25: Healing Collective Trauma Through Somatic Practices with Paula Scatoloni

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Narrator

Hello and welcome to Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. Through raw and heartfelt conversations, we uncover the powerful tools and strategies these individuals use to not only heal themselves, but also inspired those around them. Join us on this incredible journey as we discover the human spirit's remarkable capacity to heal, find hope in the darkest of moments, and ultimately live an elevated life.

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Cherie Lindberg

Well, welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy, and our guest today is Paula Scantaloni. And we were just talking before we started to record. I was getting very excited because we're talking about collective trauma. We were talking about how to use the land for co regulation and semantics. So this is going to be a really a live conversation on many different innovative methods on healing.

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Cherie Lindberg

And I'm going to let Paula introduce herself because I don't feel like I could do it justice with all the different things that you're sharing with the world. So welcome, Paula Scantaloni.

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Paula Scantaloni

Thank you Cherie, I'm pleased to be here and thank you for the podcast. It's a great resource. All right. Well, I'm I'm coming to you from the field of somatic. That's what I'm more known for. But traditionally, you know, been a psychotherapist for 30 years and have worked mostly with understanding ourselves through metaphor and Yunji and archetypes and creative art.

00;01;45;12 - 00;02;15;28

Paula Scantaloni

So when my history is fairly broad, that direction. But in 2013 is when I started my training in somatic experiencing, and that opened my world. And so, like many providers these days, I'm one of the body based providers in the world that teaches and helps people to understand how we hold our history in our body, and that the body's wisdom is actually more accurate than our mind.

00;02;16;04 - 00;02;48;22

Paula Scantaloni

And so I come from that field. What I'm also known for is training therapists and starting to bring the body into treatment. And so I've created different programs. My latest was Embodied Recovery Institute. So that was a program with Rachel Lewis that we developed specifically for eating disorders, because that was in my background. So I'm really coming from working with probably the most disembodied population, Rachel and I, she was a sensory motor psychotherapist and I engaged in that training and also body mind centering.

00;02;48;25 - 00;03;18;03

Paula Scantaloni

So we bring those together to understand eating disorders through the lens of attachment, through the lens of trauma, and through the lens of sensory processing. And so that model and that ability to kind of link between our physiology, our emotions, and our sensory processing system is what I use now in my teachings and my offerings, and really helps us to understand ourselves as a more multi dimensional being.

00;03;18;06 - 00;03;44;27

Paula Scantaloni

Right. And all the ways that we experience the world from the outside, how that impacts us inside, and then how we engage with the outside from that place of knowing. So I'm a poly vagal based clinician and have branched out around Covid. I was utilizing a lot of the work that many of us are trained in now in Somatics Kathy Kane's work, Steve Terrell's work, touch work, more trauma.

00;03;44;27 - 00;04;07;14

Paula Scantaloni

I'm working with, states that are 0 to 3 and really, you know, dropping into the body's wisdom and the narrative. And so when Covid hit, I was not able to do that so much. We weren't seeing people in person anymore. So I did a pivot and I was using Doctor Stephen Porges Safe and Sound Protocol at that time.

00;04;07;17 - 00;04;48;11

Paula Scantaloni

But I realized when I began using it online that I was having the same results as I was having touching people. and I later found out way many years later in conversations with him that that he designed it as a method of, of simulating touch for people that didn't want to be touched. So there's yeah. So there's an interesting a piece about the, the SSP and I studied it for many years all online, all online of what I was picking up and, and what it was doing and, and ended up developing a group based model or using it in healing circles.

00;04;48;11 - 00;05;15;29

Paula Scantaloni

Work really unpacking and rewiring the attachment system, but also even taking it deeper because once we start to work with sound, we move into more of a healing realm and I did a little bit of work with core shamanism and energy work, and so I can work with the SSP now in a way that really exponentiated to facilitate healing at multiple levels.

00;05;16;02 - 00;05;48;27

Paula Scantaloni

And so some of that is indeed, you know, around our our trauma narrative or early attachment narratives, but also how we hold patterns, energetic patterns and frequencies in our whole bio field. And we can engage with that field using sound in the same way you would in a shamanic journey, or if you were to travel to Peru and take psychedelics and have a ceremony where we elicit and invite healing to happen.

