Episode 10: The Beauty Industry & Trauma, Exposing the Methods Abusers Use to Keep Us Adrenalized, and Energy Healing with Flower Essences with Lauren Geertsen

The beauty industry is a toxic, psychopathic abuser. Yes, you read that right! The tactics of the beauty industry are the very same tactics used by narcissistic, predatory abusers to keep us, especially women, exhausted, manipulated, feeling inadequate, and coerced. I interview body connection coach and author of the book The Invisible Corset, Lauren Geertsen.

Lauren Geertsen is the author of The Invisible Corset: Break Free From Beauty Culture and Embrace Your Radiant Self. As a Body Connection Coach, she helps women heal their relationship with food and body image. Her website, EmpoweredSustenance.com, has supported over 40 million readers with holistic recipes and resources.

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In this episode, Lauren and I…

• share that our bodies are not our enemies and how beauty culture has convinced us that aging (our power) is a liability
• discuss Lauren’s spiritual awakenings that led to her career change from nutritional therapist to a body connection coach and author of the soon-to-be-released book, The Invisible Corset
• expose predatory dynamics and patterns that abusers use to feed off energies of fear and shame and how they purposefully instill isolation, hate, and separation
• share Lauren’s real and raw experience in an unhealthy relationship where she was preyed upon by an abuser and how she realized that this experience was necessary for her to awaken to the dark spiritual forces in the world
• reveal Lauren’s incredible past life regression that taught her the parallels between the beauty industry and psychopathic abusers
• ask how our uniqueness, our gifts and talents are being distorted into a liability to keep us controlled and in our “false selves”
• explain how the “false self” is culturally conditioned so that we play out the desires of our abusers (hint: beauty culture is an abuser)
• share about the energy healing offered by flower essences
• share the code HOLISTIC for 15% off your FloralSong.com flower essence purchase

Links

• Floral Song flower essences (use code HOLISTIC for 15% off)
• Pre-order Lauren’s book The Invisible Corset
• Lauren’s website Empowered Sustenance
• Food Without Fear 8-Week Course
• Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch
• The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
• The Hidden Messages in Water by Dr. Masaru Emoto
• Follow Lauren on Instagram
• Follow me on Instagram

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome back to the Holistic Trauma Healing podcast. I’m honored that you are choosing to spend your time with me listening to me interview someone who I have followed for a decade, at least, and someone who I never imagined that I would have the pleasure of meeting much less, having them out of a guest on a podcast because I never thought I’d ever have a podcast. But before I get into my interview with Lauren Geertsen, I just want to talk about what a whirlwind of a couple of weeks it’s been for me. I feel like mercury retrograde ended for the rest of the world at the beginning of November, 2020, and then it took another week for it to end for me. It was crazy. All kinds of communication issues. And I had travel plans that I ended up changing around several times, and then I ultimately ended up canceling my travel plans. I was supposed to travel to Texas for an appointment with my psychiatrist, and I ended up having to move it from an in-person appointment to a telehealth visit. I got a really bad stomach flu. I have not been sick like that in years and years. And who, so for the last few days I have not been working on the podcast or anything else. I took two full days and just laying in bed and rested. Watch Netflix. And it was much needed. I can tell you it was much needed. Starting this podcast has been a beautiful, amazing, awesome journey, but it has also been such a learning curve for me because I am technologically challenged. So when I have sound issues, when it sounds like I’m not editing in the right way, It just it’s because I’m a newbie and I’m a recovering perfectionist. And I am at the place in my own healing where I’m okay with putting something imperfect out into the world. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not hard. Things have calmed down. I had a few days of rest and I’m jumping back in. And I’m so excited for you to hear today’s episode.

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In this episode, I have a major fan girl moment because I am interviewing someone, um, who I never imagined that I would ever have the pleasure of meeting Lauren Geertsen. Lauren is a body connection coach and she helps women heal their relationship with food and body image. Her website empowered sustenance.com has supported over 40 million readers with holistic recipes and resources. She is also the author of The Invisible Corset: Break Free from Beauty Culture and Embrace Your Radiant Self which releases January 19th of 2021. Don’t think that because the title of this episode is about the beauty industry that it doesn’t have everything to do with trauma, especially for those who identify as women.

