Perimenopause, Grief, Inner Teen & Sound Healing - Kristy’s Retreat Journey

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There are seasons where your body doesn’t just ask you to slow down… it insists. Perimenopause can be one of those seasons. Not because you’re “falling apart”, but because your system is recalibrating. What used to work (pushing, achieving, rushing, overriding) suddenly stops working. And if you’ve spent years being the capable one, the productive one, the one who keeps going, that shift can feel confronting.

In Podcast Episode 180, Chris and Filly from Chris and Filly Functional Medicine are joined by Kristy Russell — a past Ending Body Burnout Method client who recently attended Chris and Filly’s first retreat, The Body Knows. Kristy opens up about her perimenopausal season, stored grief, letting go of younger versions of herself, and the surprising healing that came from giving her “inner teen” permission to simply be. She also shares the science and therapy behind communal singing and sound baths, and why sound healing can be such a powerful tool for nervous system regulation.

This is one of those “evidence collecting” episodes — real-life proof that healing is possible. Not perfect. Not linear. But real.

Kristy Russell: Music, Neuroscience and a Trauma-Responsive Approach to Holistic Wellness

Kristy’s background is a beautiful blend of music, psychology, education and holistic wellbeing. She’s a musician, educator, intuitive healer, nature-lover and self-confessed neuroscience nerd, based on the North-West coast of Tasmania/lutruwita with her husband and kids. She runs a weekly community choir and offers music and wellbeing workshops through her small business, Moovers n Shakers Music.

If you’d like to learn more about Kristy and her music and sound healing work, you can find her here

What makes Kristy’s story so relevant to a wellness journey is that she embodies the bridge between science and spirit. She’s currently studying Advanced Sound Therapy and is integrating ancient traditions and spirituality with contemporary neuroscience — which is exactly the kind of integrative medicine lens that supports whole body health.

Why Perimenopause Can Be a Portal (Not a Problem)

Kristy shares how she recently left a corporate job before burnout and honoured her body and her current perimenopausal season. That’s a big deal. Many people don’t notice the signs until they’re already deep in the crash: fatigue, anxiety, gut issues, insomnia, mood changes, inflammation, and the feeling that your resilience has disappeared.

From a burnout functional medicine perspective, perimenopause can amplify whatever has been building under the surface. Hormones are shifting, yes — but so is your capacity for stress, your need for rest, and your tolerance for living out of alignment.

This is why root cause medicine is so important in perimenopause. If you only treat hormones, you can miss the bigger picture: nervous system load, emotional stress, identity shifts, and the deeper patterns that keep your body in survival mode.

Kristy’s story shows that sometimes the most powerful healing move is not “doing more”. It’s listening earlier.

The Retreat as an Aligned Yes: When Your Body Knows Before Your Mind Does

Kristy describes the retreat as a big aligned yes the moment she heard about it — to support her in this transitional period.

That’s something many people recognise in hindsight: your body often knows what you need before your mind can justify it. The mind wants certainty. The mind wants to know it will be worth it. The mind wants to minimise risk. But the body is tracking something else: safety, space, connection, and the chance to soften.

A retreat can create a container where healing naturally becomes more accessible because you’re removed from the environment that reinforces old patterns. You’re not in the same kitchen, the same inbox, the same pace, the same “shoulds”. Your nervous system gets a new set of cues.

If you’re feeling called to a deeper in-person experience, you can join Heart Meets Land Retreat (limited spaces available)

Stored Grief: When the Body Holds What the Mind Moves Past

One of the most tender parts of Kristy’s journey is discovering that her body was holding stored grief about leaving her job.

Grief isn’t only about death. It can be grief for an identity. A chapter. A version of you that worked hard to survive. A role you played for years. A dream you outgrew. A life you’re no longer available for.

In mind body medicine, grief is not just emotional — it’s physiological. Unprocessed grief can live in the nervous system as tension, fatigue, shutdown, or hypervigilance. It can show up as headaches, gut symptoms, sleep disruption, and that feeling of being “on edge” without knowing why.

