Episode 552: Liz Tenuto: Why Stress Gets "Stuck" In The Body, The Science of Somatics, & How to Finally Let It Go

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up. and during covid i really started posting it online and people people became people became i thought it was going to be very niche but now i have like 4.8 million followers across that is crazy yeah yeah like how many you have on instagram alone doing this uh 1.9 million and like you have basically 2 million people who then and who's your audience really my audience generally is like 30 to 60. That's a big demo. Big demo tends to be high achieving people. My audience specifically is more women than men, but it works for all genders. Yeah. Folks who are really high achieving who have a lot of responsibilities, but also perhaps have sleep issues or, you know, perhaps like when they get home at night, they're kind of silently struggling with something, whether it's lower back pain that won't go away or they're going to a doctor for their gut issues, but they can't really figure out what's going on. Like somatics is really good at bridging the gap where doctors, you'll go to the doctor and the doctor will say it's stress and you can't necessarily like change your whole life. You can't quit your job. You can't like not have a kid. You can't be like, bye. I'm going to be a monk and go live, you know, on a hill. Exactly. So somatics is really good at reducing all of those stress symptoms and giving you immediate relief from those symptoms. And over time, as you continue to do them, you can actually, you know, for me, I really did get rid of my insomnia and my gut issues and my anxiety through doing them. So you did get, you got rid of insomnia, gut issues and anxiety. Yeah. So if someone is, were you on medication prior to this or? I was on beta blockers for anxiety and panic. And now you are still or not? No, uh-uh. Because of this? Yeah. So, wow. And because I know that you just said something I didn't even realize. Tapping is part of the somatic, under the somatic umbrella. Tapping, I've, that, I know that works well. I've seen people who are like just like me, like not woo-woo at all, who swear by tapping. So that's a form of somatic. So is that what we just did on our forehead? Would that be considered tapping? Because you are touching and pressing your head. Tapping is more like tap, tap, tap like this. So the one that we did with the forehead is a somatic exercise, which is what I teach. So it's just kind of like a different dialect. I'm not certified in tapping, so I know it, but I wouldn't really feel great. If it's under the somatic umbrella, though, it's another form. You need to get certified in each one of these specialties, basically. Yeah, I think so. Some people don't, but I personally think that to be responsible and to have the most impact with your students, you want to really know the technique and have studied it. Absolutely. Okay, so let's get into some of the things that it can be helpful for and how is it helpful. You first actually said sleep issues, right? So if you are having insomnia or really bad sleep issues, like even hormone, you know, with your hormones, you have this surge of cortisol and you can't sleep. I don't know if you're there yet, but I sure am. What can you do for it and how does it help you? There are some rocking exercises that I teach that you can do before bed. Okay. And you can do them in bed, and they take like five minutes maximum. But they release tension and stress out of your body. They immediately start to lower your cortisol, and they relax you so much that you just kind of like pass out. We used to say like, oh, you're winning if you fall asleep during a somatics class. Wow. That's success. It is. Yeah. But then don't you wake up again? Or is that the other thing, right? People with high cortisol tend to wake up at like 3 a.m. covered in sweat kind of thing. Not the sweat part, but 3 a.m. 3 a.m. That's the killer. Yeah, because you're essentially, it's normal for your cortisol to be higher in the morning. And then if you're more regulated and you're not living in chronic stress, your cortisol is supposed to go down. And then by the end of the day, it's supposed to be pretty low. Right. People who have high cortisol or people who have hormonal issues or hormonal changes and are in that phase of their life, their cortisol spikes too early in the morning. So instead of it spiking around 6 a.m., it'll spike around 3 a.m. And then rather than it going down throughout the day, it'll stay pretty high throughout the day. And then it can even like stay high when you're about to go to bed. And that's why a lot of people who live with chronic stress have a hard time falling asleep. your body essentially can't unwind right because of those hormonal issues it's not your fault and I think that that's you know I think that's something that like in the past people have always felt really bad like oh this is my fault like I need to you know I need to be better or like I need to do more meditation or like a thousand you know wellness things every day and I'm like no just just like go like this for a minute and then pass out exactly that really was actually very helpful. Yeah. So, okay. So then basically you, you think this could be helpful with sleep. Like you wrote a whole book about this when the body speaks. So in the book, are you telling people, are you kind of giving people a playbook of ways that they can actually help each ailment? Exactly. Yeah. The last part of the book, the book is split into three sections and the third section in the back are mini routines with three lessons each for different ailments. So there's anger release, sleep issues, stress release, gut issues, cognitive issues. So if you have a hard time remembering things or you have brain fog. Yes. Yeah. Give me one for brain fog. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I think we would have to lay down. I know this is the thing. I didn't realize this is more of a visual podcast than a verbal podcast, right? Because everything you do is like everything you're going to have to show me an actual exercise to help with it, right? Yeah. I mean, I think what helps people a lot is talking through kind of like the science behind it because it does seem counterintuitive that moving your body would help you with brain fog, for example. It actually does not sound counterintuitive to me because I think you need to have blood circulation for you to kind of clear your mind. I mean, to me, my form of meditation is I need to run every day, even though it's terrible for my joints and I'm like breaking down physically. It's the best thing that I can do for my mental health and my productivity. So no matter how tired I am, if I run or do my little cardio in the morning, that just gets me on point. Like that keeps my brain super like on point, much more productive. I get way more, all my ideas flow. It's that flowing that is so important. So I actually do believe that you need to move to order to be for the other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I love that you're tapped into that. Yeah. It's really important. I mean, this is what I do. Like the fitness stuff is very big in my life. I think it's, I think overall fitness is a gateway drug to success. I do too. Every successful entrepreneur I've ever met, maybe they have a different flavor of fitness than what I do, but they're all, you know, they're all active. They're all doing something. That's why there's, you know, was it like 90 or 95% of all CEOs of like Fortune 500 companies, something like that. I don't remember what the exact stat is. Don't quote me. We're all former college athletes. Wow Because they were taught number one it gave them the discipline and consistency the mindset But hopefully it stays with you That habitual thing of exercise and working out and keeping your body in motion is so important for success in all areas of your life right So it not just the physical that it helps. It helps like everything, all the other, the mental, emotional, all the things, you know? And that's why this is the one area, somatic, that I, you know, if that can help people, if they can integrate a portion of that and elevate or kind of optimize in the way that they never thought, it's super interesting for me. Yeah. You know? I love that. Yeah. So the science behind, so what is the science behind most of it? Besides what we just said, like when you're saying things like teeth, you know, teeth grinding, like all these other things that waking in the middle of the night, or I'm just staying on the sleep for a second, tossing and turning, covered in sweat, how could somatic help you? Are you retraining your brain or I guess are you retraining your body? There's such a deep connection between mental, emotional, and physical. And Western medicine kind of looks at physical as by itself. And even talk therapy, talk therapy does acknowledge how important somatics is. And a lot of talk therapists are also trained in somatics as well. But it's a newer discussion. It historically hasn't been discussed as much. And actually, in terms of our emotions, our emotions first occur as physical sensations. And then that sends those physical sensations get sent up to the brain. And then we label that as an emotion. So for example, the way the nervous system works is you can go into fight or flight. So if you see or if you get an email that's really stressful, it can kind of immediately cue your fight or flight response. That will contract your jaw muscles, your masseter, your psoas muscle, which is a deep muscle that connects your upper body to your lower body. It's in the stomach and then connects down into your greater trochanter at the base of your pelvis. And these are like immediate kind of evolutionary reactions that we can't really control. They just happen. And the reason why they happen is because we're still on an old operating system with our body. Our nervous system hasn't quite caught up to modern society. So we receive this email. we think it's like a bear and those muscles contract to either help us fight or help us flee. The way your biological stress response works because of that evolutionary programming is that we have to have some sort of physical discharge to kind of come back to homeostasis. But so many of us don't ever do that physical discharge because it's not a bear, it's an email or it's a conversation with a client, you know, or it's like your flight getting canceled last minute. And so it would look weird to suddenly start like running around in the airport. It would feel kind of weird. Not to say we haven't. Yeah. I mean, I get what you're saying. Yeah. So what I