Weaving Light From Trauma - Jacqueline Jackson

Ever wish healing felt less like reliving pain and more like coming home to your body? We sit down with writer, yoga therapeutics teacher, and group facilitator Jacqueline Jackson to explore how somatic practices, EMDR-inspired tools, and gentle shadow work help calm the amygdala, restore choice, and make safety feel real again. Jackie’s path runs through journalism, caregiving, cancer survivorship, and decades of yoga teaching, and she brings that lived credibility to a practical “healing menu” anyone can use.

We unpack the science in plain English: what happens when the fire alarm in your brain won’t shut off, why the prefrontal cortex goes offline, and how bilateral stimulation can help the hippocampus file distress into the past. Then we get hands-on with simple, portable tools—orientation, belly breathing, and the butterfly hug—that you can try in a few minutes without dredging up old stories. Along the way, we connect ancient wisdom and modern research: mudras that mirror EMDR’s left-right rhythm, the yoga idea that issues live in the tissues, and the heart center’s reminder that we are unbroken at our core.

Community plays a starring role. From music therapy in clinical settings to singing in a choir to reopen the throat after illness, we show how rhythm and voice move what words can’t. Jackie also introduces the Other Parents Like Me network, a compassionate space for caregivers practicing boundaries, gratitude, and evidence-based communication. The big payoff? Not a new self, but the remembered self—lighter, clearer, and more resourced. If you’ve been wary of the word “trauma,” consider this your permission slip to start with safety, agency, and small daily practices.

If this conversation helps, share it with someone who needs a gentler path, subscribe for more grounded tools, and leave a review to tell us which practice you’ll try first.

Bio: 

Jacqueline Jackson is a writer, yoga practitioner, and group facilitator with the Other Parents Like Me network. As an experienced, registered yoga teacher, Jackie completed a year-long comprehensive yoga therapy certification and a trauma-informed yoga certification. She is also certified in Somatic-EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining) and trained in the Invitation To Change approach from the Center for Motivational Change. Jackie is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists and is the author of Holistic Trauma Healing: Strategies to Integrate the Body, Mind, and Spirit and Urge Overkill: A Story of Breaking Free.

website: jacquelinejackson.net
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-jackson-533b0543/
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackietheyogascribe/
 Author Page: https://www.llewellyn.com/author.php?author_id=7038
 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackie.jackson.holistic.healing
 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeacefulEasyHealing
 Medium: https://jackie-jacksonus.medium.com/
 Qwoted: https://app.qwoted.com/reporters/jacqueline-jackson

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Jackie And Her Healing Toolkit
• 3:20 Shadow Work Meets Trauma Integration
• 7:50 Choice, Agency, And The Healing Menu
• 12:45 Why Mind Body Spirit Matters
• 18:30 The Body Keeps The Score In Practice
• 24:30 Safety, Breath, And Somatic Tools
• 30:15 EMDR Explained Without Rehashing Trauma
• 36:10 Music, Sound, And Community Healing
• 41:20 Other Parents Like Me Network
• 48:10 Language Shift: From Trauma To Gratitude

Transcript

Granddaughter Crow : 0:01

Welcome to Belief Being and Beyond with your host, Granddaughter Crow. Hi everybody, Granddaughter Crow here with yet another episode of Belief Being and Beyond. I found another jewel for you guys. I found another gym. I found an author. I found a yoga instructor. I found a person that will help you with trauma resolution. It's amazing. So let me just let you know who I have with me today before I bring her on. I have Jacqueline Jackson, a writer, yoga practitioner, and group facilitator with the Other Parents Like Me Network, which I'm gonna ask her about. That looks exciting. And she is experienced, she's a registered yoga teacher, right? Very experienced. Jacqueline has completed a year-long comprehensive yoga therapy certification and trauma-informed yoga certification. I have talked to a lot of people doing yoga, but I've never met somebody who has done trauma-informed yoga certification, and we're gonna get into it. She also is certified in the somatic EMDR and trained in the Invitation to Change approach from the Center for Motivational Change. I love this, all about healing. Jackie is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists and is the author of Holistic Trauma Healing Strategies to Integrate the Body, Mind, and Spirit, as well as Urge Overkill. Let's welcome our beautiful, beautiful guest, Jackie Jacqueline Jackson.

Jackie Jackson: 2:03

Welcome. Thank you, Granddaughter Crow. What an intro and what an honor and a pleasure to be with you. Loving your book too. I don't know if guests usually do it, but I'm gonna plug it right here. It's on my nightstand. Shamanism in your shadow. And I'm so enjoying it. I'm almost done already, as you can see. And it's been, I I love the parallels I've been drawing, and I learned so much. Thank you for that.