Kristy’s experience is a reminder that healing from within often includes letting yourself feel what you didn’t have space to feel at the time. And when you do, the body can finally exhale.

Meeting the Inner Teen: Permission to Stop Achieving and Start Being

Kristy shares about meeting her inner teen and giving her inner teen permission to stop doing and achieving — allowing her to rest, potter, and create beautiful things for the sake of creating beautiful things.

This is huge for health optimisation, because so many people in body burnout have a nervous system that equates safety with productivity. If you’re not achieving, you feel uneasy. If you’re not useful, you feel guilty. If you’re not progressing, you feel like you’re falling behind.

But perimenopause often asks a different question: what if you didn’t have to earn rest? What if you didn’t have to prove your worth? What if being was enough?

In holistic wellness, this is not a “nice idea”. It’s a nervous system rewire. When you give yourself permission to be, your body receives a new message: “I am safe even when I’m not performing.”

That’s the kind of message that supports healing naturally.

The Migraine on Day 2: The Ultimate Pressure Test to Just Be

Kristy woke up with a migraine on Day 2 of the retreat — and she describes it as the ultimate pressure test to just be.

This is such a real moment. Because it’s one thing to say you’re going to rest. It’s another thing to rest when your body is uncomfortable and your mind wants to fix, push, or control.

In burnout functional medicine, symptoms often flare when you finally slow down. Not because slowing down is wrong, but because your system is coming out of adrenaline. Your body starts processing what it’s been holding. Your nervous system starts recalibrating.

Kristy’s migraine becomes part of the healing story: a moment where the body asks, “Can you stay with yourself even now?” And when you can, you build self-trust — which is a cornerstone of whole body health.

Communal Singing: The Neuroscience of Connection and Regulation

Kristy also shares the neuroscience around communal singing and what happens at an energetic and spiritual level when we sing together to heal.

From a science perspective, communal singing can support:

Co-regulation and nervous system safety

Humans are wired for connection. Singing together can create synchrony — breath, rhythm, and shared experience — which signals safety to the nervous system.

Vagal tone and breath regulation

Singing naturally changes breathing patterns, often encouraging longer exhales and more diaphragmatic breathing, which supports parasympathetic activation.

Belonging and emotional release

Many people feel emotion rise when they sing in a group. That release can be part of healing from within, especially for people who have been holding it together for years.

This is integrative medicine in action: using the body, breath, sound, and community to support regulation — not just relying on cognitive strategies.

Sound Baths: Grounding, Safety and Deep Regulation

Kristy talks about crafting a sound bath experience for deep grounding, safety and regulation.

Sound baths can be supportive because they give the nervous system a non-verbal way to downshift. For people who are stuck in overthinking, sound can bypass the mind and speak directly to the body. It can help you feel held without needing to explain anything.

In holistic health terms, sound baths can be part of functional nutrition and lifestyle support because regulation improves digestion, sleep, hormone balance, and immune resilience. When your nervous system feels safer, your body can do more repair.

“Allergic” to Rushing: A New Kind of Healthy Living

Kristy shares that being “allergic” to rushing is a great thing now.

That line is such a perfect summary of a healed nervous system. When you’ve been in survival mode, rushing feels normal. When you start healing, rushing starts to feel wrong — not morally wrong, but physiologically wrong. Your body says, “No thanks.”

That’s healthy living. That’s preventative health. That’s your system protecting you in a wise way.

Want to Start Rewiring Your Own Ending Body Burnout Patterns?

If Kristy’s story has you thinking, “I want that kind of internal peace”, here are a few gentle next steps.

You can take our Ending Body Burnout Assessment

You can also register for our FREE Live Coaching Week: Rewire The Brain To Heal Body Burnout

And if you want first access and early-bird bonuses, doors are opening in October for the 6-month Ending Body Burnout Method program — you can join the waitlist

If you’d like more “evidence collecting”, you can also listen to Kristy’s Ending Body Burnout healing story here (Ep.59):

And if you’d like a calm, no-pressure conversation about what support could look like for you, you’re warmly invited to book a Discovery Call or connect the dots with us.

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 3,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 30+ 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, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards.