how do we listen to it? And then how do we actually
do something about it? Because, you know, I'm tired, but my schedule's full and I've
got this thing and, you know, I'm off to Sydney tomorrow and then I'm presenting at
a conference the following day. It's just, you know, yes, I noticed I'm tired, but
what my ability to deal with that is in this particular moment, like-- - Yeah. - I
think, you know, that catch me too. Oh, so, you know, what do I do with that
information and how do I give myself some permission or what can I do to kind of
ease that tiredness? What are some other tools and techniques and things that I can
contribute to? - Yeah, and I think you've really touched a really, really poignant
point there, which, you know, is possibly the whole point of your beautiful three
-day retreat is that it can feel really, really hard to get off that treadmill
because we have, and I say we because I've definitely been in that place where we
have booked everything in five -minute, you know, allotment, and We didn't consider
the fact that we actually need to eat we didn't consider the fact that goodness We
might actually need to pee between one zoom call and the other like it's lunacy and
If that's our idea of productivity, then we really really actually need someone to
sternly come up and ask us to sit down Or perhaps invite us to a three -day
retreat
Yeah, and It can be like having worked in health retreats for a really long time,
having conversations with, you know, clients and they're saying it was so hard to
finally take that three days, like the kids were crying and the grandparents didn't
understand why they had to end up, you know, the spouse was this and the client
had to wait an extra, you know, and after that, like after they actually got to
stop and they actually just got to have one full complete night's sleep and perhaps
a bit of a cry and an actual proper meal that involved protein and greens on the
same plate. They're like, oh my God, oh my God. And they don't want to go home to
their kids and they don't want to go home to their spouse. And also there's a
bunch of stuff that has to shift. I don't like comparing human bodies to cars,
but I often use this kind of story is that if we woke up tomorrow and decided
that you wanted to drive all the way to Cairns, which I don't know if anyone knows
North Queensland, it is a very, very, very long way away, you wouldn't just get in
the car. You wouldn't just wake up at seven o 'clock in the morning and just chuck
a bag in the back and get in the car like you would not do that you would
understand that it was a very long drive and you would check the tires and you
would check the oil and you'd probably go oh yeah that that bit from you know
Rocky to wherever is a bit shit I better put an extra tire in and I better oh my
goodness okay you know it's coming to I need a podcast do I need snacks do I need
I've had the kids like there would be a whole thing right you would check the
roads you'd check the petrol prices you'd probably do all sorts of things and you
know if you just got in the car people would be like what the hell like why would
you think that you could just drive to cans on a whim you know that's not a thing
but we do that in ourselves we just expect ourselves to you know do these high -end
like you know be corporate people be a parent, be a spouse,
and bring it at that highest level all the time. And it's bonkers.
It's actually bonkers. Yeah, yeah, you're right. But the other thing that I also
find, you know, and I know this is a resistance for many of us, is that taking a
three -day retreat is really self -indulgent. Like, You know, I've got bills to pay,
I just need to look after and stepping back and away from our businesses or our
careers and our lives seems really self -indulgent, but the reality is if we're not
doing that and we're not taking that time, as you said, to like haul back into
ourselves, we won't go very far. We start to burn out. Or the other thing I see
is we're chasing the wrong things because we're so distracted. Yeah, yeah, like,
are we even, are we even on the right track, which can be probably quite
frightening, but, you know, circling back to that element of having that healthy
education, it's not just about bodily functions, it's not just about understanding
that our period's going to turn up easefully on time and that you know peri
menopause isn't going to be a complete shit show. It's also understanding that we
actually make better choices when we're well fed. We make better choices when we've
had a really good night's sleep. It's not always possible. We've all had those days
that you just think oh dear lord okay protein's leaving one hand coffee and the
other and off we go.
That's life also but we're going to make much much much better decisions for
ourselves and everybody else if we are coming from an inside out point of view,
if we've got tools, if we're fed, if we've got energy of some description,
everything is actually going to be better. Yeah and that's one of the big parts of
the retreat that I want to really focus on with things women is About helping him
expand that window of tolerance because when we're stressed when we're hungry when
we're tired When you know, we're not feeling great in our bodies when we're not
nourished our window is getting smaller and smaller Which means that the ability for
us to explode
And we go pop You know all we are Trying not to pop and we're just kind of
pushing it down and that's then fueling and coming up in other ways. But if we can
learn tools and resources and understand ourselves, like what do those triggers feel
like and how can we then expand that window? We're less likely to fire off.
We're more responding rather than reacting. We are more patient with our children.