Granddaughter Crow : 2:30

And speaking of the parallels that you're drawing, it's really kind of interesting because those parallels in my book about shamanism and your shadow have a lot of parallels with what you do, who you are, and your approach. And, you know, with the holistic trauma healing and how they weave in together. I want to get your impression, your words behind this, but how shadow work and trauma therapy interweave when we are looking at it from the position of holistic healing. Mine from shamanism, your which is a form of embodiment, earth-based, and yours through so much, but uh highlighting through the the the yoga. So, how do you see the dovetail between shamanism and your shadow and holistic trauma healing, your latest book released by Llewellyn 2025, August?

Jackie Jackson: 3:36

That's such a good question. Thank you, Granddaughter Crow. Um, and when I was reading your book, I was really kind of struck by like how the shadow is not something we want to banish. Um, I love the ending part. I did sneak peek ahead, the the note to your shadow that was so beautiful. And it reminded me when I was doing my certification in somatic EMDR, what um a psychologist or a therapist, especially trauma-informed or EMDR uh therapist, call parts work. Um, I've also heard it called, and I'll I'll love to hear your perspective too, um so soul retrieval. Um some I've heard these different names, and I think, but it's like this integrated part of our nervous systems, like the wisdom, where pain, protection, and the potential kind of um all come together. And um so just reclaiming uh our wholeness, and it's interesting the ties uh to yoga, which you often hear in a yoga class the phrase namas day, which means that the light of the divine within me sees and acknowledges that same light within you, and when we're um in this place, we're the same. And so one of the main theory, my main point of my book is that it's like these survival strategies are parts of us that we did, you know, we needed to use to survive, these old strategies that don't work anymore, it's like we're dusting them off. And so, and we're like excavating the real true divine self within. And so I always like to start by saying um that we're not broken, we're just getting, we're excavating the true divine self. And so we're not here to fix anyone, but to find strategies, and it's sometimes these little things that sound like not much throughout the day that we might do, which I'm sure we'll delve into more, like what maybe your listeners like, oh, what's something practical I can take with me? And so um, these ways are just ways that we can over time become bigger shifts, at least I can speak for myself, who is the proverbial guinea pig in my book. I I tried this all out myself, and then um each chapter, you know, covers a modality. Um, and then there's DIY. There's like 44 practices, but I'll just say that for me, what really led me to lead read to write it and read about it and research it was my background as a I was a newspaper reporter at one point. And um, so from a journalist's view, I was like, I realized if you've ever heard the work of Dr. Gabor Mate, who read who wrote in The Realm of the Hungry Ghost, he's a trauma um kind of rock star, I'll just call him that, who has done documentaries on the wisdom of trauma. And uh, and I just loved, he nailed it. It hit it was like a little bell went off in my head when I read how, you know, there's all these great therapies out there, but what's lacking is an integration and like a how do we put them together? So I hope that to create like a menu for people to be like, okay, these are options. Um, it's just like a trauma-informed yoga class because you're in charge, because what's missing in trauma a lot of times, or most what's missing in trauma, uh it sounds like all the research shows that is a choice. And so you have a choice, and this is like, here's your options, here's how you can interact with them free, DIY, do it yourself, and then here's all the evidence in the back, and then how can we integrate it all together? So, um, and I love that no one heard this, but uh Granddaughter Crow mentioned to me when we talked the first time about oh, you have um spider medicine. I was like, ding ding, another ding, a little chills in my body because I was like, oh, I I really resonated with this medicine card that I've had from Jamie Sands and David Carson. And I had to go back because I'm like, this is what it is, integration. And so this is how we um I hope to present it to people so they can find their way by integrating things in a way that's authentic to them. Or and and we do hope that um a lot of times people hear the word trauma and it's like stigma, you know, it's all has a kind of a stigma to it, because who wants to write read about trauma? Like I've had people being like, oh no, thanks. I don't really want to spend my time reading that book, and I totally get it. Um, except that it's actually about lightening up or enlightenment, like the which how can we lighten up? Like, and so there's themes in there about, and I didn't wear the necklace, but my friend and I share it says choose joy, like you know, when it you know, especially in the dark times. So these are some of the things.

Granddaughter Crow : 8:52

I love that. I absolutely love that. So for the listeners, when I was talking with Jacqueline, it was in in everything that she said, she was weaving, she was integrating, just like you saw what she did with the interweaving between shamanism and your shadow, as well as the holistic trauma healing. And that interweaving is something that I also want to highlight because here's your here's your next question. Psychology, trauma, a lot of times people you know think, well, trauma is in the mind, and then it goes into the body, into the nervous system. Your approach is a mind-body spirit. So can you tell us what is mind-body spirit and how what does that look like? Why did you take the approach of mind-body spirit when you're talking about trauma? You little weaver lady, you spider.

