A simple visual story to explain integration

I will be speaking more about integration this year, and here’s why:

Integration is now another word being thrown around out there in the trauma, somatic, and plant medicine worlds.

And yet it seems a lot of folks are downright confused about what it actually means.

Here are the basics via my morning buttermilk pancakes:

1 – You can have all the ingredients. You can even mix it together. But, you can’t eat the pancake until it is cooked (well, I guess you could slurp that batter or try to eat the dry flour, baking soda, egg, and salt… but you won’t feel so great after and it’ll taste terrible).

2 – The same goes for all the tips, strategies, and ways in which many are being taught to “regulate.” While they are necessary for the end product, and I myself teach (neurosensory) exercises and (high level) theory to my students so they can learn how to regulate, it is not enough to just know about the “ingredients” and put them together. You have to bring it to the heat. You have to bring it to life.

3 – Integration is using those strategies, exercises, and the theory in the heat of all moments, effortlessly and without thought. It just happens. You don’t have to think about it. THIS is integration.

4 – Just like this pancake batter doesn’t have to be “taught” how to cook. It just cooks. But it only cooks well when the ingredients have been put together in the right order, right timing, letting the batter settle, the right temperature, tending it, taking it off when ready.

There are so many metaphors when it comes to restoring real regulation to the nervous system.

Another one is not following a recipe and cooking from scratch. I’ve cooked buttermilk pancakes so many times that no recipe is needed.

Metaphorically speaking, this is what I do when it comes to nervous system health and healing:

I teach people how to “cook” from scratch, i.e. regulate from organic intelligence.

Legendary chef Julia Child flipping Crêpes Suzette

But we’ve swung so far away from our biological birthright that we DO need to re-learn how to do this – via a proven recipe at first. However, given enough time and practice, we will need to refer back to this recipe less and less as our organic intelligence will start to come back online.

SmartBody SmartMind™ (SBSM) gives you lifetime access to the THREE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS for ‘stick-to-your-ribs’ (aka: lasting) nervous system health & regulation.

GUIDANCE,
NON DUMBED-DOWN EDUCATION,
AND PRACTICE.

Said another way: (and to mix metaphors even further, but staying with the food theme ?) This 12-week nervous system rewire curriculum is the “full enchilada” of trauma healing programs.