The power of destiny and free will in fueling our dreams with Eli Walker of Drunk Yoga®

“It’s not this or that, it’s always a little bit of everything. The question you should be asking is why are you seeing this truth, instead of the one that makes you happy? The point of everything is joy, and yoga serves you so that you can live a joyful life. You don’t serve yoga, and it doesn’t owe you anything.” - Eli Walker

I’m so excited to be bringing you this episode of Brave By Design, where I speak with a powerful woman whose mission is to challenge social norms and provide you with tools for self-empowerment to cultivate personal joy. 

Eli Walker originally created Divine Your Story™ in the summer of 2017 as a teaching method to help individuals rethink their relationship with joy. She deployed this in the form of yoga retreats, workshops, and one-on-one Happiness Consulting.

Later in 2017, she launched her second company, Drunk Yoga®, which quickly rose to international acclaim. As a result of its swift success, she shifted her focus to pioneering a new genre of yoga that “intoxicated” convention by infusing the practice with the social ritual of a happy hour for the purpose of igniting joy through tangible connection to community.

Connect with Eli: http://eliwalkerprojects.com/ 

Connect with Laura Khalil online:

instagram.com/iambravebydesign

linkedIn.com/in/LauraKhalil

Learn the five habits that help women rise:

http://bravebydesign.net/fivehabits 

Invite Laura to speak at your live or virtual event http://bravebydesign.net

What You’ll Hear In This Episode: 

• What inspired Eli to bring Drunk Yoga to the world [2:02]
  
  
• The type of yoga she discovered while traveling the globe that quite literally changed her life [13:12]
  
  
• How Eli and her team teach joy through both yoga and community building [17:11]
  
  
• Her thoughts on becoming an “overnight success” [23:00]
  
  
• The way Eli shed certain relationships as she rose - and how you can do the same [33:22] 

Additional Links & Resources:

Eli and Drunk Yoga on Instagram

Her Book, Drunk Yoga: 50 Wine & Yoga Poses to Lift Your Spirit(s)

Divine Your Story™

Katonah Yoga

Transcript

Eli Walker: 0:00

We have this physical expression of our internal narrative, and that we have an internal expression of our physical narratives. You know, and the real rub, you know, and compression comes between the alignment of those two things. You know, what's the story that's happening inside of me? And what's the story that's happening outside of me? And how can I reconcile these two things and bring them into alignment?

Laura Khalil: 0:22

Welcome to brave by design. I'm your host, Laura Khalil. I'm an entrepreneur, coach and speaker. I love thinking big, exploring the power of personal development and sharing the best strategies from thought leaders and pioneers in business to empower ambitious women and allies to bravely rise and thrive. Let's get started. Everyone, welcome to this episode of brave by design. I'm your host, Laura Khalil, and I am so excited to bring you today's guest. Melanie Weller is the world's leading expert in opening the door to health, performance and innovation through the Vegas nerve. That's the bridge between our narratives and our physical experience. a storyteller for the human body. Melanie has extensive background in stress management, chronic conditions, and people who haven't yet found success. She now focuses on strengthening the leading edge in businesses, speakers, entertainers, athletes, artists and medical professionals. Melanie is a physical therapist, board certified orthopedic, clinical specialist, certified athletic trainer and certified exercise expert for aging adults. Wow. Melanie, welcome to brave by design. Thank you, Laura. You know, when I learned about you, I had heard a little bit about the Vegas nerve, I'm going to assume that our audience knows, they're probably listening to this, like, What are you talking about right now? So we'll get to that. But I wanted to start with, just tell us your story. How did you even get into this? And then we'll sort of demystify what the biggest nerve is and how that can help.

Eli Walker: 2:08

Well, I will say, so I've been a physical therapist for almost 25 years now. And I, when I started my own practice, a couple of years into that I was always kind of doing my reputation locally is that on the body whisperer, and I was kind of everybody's secret. And, you know, like, as you introduced me, I've spent I worked hard. And I spent a lot of years collecting credentials. Mm hmm. After my name. And my world really came apart a few years into having my own business, my body started falling apart. I was having a lot of stress in my marriage. And I had a professional lawsuit. That was my gosh, oh, no. And, you know, and so it was just like, I was literally crumbling at every, you know, you know, my whole, like, Who am I? And why am I doing this, you know, was really challenging, you know, that it was showing up. Physically, I was having a lot of foot pain problems, and my blood pressure had gotten really high. And like, I take care of myself, it's like, Where's this coming from,

Laura Khalil: 3:18

and you're just falling apart.