Jackie Jackson: 9:58

Spider. That's a great question. Thank you for that question. Um, well, for me, um, my work comes from a professional and a personal lens. So I think all of us have things uh in our lives that have been challenging to various degrees. And so um what like brings me to you know, some of the things about myself that was like, okay, so when I was back in college, I worked at a domestic violence and rape shelter, the women, the Thunder County Women's Shelter. And um and then like when I was working in social work, I was like a crisis interventionist. Um I had my own experience overcoming domestic violence, the subject of my first book. And then um later I had a cancer diagnosis. So for me, it was personal, although, and also over the last 24 years, I've been working is teaching yoga, as we talked about, which is very much body, mind, and spirit, the integration, like yoga means yog, comes from this the root word yog, which means to yogurt, to bind, to bring together. And so, um, and it's and it's so cool how the research from people like Dr. Bessel Vanderkock, who wrote the seminal work, The Body Keeps the Score. One of his if I could condense everything I've learned when I went up to Kropolo and got to do his intensive, it's like when there's trauma or when we get overwhelmed, um, and it's very subjective, like two people in one family can have the same experience, what you would think is the same experience, but one can be like kind of traumatized, it's like alive in their nervous system, they're kind of, you know, it's they might be showing signs of um dysregulation or just like, oh, nightmares, like the things that make it seem like it's still happening because of the the neuroscience behind it, it's kind of still in the mind, like the amygdala is firing off. So um it was so cool that if I could condense that whole time with him and when in reading his book, which is which is a tough read, his book on drama, but and and he said those are his words, but because it's beautiful, but it's it's like wow, that's that's some heavy stuff. But um, I thought you could boil down to one thing. It's that when there's this overwhelm, the head goes up in the clouds, but the body keeps the score. And it's like, oh, so we have to get back in the body to heal. And in yoga, I just had a class to this um this morning and my meditation, and we call we say in yoga the issues are in the tissues. So when you're doing your, you know, you're doing a pose or you're working on your body, you know, there's this uh we call it embodiment, uh, which was physical mindfulness. It's like we realize, like, I'm like, oh, what is that? Okay, my, you know, for me, for example, I'll use myself as the the proverbial guinea pig. Um, when I got a cancer diagnosis, it was a thyroid cancer, so it's throat chakra, or or the energy center of the body. Like, what does that tell us besides the mind, like, you know, patterns of thinking, or you know, um, and I can relate in this particular instance to getting the diagnosis. So um I now work on the uh I like I think advocacy is my way of like putting it out in the world, and that help is part of my healing process. So I live, uh I work with the Live Strong Cancer Survivor program here in my town. I'm in uh I'm in Connecticut, outside a New York City suburb. And so I now work there, like I help run this free program, and we've done it like seven times over the last couple of years. So we'll just keep going. But it's for people who are, you know, have a diagnosis, and what we all have experienced or share, the shared experience is huge, number one, for healing that integration. And then also um this idea that like our mind can be a little tricky because I remember thinking this dark cloud was over me, like, oh, I wake up, oh, I feel good, and then I'm like, oh, except for that, what's happening. And so, you know, I'm not trying to sometimes I laugh when things are dark, so don't mind me. It's a little bit nuts to my my my gallows humor.

Granddaughter Crow : 14:30

I'm into it, I'm into it. Let's laugh away because some things are really dark, but that laughter moves that energy and releases that energy.

Jackie Jackson: 14:40

I love, I love that. And I hope you'll talk maybe about I want to ask you a couple of questions. Um like I was learning about the rattle in in your work, and I was like, oh, I have one, and later today I'm gonna try that. But how do we move the energy and how do we um what like how does the what are the messages and like how do we um safely release tension? Like, how do we feel safe? And so so um I think it's a long-winded answer to the question of how um, and I mean you might need to reframe it for me again. If I'm getting I hope I'm getting to it about how is the integration um, so yeah, uh for me, I think like we get we we do the bot, you know, we get into the body, we help ourselves feel safe, and whether you know it's something like this open-handed mudja at our heart, some people call it the heart high five, but like, you know, I'll I'll give an example from for myself, like when I was going through this like kind of dark cloud of the cancer diagnosis. My mind was oscillating, it was ruminating. It felt like a bad neighborhood. I'm like, I don't want to be in here by myself. And so I was like, I really had to use all my tools from yoga and just my life and my spirituality, my guides. I really needed to like just hone in with that. And um so I think the integration has kind of been in the back burner for me, like kind of in the background. It's like an authentic thing for me. Yet um what the more I learned, as I was like getting the the um all the evidence space down, I thought it's so interesting that like that the how these things all come together and they can be so helpful. And that's what I hope people um come away with. This like this is your toolkit. And I hope at the end, like um, and sometimes when I've spoken on like parent support networks, I'll I create a toolkit, and then I like I it's like here's all here's some basic ones we've talked about, we tried them out, and then come up with yours. Like what works for you? And so that's what I hope people get from it, and kind of the basis of uh the integration that um I hope I answered your question, Grandpa Crock.