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In this episode, Lauren and I share that our bodies are not our enemies and we discuss Lauren’s spiritual awakenings that led to her coming into who she is now, she’s transformed from a nutritional therapist who was all about foods and supplements and special diets to flip flopping completely over into I’ll use Lauren’s phrase here, the woo woo wackadoodle. We talk about predatory dynamics and what it looks like for an abuser to feed off of energies of fear and shame, how they purposefully instill isolation, hate and separation into their victims, and how they exploit our resources. Lauren shares are really profound experience that she had with, uh, someone who was a predator and who abused her. And how she knows that she had to go through that experience with this person in order to step into what she’s doing now, which is bringing exposure and healing to the world and especially women around the toxic beauty industry. We share how Lauren’s experience in this unhealthy predatory relationship was necessary for her to awaken to the dark spiritual forces in the world today. We revealed Lauren’s incredible past life regression that gave her the parallels that she teaches about abusers, especially in the beauty industry. We discuss Lauren’s book, The Invisible Corset, which is releasing in 2021. We expose the trauma inflicted on women by the beauty industry and how that affects us on the deepest psychological level. Lauren shares the five strings of the invisible corset. And exposes the lie that aging is a liability. Lauren encourages us to ask how our uniqueness and our gifts and talents are being distorted into a liability to keep us controlled and afraid. We also talk about the false self and how it’s culturally conditioned, so that we play out the desires of our abusers. And this is very much in play in trauma. We talk about Lauren’s work as a body connection coach, how you can work with her, the online courses that she offers. And we throw in some fun stuff at the end about the energy medicine, a flower essences, and how those can be helpful in trauma. I know that explanation made it sound like this is going to be a really long episode, but it’s actually only about 40 minutes. Like we were in such a flow state for this episode that by the time it was over, I couldn’t believe how much we were able to pack into such a short amount of time. So you’re really gonna love this one so without further ado here is my now new friend and inspiration Lauren Geertsen. LINDSEY: Hello, Lauren. Welcome to the holistic trauma healing podcast. LAUREN:Hey, Lindsey. I’m so happy to be here with you. LINDSEY: I think I’m happier than you are. I’ve been for a really long time. like probably since you were 18 or so I’ve been following what you’re doing online and I’m having a major fan girl moment over here. I’ll just be honest. LAUREN: Ah, I appreciate that. It means the world that you stuck around with me for so long. LINDSEY: yeah, cause you’ve changed a lot. LAUREN: Yeah. It’s been a journey. LINDSEY: Yeah. I’d love for you to share that journey. I’ve been getting your emails for a long time and I’ve seen you allude to some spiritual awakenings that you had, and I would love to know if you’ll share more about that with me. LAUREN: Yeah. I would love to dive into that. It’s a piece that. It’s informed everything I have done on my blog, my book, my company. I do flower essences now, but I haven’t talked about it in a lot of depth. I haven’t felt like the time is right. I think for that big piece. And, it is actually going to time right now. Oh yeah. We can go into it for sure. Yes. Yeah. And I also recently realized it’s going to be my next book. So this is a good soul project for me to work on in the next year. but just as an overview for those who aren’t familiar, I got into, holistic health blogging when I was about, yeah, late 18, 19 years old. And I had been diagnosed with a very severe autoimmune disease when I was 14 and had been on all the drugs and the medications and. when I was 18, I was basically bedridden. They had all failed me and my doctor said, it looks like your one remaining option is a surgery to remove part of your colon. And then they also said that this was a temporary solution. They’d likely have to go in and take out more because the surgery doesn’t solve disease. Like what, what happens is the body continues to attack itself. So I had gotten really good at silencing my intuition as a perfectionist type a as a highly sensitive person. Yep. Highly sensitive. Exactly. What we use to cope with our culture is self-sabotaging. Yes. but there was one whisper of my intuition left and basically a book jumped off a bookshelf at me and outlined a dietary protocol. And I just heard inside myself, I have to try this, even though my doctor said nutrition wouldn’t help. Within three days, my acute symptoms were better. Within three months. I had been off. I chose to get off all my medications and I just felt so compelled to share. What I had used on in my healing journey. So I started empowered sustenance, and, that led me to become a nutritional therapy practitioner and learn a lot more about holistic healing and use different forms of energy medicine on my journey. And, the other piece here was this process of learning that my body is not my enemy. Right that my body is actually on my side because Western medicine teaches us, at least taught me through my auto-immune experience, that my body was trying to kill me and I needed Western medicine to keep me safe. So I had a major case of Stockholm syndrome with the pharmaceutical industry and what I learned from healing myself with nutrition and. Then energy medicine was, my body knows exactly what it needs to heal me. I just need to listen and I have to be willing to make healing choices that