teach are these really simple, easy, effective ways to finalize your body's biological stress response as well. So that can look like chopping a pillow. That can look like chopping a pillow. Yeah. What do you mean? Like you just have a pillow in front of you and you're chopping it with your hands. And what does that do? It releases stress and tension and pent-up anger out of your body. And it's just really important for us to have like healthy containers for anger release because it is actually quite a physical thing, but we don't have the tools to physicalize it. So to put it into, because we're having all these bodily sensations, and then if we just sit in the anger, you just kind of store the anger. And over time, that changes you hormonally. You're going to be running more on cortisol and adrenaline. that leads to inflammatory responses in the body. And over time, that can cause a lot of, or contribute to a lot of health issues or exacerbate a lot of health issues. So really, if you're in the practice of releasing different emotions or releasing stress out of your body physically, it's really good for your health long-term. To like, let it go. Yep. Right. And also, I would imagine you're storing a lot of, Could you be storing anger or trauma in your body? Like I always hear people talk about that. So what does that mean? Essentially, when we say storing, it gets stored as tension in your body, kind of like subconscious tension. And people would be like, oh, I have lower back pain or oh, I grind my teeth. They're like, oh, I need to get a new mattress or I need to get a new chair. And then you do that and you're like, oh, it's still there. you know what's going on and hence i'm sitting on this thing right yeah is that a warm is that warming this is a pemf mat have you seen that before i have seen that yeah what does it do it's really supposed to be great for like overall like inflammation pain chronic pain overall circulation um they're really popular in like that wellness yeah and i have like a little bit of sciatica so i sit on it but yeah it's really good i love it despite a company called therasage this is a thera pro and also it's good for like there's all these other modalities i don't even know what else that i use it for my sciatica and also they say it's really good just to sit on it for like i said for healing i someone in my life broke their neck and oh my gosh yeah horrible are they okay yeah and they're fine and they sat on this thing for like three hours a day for i was I don't like to say the mat was the only thing, but it's supposed to be really healing. I love that. Yeah. You've never seen anyone? I have seen them. I have seen them. Yeah. I just have never used one personally. Oh my God, do you want to use this? I'll give it up. No, I don't. You can borrow mine. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, that's why I love it. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off or talk about this, but you were saying that it comes up in pain or whatever in your body unless you get it out. And so I was saying I have sciatica. does that mean that I'm storing something? But isn't it also, that was my point. When is something just a physically, a physical illness from, for example, my sciatica, I run all the time, like I said. So when is it because I'm actually hard on my body versus I'm just dealing with something emotionally? Yeah. So you definitely want to first go to the doctor. Like go to the doctor, get checked out and make sure it's not anything medical. Yeah, I do. You don't need to say that. You can include that or not. It's also like, duh. Okay, yes. You don't have to give me all these caveats. Okay, great. No displace. So now you go to a doctor and yes, you have inflammation. Now what? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you definitely want to figure it. Because people do that all the time, right? I'm like, what's going to happen? They're going to sue you because they then what? You know, they went to do somatic and they did, you know what I mean? Yeah. But I know in today's time, you have to like protect yourself. Yes. we are in a highly litigious California. Yes, we are in California. God forbid you like someone blames you. Like everyone blames everybody else instead of taking ownership for their life. Maybe if they took ownership, they wouldn't have some of the pain. Yes. You know? So I'll tell you my personal story and then I'm going to connect it back to you. Yes, absolutely. So I was a dancer. I was a ballet dancer and I was also very hard on my body. And so when I started having chronic pain, I was like, obviously it's from dance. This is just chronic pain. I'm on my feet all day. I'm a ballet dancer. It just felt like it would go hand in hand. So I quit dancing for two years during college. I studied psychology and my chronic pain actually got worse. And I was like, interesting. And as I was studying psychology, it was like, oh, movement helps with pain. I was like, oh, interesting. So I started dancing again in my 20s and my pain, especially once I started somatics, got significantly, you know, it went away. My chronic pain went away. And for me, it was emotional It was like 100 emotional I first discovered somatics in 2008 and the conversation around physical health and mental health and emotional health being connected was not really happening