Brenda (00:00.246)
Mm.
Brenda (00:04.234)
I was thinking one thing. Tiffany might need to put her coffee down on something soft. Because I just heard it. You can drink it as much as you want. Sorry, Malia. No, no, you can drink it the whole time. I'll be drinking mine, but if you can put it on a notepad or piece of I just heard it clank down. Yes, yeah, sorry. I just noticed that. No, that's good.
Alex (00:05.639)
Okay.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (00:11.724)
All right, I'm just gonna take one more
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (00:17.265)
Okay. I just did a notepad, was that better? Okay. Okay. Sorry. Okay.
Alex (00:27.891)
Ready?
Well, welcome back to our season on trauma. We've been talking about what trauma is, different types of trauma, and we're gonna turn a little bit of a corner today because we're gonna talk a little bit more solution oriented today, a little bit more strategy for how to address trauma. And today's fun for Brenda and me because we have been begging, pleading, and trying.
Brenda (00:54.294)
Hehehehehe
Alex (00:56.52)
to get our friend Tiff on this podcast since the very first day we started and she is here today.
Brenda (01:03.43)
Yes, this is a really special episode for us because it is so personal. Tiffany is also one of our board members and so we're thankful for that. But I want to share a little bit about Tiffany's professional journey and then a few things about personal if I can do that for a minute. You scared already? That's right.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:03.825)
You
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:20.447)
scary scary I'm already scared
Alex (01:22.212)
Spill the secrets!
Brenda (01:26.074)
Yes. Well, first of all, just to say that Tiffany's been a physical therapist for 27 years and 25 of those she's had a focus in pelvic floor dysfunction. And we'll come back to find out a little bit about that fun job in a minute. She's also the co-owner of Neurokinetic Solutions and the co-developer of Brain Pump, which is a children's group exercise class and it addresses central nervous system immaturity. So basically she came together as a physical therapist with a physical educator friend and they began to talk about
and deal with learning and sensory issues in children and saw incredible success with that. We can talk a little bit more about that. She had her own private practice for 10 years and recently has had a big transition into academia where now she is teaching future PTs at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama in their PT doctoral program.
And that's really exciting, Tiffany, because we've always said that you need to multiply yourself and now you're getting that opportunity because we need like, you know, a hundred more Tiffany's out there immediately. You're married to Keith. I've been married for 27 years and really and truly your marriage is just one of the sweetest that I've had the privilege of witnessing. I just love the way you and your husband have operated with such sweetness and mutuality and reciprocity and all the things. Three incredible children.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (02:29.691)
No more Tiffany's.
Brenda (02:49.528)
adults and adultish because I feel like Nate, your baby at 17 is like, my goodness, I feel like he's been the baby forever. And Mackenzie and Gant and Mackenzie, her daughter who's 23 is following in her footsteps to become a PT as well. And so, so, you know, you are literally reproducing yourself physically in your daughter becoming a physical therapist and then the work that you're doing. But we know you're passionate about bringing pain science and trauma informed therapies to
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (02:56.369)
Thanks.
Brenda (03:19.508)
people with the hope of the gospel. And so that's really important for us today as we really begin to discuss the idea of being embodied souls and what does it mean to bring these ideas of our body and our soul together. And so that's real, I think that's going to be incredible for us to talk about today. But I did want to say a few things on a personal connection. One is I want everybody to know that Tiffany is from Slap Out Alabama.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (03:44.081)
You
Alex (03:44.18)
Hahaha!
Brenda (03:45.686)
And it's kind of like, can anything good come from Slapout? Well, there's Tiffany, you know? And I think it's funny, I actually looked it up this morning, Tiffany, I don't know, do you know where Slapout came from? What the name's from? so tell us.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (03:56.753)
I mean, I think there's a few different stories, but there's a little country store. Sorry, I just dropped my air pot. There's a little country store called the Boys Store in the center of town. And the story is that...
Alex (03:57.683)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (04:13.423)
You know, you could buy anything from fishing bait to milk and bread there, but somebody went in and asked for some milk or something like that and the cashier said, we're slap out. And so, is that what you read? Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Brenda (04:24.95)
Uh-huh. Yep. Yes, that's exactly what our word Slap out. And if you're not from the South, you may not get that, but that's a Southern saying. We're slap out. And so that's what the town became is slap out. The other thing I just want to say is because Tiffany is wicked smart and wicked funny and just very personable.
Alex (04:32.8)
We're Slav-ing.
Brenda (04:51.08)
I don't know anybody, myself included, and every member of my family who has not had a girl crush on her. And that's just a fact. That's just a fact. I can't because it's just true. But we love you, Tiffany. We are glad that you are here with us. And maybe you could just tell us a little bit. I know there's a lot on your bio, but maybe you could tell us a little bit more so people understand what you've been doing in the area of pelvic floor dysfunction and also just the brain pump.
Alex (04:55.872)
That's true.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (04:56.792)
You
I you for years you have to stop saying that Brenda.
Alex (05:01.884)
Ha ha!
you
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (05:20.763)
Yeah, yeah, well first of all I just want to say I'm just so excited to be here with two of my favorite people in the world and you know everybody listening, y'all don't know how the real deal these two women are but they're the real deal. I've lived, I've had the pleasure of walking alongside them for what 25 plus years and...
Alex (05:20.915)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (05:26.784)
You
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (05:43.939)
Anyway, just the real deal in every way. And so I'm so excited to be doing this with you guys and so thankful for both of you in my life all these years. So, yeah, just a little bit about what I do and what I've done. Maybe a lot of people don't even know what pelvic floor dysfunction is, and they certainly don't know that there's physical therapy for it. But, you know, I always say I was doing it before it was cool.
Now it's like a real popular area of physical therapy, which always kind of cracks me up in it. And I'm so glad. I mean, I'm just, there's so many young therapists that want to do it now and it's such a need. And it's just really exciting to see that it's almost like Vogue now to be a pelvic floor physical therapist. But it was not Vogue when I started it. And I always say it kind of chose me. I didn't choose it, but I was working for a company and that...
Brenda (06:14.154)
Hehehehehe
Alex (06:22.176)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (06:31.978)
Mm-mm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (06:41.057)
physician came into town that was not from our area and and she needed a pelvic floor PT and nobody even knew what that was and and so I got set for some of the training and and this was really when it was just kind of brand new we didn't we didn't know what we were doing yet and anyway so it it became such a blessing and something that just kind of followed me around wherever
wherever I worked and then allowed me to really start my own practice which was such a blessing. But basically if you don't know what your pelvic floor is, it's muscles in your pelvis, in the bottom of your pelvis that surround rectal opening, urethral opening, and if you're female, vaginal opening. Can I say vagina on this?
Brenda (07:32.454)
Hahahaha
Alex (07:32.478)
You can. We're getting personal today. Probably not. You get to have a distinction here.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (07:34.619)
Y'all didn't give me my rules. Have you had anybody say vagina on your podcast before? No. Okay.
Brenda (07:36.739)
hahahaha
Brenda (07:44.31)
No, I think this will be a first.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (07:50.801)
So anyway, it certainly, you know, I think when people think pelvic floor dysfunction, they may think of the 50 year old who's had three babies and we're going through menopause and now she's TTing in her pants. And that certainly can be some of what we see, but the vast majority of what we see is pelvic pain. And that can be from an injury, you know, but again, a large percentage of that is
is a stress response and a trauma response and so in a lot of these people's history men and women so public four dysfunction is much more common in women but we see men as well and sorry my my thing keeps falling out a lot of times in their in their past and in their history
Alex (08:33.49)
Mm-hmm
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (08:42.129)
is some of abuse or trauma. It doesn't have to be sexual in nature. A lot of times it is, but it can just be adverse childhood experiences, high stress situations, chronic stress, abusive marriages. I mean, you name it. And the fascinating thing is that our pelvic floor is just really, really susceptible to respond to that stress and trauma. And so those muscles are
Alex (08:47.752)
Mm.