maybe don’t make sense to other people or aren’t respected by other people. In order to honor my body, who is my most important partner in my life, my first and most enduring soulmate. and along that journey when I was. 2021 to 24. I did have this series of spiritual awakenings that completely shattered my perception of reality. And the first was a past life awakening that I just couldn’t ignore. And it was the first time in my life where I was really faced with the choice of, do I believe my soul or do I believe the external systems of authority and reality that had been presented to me by both my religion and by science was a very intellectual, I was also very religious and inside the box, religious, A very rule follower kind of thing. LINDSEY: Same girl. LAUREN: A lot of parallels. LINDSEY: Did you happen to be in any type of evangelical Christianity? exactly. LAUREN: Yep. I was that I was in that homeschooled religious community growing up, and what was interesting was my parents had come from more fundamentalist backgrounds than they raised me. but it was, and so they wanted to raise their kids with a broader understanding of divinity, but it was still inside the box. Right. It was still telling me that who I was wrong. and, what my soul was telling me was not believable. So this past life awakening, was a dream that was just so real to me that somebody in my life I had known before and I, there was so much grief, this deepest grief that I, had been, actually been inside me for a long time, all the way back to the first time I experienced, A past life connection that I realized at this point was with a dog when I was six years old. And like having telepathic communication with this animal and this deeper connection that I couldn’t put words to and people didn’t understand. so I, yeah, I, and I fell in love with, this man who was the past life connection and I was in my 21. And, it was not an appropriate relationship. for my family structure. He was much older than me. And, he was a, he was my health practitioner and, one of my nutrition instructors. Then what ended up coming to the surface after being in this relationship for a while was he was a very practiced psychopath. He was actually a professional predator who preyed on his clients and his students, especially, the most vulnerable, the most sensitive. And he would sexually and financially exploit us. And he had about a history of 25 years doing this, and his clinical practice. And so it was really interesting how my soul led me into this relationship, broke me open and. a lot of other aspects came to the surface in that relationship. because he had brought in so much darkness, he was tied to the darkest spiritual forces. I didn’t understand. I was a naive empath. And we don’t understand the depth of darkness in the world. Like we can’t wrap our minds around that. I believe until we experienced that, I truly believe that my soul led me into that relationship so that I could see what psychopathic dynamics look like. What these predatory dynamics look like when somebody actually feeds off, the energies of fear and purposely instills shame, hate separation isolation, in order to exploit all of your resources because. I needed to understand that dynamic, to write my book on beauty culture, I needed to understand that dynamic to be awake to what is happening in our world right now with psychopathic industries and organizations and structures of authority who are doing this to the global population. I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend that without that experience. and, the, the reality of. How people are tied to these very dark spiritual forces. How associations. and, even politicians and people in our world are tied to these dark spiritual forces. it’s not fluffy, it’s real. And I had to learn how to call on and, connect to the spiritual forces of light in a really palpable way. And I did have a lot of, experiences with, connecting to angels. having loving beings come to speak to me in my meditations, experiencing what a dark entity is in a physical space. And, that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. And realizing the only way out is to call and connect to that spiritual forces that are greater than that. So I think that was a lot, but it was, To put a bow on this story. It was this experience of the microcosm of what does it look like? That battle between light and dark between psychopath and empath and, freed me to actually participate in that healing and the greater world. LINDSEY: What an amazing story. What’s interesting is I had no idea that you had a past life regression and I just on Halloween actually, or Samhain I don’t like to say Halloween, but on Samhain, I, purchased a course for activating your past lives. It was activate the line. and I was just scrolling on Instagram and this is something that I’ve been really interested in for a long time, but I just didn’t know. Because there’s so many different books and sources and whatever, and sometimes you just don’t know, and I just was waiting for my intuition to go there it is. And as I was scrolling on Instagram, I saw this image and I clicked and I read the caption and I was like, there it is. Right then I bought the course and, I’m actually starting it today. So really excited about that. But so the man that you fell in love with, at the psychopath, you had known him in a past life. Was he a psychopath in your past life too? LAUREN: I don’t think so. I actually did end up doing a past life regression hypnotherapy. but before that, how I realized this past life connection was through dream where, in the dream. I was, I believe I was a man. I’m still unclear on the details that don’t really matter. But in this dream it was a different time and place, but I lost him to an accident. And the grief in me was so palpable and profound. And I just, I woke up in tears with a knife, literally in my chest. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. And I was just like, I can’t let this happen. and this, in this lifetime, like I will break all the rules. To not live the rest of this lifetime with that same grief, like knowing that, so I could make a different choice now. and then what I learned, in a kind of a meditation experience was I spoke to his soul and I said, basically, why. Why did you do this to me? Like, why did you make it so hard? Why does this hurt so much? and his soul said to me, Lauren, this is for your books. And at that time I was only writing my one book, on beauty culture. But now I can realize I have a bigger scope of the work that I’m to do in the future with my writing and realize, Oh my goodness, this is for. This is for a lot of it. Right. LINDSEY: So let’s talk about your book. I’ve already, pre-ordered it. Your book is called The Invisible Corset. I will link to it in the show notes of the podcast, and you’ve mentioned, the connection between psychopathic behavior and the beauty industry. So I’m wondering if you can talk about all about that. LAUREN: I would love to. Yes. Beauty culture is a concept that I talk a lot about and this in my book, it’s the belief that a woman’s worth is intrinsically tied to her appearance. And it’s an internalized belief. So even if we logically know this, isn’t true, even if we are telling ourselves, I am smart and capable and it doesn’t matter, whether I have cellulite or if I gained weight at an emotional level that doesn’t really process or register. And just like you focus on holistic trauma healing, that belief system inflicts deep trauma on women at a profound, psychological level. And so I came up with a concept of the invisible core set, which is the set of beliefs that keep us as uncomfortable and restricted in our bodies as traditional whalebone corsets once did, but because it’s a belief because It is the water we swim in. It’s that much harder to take it off. And this truly is where women’s liberation is at in the 21st century is removing this set of beliefs, casting off the invisible corset. And there’s five strings that comprise the corset: fear domination, disconnection, mechanization and coercion. All these belief systems that we get from both the beauty industry, but also from Western science and kind of the Western worldview of separation, and where the psychological and psychopathic piece really comes in is that last course, that string of coercion. So the marketing of the beauty industry is very slick, especially now because it teaches women that whatever you do in the name of beauty is empowering. Right? It’s for your own confidence, it’s been doing it for years. Your doing it for self-care, you’re doing it for yourself. It’s your own choice and sounds right on an intellectual level. Women are like, yeah, I think I am choosing this. I’m choosing this. Right? That’s what I used to think. But what really is happening is that it’s a form of psychological coercion to strip our confidence away in the first place to get us to such a state of insecurity and anxiety and shame. That we feel like we need the beauty industry to save us. And what was so interesting was I, once I recognized each kind of abusive tactic that my abuser used with me in the relationship I saw. Direct parallels to how the beauty industry treats women and manipulates women, same propaganda, same words, same phrases. It’s unbelievable. and of course this ties into current events because now we’re seeing, other systems of propaganda, other industries, even government using the same propaganda. It’s a really profound thing to recognize those parallels. LINDSEY: Yeah. And for those who might listen to this episode in a year, we’re talking about the current COVID-19 air quote, pandemic and the manipulation and coercion that’s being used to control the population. Yeah. So I’m it’s okay. So I had this like major moment of chills when you said there were five parts of the corset, because in holistic trauma healing, there’s five pieces of the trauma healing web that makeup, us as whole beings and how we heal trauma. So I had a big smile on my face if you notice. I was like interesting. Yeah and you mentioned the beauty industry, being really traumatizing, especially for women. And so in the context of talking about, holistic trauma healing and trauma responses, is it safe to say that because the culture or the industry has convinced me that I’m not fit enough, that my face isn’t clear enough, my hair is not the right color, I have too many wrinkles, my boobs aren’t big enough. if that’s what the culture has convinced me that I am, they’ve coerced me into believing these things about myself. Then really it’s a trauma response to get implants or try a bunch of micro dermabrasion or treatments for acne or get Botox in my lips or whatever it is that a fair statement? LAUREN: I think you nailed it. Absolutely. LINDSEY: Okay. LAUREN: Yeah. LINDSEY: So can you specify some of the wording and phrases that the psychopathic beauty industry uses that were the same as the man who abused you used? LAUREN: So one of the big pieces was instilling burnout actually, and fatigue. He created a lot of shame with me that kind of piggybacked off the productivity culture that we live in, which is, you’re not working hard enough. You need to do more. He would fabricate emergencies so that I would get adrenalized and stressed out because somebody who is adrenalized and stressed out is more easily controlled. What the beauty industry does is gives women this impossible list of beauty maintenance. So we’re busy, and we can never keep up. And Naomi Wolf who wrote the landmark book, The Beauty Myth, which is it’s as relevant today as it was when it was written about, I think it was 30 years ago in 1991. And