at that time Even within therapy it wasn a conversation yet And so I had to discover this all on my own. And that's why I'm so vocal about my own journey, because I think a lot of people will try a lot of different things for the physical, and it still doesn't work. and what I say is like if you've had pain for longer than three months and it's not connected to like an accident a fall an injury something like that you go to the doctor and you get the you get cleared it's generally emotional so what about like massages does that help massages are great short term okay and you know i love massage the thing with massage is that you're like completely passive on the table and you're not really involved you're just like yeah do it do it to me exactly you're not involved at all that's why it's great you know what i mean that is why it's great yeah in terms of long-term healing though you will get relief for you know a day three days so i tell people like if they have a ted talk or something like get massage and you're in pain, get massage, get acupuncture. You're going to feel better for tomorrow. Yes. Well, when I did my TED Talk, it didn't make me feel better. No. No. But I'm just kind of teasing. Yeah. Yeah. Sciatica. Yeah. Yeah. Sciatica is really painful. Yeah. Horrible. But long term, in terms of like long term healing, you do need to be a little involved, but you can be pretty passive. So you can be really lazy. You can be in bed doing these tiny movements. But when you're a little bit involved, that is what builds new neural pathways. So you're building new neural pathways out of the pain cycle and back into homeostasis where your nervous system is regulated and your body feels safe again. And then all of those pain markers start to go away. Wow. Okay. So people, I mean, I can't really ask you about a success rate because you wouldn't have success rate. You do? I have a with my courses and my app, I have a 99% success rate. And we we have 240,000 students in five years. And we judge it based we have a money back guarantee. So we just judge it based on how many really? Yeah. Okay. So when they say the word psychosomatic, though, what do they mean? Because if it's psychosomatic, if you think it's working, because it's psychosomatic, it works, right? So is that from somatic, like somatic healing? That's kind of like the placebo effect, right? Like if you take a pill and they tell you it'll reduce inflammation and it's just like a sugar pill. There definitely is something about the mind being open to it. Yeah. But I have had so many students, especially when I was teaching one-on-one, who were totally not open to it and they were super skeptical. And I was too. you know, there is something just about it feeling better in your body. And then you being like, huh, I'm going to just keep trying this. Really? Yeah. So do some people just have to stay with it, like just the consistency, because it doesn't always, like you said, it happened for you when you went to that one person's class or something and you started crying in the bathroom. Yeah, I started crying in the bathroom the first lesson. So for me, with my students, people tend to feel better within three days. A lot of people feel better on day one, but I don't want to like guarantee that. Really? How? Like, can you walk me through what would have one of your students? So they would have, would they come to you and say, would they come to you and say, I have a chronic X pain, like physically, or do they say, I'm dealing with anxiety, I'm dealing with sleep? Like, which one is it? Are people coming to you because of the physical ailment or because of the mental and emotional issue? Now, both. Okay. When I was teaching one-on-one lessons. It was more the physical. So I would have people who were healing post-surgery, maybe an ACL tear, or I would have people who had frozen shoulder. Oh, I had that one. Yeah. It's very painful. People who have lower back pain that won't go away, people who have sciatica, people who have foot pain, and every time they stand up, it really hurts, or they have plantar fasciitis in their feet. And really, I think the beauty of the work that I do is the exercises just like do it for me. I don't really have to do that much convincing. So if they're already in front of me and they're already like down to lay down and do some stuff with me, then that's all I have to do. The exercises do everything else and they generally feel much better by the end. Okay, I got another question for you because I understand that it is a lot of it is there is science backing it. What is the science that really backs it? Yeah. Like you have some other data besides this. You're saying people who use your app and or on your who use your courses, there's a very, very few people ask for their free money back guarantee. What is the data like? Can you give me some science back data on just somatic healing in general? Yeah. Let me think about. So, you know, there's a lot of researchers like Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Gabor Mate. Essentially, neuroscience is the field that is substantiating the mind-body connection and the nervous system. There's a theory called polyvagal theory, which explains the fight-flight-freeze response in the nervous system. And there's a lot of different kind of studies that have been done, but certain studies