Dr. Nicole LePera

And if we're doing that, because for a lot of us, that's a piece of our journey is having that space once a week or however, if you can afford it and have the access to professionals to help in a supportive way, we might do that.

but this is what kind of brought me into this holistic model, then the question is, well, what's happening on all of those hours outside of here, right?

Do I have the tools to regulate, to create a new emotional response in real time?

And so I think that's where therapy or any sort of coach or self-help enhancement journey becomes most impactful, is when we bridge that gap, when we understand that understanding, insight, talking about things is part of it,

So feeling differently, producing a new response, regulation where there was once dysregulation, that's where change actually happens.

And those are the moments that we carry with us outside of those more contained therapeutic context.

It honors the gap between the mind and the body.

For a very long time, psychology traditionally has focused solely on the mind, so much so that most traditional clinical psychology programs, one of which I went to, though mine was a little bit more expanded than the CBT model.

This idea that our brain is so powerful, which it is to some extent, that if we think differently, the model is built on we think different thoughts, we produce different feelings, and then ultimately different actions.

And again, while I learned that model, I also learned a relational model.

I dabbled a bit in psychoanalysis.

But again, all very mind-based modalities.

I started my practice.

I thought I was being very integrated by bridging all of these, by teaching a little bit of mindfulness here and there, because I really wanted to help people change.

Yet I wasn't yet talking about the body because it was never taught to me in school.

I was not, I did not have any awareness of this new research that was coming to the field about the nervous system and how much our body is playing a role in even producing nervousness.

our thoughts.

I met all of that from that very disempowered place, as I shared with you, where I was like, I'm not really helping people and I don't really feel great myself.

What's going on here?

And being a lifelong learner, as my dad always teases me to be, I went online.