Eli Walker: 3:20

And I'm completely falling apart on all like, in all dimensions of my life. Like, it wasn't just happening in my work. Like, uh, you know, it was, you know, it was personal, and it was relationship and that way, you know, it was everything was just coming unglued. And, you know, in hindsight, I will say what I say I'm very hardwired for logic, like, logic. But I think I didn't really own how intuitive I was for most of my life. And I thought my intuition and my logic are the same thing. And this was part of really having that peeled apart. What's the word? Very interesting point, we're okay. And so in the throes of all of that my intuition, like the lid came off my intuition and, you know, and I've always spoken to clients and metaphor a lot, you know, and we get them to describe to me what, you know, what it's their experience in their body felt like to them, you know, and non clinical like, in their own words, right? And not non clinical terms. And when I started describing the things that I was perceiving on the movie screen in my own head, they would say things back to me like Melanie you just described my grandmother and the outfit we buried her in. And like I have no idea that that was like in the scope of my skill set. You know, like that just so you described what your clients Yeah, I was like, Oh, it's like I see this you know, reference that was really the beginning of it and because she was great. She's like, let me know if you get an intuitive messages and I said, Oh, it's like I see this older woman with you know, white hair that's current and she's wearing a pink suit. has a pink orchid on her lapel and she looked at me like Melanie, that's my grandmother, she knew exactly what it was. And so, you know, that was very uncomfortable for me, because that did not fit into my logic circuits, it was kind of fun and thrilling to I was like, oh, look what I can do. And so this learning to really trust my inner being, and my inner sense, you know, was a huge part of what this is about. And, and for all of my experiences with clients where sometimes appears that I seem to pull things out of thin air I, like I knew in my core that there's a logic to this. And then you don't have to be super intuitive or that you know that there's a very grounded way to approach this. And because my superpower for years is really helping people identify the spiritual and stress related underpinnings of their physical dysfunction, in working with chronic pain patients and others that just haven't found success, you know, in their medical situations. My observation was that what was happening inside of their body was very metaphoric for what was happening outside of their body. Oh, my God. 100%.

Laura Khalil: 6:14

Totally.

Eli Walker: 6:15

And so, you know, and the universe is just so well organized. It's like, there has to be like a structure to this, right?

Laura Khalil: 6:23

Why is this happening?

Eli Walker: 6:24

Yeah. Why is this happening and something that like I knew about chakras and things like that, but, you know, but to me, there was another level of all of that, that was still waiting to be uncovered. And so part of what I had done in the midst of the throes of my own midlife spiritual awakening, was to study astrology. And I had in concurrent with this, I had offered a free online stress management thing, it was close to the holidays, okay, five or six years ago, and I ended up talking a lot about the ventricles of the brain that makes cerebral spinal fluid, okay. And ventricles in your brain that makes cerebral spinal fluid look just like the Ram's horns in Aries and in astrology Aries rules the head.

Laura Khalil: 7:10

Oh, interesting.

Eli Walker: 7:12

The way your hyoid bone sits on top of your larynx looks just like the symbol for Taurus, and Taurus rules the throat. And beyond that, so I had been while back up a second, I had been reading about how mythology was a mode of scientific writing. And so then, like when this all started to come together, I was like, Oh, these stories can really help connect people with what this underlying stresses because your vagus nerve, which we'll talk about in a minute, gets pinched at very specific spots in Bobby.

Unknown: 7:46

Okay.

Eli Walker: 7:47

And that, you know, when you're looking at kind of what is that rub between those two points or that spot, you know, above and below where the nerve pierces through a structure. I think that the story is not only through Western astrology, but this works through the Vedas. And this works in in the Egyptian mythology, and it really just works. When you look at anatomy through archetype and through story, you can really start to put lots of you know, to put these pieces together and the difference between acute subacute and chronic pain is that chronic pain gets locked into your limbic system, which is where our emotions are, and you need an emotional key to get it out. And, and I would extend that not just to chronic pain, but to our chronic stories and our chronic beliefs and those ways that we're, you know, addicted to being right or addicted to a particular paradigm.

