What is Neuro-Somatic Intelligence? FAQ: Your Questions Answered

Welcome. Today we are going to be talking about the neurosomatic intelligence coaching certification course. We get so many questions from folks about what the course entails, who is it for? What are the differences between NSI and some of the other big somatic healing modalities? And we're going to dive deep into that today as well as give you a big high level overview. So this should be a fun conversation where we can hopefully answer a bunch of your questions.

Welcome to Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide. And I'm also one of the educators for the neurosomatic intelligence coaching certification. And I'm Elizabeth Christof,

founder of Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification. And we're joined today also with Matt Bush, founder of Next Level Neuro and one of our lead educators in NSI. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me back. I'm excited about this. I'm excited, too. I love these questions when people want to know more about NSI. And it's important, I think, that we flesh out some of the bigger questions that people have. So let's start with

what is neurosematic intelligence? Yeah, neurosomatic intelligence is really having a deep understanding of how our operating system works, our brain, our nervous system, and this big concept that we are sentient beings. We're always taking in information about the world around us. Our brain is interpreting that information and then it's generating an output. So no matter what work we're doing, either for ourselves or in the world with clients,

we're always having an impact on someone's nervous system. And the state of their nervous system is always having an impact on their experience, on how the work affects them. There's always an interplay between the state of someone's nervous system function that they come in with and then how the work impacts their nervous system health. And so NSI is really here to help coaches, therapists, healers understand and bridge the gap between mindset and

somatic experiencing through the nervous system. To have practical, actionable tools to begin to re pattern at a daily level how someone's nervous system is taking in information about the world around them, how they're responding to it inside of their body and their brain, and then creating a new experience for them.

And so when we have neurosomatic intelligence, it's really having the intelligence of how we operate, of how we move through the world and how we can start to work with that system to create real, lasting change, both for ourselves and for our clients. For me, it's about the knowledge and the understanding of how the nervous system integrates with and affects our physical body and our emotions as we deal with trauma

and recovery. There's been a lot of work done over the last 50 years in these areas, and you've gotten all kinds of different modalities and practices and theories that have popped up. But up until recently, the medical world, the research industry, the scientific side of western medicine, didn't know very much about this emotional neuro limbic system and how it integrates with long term trauma recovery.

What we're trying to do is blend some of the best practices that we've discovered from that western scientific viewpoint and a neurological perspective with some of the long lasting best practices from somatic work, and even some of the eastern traditions that are out there, some natural traditions, and put all of that together in a way that we can better understand what the nervous system and the body are doing when we have trauma responses, why that happens, and then how

we can actually recover and heal and rehabilitate from those. And I had this thought. It was like, everybody has a brain, and we deserve the right to know how to use it. Like, there is no education out there that teaches us how our nervous system works. Like in school or in education programs as teenagers, young adults. There is no user's manual

for your brain and nervous system. I think it's our job in this world of applied neurology to build the user's manual for how our brain and nervous system and body work together. So we went on to do that in next level neuro. But NSI is doing that in this emotional and trauma recovery world where it never really existed before. Now, this is a brand new piece of this world that we've created with NSI. And I think to end on kind of a couple of things that both of you just said,

like, it's the intelligence that which we operate. This is our operating system. And that's very empowering for someone who hasn't felt like they've had a lot of control or power in their lives in the direction that their lives have been kind of propelled into, through developmental trauma, through complex trauma, through PTSD, through

living in this world that I've lived in. And so for NSI, it really, by learning the language that my brain speaks, by learning about my sensory inputs, and learning that I can actually rewire my brain, that is hugely empowering and so I just love NSI for that. You guys brought so much science into it. And like, I love, I'm someone who really loves

science also. And so it's really cool. Yeah, I'd love to just for us to dive a little bit deeper into how some of this has impacted our own life and why we think it's so important for people to bring into their work. And, you know, I know for myself I am someone with complex trauma. I do have a fairly high ace score of six. And I also have deep and meaningful relationships with a lot of people that have complex trauma as well. And I've seen the outputs of

disease and mental health decline. And I've also experienced going through a lot of different healing modalities, somatic healing practices, cognitive therapy. And sometimes those experiences weren't great. My nervous system didn't have the capacity for it, and it could end up pushing me into emotional flashbacks or physical health outcomes, big flare ups

of autoimmune. And as I was studying applied neurology for a long time and really understanding about how the nervous system worked, I just saw, man, there's so much potential to bring this framework and these tools of understanding our sensory inputs, of working in a daily practice to rehabilitate the nervous system, to create capacity and resilience for people so that they can do these other big healing practices safely

and without experiencing really strong protective outputs. And that as this conversation in the world is growing about nervous system health and the role of our nervous system in trauma, there's a real place for this, for this framework and for these tools to help mitigate some of the outcomes that we see. The links between high ace score and disease outcomes, the links between developmental trauma and

mental health decline. Because we know that everything is a skill, every skill is trainable, and it is possible, because of neuroplasticity, to re pattern our nervous system responses. And just like Matt was saying, everybody deserves to know that and understand how they work. And like Jen was saying, to have some agency in creating positive change in their life.