Granddaughter Crow : 16:58

Absolutely, you know, I think it's really beautiful. I like a lot, a number of things that you were saying, but I think that the whole thing is is that like when your head goes up into the clouds and your body is keeping the score, then maybe you're not going to trauma resolution or reading the holistic trauma healing for your head as much as for your body. I don't know. It's just something that is like if you can't wrap your mind around it, we're not sitting here going, lay on a couch and tell me about all of your trauma. It's a somatic experience where your body, your tissue, your muscles are able to relieve this without maybe even revisiting exactly what it's what the initial trauma is. Okay, good. I hit something there. Tell me about that.

Jackie Jackson: 17:54

You just nailed the very important truth. And um, and uh it's a theme with all the top trauma experts that um right now, uh like and as of today, in my um experience that talking about it uh is you know can create a narrative, but we don't want to, it's like kind of like ripping off a scab that's been healing. We don't want to keep doing that, and that's kind of the beauty of some of the uh the things like EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization, retraining. And um, whether it's in like a coaching capacity, which is my background, so I have to say too, I'm not a therapist or a scientist. So that I always like to say, but um from a coaching standpoint in my certification, um, and and as having done EMDR myself too, because again, I use these therapies myself and have been trained in the some of the um as a Reiki master and uh in the chakra system and throughout the yoga, you know, journey and the certifications. Um it's funny the the the nice thing about something like an EMDR is it works directly in your brain. So what you know, the amygdala, when something overwhelming happens subjectively, it's going off. And you I know I uh I probably don't need to say a word to you, but maybe I'll just say it to the audience because I know you know I already read about you knowing all this. There's a fire alarm, and then the prefrontal cortex, like the rational thinking, the parent in the room goes offline because there's you know, but then things like EMDR, which is so interesting to me. So rather than talking about it, um, for example, um, you know, you can do the bilateral tapping, the eye movement with the, you know, some it could be a therapist, you know, a finger of the therapist. Sometimes they use lights, um, they use kinesthetic tapping paddles. Um, you can do it on your fives or you know, tap your, you know, yourself. But what that does is it sounds so simple. Like, how the heck is that gonna help me? But it's interesting because then it activates the hippocampus, which time stamps it and helps move it into the past so that the the amygdala can stop firing off, turn off the fire alarm, and then the prefrontal cortex can come back in. And then we hope, you know, that you know, we can move forward with sometimes it's called post-traumatic growth. Like there's, you know, we trauma's not good. We don't want it to happen to anyone, we don't wish it on anyone. Um yet there are things like positive things that can come from it. So for me, I like I love that I can work with other cancer uh survivors or people in the process. And I love that they're together talking to each other. And you know, some of the top uh therapist tips are like, oh, finding your people. It's nothing like people who get it. If you can hang out with those people, and that's huge. And the connection is amazing to have that connection. Um, and then to like kind of like, you know, for example, my first book is about overcoming domestic violence. And it's so interesting because I had already been trained, yet it still came up for me because it's so prevalent in our society. So it's like one out of four women and one out of seven men in their lifetime will experience domestic violence. But um, people do can and do get better every day. So, like some of the opening of my book is just, you know, it has some statistics in it. Like 70% of Americans have experienced at least one traumatic uh incident in their lifetime. And but then on the other hand, people can and do get better. So we have about, you know, for example, of people and we have about, let's see, 23 million people in recovery from addiction in America right now. So it's amazing that um that there's like that's hope, and we hope that it's a, you know, we're lightening up in the process by being safe in our body, and then we can tap into our belief system, whatever that may be, and um and we can give ourselves some grace. Uh so with little practices throughout, you know, maybe you get like me, I love little practices throughout my day. I'm like, how do I just embody this throughout my day? So you know what?

