Mastering the Mind — Liz Morse’s Tools for Reducing Anxiety and Unlocking Achievement
Liz Morse is a Specialized Kinesiologist, and uses movement and non-touch acupressure to help reduce or eliminate stress, trauma, test anxiety, and performance anxiety. She's helped people pass the bar and the MFT, ace the SAT, ACT, and achieve their career goals by teaching people how to empower themselves by partnering with their subconscious mind. She's based out of Santa Barbara, California but works with people in zoom all over the world.
Listen to the full episode HERE.
LINKS
ON THIS EPISODE
[00:01:08] Liz Morse on what she’s most passionate about
[00:02:25] Liz Morse on her childhood
[00:04:10] Liz Morse on where she went to college and what she studied
[00:04:48] Liz Morse on her early career
[00:05:28] Liz Morse on learning to overcome trauma in her own life
[00:12:26] Liz Morse on her book Your Best Health by Friday
[00:14:53] Liz Morse on right brain/left brain training
[00:23:55] Liz Morse on women expressing emotions
[00:26:24] Liz Morse on founding the Right Brain Academy
[00:28:28] Liz Morse on Specialized Kinesiology
[00:29:18] Liz Morse on non-touch acupressure
[00:34:52] Liz Morse on how she works with clients
[00:36:30] Liz Morse on her program Crush Test Anxiety and Test Taking Breakthrough Sessions
[00:42:23] Liz Morse on Non-Contact Mindset Coaching
[00:43:25] Liz Morse on Brain Gym Classes
[00:46:25] Liz Morse on panharmonic healing
[00:48:27] Liz Morse on some success stories
[00:51:51] Liz Morse on what optimal would look like in her work
[00:57:01] Lis Morse on her dream for herself and her dream for women
TRANSCRIPT
Passionistas: Hi, we're sisters, Amy and Nancy Harrington, the founders of The Passionistas Project. We've created an inclusive sisterhood where passion driven women come to get support, find their purpose, and feel empowered to transform their lives and change the world. On every episode, we discuss the unique ways in which each woman is following her passions, talk about how she defines success, and explore her path to breaking down the barriers that women too often face.
Today, we're talking with Liz Morse, a specialized kinesiologist who uses movement and non touch acupressure to help reduce or eliminate stress, trauma, test anxiety, and performance anxiety. She's helped people pass the bar and the MFT, ACE, the SAT, ACT, and achieve their career goals by teaching people how to empower themselves by partnering with their subconscious mind.
She's born, she's based out of Santa Barbara, California, but works with people all over the world from on Zoom. So please welcome Liz Morse. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having, thanks for being here. We're really happy to have you. Um, what are you most passionate about?
Liz: Gosh, helping people who've been traumatized. Um, and a lot of times people don't really know, uh, why. Things aren't working out the way they want them to, but it turns out that we can sort of carry around our own internal glass ceiling. And I'm, I just really enjoy helping people achieve whatever it is that they would like for themselves.
Passionistas: And what inspired you to want to help people in this way?
Liz: Oh, because I need to help myself. And I didn't know who to go to. I didn't know who to turn to. And once I figured it out, I figured, well, I also needed extra help because I think I was a unique character. Um, my dad was in the military, active duty during Vietnam, and so my nervous system was really, really traumatized by that.
And I've been working to heal myself and, um, had to develop extra tools to be able to do that. So, uh, it's been a pleasure to be able to, to then, you know, I got the message. I am as well as I can be on my own at this point. If I want to get better, I need to be helping other people.
Passionistas: That's beautiful. So let's take a step back. Tell us a little bit more about that childhood and your experiences growing up.
Liz: Yeah. My dad, um, you know, he was doing the best he could, but he was, um, from the trauma of his childhood. He was narcissistic and, um, and he was a very big rager. So he was, you know, Uh, I think they call it displacing it, you know, when he would take the stress from his work and, you know, from being shot at in Vietnam or, you know, having friends get shot out of the sky or whatever, and coming home and venting it on the family.
Um, and, I took all of that in and I thought that everybody had the kind of, you know, experience that I had. I didn't realize that some people actually had loving families and quiet homes and dinner times that didn't create knots in your stomach. Um, so it took a while to figure that one out.
Passionistas: And you had mentioned to us also that, you know, you were in your mom's belly when the JFK assassination happened, like, there was societal trauma happening, right, in the Cold War, beyond what was going on at home, so, It seems like people don't necessarily equate trauma to what's happening beyond their personal experiences sometimes too.
Liz: Yes, exactly. For people who can't identify anything specific that happened in their family because their family was a, you know, so good and supportive family, you can look to the fact that The societal things have been happening like wars and famines and all of that kind of stuff and we really are connected to everything that's happening on the globe, especially these days with all of our technology.
