Episode 226 Kathi Sohn Childhood Trauma and Beliefs as Key to Your Healing Now Transcript

This transcript is from episode 226 with guest Kathi Sohn.

[00:00:00] Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host Scott DeLuzio and now let’s get on with the show.

[00:00:21] Scott DeLuzio: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today, my guest is Kathy Sohn. Kathy is an army veteran whose current work focuses on the body memory process, which explores beliefs generated during childhood and how they impact our lives moving on into adulthood. So welcome to the show, Kathy. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background before we get more into what this body memory process is all about.

[00:00:49] Kathi Sohn: Hi, Scott, thank you for having me here. So a little bit about me. I started out after after I graduated from high school, I started out in college [00:01:00] and I didn’t have a really great experience because I think I was still trying to kind of figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I was very distracted.

[00:01:10] Kathi Sohn: So I had. Music training, voice and piano when I was growing up and when I got to this college campus and I found they had a fine arts building, I was in that building more often at the piano than I was in the library, even though I was in, I was studying pre-med at the time. And so that’s why I was, you know, just a little confused.

[00:01:30] Kathi Sohn: Well, do you wanna be a doctor or do you wanna be a musician? You know, what’s going on? And you know, it’s just, I spent some time trying to work that out and. You know, one, one night I was with my parents and I was particularly, I felt like it was kind of like, you know, when you hit rock bottom and like, and this just isn’t working and it was impacting my grades because I wasn’t applying myself.

[00:01:51] Kathi Sohn: And my self-esteem went downhill. And my dad who worked for electric general dynamics, he worked for the, he was a contractor with [00:02:00] the Navy in Connecticut, building submarines said, you know, I have an idea, you know, we’ll talk about it at breakfast. So. This one, he said, you know, I think maybe the military may be a good plan for you.

[00:02:11] Kathi Sohn: And and so I agreed and. Actually went with a Navy recruiter who ultimately handed me over to the army because of my ASVAB test results. And at the time the army had the loan forgiveness program. So all those college loans is. Guaranteed student loans that I had while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in college, I was gonna be able to take care of them.

[00:02:36] Kathi Sohn: And then also of course, there’s the opportunity to to take, you know, college courses in the army. So it seemed like a perfect plan and it really was. So here I went from someone who wasn’t applying themselves to being, I was been into code school by the way. So I wasn’t, if anybody is familiar with the old don’t know if they have the same nomenclature anymore in the old world R FDF, you know, I was no five hotel.

[00:02:58] Kathi Sohn: So I did Morris code [00:03:00] collection and I was up at Fort Devons at the I see S a I S D. So it was the the school up there. And I graduated virtual my class. In fact, they didn’t even put orders for me until, you know, maybe a couple months later. So they let me be a sort of, a part of the cadre in helping the other students.

[00:03:16] Kathi Sohn: So I think that’s where my journey finally began toward having successes, finding that place of excellence within myself. Just earning awards and all of that with the military was so great. I only did that for four years. I knew that I didn’t really wanna actually I’ll. I went in saying, I don’t wanna do this as a career.

[00:03:35] Kathi Sohn: And I was actually put in for recommended for OCS. And that year there were so many applicants that they could pick college graduates. And so while I had, you know, some college courses under my belt I CA I was in that pile that was just sort of taken off the top and I wasn’t even considered. And maybe that was spade.

[00:03:55] Kathi Sohn: Maybe it wasn’t meant to. But anyway that the military did so [00:04:00] much for me, cuz not only did I get my self esteem, I also started my political science courses when I was stationed in. OK. Okinawa. So university of Maryland had a presence on Kadina air force base. And so that’s when I started and I actually graduated with my bachelor’s right by the time I got out of the army and like just like two weeks before.

[00:04:23] Kathi Sohn: Two weeks after. And then I immediately went into a job in the, with the department of defense. And then I spent 36 years there. It was one of those jobs that I, you know, I can’t really, you don’t talk a lot about it, but I had lots of different assignments and I ended up in three different war zones.

[00:04:38] Kathi Sohn: And so when I was in the army, I didn’t. I didn’t have that opportunity, but it was actually when I was a civilian that I spent some time in Sarajevo some time in Baghdad and really most of the time in Afghanistan where I did a six month deployment in 2015 that was you know, that was just really an interesting time.

[00:04:56] Kathi Sohn: I had very young children but thank God for FaceTime and. [00:05:00] You know, be able to stay connected, right. That families have that technology these days. There’s. It must have been really rough before that.

[00:05:10] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, for sure. I know when I deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 Some of these technologies, like the video calls and stuff they were around, but they weren’t quite as popular as they were, you know, just even just a few years afterwards, and even just the internet connection speeds that we had.

[00:05:28] Scott DeLuzio: Wasn’t all that reliable. So, you know, you might get on, but then it gets choppy and you know it, so you get a little bit of a call but then it kind of cuts out that kind of stuff. But we did have internet connection and. So there, there was a much more immediate you know, response as far as, you know, being able to communicate back home as opposed to people who maybe, you know, think way back to you know, the world war I, world war II, even earlier generations where people were off for months, years at a time.

[00:05:56] Scott DeLuzio: And. The only communication was just [00:06:00] through written letters back home. And, you know, that’s just gotta be hard to, you know, communicate back home and you know, read about your children growing up and all the things that they’ve experienced and accomplished. And here you are on a battlefield like, oh, wow, great.