Granddaughter Crow : 22:29

I absolutely love that, Jackie. That it's kind of like, you know, at the beginning, you're like, oh, well, people see the word trauma and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. What if we were just to say people? You don't have to define it. If you don't feel safe in your body, if you know somebody who doesn't feel safe in their body, maybe their body, their amygdala, they're in a past event. And this book is really good for you to pick up because it does have like she said it DIY, do it yourself. You know, this is such a beautiful, it works with so many different things that you don't need to go out and get a bunch of equipment, you just need to remember how to breathe, you know, stretch, and or you know, the different modalities.

Jackie Jackson: 23:23

And I would I should mention too, so I don't misrepresent that um it trauma is known like research based to not really it's hard for it to just go away if we don't address it. So I would say in conjunction with like a so if there is trauma, then I hope that people can use the resources and be like, okay, maybe ENDR is kind of something I would be comfortable with, or maybe I like um, you know, the strength base or the positive psychology, or maybe I love music. And it's like, I would love that, like, for example, I met this music therapist whose I research in the book, and my husband's a musician, I sing, and our whole family is really into music. And I find that in my talks and with my own children, and they seem to respond to it. So one of the practices and um is like, you know, what's your favorite songs and what do they mean to you and resonate with you now? And that sounds pretty simple, but like on the parent support groups um on the network when I've spoken there, that one worked with the kids. It works with my kids, and it works at Metro Hospital in Harlem. Like they have a whole music therapy. Um, there's a woman who's the clinical director, so she's like, we do psychiatry and music therapy along with the other things we do. And so they mostly work with the homeless population in the area. And um, you know, unfortunately, sometimes the that the the medical term is subclinical that some people feel like, oh, like the worry is that like we gotta help how do we support these? How can we support people? This is a challenging population. They're they're in a hard place. And she said, it's amazing how it works. So she's the the blues is one of the favorite things, that's one of the favorite modalities. So everybody can beat the crap out of drum. Um, it sucks to be here. I don't want to be here, but this is keeping me from being coming incarcerated or acting out in a way that is gonna get me in trouble. And not only that, but it's a beautiful expression that's celebrated. And everybody can relate to music. And so, you know, there's a whole um other piece on sound healing and the sound, the vibrational healing, and some people might love devotional chanting, or you sing at your church choir, or you know, it's you like the sound bowls or you know, resonance um of all kinds of sorts these days.

Granddaughter Crow : 25:54

I love it. You really have done your job in providing us with a menu, and I love that because it almost makes me think, how many techniques are we doing subconsciously to help us to return to our body? I mean, that's lovely. Jackie, since you're talking about, you know, the different advocacies, and I caught it in your bio, and I've gotta ask, what is other parents like me?