We're more patient with our husbands. But we also make better decisions, as you
said, because our brains are clearer, but we also then have much more clarity around
what we want and what we don't want, so that when someone is asking us a question,
we can easily go, "That's not for me," or "Yes, I'm all in," without hesitation,
because we already know what our boundaries are, and we then feel resourced and
strong enough in ourselves to hold those boundaries. And these are all the things
that I know that I've experienced for myself, like when I was in that completely
depleted state, everything just felt too hard. But yeah, and that's all that's
because it is it's like you have worn your kidney energy, your clean energy,
all of it's out the door. And your liver, who is in charge of lots of things,
unfortunately, including that that ability to say no these are my edges this is my
yes this is my no um is has just gone to sleep all together and it's like
everything is out you know and then we have to really build back from that place
um and it is yeah it is easier I mean it feels hard I'm not I'm not saying that
it doesn't but it is easier to stop on the orange light instead of waiting for the
red yeah - Absolutely. Absolutely. So, look, it's going to be an incredible retreat.
I'm sorry, sorry, I need about the conversation that you're going to bring. And I'm
really looking forward to the takeaways from that and just that opportunity for these
women to really reconnect with their bodies, to really understand what their bodies
are trying to say, what each of these, you know, what are the organs functions and
how do they, you know, how do they communicate with? So like when your lever is
overloaded, what are some of the things that you'll start to see and what can we
do to support it to bring everything back into some sort of balance. Absolutely. I
think there's some just incredible conversations that we're not always having and this
is an opportunity to do this in a really safe space. You know, as part of the
retreat, we're also going to have a beautiful yoga practitioner, Heidi, who will be
guiding us through go two mornings, we've got sound healing with the lovely Courtney
from Heart Residence, we've got a breath work with Amber Hawken, you know, so we've
got some really lovely healing modalities that are going to be introduced to you in
a really gentle way so that you can start to experience what these things feel like
in your body and how they start to help release all of that tension and that
anxiety that we're carrying because when we've got all of that built up in our body
and you and I were talking about this just yesterday, but the little T's and the
big T's in our trauma is that the layering and layering and layering, all these
little T traumas just build up and build up and build up and I don't really
understand the space that they're taking out inside us. Yeah, and as women we can
be very hard on ourselves and we can set the bus also so high. So I think coming
to this kind of space where you do have an opportunity to be with yourself and
just take a short amount of time to feel however it is you're feeling but also
witness in some ways other women that are in a very similar space possibly and just
understand that actually the kind of experience you're having isn't because you're not
good enough or you haven't done enough, it's just that there's been this build up,
like you say, and it is actually really natural and healthy to need to just let
some of that go. So you've got more space to do things that you want to be doing
in your life. Yeah, exactly. And then, and that's where the next round of
conversations come in through the retreat is that creating this space, you then got
internal capacity and what do we fill it with? And so being really intentional and
very deliberate and very discerning about what you choose to allow back into your
life. And I think that's just as important to be really clear about that because
otherwise we can come back to our daily lives and we let all of that stuff back
in again. And it's not really the stuff that we want. So we'll be having
conversations around what your dream life looks like. We'll be working through some
of my frameworks to then how to actually implement that and create that and then
what that looks like from your business and career perspective because if you are
wanting to have this particular life but your business is holding you back or your
career is holding you back then we need to look at what can you shift there and
how we can actually create a business and a career that's going to enable the
lifestyle that we actually want to live because at the end of the day that's my
purpose.
- We don't live to work, we work to live. And I have to learn all of this the
hard way. And this is where my years and years and years of teasing is out, I've
been able to create these frameworks to really help you get clear on what it is
that you want from your life and then how you're going to create that through your
business and your career to make that happen for you. - Yeah. It's so powerful to
do it from the inside out and not the other way around. - Yeah. - Great move. - And
we do often do that go from the outside in because what happened is we are getting
told this is how we should be running our businesses and this is the thing you
should do and this is the career ladder you should be climbing and you should be,
should be, should be, should be. And is that actually what you need? No. Perhaps
not. No and it's often not what you want either so I'm really excited about that
as well. So it's going to be an incredible retreat. It's happening in October the
23rd to the 26th in the beautiful Tweed Valley. It's just over four weeks away
which I'm very excited about. So if you are wanting to join us there are only
three spaces left so jump over into my bio you'll find a link there where you can
check out all the details of the retreat you can save your space but I would
absolutely love you to come and join me at exhale and just take the weekend to
relax and really reconnect with you and, you know, go back to your life completely
rejuvenated, refreshed and have so much clearer perspective because that is gonna
ripple out into your family and into your life and into your business. And yeah,
you won't know yourself when you're left. You will not be the same woman that
arrived. I can guarantee that. - It's an incredibly powerful choice to make. Yeah, I
really look forward to seeing you all there. - Excited. So thank you so much for
joining me tonight. - Thank tonight apparently have a lovely evening and we'll see
you in four weeks see you then bye bye