Passionistas: So talk about where you went to college and what your early career path looked like.
Liz: Yeah, so I first had a philosophy degree from UC Santa Barbara and didn't find that too useful for putting food on the plate. Uh, so I, I ended up going to school again, getting another bachelor's in, um, fashion design from UW Madison, and then finished up the final year of the program at FIT in New York City, and then, uh, ultimately went on to get a master's degree in internet strategy management.
Passionistas: And so did you pursue any of those careers actively after you graduated?
Liz: Well, I, the one career that I was in for a long period was seven years working in the fashion industry. And I was working in import operations and started off at the, you know, bottom of the totem pole and ended up being an import operations manager handling, well, 70 million dollars a year in product and really operating as the vice president.
Passionistas: And, um, and so what inspired you personally to learn more about, um, about overcoming the trauma and healing your health?
Liz: Well, I tried all of the routes to, uh, curing myself with, uh, pills, Western medicine style. And, um, I had the only doctor who wasn't prescribing opiates at the time. There was one doctor, at least one doctor, and she was my doctor.
I, uh, other than that, the, the other meds gave me side effects and I'm sure that you could say that, uh, so the opiates, but, um, uh, not, she, she turned me away when I, when I went there in horrible pain and she said, you, you need to deal with the stress in your life and you might try yoga. And I actually had done yoga and I couldn't imagine how Down Dog was really gonna, you know, get to the root of the kind of pain I was talking about.
And I just really didn't realize that, um, physical pain can result from emotional stress. It's the same circuit board. And when you don't deal with figuring out how to de stress yourself, you end up becoming, um, more and more tight in your body and that rigidity is being reinforced by fascia. The feelings are being reinforced by fascia because they are so precious.
The neurochemicals of emotion will never be released until they are learned. And So we just get more and more and more of this internal, you know, internal skeleton almost of reinforced fascia and And it's inflammatory in quantity and inflammation can lead to disease whatever our genetic weak link is, right?
So I got to the point where all of the neurochemicals in my body were making my body very uncomfortable and painful, and Emotionally, I was as stressed as I could possibly be, and I felt like I was breaking down, I was actually starting to see things kind of, you know, hopping into my vision on my peripheral vision.
So my vision was being impacted. My mental state was being impacted, and my body was being impacted. I had fibromyalgia. With extreme pain, I couldn't sit upright for any length of time, couldn't stand upright without being in, you know, crippling back pain from it. So I ended up very motivated, because I could see, I could look around me and I could see, I wasn't in a war zone.
I wasn't in a famine, but I was operating as if, I was in extreme danger all the time, and I could see that the fear was killing me, and I needed to figure out how to get past that, and I realized that somehow my conscious mind was making decisions that were not for my best, highest and best good, and it like, I extend a stay on the planet above ground.
So I started to get open to listening to my intuition because I realized that I wasn't I wasn't in touch with my intuition at all. But I realized that I just had to believe that there was a part of me that was able to direct me still because I knew that my conscious mind was making some bad choices and that my subconscious mind was also making some bad choices and that that intuition indeed did start sending me like basically a breadcrumb trail to follow.
Wow. The way that I followed that was following the repetitions. So if any of you have ever had the experience where you Have somebody talk about a book and then out of the blue, somebody else in the next day or two talks about the same book. That's what I'm talking about. It's not an accident. It's synchronicity. That's how you follow your path.
Passionistas: Right, right. Um, and so how did you start to learn those things? I mean, you went to yoga and you did that, but where did you work with people one on one? Did you take courses? Like, how did you start to experience this stuff?
Liz: Yeah, well, the, the biggest thing was, um, I, I'm also a southern historical fiction writer and I had arranged for a residency, um, a six week residency on Martha's Vineyard, which unfortunately is no longer active, but it was fabulous.
And so I went out there, I was having a problem with spinal stenosis symptoms and, um, I went out and there was an osteopath out there who told me, uh, that I was, you know, Either going to be in a wheelchair in my 50s, or I needed to do hot yoga three times a week. And I was right at the point where I could still choose which path I wanted to be on.
So I took my, I took my hot yoga, first yoga class, hot yoga class the same day, and Um, I had taken a bunch of different books out with me that, you know, again, like the, the double mentions of the synchronistic breadcrumbs. And there were other things that came up while I was out there talking to the other writers.
Um, but, you know, You know, it was a combination of all of those things. And also what was really helpful was, um, uh, Julia Cameron's, um, Artist Pages, if you've ever heard of, of that. She talks about, um, writing, uh, in a way that's very helpful where you just, you're, you're thinking of, of The stillness of a pond.
And do we argue about how there's algae on the pond? No, we just accept that the pond has algae on it. And so what we write, we don't criticize, we just accept. And so we have our, our mourning pages, she calls them. Um, and also, uh, I was taking classes from a writing teacher who is, uh, interested in writing to heal.