Brenda (09:09.59)
Hmm.
Alex (09:10.112)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (09:12.595)
which just means supplied more by our central nervous system than other parts of our body, which is just really, really interesting. And so it's going to respond more aggressively and quicker sometimes than other parts of our body. And how that looks symptomatically can be pain, just pain with function, but a lot of times it shows up with pain with...
penetrative intercourse or pain with sex. And then that just compounds trauma. mean, it just compounds, that's a lot of pressure on one body part and then begins to affect maybe relationships or maybe the relationship that you maybe felt even the safest in, or not. But it becomes very complicated and begins to affect other areas of our life. It's not just like dealing with shoulder or knee pain. It begins to affect relationships more than other parts.
of our body and so that's what I've really done for the last 25 years and again I've always loved it because it is intimate it is it's a it's a relationship that's different than just treating somebody's knee and so you really do have to kind of enter into a lot of safety and a lot of trust and it's a pleasure and a privilege to be able to do that with people and so that's
Yeah, that's kind of my story in a nutshell.
Alex (10:38.656)
Mmm.
Brenda (10:39.712)
That's so good. feel like we could just do a whole podcast just on that and maybe we'll come back to do that. But I'm also curious, Tiffany, just to know your work with children, particularly looking at the immature central nervous systems and how that might be relating to trauma as well.
Alex (10:43.21)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (10:54.693)
Yeah, yeah, we don't know what there's not a lot of data to support that children who have had trauma or who have been in traumatic experiences have some of these developmental delays. But most of the literature will say that they do think that there's a link because trauma just it changes your brain. And so it just does. And so we can kind of see some of these.
Alex (11:14.73)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (11:21.957)
these same symptoms in children in terms of our brain not being well organized. And so whether it be we can't control our emotions or we can't track our eyes left to right or we can't stand on one leg. And so what I have seen, so my practice initially was mostly women and children. And so I treated women, pelvic floor dysfunction. And then I had just a real niche for preschool and school-age children.
who were having some learning and developmental issues and a little bit trouble in school. And so that was kind of how I started my practice. And what I began to see is just more and more kids with learning disability and developmental delay and sensory issues.
Alex (12:01.45)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (12:06.403)
And so I kind of teamed up with a colleague of mine who is a PhD at another college here in town. And we began to just do some research of letting our worlds combine. Her background was mostly like what you would do with PE and children. She mostly taught physical educators. I was a physical therapist. And so we let our professional lines kind of blur and say, there's so many kids with these issues that there are not enough therapists to go around. so we're like, what do we need
Alex (12:33.745)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (12:36.607)
to do to bring this into schools. And basically the whole premise of it is we can watch a child move and have some sense of how well organized their brain is. And so to make them move more normally helps organize things and everything seems to get a little bit better. And so we know trauma is part of that, but there really has to be a lot more research to kind of define that. But yeah, yeah.
Brenda (12:47.094)
Hmm.
Alex (13:02.368)
Mm.
Brenda (13:03.99)
But I like what you said, know we'll talk about this later, but just this idea of movement and trauma and reorganizing the brain. So we'll come back to that. Keep that thought.
Alex (13:09.888)
So to bring us into today, we've been talking about trauma. We've been talking about how trauma fragments us and how
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (13:11.365)
Yeah. Yeah.
Alex (13:21.96)
That fragmentation means we get alienated from our body, get alienated from ourself, our thoughts, our own story, our feelings, we get alienated from God and other people. And so because of that, we often find that in trauma, we begin to see the world as an unsafe place.
And so what we're really gonna talk about today is how we're gonna establish that safety because trauma experts will tell us like the first thing we need to do is establish, reestablish a sense of safety. And I know that that could maybe sounds really basic or even abstract. So we wanna, we want that to become more concrete and...
What happened with me when I experienced a traumatic experience in my church a couple years ago, I began to realize that if I was going to come back into a church setting, I wasn't going to be able to make the church setting a safe place for me. I couldn't change that environment. And so I had to learn how to establish safety kind of within myself and bring that with me. That's the way I began to think of it, is that I could bring my safety with me. Of course,
any believer brings their safety with them because the Holy Spirit resides in them. But I began to think about what did it mean to keep my body safe? What did it mean to feel safe with God and the Holy Spirit in me? And what did it mean to feel safe as I re-entered into relationships? And so that's the paradigm we're kind of going to use going forward and why we wanted to bring Tiffany in today because we want to talk about specifically today just to focus on the body. What does it mean to feel safe in our body? What are some practical things we can do? How that safety gets
destroyed and then how that safety gets restored.
Brenda (15:10.016)
Yeah, and let me just add to that.
Alex that I know for me and my biblical counseling training, it's probably only been the last five or 10 years that I've really become aware of the body, which that's interesting, isn't it? Because we are after all embodied souls. But in the Christian faith, and I think in biblical counseling world, we've really disconnected these two from one another. It's like we know that the inner man impacts the outer man and the outer man impacts the inner man, but we couldn't figure out how to put them together. And it really almost came across oftentimes as seeming like maybe we were going
Alex (15:19.483)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex (15:24.67)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (15:43.646)
off the rails, you know, to talk about the body. In some of the ways even we're going to talk about the body today, we really want to come back to showing how this is a very biblical and theologically sound way of thinking about being embodied souls. And so I do want to say we're going to put up a link in our show notes. Dr. Bob Kellerman, who you know is one of our favorite guests who's never on our program here, but is always on because we're always referring to him, has put together a collated 500 and
Alex (15:45.086)
Yeah.
Alex (15:57.289)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (16:06.194)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (16:13.496)
60 biblical passages from Genesis to Revelation on what the Bible says about suffering and embodied souls. So if you're wondering today, if we get into this as like, are biblical counselors taking a whole season session, I mean, to talk about the body? Well, this is why I would encourage you to download that and really go back and realize how much the body is addressed from the beginning to the end of the scriptures. And, you know, and our bodies are going to follow us eventually as well.
Alex (16:20.031)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (16:32.435)
Mm.
Brenda (16:43.496)
you know, we're not getting rid of these bodies. Temporarily, we will. So, anyway, just to really, I think, frame this conversation that this is a theological discussion when we begin to talk about the body.
Alex (16:45.833)
Mm.
Alex (16:53.466)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'd like to tell people that the very first thing God gave us to Stuart was a body. I mean, like he made a body and then he placed it in the garden. And so when people start to get a little nervous about why am I talking about my body, I let's just start at the very beginning and remember this is the first thing God gave you to Stuart. So...
Brenda (17:01.002)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brenda (17:12.021)
Yeah.
Brenda (17:15.739)
He gave us a body, think Genesis 2, and then breathed life into it and animated that body, which means he gave us spiritual and physical life. But to your point, the body was there first.
Alex (17:19.206)
and breathed in too.
Alex (17:24.825)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (17:28.207)
And I'll just add to real quick, there is such a disconnect in the medical community too. mean, that's what I've always been passionate about is that, don't forget that this body that you're treating as a physical therapist also has a soul and a heart and a mind.
Alex (17:44.36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (17:46.083)
And, know, on your end, y'all do the opposite. You know, you, you're all about the heart and the soul and the mind, and you completely forget their body. And just from a purely nervous system standpoint, I mean, think about, you know, if you're just a brain, like the way that we organize our brain as a baby even is through movement. so it, a brain is just nothing. And then that's how God made us is that he put us in this body that has to move in a certain way through a developmental sequence.
Alex (17:49.339)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (18:04.308)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (18:05.332)
Hmm.
