Episode 81: Openness in the Body, Cosmic Spankings, & Vulnerability in Relationships (part 2) with Kirby Criddle

This Episode’s Guest

Kirby Criddle is a teacher, writer, illuminator and guide, in service to the mystical and physical forces that bring our highest Self through to this world. Using an intuitive combination of coaching, energy work, meditation, breath, and plant medicine, she supports people with trauma integration, nervous system regulation, and the exploration of the intersection of sexuality and spirituality. Kirby has been working 1:1 with clients for 16 years, teaching for 15, and is the co-founder of GreatFull, a multi-tradition spiritual practice and wellness centre. She lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her 5 kids, hot husband, and super cute cat.

Show Notes

In the second part of my two-part conversation with Kirby Criddle, we…

share an instance when one of Kirby’s clients had a spontaneous healing from hearing loss
talk about the upside and downside of “quantum leaps”
discuss Kirby’s attempted cancellation over a video she made about triggers and self-responsibility
discuss triggers as a way we close and collapse around pain
share a story about Lindsey falling, experiencing constriction and closing energy, listening to her body, and shaking and how she remained open
talk about how openness allows us to suffer less and remain present and move through stress without it becoming trauma
explain what Kirby calls a “cosmic spanking”
talk about moving through judgment and shame to stay open
Kirby shares how different her online cancellation experience could’ve been if she’d had a Nervous System Hygiene Practice
share experiences when Kirby remembers consciously closing off and shutting down or exiling parts of herself
Kirby shares a story about a man she dated who lived a double life and how she convinced herself to ignore her intuition about it
discuss being closed as a familiar state
talk about the dance of opening and vulnerability in relationships and how we can trust both our opening and our closing

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. Um, I am not going to spend a lot of time on today’s introduction because I’m just so excited to jump into this episode. But since I feel like I always give some sort of like weather reports. At the beginning of the episodes. Um, it feels like I should probably stick with that mostly because I’m just so stoked that it’s finally warming up.

I feel like Northeastern, Minnesota has been like. Narnia, whenever it’s always winter. And the winter just goes on and on and on, and it’s cold and it’s dark and there’s no green. And even when the rest of the world is posting about. There spring flowers and planting their gardens and laying outside in the sun and all the things. And I’m still up here like staring at two feet of snow that won’t melt. Um, it’s a little hard.

But I’m no longer staring at two feet of snow that won’t melt. I would say. Uh, the snow in our yard is probably. I would say like, 85% Melton. It’s like, it’s like very difficult to quantify the amount of snow. That’s melted, but slowly and surely every day, a little bit more melts and I can see a little bit more of the ground and now I can actually see more ground and less snow.

Um, another life update. We boiled our very last batch of maple SAP to make maple syrup yesterday, Sunday. Um, and we’ve never done maple syrup bang into maybe four. We are always usually done by the third week of April. And this was such a weird season. It got started really late in the beginning.

It was really slow. We were a little bit worried that we weren’t going to have a great syruping year. Like we. I’ve had a couple of pretty bad years in the past where we don’t get enough syrup and then we run out and then we have to wait. You know, two or three months until we can syrup again, before we have more maple syrup. And I’m just now realizing that I’m saying all of this, and most of you listening to the podcast who don’t follow me on Instagram, probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

So. Let me backtrack a little bit and fill you in my family. And I have a lot of maple trees on our six acres in Minnesota, and one of our favorite things to do. Every spring is to tap our maple trees and collect SAP and then boil the SAP until it becomes syrup. It is a very time and labor intensive process, but it is so fulfilling and rewarding. It feels very much like little house on the Prairie. Um, in little house in the big woods, there’s a whole chapter or two about maple syruping and it’s just, it’s such a beautiful process.

It’s so cool to watch. This clear SAP. Cook and cook and cook and turn into this dark brown, almost black. Gooey liquid that tastes like maple syrup. Um, it takes about 50 gallons of SAP to make one gallon of maple syrup. And so we, as of yesterday have seven gallons plus one court plus one pint of surf.

So, if that tells you how many gallons of SAP we boiled, I can’t even do the mental math, but it was a lot, several hundred gallons of SAP and we boil it over an open fire. We have a big steel pan. We use wood that we cut from our land from dead trees. So it’s a mixture of Birch and maple, mostly maple. So it’s maple syrup boiled over maple fire, um, all done by hand, all done at home, and then we finish it on the stove inside, and then we put it in Mason jars and.

Have a year’s worth of our own maple syrup and it’s really fun and beautiful and so much work. But, um, it’s one of our favorite things that we do. So yesterday we finished up for this year and we had our taps in for about seven weeks. And that’s like, we made like a gallon of syrup a week, which is pretty cool.

So glad to have that over with though, because it means that spring really is officially here. And I know it’s beneficially here since March, but it certainly did not look like it or feel like it, but it is here. Now we went to a local nursery over the weekend and I got some drainage, hymns and petunias, no pansies and opportunities.

Uh, pansies and some asparagus Bern and sweet potato vine. And I planted those in pots, on my porch. I also had a false bromeliad plant that I have been nursing all winter long and it was starting to look so terrible because it had outgrown the pot and the pot had a crack in it. So I couldn’t give it very much water.

And over the weekend, I finally repotted it. And I took it from one big pot to three big pots and they’re on my porch. And now the false Familia is so much happier. And today. I’m going over to a local greenhouse that my friend. Uh, runs and he has a bunch of extra tomato plants that he’s not going to use. And if I bring my own little pots and re-pot them, then I get free tomato plants. So that’s what I’m about to do.

Um, after I get this podcast out, So anyway, I am back. On this episode, episode 81 with Kirby Crittall. If you have not listened to episode 80, I highly recommend that you hit pause. Go back and listen to episode 80, because that is part one of this conversation. So today is the second and final part.

And Kirby and I are continuing our conversation about opening. And it’s just amazing. And that’s really all I’m going to say about it, because if you listen to episode 80, then you know, this one doesn’t need an introduction. The episode speaks for itself. So I do want to re-introduce Kirby to you though. If you haven’t listened to episode 81 yet.

