Feel It To Heal It: Somatic Emotional Processing with Karena Neukirchner

Listen to the full episode.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, we understand that true healing extends far beyond addressing physical symptoms alone. Through our comprehensive Ending Body Burnout Method, we've discovered that somatic emotional processing represents a crucial component of lasting transformation, particularly for individuals caught in patterns of perfectionism, people-pleasing, and chronic over-doing that lead to body burnout.

Understanding Somatic Healing in Holistic Health

Somatic healing represents a revolutionary approach to wellness that recognises the profound connection between our emotional experiences and physical health. At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, we've observed how this integrative medicine approach can create breakthrough healing where traditional methods have fallen short.

The foundation of somatic work lies in understanding that our bodies hold the memory of every experience we've ever had. When we suppress emotions or disconnect from our physical sensations, these unprocessed experiences can manifest as chronic symptoms, anxiety, digestive issues, and the constellation of problems we recognise as body burnout.

Our approach to burnout functional medicine increasingly incorporates somatic principles because we've witnessed how this mind body medicine approach can accelerate healing in ways that purely cognitive or physical interventions cannot achieve alone. The body's wisdom becomes an essential partner in the healing process.

The Journey from Anxiety to Healing Through Somatic Work

The transformative potential of somatic healing becomes evident when we examine real-world applications. Through our work in natural healing and alternative medicine, we've seen how individuals can experience significant improvements in anxiety and other symptoms within relatively short timeframes when they learn to work with their body's natural healing capacity.

The process of metabolising shame through the body represents a particularly powerful aspect of somatic work. Shame often becomes trapped in our physical structure, creating tension patterns and nervous system dysregulation that contribute to chronic health issues. When we learn to feel and process these emotions somatically, we can release their grip on our physical and emotional wellbeing.

Our Ending Body Burnout Method incorporates these principles because we've observed how unresolved shame and other difficult emotions often underlie the perfectionist and people-pleasing patterns that drive body burnout. Addressing these emotions at the somatic level creates space for genuine transformation.

Why Burnout Patterns Create Body Disconnection

Individuals caught in chronic patterns of over-doing, perfectionism, and people-pleasing often develop sophisticated strategies for disconnecting from their bodies and emotions. This disconnection serves as a protective mechanism that allows them to continue functioning despite internal distress, but it comes at a significant cost to their health and wellbeing.

Through our work in holistic wellness and naturopathic medicine, we've identified how this disconnection from bodily sensations and emotions creates a cascade of health problems. When we can't feel what our body is telling us, we miss crucial information about our needs, boundaries, and the impact of our choices on our wellbeing.

The nervous system dysregulation that results from chronic disconnection contributes to inflammation, digestive dysfunction, hormonal imbalances, and the energy depletion characteristic of body burnout. Reconnecting with our somatic experience becomes essential for healing these systemic issues.

The Principle of "Feel It to Heal It"

One of the most fundamental principles of somatic healing involves the understanding that we must feel our emotions and sensations in order to heal them. This concept challenges many people's instinctive desire to avoid or suppress difficult feelings, but it represents a crucial aspect of root cause medicine.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, we've observed how the attempt to bypass difficult emotions often leads to their manifestation as physical symptoms. The body becomes the repository for unexpressed grief, anger, fear, and other challenging emotions that haven't been processed consciously.

The healing from within approach recognises that emotions are energy in motion, and when we interrupt their natural flow through suppression or avoidance, we create stagnation that can manifest as illness. Learning to feel and move these emotions through the body becomes essential for restoring health and vitality.

Holding Space for Self-Judgement and Inner Wisdom

One of the most sophisticated aspects of somatic work involves learning to hold space for all parts of ourselves, including the self-critical voices that often arise during healing work. Rather than trying to eliminate self-judgement, somatic healing teaches us to listen to these voices with curiosity and compassion.

Our approach to personalised medicine recognises that self-judgement often carries important information about our values, boundaries, and unmet needs. When we can hold space for these critical voices without being overwhelmed by them, we can access their wisdom while reducing their power to create suffering.

This process of internal dialogue and integration represents a crucial aspect of healing that goes beyond symptom management to address the underlying patterns that create and maintain illness. The body becomes our ally in this process of self-discovery and transformation.