Alex (18:14.847)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (18:16.107)
that we all do as image bearers to organize this amazing brain. And so you cannot separate the two ever and it is not what he intended if we do.
Alex (18:20.0)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Alex (18:26.908)
Mm-mm. Yeah, yeah.
Brenda (18:29.91)
Great point.
Alex (18:31.622)
So Tiff, let's start off just talking about this concept of when someone experiences trauma and they come to you or sometimes they come to me and I send them to you and we get back and forth. And they have, they probably usually can't put this in the words, but we recognize that they don't feel safe in their body. Like I recognize why I don't feel safe in my body after 20 years of chronic pain, right? My body doesn't feel like a safe place to be because it hurts. But when they're experiencing other traumas,
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (18:42.801)
You
Alex (19:01.536)
why might they not feel safe inside their body?
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (19:05.253)
Yeah, mean, I think everybody's experience is a little bit different, but some commonalities, know, one can be pain, certainly, but we've all experienced, you know, whether we want to say, I feel like I'm coming out of my skin or I'm on edge or I feel like I'm so tense, like why can I not settle my body? And even if they do feel safe in their exterior world, they may still not feel comfortable.
Alex (19:18.803)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (19:33.183)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (19:33.749)
whatever word we want to use, just can't get comfortable in their own body. And there can be lots of different things that may have caused that. But it's just a huge awareness that something is not right within their physical body.
Alex (19:49.701)
So right away one of the things I start to talk about is the window of tolerance and I think maybe it'd be good for you to explain like what that window of tolerance says and then what is kind of happening just in pretty layman's terms what's happening in the nervous system when somebody's saying I don't feel comfortable in my body.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (20:06.405)
Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna get just a little sciency. Y'all tell me if it's too sciency. But, you know, there's different theories out there and polyvagal theory is one of them and I think we're gonna talk about the vagus nerve a little bit, but.
Alex (20:09.898)
Yeah.
Brenda (20:10.23)
You
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (20:22.095)
Basically, we have 12 cranial nerves that come off our brain and our brain stem, the base of our brain. And the tenth one is called our vagus nerve. And if you ever doubted that there was a divine creator, look at this nerve. It's absolutely just amazing. it comes off your brain stem. It's really long. It's the longest cranial nerve. And it goes through our neck and down into our body. And it supplies our...
Alex (20:37.734)
I'll that.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (20:50.961)
and muscles that we use to swallow and talk, but then also our heart and our lungs and our, goes all the way down to our lower intestine. And it splits off into two branches. And so we have a dorsal branch and a ventral branch. So ventral just means belly. Dorsal think like, know, dorsal fin on a fish. So dorsal means back. So it kind of splits off into these two branches. And...
probably vagal theory and again, most people will agree at this point that it might be too simplistic but it at least gives us a theory, gives us a framework to kind of understand some of these things but.
you know, we have a nervous system, an autonomic nervous system that kind of breaks up into sympathetic nervous system. And I think we've all kind of heard of that as like fight or flight, right? And then we have a parasympathetic nervous system and we kind of refer to that as rest and digest. And 75 % of our parasympathetic nervous system comes from that vagus nerve. So that vagus nerve is hugely responsible for this rest and
Alex (21:42.474)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (21:42.762)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (22:01.283)
Okay, and so polyvagal theory kind of talks about kind of a ladder of And that's what we kind of mean with this window of tolerance whatever we want to call it But if we're in our ventral vagal state, okay, the part of the nerve that's more in our belly We're good. Okay, we're we're calm We are present
Alex (22:01.948)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (22:21.95)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (22:27.433)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (22:28.507)
we are where we should be, If we get on either side of that, we can get into dorsal vagal.
Alex (22:31.232)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (22:37.455)
which is, and we're gonna talk about that some, think of just shutting down. that's kind of almost your freeze response. That can be in the sympathetic nervous system too, but we just checked out. We are completely shut down. It's a protective mechanism to say, cannot deal with this anymore and I gotta check out. So that's dorsal vagal. We're outside of our window of tolerance if we get into that. And then the other part of the ladder is a sympathetic response and that's that fight or flight.
Alex (22:41.832)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (22:49.304)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (22:56.516)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (23:00.281)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (23:07.619)
in both of those we are in self-preservation. Okay and it's what God gave us. I mean it's protective mechanisms for us whether we need to and it's a good thing we need our sympathetic nervous system big time when we are in a crisis and we need to respond very quickly and our body knows what to do to divert our attention and our blood supply to all the things to fight or flee. Okay and so it is a protective mechanism but if we can't settle back
Alex (23:10.997)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (23:19.851)
Yes.
Alex (23:33.526)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (23:37.388)
down rather quickly.
Alex (23:38.414)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (23:40.763)
then we've got a problem and we can stay outside of our window of tolerance. What should happen is, know, like here's a simplistic example of you're walking along and somebody jumps out at you or something scares you. Okay. And your vagus nerve should really respond. And again, your heart rate is going to go up. Your palms may get sweaty. Your mouth may get dry. You, okay. You have this big physiological response because of that vagus nerve, but you realize real quickly that you're not in danger and it, you, you,
back to baseline and that's what we call a healthy vagal tone. so tone just means health in that situation and so when somebody has had a lot of trauma in their life and a lot of stress we the vagal tone goes down it gets low and we just can't get back to that window of tolerance as quickly as we should and a lot of people just live outside of it all the time. So is that help? Okay.
Alex (24:12.159)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (24:25.453)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (24:32.717)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, it helps a lot. And I think since we've already introduced this idea of embodied souls and this interplay between body and soul, one of the things I like to tell people is like being outside of our window of tolerance is not a sin, right? We have to remember we're not talking about a sin issue here. We're talking about a physiological response that God designed in us to help us stay safe, to help us respond to danger. We can sin when we are outside of our window of tolerance and probably many of us
Brenda (24:40.874)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (24:57.841)
That's right.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (25:02.321)
That's right.
That's right.
Alex (25:09.079)
do have sinful responses they are right because we're in fight or flight but in and of itself our nervous system response is not sinful and I think it's important to say that because when the nervous system gets stuck so to speak and unable to easily settle back in the window of tolerance I think people can begin to feel like there's something wrong with them i.e. sinful with them not just that this is physiological but now they they begin to think that they
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (25:09.177)
Most often do. Yeah. Right.
Brenda (25:33.844)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (25:40.2)
that this is a sin issue, that this is something that God has displeased with them ever because they don't feel good.
Brenda (25:45.206)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (25:47.217)
Absolutely, absolutely. it allows them to be gracious to themselves and it allows us to be, you know, if we understand as caregivers and family members and friends and everybody walking along with them that their body's doing what God designed it to do. And it's an acceptable response considering the life that they've had to lead. And so it just puts us in a posture of lots of grace and mercy.
Alex (26:06.359)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (26:12.45)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (26:18.351)
So Tiff, what are the things that you see when somebody stays in this place where their nervous system stays activated, so to speak? What are some of the effects you then see on the body?
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (26:31.803)
Yeah, mean, for what I did personally, we see this big muscular response. so particularly as it relates to pelvic floor, the medical term would be hypertonicity. again, it just means spasm, basically. That muscle is going to respond.
Alex (26:45.24)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (26:50.605)
and be overactive. And so we can see that throughout the body. But you know, there's been so much research of just, it might not show up from a musculoskeletal standpoint, but it might show up in just our general health and our immune system and our ability to fight off any kind of disease or so. mean, the literature has been well established that, you know, the higher some of our adverse childhood experiences are, the more likely we are to have all sorts of
Alex (26:52.345)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (27:20.499)
things, particularly if we're not aware of it and know how to deal with it appropriately. But yeah, from my standpoint, I would see a lot of just dysregulated nervous system and an overactive muscle response that caused a lot of pain.