So Kirby Crittall is a teacher writer. Eliminator and guide in service to the mystical and physical forces that bring our highest self through to this world. Using an intuitive combination of coaching energy work, meditation breath, and plant medicine. She supports people with trauma integration, nervous system regulation, and the exploration of the intersection of sexuality and spirituality. Kirby has been working one-on-one with clients for 16 years, teaching for 15, and is the co-founder of grateful.

A multi tradition, spiritual practice and wellness center. She lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her five kids, her hot husband, and a super cute cat. And I will have links below in the show notes as well as on my website, Lindsay locket.com. For how you can follow kirby and the different offerings that she has so without further ado i hope you enjoy this final part of my conversation with my teacher and friend kirby

Being closed is just part of it all. But if we want to open, we do need to look at recognize and take responsibility for the conditions under which we closed. Yeah. And I that is ultimately the root of all of it, right? Yep. So many people are like, oh, I wanna do this. I wanna manifest this.

I wanna quantum leap this. I want this. I’m like, yeah. Okay. And what are you willing to do about it? Yeah, because it’s it starts here with us. It starts inside. Yeah. Everything I out there is just a reflection of what’s in here. Yeah. And I have, this is probably some of my own closed offness, so I’ll just be transparent about that.

But I have issues with practitioners who are like. Quantum leap hypnosis or quantum this, or like I have the codes for the light codes or the sun codes or the water codes or whatever the fuck the codes are, like all of these things, because I’m like, yes, I ask myself what if this was easy.

And also that’s like too easy and that’s robbing people of the process of taking no. <laugh> OK. So I’m skeptical about it, but please. No. It’s just if I’m just gonna sign up and pay for your course, and you’re gonna tell me the codes or whatever, or the quantum, I’m gonna have one hypnotherapy session with you.

That’s gonna quantum leap me from point a to point Z. Like, is that not not that I’m saying it needs to be hard, but isn’t that robbing me of the lived experience of. Learning that for myself, or is it as quick as snapping a finger or having a hypnotherapy session and it just ships. So again, this is completely individual.

Totally. Both and both, and yeah. Okay. Because it really can be that easy. Like I have clients put down like decades of shit, just and just be like, oh, I didn’t know. I could just literally just put that down. I could just stop choosing that. There was a man I worked on a few years ago.

His wife was one of my longtime clients and then, and he came and his deafness resolved in a session with me. He’d been deaf in one ear for, since he was 16. I think he used to be like a fighter or something. And we were not doing anything to do with his ear. We were working through childhood stuff.

And he said in that session, he didn’t tell me what happened. He felt it happened. He felt something like wet drip out of his ear. And he was like, oh shit, am I bleeding? And he is no, there’s nothing there. And then when he touched his ear, he was like, oh my God, I can hear. But he didn’t say anything.

So he didn’t tell me. So he left and then he came back a few weeks later and was like, Hey, like I have to tell you I’m really freaked out by our last session, but I can hear now. And I was like, okay. We were like, just working through some grief or something. And he was like, yeah whoa I just don’t even know.

I’m like, yeah it’s not, it’s never been about your ear. Yeah. Your ear was just the symptom of something I’ll was happening. So if you had known how to address that, it could have been that easy. You didn’t have to carry that into your fifties. Yeah it could have been that easy, but at the same time, That was his journey.

So he needed to walk that. Yeah. And for anyone listening out there that really wants to make quantum leaps I know that’s on trend right now and that’s cool and you can do it. You absolutely can. You can shorten your, you can shorten the time it takes to do certain things. But the one thing that I wanna I don’t wanna discourage anyone.

I don’t wanna sound like I’m shitting on quantum leaps. That’s not my thing here. It really can be that easy. I was great <laugh> but at the same time, when you do a quantum leap, just like you’re saying, Lindsay, you don’t get to live out the experience. So you’re landing this place where you have no frame of reference it’s for what the fuck to do now.

Okay. That, and so often that’s a better way of saying what I was saying. Yeah. People wanna make this quantum leap and you can for sure. It’s an energy thing. And if you know how to. Be malleable and work with that. You can, but you just also have to know don’t get discouraged when the contraction happens for me.

I really wanted to quantum leap last year. I was in some programs and I was like, oh man, this is great. I’m a woman in business. I’m doing all these things. I and I really wanted to quantum leap. And so I put my energy and attention and focus there on meeting a business goal. And I did, and I was so excited that I created it and it was so easy and I probably got canceled <laugh> oh, I didn’t know.

You went through a cancellation. Yes. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. Yeah. That’s actually how I found you. Yeah. Was I gone through it too? Yeah. I was going through it and I was like, oh my she’s a voice of reason. Yeah. Yeah. I, so I made a post about, I made a video about taking personal responsibility for triggers <affirmative> and I was like, having a trigger is not your fault, but if you want to feel better, it’s your responsibility.

You’re the only one who can unplug trigger. You can ask the world, the environment around you to tiptoe around your triggers. You can ask for that, but largely you’re gonna be disappointed and triggered because the world is never gonna deliver that to you. It’s just not possible. <affirmative> and so wouldn’t it make more sense to get out of your own way? Wouldn’t it make more sense to find that place inside you where you can unplug that thing? So it stops being an issue. So you can just live like unencumbered in the world and you can enjoy your existence, and people were really pissed about that.

<laugh> and I was like, and even still there’s situations to which that advice does not apply at that time, because it’s acute. The safety’s important if you’re in a situation where you are actively being harmed and you can’t get out of it for whatever reason <affirmative>, you can’t preach personal responsibility to that person.

That person needs safety. They need reassurance, they need support, they need comfort. They need all kinds of things. , it, it’s not always available, but there are a lot of people who it is available to who are not making use of it. Yes. And I think I’m glad you brought this up because I also, I haven’t gotten canceled over this, but I have been raked over the coals and I’ve gotten some really strong DMS and comments whenever I talk about triggers as well.

Because I am never going to post a trigger warning on my content ever. And people think that is completely wrong. And irresponsible, they say it’s not trauma informed all of the, all these things that people like to say about that. And the reason why is because or the reason why I won’t post trigger warning is first of all I feel like that infantilizes people, because it’s saying I know.