she talks about beauty, basically being a second shift for women, we’re working a full-time job, being a woman in today’s culture with family and work. But then on top of that, we have beauty labor. And so this is the same technique of exhausting the victim, giving the victim so much work that they can’t keep up. And they’re in this constantly stressed adrenalized state. Because they’re easier to control then, because what happens is, as you well know, from trauma work, it shuts down the rational centers of the brain. When we are in that sympathetic reacting state, rather than when we’re in a parasympathetic, relaxed state of the nervous system, it opens up the creativity center, it opens up pathways for our intuition at a neurological level. literally in the parasympathetic state, the Vagus nerve, which conveys intuitive signals from the gut to the brain becomes more activated. So an abuser is always going to keep their victim in a stressed adrenalized emergency state with, not enough messaging so that you do more and you race around so that you actually can’t see the bigger picture. So that’s a big one right there. LINDSEY: Yeah. Wow. I’m just thinking of women in my life, one woman in particular, who’s very close to me and she’s getting older and as she’s gotten older, her hair’s thinning, she’s things on her body are not as uplifted and tight as they once were. She’s got wrinkles now. Her skins, getting darker age spots and whatnot on it. And it’s been heartbreaking for me to see her criticize herself, even to the point of Oh, you’re taking a picture. I don’t want to be in it. And that’s really hard. And my number one question, that I feel like if somebody is really, dedicated to the work of trauma healing. The one question that they have to be asking themselves is what purpose does this serve? whatever I believe about myself or the world or whatever. I think that the cyclical thoughts that are going through my head all the time, whatever behaviors I’m exhibiting in relationships, whatever it is, whatever my adaptation is, what purpose is it serving? And it’s interesting that you talk about how the beauty industry has, is forcing women to do beauty, labor and exhausting us, because if we’re honest with ourselves and we say, okay, what purpose is this actually serving for me? Every single time I’ve ever asked myself that question about a trauma response is it serving to keep me stuck. LAUREN: Well said. LINDSEY: Is to keep me stuck. That’s it? LAUREN: Yes. Can I add something to your reflection on, watching this woman feel so at odds with her aging process? LINDSEY: Yeah. LAUREN: So another thing that a psychopathic abuser does a psychological abuser does is they convince you that your power is your liability. Your power is what puts you at risk. And so women’s aging process is our power. Women step into our confidence, our intuition, we become less people pleasers. even our sexuality is heightened in terms of we know ourselves and our body and our desires better. So all of these aspects that really bring so much healing to our lives, into the lives of other people. the psychologically abusive beauty industry convinces us that now that’s a liability. That every visible sign of aging is a liability to your desirability and value as a woman. And so I noticed that in the parallel between my abuser would tell me that my, My forms of power, which were emerging in this relationship, my connection to the spiritual realm and ability to communicate with the divine frequencies and channel. And, he was like, Oh, you can’t trust that, that’s, that’s darkness coming through you. Like, funnily enough, it was the same messages that fundamentalist, religion tells you have to only look to the Bible or, the pastor to get divine messages. You can’t trust that from yourself. So he was convincing me that what was my power was actually my liability. And if I listened to that, or if I trusted that I would be putting myself at risk, I would be putting him at risk. I’d be putting my family at risk, blah, blah, blah. So another really interesting parallel there is to ask in any relationship, how might you be being convinced that your unique gifts, your power how has that being distorted into a liability for you? Or what my clients often get is if they’re in an abusive relationship with a religion, with a family member, with whoever, they’re being convinced that their gifts are a liability to their kids’ wellbeing, right. To the people they love. So that’s a big one. LINDSEY: Yeah, I love how you so eloquently talks about getting our aging is our power because I’m in this stage of my life. I’m going to the triple pagan goddess, maiden mother crone. And, I’m in the stage of my life where I’m transitioning from mother to crone. And so physically, like my kids are teenagers and they’re going to be gone and out of the house and the next three or four years at some point. My menstrual cycle is already starting to get a little bit wacky and I’ve needed some bioidentical progesterone and, just things like that. But I’m excited to make that transition because I know it’s like, As a mother, so much of your energy goes into raising these kids and loving these kids and you just, and you pour yourself into raising these children. And it’s a beautiful, wonderful process. And it has changed me and made me grow in ways that are indescribable and immeasurable. But I’m so looking forward to this crone stage, because it’s like I’m 37. Like I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks anymore. My fundamentalist family can listen to this podcast and hear me cuss and hear me talk about religion and I don’t care.It’s just, it’s this beautiful, transition of wow, I’m finally becoming who I was meant to be before the world told me. And it’s powerful. It’s so powerful. LAUREN: Yes. Yes. When one thing that I talked to my