on the vagus nerve and how re-stimulating the vagus nerve can help get you out of freeze response. Or there's sympathetic activation of your nervous system, which is when your nervous system gets stuck in fight-flight. So it's essentially like your nervous system gets stuck in its on position and you feel restless and anxious and you have a hard time falling asleep and you feel easily irritated. Then there's parasympathetic activation, which is more associated with freeze response. And that's when your nervous system is kind of stuck in its off position and you'll feel exhausted all the time, numb. You'll have a hard time getting out of bed. Maybe you can't feel your emotions. You have a hard time crying. You don't want to talk that much. You lose your, you don't really want to socialize that much. You're like not responding to text messages. You're kind of like letting tasks that aren't necessary kind of like fall by the wayside. So there's a lot of research into the different states of the nervous system and somatic healing and somatic exercises largely works with the nervous system to provide relief for people. I know there's a lot of people I've heard a lot about the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. So if you're some end of vagus nerve, there's a lot of people that is kind of becoming much more mainstream. You never really talked, never really heard of that like 15 years ago. Right. How did that become more popular? Like, where did it come from? Like, how did that become like more part of the, I guess, in the ethos or in the ether of what people know about now? My theory is that, you know, in 2020, during the pandemic, therapy, talk therapy became a lot more popular. At the same time, a lot of us came much more online to live. And through social media, a lot more of us were talking about different things. we were spending a lot more time on social media during the pandemic. And a lot of us absorbed a lot of new information, not to brag, but I really think that I have really helped popularize the nervous system healing. Not that I started it, not that it's not, you know, like nothing like that. No, brag away. I like braggy people. Go ahead. But, you know, a lot of my posts have gone like mega viral. How viral are we talking? 52 million is my biggest. Oh, that's it? Oh, wow. Nothing. What was that video on? It was about sleep and being stuck in your stress response while you're asleep and what that looks like. Tell us. I want to know. Jaw-clenching. It's waking up with pain. It's sleeping with T-Rex arms, which is where your hands are kind of like curled in underneath your chest like this Sleeping in an extreme fetal position Grinding your teeth or TMJ sleepwalking sleep talking having a hard time falling asleep waking up to any like minor sound in the room waking up at 3 a.m., waking up covered in sweat, waking up with like a lot of hair loss on your pillow. It was just illustrating what that looks like. But I think what was so shocking for people was people didn't realize that you could still be stressed out during sleep. Yeah. You think like sleep is restorative, it's stressful, but your body can still be stuck in a stress response while you're asleep. And those are the signs that it is. What are the signs that you are, I mean, what kind of sleep patterns or like, I guess, positions would indicate that you're not under stress when you're sleeping? Sleeping on your back with your arms down by your side and your legs long or sleeping on one of your sides, but not in an extreme fetal position. So not with your knees tucked in are both signs that you're not in your stress response while you're asleep. But a lot of people will sleep in what I call the mountain climber position, which is like on your stomach with one knee bent and your head turned towards that knee. If you're in that position, you're ready to go. You're ready to jump up and just like... So that's a stress response. If you're sleeping on your stomach with your knee kind of jibed up a little bit, like mountain climber-wise, that means that you are sleeping, like you're stressful sleeping. Yeah, you're kind of, when you're in that position, there's mild activation in your stomach muscles. Your body can't fully relax. A lot of really high-achieving people sleep in that position. And I joke with people because I'm like, you're just like ready to go at any moment. Anytime you're just like, I got this. Totally. I think I sleep like that. Wow. Yeah. That's so interesting. So it's shocking for people. And I think that that shock value is kind of what made it so viral. Right. And so is that the one thing that kind of put you kind of, that gave you momentum during COVID and kept on, was it, did it keep on happening because of that one post? I would say trauma release is what initially made me go viral during COVID, but the sleep positions kind of took it and the sleep behaviors kind of took it to a different level. I also have posted a lot about how stress changes the way you look and that attracted like a whole, yeah, because like I'm like, I'm kind of vain. And so once I learned like, ooh, if I release stress out of my body, like I'll look better. we need to talk about this. Yeah, and so that brought in like a whole new, yeah, it brought in like a whole new audience to me. Okay, ladies, let's listen to this. No, it's true because