What is going to be quote unquote harmful for you. And you don’t know that. So I have to put this label on it so that, it’s gonna be harmful for you without being it’s it incredibly pessimistic. It is. It’s very pessimistic. It’s infantalizing. It doesn’t force people to take personal responsibility for their own triggers, which really in the, under the umbrella of being closed, a trigger is literally like a road closure.

Like it is a road closure in your life. It’s like a, it’s a concrete block in the middle of the highway that you cannot get PA and nobody can move it for you except for you. And that may need, you may need help therapy, support coaching. Nobody’s saying, you have to figure that out on your own, but still at the end of it, you’re the only one who can move that.

But I also see triggers as a way that we close off in our life because it’s like we say, this thing triggers me and I need to collapse around this pain instead of being able to open to this pain and recognize it for what it is and feel what I’m afraid to feel, and then realize that it’s not actually.

Harming me or hurting me in some way that it really is just something that I’ve collapsed around and I can open up and go through it. And this isn’t a trigger, but it was a, the universe often gives me like physical experiences to explain these like nebulous, metaphysical, energetic ideas. And this past winter I was taking a sauna.

We have a sauna in our house not inside our house. It’s own separate building and it had snowed and I was walking back into the house and I always wear flip flops to the sauna, even in the wintertime, because it’s just easier. And I don’t wanna be walking in my snow boots through the yard.

And anyway, my flip flops don’t have any tread on the bottom, basically. Like they’re pretty bare and it was fresh snow. And I was walking downhill towards my house and I slipped and just landed like smack on the back of my sacrum and. It’s the first time I’ve fallen in a while. And I also have invested thousands of dollars in pelvic floor physical therapy and like the alignment of my pelvis and all these things.

So the first thing I was like shit. What if I’ve really hurt my pelvis? What if I’ve undone all this therapy that I’ve had? What if, like I could feel that starting to set in and instead I got up and I noticed the racing thoughts and my heart rate racing and my breath being shallow.

And I went inside and I could feel like panic coming on. And my, my I, because at this point I’ve worked with this feeling and intuition in a nervous system care long enough that being able to take care of myself in the moment has become something that I’m very used to doing. So my, my body, my intuition was like, shake.

Just start shaking. So I just started shaking and made myself shake and shake. And I probably shook for 90 seconds maybe. And then I took a deep breath and we had people over and they were coming inside and I needed to make them dinner. And I had to keep going with the evening and I took a breath and I was like, I don’t have to collapse around this.

I don’t have to collapse around this. I don’t have to create a story about this. I don’t need to fear how sore I’m gonna be tomorrow. I don’t like I can just keep going because right now I am okay. And I shit, you not Kirby. I woke up the next morning. I was not sore at all. And it was a hard fall dude.

And I don’t know. You’re past 35, I’ll be 39. This falling at 37 or 38 is different than falling when you’re 22, like it’s just different. You don’t land a softly <laugh> and I wasn’t sore. I kept waiting for the soreness to set in it. Never set in <affirmative> I kept waiting to feel like something off in my pelvis.

I never did. And I was like, oh my God. I literally had this physical thing happen that normally I would’ve collapsed around. I would’ve created a story out of it. Oh my God. I’m gonna be so sore. Oh my gosh. This is undoing. All this pelvic floor work I’ve done. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Oh God. I’m like, that panicking energy, but instead I was like, or I can just shake because that’s what my body wants to do instead of collapsing around this pain and freezing right. Stiffening up and hardening myself around it. I could just like shake and keep my body moving and be like, okay.

Everything’s okay. And hello. Like it worked <laugh>, that’s the beauty of being open because when you’re open, you can feel the guidance coming through your body. Yes. Shake. And you know what to do. You didn’t need to plan it. You didn’t need to go, oh, okay. If I ever fall in the future, this is what I’m gonna do.

Because also your body, depending on what’s alive, energetically, and in the presence of the moment, your body’s gonna tell you to do different things. Absolutely. Yeah. But how amazing that, that could happen and you could just stay open and present with the moment and follow it where it led you and poof way less suffering.

Yeah. Way less suffering. You’re right. It was it totally was. And I love having experiences like that. They’re not fun in the moment, but I love having experiences like that because inevitably I will have three clients the next week who are going through something very similar and I’m like, okay, I can help with this.

<laugh> okay. I am now resourced in a way that I was not resourced before and I’ve experienced this firsthand and I am prepared for whatever I need to walk through with you. <affirmative> it just, it always seems to work out that way. Totally. Yeah. And if we’re present to our life, we are more likely to notice those patterns.

Yeah. And those, yeah. And it’s a lot easier to navigate. Yeah. And it’s a lot easier to trust that, oh, this is happening in sequence. What other parts of my life have happened? And <affirmative>. Yeah. And oh, maybe I didn’t do anything wrong to trigger these experiences. Maybe this wasn’t a punishment.

I just slipped in the snow. God wasn’t punishing me. <laugh> exactly I joke, I call it a cosmic spanking. Yeah. I’m just, but I’m like joking. It’s like a little, whatever. It’s not meant to be like spanking in the term in in the sense of like punishment. I just say that that’s where I sat up and took notice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it could be just, you could buy into the trigger or you could do what you usually do, or you’ve got a little space to choose something different. <affirmative> yeah, it’s really cool. Yay. And also sometimes you can’t, so I just true. Sometimes it’s not, sometimes you’re so overwhelmed.

Some like that is not necessarily available to you. So if you’re listening and you’re like, I haven’t had that experience my triggers come up and I just feel fucked up and I’m, I don’t have the space to choose. I don’t have the, it’s just <affirmative> like a freight train comes over me or whatever.

<affirmative> that’s okay, too. That’s just part of the journey. You’re not doing anything wrong is happening to you. But just get some support so that that doesn’t have to be your existence all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And at the same, no, go ahead. And at the same time There’s a sequencing, there’s a trajectory to our lives.