[00:06:17] Scott DeLuzio: I just get this piece of paper and I don’t even get to experience any of that stuff. Must have been a, just completely different time. You know, back then. I do feel fortunate that. Exist in this time period, right? Yes,

[00:06:28] Kathi Sohn: indeed.

[00:06:28] Scott DeLuzio: Yes. Yeah. So let’s jump into the body memory process. Could you explain to me in the listeners what that process is all about and how you got involved in working with us?

[00:06:40] Kathi Sohn: Absolutely. So first I’ll talk about how I got involved and then I’ll kinda set the stage by talking about the, sort of the problem that it addresses. And then I’ll talk about the actual work the, my memory process. So 19 4th of July, 1994. I met my husband to be and back in back at that [00:07:00] time, He, you know, he was the one who had created this work.

[00:07:03] Kathi Sohn: So that’s when I first learned about what this work was. And he was just starting to write a book. And that’s how I really then became really deeply immersed in it because I ended up as his editor in. And so I was going through, a lot of his very long very long. But to talk a little bit about David so his name was David Williams, so, and he had a near death experience when he was 14 years old.

[00:07:31] Kathi Sohn: He came from a military family. His dad was air force. He was Brigadier general. And at the time they were in Vanderberg Vanderberg air force base. And he said that the military doctors had done everything they could for him. They even had him on some experimental drugs, but I guess this is back in what, 1961.

[00:07:49] Kathi Sohn: And they didn’t, you know, they didn’t really know what to do for that type of an infection. And they, you know, had he had no respirations, no pulse or a period of [00:08:00] time. And then his dad was. Was I guess, looked at the monitor and said, Hey, you know, what’s going on there? And he actually had made his way back.

[00:08:07] Kathi Sohn: He came, he said he came back he had a near death experience. He came back not knowing exactly what his mission was, but he knew he came back to do something you know, important for the world. And it, I think it, he came to understand what that was through his own personal experience of.

[00:08:26] Kathi Sohn: Doctors telling him that he was never going to be truly well. He wanted to really be in the military again, he had a military family. He was even in ROTC, but ultimately told him that because he had lung issues which he never let really, that he was very active. He did a lot of activities sports and things but just couldn’t meet those standards because the Celia and his lungs didn’t work properly and he would actually have to cough every now and then to kind of do what naturally happens for us.

[00:08:55] Kathi Sohn: Because again the disease had done that. But, you know, he was like, [00:09:00] okay, you know, he is on this personal quest for what is wellness. And when he got outta college, he he had, he has a couple of advanced degrees and then kind of stepped out into the human potential movement. It took a lot of trainings, read everything he could just went.

[00:09:15] Kathi Sohn: And traveled. And he pulled together this work based upon a number of contributing pieces of research, but three major underlying opinions that I’d like to talk about. One is that we, our beliefs. Our beliefs help shape our reality. And I think that’s a pretty commonly accepted thing, even in science.

[00:09:35] Kathi Sohn: I mean, you can pick scientific America now and find articles about that. And it goes back as far back as scripture about, you know, it was done into you as you believe. And I think that. As humanity, we still don’t really get that. Because we still don’t really pay close attention to the words we choose, you know, or the, you know, the thoughts we have and that don’t understand that how how that makes us, that gives us so much power, [00:10:00] really to create our lives.

[00:10:01] Kathi Sohn: And so that’s one underpinning. Another is the mind body connection. And there have been scientists that have come along in the past 20, 30 years who have come to understand that the body is Dr. Can PERT who was a researcher said. Our body pretty much is our subconscious mind for all intense purposes because the subconscious mind knows everything, but it’s very it’s inaccessible, but the body has been found to really bring us those messages about what’s going on.

[00:10:34] Kathi Sohn: That’s a major underpinning of this work. And I’ll talk about Dr. Burt’s work again. And in a moment the third major underpinning is. They have found that babies are in the womb are actually, you know, quite aware. As far as being able to, you know, pick up on things, energetically, you know, what they can hear and while they don’t have language you know, they’re on an energetic level, they are able [00:11:00] to process things and things really start back then.

[00:11:03] Kathi Sohn: In fact Dr. Bruce Lipton, if anyone is familiar with. He wrote biology of belief talks about how we are in theta state from the woman till about seven years. That’s you know, that’s the brainwave state of imagination and you know, emotions. And you know, that age group is really right for doing what I’ll talk about in a minute.

[00:11:25] Kathi Sohn: And that’s like creating of these beliefs from, you know, personal experiences. So that’s really the third area about Is about babies and children. And so, the work is, you know, is it sort of can be boiled down to simply when we are in that. Wound to seven years state, we are forming our core beliefs and we do this based upon often traumatic experiences, but they can be just highly emotional ones.

[00:11:56] Kathi Sohn: Not necessarily the emotions don’t necessarily have [00:12:00] to be bad. So I’ll give you an example of a of a actually sort of a good experience that actually can create what David termed a vow which is a, you know, basically a very strong belief. very strong statement about. About life or myself or about other people.

[00:12:17] Kathi Sohn: So say I’m three years old and I’m sitting on my daddy’s name. He’s very busy. You know, it’s hard to get his attention. I don’t know, maybe he’s in the military and he’s deployed a lot, but I’ve got, you know, so now I, you know, I’m with him and I’m so excited to be with him. And he says to me, you know, you’ll always be my good little.