Laura Khalil: 8:43

Yeah. So it Melanie, I have so many questions, so hang on. So first of all, this is fascinating. First of all, so it sounds like you use this knowledge recombine astrology, mythology, and where the points where the vagus nerve was pinched to sort of do that unlocking for yourself

Eli Walker: 9:02

salutely so right so here I was the stress management expert completely coming up.

Laura Khalil: 9:07

Of course, you

Eli Walker: 9:08

were I mean, that's, that's awesome. What happens to us? It is we all do the thing we need most to heal ourselves. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you unlock this stuff. Now? Where is the vagus nerve? the vagus nerve goes all the way from your brainstem down to your pelvis. It's outside of your spinal cord.

Laura Khalil: 9:29

Okay, and what is it like control?

Eli Walker: 9:32

So it's the major component of your parasympathetic nervous system. So we have our fight and flight, which is our sympathetic nervous system, and we have our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest our grace under pressure. And it's also our pleasure pathway.

Laura Khalil: 9:49

You just speak in my language, no, Melanie. So let me ask you, so if the vagus nerve, so how does it get pinched? Or how does it have these like, how do these problems with it occur? Do we have some sort Common thought around that?

Eli Walker: 10:02

Well, yes, I'll just preface this just give everybody a little idea of how they're familiar when their biggest nerve is not working. Okay, great. So public speaking is a great example. You know, or when you do something that makes you nervous, like, you know, most people have a little bit of fear, yeah, datian around public speaking. And you get a lump in your throat, and your palms sweat, and your heart races, and your digestion alters. And you get those symptoms because your vagus nerve has been dialed down your Vegas nerve mediates all of those things, the lump in your throat, your really lands, it innervates your heart, and it innervates your digestive system. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what it does, it's in almost all of your organs, it sends more information up to your brain than from your brain down to your organs. But it is from a motor standpoint, it innervates your vocal cords, your heart and your digestive system. And I as a physical therapist, I was introduced to decompressing it at the base of the skull many years ago. And my interest in it was really piqued by the fact that it uses the same neurotransmitter that your muscles do. And so you get these really beautiful, musculoskeletal shifts. And you treat the Vegas nerve. So as a physical therapist, if I had someone who wasn't getting better or wasn't getting better, as I even expected them to be like, you know, if I'll say for example, if they had a knee problem that wasn't getting better, I would go decompress their vagus nerve at the base of their skull, and then their knee would be so much better afterwards. And it was really incredible magic trick. That was, I mean, should we just use this for everything? Well, I think it's an incredible place to start. It does. It's the number of things that it fixes and the speed with which it does that, to me is really profound. And to answer your question about kind of like why it gets pinched, yeah, or stressed, we know that stress and trauma always affect the voice in the breath. Oh, wow, that's understood in the research and research terms to and then we understand that experientially, that when we have a trauma, we scream, or we can't scream, or we gas, you know, or like we lose our breath, my mind

Laura Khalil: 12:17

is being blown right now.

Eli Walker: 12:19

And your vocal cords and your diaphragm or horizontal muscles, okay, what does that mean? They're oriented, so they go across the body, horizontally, like they snap this into layers if you wanted to think of that. And so, but there are other points in the body where you have horizontal structures, that also locations where the vagus nerve can get compressed, like for example, even the pelvic floor like people will sometimes lose valor bladder control in the midst of the severe trauma. And it gets pinched around the backside of our hearts at the level where our pulmonary artery and vein are oriented horizontally and and also can get pinched the base of skull and like a what I would call your thoracic inlet, the opening to your ribcage at the top. So it gets pinched at all these horizontal points is what I'm hearing and those are the primary absolute primary, it gets pinched at the horizontal points. And yeah, so if we take the diaphragm, for example, I think this is a really easy place to tie it kind of into that bigger cosmology sort of all, you know, and you know, it's all say one of the things I discovered in looking at how mythology was a mode of scientific writing, is exploring the earth is at a 23 and a half degree tilt. My PT brain was like, oh, what's 23 and a half degrees from the midline of the body, hmm. And where your vagus nerve exits the base of your skull 23 and a half degrees from the center of where your spinal cord exits and the earth at about a 23 and a half degree tilt and normal rotation that your first and second cervical vertebrae is 47 degrees to each side. So it's twice that 23. And there's 47 degrees between the pole stars that the earth orients to over thousands and thousands of years. And so they're all the there are these angles in the body that I was already familiar with that matched just math. You know, what's so interesting is it's kind of like that whole concept of As above, so below, it is. And I think that that's really the