And it's really so important. When I think of my own story and the anxiety and the disordered eating, or the dependent behaviors on substances at times, and just the unhealthy relationships and this whole world that I had identified myself with to my outputs, and through NSI, I learned that I'm not my outputs. That was really important for me to understand that. And then also too, as we're talking about our foundational operating system, I have an Apple iPhone. I have updated this

thing so many times. I've bought many of them, and it updates on its own many times. It fixes the bugs. And then I ask people, how many times have you updated your operating system? Because that's what we're offering you here. If you think about the time of life that we're pattern that zero to seven. Well, now here I am at 47, running a successful business. I can't be running that business as a three year old who's scared to use her voice, to

show her face, to be in the world. That's how I was showing up as unhealed parts and ages of myself that were really not capable and didn't have the capacity for the life that I wanted to be in. I think what's really important about what you just said, Jen, is like you may have found yourself in a difficult situation or other people who've gone through NSI, same thing. Like, I'm a grown up, I'm running a business, I'm running a household,

but part of me still feels like this little child. And it's not that you or any of those other people are not already trying to do the work. People have gone through years or decades of doing the work. But what we found through the first several cohorts of NSI is that when people have done that, but they don't have the nervous system component, they kind of just keep

running into the same obstacles. It's like they're trying to do what they've been told to do, right, but it's not creating the results that they want. They keep going through the same or similar loops. They're stuck on the same train going around and around. And once you actually have a better understanding of how the nervous system is reacting to inputs, that it's either a protective mechanism or an internal defender at work, it starts to make sense why you've been on the same merry go

round over and over and over. So now you can understand what actually needs to

be repattered. Right? It's like once you know better information, then you can take better actions and, well, I think we're going to get to some of these other systems and modalities on today's call, but it's just, there's such an opportunity like an open door before you when you start to see the connection between the actual brain areas and parts of your nervous system and how they affect your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, your

words and your habits. And it just completely opens up a new world of that's what I need to be focusing on. So major transformation is possible. And I think that's what's so important. Even in our, our culture, our society, at least in the western world. This whole view of trauma and recovery, it's fairly new. Even if we give it 20 years, like, that's not like yesterday, but even if it's 20 years of really focusing, there's such a large number of people who have not yet been exposed to how

all of these pieces fit together. And I just. I want us to be able to reach those people. I think it's so important for them to have better tools and better understanding to do the recovery that they want. Absolutely. And like you say, a lot of the time we're all working with someone's nervous system, whether we know it or not, where everything that we do with our clients and with ourselves is

having an impact on the nervous system. So it benefits everyone to do that a little bit more intentionally, to understand how to read what the nervous system is saying back, how to calibrate work, so that you're doing things at the appropriate level for someone's nervous system. And so we have a lot of different types of practitioners that come into NSI, whether they're therapists or they're working with kids or they're working in corporate wellness or coaching and mindset work,

somatic experiencing practitioners. But all of these people are directly impacting the nervous system of their clients. And when there is a framework and tools, that work can become a lot more effective. Like, at the best case scenarios, you're doing good work, and we can make it more effective, but it can also keep you from inadvertently harming people when you don't

understand the signals that the nervous system is sending you. And then again, give you really practical tools that make things safer and more possible for your clients to really get that change and not get stuck in that cycle. Yeah, I think you brought up a really great point around, like, people being re traumatized in healing

spaces. And one of the, this, one of my favorite things about NSI is all the various practitioners that come through, doctors, therapists, psychologists, pts, breath work facilitators, plant medicine guides. Like, it's really an incredible, robust array of people and practitioners and humans, and it's global, so we get to work with people all over the world. And what's really inspiring about that at NSI is that the questions that one of them would ask is never

something I would think of. I'm just in awe of the knowledge and the wisdom that comes in and through NSI. And because everyone out there has a nervous system, there's no one that NSI doesn't speak to, and we really see that with every cohort that comes through. So I think one of the biggest questions that we get is, what is the difference between neurosomatic intelligence and somatic experiencing? So let's discuss that and kind of dive into some of the nuances here. Yeah, this is such a great

question, and it comes up so much. And I'm a huge fan of somatic experiencing. I have done it a lot in my own healing. And when I first began, it was almost impossible for me to go through a somatic therapy session. I just didn't have the capability at a nervous system level when someone would stop and ask me, how's that feeling in your body? Do you want to move closer to me? Do you want to move far away? Do you need to move right now? What signals is your

body sending you? I didn't know I wasn't connected. I was in such a chronic state of dysregulation and dissociation that I couldn't answer that question. And then a lot of times, trying so hard to feel into my body, to be embodied in a nervous system, that dissociation was a well worn, protective path, and I really didn't have the skills for that would end up pushing me into periods of insomnia or physical outputs, migraine pain, long emotional

flashbacks. And so I think that it is incredibly important to begin to move emotions through the