[00:12:36] Kathi Sohn: and somewhere, you know, it’s a happy time and I sort of log it in that. Okay. I’ll always be your good little girl. Like mm-hmm, , that’s how to get love. That’s how to be in the world. Because at that age, we’re trying to figure out how do we get love? You know, how do we get support? You know, how do we survive in this.

[00:12:57] Kathi Sohn: Right. There’s there’s another point I [00:13:00] wanna to make here when I’m talking about it can be positive emotions. It can also be what someone might say is actually could be a good vow such as I’ll always be happy. Wow. You know, who wouldn’t wanna always be happy. Right. That seems like a pretty good one to have, but remember it’s, I’ll always be happy, but there are times in our lives when it’s not healthy to be happy, it’s much healthier to grieve the mourn to give everything it’s due process.

[00:13:28] Kathi Sohn: And so that’s when and as David would say, Anytime we have something that we’re not aware of, you know, it’s in our subconscious and it’s running us. It’s not good. It’s not something that’s life affirming. It’s something that’s actually sort of running the show instead of allowing us to have conscious choice in the moment, which is when we truly are powerful in our lives.

[00:13:52] Kathi Sohn: And so the body memory process is about. You know, a, about addressing to discover those vows. But [00:14:00] before I get into that I mentioned Dr. Can per and I wanna make a point here because this is very, very powerful. And it’s important to those who are trying to understand emotions and trauma and perhaps dealing with PTSD.

[00:14:16] Kathi Sohn: So she found she back in the seventies, she was trying to find the opiate receptor. They, I guess, research at the researchers at the time, figured that. If there is a drug that has an effect in the body, if it works the way, you know, we wanted to, there must be some receptor for it. And so they were looking for one for opioids and they did find it and they realized that, okay, why is it there?

[00:14:42] Kathi Sohn: Right. Not because it’s anticipating something that will come in from what, outside the body, but because there is a natural opiate, if you will, in our body called endorphin, And so they started looking at this more and more, and they found that [00:15:00] neuropeptides, you know, neurotransmitters, hormones, you know, everything has receptors in the body all over the body, actually.

[00:15:08] Kathi Sohn: So not just in one part. And so when we talk about the body as. But is basically our subconscious mind. You can start to see how, you know, emotions and Dr. PERT said deep emo deep trauma can put down deep roots in the body because. That’s how there’s actually a scientific explanation for the mind body connection.

[00:15:30] Kathi Sohn: That’s why her work was so phenomenal. Because through the ages, you know, lots of people had been talking about the mind body connection, but you had to be in that camp. That was well there’s science over here. And then there’s this. Well, we’re not so sure it’s all based upon. You know, folklore and, you know, just traditions that are, you know, you know, alternative medicine.

[00:15:54] Kathi Sohn: Oh. But no science, all of a sudden was like, oh, okay. You know, this, there really is a basis for [00:16:00] this. And I think there was a big turning point there. Sure. People started to come along. Like, I don’t know if you are listeners who, again, who are maybe trying to find solutions for PTSD have heard of Bessel VanDerKolk who wrote your body keeps the score.

[00:16:14] Kathi Sohn: And it was actually a actually after his work that the I think the department of veterans affairs started to pay closer attention to PTSD and that it actually. You know, something that it was important to help people to deal with. Because you know, he was explaining how it was true with with trauma.

[00:16:34] Kathi Sohn: It sort of, you know, hijacks the brain. The part, you know, if you kind of remain kind of stuck more in that limbic. Part and not you know, not so much in the rational part and that you actually do relive experiences, you know, there, it, I think a an experience maybe that civilians can relate to is I’m in a car accident maybe three years ago.

[00:16:55] Kathi Sohn: And just before that impact, I could smell the rubber. I could [00:17:00] hear the squealing of the brakes. And now it’s three years later and I’m witnessing a car accident right near me. And I can hear the brakes. I don’t know if I can maybe smell the rubber, but there’s all of those sense that sensory input and I’m right back in the middle of my own experience.

[00:17:17] Kathi Sohn: That’s how it works. And you know, it’s very powerful stuff. And so, you know, if if people are dealing. Trauma. Now a big key is how we were able to deal with it as children. And VanDerKolk actually talked about if children had good attachment, right? If they had parents who who, you know, showed them a lot of love and they were able to maybe work out.

[00:17:42] Kathi Sohn: Some of their emotions cause children are all about, you know, always and never, and everything’s a big drama, right? You’re a dad. And so, if. You know, if parents are able to kind of help them work that out and maybe even unknowingly kind of stave off some of these [00:18:00] vows, you know, the children might have, and this is what vanco says, have greater resources and tools to be able to handle traumatic events that happen later in life.

[00:18:10] Kathi Sohn: And so, you know, I believe that people who might be struggling with. Traumatic experiences now would, it might be very helpful for them to do work such as the body memory process to be able to discover, okay, well, you know, what was going on back when I was little and a lot of people don’t necessarily remember, I mean, who remembers their time in the womb or their birth?

[00:18:34] Kathi Sohn: You know, you did a rare one that comes along and there’s been some researchers that talk about that or even early childhood. But it’s not. What you remember in your mind, it’s the body that’s gonna give us these clues.

[00:18:46] Scott DeLuzio: So, so your body is hanging onto these Traumatic or I don’t wanna say traumatic cuz they’re not all traumatic.