So also recognizing those things are just, they’re what’s happening. And if we can take the personal shame or judgment out of it and recognize like it’s not happening because we’re bad people or it’s not happening because we’re being punished it’s just happening because it’s happening. Then we don’t have to also do the work of removing that layer, that frequency of shame.

Which actually is like a huge problem in terms of healing. Yeah. So much of the work that I have done with clients in the past has been to remove that shame because once the shame is gone, there’s so much more breathing room. There’s so much more wiggle room. Yeah. So yeah, if you don’t have the capacity to choose, that also happens.

And at the same time if you do have the capacity to choose, please exercise it. Because there’s also a lot of people who do have the capacity to choose. Who are saying that they don’t . And so all of these things are happening at the same time. Yes. So wherever this lands in you, if you’re like, fuck, that bitch is telling me, I have to choose.

No, you just listen to your body. Yeah. But if this situation, if this experience isn’t the experience wanna be having, then what are you prepared to do about creating the experience you do wanna be having? Or what kind of support do you need to be able to do that? Absolutely.

And to go along with what you’re saying, what I interrupted you with or what I was so excited to say earlier that I interrupted you is if you don’t have the capacity to choose right now, don’t collapse around the fact that you don’t have the capacity to choose right now and assume that’s how it’s always going to be.

Yeah. Leave space, leave openness for it to be different next time. The more resourced your nervous system is because it’s true. You may not have the nervous system resources to deal with a particular, thing like somebody else could be hearing what I’m saying about the fall and knowing to shake in all of that.

And they would be like, it would never occur to me to do that. I don’t even have any idea that’s a thing I like, no, that’s not, for me. That’s fine. That’s totally fine. I don’t expect it to be possible for everyone. Not everyone has spent literally the last three years of their lives as their full-time job, working on their nervous system.

So of course I probably have a better resource nervous system than some people do. And also if you don’t have a well-resourced nervous system, don’t collapse around that being your story. Because as soon as you lapse around that, then any openness for your nervous system to be more resourced is now closed off.

Yeah. And the one thing I do think is interesting is that I think even if you do collapse, <affirmative> and you’re just like in the shittiest place ever, like eventually you’re gonna get fed up with that. Yeah. And that will prompt emotion yeah. In some direction. Yeah. Yeah. So even that, like sometimes we need to be taken to the end of whatever is there so that we can and turn around and walk in a different direction.

Absolutely. And yeah. And a lot of, and a lot of times when I’m taken to the end I keep being shown that it’s my reaction. That’s making it so intense. Yeah. It’s my fucking reaction. Yes. It’s not actually what’s happening, like honestly getting, so that whole internet thing that happened like last year, it hasn’t even quite been a year yet, but it really.

It was so intense. So I tried to just ignore it for a while because I was like, these people are clearly hurting and they’re misrepresenting what I’m saying. So I’m not even gonna get involved. I’m just gonna, let it burn out for a month and a half. It didn’t burn out. Yeah. And so finally I spoke to it, but in the meantime there had all this, like people were saying they’d had experiences with me that they never had.

Like people hadn’t even met. I was like, who are you? <laugh> and yeah, just saying, oh, she charges $1,200 for a session. It was like, I don’t know where you are getting that information. Cuz if you just go to my website, you’ll see this even anywhere in the realm of reality. Yeah. Yeah, so just but people just see these things and they don’t question them, they just repost them.

They just go, oh, but my I, what I realized is that if I had been better resourced at the time, if I had been able to regulate myself it would’ve been more of a blip on my journey. Then whole thing that just kicked my feet out from under me. Yeah. Like at the time that was happening, my mom was in and out of the hospital.

We’re having some mental health difficulties with one of our children as well. So was really stressful. And I was also running three businesses and trying to parent five kids. And so it’s just totally insane. Like we didn’t foresee the pandemic happening. So when we created grateful, we imagined that I would take some time off for music and I would focus on running it for a year.

And then by then we’d have a really great manager. So I’d just be teaching, treating clients there. And then I could go back to doing some touring as well and parenting, whatever. I didn’t imagine that I was gonna have to be there for all of the time. Yeah. For so much of the time. And so I was just totally burnt out.

So when something like that happens to you, , you just, you don’t have the resources, but I was taken out for like months. I took the summer off. I took the summer off social media and I wasn’t, it wasn’t really until like maybe November that I could even engage with social media without feeling triggered.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I could just be like, oh, those people they’re so bad. They’re so terrible. Whatever. I could blame the experience on them. Or I could go, yeah, that was shitty. But man, if I had better nervous system hygiene, how different this would’ve been. Yeah. And yeah. And like in terms of the world, in terms of the internet we’re gonna run into those, like those people who are gonna talk shit, who are gonna, and what we say, who are gonna be provoked to attack because they don’t know yeah.

How to regulate themselves. So they take it to their keyboard. The other day had someone so pissed off at me because my teacher was interviewed on Joe Rogan and I posted, I didn’t even think about it. I just posted that. I was really excited to check out the interview because Joe Rogan like a pretty balanced interviewer.

I don’t have a lot of experience listening to Joe Rogan. Just the few things I had seen like long ago. I remember that he asked really interesting questions. So I was like, oh man, I wonder, I feel like maybe I’ll get to see a side of my teacher. I’ve never seen before. How cool, how exciting.

And so I just posted that I was excited and someone was like, what do you mean by this? And I was like, I’m excited to see my teacher. you, What do you mean by this? <laugh> I they’re creating a story. Yeah. And then that person, like we engaged in dialogue. And the person was like, I wasn’t able to sleep last night.

And I was like, you weren’t able to sleep last night because I was gonna watch a, an episode of a podcast. How does me watching this episode have any bearing on your life? I just don’t understand. No, it, it literally does not affect you. No, personally. And if you’re to the point that is affecting you personally, maybe it’s time to take a break, just be really gentle with yourself.

Put your phone down, go for a long walk outside, spend time with people you love just. Come back to the real world. Yeah. Yeah. And so I could feel myself being like, oh shit, is this gonna turn into an issue? But I was just able to just be with it and yeah. And yeah, not get rattled, and obviously, I don’t, I’m not having all those experiences I was having a year ago.