Alex (27:33.561)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (27:43.623)
And then things like sleep and headaches and all those kind of chronic.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (27:45.649)
Yes, yes, yes. And it just, all that compounds, yeah, all of it compounds, it makes it worse. And so it's just they get into this vicious cycle of not regulating in any way. We're not eating right, we're not sleeping right, we're not resting, we're not living in any kind of healthy way that would promote us back to a sense of calm or regulation, and it just gets you get into a vicious cycle.
Alex (28:13.689)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (28:15.338)
Just think about how trauma does create such chaos. Why don't we think about the idea of like from going to chaos to rest, we have to be ordered. And so there's so much chaos, there's no order, body, soul, relationships, and that just creates so much more rest and unrest, which leads to more chaos. So we want to transition now to what would it look like for chaos to become ordered in our bodies so that we can experience rest or
safety.
And you talked about, you know, dysregulation, Tiffany, in all these different ways. But one of the things that we see a lot when we're dealing with people who have had trauma is this idea of emotional dysregulation. And, you know, that's not, we're not going to find that word in the Bible. So maybe you could help explain to us what it is, what happens, what is emotional regulation, and what is emotional dysregulation, and how does this come about?
you
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (29:17.733)
Yeah, think, you know, still going back to kind of that window of tolerance of if you're in that state, that ventral vagal state, you can regulate and you can control your emotions, so to speak. But if we get on either side of that, begins to be very difficult. so it's beyond just like I'm...
a slave to my emotions. mean, you know, we all do that from time to time. We all have difficulty, you know, controlling our emotions. I think when we talk about being dysregulated, that's...
this is going to be to a greater degree and that person's gonna have a harder time getting back to baseline to where maybe, you know, we might get mad for a minute and we can, you know, if we're in our ventral vagal state for the most part and we are neurologically healthy and emotionally healthy, then we can get back to that baseline fairly quickly. But somebody who's really dysregulated all the time and does not have...
Alex (30:02.105)
Mm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (30:21.998)
a normal nervous system because of what they've been through, they can't do that as easily. And they get outside of that window of tolerance. And again, it can look like anger, can look like crying, it can look like complete shutdown and dissociation. It depends. There can be a wide variety and it could change even from day to day. That person can be one way one day and another.
Alex (30:43.498)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (30:46.767)
way another day, but it's beyond just that ability to be saying, know, rule by my emotions, in my opinion.
Alex (30:52.697)
Mm-hmm.
I like to tell people that all the good stuff happens in the window of tolerance, right? Like all the, like you said, we have this ability to problem solve and be creative and connect with other people and regulate ourselves, right? So like all the good stuff happens in the window of tolerance. And if we regularly find ourselves kind of knowing that a situation calls for like a level three response, you know, of maybe irritability.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (31:08.209)
That's right. That's right.
Alex (31:24.827)
And we're consistently jumping to an eight in this situation. And I think we've all had that experience where we go.
my reaction is not matching this situation. Like it's out of, you know, it's out of proportion to what the situation calls for. And if we regularly find ourselves doing that and then unable to settle ourselves in it, then we kind of know like, okay, we're talking about more, like you said, than just anger. We're actually talking about something that's happening in the nervous system where we can't get back into the window of tolerance easily. And so that becomes, I think sometimes when I put numbers
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (31:34.971)
That's right.
Alex (32:02.703)
to it, people have something they can kind of grab onto that feels a little bit more objective instead of just I'm really angry. And so we kind of put numbers to it for people so they can begin to gauge, okay that was a level five response but the situation probably only called for it too and so I need to address that.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (32:22.373)
Yeah, and I think again, it's back to that vicious cycle too of, know, when we get outside of that window of tolerance, we don't feel safe, we disconnect, you know, we can't socially engage. And so the situation builds rather than I can get back to my window of tolerance. can think clearly. I can engage with people that I love that care for me and can co-regulate me. And so we get the cycle spinning the right way, you know, rather than
Brenda (32:22.698)
Get it.
Alex (32:29.432)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (32:52.347)
the wrong way.
Alex (32:52.567)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (32:54.71)
Tiffany, what do you think about a person who has a lot of trauma? Do you feel like they can wake up in the morning they're already jacked up, so to speak? Like maybe on a scale from one to 10, they wake up a five. So then when something comes along, like I might wake up at a two and something comes along and it takes me to a six, let's say. But somebody who starts the day at a five, same thing happens and they go to an eight. Yes.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (33:08.027)
Yes.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (33:13.179)
Right. Absolutely.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (33:19.441)
That's right, they're already outside of the window to begin with. They've already jumped out the window and so it's just gonna get worse. Yeah.
Alex (33:21.795)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and what's the word hyper vigilance? So that's that hyper like we that's when the body's already staying poised for danger and You know, so like you said Brenda wait, we wake up poised We wake up already feeling in danger So Tiff I think the hard thing is that and I'm one of these people you know that because you've treated me for I was thinking you've been a PT for 27 years and I've been
Brenda (33:30.046)
Yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (33:34.598)
this.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (33:46.075)
Yes.
Brenda (33:46.186)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (33:59.579)
I I should get a prize for that I'm just saying I need at least a t-shirt or something but
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (34:03.431)
I just can't get you well. can't get you well. You need a new PT.
Brenda (34:09.82)
Hehehehehe
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (34:13.471)
Hahaha!
Alex (34:15.513)
I'm one of those people who we say is very contained. And so it can be very hard to know when someone is outside their window of tolerance when we're sitting with them. And I'm one of those people, you could sit with me and you may never know how dysregulated I am on the inside, but my pelvic floor is definitely reported on me, right? So how do we know when we're sitting with someone, like what are the signs that we're looking for that somebody's outside their window of tolerance so we can help care for them?
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (34:34.705)
You
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (34:46.555)
think when you're in, know, Alex and I talk about this all the time, like when somebody's in the sympathetic response, can be fairly easy to recognize. That's the person who is just, they look stressed out. They're not calm. They're very agitated looking. Their breath looks different. Their tone, their expressions look different. know, they're anxious and stressed out. When we get to that other side of that,
Alex (34:59.191)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (35:08.632)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (35:16.753)
Dorsal, you know vagal response that kind of shut down you know if somebody has looked really agitated and angry and Anxious and they go into the shutdown mode it can also look it can almost look like improvement like they they look so much calmer there They're not yelling at me. They're not but if they're if they've shut down that that's
Alex (35:34.699)
Right.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (35:38.016)
Mm.
Ehem.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (35:44.869)
they're still way outside of their window of tolerance and they can be into that dissociation kind of freeze mode. And so just being aware that that can happen, I have had patients disassociate on me, it's scary. I've had a colleague who, a patient fully disassociated and relived a traumatic sexual experience as a seven year old right in front of her during a physical therapy session. you know, that's...
Alex (35:51.597)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (35:58.231)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (36:08.185)
Hmm.
Brenda (36:08.512)
Wow.
Alex (36:11.416)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (36:14.057)
traumatize the therapist too. And so just, I'm always just aware of and knowing the more you know somebody and kind of know their defaults and when that looks outside of what they typically look like, just being aware that we can go to the other extreme and how do we call them back out of that. And so I'm always just...
Alex (36:15.841)
Yeah, yeah.
Brenda (36:16.022)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (36:30.455)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (36:36.451)
I always am looking at somebody and if they're able to be present, you know, I don't even during a therapy session, particularly with what we have to do with pelvic floor, you know, if there was some trauma that was particularly sexual in nature, you know, I don't let somebody put their AirPods in. Patients will ask that like, can I just listen to some music? No, you cannot. You can ask. You're to stay right here with me and you have a conversation with me while we do this because I need to be, I need to be aware of your state and that you're
Alex (36:42.873)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (37:00.792)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (37:06.385)
still with me so to speak and so calling them back to the present, grounding them so to speak, but it sometimes it can be hard to see but I think again just knowing a person and spending some time with them to know when it looks a little different. Yeah.