[00:18:53] Scott DeLuzio: Like, like you said, sometimes they’re just maybe just out of the ordinary, whether they’re a really good experience that, that someone [00:19:00] had and you can hang onto that. Yeah. Emotionally emotional you know, one way or the other could be a bad emotion. It could be a good emotion.

[00:19:06] Scott DeLuzio: It could be traumatic. It could be just a really happy occasion or something. Right. And your body hangs onto these. Over time. And like you said, a lot of times we don’t remember the specific incident or the, you know, you’re too young. You’re not gonna remember the day of your birth most likely, right.

[00:19:25] Scott DeLuzio: or, but we might also block out certain things, traumatic things that have happened. Our minds can play those tricks on us, where we block out those things, but our body still hangs onto those. Memories is what I’m understanding. Right. And does that cause like tension or pain or something in the body?

[00:19:45] Scott DeLuzio: Is that like, how does that work?

[00:19:46] Kathi Sohn: Absolutely. So I’ll talk about that in a moment. I do want to at this point, okay. I, I have a few hours I’m gonna read here, but I have sort of handy cuz, cause I think some, sometimes if you hear what some of them sound like, you can go, oh yeah. You know, that kind of makes [00:20:00] sense.

[00:20:00] Kathi Sohn: And remember. Yeah, it’s not necessarily trauma, even though often it is. It’s the emotion these that I’m gonna read are largely about, traumatic experiences. So fear can generate vows. Like this is scary. There is never enough. Alone is safe, guilt. Everything is my fault. I must be doing something wrong.

[00:20:23] Kathi Sohn: Everything changes because of. Despair. They don’t care about me. Nobody listens to me. Nobody wants me and loneliness. Everybody leaves me. They don’t need to love me. I’m okay. Or, you know, I’m always alone. And you know, I work with kids in the foster care community. Because they are so deeply traumatized.

[00:20:42] Kathi Sohn: I work with their parents actually to teach them how to work with these kids, hopefully to help them from not having so many of these vows, that it really sets them up for a difficult life. And you know, these are You know, largely about, you know, that, that type of [00:21:00] beginning.

[00:21:00] Kathi Sohn: And, but not all of the vows again are quite so, kind of dramatic and about, you know, such a traumatic beginning in life. You know, there can be some that are you know, just related to something that was important to the child at the time. And they’re like, okay, this is the way to be.

[00:21:18] Kathi Sohn: So you asked about where they show. You know, in the body. So they have found Louise hay talked a lot about she, she wrote you can hear your life. Had a map. We have a map in the body memory process too, which I’ll talk about in a moment. Guilt has often felt, you know, in the hip areas.

[00:21:34] Kathi Sohn: So that’s one place that, that can show up you know, fear and despair and loneliness. All those kinds of emotions tend to be kind of at the root chakra. So the body map that David put together for this work is based upon the energy system of the body. If anyone is familiar the chakra system it comes from from the sort of the Eastern Iveta and like the Eastern side [00:22:00] that has been working with sort of body med, med medicine, and body with energy for a long time.

[00:22:07] Kathi Sohn: And so if there’s, you know, there’s the root chakra, which is about being here now. This is the, my connection here to being in this world. And it tends to sort of, to deal with those. Basic energies about kind of like the, if it’s familiar with a Abraham Maslow, you know, the hierarchy of needs and about those basic needs being met.

[00:22:28] Kathi Sohn: And then as you progress up the body there’s the creative chakra that’s in the lower abdomen. The solar plastics is about personal power. The heart is about love. The throat is communication in the middle of the forehead is intuition and then there’s a spiritual shocker at the crown.

[00:22:45] Kathi Sohn: And so, the, we have a body map that David had created about the, you know, right side is more about masculine issues, left side feminine front of the body is how I relate to the world. And the back of the body is about how the world relates to me. So I can give [00:23:00] you an example, you know, for.

[00:23:01] Kathi Sohn: I carried a, I’m not in my left scapular area for like the longest time until I did the work. After I had been involved in this work and I did the work on myself Go ahead. I think I called David, my poster child. I have probably know the longest list of our cause I had quite a traumatic beginning in life.

[00:23:22] Kathi Sohn: But I had I was adopted and the trauma has to do with the before adoption. But my adoptive mom, of course, I think it was very protective of me, you know, because of what I had come from and always tried to. Kind of smother me, you know, with love and always be in my affairs and so, that didn’t sit well with me, I think, because especially as I be, you know, became an adult.

[00:23:44] Kathi Sohn: And so this pain and tension in my back was if you look at the map, Left side you know, powerful female in my life. It was about how she was relating to me. And it was between my throat chakra and my heart [00:24:00] chakra and it decoded to about how a powerful female in my life was expressed love to me.

[00:24:08] Kathi Sohn: it’s like, whoop that there it is. The hi mom. right there you are you? And so, yeah, I had When I did the work on myself, you know, I had a whole bunch of stuff from my birth trauma and from my birth mom. And then there was like all the stuff that came along with my adoptive family. So yeah.

[00:24:25] Kathi Sohn: Yay. whole lot to work on

[00:24:30] Scott DeLuzio: but having a map like that and. Being able to look at the specific areas. Like you said, you had that, that issue on your kind of shoulder area. That’s kind of right between the throat, the heart kind of almost dead center in between the two. Right. And you know, it helps you kind of pinpoint.