body, to process things somatically. And there's a place for using practical work with the nervous system to rehabilitate different sensory input systems, like our interception, the health of our vagus nerve on a daily basis, to start to make it possible to be able to do some of these other practices safely and to re regulate after and continue to re pattern so that my nervous system, my brain is like, it's

okay to do this work. You can come back from this, and little by little, especially if I now have a practitioner that knows how to read the nervous system, knows when something is too much, then we can really work in that sweet spot, that minimum effective dose, and create a lot of safety and regulation around that experience to, again, provide for more positive adaptation rather than continuing to perpetuate the same patterned responses that

someone's trying to move out of. Yeah, I was going to say, after hearing you speak there, the first thing you're talking about is the dosage, that if you don't have a way to assess whether the dosage is correct, it's really easy to overdose. Somatic experiencing, especially at the beginning when you do that, you open up or release more emotion or somatic feeling than someone can actually process and feel safe with.

So whats supposed to be therapeutic instead becomes threatening, and then that person is kind of left in a tailspin of this ungrounded reality of, like, where do I turn to for security? And unfortunately, that often becomes unhealthy coping mechanisms that they will turn to, or some of the behaviors that theyre actually trying to get rid of, theyll adopt again because of that lack of safety and grounding after the experience. So dosage is really important.

Definitely need a way to assess that. The other thing that I find very different between NSI and somatic experiencing is that this whole understanding of how the nervous system is involved, like, there's a, I don't even know the best word for it. Maybe a myth, maybe an urban legend that our emotions and our trauma live in the body,

which is not untrue. But if you put a period at the end of that sentence, you're missing a big part of the picture, because it's not just the body that keeps the score, to borrow the name of the book, it's the nervous system that keeps the score. And the truth is, you cannot ever differentiate or distance the

physical body from the nervous system. They are intricately linked and intertwined at such a microscopic level, down to the little nerve endings that innervate our skin and our joints and our bones and our fascial layers, that when you say the body holds the trauma or the traumas in the tissue or whatever buzzword you want to use, it's like, yeah, but also there's a nervous system there. And you can't, you literally cannot dig into the human body without

running into the nervous system. And I mean that both metaphorically and literally. You can't do any surgical procedure on the human body, on the literal sense of this, without running into a nerve. You can't do any digging into the tissues, metaphorically, without running into the nervous system, because the nervous system is always involved

in all body tissues. And so what we talk about in NSI is that some of the protective mechanisms, the tension, the emotional memory, the flashbacks, the fear responses, it's like you may have triggered or accessed those by starting at a particular body area. True. But the actual response that you're getting, the reaction that that person is having to either hold or release to process or not all of those reactions are coming

from up here, their brain. In the NSI, we dissect what are all the different brain areas that are involved the amygdala, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the brainstem, the prefrontal cortex. We run through exactly what all of these do, and it gives you a more holistic picture to understand that, yes, the body is. There's a physical memory in the body of previous trauma. There's a memory in down to the cellular level in the human body that it can access or recall

emotional events, both happy and traumatic. Like, it's not just one or the other, but in doing the recall and then reacting and responding, you're automatically living in the world of the nervous system. You're not just living in the physical body. And so I tell my clients all the time, you can't just treat the human body from the neck down. Like, you forget that there's a head attached to it and go, oh, we're just going to treat this and that down here. We're going to.

In my world, it's like we're going to work on your muscles and joints and connective tissues. In the healing and trauma world, it's like we're going to work on your emotional release from these tissues. Like, yeah, but what about what lives above the neck that can't be forgotten? It can't be left out of the picture.

So I think it's a greater context and understanding that lets you dose it appropriately, lets you respond after the fact in a more helpful way, more productive way, lets you know when to not use your tools with a client. This is a really important point

that comes up often in our NSI conversations. But most training modalities, I'm not just picking on somatic experiencing here, but most training modalities, they give you the shiny, cool, awesome gadget or tool, but they don't really tell you when you should not use it. With a client, like, what do you really need to watch out for? When is it going to be too much or possibly ineffective? And when you actually understand the nervous system and have a different

perspective, that question is much easier to ask. You'll know which tools are available or responsible to use with a given client or at a certain time. So there's a much bigger world out there than just thinking that we have to release the trauma from the body. Well, it really is a deeper way to work with someone at this foundational, in this foundational way. And both of you brought up

some really key words that I really think of. When I think of peak somatic experiences, like, I really think that's what somatic experiencing does. And online anyway, it's this image of calling people forward into these big releases, into this big deeper work that they can do in their bodies. And my question always is, does the person have the capacity for this? What is going to be on the back end of this person's experience?