I have much more space to, to be able to cultivate healthy, nervous system and to be more regulated. But sometimes it takes taking a step back from the things oh. To create that space. And so many people try. They’re like obviously I wanna create, I wanna heal. I don’t want my bucket of my nervous system to be overflowing, but they’re not willing to take the steps back from the things that they need to take the steps back in order to create that environment for themselves.

And when we did. Yeah and a lot of it too is we have disapproval for so much of ourself. We like and then mostly it’s unconscious, but sometimes when we’re doing this work, we can pinpoint the moment where we made the choice. The conscious choice to disown that piece of us.

Yeah. Yeah, I had, I’ve had tons of experiences just taking myself through that. What’s underneath this, what’s underneath this, what’s underneath this, I had

you can see me smiling. No one can see me smiling. I’m like, should I share this story? I don’t know. Is this like a family podcast? The podcast, every episode is rated explicit okay. So I’m just thinking about how like my husband’s family might listen to this or whatever, but whatever I’m a real human being.

Yeah, so I. Have had, like a lot of people have had terrible experiences dating. And so like my first serious boyfriend, we dated, we met at Bible school and we dated for a long time. He was the first person that I slept with. And so I thought that I had to make it work no matter what, or I was going to hell.

Oh my God. And you weren’t married. We were not married gasp. I know. But I was like, but if I marry him, it’ll all be okay. Yeah. If I just, and so that led me to accept all kinds of bullshit. And in the end he actually ended up living like a double life. Oh, so I would be at home. We’d be like working during the day.

I would go to sleep. Cause I’d be exhausted from working a few jobs and carrying my trauma that I wasn’t knowing how to deal with yet. And he would go out at night and go clubbing and cheat on me. And I, would’ve no idea, like I actually, it’s not true. I had an idea. I had this feeling that something was wrong, something was off and he’s you’re just jealous.

You’re just being jealous. You’re jealous. You’re out of control. And I was like, totally gaslighting, am I totally gaslighting you totally. And this went on for years. And then and then eventually I found out and I was like, That’s why I had that fucked up feeling, but I couldn’t place it. I just assumed I was crazy because I had no, I was like we just go to sleep.

I had no idea. Who’s like going out in the night, like all this shit. And for a while we lived in different cities. And so same thing. I would have friends that lived in his town being like yeah, I saw this person with this woman are you guys broken up? And I’d be like, no, what the fuck? Just this whole thing.

So that really patterned my body. That primed my experience to be on the lookout. Yeah. It’s really primed me to scan my environment for harm and danger when I was engaging with people. But I am married to such a wonderful man. He’s so beautiful. He’s so generous. And so I realized that here’s, I have some space to confront these feelings.

Because these are just coming up as patterns. They’re just coming up as encoded pattern. So can I sit with this jealousy, with this fear? And can I look at what’s under it? And I tried to do it a couple times and I couldn’t do it. It got too intense. It got too hot. I got too overwhelmed and I was like, no, I put it down.

And it was maybe like a year before I would sit with it again. From the last time I was like, you know what, no I’m gonna do this. I’m so tired of this being my experience. I’m tired of carrying this fear. It’s getting in the way. I think what prompted me actually was it was getting in the way of my business.

And I was like, I gotta get outta my own way. So I sat with it and I just kept peeling back the layers in hindsight having someone there to support me might have been a good idea. But I did it on my own cuz I just, I got to that rock bottom piece and I was like, fuck, this, I’m gonna do, what’s required to move through it.

And I did. And what I realized is I moved through the jealousy, moved through the. Yuck through the like bar feeling the hot flush, everything. Once I got to the bottom, I realized, and I’m sorry for my husband’s family, that’s listening to this. If this is too real for you turn it off. Yeah, skip ahead.

One minute or something. I realized that the thought of my husband being with someone else

actually turned me on so much. And I was like, what the fuck? What the fuck? And then I remembered that when I found out that my first partner that I slept with was like sleeping with all these people and doing all this crazy shit. There was part of me that was turned on then too. And I was like, I’m a good Christian girl.

I do not get attracted to this bullshit. That is Satan. Ah, turn it off. Yeah. And so I spent the rest that I was 18. Then I, 36, I did this when I was like 33 or 34. I think I’d been stomping that for so long. And to be clear, just cuz you think something is hot in your head doesn’t mean you want it in real life.

Yes. You can just like fantasize about stop, whatever. But but that’s what was true. The truth was the thought of that really turned me on. And as soon as I accepted that, this influx of energy just wooed through my body and I felt grounded and I felt present and I felt healthy. I looked in the mirror, the structure of my face changed <affirmative> my rib flare softened.

I walked through the world with a pretty curved spine. But my ribcage was just relaxed and I was like, holy shit. Yeah. Whoa. So again, just like it, it is just all part of a process. And we’re just stacking those little pieces. I can’t, I couldn’t have done that from day one. I had to have all those experience of oh man, this true is taking me the direction I don’t wanna go in.

This trigger is actively moving me away. I’m saying, I want these experiences, but this trigger is moving the chess piece in the wrong direction to create this. Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. So yeah it’s just all part of it, but yeah. Welcome back. Kirby’s family who fascinated. So that’s yeah, that’s amazing.

And I actually have some things going on in my life right now, personally, that I’ve not shared anywhere on social media. That is, is taking me through a similar process of facing triggers, seeing where the pain is seeing, where I have my own roadblocks up, seeing where I’ve collapsed around the story where I’ve closed off and then just really being intentional about sitting with it, leaning into the resistance letting myself, so one of the ways that being closed off has shown up for me is I’m a Gemini son, so I’m very like bubbly, curious, inquisitive.

Like I wanna know everything about everyone and sometimes that scares people but the other thing that I think that, whether it’s because I’m a Gemini or for whatever other reason it is I have this. This just natural openness towards life. And I wanna experience all the things and I wanna watch other people, like part of my enjoyment of an experience is doing something with somebody and watching their enjoyment of an experience.

Me too. So I have this just I wanna enjoy life. I wanna watch you enjoying life with me. I wanna have experie with you and watch you feel excited and joy. And then I wanna talk about it. And I wanna talk about all of our feelings about it afterwards, and I’m just really curious.