[00:24:49] Scott DeLuzio: What areas to focus on, right. Because it’s clearly it’s bothering you enough to the point where it’s causing you that discomfort. And it’s like, okay, well, let’s focus on that because [00:25:00] obviously it’s an issue. Right? And so, by having a map like that that, that might help identify some of these issues that people are coping with, right.

[00:25:10] Scott DeLuzio: From right from their childhood.

[00:25:12] Kathi Sohn: Right. So I’ll talk about the body memory process now. And I’ll factor that in exactly what you said is right on. So in the discovery part of the process, so it’s a discovery process and then a homework process for discovery. It’s really a there’s really two ways to get at.

[00:25:30] Kathi Sohn: What’s really going on. One is sort of a, an objective phase where you’re actually kind of looking outside the body for answers. And then there’s the subjective, which is what you just talked about. I have a video with a multimedia course that I have that kind of walks you through. It’s almost about an hour long and it walks you through.

[00:25:50] Kathi Sohn: A whole series of questions. David used to say, you know, questions begin thought, right? The questions are very powerful to kind of get at, you know, you’re trying to discover [00:26:00] something and if mom’s available, you know, yay. Cuz that’s, you know, she’ll told a lot of those answers and a lot of people find that they’ll talk to mom and just like, well, yeah, this happened.

[00:26:10] Kathi Sohn: But gee, I almost forgot about that. And I didn’t think it was important. But now I’m an adult. This is going on and wow. What was actually going on for mom back? Then’s affecting my life now, you know, so it’s a wonderful that interaction people have with mom and with other family members, as they go through these questions and start to figure out what was going on it’s can be very healing and, you know, things can come up that really, maybe need to right in the, within families.

[00:26:38] Kathi Sohn: So there’s that the objective part and then the subject. Is, yes, what’s going on. So first not it’s, what’s going on in my body, which I’ll talk about in a moment. It’s also what’s going on in my life. So, you know, Dr. Lipton, Bruce lips, I talked about earlier talking about how we are. He calls it programming, you know, those core beliefs until we’re seven years [00:27:00] old and he says, you wanna figure out what’s going on?

[00:27:03] Kathi Sohn: Take a look at your life. What’s working well, what’s not, you know, just take a real good inventory across. So not just health, which again, we’ll talk about the body in a moment, but also relationships, finances the what’s going on with my career. And with, you know, with our veterans, maybe how well am I you know, integrating after leaving military service right there, we can take a look at all of those areas that may be causing us some, you know, some, anything from just.

[00:27:33] Kathi Sohn: Kinda like, you know, it’s a little bit annoying all the way to, wow. This is a really huge problem. Right. Right. So that’s a, that’s another way. There’s questions also to kind of get you to think about those areas and then yes, our wonderful resource, the body. And I have a, I think it’s. At this point about 61 pages body map which for lack of an app, which I would like to develop at some point for this, because I think it could be very powerful [00:28:00] to help.

[00:28:00] Kathi Sohn: It’s a sort of an interactive hyperlinked PDF for looking at that body map that I described sort of bumped up against, near going on a thousand vows. That we’ve collected over David doing this work for almost 30 years. So, and I don’t know if I mentioned earlier that I lost my husband that did I mention that?

[00:28:21] Scott DeLuzio: No, you didn’t. I did notice using a lot of the past tense, so I kind of assumed, but I didn’t wanna, I didn’t wanna pry into that either, but I so sorry for your loss, but you know, I’m. In a way I’m also glad to see that his work is continuing on. Even, you know, through this episode, through all the work that you’re doing it, it’s kind of a, nice tribute that you’re doing to him and all the work that he’s.

[00:28:43] Kathi Sohn: Yes. So, yes, I lost David almost three years ago now. I was on my last assignment in Hawaii actually in supporting you know, Indo with my work. And David became very ill and went down downhill very fast. But yes, I mean, you know, before before he left, you know, he had taken [00:29:00] such good notes and, you know, he had.

[00:29:02] Kathi Sohn: All this body map together, you know, he had collected all of these vows that yes, we were able to you know, able to put this map together. And so people can you know, they can look at what’s going on with the pain or tension in their body, or even a disease like a chronic disease usually is where it will show up, you know, acute issues.

[00:29:22] Kathi Sohn: You know, you, they, they say that even like the body’s giving you a message, even if you it’s an acute problem. But you know, they, that, that tends to come and go quickly. You may or may or not get get the question the you know, the issue that’s going on. And sometimes, you know, we get those acute issues and then over time, maybe things start showing up more chronically because we’re not listening to the message.

[00:29:43] Kathi Sohn: Right. So, you know, I personally believe that. Things start in the body as in balances, right? Water electro, you know, any number of systems that are supposed to be in balance when we’re paying attention to our drinking water, in our eating in our environment. And [00:30:00] then we get. You know, then we start getting these little messages and then the disease if something blows into a disease, it’s because you know, all of these other more gentler ways of telling us that there’s something going on, we haven’t been listening.

[00:30:14] Kathi Sohn: And so that’s all the different ways to to, to figure out what’s going on. And then when you go, okay, you know, I got low back pain and I don’t know. I’ve got I’m trying say I have diabetes or I have some type of pain. I have migraines. By the way I talk about that in a moment is an interesting thing that came a pattern that came out of David, working with clients who have migraines.