Laura Khalil: 14:18

only rule we ever follow. But yeah, I love that. So, here's what I want to understand. Melanie, people are listening to this and probably like me, their jaws dropping and they're like, WTF, whoa, what is this about? And what I want to know is for the average woman in business, who is feeling like, Do I have a problem with my Vegas nerve? Do I need to do call it sublimate the Vegas nerve? I'm not sure what the language is. They call it decompress. decompress the Vegas nerve. Yes. How would they know what would some of the symptoms be around having troubles with the vagus nerve and I know you were speaking about the esophagus, but let's go into that.

Eli Walker: 14:54

Sure. So the diaphragm is like is one point that it gets compressed and it also has humans, we have more muscle mass on the right side of our diaphragm than we do on the left. Why radically the right side will always win? Well, I'm sure it has some, it's somewhat to do with the fact that most people are right handed, your liver is also on the right side. And it's much bigger than you imagine. And the body lays down cells in response to stress, like even good stress, you know, tension. And so there's just more of a stimulus on that side to lay down. Okay, more cells. And it's like our hearts a little bit off to the left. It's part of our inherent asymmetry. But for me, when, and I'll come back to your question in just a second. But for me, when people are tight on the right, and they're all compressed down, and they might have a low right shoulder, the right side of their neck is tight, or their right hip hurts, you know, those are the easy connections to me. Oh, okay, that, but the earth below us in the solar system above us are spinning the opposite direction that we're out of alignment on a much bigger scale. Oh, wow. And so symptomatically, like the easy things that will show up with it, you know, can really be physical pain of any kind, particularly neck tightness, like that's an easy one. Mm hmm. You know, shoulder limitations. reflux has a strong component of a compressed vagus nerve. Especially if you've gotten to the point where you have a hiatal hernia, then you've really got some significant compression there.

Laura Khalil: 16:25

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, even.

Eli Walker: 16:29

I have one of the accidental discoveries that I've found through doing this is that even pelvic pain and difficulty with sexual arousal and orgasm can be related to Vegas nerve compression. Really, that isn't usually why people come to see me in the first place. I'm not a pelvic floor specialist. Okay, but they come, they usually come to me for back pain. And then they maybe tell me that, you know, since their child was born 10 years ago, that they've had pain with intercourse, or with sexual activity, and then they'd come back the next visit, and tell me that they're like, Melanie, what did you do, my pain is gone. And my sex drive is through the roof. Really, it was just one of those strange chapter, you know. And so like I've talked with, there's this sex coach locally that I've talked with about this, because some of the techniques that she's used, she has a technique for sexual arousal that involves stimulation on the roof of the mouth, and I will use cranial technique on the roof of the mouth to open up the vagus nerve when it's really compressed to and so we've had some really interesting conversations about where our work

Laura Khalil: 17:39

overlaps. You sound like a magician to me. Coming to you, I'm like, What the heck? How do we do this? Like, this is so interesting. I'm sure a lot of people are listening. And they're thinking, Oh, I'm really tense in this area, or I'm very tight. I mean, I can tell you like, as you're talking, you're talking about the right hip. I'm like, Yes, my right hip hurts my right knee hurts. And it's really funny, because I know that from my own understanding, I believe that the right side is the masculine side, in the left sides, the feminine side. And so yeah, okay, so every time I think about my knee hurting, I often go to kind of like that semantic intelligence around. Well, what are you having trouble moving forward with? Like, were you feeling stuck? were you feeling trapped? And I always like, go through that I go through the thought experiment, but I can't seem to unlock it.