Brenda (37:07.967)
Hmm.
Alex (37:08.025)
you
Alex (37:23.762)
And some of the things I've seen you do is just say things like, are you doing? You're just kind of keeping, you keep a verbal connection with them.
It might not be talking about what's happening in the therapy. It might just be talking. But you'll check in, how you doing? How's this feel? Are you with me? Like just some questions like that to get them to keep trying to verbalize. Because some people just need to ground to your voice, right? Like they need to stay in the present and they need to hear your voice. I think with what you do, you're already engaged with touch. But I think for us, we have to be a little bit careful
because the touch barrier hasn't been broken. And so if somebody is starting to dissociate, it can feel instinctive for somebody sitting with them to want to touch them. And it's me, I want to touch somebody. I feel like that's going to bring them back into the room with me. that often, no, that is not the thing to do. You've broken the touch barrier, you can go there. We haven't. And so we have to be really careful in that time not to reach out and touch, even if
it feels instinctive for us to do that. so I think that's an important thing to use your voice, use eye contact, use things like that and not rely on touch which can often startle people and can be very triggering to people.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (38:48.773)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think too, just calling on our senses of, I do that a lot if I feel like somebody, I'm losing somebody a little bit, it's, what's the color of my shirt even? We're bringing our brain back online and what do you smell, what do you see, what do you hear? using those senses that God gave us to bring us back to the present can be also very powerful.
Alex (39:01.579)
Yes, yes.
Alex (39:08.482)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (39:16.385)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.
Brenda (39:20.0)
That's really moving us in.
Tiffany kind of to the next thing we really want to talk about like some practical practices that we can help people feel safe in their bodies again. you know, and I do want to say at this point, we are body and soul. so Alex and I talk a lot about the both and the both and the both and we are not we are not minimizing the role of the soul. can even talk about how to have soulish practices if you will with some of these physical practices. But I think sometimes when we start talking
Alex (39:39.863)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (39:40.433)
Yes, yes, yes.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (39:49.553)
Absolutely.
Brenda (39:51.768)
things like grounding or breathing or some of the things we want to move into, it can set off theological alarms for some people. You know, like, what? They're going into Eastern religion or psychiatric practices. What's going on here? And so we want to really talk about, yeah, yeah, we want to talk, yeah, yeah, yeah, the woo-woo of it all. And so we're saying this is not woo-woo, y'all. This is like we are talking about real, real ways that God has made us to interact with our bodies for the sake of ourselves. Honestly,
Alex (39:57.683)
Mm. Mm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (39:58.555)
Yes.
Alex (40:01.369)
Mmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (40:03.717)
Woo woo.
Alex (40:05.819)
It's too very well.
Alex (40:09.933)
Mm-hmm. Mm-mm.
Brenda (40:21.684)
When we look at these exercises and brain hacking is what I might call them as well, or body and brain hacks, they work in a common grace way. They'll work for anybody. But as Christians, we can actually use them to engage our faith and our trust in Jesus in a really, really practical way as we begin to exercise agency or dominion or stewardship in having good knowledge about our body and the ways that
God has actually given us these warning systems, but also has given us ways to interrupt these warning systems on a physical level when they are going off the rails and no longer serving us the way that God has designed them to serve us. So,
Alex (40:59.426)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (41:07.989)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (41:09.828)
this.
Brenda (41:10.804)
That leads us a little bit into, I think the first thing we'd like to talk about is breathing and breath work. And maybe you could tell us a little bit about why is breathing important and what is happening to the body when we engage with breath work. Because I used to think this was pretty hokey, okay? Because I didn't understand, I didn't understand it.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (41:25.551)
Yeah.
That's, yeah, right, right. And I think if people can again just wrap their mind around like this is just basic physiology that God created. I mean, and really, if we really think about it, it's ridiculous to think that.
this would not have an impact on our mood and our state. We're one body. cannot separate the two. And so, you know, it's just so funny to me. And I know I think from a more physical standpoint than the common believer in particular, but it's so silliness to me to think that we would not understand.
Alex (41:50.786)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (41:53.909)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (42:13.981)
But the church at large, you're right, I that has always been, and I mean I work and live in Montgomery, Alabama in the middle of the Bible Belt, and so I always have to be careful with saying that this is not woo-woo. I'm not trying, this is how God made your body, and all I'm doing is trying to teach you how to enhance it and tap into that.
This is all biblical and basic physiology of how God created you. So, work, if we kind of get back to the science of what we were talking about, about that vagus nerve, when...
Alex (42:43.315)
Mm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (42:56.047)
When we breathe through our chest, which we would call apical breathing, we do use our chest to breathe, but really we should use our diaphragm. Everybody understands what their diaphragm is down here in our belly. Our chest shouldn't really come online until we do something like exercise. We should mostly be breathing through our diaphragm for the most part when we start to get an elevated heart rate and respiration rate.
start to pull in these accessory muscles is what we would call them from our neck and our chest that help expand our lungs and get more oxygen into our body. But we really shouldn't be breathing here just day to day. And what that does is your body, your brain thinks when I'm breathing through my chest that I'm running or something, okay, that I'm doing the fight or flight thing. And so it says, okay, we need to gear up. And it senses that I'm in that sympathetic state. And so it brings that sympathetic nervous
Brenda (43:44.693)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (43:56.071)
nervous system back online more, okay, and it doesn't help. If we breathe through our diaphragm, that brings that vagus nerve in, that brings that parasympathetic nervous system, that rest or digest, and it calms us, okay, and so I always say that's one of the first things I teach anybody how to do is just breathe correctly. We all breathe wrong.
Alex (44:11.781)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (44:18.662)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (44:19.072)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (44:19.373)
And it's just, think again, it's just the world that we live in that we're all, we all are under too much stress and we all easily, it's not, it's common to man. And we all need to be reminded how to tap into that belly breath and calm ourselves down. And what it does to our nervous system is just absolutely amazing and how quickly you can respond with just something so basic as your breath.
Alex (44:25.008)
Mm-mm.
Alex (44:39.282)
Mmm.
Brenda (44:44.224)
Mm. Mm.
Alex (44:46.547)
One of the stories I tell people to have happened with you several years ago, my back went out and I was in your office and in a lot of pain. I at that point had probably been practicing breathing probably for about at least a year, year and a half, like almost daily doing some type of breath work.
And because again, I think we need to develop that muscle memory around what it feels like for a diet. You so I felt like I had done that, but I was in a lot of pain. And right before I left, you said, okay, don't forget to breathe. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you said, no, stop and give me a good belly breath. And we stood in the doorway and I could not do it. Like even having practiced, but I was in pain and my body was fighting me.
Brenda (45:11.348)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (45:36.276)
my body I think was saying, you still feel in danger because you hurt and my body was fighting me and I said to you, I gotta go out to the car. So I went out to the car at your office and I had to sit in the car for three or four minutes before I could get a good deep breath in my belly and I had to sit there and breathe for a while. But it was just such a great picture to me of how even when you want to and you've practiced and you know how to do the breathing, if your body is giving signals that you've
Brenda (45:44.502)
Hmm.
Alex (46:06.196)
feel in danger. It is going to take some time. It's going to be a lot harder. So I've had people when I say, do you know how to breathe? And they'll say, well, I breathe every day. And I'm like, yeah, we all breathe every day. But do you know how to breathe to calm your nervous system? And we can even know how to do it. But when, when the body's activated, it's going to fight us a little bit and it's going to take some time to get the breath all the way down into the belly and to feel the exhale all the way down through the pelvis. And so it was just such a great, a great example to me in my own body of like, I
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (46:09.201)
That's right.