Somatic Healing Versus Traditional Approaches

The distinction between somatic healing and traditional talk therapy or mindset strategies becomes important for understanding why some individuals don't experience lasting change despite years of conventional treatment. While cognitive approaches work with thoughts and beliefs, somatic healing addresses the felt sense of experience in the body.

Our work in health optimisation has shown how trauma and difficult emotions become encoded in our nervous system and physical structure in ways that purely cognitive approaches cannot always access. Somatic work allows us to address these deeper layers of experience where lasting change can occur.

The integration of somatic principles with functional medicine creates a comprehensive approach that addresses both the physical imbalances contributing to symptoms and the emotional patterns that may be maintaining them. This whole body health approach recognises the interconnection between all aspects of our experience.

Physical Manifestations of Suppressed Emotions

The relationship between suppressed emotions and physical symptoms represents a crucial understanding in preventative health and wellness medicine. When we consistently avoid or suppress difficult feelings, our bodies often develop symptoms as a way of expressing what we cannot or will not acknowledge consciously.

Through our Ending Body Burnout Method, we help clients understand how chronic muscle tension, digestive issues, headaches, and other physical symptoms may be related to unexpressed emotions. This understanding opens new possibilities for healing that address both physical and emotional aspects simultaneously.

The nervous system's role in this process becomes particularly important, as chronic emotional suppression can lead to dysregulation that affects every system in the body. Somatic work helps restore nervous system balance by allowing natural emotional processing to occur.

Practical Applications of Somatic Regulation

Learning practical somatic regulation techniques becomes essential for anyone seeking to heal from body burnout or chronic stress patterns. These practices help restore the nervous system's natural capacity for self-regulation while building resilience for handling future challenges.

Simple practices like conscious breathing, body scanning, and gentle movement can begin to restore the connection between mind and body that is often disrupted in burnout patterns. These techniques become particularly powerful when combined with the comprehensive approach offered through our functional nutrition and lifestyle medicine protocols.

The integration of somatic practices into daily life supports the healing process by creating ongoing opportunities for emotional processing and nervous system regulation. This preventative approach helps maintain the gains achieved through more intensive healing work.

Creating Safety for Emotional Processing

One of the most important aspects of somatic healing involves creating sufficient safety for deep emotional processing to occur. This safety includes both external factors like supportive relationships and internal factors like self-compassion and nervous system regulation.

Our approach to health and wellness recognises that healing happens in relationship, whether with practitioners, community members, or different aspects of ourselves. Creating containers for safe emotional expression becomes essential for accessing the deeper layers of healing.

The Ending Body Burnout Method incorporates these safety principles because we understand that lasting transformation requires an environment where all parts of ourselves can be welcomed and heard. This inclusive approach supports comprehensive healing at multiple levels.

Integration and Sustainable Transformation

The ultimate goal of somatic healing involves integrating new patterns of awareness and response into daily life in ways that support ongoing health and wellbeing. This integration process requires patience and commitment to practicing new ways of being with ourselves and our experiences.

Through our work in healing naturally, we've observed how somatic awareness becomes a lifelong practice that continues to deepen and evolve. The skills developed through this work support not only healing from current symptoms but also resilience for navigating future challenges.

Ready to explore how somatic emotional processing could transform your relationship with your body and accelerate your healing journey? We invite you to discover how our comprehensive approach to mind-body healing could help you access the deeper layers of transformation that create lasting change. Book a Discovery Call with us to learn more about our integrative methodology, or take the first step through our Connect the Dots consultation to begin understanding how somatic healing could support your path to vibrant health.

Remember, your body holds profound wisdom about what needs attention for complete healing. When you're ready to explore this deeper approach to wellness and emotional integration, we're here to guide you on your journey to feeling truly at home in your body and your life.

Listen to the full episode.

Chris & Filipa Bellette are the Founders of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, which is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood and gut issues. They have worked with over 2,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 25+ years, with their own passion for ending body burnout coming from their own personal experience of body, mind, family & business breakdown, after a prolonged period of physical and mental stress.

Filipa is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a Ph.D. Scholar, author & regularly featured the media, such as Forbes, Body+Soul and The Daily Telegraph. Chris is a Burnout Recovery Coach & an accredited Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, with a Bachelor of Human Movement Science. He has existed in high-performance realms of the sporting (think national athlete) & business industries and knows what it takes to get out of hustle-and-grind culture to thriving. 

They were recently awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards 2022, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards 2022.