That was something that, that came up. And it's where you ask yourself, um, about events that happened in your past, how you felt about them then, and how you're feeling about them now, and helps the two hemispheres of your brain start to come into synchronizing again. So our trauma can be held at a different vibration, the vibrational frequency between the two hemispheres, and there's actually been studies to show that when you, even just for 15 minutes, they've been able to see that the, um, Students were using the healthcare system, I think 40 percent less for three or four months after doing that, just by that one little thing. So all of these things were methods that helped me a lot.
Passionistas: And did that writing workshop and those early writings lead to you writing the book? Your best health by Friday?
Liz: Yes, um, well, I realized as I was getting better that I should take notes, you know, uh, that was part of my journaling process for sure and, um, it actually leapfrogged over my southern historical fiction novel which is called West of Center and One of These Days will get published, um, but I, uh, I felt like. Your Best Health by Friday was just waiting to, to get out in the world. And it had a speedometer on it that was, you know, basically 90 miles an hour. That was how it took about six months of writing is all that took.
Passionistas: And what do you hope people take away from that book?
Liz: Um, empowerment, you know, just, um, to be able to, uh, understand that there are little things that you can do that are very easy that can make a big change. So it's kind of like, um, wherever we are in life's journey, say you're a freighter, um, you're on a freighter, and there's a little tugboat that's trying to direct you, right? And the tugboat doesn't have to do much at all. If, um, The distance to shore is the island or whatever is a long way away, right? But you can avoid crashing into the island very easily.
So if, if the freighter is very healthy, you don't have to do much, right? But the more, uh, the There's always things that you can do to heal. You just have to devote a little bit more time to it. And there's suggestions, easy, medium and hard, um, harder things to do. Um, and depending on you, you could sort of pick and choose all these different areas of whether it's physical things that you're dealing with, or emotional things you're dealing with, or, yeah, that kind of thing. So, um, yeah, just realizing the power of setting an intention. It's really so important.
Passionistas: So you mentioned earlier the right brain, left brain thing. So can you, for those of us who don't understand brain science, can you talk about how you can access those and to reset your stress?
Liz: Uh, sure. So, um, the left hemisphere state is the ego mind. And the subconscious. And so these are two sort of, there are judgmental states of mind. And the right hemisphere is all about, um, well, as Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor says, who's a neuroscientist who has written two books, My Stroke of Insight, which is also a TED Talk, and Whole Brain Living is her second book.
And she talks about the right thinking mind is a spiritual being having a physical experience and the right emotional state as just it's the positive joyful emotions. So we don't realize when we, um, Uh, and do let me share my screen. Ah, yes, great. So, so here's her, her page, uh, 32, 33, uh, in her book, which I highly recommend everybody get.
She's got her own method of being able to easily toggle between the emotional states, which is, uh, it's, it's It's a good support for what I do. And as you can see, um, they're opposite. So the left thinking is verbal, the right thinking is non verbal. Um, the left thinking is punctual, the right thinking is lost in the flow of time.
Um, The left thinking is fixed and the right thinking is open to possibilities. And then if we look at the left emotional and right emotional, we see rigid versus open, cautious versus risk taking, stern versus friendly, bullies versus supports. So we can see that it's all of these opposites, right? But I think most of us, if we looked at these four characters, we would think, oh, those are four different people, right?
We wouldn't think. Those are four aspects of myself. So instead, what's happening is the trauma that we go through is keeping us showing parts of left and right hemisphere. Depending on how traumatized we are, um, and in what, what way we're traumatized, but it's not letting us access both sides so easily.
And particularly these days, as we've spent more and more time computer based, we're not in the state of mind where we can switch back and forth easily. So when we were growing up, we. We used to spend a lot of time outside on our own and we would figure out games with our friends to play. That is directly connecting in to, to creativity, um, so that's the right emotional character three.
But when we don't let our children be bored, when they're, they're, you know, complaining and so we hand them an iPad, they're not developing their own path into that. And when they don't have their own access to it. They only are ever stressed and stressed and more stressed and it's almost an accident if they somehow do something out in nature where they feel connected to it.
Because when they're hooked on the iPad and you stick them outside in nature and walk around, they're annoyed that you've made them leave their iPad. And it takes a while for them sometimes to get into looking at it as not as punishment, but maybe something they want to do. So also the, so the left thinking character is the ego and the left emotional character is the subconscious mind.
And that subconscious mind is the trigger that prevents us from getting into the right hemisphere. And while I don't mean to talk down about the left hemisphere, because we need it to protect us from the tiger, the Mack truck, that kind of thing, it's coming our way, it knows, hey, that's bad news, got to get out of the way.