clients about, and I write in the book is the difference between your false self and your true self. And what I’m hearing is like you are right there and your true self in a really powerful way. And the false self is the culturally conditioned, beliefs and expectations that are intentionally implanted in us so that we play out the desires of our controllers or our abusers rather than the soul desires that we have inside of us, rather than the force of life that’s within us. And so this journey of then uncovering who is your true self, right? Is like the most profound powerful healing process. And you get to actually express that healing power within you, which I see you doing in your work right now, which is so cool. LINDSEY: I see it in you as well. it’s amazing. yeah, it took you four years to write your book right. To to finally figure it all out and piece it together. So when will it be out again? January 20, 21. LAUREN: January 19th, 20, 21. LINDSEY: Nice. Okay, cool. I’ve already, pre-ordered my copy. And I cannot wait to read it. So I’m going to shift into you are a body connection coach. Obviously you’re working with people who are dealing with body image issues, probably elicited by the beauty industry. I’m wondering if you could just describe what you do with your clients or what courses you have or how someone can work with you if they’re experiencing these trauma responses because of beauty culture. LAUREN: Great question. So I actually created a body connection coaching because I needed something that would be as holistic and in depth. so it’s something that I made up and, I’d love to actually, creates a practitioner training system in the future. But right now it’s just me and it’s a combination of energy, and emotional and mindset and subconscious healing modalities that allow us to radically shift the perception and relationship with our body. so instead of seeing our bodies as machines that we need to control. we see them as partners so we can trust. And that takes us to the next place in our life. When we have access to that intuition inside of us, maybe that unlocks what we need to do for physical healing, but where most clients come to me, it unlocks that intuition that they need for their career, their relationships, their spiritual growth. I really focus on helping people heal their relationship with food right now. so giving them a spiritual toolkit and a subconscious toolkit to do that because you can’t really solve a food problem with food, right? You can’t solve the problem with the consciousness that created it in the first place. So a lot of people are trying to solve food and weight issues with this consciousness of control and body distrust and body disconnection. And so they’ve tried every diet under the sun and they just think they need more willpower when the reality is that they’re actually having underlying spiritual problems and they need to change the emotional factors in their life that are causing them to emotionally cope with food, right? They need to change the relationships in their life or the mindsets that are leading them to believe that they have to control other people’s perceptions instead of trusting their own intuition. So that’s where I really focus my energies right now. And I have, an eight week program called food without fear and it’s combination of group coaching. And you get some one-on-one time with me. And in eight weeks I will help you solve lifelong, food and weight issues at the spiritual level. LINDSEY: I’ve told people for years now, I had weight issues. I look back at old pictures of myself and I just looked really inflamed and swollen. And, in 2018 I basically just stopped. I was like, I’m not going to label myself anymore as paleo or keto or vegan or whatever. I’m throwing off the labels. I’m going to eat whatever I want when I want to. Whatever I crave. I’m going to give into it. Even if it was a cheeseburger from the local bar, like I’m going to give into it. and I’m just going to see what happens. And I ended up losing 30 pounds and when it was 30 pounds of I needed to lose it because it was uncomfortable. And it was a sign of inflammation in my body. Really? It wasn’t, it had nothing to do with my pants size or anything else, but and now I tell women who, show up in my DMs on Instagram and they’re like, Oh, I can see you’ve lost weight. What did you do? And when I tell them this, there, they just think I’m nuts, because they’re so conditioned to believe that their bodies need micromanaging in order to function properly. And we have to count calories and macros and, fine tune, whatever time of day that they eat. And it’s just, all these hacks that people are trying to do into their bodies. But the truth is as I tell them, your body’s holding onto weight for a reason. Like your body puts on weight as it’s trying to protect you from something. And Your problem is not that you need to count calories and cut grains out. It’s that what we need to figure out? What is your body trying to protect you from and address that. And then if the weight comes off great, if not great, you still address something in your life that was showing you it needed to heal. LAUREN: Absolutely. So are you familiar with the concept of intuitive eating? Because that’s exactly what you did. LINDSEY: Yeah, I never read the book Intuitive Eating. I never read it. It was just something, I was like, I’m still sick and tired of doing all of this and it’s for me, I, I used to be all into the beauty stuff. Like I used to have my hair like highlighted all the time. I spent much money on that. I used to wear makeup every day. I used to have all the jewelry I used to wear fake nails. Like I go to the tanning bed. I mean, God, I used to do all this stuff. And, then I moved up to Minnesota and I live in the woods and it was like, I don’t have to do this anymore. And