[00:30:33] Kathi Sohn: I’d like to mention that in a moment, But just, you know, then someone can take this body map and say, okay. And zoom through, you know, zoning into where what’s going on in that, what valves show up, you know, in that area, then they can, it can help them to do that self discovery.

[00:30:49] Kathi Sohn: It’s not a, it’s not perfect. I would say, I think the perfect solution is having David Stone in the room. . I can’t, unfortunately, we weren’t able to clone him [00:31:00] before he left us. But he would sit in a room with someone and within three hours, you know, he would zone in like maybe a, you know, whole list of vows and they’d be off, you know, to do their homework.

[00:31:11] Kathi Sohn: And then he got I, I have about 25 case studies that are very, you know, very well documented about what were their vows, what happened? You know, how would the, what was going on in their. And then how things changed after they did the body memory process? I have a few of them up on my website and I’m I’m turning, you know, turning more into sort of infographics to to show people, you know, this is how this has helped other people.

[00:31:36] Kathi Sohn: There’s an initial book that David I mentioned that he was writing that what we published in 2004 called escaping the lab. And that has some appendix in the back several appendices one that lists has the all those vows and sort of a table form. Not really Interac, not interactive, like, like we have now.

[00:31:56] Kathi Sohn: So there’s a resource there. And then I’m also working on my own [00:32:00] book now. So I’m hoping for, you know, within about six months So to have that out to really be able to pull in some of the research that’s happened since we, you know, published the first book to help people connect with, wow.

[00:32:13] Kathi Sohn: You know, this really has the good scientific basis and this is really powerful stuff.

[00:32:19] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. You know, I, I. And thinking about all of this stuff and how a lot of this stuff from childhood you know, shapes your beliefs or vows that you’re talking about. And how you think about yourself, your your self worth, your you know, your fears, your, you know, different things that, that go on.

[00:32:41] Scott DeLuzio: Right. And now I’m thinking. The veterans, you know, because a lot of the people who are listening to this are either veterans or their loved ones or you know, people like that. And specifically thinking about these people I’m trying to make the connection here between some of these maybe childhood traumas or childhood.[00:33:00]

[00:33:01] Scott DeLuzio: Emotional events that take place and how that can influence future things like someone developing PTSD from experiencing a traumatic incident, like maybe in combat, for example and how that then can lead to other issues that, that come along with that very often things like substance abuse or.

[00:33:23] Scott DeLuzio: The suicide epidemic or any number of other issues that seem to impact this veteran community? It can almost seem like it’s a like a little spark in childhood and then it. Balloons out into a much, much bigger issue when you start dealing with adult traumas in terms of, you know, combat or it doesn’t have to be combat, it could be any other you know, major event that maybe triggers some of these beliefs and other things that you might have going on in, in your mind and your body later on in life.

[00:33:54] Scott DeLuzio: So is there, has there been any work kinda. Talking about that correlation between [00:34:00] those,

[00:34:00] Kathi Sohn: The correlation that really makes sense to me and that what seems to come up in, in, in the lives of the clients that we’ve worked with is that these things happen in our lives to help us to bring up what needs to be healed.

[00:34:18] Kathi Sohn: And so, when you have someone who has. You know, trauma from childhood and they’ve grown up to be, you know, they become, you know, a soldier and they, you know, they go off the war and they’re they’re in that type of a, of an environment that is so ripe for just bringing all of that stuff up. I would say that is a, you know, for them, that’s their journey.

[00:34:41] Kathi Sohn: That’s part of their journey to be able to bring up what needs to be healed in, in such a.

[00:34:49] Kathi Sohn: When I say ideal way, I’m not saying that war is ideal or anything cuz war stinks but[00:35:00] unfortunately, because we need to deal with it for someone to be able to to be in that environment, you know, that’s sort of a, almost a, like, like a really kind of perfect way to be able to, to access.

[00:35:12] Kathi Sohn: Their own trauma, but, and to be able to once and for all to deal with it and heal it. And again, of course they need to have the tools and the resources then to understand what’s going on. And UN unfortunately before a lot of this research has come along you know, people were kind of left.

[00:35:28] Kathi Sohn: Not even being believed, you know, like they’re just told to get over it. Right. Oh, you home now get over it. Right. Okay, great. Thanks that doesn’t do me any, because I’m, I have these very real things going on. My family, you know, is experiencing it all with me. There’s so, so much. And so. Yes. I think that’s really what’s going on, because then you have other circumstances where people are experiencing trauma as adults that just shows up a little different.

[00:35:56] Kathi Sohn: It might come up in their job. And you know, [00:36:00] they, they kind of end up sort of what they, I guess they used to call it shell shocks, right? So they, people feeling shell shocked from a boss and that boss is bringing up well, you know, a lot of times it is. Dad or mom because when we’re birthed to seven years, well, geez, they’re all around all the time.

[00:36:18] Kathi Sohn: yeah. So it’s just a fact of life that they’re the ones who are going to have that heaviest influence. And so again, that’s that real, you know, if you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, look at them, you know, and if they’re around to talk to great, if they’re. You know, just talk to older older siblings or whoever really remembers them well, to help you figure out.

[00:36:38] Kathi Sohn: Yeah. Yeah. Mom, you know, mom had a tendency to kind of like stuff, her feelings in and then explode, you know, I mean, just examples like that and they sure. Wow. That’s no wonder you know, I’ve got this going on.