Can they get regulated? Do they have tools? Can they come back down from this? Like, can they, after they release, after they process, how did they then again, fill their cups? Like, I really question it from a real, like, safety perspective in that way. And you see, I see a lot of practitioners that are not trauma informed, that are not informed on how far they are pushing that client. And then we have clients who are voluntarily engaging with these big

experiences because they want those releases. And why wouldn't you? I want those releases too. Right. Like, we want to be able to have those kind of experiences if that's what you desire. And we also need to be able to maintain a flexibility, a balance within the nervous system that we know. Once again, back to how empowering NSI is that I know I have the tools that I can pull myself back from this, even if the practitioner isn't catching my spiral in a

way. And that's what's happened for me working with practitioners is that I'm the one who knows when I'm going too far. They often don't understand the nervous system. And so I've worked with many people along the way and so many modalities, and it's a lot of times, like, I need to stop and I need to regulate. Like, this questioning is either pushing me too far, we're going into a place like, I need to regulate, because even this conversation is creating too much of an

experience in my body. And as we go through the work, I want to use my tools so that I can stay grounded and present and, and know where my edges are, not rely on the person leading my experience to know when, when I hit my edges, because a lot of times they're not going to know it until it's way too late. One of the most important things, and you

just alluded this, is that let's use the word tension. I don't want to use, like, the word threat or trauma in the body, but the tension that we hold around emotional areas or around those boundaries that you're alluding to. Tension is a tool that the nervous system used to protect us. So tension is protective, right? But in the greater world, people assume all tension

is bad. If there's tension, we need to release it. You see this in the physical training world, like fitness and exercise, or people like, everything's tight. I need to use my foam roller, I need to do my foam rolling, do my stretching, get my massage, and they're like, ah, you know, it's so tight, I gotta release. Well, as soon as you do that, the nervous system takes a look at the body and is like, dude, what happened? Like, what the heck? I needed that tension to keep me

safe. Now it's gone. I'm way more likely to get injured now because I no longer have my protective mechanism. You've stripped away my armor, and now I'm super vulnerable. I don't know how to move through the world, and I'm probably gonna get hurt. And this, I'm talking about a physical sense of tension, but the same exact thing applies to this emotional protection that we have that lives in our body. So my question to bounce off of what Jen said is, should

it even be released in the first place? Does the nervous system have another way to feel safe? Or as right now, this is the only thing it's relying on to get it through the day to day and feel safe and successful in its life. And if you strip that away by having this huge peak somatic experience and you blast it out into the universe, now that nervous system is super vulnerable to

what comes next. And what happens the next time I get into a threatening conversation or a situation that's difficult to deal with, and I no longer have that protective mechanism, now what am I going to do? And often the result is things get worse for people before they start to get better. Yeah, as you were talking, I really thought about, that applies so much as well in the world of mindset and personal development. When we just expect people to move

into different beliefs, we've maybe cognitively deconstructed it. And it's like, okay, now I'm going to be really visible, or I'm going to take these steps of growth, or I'm going to show up differently in my relationship. And those are all protective patterns. And I've had many clients, and myself included too, that when we start to take that stuff away, whether or not those adaptations were like, quote unquote maladaptive, they were providing some sort of safety and regulation. And the other

outputs can start to get a lot worse. I might experience a lot more pain, or I might, you know, I remember trying to take away binge eating and just taking it away without any other tools to create safety and regulation. And now all of a sudden, I'm not doing great physically. I can't sleep. I'm in a lot of pain. I have migraine because there wasn't any other way to create that safety when you take the thing away that my system had

become so reliant on for regulation and safety. And then I also was thinking, too, as you guys were talking, another big difference is that NSI is very forward facing. So we're not necessarily going back and diving into the trauma all of the time. We don't have to really relive that experience. We're really looking at how it's showing up in the present day life in terms of our reactions and behaviors, and then using that as a guide to find where does my nervous system need

rehabilitation? Where do I need to create new stimulus for different areas of my brain and my nervous system to create different outputs and gradually re patterning, rather than always diving back into the trenches of our experiences and then not even having tools to create a different output with that, but just going through it over and over again. You know, one of the things that came up for me when you were speaking, Elizabeth, is that like these

outputs, they're part of a pattern. They're part of a pattern that our brain looks at from how we believe and how we move in through the world. And so when you, when you kind of erase part of the pattern, there's going to be some chaos. There's going to be a little bit of panic. Part of the neurotag just gets taken away, and that's unfamiliar to the brain. That's already going to send a lot of alarm bells off.

It's really interesting. It is. It is. Another one of the big modalities that we get asked about is the difference between neurosomatic intelligence and polyvagal therapy or theory. And my first thoughts on this are just to kind of segue from this other conversation is it is a more holistic approach. Right. We're looking at more components of the

nervous system. So polyvagal theory really emphasizes the health of the vagus nerve and vagal tone, which is crucial for our interceptive system and being able to convey internal bodily states to the brain. But from an NSI perspective, there's just a, there's a bigger picture view of the nervous system considering not just how is information relayed from the vagus nerve up to the brain, but how's our brain interpreting that? What's going on with our brain function, with our

insular cortex? How do we read those signals? And then what's the output that's created? And there's also many different sensory inputs that come into our nervous system besides just our interceptive system. We have all of our extraceptive senses, our seeing, our taste, our touch, our hearing smell. We have our proprioceptive system that lets our brain know where our body is in space.