Brenda (46:15.318)
You
Alex (46:36.116)
know how to do this and I can't do it.
Brenda (46:38.972)
Mm, yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (46:39.601)
Yeah, yeah, and it can be it can get a little worse before it gets better too because if you if you don't know how to you'll almost feel like you're hyperventilating a little bit, you know, if you've Had an irregular breathing pattern for for a while It can take a minute before you get it. And again, it's it's muscle. It's tissue that has to Learn and expand and change just like any other muscle. And so it takes it takes a little time there as well. Yep
Alex (46:43.418)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (46:47.994)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (46:48.874)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (46:55.562)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (47:06.59)
Hmm. So.
Alex (47:08.54)
Tiff, is it true that, I've been reading some that when we are down, when we are down and collapse and freeze, the hypo around, so we actually have to get a little bit activated to come into the window of tolerance and breath, we can actually do activating breath, so there are relaxing breaths, but there are also activating breaths, yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (47:26.662)
Yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (47:31.471)
it.
Correct. And that can be the other, the wisdom of kind of knowing where somebody is. And sometimes that we just, need to move. We need to, you know, we need to excite them a little bit to kind of pull them out of that dorsal vagal state where for in a sympathetic response, we need to do things that, that calm and co-regulate. But sometimes the answer is we need to, we need to excite you a little bit and you need to move, you know, yeah.
Alex (47:38.278)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alex (47:47.994)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (47:57.955)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And I've been watching people a little bit, I hope a little bit more carefully and even suggesting that sometimes when we're in the middle of a counseling session, if I see them either seemingly I'm starting to feel like I'm losing them or if they're getting very agitated, I'm more and more suggesting, do you want to get up and walk around the office? Do you want to get up and walk around outside with me? And just not thinking we have to stay in this little room and have them squirm in their body, but just letting them.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (48:22.501)
Yes.
Alex (48:31.586)
express some of that through movement sometimes has been helpful.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (48:33.953)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Brenda (48:38.336)
Well, not that we have to overly spiritualize everything, but I do want to bring it to our attention. First of all, you know, when we talk about breath, the Hebrew and Greek words for breath are also spirit.
And so I do think it is just interesting that God had breathed life into us, spiritual and physical, and now we can use breath work to help us physically and spiritually. And I think one of the ways that is really neat to use breath work, particularly once you understand, because I really like to take people through a process of understanding how to breathe first on the physical before we maybe add something spiritual in, because I think as Christians particularly, we want to jump straight to the spiritual. When it's like, no, I really want you to understand like what
Alex (49:13.586)
you
Brenda (49:22.956)
belly breathing is and those sort of things. But I think that using an ancient practice of breath prayer can be really, really helpful. We can begin to tie our breathing to Bible verses of inhale and exhaling, or we can inhale a word of hope and exhale a word of confession maybe, or something that we are surrendering or releasing. And so I think breath work really becomes a way to be reminded that God is with us, that he's watching over
Alex (49:30.192)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (49:53.016)
us, that he cares for us, that he sees our body, he hears what's going on, he's moving toward us. I think it can just be that moment that we can take to really reflect spiritually as we actually pull away and calm ourselves physically as well. And so one of the questions I did have, and maybe we could just do these as some handouts and rather than taking time here Tiffany, but maybe you could share with us some of your favorite breathing exercises
Alex (50:11.086)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (50:22.866)
for both hypo and hyper arousal and we could put together a little handout and maybe even some apps you might use. I know that there are a lot of apps these days that can be really helpful with showing us why and how and the counting and all of that. So maybe we won't take time in this podcast because I we need to move on but I'd love for you to help us do that. There's so much out there. I know as I've gotten on the internet. I mean there's tons of videos and there tons of apps and it can feel very overwhelming. Talk about now I'm panicking over the fact I can't figure out how to breathe.
Alex (50:37.51)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (50:46.416)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (50:48.433)
Yes.
Brenda (50:52.696)
or I can't figure these things out. You know, which one of these is working and now I am hyperventilating. But let's move on to just another way that we've that we have touched on, but maybe drilling down a little bit more on this idea of grounding. What it is and how we do it and why it's important.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (50:53.007)
Right? Right?
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (51:13.381)
Yeah, you know, one thing I want to say about the breath also too is when we do something like what you were talking about of using an app or using scripture or prayer and
the other thing that that does. And again, a lot of people will, when I use this word, you're going to think woo woo immediately, but it's some mindfulness practice and that's had negative connotation in the church, but it's just, it's the grounding part. It's the being present. And so when I force myself to focus, that is a discipline that calms me down. you know, because again,
which you guys know anxiety is, is living out here and not being present with my current situation. And so if I establish a discipline of focusing on my breath and focusing on whether it be words or scripture or accounting, okay, whatever we want it to be, and my mind starts to wonder and then I pull it back.
and I become, I'm building discipline and muscle memory, so to speak, of controlling that. And that's all grounding and mindfulness is, is I'm living out here and it's producing negative emotion in me. And how do I bring it back to where I am now? And that's one of the ways to do it, is to focus on my body and where I am in space, where is my breath.
Alex (52:50.097)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (52:52.049)
where is my mind and my thought? What is the discipline practice that I'm gonna do to bring it back to you, whether it be counting or just focusing on my breath or scripture. Again, so many apps to do that. And like we were talking about, bringing in your senses of what do I see? What do I smell? What do I taste? What do I feel? That brings me all back to being in the present.
Alex (53:01.862)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (53:19.653)
getting out into nature, know, that's so important, being out in God's creation. And it's so easy to, like you could just go for a walk and you realize you walked the whole time and you didn't focus upon one thing of what you could see, what you could smell, what you could hear, what you could feel, what you could taste. Just becoming, just being aware of being in God's creation.
It's just so powerful and it's so simple. All these things are so simple that God gave us so
Alex (53:48.208)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (53:50.582)
you
They're just at our fingertips and disposal and we don't even acknowledge them. I think about just how, what you said, how emotional overwhelm, emotional dysregulation, feeling very overwhelmed, feeling flooded, really tempts us to either get stuck in our past, right? Like we go backwards with regret and fear and all that, or we race ahead toward the future. And just what you're saying is that when we ground ourselves, we're staying present, and this is where God is. God is in our present.
Alex (54:18.384)
Hmm
Brenda (54:22.284)
where God's in our past, our present, and our future, but where he wants us to meet him today is in our present. He's our ever-present help in trouble. He's present here. And I read a... That's right!
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (54:31.782)
And that's where his grace is. His grace is the here and now.
Brenda (54:34.87)
His grace is here in this moment. Yeah, the grace for this moment. And I read a beautiful article by Mike Emelint and some things by Todd Stride. We'll post these articles as well because they were really beautiful about just breath work and about embodied souls. And Dr. Mike Emelint is a physician who also is counselor. But one of the things he just talked about is how our five senses help us experience the love of God and His goodness. And so, again, kind of taking this idea of grounding and moving it maybe a little bit more into acknowledgement of
Alex (54:36.37)
Hmm. Hmm.
Alex (54:59.558)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (55:04.964)
But like the sound of music like God. Thank you for the beaut like ears and the beautiful music The smell of a baby. I'm smelling this little baby and she just smells so good I say that cuz I have a little newborn grandbaby and she just smells so good, but that keeps me present right or The feeling of a cold or warm water, you know how that like this Lord Thank you for this the smell of fresh cookies or the taste of cookies or seeing the fall colors change Like God has given us so many things
Alex (55:12.891)
Hmm.