00;05;48;27 - 00;06;23;02

Paula Scantaloni

We can use modern sound therapies in the same way, and you don't have to travel all the way across the world for it. So it's, I think, a really interesting way of bridging the ancient with the modern and I'm very much trust the SSP as a psychotherapist. So I don't think of it as a technology. I don't think of it as, you know, what's happening in the nervous systems so much as inviting the sound to go where it needs to go for healing to happen.

00;06;23;04 - 00;06;49;22

Paula Scantaloni

Beautiful. And then supporting that process. And so my groups bring up to ten people at a time, and we set it up in a very similar way as if you were to travel to somewhere and take psychedelics, where you would invite in the ancestors and connect the land and invite nature to be a co participant in the healing process.

00;06;49;24 - 00;07;00;19

Cherie Lindberg

And you do this in an online group? Yes. Oh, I mean, that's wonderful because that gives so many more opportunities for folks that can't physically travel.

00;07;00;22 - 00;07;25;22

Paula Scantaloni

Yes. Yeah, yeah. There's a comfort level being in your own home. And there I say because of of the set up, it does allow for level of connection. I think that people often say they're surprised at the level of connection that can happen, but I think a lot of that has to do with the intentionality in the setup of coming into authentic communication.

00;07;25;22 - 00;07;40;25

Paula Scantaloni

We're not there for training. We're not. We're there to connect as humans and invite in vulnerability, presence and honesty as you would in any therapeutic process, right? In a group.

00;07;40;27 - 00;08;02;06

Cherie Lindberg

So as sure as you're talking about this, and I'm just wondering because I was, you know, looking at your website, do my research to kind of understand all the different methods and so you're using SSP. And then I saw psycho acoustics on there. Are there other methods that you're using like drumming or some of the tuning forks as well, along with SSP?

00;08;02;07 - 00;08;28;01

Paula Scantaloni

No, I think well, it's from my training in tuning forks and trained in Eileen Acoustics. I am a bio field tuner, so the idea with biofuel tuning is you can tune into the field and influence the field with your own frequency and the tuning fork. So I'm a tuning fork and the SSP is a tuning fork. And the vagus nerve is a tuning fork.

00;08;28;04 - 00;09;00;11

Paula Scantaloni

So when we combine those and we're thinking about it in reference to frequent C, and we set intention, we can direct the sound and the healing to occur in a way that is more influential than just putting it on and being in our heads. Right. We're bringing a more embodied, intentional experience to the SSP that invites it to serve in the same way that a psychedelic may serve you.

00;09;00;13 - 00;09;10;01

Paula Scantaloni

So you are moving into a different state of consciousness, I would say a theta state, and you will start to travel for sure.

00;09;10;03 - 00;09;37;07

Cherie Lindberg

I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a brain spanning, you know, practitioner. And that can happen also with brain spine. What's been interesting is that adding drumming with brain spotting does very similar what you're talking about. And you know, I know this might not be popular, but the ancient wisdoms of soul retrieval and so forth, like, what else are we doing when we're helping folks go back and do attachment repair?

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Cherie Lindberg

Right. It's just a different language, right?

00;09;39;26 - 00;10;06;08

Paula Scantaloni

Yes. Yeah. I think at some level, in Peter Levine's newest book, he has supported a very ancient wisdom in being understood scientifically. Right. And been able to break down the components. And I do feel I'm not trying to embrace funding, but sensory motor psychotherapy, all the psychotherapies that allow us to drop in to body consciousness is what the shamans are doing.

00;10;06;10 - 00;10;37;05

Paula Scantaloni

But the soul retrieval rates are dropping into and retrieving dissociated parts that are sequestered right in our consciousness. And we can do that with sound. We can do that with intention. We can do that with location and retrieval. So we're seeing a renaissance and a meeting of the ancient and the modern. Now. And this is exciting.

00;10;37;07 - 00;11;09;05

Cherie Lindberg

It's very exciting because we're honoring the healing methods of a millennia versus what, 200 years here? Like, we think we know it's like all these ancient traditions that have been around a lot longer. So it's like east is meeting west and people are getting results, and you're watching these miracles happen, like right before you can you talk a little bit more about how you're using your approaches for collective and generational trauma?

00;11;09;08 - 00;11;51;29

Paula Scantaloni

Sure. So in all of my courses, we do speak about the intersection of the collective and the intergenerational. So just by doing our own work, we are influencing, right? Seven years ahead of us, seven years behind us, but also so the work that I'm bringing forward is based on our understanding of how we hold collective archetypes of the wounded masculine or wounded feminine in our physiology and our behaviors, in our belief patterns, and how those are expressed through our character, logical strategies.