We have our vestibular system. That's our balance system that orients us with the horizon, keeps us upright against gravity, lets us know what position we're in. And then we have our interceptive system. And all of these systems really work together to create our neuroception, our felt sense of either safety or threat in the world. And there's many times where we might have deficits in one of these other systems. That's creating a lot of

stress in the nervous system. That makes it impossible to create the outcomes that we want from, say, like a vagus nerve exercise. If I still have a lot of stress coming in from sensory mismatch or from a vestibular issue. And all of these systems are always working together, they're always impacting one another. And so to really create change in the nervous system, there just needs to be a more holistic approach where, yes, definitely vagus nerve health and vagal tone is very

important. And we need to look at how the nervous system is functioning as a whole, how these systems are interacting together and have many different tools for rehabilitation. Yeah, so there's several ways to look at this question, and I come at it from a little bit more of the science perspective. So, in order to really understand the whole argument, you kind of have to go all the way back to when Polyvaga was first published in

1995 by doctor Steven Porges. He had been studying, basically, cardiac arrhythmias and heart function in neonatals. So in infants and fetus development. And if you go back to the original science, unfortunately, a lot of it's just wrong. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm not trying to step on any toes. But 1995 was before the development of the functional MRI

machine. So it was before a lot of the brain imaging and nervous system imaging that we now have access to that wasn't invented until 1995 or 96, actually, and didn't come into regular use until about 99 to 2001. And what the research around the fMRI actually says, interestingly enough, is we learned more about the human brain and nervous system in the 20 years after the invention of the fMRI than we knew in all of human history. So massive amounts of scientific information have come in on how

the nervous system actually works. Okay, so some of the myelinization pathways that forges talks about aren't actually there or they're not unique to humans in the way that he discussed. Some of the survival structures that he proposed in the theory aren't actually there in humans or not exclusively in humans, which is one of the major tenets of the whole theory is that humans are different than other mammals or other vertebrate creatures.

That seems to not be the case. And then the other thing is like the whole idea of what would trigger this polyvagal system into a survival response is this idea of neuroception. And if you've ever studied polyvagal theory, you might know that word. I get asked about that one a lot, I think neuroception, looking at it now, we're almost 30 years later. But neuroception is

one of the silliest terms that has ever been created. Because when you actually break down what that word means, like your neuro perceptions, well, everything you perceive is neuro like. You don't get any sensory input without the nervous system. No vision, no auditory, no smell, no taste, no touch, no proprioception, no interoception, no somatosensation, no vestibular input like no thoughts, no feelings. You can't even perceive yourself

without neurology. So neuroception isn't descriptive of any particular kind of input. It's an umbrella term that means all sensation that the human is capable of perceiving. And if it means everything, it basically means nothing. Okay, so you go. It's because in the theory, and I'm oversimplifying, I know, but it's like because of neuroception, our vagus nerve flips us into this particular survival response. That's like saying

something happens and then I have an output. But you're boiling the entire output down to simply the physiological function of one single nerve or the branches of one single nerve going. It's either the dorsal branch that's responding or the ventral branch that's responding. The reality is that's way too black and white of a description to actually talk about how this human body and nervous system respond to all the different shades of gray that are potential threats or

dangers, either emotionally or physically. It's not so black and white. If you're studying. I'm going to be totally sarcastic here. If you're studying reptiles, that makes a little bit more sense because they have a reptilian brain. It's non cognitive, non rational, not a lot of thinking going on. It's simply just a response to stimulus. But humans have the ability to self calm, to mitigate threats cognitively, to modulate sensory inputs

that are coming in and how we perceive them. And the truth is, you just can't boil it all down to one single nerve. Okay? Now, if you fast forward to the last five to seven years, like, probably since 2015, there's been a lot of work of people trying to basically resuscitate polyvagal theory. Like, we figured all this stuff is wrong. It's basically dead as of, like, 2007 to 2012. And you can see a lot of publications that are still floating around

the Internet, like, is polyvagal dead? Polyvagal is dead. RIP polyvagal theory. That's all happening 2007 to 2012, okay? And then around 2014 2015, other researchers and psychologists start to publish the resuscitation of polyvagal. And basically what's happening is they're kind of updating the science, going, okay, it's not this or it's not that, and they're clueing into some of the brain areas that are in this subconscious survival brain.

But when you do that and you update the theory, in my opinion, this is only Matt talking, not even necessarily all of NSI, but in my particular opinion, when you do that, you're no longer talking about polyvagal theory. Now you're talking about neurology. So it's almost like polyvagal has caught up to the rest of the neurological world and gone, oh, these brain areas are involved, not just the branches of this nerve.