Jackie Jackson: 26:26

Oh my gosh. Well, I love this network. So Other Parents Like Me is a compassionate, it's a national subscription-based uh network. Um, it's for caregivers whose kiddos are struggling. And uh I met the CEO. Actually, I just got to meet her in person for the first time. We've known each other for five years like this. And it's online. So and I have met a lot of the parents. Um, but for me, I was working on, you know, my own stuff, my own traumas, as I mentioned. Um and I started writing this in about 2016 uh and doing the research and you know, and all that. But in 2019, my my son, my one son, started to really struggle. And so in the process of like researching, of course, I was like, you know, researching and you know, figuring out where where what what what kind of resources he could go to, like you know, and so at that time I met Casey Fariello, and she was like recommended by this one program as a parent you could talk to for the real lowdown. It's like, what's really, what is really like, is this good? Like, what happened with your son? And it was so interesting because she is an amazing person. And then I get to meet her last week. We just went to this conference for therapeutic boarding school, so that's kind of full circle here because she's like, bring your book, come on, we're gonna go meet everybody. And um, she's an amazing human. And so she started this network because it was a it was missing. Like, there's all these people, like so. For example, I'll talk about my experience. From in my experience, um, there's a crisis, or someone gets a diagnosis, or you know, someone's in trouble. And like here we are, we're like, oh my god, like look trying to figure out you know, research specialists. They all the specialists we see have subspecialties, and like they weigh in and they tell you one small pace, and you're waiting through all this information, yeah, and then you're like fighting with insurance, and then all while you're fighting for your life, I mean it, you know, it's like, and so for me, I'm like, this is missing. Like, why why don't I, you know, what you know, where's the like where's all the stuff put together? You know, so so that was what really brought me on board to other parents like me. And um, so so it's been about three and a half years that I've been up here parent, um, facilitator, and I've taught the trauma-informed yoga, and then there's various groups throughout the week um that I do. Uh so I currently have a Tuesday and a Friday, and then I also used to do the trauma. We had one on trauma, of course, and we changed it because people don't want to talk about trauma. They don't that's they did. It was very popular for a while, but then it sounds kind of dark. So we were like, let's let's switch, you know, flip the script here. And so we call it gratitude and tea now, which is which is funny, but it's wonderful because you know, we call ourselves the unshockable people. So you can come in and you can talk about your story or your challenge as a caregiver. Some people are sandwich caregivers, they're taking care of their parents and their children, and um, it's a lot, it's a lot. And so um, this is the way that like we do, like in our groups, we do like an opening centering meditation, we have specific topics. Like boundaries, you know, and the things from the invitation to change or what's called community reinforcement and family training. And that's gonna come. This was that's from the Center for Motivational Change. And they were the people who wrote this really important book called Beyond Addiction, uh, Dr. Jeffrey put. And it's all about compassion and kindness and science. So they put it together so that it can help people, and you can use it with anyone. You don't need to have uh be focused on addiction or uh mental health, or it could be, you know, whether someone has cancer, whatever the diagnosis is. And and even just with your, you know, your friends, or like I use it all the time. The techniques are just um provide these frameworks of how do you help um yourself change? Like, where are you at in the stages and know that change is change a lot of people are ambiguous with change, you know? A lot of us, and we can re we can relay that to anything like even like like I'm going to lose weight, for example. I want to lose weight. Okay, we say that's a goal. How hard is it to be like, oh, I slipped up and I had that pizza last night, you know, and the same thing as if someone's struggling with addiction or they're struggling with any change you're trying to make. And so the focus is on realizing this, you know, that change you can feel ambiguous. There's no one size fits all. And if you're gonna speak with f people, even yourself talk, it's like using positive, you know, you know, speaking, eye statements, understanding, shared responsibility. So they have some beautiful work out there that's applicable to anybody. And you know, if we don't need want to talk about trauma, we can say chronic stress, which is like an epidemic in our country, you know, with 24-7 connectivity. We just got through a pandemic. We have um there's an opioid epidemic, there's joblessness, there's a political upheaval. We all know climate change. So all these things, it's like just being modern. And and even the 24-7 connectivity right now, they it's estimated that these days as a human, we have 50 times more life experience than anybody who ever existed before us, which is a lot and and contributes to, you know, there's an increased, you know, for example, one small example. Um gray hair.

Granddaughter Crow : 32:32

Sorry.

Jackie Jackson: 32:33

I'm all yes, gray hair. Let's leave it in that. But there's I'm trying. So anyway, yeah.

Granddaughter Crow : 32:40

No, I I love that. And you know, what's so beautiful about this is be is that you're not just a professor studying one form of trauma resolution, you are approaching it as an advocate, you are approaching it as a journalist, you're approaching it as someone with a personal experience, which is why this book is so practical and gives us each because it meets us where we are. And when meeting us where we are, you predicted, I would love for you to share. Uh, do it yourself right now. People pull over if you're driving. No, you can go home and replace. I mean, this is a recording. You can hit but can you share with us something that would help the listener with some trauma resolution?