00;11;52;01 - 00;12;23;01

Paula Scantaloni

And so I teach about character strategies right as the expression of these wounded aspects of our collective embodiment. And so when we think about them that way, we can start to feel into that again as a frequency and expression and then begin to bring the mind into how do my sides contribute to that particular frequency and the propensity of that in my life?

00;12;23;01 - 00;12;55;01

Paula Scantaloni

So example would be the feeling of victimization and powerless ness is an expression of in more collapsed state and disempowered feminine, and the expression of a more hyper vigilant dominance over would be the expression of the wounded masculine right. And we all hold that at some level. It's not them and us. It's like, how does that get expressed in my life?

00;12;55;01 - 00;13;13;28

Paula Scantaloni

How how do I do that to myself? So when we can start to unlock that within our selves, then we begin to free ourselves and liberate ourselves and see and experience the world differently on the outside. And then we can influence the world from a different place.

00;13;14;00 - 00;13;34;08

Cherie Lindberg

So you're not using this language, but what I'm hearing is how we adapt, right? Which is our expression. And then also parts, which is archetypes, how we express. So we're, we're it's the same language, just different words I guess is what I'm hearing from what you're sharing.

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Paula Scantaloni

Yes, yes, I would say in other models will fine parts work being called inner child work? Right. We have it being and more current models, you know the self and the protectors and but they're all parts right. They're all aspects of the self. So the more we can bring self awareness to those and begin to see them as in a, through a broader collective lens.

00;14;00;24 - 00;14;07;01

Paula Scantaloni

And I think that empowers us to change. Right? Right. So knowledge is power.

00;14;07;03 - 00;14;44;24

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. I'm I'm listening and I'm just I'm just thinking about what you're saying is that when we come into this world, we have to split to survive, which is our adaptations or patterns or archetypes. Our system chooses whatever works for us to be able to, you know, adapt to survive. And then the healing piece is becoming very aware of that and being able to maybe be consciously aware and choose versus just an automatic archetype or an automatic response pattern for survival.

00;14;44;26 - 00;15;09;24

Paula Scantaloni

Exactly. Yes. And there would be a piece, though of I think this is where the work I do with the safe and sound protocol, there is a dismantling of the protectors. Right. And the ways in which we've developed protective patterns to keep the wounded parts out of consciousness, that hold the pain and hold the grief. There is the soul retrieval, right?

00;15;09;26 - 00;15;34;15

Paula Scantaloni

Calling those parts home, feeling the emotions that have not been integrated. If we don't have the emotional peace we're missing, whatever we do is not going to stick, right? So we've got to have that emotional piece for the energy to alchemists and to allow that central channel to clear and for that energy to flow in a new way.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. Because otherwise it's in our physiology. Yes. And we're still carrying that.

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Paula Scantaloni

Yes.

00;15;42;10 - 00;16;09;03

Cherie Lindberg

Yes. Beautiful. What? I don't like the word advice, but what may be wisdom would you like to to share with maybe somebody beginning their journey and maybe not comfortable in their body at all because of that, right. Because all those adaptations is protecting us from being in the body. So what wisdom might you share with somebody maybe beginning their healing journey?

00;16;09;06 - 00;16;35;07

Paula Scantaloni

I think there's all sorts of phases and places that we can enter into this, but a very basic somatic experiencing perspective is that locating moments of safety and places of safety where you do feel even 1% safety can begin to elicit and invite a system into something different. And for many people, and another reason why I use nature in the natural world, a lot is that people are not safe.

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Paula Scantaloni

People are complicated, people are complicated. So cultivating a relationship with the natural world as the greater mother is a beautiful first step of starting to develop that neural pathway of bonding and attachment. And we do need to bond and attach to the Earth before we attach this direction to to another being. So that's our first attachment is a linear attachment as we come from energy into matter.

00;17;11;03 - 00;17;50;28

Paula Scantaloni

So connecting to nature as a benevolent being. And then maybe animals, right, are another fairly uncomplicated way. And starting to pay attention to how you feel inside when you are near something that feels relatively safe. Because an important question I ask people that isn't always easy to answer is how do you know you're safe? You? How do you know what safety might feel like if if you were, you know, what would the society do to get that curiosity about the body?

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Paula Scantaloni

With the body is telling you from the inside about what safety feels like. And if we've got a lot of trauma, that's not going to be an easy question to answer. Right? And there tends to be a lot of focus on controlling the outside in order to feel safe inside. And so to start to turn that around neurologically, we want to start to find where there safety inside.