Eli Walker: 18:33

I think that I'm so glad that you brought that example, because I think that's just a perfect one. Like, I would look at the situation and see like, Where are your inspiration and your structures at odds with each other? You know, like, sometimes we have these really brilliant ideas, but then like, the structure of our life doesn't allow us to, to do that to do that. Or it makes it more challenging, you know, and it impairs our memory of like, who we really are at our deepest levels of bones, you know, in a metaphysical sense, bones, crystals and rocks hold our oldest memories. Wow. And so Wow, okay. But I'll tell you, like, where probably the most obvious and common situation I see with women and female entrepreneurs, and leaders, is where their heroics are at odds with their desires.

Laura Khalil: 19:27

Okay, what do you mean?

Eli Walker: 19:28

So they are often being the hero in someone else's story, and not their own. And they have no idea what they really want. If you ask them what they really want, they really don't know because we're all you know, we've been so conditioned to be the hero in our significant other stories, the hero in our children's stories, and to help everybody else get what they want. Yeah. But when it comes to really tapping into that, deeper memory and that you know, and our deeper vision, you know, And what are the desires that go along with that is almost universally very challenging and my clientele.

Laura Khalil: 20:07

Wow. So Melanie, when you're working with people, and if there are women listening to this, who are like nodding their heads right now and they're like, yep, that sounds like my problem I've you know, martyred myself to my job, my husband, my children, and I feel a little bit lost, you know, I don't know how to advocate for myself. Where do we start?

Eli Walker: 20:29

I think that Well, I'll tell you, one, I think starting with on my website, if you opt in on my homepage, Melanie wyler.com, it will send you a free Vegas nerve decompression course, it's an hour long head to toe thing, and it teaches you how to evaluate where you're compressed, and treat it yourself as well, really. So you can really take yourself through this process. The beautiful thing about these exercises, they're very simple, they're largely breath based, you know, you get into a position and do breaths in a particular pattern. So they're not difficult and you can adapt them for any limitations you have, the great thing about the brain is that it doesn't see the difference between imagining doing it and actually doing it, you know, adapted for your physical situation as you know, as you need to, and just getting some flow of vertical flow in your body, because when these horizontal structures are compressed, it's not only compressing the vagus nerve, it's compressing your arteries and your veins and your lymphatics and you know, the other things that go vertically through the body, and it's compressing the vertical flow of energy as well. And so by just opening up these spaces, you take a layer, it's kind of like cleaning the windshield, okay, you know, you just take a layer of stuff off so that then the situation becomes a little clearer. Because it can be when you've been in the fog for a long time you sort of forget the sun exists, Isn't that the truth? It really is. And so part of that is getting into that vertical flow would be, you know, doing some of these exercises that you have on your website. Absolutely, yeah. And I think that that's just because we're physical beings and our bodies speak, you know, this physical language, I think getting it into the body is so incredibly important. And I would say that even when we use mindset techniques, successfully, that we haven't really changed our mindset, we've changed our body set, hmm, that you've really embodied it at the level to make it real. Like when we, in my clients, they've, a lot of them have used mindset techniques, but haven't really gotten them into the body, you know, like at a cellular level at a cellular level, that you've got to embody it for it to really be transformational. And I would argue the people that use them very transformational are really good at embodying them.

Laura Khalil: 22:54

So I'm wondering if people do these techniques, let's say, you know, we do the technique, are there are side effects that come with releasing things that no longer serve us? So a lot of people I've noticed, so sometimes when I've had really transformational experiences that have felt very embodied, like I'll get sick. Yeah. And I often attribute that to the body releasing the toxins or whatever it is that it doesn't need anymore. And so do you notice that as well in your work with the vagus nerve?

Eli Walker: 23:25

It's quite rare. It used to be before I was doing this vagus nerve compression, systemically really looking at it head to toe, I would get people with more treatment reactions like that.