And so now, at this point, what's left is that the theory basically becomes a language structure or a metaphor to describe these outputs that occur. It can be useful language like, it's fairly easy to describe and identify what these are and how they feel, but it's just language that's couching what is actually happening in the nervous system, not just the response of the nerve itself. So today's polyvagal theory, very different than what was left in 1995 to 1999. It's evolved quite a bit, but I

think it's just neurology under a different name. Neurology under a different name. So when I put all that in a blender and mix it all up right, what comes out on the other side is that the primary difference to me is that NSI is a larger perspective and lens, and it's more of a practice versus a language model and a theory of how the nervous system works that then you would kind of have to extract, what do I do with it? So daily practice versus theory

is the big takeaway for me. I'm really happy that we're going here today because it's something that I've tiptoed around. And like I said, I get this question a lot. And I'm always like, well, neuroception is our perception, right? What is the difference between neuroception and just perception in general? Because, like you were saying, all of our perception of the world comes in through all of our different sensory input systems, and then our brain's interpretation of that, that is perception.

And, yeah, I just think it's. I'm happy that we're going here today, and I feel, I feel good about it. Let's talk about who this course is for. Right. As I was saying earlier, like we've all said, if you have a nervous system, this course is for you. If you work with other nervous systems. That's my short answer to that. But I'm sure one of you has more to add. Yeah, I think that we're for

people who, for the most part, already have a practice, right? They're doing good work in the world, and maybe they've, like, hit a wall in their practice or their leadership. They have gotten some amazing results for their clients. They do love what they do. But there's this feeling, this knowing that I could go further. I could go deeper.

Something is missing. And as there's more conversation in the world about the nervous system to heal stress response patterns and dysregulation at a root level, I think many people are becoming aware that this is something that needs to be a part of what I'm doing, and that that is the direction that personal development and trauma healing and different therapies are going. And they want to

understand what's happening in the brain and the nervous system. They want practical tools to be able to offer their clients to create some of that change and also to work with their own nervous system, right. So that they can show up as a more grounded, more regulated person and stop going through so much burnout that we see in the world of coaching and therapy. Because when we're hitting that same plateau with clients over and over again, that can be really

stressful for us. And it takes some of the reward and the joy out of the work. And then also, too, maybe I don't have the tools to work with my own nervous system, to increase my own capacity. And I'm ending up in a lot of states of dysregulation from trying to run a business or work with so many people or being around that much other

dysregulation. And so it's really for any practitioner that knows that they want to take the work that they're doing to that deeper level with a really clear framework, really clear tools, and to be part of a community that's really interested in nervous system health and creating some change in trauma resolution. Who is this for? Ask yourself these questions. Number one, do you have a brain? Number two,

do you want it to work better? And number three, are you interested in trauma recovery or emotional growth? That is also helpful because a lot of the content focuses in those areas, but you don't have to be in that world. Like, we have just enthusiastic parents and caretakers who've gone through NSI because they want to help their kids move through

childhood and teenage years more successfully. We have sport coaches, we have physiotherapists, medical doctors, like people who are not necessarily in the world of emotional coaching, healing, or growth at all. But it's tangential to everything that they do. Right. So if you're working with someone to overcome a physical injury, may it be important to also work on their emotional state and their

beliefs? Absolutely right. If you're working on performance as an executive coach for high level C suite executives and you're all about productivity, is it also important to work on their emotional intelligence and their leadership skills and how they show up for their team? 100% right. So this is another one of those topics where, when you really dig into it, you can't separate physical performance, cognitive and work performance social interactions from our emotional

state. As humans, we are emotional beings, and we make decisions emotionally and then justify them rationally later. We act emotionally. A lot of our social interactions are driven there. So you don't have to be in the industry of emotions and trauma, even though we talk about that a lot, and especially here on the podcast, clearly. But that's not the only application of the tools. You do need to have a passing interest in those topics, which is very helpful. But I still come back to

those first two questions. If you have a brain and you want to help it work better, you can get a lot of value out of NSI. It's going to be huge for understanding your own system. And I really wish, as someone who's part of the psychedelic community, I really wish more of the psychedelic community would become trauma informed, because what we're seeing out there is not all rainbows and unicorns. Literally, like, it's

messy, very messy. It's dangerous. There are crazy reports that come out about various things that go on in psychedelic spaces that are shocking and horrifying. And when it comes to being part of that community, as I work with NSI, sometimes people well, I'll just say this. Psychedelics are not for every nervous system and every. You don't need to serve medicine just because someone comes to you and says that they want to have this experience. It's

dangerous. And we are this. A lot of the spiritual realms are kind of loosey goosey, kind of going with the flow. But, like, what NSI gave me was an incredible level of attunement through my nervous system and grounding in my nervous system that I can hold a space that doesn't push people too far. And it maybe saves people from going into some of these peak somatic experiences. And not only I can prepare them for this, that can be something that is happens in the future, it doesn't have to

happen right now. And having this skill set has been incredibly rewarding and in my personal business, very expansive. And it's truth. I think you both kind of touched on another component that is really important, and that's that, you know, being trauma informed is a big. It's a big buzzword right now, and people do know that they maybe need to be more trauma informed, want to be more