[00:36:51] Scott DeLuzio: right, exactly. And the way when you were talking about this, the way I thought. This process is kind of like, if you’ve ever been to the beach [00:37:00] and there’s all the sand down underneath the water and everything like that.

[00:37:04] Scott DeLuzio: And when you go and like kick your foot under the water, it picks up a lot of the sand, right? There’s this big event that, that takes place. And it’s normally the sand is just hanging out there. It’s happy where it’s at and everything. Equilibrium is it achieved? And every everything’s just fine, but then this big quote comes and kicks everything up and it just stirs up a whole cloud of Sandy dust or whatever you wanna call it in the water.

[00:37:31] Scott DeLuzio: And I sort of think about that. Like these childhood. Memories and the things that have happened in childhood they’ve, you’ve kind of figured out a way to just exist with them kind of sitting down there under the surface they’re there, but they’re not super. Top of mind or anything like that, they’re just kind of there, but then this big traumatic thing might happen.

[00:37:53] Scott DeLuzio: Something, you know, if you’re in combat, I’m just using that for an example, it doesn’t have to be combat, but you know, something traumatic happens to [00:38:00] you and that just kicks up. Not only the main emotion that is taking place right now of this Fearing for my life or, you know, all these other traumatic things that might be occurring, but it’s also kicking up all this other stuff that is coming along with it.

[00:38:13] Scott DeLuzio: That’s kind of how I envisioned it as I was hearing you speak about this.

[00:38:18] Kathi Sohn: Yeah. That’s a beautiful analogy. I might use that sometime. I think, yeah, please do a really great way to describe it. So I’ve talked about the discovery side of the body memory process. I’m gonna talk about the homework now for a moment.

[00:38:30] Kathi Sohn: Yeah. I want all your listeners to know that there’s so much hope. There really is so much hope and you are powerful, you know, always know that you have so much power within yourself to change. You know, we’re not, you know, David used to say well, you know, the. The the bad news is you created it, you know, the good news is you created it.

[00:38:51] Kathi Sohn: And so now you can, you know, you can create something new, the whole sort of philosophy of if you will, of how David put together, the homework is [00:39:00] about emptying what he calls, emptying the. If the cup is full you can’t put anything else in it. Right? If I like to talk about the the story of the master and the student and the students says you know, master, I want you to teach me everything, you know, and the master is pouring the cup of tea.

[00:39:19] Kathi Sohn: Pours over outside the cup master. My cup is full. Yes. So is your mind I can’t teach you anything. Right. Okay. And so, David created the homework for the body memory process based upon the idea of emptying the spiritual to physical and the mental cup from. What was going on. Right. So the whole idea is you’ve done the discovery work and you may not have discovered every single vow that you have.

[00:39:42] Kathi Sohn: He said that, you know, the whole great, I, the great thing about this is once you have the tools, once you know the process, you can use this whenever you need. It’ll be like, oh, wow. That like every once in a while, like I I’m trying to think I was Driving somewhere recently in a with my kids and I said something [00:40:00] and something like, well, I’m not just gonna.

[00:40:03] Kathi Sohn: I’m gonna say it like it is, I’m not just gonna keep my mouth shut, like a good little girl, or I’m like, whoa, where did that come from? Right. Sure. And so, but what you start to do is you also, and your awareness is increased that oh, wow. About what I say I almost, and then you can hear yourself saying something and go, well, here’s a vow right there.

[00:40:23] Kathi Sohn: I’m gonna, I’m gonna figure out exactly the wording and do the homework. And so that’s the, that’s really the beauty of it. So. Emptying the physical cup is what David term disavows. So we talk about the vows. Now we do disavows. Now, if you think about the whole idea of a disavow is to to deny any right.

[00:40:44] Kathi Sohn: If you deny any responsibility, any, you know, and so what you are doing is, you know, changing the energy there. Like, so this is the wording. So, I have a vow, nobody wants me, right? So I disavow, nobody wants me. [00:41:00] And you know, you feel it there’s the emotion when it was created. You put the emotion in now that.

[00:41:07] Kathi Sohn: Well, because you know, that’s not true. It might have been true for the child, but now I’m an adult. And I know that, yes, I very that’s. I have family, I have friends, you know, that’s something I decided back then. And so it’s two or three times a day, I dis about whatever. The vow, you have a list of 20, you go down to, you know, your list of 20 and you know, it’s not difficult.

[00:41:31] Kathi Sohn: It’s about committing to the process. So if you skip a day, you know, you start over because it’s, you’re actually, you know, you talk about the energy being in the body. Well, you’re actually, you know, emptying, you’re changing. You know, it’s about the, at a cellular level, you know, you’re actually in the body renews itself.

[00:41:50] Kathi Sohn: So if the body has that, you know, same old information, you know, it’s gonna hold onto that. What you wanna do is let that go so that you can. In the moment as [00:42:00] an adult the emptying, the spiritual cup is no, no surprise here about forgiveness. It’s very, very powerful. Lots of people out there talking about the power of forgiveness.

[00:42:12] Kathi Sohn: So there is a process for that. And then there is an affirmation process that’s a little bit different than the affirmation process that others may be familiar with. So, okay. I want you to say I’m a powerful woman. Okay. So, you know, every day, make that statement. Well, we all know that when we make a statement like.