Laura Khalil: 23:36

Oh, okay. Interesting

Eli Walker: 23:38

is much rarer than it used to be overwhelming, like people will feel better. The worst thing that usually happens is that they get sore, like they've worked out. Oh, really, you know, too much, you know, or like, or not too much, but hard. You know that because they're using muscles in a different way. And they're moving differently. Melanie? Is it something that we do once and it's just kind of integrated? Or is it part of a daily practice that people are wise to adopt? Well, I think you don't certainly have to do all of them every day. But I think having practice at least a few times a week is really helpful because life is out there. You know, like things happen to us, you know, totally should have zagged and I think is a good practice. It does work very quickly to where you don't always need to do a lot of it. Melanie, I am so curious. Can you give us one example right now? Sure. Okay, I'm with you to release the diaphragm. Okay, and if you you know, for listeners if you're like you cannot do this while you're driving.

Laura Khalil: 24:41

Okay, everyone pull over

Eli Walker: 24:45

a good safe place while you're doing this. And you cross your left ankle in front of your right and just very gently sluice close together. You take your right hand and put it on outside If your left thigh or is that as you can get to your left hand and put it behind your head, because you don't have any shoulder choose or you know, this shouldn't torture you if you're wrinkling your forehead because it's uncomfortable, like back off and make it comfortable for yourself. And then what you're going to do is in the count of five, hold your breath for a count of eight. And exhale, like you're blowing up a balloon or blowing out a candle, like giving the air a little bit of resistance for a count of 13, or as long as you can. And if five 813 is too long for you can do 358, or you inhale for three, hold for five, and exhale for eight, okay? To Do you know, a full set would be four or five breaths. And you could certainly do three to five sets of, you know, three to five breaths kind of in that range. But it doesn't have to be anything. You know, like, that's pretty easy. As it goes,

Laura Khalil: 25:59

Yeah, I was trying to do it. As you were talking, Melanie, it's a little hard with all my podcasting gear on like my headset and stuff. But I was like, this is really interesting. And I had like an did one round. And I had like an immediate, like, I feel like an immediate burst of energy.

Eli Walker: 26:14

Oh, that's exciting. I love that. Yeah, it's incredibly fast. And like, I love this, especially, I'll tell you like I've like if I live in New Orleans, and we have a lot of uneven sidewalks, like old Riyadh or upgrading the sidewalks and things like that. And so like if I trip and fall, you know, while I'm walking or running shoes like that, because I don't even sidewalks. That's a really nice exercise to prevent, that fall from spiraling out of control and into anything worse. You know, so you, like if you help somebody move their sofa and think, Oh, I'm gonna pay for that later?

Laura Khalil: 26:54

Oh, my gosh, there's

Eli Walker: 26:57

I kind of mitigate the effects of that. Really? Yeah, I've had it work, you know, for myself and my clients just so many times. And so they're very magical kind of in in that sense. And I do I so appreciate you seeing me as a magician, because I do I do like my challenge in my business, then that my work has so many applications that really honing my target audience, you know, is teaching my business has been kind of challenging, because it's, it's boring to me to nature. And you know, to be honest with you, Melanie, I think that's the problem that most of us have is like, drilling down and like I only want to help this group of people, and it can feel very limiting. Ultimately, you know, as someone who advises businesses, I'd be like, well, ultimately, it's actually quite expensive. But I totally understand that because it can help people and no, that was very interesting. So when you're crossing your legs, I guess you're hitting the Vegas nerve somewhere, and then you're putting your hand, right hand over to your left hip, that sort of, you're activating it or you're wrapping yourself up, you could maybe think of it kind of like a helix. Okay, now that you're wrapping yourself up, like a strand of DNA, you know, a little bit it really, I believe, works more your vagus nerve, because it innervates Your heart is a huge part of what creates the electromagnetic field of the heart. And we know through research that the electromagnetic fields of our hearts are measurable, and that they synchronize with the electromagnetic field of the Earth. For example, when solar in space weather disrupt the electromagnetic field of the Earth, it's measurable in our Vegas nerves. Really? Yes. And so, and that electromagnetic field is shaped, it's called a toroidal field as the shape of it, and it looks kind of like a doughnut. It's got a hole in the center, you know, and it's round, like a tall, you know, tall doughnut. And so the theoretical basis for why this works, I believe, is that it engages your electromagnetic field. And so it really it not only shifts your body, but it shifts. Your energy is shifts culture, you know, like your thermostat like reboots your thermostat, and it's like putting you in alignment. Not just with yourself, but with the earth with the universe. Like you're really getting a much bigger scale. Yeah, I think we think way too small about alignment. Wow, Melanie, I feel like we could talk about this for two more hours because