00;18;18;13 - 00;18;22;01

Paula Scantaloni

So our locus of control starts to shift.

00;18;22;04 - 00;18;32;19

Cherie Lindberg

Therefore, is there anything else that you would like to share with your audience that I haven't maybe brought up? I mean, maybe even talk about your embodied self class that you have?

00;18;32;21 - 00;18;57;22

Paula Scantaloni

Sure, sure. I would love to. I would love to. So we have different ways of engaging. I have co-teacher that come with all sorts of skills and talents, and some with brain spotting, some with yoga, some with perspectives on touch work. And so we have different ways that people can come in. One is through a class called Embodying the Unified Self.

00;18;57;25 - 00;19;24;01

Paula Scantaloni

And so it is a course that goes with the safe and Sound program, and it teaches you about the evolution of consciousness and how consciousness, how we come into consciousness as beings. It brings in that ancient wisdom, but also takes you through the safe and sound program at the same time. So as you're unpacking and coming into a deeper connection with what I would say is the inner child.

00;19;24;01 - 00;19;49;22

Paula Scantaloni

So we're seeking to meet that inner child that holds our light right and holds our joy and holds our connectivity. Then we're also understanding ourselves through that lens, both of the Western and a non-Western perspective. And so those courses are seven weeks and they're co-taught and they're in a what I call relational ecosystem that we can move through an experience together.

00;19;49;25 - 00;20;15;16

Paula Scantaloni

And so folks who are curious about the SSP utilize sound, shamanic journeying, psychedelics. They come through that pathway. And then we have some new music you and I were discussing, which is probably vehicle music by Doctor Stephen Porges and Anthony Gori, and we're testing that out. One of the ways we're testing it is we're combining it with a yoga class.

00;20;15;19 - 00;20;37;01

Paula Scantaloni

So we're doing half an hour of yoga and a half an hour of that program. And then another way is through a class called Acoustic Alchemy. So we are setting it up similar to SSP, and it has a whole course that goes with it. But that course focuses on collective thinking about yourself in the context of the wounded masculine and the wounded feminine.

00;20;37;04 - 00;21;04;15

Paula Scantaloni

And so there's a little bit to the left brain, and then there's the sound experience for the right brain. Yeah. And then ongoing pieces that are not fully in place are helping the therapists. That's ready to move into becoming an energy healer and opening up that toolbox, though, and providing training and support, and that mentoring programs that allow therapists to start to unfold themselves.

00;21;04;16 - 00;21;25;20

Paula Scantaloni

Who do I want to be in this next phase of my life? And then lastly, we have some we have a podcast, actually, that work we're opening up and starting, which is about the intersection of Neurobiol ology, ancient wisdom, attachment, all the things that were is missing today.

00;21;25;22 - 00;22;07;05

Cherie Lindberg

Well, it's so nice to to meet you finally and talk about it and know that there's other people out there doing this work. I just completed my doctorate in December and it was on brain spotting and how brain spanning helps people that come in with an insecure attachment move towards an earned secure attachment. And again, it's through the work that we're talking about, reworking all the old patterns, all the old adaptations, but most importantly, you know, connecting safely inside with who we are becoming and who we are evolving into and becoming consciously aware.

00;22;07;05 - 00;22;34;20

Cherie Lindberg

So it's just nice to need somebody else that's out there doing this work and helping people here, because we need and I've said this over and over, almost probably, I don't even know how many on the podcast, but everyone does shine our light right now. And the support people's healing, because Covid really did a number on the world, and there are so many people that are disconnected because of that experience, or they were already disconnected and it brought a lot of that up to the surface.

00;22;34;20 - 00;23;05;24

Cherie Lindberg

So they got access to it more. So it's nice to know that they had these options. And what what speaks to folks. The other thing I want to just reiterate, what you said, Paula, is that it's in the body that the issues are in our tissues. I know that that's like a saying that people say, and that we can access the same kind of phenomena as using psychedelics by going inward, like our brains and our bodies have this capacity in there.

00;23;05;26 - 00;23;13;06

Cherie Lindberg

And so great that you're you're facilitating that and that it's a natural phenomena that we already have living inside of us.