Brenda (55:34.744)
And I guess one of the things that if I understand like fight-flight kind of narrows, right? Like our vision and we get that tunnel vision and so to be able to to use engage all of our senses as a way to acknowledge that we are like when Paul says be rooted and grounded in the love of God I'm thinking that rooting and grounding in the love of God is acknowledging the goodness of God his presence and all that he's given to us to be present with us in this moment and just one example
Alex (55:52.278)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (56:03.282)
Mm.
Brenda (56:04.904)
that Mike Emelet gave I thought was so good. He said that he has a collection of stones in his office and he'll invite a person to like touch and hold it and then they'll talk about how God is like the rock, what it means that he's strong, he's immovable, you can hide behind the rock. And again just using something very tactile. Yeah and I think about you know this idea of embodied souls Tiffany and I know I'm wondering with your brain pump if you see this but we are becoming so disembodied.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (56:21.563)
some visualization and stuff too.
Alex (56:23.27)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (56:32.02)
Right, like everything we do is technology or a there's so much technology that's taking over. There's, I don't know, maybe speak even just a little bit to that. I'd be curious to know your thoughts on, like we are living more disembodied. And so we don't even think about doing these things.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (56:45.073)
For sure, for sure. Yeah, and particularly in children, mean, that's what we see. We don't know all that's going on, but it's certainly one of the theories as why we're seeing more of these sensory issues and developmental delay is that children just go straight to screens. so, I mean, maybe even if we were kids and we...
Alex (57:04.914)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (57:10.277)
you know, we watch too much TV, we still went outside and we played and you know, now kids, we have too much baby equipment and they don't, they don't move around normally as a newborn. We stick them in all this different baby equipment and so they don't, they're not on the floor moving around like we're supposed to. And then again, even if, if we did that as, as, as infants and stayed say in a stroller too much or whatever, we still, we, we righted the wrong, so to speak, because we went out
and we played and now kids just go from one to the other and so again remember we can't we can't organize our brains without without movement that is how we do it and that we are the only species that goes through a developmental sequence I mean isn't that amazing and no other species really does that and so we have to go through developmental sequence of those milestones because our brain absolutely requires it
Alex (57:44.316)
Alex (57:49.51)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (57:57.078)
Hmm.
Alex (57:57.755)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (58:07.803)
because we have a higher brain that is made in the image of God and we have to move. It is so, so, so important. so mothers, if you hear nothing else, nobody's trying to hurt their baby, but you know, put that baby on the floor on their tummy and let them move and crawl. then.
Alex (58:07.846)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (58:08.149)
Hmm.
Brenda (58:20.267)
Mm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (58:28.379)
you know, get them off of those screens and outside playing, moving their body. That is how we develop our brain. is not just about weight management and cardiovascular health. It is neurological. So it's, yes, we're getting farther and farther away from it. You see schools, you know, that's always my pet peeve. We go to schools a lot and...
Alex (58:39.856)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (58:43.858)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (58:44.534)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (58:54.513)
and speak to administrators and people, policymakers and speaking at conferences and it's like, where did your playgrounds go? Like, you you go to schools all the time and there's no swings. Like, where's the swings? And it's because, you know, even that, like swinging, just basic swinging calms your nervous system for eight hours, 15 minutes of linear swinging.
Alex (59:02.549)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (59:04.842)
What?
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (59:17.273)
stays in your nervous system for eight hours. But where did all our swings go? And so, you know, somebody got sued because an arm was broken or whatever, you know, and again, I'm not, I'm not discrediting that real injuries don't happen, but what the lack of that is doing to the population at large is much worse. So yeah.
Alex (59:20.678)
Wow. Yeah.
Alex (59:26.898)
Mm.
Alex (59:38.128)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (59:39.104)
So how does that translate to movement with people who have experienced trauma? If we're, our listeners are professionals, but also, you know, lay people, just Christians in the pew that are wanting to help their neighbor, what would be some ways that you would encourage us to help a person coming out of trauma with movement?
Alex (59:43.908)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (59:59.291)
Yeah, I mean, think just encouraging them to move even with you, of going for a walk and calling them back to the present and getting out in nature and getting off of technology and that idea of co-regulation, we haven't talked about that, but just it's such a gift to be able to sit with someone.
And that's where our nervous systems talk to each other without even talking to each other. It's absolutely amazing that that vagus nerve, is our sixth sense. And that's what I'm always trying to teach young therapists. It's like, you've already made an impression when you walk in a room with a patient before you ever speak a word.
Alex (01:00:38.097)
Mm.
Brenda (01:00:50.452)
Hmm.
Alex (01:00:50.674)
you
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:00:51.49)
And if I am regulated, then I have the ability to regulate somebody else. If I'm not regulated myself and I'm running around.
my hair on fire and I'm 15 minutes behind and I'm thinking about my last patient or when I'm going to cook for dinner that night, I have no ability to regulate somebody else. And so to calm myself first and to step into a room and to realize what a privilege it is for our nervous systems to talk to each other. And that's an amazing, amazing thing. And so we have the ability to do that for each other. And that's community.
Brenda (01:01:09.526)
Hmm.
Alex (01:01:19.314)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:01:27.789)
Mm. Mm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:01:28.339)
and it's again it's just it's such an amazing thing and you know with me I'm telling PT students all the time too like you might be the only person who touched that person today there may be nobody else in their life that is touching them and it is a privilege to be able to touch another person and so it's just a very powerful thing
Alex (01:01:41.37)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:01:41.536)
Hmm. Well.
Alex (01:01:45.98)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:01:46.006)
Mm.
Alex (01:01:48.858)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:01:54.666)
I think that I'm just going to say I think that's interesting you say that because I think in the soulish realm it's the same right like you might have an encounter with somebody and you might be the only person that this person is invited into their trauma or the only person that's going to give them an encouraging word or just be present with them today and just the power of that.
Alex (01:01:55.09)
I wanna, yeah, sorry Brenda.
Alex (01:02:01.702)
Hmm.
Alex (01:02:08.146)
you
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:02:15.621)
Yes. Yep.
Alex (01:02:16.921)
And I want to just make one clarification because when we are talking about, because we're going to talk in a couple of episodes about telling your trauma story and helping someone tell their trauma story. And so when we're talking about staying present, we don't mean that we're forcing somebody to talk, always talk about the present.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:02:35.078)
Right?
Alex (01:02:36.114)
you we're talking about staying mindful again it's a word some people don't like but mindful so even when someone is sharing their trauma story with us that may have happened in the past are they able to be present in that story mindful in that story with us not dissociated in their nervous system not going into freeze or collapse and if they're not then we can bring some co-regulation to that we can check in are you okay do we need to breathe for a
So we're not saying that we only allow people to talk about what's happening in the present. I think that maybe that's obvious but I want to make sure we say it. We're saying that even in the way we tell our story about the past, we want our body to stay in the room so to speak because what trauma can do is that it wants us to believe it's back there. It's still experiencing that and so we want the body to be able to recognize it's still safe and it can tell the story of the danger.
Brenda (01:03:14.314)
Mm-hmm, that's good.
Brenda (01:03:28.074)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:03:35.967)
that happened back there but recognize its safety in the moment.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:03:40.049)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think too, just, you know, an awareness of teaching people of where they feel things in their body. It's just so powerful, you know, that we just, we dissociate our head from our body and we don't even realize that we are feeling things in our body. And so just be...
Alex (01:03:51.188)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:04:04.401)
bringing an awareness to where do you feel that tension and what does it feel like and can we do some strategies that begin to reduce that because that seems again so basic but people don't realize until you call attention to it that they are feeling this in their body.
Alex (01:04:24.171)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:04:24.593)
And so just so much, again, we tend to do neck up therapy and neck down therapy. And we have to bridge that gap more and more.