[00:42:33] Kathi Sohn: There’s our brain starts talking to us about how many, all the things that we’ve gone through our entire lifetime that have proven that statement wrong, right? Yeah. , it’s like I’ve recorded everything. It’s like, gee, I don’t remember what happened when I was but all of a sudden I make a statement like that and all these things start coming up that I remember actually in my, in all these memories or all of these Maybe bad experiences.

[00:42:59] Kathi Sohn: And so. [00:43:00] The process is about working with pen and paper, kind of getting all that down and being able to sort of work that out get it all down, you know, and that’s a process that is about when you’re complete with it. You know, when you’re complete with it, then it’s done. Maybe you take on, you know, do you work with a different affirmation?

[00:43:20] Kathi Sohn: So, you know, That’s the body memory process. And then along you have what comes along with that is not only, you know, healing for what it is that I’ve decided that was getting in my way, you know, what these vows are, but then an awareness that you go forward with that is so valuable. If you’re a parent.

[00:43:40] Kathi Sohn: You’ll interact with your children differently. You know, I had an experience recently where I caught myself saying something that I was like, Ooh, that could be a vow. , you know, that could turn into a vow, is the message I was giving my daughter was that money was more important than her opinion.

[00:43:56] Kathi Sohn: Right. So I was gonna have to throw this away cuz she didn’t like it. [00:44:00] And I got upset about that. And then I realized that, you know, she’s watching me and she could get the message. My opinion doesn’t matter, or, you know, money’s more important than. You know, than what I think or something. And then in her adult life, you know, that could have a negative impact.

[00:44:16] Kathi Sohn: And so you know, you just developed this awareness. And then, like I said, before, you have these tools that you can, you know, not only help yourself, but you know, you can help others as well. I’d like to say here too. I am looking for people who are interested in doing this work on themselves first, because that would be a requirement.

[00:44:35] Kathi Sohn: Is do the work on yourself first and then interested in actually being able to be sort of what I call an with David termed an apprentice of the work to be able to do you know, coaching and for others to do the work really, really looking to grow that network because David had had a network, but then after David.

[00:44:55] Kathi Sohn: You know, there’s been, you know, a period of time, of course, that I needed to go through my own grieving [00:45:00] process and mm-hmm, move the children from Hawaii, you know, sell the house, buy a new house in the middle of a pandemic so, so the work right now is, you know, largely about. Like what I’m doing now, really getting the word out.

[00:45:14] Kathi Sohn: You know, I’ve been refining and refining the multimedia course to be able to scale this so that people can do this and do this on their own again, because they don’t have David, you know, sewn to do this with them. You can do it right. If anybody can do this on their own. So, but I am it sometimes it is important.

[00:45:33] Kathi Sohn: Everybody can use a coach, right? Coaches are important. That’s why there’s so many life coaches out there to very specifically coach people through this process. So. Feel free to contact me. Please, if you’re interested

[00:45:46] Scott DeLuzio: in that. Yeah. And where can people go to get in touch with you if they’re interested in, like you said be becoming an apprentice or a coach or even just for their own benefit to, you know, go through this process the, you have the that That [00:46:00] course that you have available as well.

[00:46:01] Scott DeLuzio: You know, where can people go to find all of this and get in touch with you if they’re looking for more information?

[00:46:08] Kathi Sohn: Sure. So my website is body memory, process.com. So all together body memory, process.com and you can also reach me an email at info body memory, process dot. And the website has a lot of information.

[00:46:26] Kathi Sohn: There’s an ebook, a free ebook download there. It’s about 34 pages that gives you, you know, all kinds of, you know, background pretty much what I talked about here and maybe some more and you know, links to the course that lot, lots of information on the website. So yes, please do.

[00:46:42] Kathi Sohn: There’s a, I have a 20 minute free consultation if someone’s just kind of wants. In a, to that’s perfectly fine and happy to talk to anyone and.

[00:46:53] Scott DeLuzio: Well, that’s great. And I will have links to that. And more in the show notes, you mentioned a couple books throughout the, this [00:47:00] episode, I’ll have links to those as well in the show notes.

[00:47:02] Scott DeLuzio: So, people who are interested in checking those out, they can find those pretty easily. And I wanted to thank you first off for joining. Me and the audience today to share this process, but also for continuing the work that that you and your husband has have done for all those years and continue continuing it on.

[00:47:21] Scott DeLuzio: Because I think you know, it’s one of those things where you know, especially on this podcast, we like to talk to people about different approaches to solving certain problems, things that people are dealing with and trying to cope with. And there’s. One size fits all solution. You know, the veterans who are listening to this, they very often are in the VA system.

[00:47:45] Scott DeLuzio: And they’re dealing with whatever the VA has to offer, but that may not be the solution for them. And so having other approaches, like what you’re doing here with the body memory process is just, you know, a, again, another example [00:48:00] of. There’s something else out there for you that you can try, you can apply to your life see how that helps.

[00:48:06] Scott DeLuzio: And hopefully it does help and you can move on and have a happier, healthier life without the burdens of, you know, the past childhood traumas or even current things that happened more, more recently. So, you know, I want to thank you for all of the work that you’ve been doing and for sharing it with us today.

[00:48:24] Scott DeLuzio: So.

[00:48:25] Scott DeLuzio: Thank you.

[00:48:26] Kathi Sohn: And thank you for having me here. It’s really been a lot of fun.

[00:48:28] Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website DriveOnPodcast.com We’re also on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Drive On Podcast.