trauma informed. And what we're talking about within a si is. Is a very deep level of understanding how trauma impacts our nervous system and our brain function and how to really understand what someone's nervous system is communicating to you. To be trauma informed in a way that you are really attuned, like Jen was talking about, and that it's not. Matt

has talked about this many times. It's not about just being soft and gentle all the time, but it's about really being able to read someone's nervous system, to be able to find their deficits, to be able to help them rehabilitate and know the right dosage. Because some people do need more stimulus, some people need less different. What works

for one person might not work for another person. And so there's a different way of being trauma informed that isn't always, like, soft or backing away from things, but really having an accurate understanding of what's going on. And then tools real practical strategies to help somebody through that experience and create a new pattern and reaction for that person that can become

lasting over time with repetition. And honestly, Elizabeth, listening to you talk like that relieves panic and chaos in a scenario where we are releasing, where we're purging, where we're exploring some of these deeper narratives in the body or whatever it is. And if the person in front of me, I can read that, I know what's going on with them, and that's grounding for me, that's really settling for me, and it creates more

safety for that person. Another one of our big questions that we get is, do you need prior certification to enroll in this course? Definitely not. So we are starting this course always at the foundational level of not expecting anyone to come in with a degree in neuroscience or any kind of background in

biomechanics. And we're really setting people up with an education that's going to teach them the foundational concepts of applied neurology, of how their nervous system works, of how their brain works, of how to have a framework to dose interventions appropriately, and then we will dive into

more nuances, different outputs. We do take a deep dive into neuroscience throughout the course, but it's progressive in a way that this is really a course meant for anyone who has an interest in this to be able to come in and get the education and the tools that they need to start practically applying this work, not just learning about how the nervous system works, but actually

be able to work with the nervous system. And like we've said many times so far, there is a wide range of different practitioners that come in with different experience, and this course speaks to all of them as the certification course. Yeah. The cool thing about it is the course is certified, so you do get a full certification when you're done, certified with the ICF. So you can use this work professionally,

no matter what industry you're in, because you get that certification. You can use it with your clients or patients in a professional manner. So you don't have to have any prerequisite education, but you're going to walk away with a professional certificate at the end. Quite honestly, you're going to be blown away at

the information that gets delivered to you in NSI. Like, if you think we bring it on the podcast, NSI is in twelve weeks of just incredible information that it's really hard to even describe, to put it in a package. It's like it's neuro, it's somatics, it's mindset, and it's so deep from the way that, like, this is my nervous system and I'm excited now that we're talking about this. So, like, let's talk to them about, like, what we teach and what's included in the

NSI. Yeah, so the course is, it's twelve weeks of lecture, and the lecture is really where we deliver the information to you. You're getting, it's a passing of knowledge, and we're giving you the years of experience and education that we have distilled down in a way that makes it really digestible. And so in the lectures, you learn the neuroscience, and you also learn

the practical tools. And we also have a lot of live components where you get interaction, there's coaching calls where you really work on the practical application of these tools, practicing the techniques, having questions answered. We do Q and A's where you can ask all of the things that are coming up or if things are presenting in your certain clients and you want some guidance around that. We have practice pods where you get peer to peer coaching experience, and those are all

facilitated by certified NSI practitioners. So you get to actually practice teaching and being taught and get feedback on that. We have affinity groups for different identities, BIPOC affinity groups, and LGBTQ. We have a Facebook group where people share things. So it's a very immersive, interactive experience. And then we also have a business development component that comes after the educational part, because, like we've said, we're really

bringing a new profession out into the world. And we recognize that people need help with their messaging, with communicating to clients what it is that we're doing, helping to get a return on their investment in their education. And so all of that is included in the course. And it's a deep dive. It's a big experience, but there's a lot of different avenues for you to digest and integrate the information, and then everything is recorded, and you can take that at the pace of

your own nervous system, spread it out if you need to. It's there for you to keep using the material, because there's a lot. There's a lot in there.

One of the things that we also want to make sure that we're addressing is that NSI, we want to also be looking at not just how this impacts our individual health, but recognizing that as we work to re pattern our own nervous system, create new outputs, show up differently in the world, this does have an impact on our communities as well, and on the people that we engage with, on the relationships that we have. And there's this

trickling out effect of this work. And so we do get a lot of people who come into the course as activists or people working in social justice to create big change in the world. These tools and this framework are really important for that one, so that people can take care of themselves and preserve their own health and not move into burnout as they go out into the world to do this

big work. And then also understanding that there's a component of this work, of creating change that has to do with changing ourselves internally, changing our own reactions, the way that society's social norms, beliefs, and biases are programmed into our nervous system, into our body, into

our brain. And so as we start to work with our own nervous system to make rest possible, to not move into the same pattern, stress responses, to be able to show up and use our voice without experiencing big repercussions of that as protective outputs of our nervous system, we are creating big change from that internal work initially that then moves out into the world. Yeah, I think at this point, most people have probably heard the quote that's attributed to Gandhi that says,