Laura Khalil: 29:30

I am just I'm like we have just just gone over really scraped the surface of the Vegas nerve. So I want to ask you one thing for people who are listening who are like OMG, WTF, should I use this? What are the most common sort of reasons people would use it? And let's just say like, is it when you're stressed? Is it when you have body pain is that like, what are the things that would really help our listeners who are thinking is this for me?

Eli Walker: 29:59

Well, I think The easy answer to that is any orthopedic pain, joint pain kind of thing would be, absolutely go to my part of my goal with like bringing this out and particularly framing it leads, vagus nerve compression points as leadership compression points or points, you know, or leadership expansion points is, you know, talking about like where your heroics and your desires are at odds with each other is different in this so that you don't end up in my office or somebody else's office when I mean, you know, or that where your adaptability is at odds with your emotions, you know, that you help, you know, you bring awareness to that. So you don't end up in my office or somebody's office, right shoulder pain, you know, that there's this, you know, to really, so I think that you absolutely can work it on the front end. And I think anytime that you are having a you know, asking yourself even like who, what, when, where how, you know, that you know, that you're just kind of questioning what's going on that this is these can be rituals that help bring clarity.

Laura Khalil: 31:02

I love it. You know, this reminds me and I know that a lot of our listeners are familiar with the book, the body keeps the score. So if anyone is listening to this thinking, I think this is a little too woowoo for me, or I don't I don't know how to make heads or tails of that, I want you to remember that we have science that validates that your trauma is stored within your body, and your body has a lot of somatic intelligence to share with you. And that sometimes these aches and pains as Melanie saying, are expressions of things that need to be released. And I love this whole sense of asking yourself, what stories Am I living in? And what stories? What story do I want to be in? I mean, that really, that really hits me in the core, because I think that we had, I'm a huge like Joseph Campbell mythology person. And I think so many people are living in kind of an unintended life, where they don't realize that they're the hero or heroine of their journey, they don't take up the mantle to go fight for that one thing that they are uniquely positioned to do on this planet, because as you said, so busy doing things that are really not in their zone of genius, but are helping others but you know, putting themselves second, and then somatically, it shows up as like your body being like, Hey, hey, pay attention to me, I have some information for you. Is that how you see it? Melanie?

Eli Walker: 32:28

Absolutely. And I think by the time it shows up in the body, like it's been hanging around for a while, like, you know, or that awareness isn't always the first thing, you know, like your it'll show it very subtly, you know, in the early stages, races in the later stages. And I think really, you know, seeing our bodies as fractals of the cosmos, and you know, that we have this physical expression of our internal narrative, and that we have an internal expression of our physical narratives, you know, and that the the real rub, you know, and compression comes between the alignment of those two things, you know, what's the story that's happening inside of me? And what's the story that's happening outside of me? And how can I reconcile these two things and bring them into alignment? Melanie, this has been incredible for people who want to learn more, where can they go? How can they learn more about working with the vagus nerve and all the incredible resources that you have to share? If you go to my website, Melanie Weller calm, and often, it will send you some free resources both for the physical response physical restriction aspect, as well as workbook on reflecting how these issues are showing up in your business, as well or you know, are the stories showing up, you know, and maybe in more subtle ways, as well, and all of my social media is embody your star, and my contact information is all over my website. I'd love to hear from people, so please feel free to reach out. I love it. Melanie, thank you so much for joining us on brave by design. Thank you so much, Laura.

Laura Khalil: 34:01

I want to thank you for joining me and remember to subscribe to your favorite app so you can stay up to date, and I would love your review. If you've enjoyed this episode. Please leave a review and comment on Apple podcasts. You can also keep in touch with me online. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm also on Instagram at force of badassery. All that information will be available in the show notes. Until next time, stay brave