I quit wearing a bra. Oh my God. Like I have my hair dyed blue underneath, but that’s just cause it’s like, Oh, it’s cool. I have blue hair. So fun. Yeah. Fun. yeah, it’s freed up so much time and money and energy to not have to worry about that crap anymore. I’m curious. I’m sure you get clients who, come to you and they’re like, I don’t wear makeup or dye my hair because that’s what the world wants me to do. I do it because that’s what makes me feel good. So what you have to say, doesn’t apply to me because I’m not listening to the beauty industry. I’m doing this because it makes me feel good. What do you say to that? LAUREN: Yes. Yes. And every time I post something on Instagram, I feel like I get one of those comments too. So the real issue here is we actually don’t know our own opinions and perceptions until we’ve done the work of self discovery until we have done the work to deprogram that false self that I talked about, which is the opinions and beliefs that the beauty industry. And, once we’d be programmed that then we can actually get underneath to who is our true self. Do beauty products allow expression of our true self and celebration of our true self? For some women, it does. I work with, an amazing guide and intuitive, and she has fabulous nails and makeup and fancy hair and sequined jeans. And, for her, it really is an expression of her true self because she has done the deep inner work. She has done the mental deprogramming. But for a lot of women and I was there too, I was like, no, I’m just doing it for me. That I wear makeup all the time. It was because I didn’t want to do the difficult work of facing my own insecurities and developing my own confidence. I didn’t want to let go of the crutch of beauty products. Okay. But the thing there is who wants to live with a crutch their whole life. You don’t know what true freedom feels like. Yeah. Okay, fine, you won’t ever give up that form of comfort, but then you don’t know what it feels like to run across a field without anything holding you back. So that’s the analogy that I like to share. LINDSEY: Yeah. if you’re only showing pictures of hippie Bohemian women wearing like flowy skirts and no makeup. And if that’s what you’re putting out there and you’re like, this is the standard that you need to get to. If you’re all about makeup and nails and fake boobs and highlights and whatever is the opposite of that, then that’s not actually the message. Cause then you’re just setting another standard of beauty and telling you exactly what it’s supposed to look like. LAUREN: Exactly. But it’s something you got to find within yourself and there’s no shortcuts and it’s not easy and it’s deep psychological work and it’s trauma healing and it’s not for the faint of heart, but when you do get there, then, beauty products become truly a form of celebration and fun. They become so much better because you’re not using them with any sense of I’m less than without it. I now have a new habit of putting on red lipstick at the beginning of every single day before I start work. Because for me, this is not about, Oh, I have to hide something, about my face. I’m not good enough. I can’t, open the door, go outside. without makeup it’s this is so much fun. And I feel like I’m just like putting it on my work uniform and it literally takes a minute and it’s cheap. So for me, that was something that came out of this healing process. LINDSEY: That’s beautiful. That’s so beautiful. I want to shift over into the new thing that you’ve started in the last year or so, which is your flower essence business Floral Song. I’m familiar with flower essences. I make them myself. I love talking to flowers and hearing them talk back. I’m curious if you can talk about, how you got started talking with plants and how have you used flower essences in your trauma healing journey? LAUREN: I love that question. Yes. Let’s geek out about flower talk. I definitely developed, a sensitivity to energy medicine with my own experience in it. And some of those spiritual awakenings that I had and something that happened was I started hearing messages from flowers. And I actually had one experience where I visited my friend, who was, she’s a profound plant, intuitive. And I was in the Hawaiian jungle with her and we were taking a hike and she was like, Lauren, you can do this, just listen and see if a flower calls you I’m like. What? Nope. You’re the flower person. I don’t think I can do this. and she was like, just give it a go. I think you can. And sure enough, it, I just opened my perceptions and allow the possibility that maybe this could happen. And it was like one little purple flower. It was like she was raising her hand and said to me, pick me. And I, I felt the words enter my body very, for me, it’s like clear words, but a silent communication. And then the words are like viscerally felt in my body. it was just one of the most beautiful experiences in my life. And I just opened myself up to that. And. Began to have more experiences where I would see, imagery or hear, the healing properties that certain flowers wanted to offer. And I learned that this was how shamans and indigenous healers made their plant medicines was the plants would sing to them the healing that they wanted to offer humanity, and also the other piece here is now that these remedies are, proven effective by science, like things like white Willow bark, aspirin, opioids for pain, a lot of other, medicines that are originally plant derived and now big part of our everyday life were initially created through this form of intuitive plant communication. And so you’re familiar with flower essences, but for those who aren’t, they are a form of energy medicine. So you capture the energetic field of the flower that has that, frequency information of how to bring balance to the human body. You imprint that and