Meanwhile, our right side would just be like meditating, totally chill, Mack truck, end, right? So we can't, we have to have both. But we need to realize, wow, here's There's a whole other pathway and no wonder it's so hard to get around in the world because we've got basically four characters fighting for control of the steering wheel and character two, that emotional character two, the subconscious, which I call the child mind to make it seem less scary, that child mind is what we have to jump over in order to be able to access the right hemisphere and to even be in our upper level of thinking with the left mind, the left brain too.
Um, the, the left emotional character can really take us out and it's taking us out for a number of reasons, but really because I think of it as a hero. It's got its own programming. It knows, here's, so this is Dr. Gay Hendrick's work, the, um, there's a zone that's comfortable for the subconscious. It's learned.
If I operate within this parameter, I don't get in trouble for thinking too much of myself and tooting my own horn or whatever. Um, I, if I operate in this zone, people don't complain that I'm not doing my part. I don't get spanked down here. I don't get bullied up here. I don't get This is SafeZone, and it's remembering the SafeZone as a child for our whole lives.
So when we want to start that business and we want that business to go through the roof, it's saying, Oh, that's the upper limit. We can't go there. Zone of genius is bad. Zone of genius is bad. And so it's working to sabotage. It'll send us emotions to manipulate us like fear or anxiety or depression. So we can't fill out all those forms.
over our head. So that's the internal glass ceiling. But if we give it what it wants, which is to learn emotionally, then it's going to start to cooperate. And it will allow us to be able to take a step forward.
Now, the subconscious is all about continuity. That's its job and it's, Thank God it's created continuity for us and kept us safe, but it's willing, if we let it learn feelings and educate it to rewire itself and allow us to take a step forward. And the more of those steps that we take, the higher the vibration.
We're in. And if you think about, um, I'm not going to put it up because I know the David Hawkins folks are very, um, strict about not having his chart up on the internet because they want people to buy his books, which are awesome. But if you Google on the internet, you might find his scale, which, um, all of the emotions at the survival paradigm are in red and orange.
And if you want to get out of that, and you were raised in trauma, you have to learn those feelings, and they're not pleasant to feel, and if we felt them as children, they usually re triggered our parents, and then they would yell at us, and that's its own extra trauma. So, we've had a lot of time avoiding feeling those feelings, but if we feel them, just a drop, just one drop, it allows our subconscious to learn.
And so that's what I, what I do. I have a Wednesday program where I'm doing that for free with people Wednesdays at 10 Pacific to try and help them understand just a drop. It's a step, right? It's and it's each step you're working your way out of that survival paradigm into thriving more and more.
Passionistas: I think another element of this, and I don't know if this is something that you study or work in, is as women, especially in business, we're told our feelings are bad, that we are not to show emotion, that we have to, you know, lock that up to be in the male space, to keep the men feeling comfortable with that. The way we react to things. So is that part of what you study? And is that something, you know, do you have, um, thoughts on what women can do to, uh, to be more comfortable tapping into their feelings and not being afraid that that's going to alienate other people?
Liz: Well, yes. So, so basically the way the culture works is poker face, right? But we are constantly exchanging how we feel non verbally. And so just the fact that we're willing to go there, we could go in with like the, toughest, you know, whatever, like, completely blank slate, and we would still have a different feel to them because of the fact that we're willing to be feeling even as unwilling on a certain level as we are, we still have the door open so much more of a crack than men do.
Um, So, my suggestion is not to be doing, uh, anything in public where you're going to be picked up on at all. The, the stuff that I'm suggesting is stuff that you can, um, you can be doing at home to support yourself, you can be doing in, uh, the bathroom stall. So, here and here, this is a really great emotional reset, an inch above the eyebrows and an inch below the collarbone, and just tell yourself everything always turns out marvelously well, and it's not toxic positivity, it's giving guidance to the subconscious mind.
So there's a difference between the two. Um, we have to acknowledge the fear. We have to let the fear, the feeling of the fear happen. Again, this is something that we can do at home, uh, and when we have a safe space. But when you're in the moment, I also, one of the things that I do is a type of Tibetan meditation.
Um, it involves breath holding and Imagining movement of energy and breath in the body and doing that helps people hold their stuff together when they're out in the real world and somebody's being a jerk so that you don't go into your automatic pattern so you actually can be less reactive and less emotional at work, which is a great thing.
Passionistas: That's incredible. Um, why didn't we hear about that sooner? Um, so how did you, how and when did you decide to start Right Brain University and what can people expect, um, from going there?
Liz: Uh, I started it in 2015, and I've been, um, getting word out rather slowly, I would have to say, uh, here and there, although I do travel around the world and speak as well as speak in the States, um, at trauma conferences, primarily.
What, um, what people can expect if they work with me is to, uh, Learn how to, how to feel safe connecting with themselves emotionally and to feel calmer, to feel like they've been able to, like if they have a sense in the past of that they used to be able to like take a nap and really feel rested after a nap or really feel rested after sleeping at night.