Jackie Jackson: 33:40

Right. We could we can do a couple, but like the one one of the simplest ones was the one I mentioned, the heart. Uh well, you know, I'm gonna do a different one. Let's do this one. Okay, so if you want, if everybody's comfortable, I just invite you to get comfortable. Like you might put your feet on the ground. Maybe you want to put your hands on your thighs as a grounding kind of technique, and just kind of tune in if you and maybe you want to. Some people like containment, so maybe you put your hands on your belly, and so let's take a breath belly breath. So inhale, expand your belly, and then on the exhale, let it contract and soften back to your spine. And we'll just kind of deepen our breath and notice how you're sitting. Like, are we kind of perched a little forward or slumped a little back? And we just kind of let ourselves center uh and settle at center best we can. And as we take a couple breaths in our belly, we can let ourselves center. And this is so simple to do belly breaths. And did you know that your belly, if you can expand your belly, we're always taught to suck it in. And now we're saying, we're gonna give you permission, just expand it like a balloon. And as we do that, the diaphragm hugs inward. So that's a little dome-shaped organ right under your ribs. So if we expand our belly, the diaphragm hugs in, and that way we breathe all the way down to our belly. Most people are just breathing into their chest, which is kind of fight or flight. So if we can go and let the belly, then the ribs and the chest, we're kind of letting it expand, like filling up the whole torso, as if up to the base of the throat and to the sides of your torso, just expanding your belly and then exhale. You let it contract. You might even squeeze it in at the bottom of your breath to squeeze any stale air from your low lungs. And now, if you'd like, we could try the butterfly hug. So it's like wrapping your thumbs and placing your fingers maybe below your collarbones. And as you as you kind of feel the pressure this of the, you know, you can it's containing yourself in your body because you know, we can bring ourselves back into the breath, into the body, into the present moment, and we might orient ourselves. So that is simply turning our head. Maybe we start looking to the right side of your space. So just taking in, like turning your head and look your let your gaze shift forward across your periphery, taking in the objects and the colors, and then just let your head turn to the left, being aware of your space now and everything within it, the textures, nice and slow, and notice if you're ready, that the way the light is hitting the objects in this your space, and um just with the realization that this moment will never be replicated again. And once you're kind of oriented into your space, you might, you know, let your gaze come back to each other here. And this is the butterfly hug. So it's like almost you could think of it like we do it in Somatic EMDR, but this is an abbreviated s version. So say the heart there's a hard time in the day. Someone cuts you off, or you get a note from your your boss is like you feel the amygdala, you feel this like fire alarm going off, and it's like, okay, right, I see what's going on here. So a couple belly breaths, and then we could tap. So here's the butterfly tapping. So it could go, you know, we can tap both finger, you know, both hands together, or if you felt like it, you could even do the bilateral, the side to side. Right, left, right, left, and maybe do it 10 times. Um, if it's not too busy, you could do a little slow turn of your head if you want, or you can just stay steady, but we keep it as simple as possible. So whether you want to just tap, but maybe you try 10 times. And this is kind of helping to process and calm our nervous system. So we see how it feels to us here. And after we've tapped to, you know, maybe the 10 times, and we there's no rush here, but you know, after you tap, you might pause. Maybe you want to maybe take a couple other more belly breaths. You know, I'm I'm putting you can't see it, but I'm holding my hand on my belly. Okay. If you want to do if you like that, I happen to like that. So, and then we just like kind of check in, like, okay, uh, there was this moment I was raw, you know, kind of I felt the alarm going off, and now how do I feel? And sometimes people just tap again, or they might, you know, be ready to be like, okay, that's that's good. Uh, you know, so you can continue it, but it's a really short one that like say something happens and you're like, I'm gonna step outside now and do my little butterfly hug. And um, that's that's a simple pro a little practice that's abbreviated. And it's similar to the somatic EMDR that we we do as I do as a coach. And it's like it helps to process this this strong emotion. And sometimes we'll even scale it. We'll say, like, okay, on a scale of one to five, where am I at now? One's the most calm, five's like the most agitated, and then we see it's just like an experiment. Does it there's a number going down? And um, so I I am lucky because I get to share it on these networks and these classes and with clients and on myself, and um I a lot of people find it really helpful. And I'll I'll finish by saying it's so interesting, speaking of integration, granddaughter girl, that in yoga this is called Garuda Mudra, or that it's the gesture of the eagle. And if you were to look it up in the ancient texts, they say it helps to integrate the right and left hemispheres of your brain. Boom! It's like amazing that this these techniques, whether they're from 3,500 years ago or modern day science, very similar, a lot of crossover. And so uh these are I think that's that fascinates me. So I meant to me too.

Granddaughter Crow : 40:02

It's ancient age old wisdom that we just keep tapping in, tapping into.

Jackie Jackson: 40:09

Oh you're well, you're yeah, that was good. I love that. But you know, you know what?

Granddaughter Crow : 40:17

Um, I definitely felt a shift. And um, you know, I mean, I'm like, okay, Granddaughter Crow, you can't just like go and play now. You gotta get back in this interview. So I'm like, I was like at a one. You know, I was like, we're good. You know, we're good. So here is the beauty, and this is how I would kind of like to wrap it up. And I'll give you a second to think about it. What is after trauma? And before I ask you what is after trauma, you guys check out Jacquelynjackson.net, follow on Instagram, everything is located down below. Jackie the Yoga, scribe, follow on Instagram, follow if this is making sense, because to me it's so grounded, it's not scary. She'll change the language if you're triggered by the word trauma. And so, you know, here on Belief Being and Beyond, we have what is beyond Jackie. What is what is it that we are trying to do, and what was the experience after we can start being released? And I know that, you know, healing the trauma, and I know that you also say that healing isn't linear, but what is the like surprise? What are what do we get for all this work?