Sometimes I can be nosy, but it really does come from a genuine place of just being curious and wanting to understand people. And I’m fascinated by people’s stories. But it, because of trauma because of. Things that I picked up from religion and my parents and whatever else. That childlike part of me got squashed down for a long time.

That inquisitive, curious, like joy filled part, just, she had to go take a backseat for a while because it was too painful to be that vulnerable with people, cuz being inquisitive and curious, like I am, it requires a level of vulnerability that a lot of people don’t even have even without trauma, but I’m going through an experience right now with someone it’s a new, it’s a new friendship in my life. And I notice myself being with this person and retreating up into my head because it’s a new relationship wondering what are they thinking about me? What are they feeling right now?

Is this okay? Are they feeling good? And. Then for a few days, I pulled away and I retreated. So I closed, I like pulled back and I was like, they’re gonna think I’m too much. Like they’re gonna cuz I like to share information about myself too. So they’re gonna think I’m too much. They’re gonna think I’m oversharing.

They’re gonna think like this is gonna turn them off. know, They’re not gonna wanna be my friend or whatever. And I observe to that process happening in myself. And I was just immediately like the old programming, the old pathway in the brain, the old way that your body is familiar with is to shut down and pull back and close off and not let this person in because of what you think they’re gonna think about you or what it’s gonna mean or whatever.

So what are you choosing? And so I ripped the, ripped it off, ripped it away and I put myself right back into that relationship and I was like, I am going to reject the idea that there has to be a certain amount of time that passes in a relationship before you can be vulnerable. Cuz a lot of people say, oh, when I get to know them better or when I trust them more or when we’ve been together or been a relationship or had a friendship for X, many years, that’s when I’ll feel comfortable being open and vulnerable and really being my authentic self.

And I noticed myself doing that because that’s what’s culturally and societally accepted. And I was like, no, I am rejecting that. I am going to put my whole self into this relationship from the very beginning. I am not going to hide parts of myself or stifle parts of myself or not be my authentic self because I think that they think it’s too much.

Like I am just gonna fully put myself in and if they reject it if it is too much for them or whatever, so be it. But I don’t wanna have to look back on this relationship in a year or five years from now and wish that I had been able to put my whole self out there and to be open with this person, even if it means it’s too much for them.

And it ends the friendship. Yeah. And so that’s a real life example of something I’m going through like literally as we speak that’s happening and it feels huge. It feels huge for me. Am I still scared? Yes. , that’s what I want people to know. I am still scared. I, there is still a part of me that fears the loss of this relationship, because so far it’s been really meaningful to me and I want it to go on forever, but.

I’m just both feet in, I’m both feet in. I’m not one foot in one foot out. I am both feet in all the way. This is me. This is what you get. This is what I’m here for. If it’s too much for you, I respect that, but I’m not going to cheat you or cheat me out of being my whole self. I was just gonna say, do you know and I’m sure.

Or you do know, but what a beautiful gift you’re giving that person, the experience of being someone with someone who’s fully with you, who’s not trying to curate themselves to what they think. You wanna hear, someone who can actually meet you in intimacy. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s so beautiful. And it’s so sadly, so rare. <affirmative>. Yeah. And it’s been rare for, that’s how I was whenever I was a child. That’s how I was whenever I first started dating, even I would put my whole self into whatever I was doing and whoever I was with and I wanted them to know everything about me and I wanted to know everything about them.

And I wanted to like, literally I wanted us to soak each other up, I’m saying this in a romantic sense and in a platonic sense, like I’m saying it for both and, getting hurt, getting rejected fawning, religion, all of those things. It really did, one by one, just create more and more closure, more and more walls.

More of me not being willing to be vulnerable or it be my authentic self, more awning. And all of that and I haven’t had the opportunity to have a new relationship a friendship in a while. I think that’s probably the case with everyone with COVID, like all of us have been at home for two years now and we haven’t been out meeting people.

And so now that I’ve been out and I’ve met this new person, like I’m seeing myself through the lens of awareness and presence, but also knowing what my history is and knowing how I’ve closed down in the past and how that’s created the, my, I created my own inability to be authentic. And because of closure, like I did that.

Yeah. But also that was who you were at the time. That’s how I needed to survive to get through the world. In essence, that was authentic of you because that was your capacity. That was your range. <affirmative>. Yeah. And now I have more capacity and I have a wider range and my bucket is fuller or is less full.

So I have more room. And and yeah, I fully know that it might be too much for this person. I fully know that I’m not expecting that to be the outcome. That’s not the story aligning with, I’m aligning with the story that me doing. This is gonna be a gift for them. And they’re gonna wanna give me the gift of themselves as well.

Their whole self not the bits and pieces that they feel comfortable with. But yeah it’s been, it’s opened up the opportunity for me to have an experience with another human being, where there is a soul connection there, and we are fully acknowledging the soul connection. And it means that the amount of time we’ve known each other doesn’t matter.

<affirmative> it just doesn’t matter. Yeah. And I think too, because people I’m really glad that people are aware about codependency, but people have gotten so scared to be codependent that they’ve swung to independent almost past independent to hyper independent. Yeah. Yeah. Really where we wanna go is the middle <affirmative> where we’re interdependent.

Yes. And we don’t behave the same way all the time, because again, we’re paying attention to what’s alive in the moment <affirmative>. So if you’re with a person that makes you you notice, you want to share yourself with this person, then you do. And if you notice you’re with a person where you don’t feel like you want to share yourself with this person, then you don’t.

Or you wait and you can make that decision in the moment. Yes. Feeling into what’s there for you in the moment. You don’t need to go into a situation. If they do this and this, then I will reveal my true self. And if they don’t do this and this, then I’m going to be more guarded. That’s again, that’s that criteria bullshit again.

I will trust you if you check these boxes, right? No you trust yourself so you can carry yourself. And sometimes, Ugh, sometimes it sucks. Sometimes you like men. When I got canceled, I got blindsided by it because I wasn’t doing anything harmful. I wasn’t saying anything bad or rude that I thought, I was just suggesting, I was like, here, this can help you transform your life.