They get that reset from a session. So what, what was the. Clincher for me and knowing I was on the right path was exactly that so much static, so much pressure, so much stress, go into a session, walk out of it, 75 minutes to 90 minutes later, feel like I'm grounded, centered. in touch with how my body's really feeling and that might be that my body's feeling really tired and I just was able to reset the adrenaline factory so I'm not wasting all those neurochemicals anymore and I can just be in the wow I need to get some extra rest now mode you know so it's it's about being able to get back into rest and digest which if all we ever do is allow the stress We're not digesting, we're not getting the nutrition that we should, and we're not able to reset. And I think it's happened a lot to people since the pandemic.
Passionistas: Yeah, yeah. So now is that specialized kinesiology? Is that what that practice is, or is that something different?
Liz: No, that's specialized kinesiology. And there's a number of really great aspects of specialized kinesiology. It's, it's a group of probably over 150 types at this point.
And, um, It started with a chiropractor wanting to know more about traditional Chinese medicine. And he looked to see what was going on with the 42 muscles that chiropractors check and to try and figure out how to get them, if a muscle was turned off, how to turn it back on using points on the body. And from there, uh, you know, all of these different ways of working with the body started to develop. It's really been amazing.
Passionistas: And so one of those is non touch acupressure. Is that true?
Liz: Yes. So there's probably quite a few that you could say are in essence non touch acupressure. There are a number of them that involve, uh, um, What's called muscle testing, muscle response testing, which has been shown in an Oxford study, uh, they had a 63 percent success rate in a double blind study, uh, with people, not all of whom were fully trained in how to do muscle response testing.
So the Oxford folks were completely, uh, excited about that. Um, so. The body basically has the ability to say yes or no. It makes sense or doesn't make sense to the body. And from there, we can, we can see, well, what does, what, in essence, what does the body need to learn emotionally? What does the body need to learn physically?
And we can address it with, again, with these traditional Chinese medicine type of, um, interventions, uh, You know, basically, ways in which different aspects of, of the body. Talk, how the body talks to itself to reset and it could be say, for example, um, when a muscle works and when a muscle fires, the neurolymphatic, uh, response isn't resetting.
So it could be something completely on a physical level like that. But what can happen in the traditional Chinese medicine viewpoint is that, um, all of these, The nervous system is set up as an electrical, as an electrical system, right? And certain meridians are focused on certain things, certain feelings, for example.
So if you think of liver, I mean, this is something that our language supports, right? So with the liver, people think of liver folks who are like the liver types as being angry. And people might say something like, but also sometimes fear like, you scared the liver out of me, right? And you could say something along the lines of, they vented their spleen.
That's an old, old time expression, right? So we have ways in which we, like, the, the folk wisdom is that there is something to these parts in the body, right? So this is sort of corroborating the traditional Chinese medicine. So what we would say with that traditional Chinese medicine thing is, so the neurolymphatic that went off because that muscle isn't firing, well, what meridian system is it on?
Is it that anger is shorting it out because we've held those neurochemicals of emotion in the body for so long, and all of the fascia is wrapped around them, it can't do its job anymore. So if we let that person feel anger, then the fascia doesn't have to hold it anymore, the fascia can rewire itself, and then the muscle can function properly.
So that's what I'm doing with folks is, is. Somebody says, I want to become a doctor, the body's having a response to that, it's bunching up, it's saying no, for whatever reason, and great if it says yes, but if it says no, you know, that's who I can help. And I can say, oh, it needs to learn, you know, this one is Yeah, definitely, it's resentment, you know, there's some way in which resentment is holding you back.
And the body needed to learn that before it could allow this other thing. And why, why resentment? Well, so for example, we were treated a certain way by our parents. led to some suffering on our part, and now they want us to become a doctor. So you don't get to choose your own path. So then resentment is there because you want them to see the suffering and, and all of the manipulation.
And if you don't get to the resentment and sort of feel that, and then feel into, you know, Now you can feel maybe I, well, maybe I do want to become a doctor and I was just holding on to this because I wanted them to see how much they suffered, but I don't have to prove to them how much I suffered. I could just really just be a doctor and be my own person.
So there's just so many fun ways to help people that they don't know that they're holding on to any of this stuff, but it's, it's there and it's holding them back. So then they get to go on their merry way.
Passionistas: So do people come to you? When they have some kind of I guess my question is, is it more of a physical thing or a mental thing or both? Like, does someone come to you because they have some kind of illness and they can't figure out how to physically heal themselves? Or do they come to you more for things like that? Like, I don't know why I don't want to do this or why I'm resisting this. You know, is it more one or the other?
Liz: Um, it's probably more of more people who the latter, you know, of people who feel that there's some resistance or just see the evidence in their bank account that there's obviously some kind of resistance.