if you look at every president who's ever been in office, how they looked before they started versus how they looked when they finished, they look like a walk, like they look totally different. Yeah. They look like they've aged a hundred years, not eight years or four years. Yeah. Because of the stress. Because of the stress. So how do we release the stress so we can be our most attractive, most beautiful, physically beautiful selves? Yes. Somatic exercises are the way. So essentially when you're really stressed, for example, a lot of people experience bloating when they're stressed because your body retains more fluid. a lot of people can't lose belly weight when they're stressed because what happens is your body stores calories as visceral fat to save for a survival situation. And then even if you're eating well and exercising, even if you're doing a bunch of sit-ups to target that area, a lot of people will still have stubborn belly weight and they don't realize that when your body is in its stress response, it literally won't lose that visceral fat until you get it out of its stress response. So all the sit-ups, you don't need to do that first, later, yes, but the first thing you need to do is get your body out of its stress response so it stops storing extra calories as visceral fat, get rid of the bloating, get your body out of the stress response, get rid of the bloating, and then you'll be able to lose belly weight successfully and easily. Okay, I got a few things to say about that. It's hard to spot reduce anyway. Yeah. Secondly, that's also because when you're highly stressed, your cortisol, yet again, gets spiked and elevated, which is, you know, why people are holding on to that. We call it cortisol belly. Right. Cortisol belly. So that's definitely one thing that's not super attractive. So because let's, I want to really talk a little bit more about the trauma, because I know that's a big reason why people even like contact you or what I've heard of for somatic. So what about betrayal? Betrayal trauma, I would say, would be a big one. Is there a series or how does the modality of somatic healing really help someone who feels super betrayed? We work largely with the hips and the pelvis when people have experienced betrayal trauma. So betrayal trauma happens when someone that is close to you, whether it's a romantic partner or it could be a parent or even like an institution like work betrays you in some way. And the trauma of itself is really hard, but the aftermath of it is also quite difficult for people because it really is shocking. And because of that, it can really take people's bodies into fight or flight. And I mentioned this muscle earlier in the podcast, but there's a muscle called your psoas muscle, which starts at the base of your diaphragm behind your rib cage, wraps around the front of your body and connects into your lower trochanter, which is at the base of your pelvis down here. It connects your upper body to your lower body. It's a deep, deep muscle in your abdomen, lovingly called the muscle of the soul. It's one of the muscular first responders when you're in fight or flight and people who have experienced betrayal often will have a really tight psoas. Oh my, the tightest psoas in the world. I mean, maybe that's why I have sciatica. It contributes to sciatica as well. And so the interesting thing about the psoas muscle is once it's contracted, it tends to stay contracted until you manually release it. And your body has a built-in mechanism for the manual release, which is part of what I teach as well. But a lot of people will go to like a massage therapist and they'll try to get their psoas released. And if you do that, it will work. It will release your psoas muscle, but it's also incredibly painful. Oh, the worst. It's so, so painful. It is the worst. It's so sensitive and you'll like, you'll jump to the roof. There's no way. I mean, if anyone has ever gotten their psoas released at a massage person or a body work person or whatever, a physical therapist. It's horrible. It's really bad. Yeah. So why is it so bad though? It's just the idea of it. It's so creepy. Yeah. Like to push into your psoas. I know. I know. It's such a, I mean, it's such a deep internal muscle and it's so connected to your fight flight responses, so connected to your emotional responses that that's why it's so painful for people. And so I really teach a way to release it that's gentle and not painful. But it takes, I don't teach it until like day 18 of the sessions that I teach. I will not start, we will not start with a psoas release. You have to release some superficial muscles first. So then if someone has betrayal trauma that they're coming to you and you're not going to do the psoas until 18, what do you do between 1 and 18? I start with releasing superficial muscle tension. So muscles in your back, muscles in your pelvis. I'm too excited. Yes. I'll show you after. I'll show you the laying down version because it's quite nice. And jaw muscles and shoulder muscles and your trapezius. And we start with the superficial muscles to just release habitual tension. And then we go deeper into the psoas muscle. and after that we go into the nervous system regulate the nervous system and then at the end we do integration so that you're not just like i'm not just like we just had this huge experience yeah