Cuz it helped me transform mine. And all of the people I work with every day, this is literally how we do the transformation. If you want a formula, try this one. And yeah, and also just seeing that so much of the conflict in the world is someone gets triggered and then they blame this other person and it’s this whole thing.

So I like, yeah. The people that you ask to tiptoe around your triggers, like they might not be able to do that. That doesn’t make them bad people. Cause we all have our own boundaries. So we just have to remember like agency and boundaries and we’re all doing the best that we can.

Yeah. And but yeah, if you’re with someone and you feel excited and joyful and you want to share, then that’s great. And even if you are too much in putting that in quotes for people who are listening, even if you are like too much cross that bridge, when you, you come to it. Don’t cut yourself off.

Don’t siphon yourself off because you also might not be, you might be just exactly the perfect amount of what that person needs to soak up and they might be so fucking grateful cuz you’re the answer to their prayers. Yeah. And so if you were to pull yourself back a little bit yeah, you might not they wouldn’t get what they need and you wouldn’t get what you need.

<affirmative> so just, yeah, if that bridge is there, you can cross it, but you might never come to it. You might just take this beautiful meandering path along a gorgeous river the whole time. Yeah. <laugh> yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you do need to tiptoe in to something. If that’s what it feels like you need to do.

<affirmative> but that doesn’t mean you always need to tiptoe into something sometimes. Exactly what you need is to dive in head first. Yeah. Sometimes you just get pushed off the bridge and you figure it out on your way down. Yeah. Yeah. Like sometimes that’s literally the way it goes and you just figure it out and yeah they’re just always in, in my experience, seems to be a higher wisdom at play.

And I often won’t understand it in the moment. And then it makes so much sense later. Yeah. As I’m, as we’re having this conversation, I’m like, part of me is oh man am I doing, am I giving enough information? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? Will people hear this and understand, or will they wanna work with me or blah, know, there’s that like chatter box in the back of my mind.

But there’s also this simultaneous knowing that just whatever happens is what is the only thing that could have happened. Is the only thing, the thing that’s happening is the only thing that could be happening right now. <affirmative> yep. And you can be with the chatter box and you can hear it and you’re observing it, but that’s not the energy that you’re operating out of.

No, it’s not driving me. No, I’m just noticing that it’s there. Yeah. In the past. I feel that way all the time. yeah. I would’ve been like crippled by it in the past, yeah. Yeah, when I was more actively a musician, every single show, I would get stage fright, so bad. And then I would get up there halfway through the first song the would be gone.

I would be like, yeah, this is where I’m meant to be. It feels great. And then I would love it and I would just be buzzing and so full of energy by the end of the set and then somehow I would forget it again and I’d be like, Ooh and then same thing. And I actually, part of why I put my attention and focus in, into working with my clients more full time was that I was like, oh man, I’m so tired of getting stressed.

I’m like stressing myself out before every gig. I’m so tired of this Merry go round. But guess what? That stress fucking followed me. It wasn’t limited to music. Not, it never is limited to just one thing. It’s not the thing you think it is. . Yeah. And the great thing about that is now, like I’m able to look at it and go, oh, what are the roots of this?

Why is this here? Yeah. Yeah. That’s like what I was saying, the very beginning of our convers is like, when I noticed the closed constrictive energy, it wasn’t just showing up in my marriage. Like it’s impossible for it to just show up in one area of your life. But in every other area you’re not closed off.

It’s no, I was closed in my marriage, my sexuality, my business, sometimes in my relationship with my kids, like to new experiences, taking risks, like it was everywhere. It’s not just a singular. No, but the great thing about that so there’s a saying, you’ve probably heard it, how you do anything is how you do everything.

<affirmative> so the great thing about that though, is you can hone in on the one area you’re doing that and it will spill out into all of the other areas. If you wanna, if working on sexual trauma feels too dangerous or too intense, then focus on your business. Yeah. Look at your money.

Shit. Yeah. If that feels too intense, look at another area because it is going to have an impact <affirmative> you’re the common denominator you’re carrying that work forward. So even if you’re not specifically looking at that thing, get just saddle up next to it, get adjacent to it. And then eventually you will be able to go a whole hog.

Yeah. I just wanna check in with you, is there anything that you feel that you wanna to say or needed to say before we wrap up that hasn’t been said already?

So I, I realized that like essentially I’m a professional illuminator.

Like my business is called Illumina wellness because. I’m so good at listening and identifying the pieces of your life, the places that you close habitually on yourself, that’s just like second nature to me. I’m so good at identifying those. What are you in human design? I’m a generator. Okay. And it’s interesting because I’m an emotional authority, but I don’t actually feel like that works for me.

My SAC role works better. Like I definitely notice some of it, but if I wait, I lose momentum and like I need to trust my Sacra and trust the confluence. So if something’s coming through me and I feel energized and excited about it, I gotta follow it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so I’m here in service to the mystical and physical forces that bring your highest self through to this world.

Love that. So that encompasses the full range. I’m not here to get you to transcend your body, to have some enlightened mystical experience. Cuz I think that’s bullshit. Your body is a vessel. It’s a vehicle it’s so sacred. It’s so important. It’s gotta come along for the ride. <affirmative> a lot of people are missing that.

They’re just like, oh it’s base, gotta be above. No, you don’t need to be above your body. You need to, the body is so basic. <laugh> yeah. You’re like, no, like literally me, we need the physical, but we also need to not get so caught up in the physical that we forget about the mystical. Because there are all these experiences happening that we don’t have language for <affirmative> but they’re happening <affirmative> and yeah, so they’re and those forces, co-create the magic that is you in the world.

And when you’re in that magic, when you’re in the flow, when you’re in confluence, That’s when you can, that’s when you’re open, that’s when you can express your magic to the world. And that’s when you give the world your medicine. Yeah. Without being scared of how it’s gonna be received, and your medicine is gonna be different than my medicine, which is gonna be different than their medicine.