Brenda (01:04:31.539)
Hmm
Alex (01:04:31.669)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:04:36.181)
Yeah, can you say one thing Tiff about how I mean know that we could do a whole podcast on this I know but maybe give just a little example when somebody says trauma stored in the body or the body's keeping the score just what's like a simple example of how you've seen that play out?
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:04:51.631)
I mean, again, with me, it's more of that muscle tension, you know, and a lot of people will poo-poo that of, you know, the body kind of keeps the score, but again, of course it does. I mean, we have physical responses to emotions all the time. That's what crying is. That is a physical, a physiological response to an emotion. We do it in all kinds of ways.
Alex (01:04:56.021)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:05:04.811)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:05:08.809)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:05:10.144)
Hmm. Hmm.
Yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:05:17.359)
And so to, again, that's a very naive understanding of the nervous system, in my opinion, to think that we're not going to have a physiological response to an emotion. And if we do that enough, body can't, it defaults, it can't forget it. It, it, it has a harder time moving on from that. And we begin to get a pattern and we see that in therapy all the time. There's just patterns that develop on how we live our life and emotions are part of that too. So.
Alex (01:05:32.907)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:05:41.407)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:05:47.863)
I've seen that a thousand times, you know, and it's very odd. mean sometimes I'll be releasing a certain muscle in somebody's hip or belly or pelvic floor and they'll just start crying and and they don't know why and and is it I don't I don't know exactly what physiologically is happening either. I mean, I don't know that that trauma was stored right in that muscle but
Alex (01:05:53.845)
Very odd.
Alex (01:06:01.737)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:06:01.908)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:06:14.395)
There was some kind of release that happened that released some emotion as well. And I've seen it a hundred times and it's odd and I can't explain it, but it happens.
Brenda (01:06:16.917)
Hmm.
Alex (01:06:16.981)
Right.
Alex (01:06:22.153)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:06:27.241)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:06:29.386)
I really like Tiffany when you're talking about, you know, recognizing the feelings of overwhelm in our bodies. And then also it reminds me just the importance of being able to name the feelings we feel. You know, we use the little feelings chart because so often when we go into overwhelm, we can't, we can't say how we feel. I just am overwhelmed, but kind of that name it, detain it. If we can begin to name some of those emotions and if we can begin to identify how it's making us feel, then we can begin.
Alex (01:06:49.249)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:06:59.32)
to act on and because the Bible has something to say from an emotional standpoint about every emotion we feel and from a physiological standpoint there are things we can do to help regulate our bodies depending on how our bodies are responding to that emotion. Like we said we're going into fight-flight in a hypo or hyper arousal state. But the last thing we really want to talk about just in terms of things that might help and you know certainly our list is not you know maybe all there is but a few good things is just this idea of
Alex (01:07:06.505)
Mm-hmm.
Alex (01:07:14.58)
Hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:07:18.961)
Yeah.
Brenda (01:07:29.24)
moving people toward beauty and how beauty impacts us. And that beauty might be coming in lot of different forms, but maybe you could speak to that for us.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:07:38.853)
Yeah, mean, I think certainly what we've already talked about of just being out in nature and.
and finding what is beautiful to you. I mean that can be a lot of different things from music to art to nature to people. God gives us all kinds of things that we find beauty in and I think that is really important and again it brings us back to that grounding. I think other things
Brenda (01:08:01.928)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:08:14.777)
you know, singing. And that's what's so interesting too. Like even just humming, it stimulates your vagus nerve. I mean, it's gargling. mean, it's so strange just humming music. And then particularly if that music has some positive, powerful influence and it brings back a positive memory, you humming. Humming raises the tone of your vagal nerve.
Alex (01:08:18.059)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:08:24.277)
Okay.
Alex (01:08:42.975)
Mmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:08:43.793)
And so, you know, just again, certain sounds, music, stimulate certain areas of our brain that brings our parasympathetic nervous system back online. You know, cold exposure, I mean, that's been like all the rage, but that's always been around in terms of, there's nothing that's gonna bring you back into the present, like some really cold water.
Brenda (01:09:04.991)
Cold splash.
Alex (01:09:08.319)
Ha ha ha.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:09:09.775)
But it's that discipline, it kind of puts you in that sympathetic response and then you have to have the discipline of calming yourself. And so, all of these things can be helpful, but yes, beauty is so powerful and it can mean different things to different people, but finding what does bring you beauty and being present in that is so, powerful.
Alex (01:09:38.091)
Tiff, I like that you're saying the discipline of calming yourself because I think a lot of people think when they get activated and they're in fight or flight, I'm just gonna knuckle down and I'm gonna push through. what a lot of times what that means is they're gonna knuckle down and push through in fight or flight. And they think that that's going to, that's gonna get me better. that, know, I've just gotta pull myself up from my bootstrap. And I think it's really,
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:09:57.04)
Right.
Brenda (01:09:57.494)
Mm-hmm.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:10:06.949)
Right.
Alex (01:10:08.045)
important to say that actually the discipline that we need is to learn to calm ourselves because we don't expand our window of tolerance by knuckling down and just going deeper into fight or flight to accomplish a task in front of us. Sometimes we have to if we're in real danger, but what really expands our window of tolerance and in other words helps us develop more resilience is to develop the discipline of learning to calm our nervous system. And so all of these things don't just calm us in the moment, but they actually
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:10:23.579)
Yeah.
Alex (01:10:38.225)
help us develop resilience for the next hard thing. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Brenda (01:10:39.86)
Mm-hmm. That's right. Yeah.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:10:41.425)
That's right.
that tolerance gets bigger. And that is the feel your feels. mean, you know, and that's where we go a little sideways sometimes of like, I'm not gonna, I'm going to just ignore what I'm feeling in my mind and in my body and push through. And that oftentimes makes things worse rather than we have a toolbox. We can feel our feels and we can determine where we feel it in our body.
And then we have these strategies that begin to bring our nervous system back to a window of tolerance, bring our parasympathetic nervous system back online. And then again, we've got the wheel spinning in the right way and we actually can think a little clearly at that point because we're back inside the house, not jumping out the window. Yeah.
Alex (01:11:27.241)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:11:28.182)
Mm-hmm.
Brenda (01:11:33.928)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex (01:11:34.293)
Right.
And that's why we wanted to start today with the body because we wanted to recognize that we really do in many times have to start with the body. If we're going to think well about God and think well about relationships, which is going to be our next two podcasts, then we're going to have to be able to think. And if that's offline, then we can't do that. So that's why we wanted to start with the body. It's not that we're trying to place more importance over one thing or the other, but we are recognizing
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:11:53.701)
right.
Alex (01:12:06.055)
of the way God designed us in order for our brain to think well, even to remember the things about God that we know, to remember that Bible verse or remember that visual theology or something that we've built in. We're going to have to be able to calm the nervous system to be able to access that in the brain and so that's why I wanted to start with the body and I just can't think of a better person to take us there than you have today.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:12:30.952)
Thank you. I have enjoyed it. I really appreciate you guys having me.
Brenda (01:12:30.997)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Tiffany. We're definitely going to have you back. I think we've got a lot to.
I think we've been challenged by a lot today and I really hope that we will be able to implement some of these things and also just to provide more handouts. I want to say that we'll have some handouts that we will attach some articles we will attach because maybe this is your first time of hearing of some of these things or hearing them in a theological framework. And sometimes we just need to spend a little time spending more time understanding what this idea of calming our body looks like so that our bodies
the soul can be connected and we can really use our bodies in a way that will better glorify God, better be prepared to serve him and honor him. And that's really what we're about and what we want to do. So thanks so much for all your expertise. We love you, we appreciate you, and we look forward to having you back on.
Tiffany Brock Higginbotham (01:13:25.797)
Love you. Same, same. Thank y'all.
Alex (01:13:29.525)
you