Today I'm so excited to bring you a very special interview with my trainer and mentor, Donna Phillips. Donna has over 30 years of experience in the health care, wellness and medical industries. She has degrees in exercise physiology, business and holds advanced certifications in both yoga and pilates. She's an outstanding teacher. But what makes her really unique, and why I wanted to introduce her to you today, is that she also happens to be a trauma release exercise certification trainer.

She is passionate about bringing trauma release exercise to the world as a way to safely self regulate stress tension and trauma. We're going to learn a little bit more about what trauma release exercise is, what it does for the body, how it can help us connect and reestablish a friendly relationship within ourselves and safely down regulate the nervous system, so that we can really experience our lives to the fullest.

one of my goals on this podcast is to try to use these conversations to help normalize the experience of trauma so that people don't feel so alone in their experience. And so that when we encounter someone who has maybe a trauma story, or trauma history or maybe is struggling in that moment, we can hold space for them a little bit and maybe extend a little grace for what they are experiencing. And my guest today is a beautiful example of that and of how you he's using his own experience to help others. Jason Sapp is a retired Army sergeant and Iraq or combat veteran, and now a certified professional life coach and author, Jason guides people to more holistic alternative resources to wellness…

There is NO trick to unlocking resilience. No one skill or tool or practice will guarantee that you will never be overwhelmed by stress or trauma. We can’t trick our body’s survival system. And I don’t think we want to even though people try all the time.

There are 3 things that make something feel stressful or traumatic to your nervous system. And you can apply these to situations, relationships, memories, thoughts or injuries, pretty much any experience you’ve had long or short term, present, past or future. Isolation, uncertainty and lack of control. It could be any one of those things or any combination of them.

The good news is that knowing those three components of stress and trauma, we can customize our own behavior to build the kind of unshakeable resilience that so many people are looking for.