Um, uh, and by the way, they can have a hard time showing up to a session because of the resistance and it's the subconscious wants to stay in control until you. Really teach it that, no, no, we're, we're working together as a team. I'm going to be kind now, but I'm going to be a firm parent and insist that we go to these sessions.
It can often be, um, something where they sign up for a session and their subconscious is like, no, and they think that's a sign, you know, but it's really just manipulation. Um, But I do also work with people who have physical stuff that they can't figure out, and the doctors aren't coming up with answers either.
So they, they work both ends. They work the Western side and me, and, you know, I help get them where they need to go back towards health as well. So it's, it's a super rewarding career path. Let me tell you, you know, I feel like Robin Hood for all of the people who either I'm helping them get back their health, or I'm helping them become the person that they want to be. You know it's just fabulous.
Passionistas: So let's talk about a couple of the programs you offer. Um, there's one called Crush Test Anxiety and Test Taking Breakthrough Sessions. So talk a little bit about what happens there.
Liz: Uh, yeah, so test taking anxiety, it's a type of learned helplessness and, um, what's really great from, from that angle is that, um, it's, it can be so easy, you know, to, to help people find their way through.
It's still like, this is a layer, a layer, a process of layers that get removed. Continuity is important. We can't change too quickly, um, to keep that subconscious mind happy and healthy. What's often happening is, so it's a combination of things. You, as a child, other people have an easier time, other people get A's, and it hurts too much.
So then you might have the, Oh, well, I don't do well in that. I don't care. I don't care. And so that kind of preserves your, your sense of, of self, right? That, well, you just didn't even try. So it's not important to you. So that's why But, you know, the reason why you might be having the situation start off where you're not doing well is because of, say, primary reflex.
When we're born, we, in utero, we actually have primary reflexes that are activating and they, they help us learn patterns of movement that will help in our survival. So at a certain age, those reflexes are supposed to have been integrated along the way. And by four, all of our primary reflexes should not be active anymore.
They should be part of integrated system. But when we're traumatized, it can re trigger and reactivate these reflexes. So it could be that, um, let's say for example, it takes three primary reflexes to have proper 3D vision. You could be, um, wanting to get out there and do great things in, uh, playing baseball, for example, and suddenly you, you have these activated reflexes and you can no longer see 3D or, um, and then you might be stumbling into things and you might have, you know, bumped into something and fallen down, hit your head, and then you have to go in to take a test and you're in fight or flight, but you have to do well on that test and you bomb it.
So then it becomes this thing of, well, I can't, you know, why is it that I can't, I don't know why I can't, but I can't, and fast forward for a number of years of, you know, these things happening, and you, your system is afraid every time you take a test, when we're afraid of something, it's that fight or flight, it's putting us into our dominant hemisphere.
That's where, so normally our two hemispheres are talking through the middle, the corpus callosum. And when we aren't talking through the corpus callosum, we're reacting to something like the tiger that we're running away from. That's so from whatever our dominant hemisphere down to the same side in the body.
So typically the people that get into the most trouble and tests consistently are the ones who happen to be right hemisphere dominant because languaging And so, so, words. And numbers reside as part of the left brain. We, we excel at that academic on the left side. And so if we associate test taking with something that we're afraid of, and we're in that zone, we can't access our letters and numbers the way that we should.
And so more and more we go down that pathway of we're doing fine sometimes, but something triggers us and we can't, we can't Like the higher the stakes the tests are, the more likely that we're going to be in that fight or flight zone in the dominant hemisphere. And so I'm teaching people self talk, exercises, and, um, emotions that are needed to rewire the brain to be able to do well on tests.
And if we don't take care of it as a test taking thing, it becomes a general performance anxiety in life. And because it's that same kind of thing, it When we get out into the world, whatever dominant hemisphere we're at, if we can't, for example, be thinking of the group, and we're only thinking of ourselves, and we're in a group situation, like an interview, that's going to come across, and people are going to be turned off from hiring us.
So, you know, can we even get the job? And then once we're in the job, can we be part of a team? Or are we of the mindset that it's all about us? You know, so there's all different ways in which performance anxiety can impact both hemisphere dominant people. Yeah, especially the right hemisphere and dominant people and the people who are, who are traumatized. It's going to show up a lot more.
Passionistas: So do you work with kids as well or do you mostly just work with adults?
Liz: I mostly work with adults and older children that though, like of the age to go take the ACT and the SAT, that kind of thing. And grad testing because a lot of people will do well on the ACT or SAT and then when they want to go into grad school, they can freeze at that point. Or trying to take the bar or not trying. Yeah, trying to get licensed once you finished the learning process.
Passionistas: So tell us what non-contact mindset coaching is all about.