water in a sun soaking process. Water is, a substance that has it a memory for energy. We know this from the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, and of course indigenous, practices. And so when you take the flower essence, it’s like an acupuncture needle in a bottle. That’s how I explain it. Acupuncture moves stuck and repressed emotions in the body that are disrupting the healthy frequency of the human body and flower essences do the same. LINDSEY: Yeah, so they can disrupt the energy of trauma and help us release it. LAUREN: Yep, absolutely. Yeah. what I tend to notice is, the unconscious becomes conscious using the right flower, essence. So unconscious coping mechanisms or beliefs, things that we didn’t feel like we had space around to make a different choice. We suddenly have more space around that we can choose differently. We can see differently. LINDSEY: Yeah. And it’s important for people to know that no parts of the flower, like the pollen or, none of the parts of the flower are captured in the essence. It’s literally just the vibrational frequency of the flower. LAUREN: Exactly. LINDSEY: Oh, even if you’re like allergic to dandelions, for example, you’re fine taking a dandelion essence because there are no dandelion pieces in the flower essence. Yeah, I know we have to wrap this up, but I can just keep talking to you all day I feel like. LAUREN: That’s a great conversation. Yeah. LINDSEY: My last question is what would you say was, was there a moment, or maybe after a series of events that you realize like, Oh, the root of a lot of what I’m dealing with is actually rooted in trauma. And the energy that is imprinted in my body because of trauma, the way that my nervous system has stored, and is trying to protect me and help me survive. Cause that’s, what’s trying to do, even if it’s trying to protect you from something that isn’t actually a threat. So I’m wondering if you could just share how, or if you ever realized that trauma was a big piece of the puzzle for you? LAUREN: I don’t know if I ha if I put it into those words. I think that’s a beautiful framework to look through. And I think there’s parallels with what came to the surface for me, which was realizing so much of my choices were informed by fear-based motivation rather than love-based motivation. So I’m afraid that I’m not going to be enough or I’m going to do something wrong, afraid of what other people will think. And how that was so deeply embedded in my psyche that I wasn’t making choices based on, what could go, right. what if I loved myself? what if new and beautiful and unforeseen possibilities can occur? which I think this is the shift that I teach my clients to. How do you go from that fear-based mentality to the love-based mentality? LINDSEY: Yeah. And we don’t realize how much of our autopilot is really fear-based. LAUREN: Yeah, right. and that perpetuates that sympathetic state of the nervous system, which locks us in the traumas. LINDSEY: Yeah. And it just keeps repeating itself. and the only way out for me is awareness. That’s like putting those beliefs and thoughts and. The culture and everything under the microscope and asking what purpose is this serving for me? And not really serving to make you your truest self, then it’s keeping you stuck. LAUREN: Absolutely. And giving yourself the opportunity to, see things in a new way to, first believe that new possibilities and new healing possibilities are available to you so that you can make that a reality. LINDSEY: Yeah, so people can find you where? LAUREN: So my health website is empoweredsustenance.com. I’m on Instagram now at body underscore connection underscore coach, because my previous Instagram got shadow banned because we are living in big brother era. And, yeah, my book is available for pre-order at invisiblecorset.com. And my flower essences are@floralsong.com. Lots of places. LINDSEY: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. I just ordered your flower essence for anxious thoughts just the other day, whenever you had more in stock, I ordered it that day to try it. Lauren, thank you so much. This was truly an honor and like the highlight of my day to you get to talk to you. LAUREN: I feel the same, Lindsey. You are such a beam of light and I’m so glad we got connected. LINDSEY: Okay. My heart was so full after finishing that interview with Lauren, she had to get off and do client calls, but I could have stayed on zoom with her for the rest of the afternoon. I feel like she and I had such a strong connection and so many similarities in our stories that I had no idea existed. So lots and lots of links in this episode. So much good stuff that you can go grab for yourself. First and foremost, I want to encourage you to pre-order Lauren’s book, The Invisible Corset: Break Free from Beauty Culture and Embrace Your Radiant Self. It’s available to pre-order before January 19th, 2021. And then after that, you can order it as a hard copy. Get yourself a copy. I think it’s going to be revolutionary the way that women heal from the trauma of beauty culture. And the only way that we can heal from that trauma is by exposing it to begin with. To work with Lauren in her eight week food without fear program, you can check out the links to that in the show notes. And she’s done something really fun and generous just for listeners of the holistic trauma healing podcast who are interested in trying the energy medicine of flower essences. You can find Lauren’s a flower essences at floralsong.com and use the code HOLISTIC for 15% off your order. Finally you can find everything else that Lauren is doing at empoweredsustenance.com or on Instagram @body_connection_coach. The show notes and links for this podcast are at lindseylockett.com/Podcast. This is episode 10 and as always, you can find me on Instagram @iamlindseylockett. [OUTRO MUSIC]