Jackie Jackson: 41:51

What a great question. So for lightening up in yoga we call that enlightenment. Um, but uh I'd say that the healing isn't about becoming someone new, but remembering who we always were beneath the pain, um the the challenges of life, but also the beauty, too. So um there's they all coexist. It's beautiful, it's amazing. It's there's challenging dark times, but there's these amazing moments. Like if I look out my window, I have a hummingbird feeder right outside, and I like to zoom in and be like, right now, or as Tik Not Han, the meditation master, would say, There's no bombs busting through the ceiling right now. I'm okay. But these like little reminders help us, like, I'd want people to carry with them, like just remembering, like, and in yoga we say, like, for the heart chakra, for example, this energy center of the heart is called anahata chakra, and it means unstuck or unbroken. And it's that this is this beautiful strength and light within, and it's amazing that we can connect to it and that it's always there. So after, you know, afterwards, as we're healing, we're just working towards enlightenment, which is this lifetime, many lifetimes. I don't know what with how that's gonna all go. But it's just like I find that um amazing, and that you know, where we talk about the collective consciousness, I would say at the beginning of the book, I could say like these challenges with like modern life. But at the same time, as we we say on the the other parents like me, as we heal ourselves, we heal our family. And and so, and I always think of all of us like a tapestry connected, like a or like a crystalline network. And as we each light lights up, you know, it you know, could be a beautiful radiance that we um can offer to the rest of the of of the the all beings everywhere.

Granddaughter Crow : 43:52

So I love that the unstuck heart or being unstuck, and I absolutely love that because you know when we're going through our days, people um sometimes you know you don't even realize that you're just like I don't know what I'm feeling, I just feel stuck. This is I know I'm just like selling your book, renaming it, retitling it for all of the people who can look at this menu. But there are a lot of things that you know, when we feel unstuck or put in the past because of that trauma, and we want to move forward, we want to be our authentic self, we want to feel safe within our body, then we have that ability through this beautiful menu, holistic trauma healing. Jacqueline, I just really appreciate you, and I'm wondering, and thank you so much for writing this book for us. Is there any last thing that you would like to say to the listening audience?

Jackie Jackson: 45:03

Oh, well, I I would say that um may you find light in the pages and and your own formula, you know, and and I think that can be pretty fun to be like, oh, well, I'm a person who likes to sing. So for me, I joined a qu this competitive choir for the throat chakra stuff. I thought I'm learning to sing now, and it's so cool because it's also um uncomfortable because we're so competitive. Um, two weeks ago we had our international competition. I was like, okay, this is cool, but also terrifying. And then somatic EMDR, we say we say, if uh breathing, if we like excite anxiety becomes excitement if we breathe through it. So may we find these practical tools with this, you know, work. And I did, I don't know if you have time to ask you a question. Like, do you like with your shadow work? I mean, I think the animal base, I am obsessed with that. And it I just wonder what that's how how you see the crossover with your your beautiful book, if you don't mind me asking.

Granddaughter Crow : 46:08

If we don't have time to no, that's a perfect question. I mean, we began with the integration, and look at you, you little spider woman. Now you're integrating and weaving our books again. It's perfect bookings for this podcast. You know, the beauty around it is we're saying the same thing in different languages. The reason why I'm working, I mean, shadow, trauma, these are scary things. But the truth is that the reason why I work with the wisdom of the natural world and the expressions of the animal kingdom is to embody ourselves to look outside of a humanized psychological lay on the couch and talk about it. And so, you know, this let's work with the the raven and the snake and the wolf and the owl. And so I guess the best way to explain it is to reflect back on what you just said that this technique is also known as the eagle in some older things. Well, it's the same thing. I'm doing the eagle, I'm bringing the eagle, I'm just not doing it in a yoga thing, which would kind of be fun if we could get together and do yoga poses for the four like shadow animals to help that. We never know, people. We never know, but with that, I just love, love, love having you on the show with your expertise, so humble and graceful. And you know, you can talk to Jackie, you know, Jacquelynjackson.net, and you can connect with her. She's got stuff going on. Definitely pick up this book, buy it for yourself, buy it for a friend, buy it for your, you know, your parent and your child so that you don't have to sandwich stuff. You know, I'm just saying that's a good one. Yeah. I know it's Christmas time. Let's buy this. But nevertheless, thank you so much for writing this book for living a life that makes holistic trauma healing tangible as an example. If Jacqueline can do it, I can do it too.

Jackie Jackson: 48:34

So, anyway, thank you, listeners. Thank you so much. Yeah, and if people do reach out to me, I actually do get back to you. And if you want to uh reach out, I'll send you one of those little here's the toolkit, like here's some ideas. And then so you know, reach out. I do, I do get back to people. I I'm I'm into it. Reach into the internet.

Granddaughter Crow : 48:52

And Jacquelinejackson.net, reach out and you get a free gift. You heard it here. I believe being and beyond with Granddaughter Crow. Nevertheless, people hit the like, subscribe notification. And if this one is one that you are like, whoa, there's something here, pick up the book, share this podcast, and always, always, always you are loved. And I will see you on the flippity flip.