you must be the change you want to see in the world. But what's really interesting to me is the story that comes before it. And it kind of goes that during the 1930s, a mother brought her son to see Gandhi because the son was essentially addicted to sugar, as humans are, and couldn't stop eating sugary foods. And the first time that Gandhi met with them, she came before him and said, I need you to help my son. Tell him to stop eating sugar. He'll listen to you. And Gandhi actually

said, come back in a week. I'll talk to you then. And so they left, or they went back home. They came back the next week. They came back before him. And then he said to the boy, you must stop eating sugar. And the mom's like, why did you send us away for a week if all you are going to do is tell my son to stop eating sugar? You could have said that last time. And hes like, well, last week I, too, was eating a lot of sugar. And then he says, you must be the change

that you want to see in the world. So he wasnt. Heres the point of the story, is he wasnt willing to give advice or ask someone to make a change that he himself wasnt willing to make. And one of the most important things about NSI is for those who are in communities that you're really trying to transform, either to rejuvenate, to refocus, to bring a new sense of life and equity into your community. Whether that's a social group, an indigenous group, a race, a gender, whatever title it is, it

doesn't really matter. One of the things that NSI will give you, the tools to do, is to create the changes in your own body and your nervous system so that your life becomes transformative. So it's leading by example and walking the talk, rather than perhaps just asking for things to change around you. I don't think anyone who truly wants change would ever do that. I don't think that's the intention to ever ask

for something that they themselves wouldn't participate in. I think our leaders who are in those groups have good intentions, but sometimes they. And we run into the same obstacles that we're trying to overcome. Like, we're stuck. We're still in the same loop, and I'm trying to affect change, but I'm still being marginalized, or I still have these disadvantages, and I'm having trouble transforming through those things.

I'm not saying NSI is going to fix every societal problem, but it is going to give you the tools to change your own life so that you can become the example to lead the other people that you have influence with. And that is a much, much bigger thing than just only taking it for your own self. You're taking it for the benefit of those around you. I think

that's a really beautiful story about Gandhi. I hadn't heard that story before, because I think what often calls us into these higher educational spaces of healing or certifications is we have experienced it, we get to heal it, we get to know from it, and then we get to share it, we get to serve it. We get to be. Our nervous system becomes a magical healing space because

we are regulated, and we get to move that out into the world. And we spend all of season three talking about collective and relational healing and why it's important that we do this work for ourselves. Sometimes it happens differently, because with activists, a lot of times working outside of themselves, we need them to come back into themselves to continue to serve, whereas some of us start on the inside so

that we can move it to the outside. So people are really starting and coming from many different perspectives and starting at really different places, too. And so, yeah, I think all of. That is incredibly important. And I do want to echo that. Like, there are large structural forces that create a lot of stress for people,

and those are real, and they exist. And again, the onus doesn't always just fall on the individual to regulate your nervous system, to be resilient in the face of all of this injustice, and to be able to continue that work of deconstruction. We have to have capacity in the nervous system. We have to have the ability to adapt to that stress and not get really sick. There's so many poor health outcomes for people who are under that stress load all of the

time. And so this isn't the only step that's necessary, but it is also really important for these communities, for these people to have tools to begin to create more stress resilience. So we need practitioners that can get these tools out to those communities and to also use them in their

own lives. And it's just an important piece of creating that change that won't undo everything, but it can help shrink some of the gaps in health outcome and mental health outcome, addiction, all these things that we see as a result of those stressors. I just want to echo something that Jen said earlier before we wrap up. That is that you're already doing neurology all the time. You just might be doing it on

accident. So if you don't understand the ways that you're training the nervous system inadvertently, that you're getting into loops, patterns, or habits that are not helpful for creating a better future, I think it makes more sense to learn and understand some of these key tools and brain areas so that you begin training on purpose, those outputs that you want. Because once you know that you're already training, I don't think it's good

enough to just continue letting it happen by chance. I think it's time to step up and get some education to understand what is happening, why it's happening, and how you can change it to make it what you want it to be. And I just want to close with like, you know, I think to speak to the spiritual community once again. A lot of times I think people are worried that getting into this more grounded, maybe this more scientific modality could take away some of

their gifts, like empathy or attunement. And NSI is only going to strengthen every gift that you already have. And it's also going to strengthen all of the weaknesses that you already have. Because nervous system health and healing, it has no boundaries. So it's not like you can just tackle this over here and not, it's not like you can't rehabilitate

your knee over here and you're going to lower your anxiety over here. It's all working together in one bucket, and it's really the way that it expresses into the world and into your work is going to offer such, so much more connectedness. Thank you guys so much, and thank you to our listeners for joining us. And we love to have conversations with you about the program. If you think it might be a right fit for you, you can go to neurosomaticintelligence.com and book a discovery

call, and we would love to explore these topics more with you. Thanks, Elle. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice. We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners. This podcast

is not intended to replace professional medical advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call 911. For specific services relating to mental health, please see the full disclaimer in the show. Notes.