Liz: Well, so, um, contact coaching would, would involve, um, you know, touch, which I was. You have to be licensed in order to touch people, and I was not interested in having a practice that was basically massage based or something like that, where I would have a massage license and then be able to muscle test people.
So that's where I developed the emotional acupressure that, um, uh, at first I was practicing on friends and family to be able to make sure that I could get the same results. As if I was actually doing the muscle testing in person and, um, and getting the feedback of, no, I'm, I'm able to feel this and get the answer wherever they're at. So I, I have helped people in Australia, Turkey and, uh, UK, that kind of thing. It's fun.
Passionistas: Amazing. Um, what are your brain gym classes?
Liz: Brain gym is this amazing process. Um, so, so basically when, We have events, negative events happen to us, it can create a part of the brain reacting differently than it should.So we have the brainstem layer, the emotional brain layer, and the cortex layer, and the prefrontal cortex, and for the two sides, right? So any, any region within any of these can react negatively and instead of working across the hemispheres, go into that reactive, you know, fight or flight. Um, and it might be that for a particular goal that you have, that the brainstem on the right side is activated or the, um, uh, emotional brain is activated on the left side in a way that's non optimal.
And so when you work with the combination of the movements, uh, that Brain Gem offers, they have 26 movements. Um, and some different, um, forms of, reset, I would call it, then what happens is you change the reaction in the dominant hemisphere into working across hemispheres, again, for all of the regions of the brain.
And I have seen that there's a lot of controversy Among the science based folks that have done research on this, and I think the reason why is because most people who get to the level of education that a scientist has to have in order to be able to function are not at the level of trauma. That people who are held by brain gem are under, um, it can make any brain work better, including the scientists, but their brains already functioning well enough because the people that come to my program on on Wednesdays, I do brain gem the last 15 minutes and I don't record it so you can't like look at it later.
Because it's not allowed to be recorded at this point. But even after the 45 minutes of the other stuff, people can still feel that there's an extra boost that it gives them, where they felt like before that same sideness, uh, without the cross communication felt more normal. And then they can feel, oh wow, now this is feeling normal. And it's healthy because this is, this part is 90 percent of our brain. This part's 10 percent so you're stressing out your body if you're if you're reacting instead of cooperating.
Passionistas: And what's panharmonic healing all about?
Liz: Panharmonic healing is the emotional acupressure that I have developed. It started off as 20 different points on the body that responded, corresponded to different emotions and I've developed it into hundreds of thousands of emotions. So, what I found, if you know of Dr. Dan Siegel, he talks about naming emotion to tame it. And that's what I've found is really vital is to be very specific. And so the, this, so panharmonic started off with 20 emotions and 20 different, uh, types of emotion. So there might be an emotion that was handed down ancestrally or an emotion that was a chronic emotion or an emotion that was unexpressed.
Or attached. An attached emotion is where you got to benefit from it. So you don't want to give up and learn the feeling because you want to have support for your way of thinking. Thinking, because you got a benefit from having it that way. So there were 20 of those and now there's 150 I think I've got at this point.
And so you could have attached anger, you could have chronic anger, unexpressed anger. And now there's these 150 different ways you could have anger. So you're really doing quite a bit of taming to be able to name with that specificity. Um, and yes, it does seem to me, given how much it's helped me and everybody I'm working with, that it really is, the body keeps track of all of these things in incredible, impeccable detail.
Passionistas: So do you have one or two success stories that you can share with us from your work?
Liz: Sure, you know, I've had people go through, um, uh, some pretty incredible stuff, uh, you know, past trauma to be able to take tests, um, and pass them. The Bar, or the LMFT, um, you know, people who, uh, are helping people who are trying to remake their lives, um, You know, obviously, I can't go into too many details because of how personal these, these things are.
And I wish I could get people to share the depth of what I do. But just, um, you know, there, there was a, a fellow who I helped whose mom had, um, there had been family trauma in his youth that had led to, um, surgery, which had led to, uh, chronic, um, Um, uh, basically failure to thrive, you know, and so I was able to help him pull through and You know, to help people go from not being able to support themselves to becoming a lawyer is an incredible feeling, you know, and a lot of, a lot of times what keeps particularly women in relationships is not being able to support themselves and to know that I've made a difference to people who needed it when they needed it.
When they should like the when they like the least likelihood of success and knowing that they made it um through to the other side and are are now in this whole other path is it's just incredibly rewarding to me um and helping people you know I help somebody improve their business by 40 percent in the year you know when she needed to so it so basically what what I think of it is you know there is this movie about the Law of Attraction and I think it really opened people up, right, to, wow, you know, it's this thing and I can feel it too and it's so wonderful but it's not working for me, it must not be real, but the subconscious mind is slamming the door, the Law of Attraction, every day of our lives unless we let it learn feelings, just a drop, and if we let it learn feelings and we practice not knowing, like, Imagining you see all of the signs are pointing to this negative thing happening and instead you say it everything always turns out marvelously well as a direction for the subconscious and I can't know that it's not because I am not my higher power.