00;23;13;08 - 00;23;31;03

Paula Scantaloni

Yes. Thank you. Well, I think there is a shift. I agree with you. I'm glad that it feels like we're on that same wave where we're we're moving out of or understanding that the traditional models of therapy are not enough. Yeah, right. So people are opening up their toolbox and saying, okay, what what else is out there that I can bring in to help?

00;23;31;05 - 00;23;48;23

Paula Scantaloni

Because we all want to help, right? Yeah, we all want to help is healers, helpers and there's a lot of creative ways we each are drawn towards a particular ways that speak to us, and then we can integrate them in a way that feels right for ourselves and meets the needs of our clients. So it's an exciting time.

00;23;48;25 - 00;24;12;24

Cherie Lindberg

To be a part of that. You know that you brought that up. This is just one question that I have, noticing that in our academic world, there seems to be some disconnect in terms of like, let's exclude the body. You know, let's just be in the mind and the body is a historical organ. So I'm just wondering if you could, you could speak to that a little bit.

00;24;12;24 - 00;24;14;01

Cherie Lindberg

Your thoughts on that?

00;24;14;03 - 00;24;37;22

Paula Scantaloni

Well, I do will agree with you that we are come from a world where there has been a mind body split, and I feel like that is reflective of our larger collective split between the masculine and the feminine, where we've over identified with logic and the external. And not that that is not important, but we've done it to the exclusion of emotions.

00;24;37;24 - 00;25;09;25

Paula Scantaloni

The body, the heart, compassion, creativity, intuition, you know, whatever you want to call it. These attributes that when we have both of them and we have this ability to support the more feminine qualities of intuition, embodiment, emotions to inform the mind and the mind to support those, then we have what's called balance. Balance of our unified self. That is our unified self.

00;25;09;25 - 00;25;39;16

Paula Scantaloni

So we are in a great collective shift, what we're being called into that balance. And I think psychology, medicine all over the place is just a reflection of the imbalance at this time. And we're waking up to that because we've come to the edge. We can't go any further in the imbalance. And now the pendulum is going to swing back to Nolan all the way over to the other side, but to a place in the middle, right?

00;25;39;16 - 00;25;54;24

Paula Scantaloni

As we each come into more embodiment ourselves, more connection to our emotions, more permission to be creative as well as productive. Right? So these these ways of living that need to shift.

00;25;54;26 - 00;26;18;24

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. And and I would I'm looking forward to that. Watching this happen and acknowledging these primal instincts that we have and that we're starting to honor, and that these two have been around for a lot longer than what we have here in our country. You know, maybe the last 200 years versus all this ancient wisdom that's been around for a millennia.

00;26;18;24 - 00;26;24;14

Cherie Lindberg

So I'm excited to be here and watch where this takes us.

00;26;24;16 - 00;26;26;20

Paula Scantaloni

I agree, it's an exciting time.

00;26;26;23 - 00;26;45;04

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. And we'll make sure that we have your website and all your social networking underneath the podcast so that people that are listening and really resonating with your message can find you, Paula. So thank you again for being a guest on the podcast today.

00;26;45;07 - 00;26;47;04

Paula Scantaloni

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

00;26;47;06 - 00;27;20;09

Cherie Lindberg

Thank you. I hope you enjoyed hearing more about the body and how the body is involved in healing and learning more about Somatics, and the different ways that we can go deeper with our healing and teaching our body what it's like to be safe on the inside. And these are all skills. That's the thing that I really want to focus on, that these are all skills that any average person can learn.

00;27;20;09 - 00;27;52;13

Cherie Lindberg

So if you're someone that's really suffering with complex PTSD, where even if you're a healer and you're suffering with complex PTSD, because we are all wounded healers, know that these resources are available to you, and that there's so many things that you can do for your own healing. And we're trying to support a conscious community where folks are healing and waking up and being more present.

00;27;52;17 - 00;28;16;15

Cherie Lindberg

So would love to hear what you think about this episode in the comments. And if you listen to this episode, and I think that this could really help a loved one or friend, if you could really do me the favor and share it out there with the world, it would be so appreciated because we're really trying to reach as many people as we can.

00;28;16;17 - 00;28;22;04

Cherie Lindberg

Thank you for being with us until we meet again.

00;28;22;06 - 00;28;41;02

Narrator

Thank you for joining us on another uplifting journey on Cherie Lindberg’s Elevated Life Academy. Stories of Hope and healing. If you found resonance or connection with what you've heard today, we encourage you to share this episode and consider becoming a subscriber. Please spread the word so others can live an elevated life.