But we each have a unique thing that we are meant to bring to the world. <affirmative> we are born to be in relationship with the world. Yeah. And look at the world right now. We have so many people being like this world is so fucked up. I’m gonna complain about it, but I’m gonna be hands off. Yeah.

Or I’m gonna activisty post about it on my social media, but that’s all I’m gonna do. And I’m like, what is that really doing? Nothing. It’s makes them feel better. Yeah. And honestly we need things like that to feel better in times when we feel helpless, but why don’t we have a conversation about why we feel helpless and how we feel helpless and what we could do instead <affirmative>.

Like several years ago some friends and I made these free food boxes in our community. We made 14. They’re like the free library. Do you guys have those? <affirmative> yeah. So same thing, but I, the reason we did it was I was sitting in, I was at a meditation practice. And I realized, holy shit, if you can’t address your spiritual needs, you can’t hear your guidance cuz your basic needs aren’t met. Yes. Holy shit. There are so many people going unserved because they don’t have what they need and we could easily just take the food that we’re gonna waste or just put a little bit at extra out or whatever. We could easily make that available to people in the community.

And maybe you’re even a person like it, it’s not limited to a certain person. Maybe you’re out for a run and you have low blood sugar and you need to get a granola bar from the box. It’s there for you. Yeah, fuck. It’s there for you. <laugh> so yeah, so just so I’ve been treating clients for just about 17 years.

I, again, with a whole shit ton of different modalities, so I don’t go into it with a formula or an idea. I go into it with the intention to listen and to meet the person where they most need to be met. I offer a variety of different workshops and classes. I do an open, do a monthly session called open, which is basically just a container where you can show up and receive.

So we do breathwork. We do yoga Nera. We do a group energy healing. And I trust that whoever shows up to that is are the right people. And so there’s open. I have a six, maybe eight. I don’t know. There’s a lot of curriculum. I’m not sure I can condense it down into six, but I’m gonna try, we’ll see women’s program called vessel.

That’s coming up and it’s all about the care and the maintenance of feminine system in a world built for men. And not to say that in like a derogatory way. It’s just that, the systems we, we live in a page. They often don’t work. They often part of it is like they often cause closure in women, but at the I’m noticing they’re so beautifully designed for women to practice openness.

So there is a gift in it, as much as it might be hard to see sometimes it’s almost like it does help us to unlock our feminine magic. <affirmative>. Because it gives us opportunities to practice that. Can you open here? Can you open here? Can you be the love that this moment meets it reminds me, honestly, what’s coming up for me, as you say that is it takes me back to working with a physical therapist.

And when I was doing some really deep, gentle core work with a physical therapist we were trying to get these like super, super low, tiny muscles in my lower core to activate. And I just, I was doing all the movements the right way. I was going slow. I was keeping my sacrum still, like I was doing everything, but I wasn’t feeling the muscles activate.

And so I just said, could you just touch, could you just touch the muscle and just her touching it? Like I was able to feel in and get it to activate. So it’s almost like what you’re saying is these things that are masculine in nature that kind of force women to close, it’s also providing that biofeedback or that touch point to know this is exactly where you open.

You got it. And when you look at it from that place, you’re like, holy shit. How, yeah. How fucking brilliant it’s astounding. Yeah. And you can also forget and be like how fucked up <laugh>. There are a lot of things that are fucked up about the patriarchy <laugh> yes. not, We’re not dismissing the patriarch.

Not saying that. No, just noticing. What’s also available to notice in those moments. <laugh> so in addition to open and vessel I’m relaunching a program also this spring called sovereign beings. It’s a six week journey through emotions. And basically an investigation of the ways we close and what to do about it.

So here’s some resources, if you’re angry, this is how you can process anger. If you’re sad, this is how you can process that. If you’re clinging to joy, this is what to investigate. So we can do less gripping of all the emotional states. And we can also recognize the value and the validity of the emotional frequencies in their non recognizable mood states.

For example, fear helps us to pay attention. I can’t count the times the people are like, I just wish fear didn’t exist. And I’m like, no, you don’t. Yeah, no, you don’t. It would be chaos. If fear did not exist, like the frequency of fear helps us do so many things. Yeah. Anger. The frequency of anger helps us to be motivated.

So anger is actually tied up in your creativity. Yeah. And your motivation to do those things in the world. So they’re really important too. Yeah. Yeah. And then I’m working on a program called range, which is about window of tolerance and how to support yourself through that. And then there is also, but it’ll be less sciencey and more like energetics <affirmative> and then Oracle I’m still, I’m working on Oracle too.

That’s a nine month certification program certification on certification, wild mystical time. Love it. All right. To all that. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. Oh, people can find you on Instagram. Yes. They can find me on Instagram. I’m in the process of making like. Websites and landing pages for all of this information.

I, I still am like, is it necessary? I don’t know. But I think at this point in my career, like a little more masculine containment would probably be helpful. <laugh> I tend to just wake up and go, I wanna do things by how I feel and that’s great. But if I wanna scale and emotional authority <laugh> yeah, totally.

It’s a hundred percent. And so I love it. I can. Yeah. But I there’s a lot of people that wanna walk with me and work with me. And so if I’m able to serve, I’m much able, I’m much more able to serve them better if I have strategies and systems in place. So much of my energy, isn’t going to like navigating or answering the same a billion times.

Just because I value connection. So I’m like, oh, I’d rather have an in have a conversation with the person. But I can’t do that a hundred times a day or that’s all I do. Yeah. I hear that dude. Yeah. I wish I often wish I could multiply myself like three times if I could just multiply myself three times.

yes. And I could serve so many more people. Yes. So I get it. So we’re gonna link to all your things. Oh, and oh yeah, go ahead. And of course yeah, so there’s also one-on-one sessions that I do. Oh, yes, for sure. Okay. All right. We’re gonna link to all the things so people can find you and work with you, however they want to, which I’m going to encourage them to do.

And I just thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight, and this has been a profoundly helpful conversation for me, and I’m sure it has been for our listeners as well. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much.

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Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast

Episode 81: Openness in the Body, Cosmic Spankings, & Vulnerability in Relationships (part 2) with Kirby Criddle

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