That opens the door crack and then you let the law of attraction come through. So it's not, you know, manipulating your higher power. Your higher power always wants the best for you. It's about letting, letting the higher power do what the higher power wants to do, if it chooses to.
Passionistas: Um, so what's the one thing we're not asking you about what you do that we should be asking you?
Liz: Uh, um, you know, one of the things that I, I'd love to talk about is, um, you know, what would optimal look like? So you're a mom or a dad that's watching this, um, and your child comes home and is, uh, very upset over something that happened at school. Maybe they got bullied. And so instead of, uh, maybe letting ourselves get caught up in the feelings of all that, just be curious about, wow, that's really stirring something up within me.
Isn't that interesting? And maybe practicing a little bit of this at the same time for yourself and having your kid do that too. Just say, Oh, let's feel into this. Just be curious, right? And, and realize that in an optimal world, what would be going on is That kid would go to school, and the teacher would say, Boys and girls, today we're going to learn about anger.
Now, anger is a feeling, and feelings are just information. Sometimes we get into trouble for feelings because we do things because of them. But just because we're angry doesn't make us bad. Now we might hit somebody because we're angry, and we need to learn we can't do that. That's not okay. But today we're going to learn about all the other things that we can do to express anger.
We're going to paint and we're going to draw and we're going to use scissors and we're going to cut up paper in an angry way and we're just going to let us ourselves feel this feeling and know that we are whole, complete, and perfect as we are as we feel this feeling. And then be teaching children that they could tolerate.
The sensations in their body of anger without feeling like they have to do anything about it. And wouldn't that be helpful if somebody had a gun? They wouldn't feel that they had to go get it because they had a feeling of anger that they think somebody else made them feel. And on top of that, we would learn if you let these kids do this kind of thing, we would have them realize that, you know, they could talk about the different things that made them angry.
And then they would maybe ask, well, would so and so, would you feel angry if this happened to you? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. How about you? No, I think that would be kind of, like, I might even laugh because I would think that would be maybe even a little silly that they tried that. Oh, well, so we react differently to the same thing.
Isn't that curious? So, we can see, We have our own little part in how we're reacting. So then we're getting some personal power because we're realizing it's not necessarily what the other person did, it's partly who we are. And when we can claim our power, then we're not victims to it, right? So, so then the little kid goes home and is, he's been And if you're a parent and you've had a parent that's been bullied because they haven't gone into the feeling of bullied yet, and the parent is able because the parents had some education to it to just go, wow, you're feeling I feel that you're feeling very angry because he knows he's he's able to step in and feel that feeling with his mirror neurons that his son is having, and he can say, wow, yeah, you're feeling really angry. And the little sister can say, yeah, I'm feeling angry too, and say, yeah, wow, okay, so everybody's feeling angry, and let's just stop and feel that in our bodies, and I love you no matter what. No, you got to stop hitting your sister.
That's not okay. And the little girl can say, yeah, that's not okay. Anyway, so they all get into the space where they're allowed to be who they are. They're allowed to express the feelings that they have. The father doesn't get reactive and start yelling because he can't tolerate the sensations that he's feeling. And the mom comes home from work and everybody's getting along. Whoa. How awesome is this? So.
Passionistas: That sounds beautiful.
Liz: Doesn't it?
Passionistas: Yeah. Yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there. With people like you, helping people and working with people, we'll get there. So we have one last two part question for you, which is, what is your dream for yourself and what is your dream for women?
Liz: Good questions. Um, well, I would, I would like to change our culture for the better. That's what I would like to do. And I'm open to the ways that that's going to unfold, however, it's meant to. And for women, I see, well, first off, we're in a time of great change. And a lot of people are very uncomfortable from the feelings that we're all going through and the stresses that we're all going through.
And I would just say to hold on to hope and positivity because that's the direction that we're headed and that we're evolving towards love. So, what I would see and hold, not just hope, is that that's where we're coming to is that Um, we are getting closer and closer to love and, um, understanding how to heal trauma more and more, and the more of us who do the work, who are capable of doing the work, the more as we go out into the world, that's what other people's mirror neurons are being reflected with, you know, they're reflecting, they're seeing, oh, that person is feeling good, why?
I want some of that, and in fact, I actually have, um, some husband and wife, uh, client pairs because of that. I want what she's having, you know. So, so yes, I see that for women, and I see that, um, more and more our, uh, emotionality is going to be driving that to, to that point of, of being able to be in that right hemisphere state and feel calm and, and valued and cherished.
And in fact, then being able to turn around and, and, and hold space for the rest of the society.
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