Hi friends,
For midseason content this week, we’re thrilled to share a longer essay from Jamie — her first piece of writing in a good while. Alongside it, she’s got some exciting updates to pass along.
Here’s the Cliff Notes + some important links right off the bat :)
→ Jamie’s course Your Body is a Person course is now half price
→ Log Off + Tune In (to Your Body) workshop is now available as a recording anytime
→ AND at the end of this essay, Jamie shares a free preview lesson from her online course on Inner Child Grief Work that you won’t want to miss
The Art of Changing Your Behavior
How becoming a parent has changed the way I approach embodiment
Essay by
For the past nine years of my ever-evolving work as a coach, author, educator, manual therapist, and (now) yoga teacher, I’ve “known”, conceptually, scientifically, about the way development works. How our embodied experiences as young humans shape, and in many ways unconsciously determine, the way that our life path unfolds before us. And how deeply it benefits us to find avenues of successful communication with our bodies so that they, the record keepers, can reveal to us what they remember, and we, the truth tellers, can help them release and heal. The principles of human development have always been a core foundation of my work, throughout my many shifts and changes of tone and focus.
But for the past year, in my personal life, my learning and “knowing” have taken an even more tangible form – as some of the most vital, foundational stages of human development are occurring right in front of me. In my house.
Because, as most of you know, I am now a parent.
And it’s the single most challenging and interesting and enjoyable and excruciating thing I’ve ever done. I was not prepared for just how much becoming a parent has taken from me. I was not prepared for just how much becoming a parent has given to me. I was not prepared for the intensity of the shift on my nervous system – having quite successfully adjusted to living alone with my cat for six years before, all-at-once, moving in with two boys, a grown man, and a dog (also male, btw).
This probably goes without saying, but since I’m actually finally writing, I’m just saying everything right now: the intensity of that shift has resulted in a sort of whiplash to my time and energy. A few weeks ago, while texting with my best friend and reflecting on how disorientingly quickly everything in my life has changed, I finished a paragraph by saying, “I feel dissolved”. And for better or worse (it’s both), that’s true.
One of the casualties of this dissolution is that my relationship to writing has taken a backseat. Some days/ weeks, it’s not even in the vehicle. And some days/ weeks, I’m fine with this. Occasionally, I’m actually so fine with this that I’m even grateful for it. Because remember that human development passion of mine? Well, some time ago, my body, the record keeper, reminded me that Little Jamie often withdrew herself into writing so that she could disengage from an environment that she didn’t totally understand and that didn’t totally feel safe.
And that was a brilliant strategy at the time, but it went on for much longer than I am now realizing was beneficial. And since I’m the truth teller, I’ve been asking my body a lot over this past year to take deep breaths with me as we bravely stay present, right here, instead of retreating into that familiar interiority.
Which is somehow both harder and easier to do now that I live with two boys, a grown man, and a dog.
But regardless, I know that writing will never leave me completely, nor do I want it to. I understand now that this written reflection has been subtly assembling itself just under the surface of my perception every single day of this Whiplash Year. Almost exactly, in fact – tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the night I arrived in my new house in my new city in my new state in my new life with my new family after leaving every shred of anything familiar 2500 miles behind me. Ty and I had one day to settle in together before the kids arrived for ten. straight. days. It was my baptism by fire. And, truly, nothing has been the same since.
I have changed, profoundly. Mostly inexpressibly. And, naturally, my work has transformed alongside me. I mean, let us not forget that while all of the above was happening personally, I was also going through a 300 hour yoga teacher training, while also building my brand new bodywork practice, while also creating + hosting my brand new podcast. Each of these professional developments has also been a profound teacher for me in work I do: helping people successfully establish compassionate communication with the alive and loving being that is their body. I feel an unprecedented potency in all of the spaces I hold right now, and that has both humbled and invigorated me like never before.
As I continue to move forward, past pieces of my work gain even more foundational relevance and meaning to me, and I increasingly desire for people to have easy access to them. So I’ll say this part simply + straightforwardly:
I did both of these things because helping people compassionately excavate and intentionally rebuild the foundation of their unconscious feels more important and more possible than ever before. And I want people to have access to the tools I have created because I believe in them. I know that they work. I have nine years, hundreds of people, and my own path as proof.
There has never been a more important time to learn how to cultivate sovereignty in your consciousness, safety in your nervous system, and hone your ability to focus in the midst of all of the distraction and noise in the online world.
And I cannot think of a more important life skill these days than the ability to consistently practice extending compassion and curiosity in your own direction so that you can understand, and ultimately transform, both your body and your mind in alignment with your chosen values — rather than unknowingly and frustratingly repeating old habits and patterns.
Because, as I’m learning so acutely in my journey of becoming a parent, the human path is quite sensational, but also, technically, very simple. We’re impactable and impressionable throughout the entirety of our life lived in a body, but when we’re young we don’t yet have the ability to totally understand and assimilate what happens to us. I’ve found myself explaining it like this a lot lately: We absorb the world through our bodies, taking the tones and frequencies of our environments and experiences into our nervous systems where they become encoded as familiar.
In yoga philosophy, these marks made on our unconscious bodyminds are called Samskaras, and they exist as incomplete, looping patterns of energy that lie dormant until we, inevitably, find ourselves in places or phases or relationships that kick up the dust of what our bodies are holding onto. I say “inevitably” because the second part of this process is emission — what we absorb, we always unconsciously emit as vibrational frequencies that flow through the living matter of our body. Which is, unbeknownst to us, what is orienting us towards those places or phases or relationships in the first place.
This is precisely what Carl Jung meant when he said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Whether he knew it or not, he was articulating a somatic process.
And, essentially, this somatic process is how we become who we think we are… until we learn that we get to choose.
I believe we make the unconscious conscious by choosing to learn how to communicate both kindly and honestly with the body. I actually believe that’s the whole reason we’re alive in the first place — to learn how to do it and to learn how to enjoy doing it. To learn how to choose and to learn how to love the art/ game/ dance of choosing.
This is, without a doubt, the thing I find myself saying and modeling most as a new parent: reflecting to my children their powerful, innate ability to choose their response to anything and everything that happens to them. And doing my best to articulate in developmentally appropriate ways what they’re accomplishing for themselves by choosing, and just how deeply it’s benefitting them and their bodies.
And the truth is, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this with them had I not created, and subsequently learned from, my own course and workshop.
The information and practices in my course have built within me a foundational baseline of regulated sovereignty that I can return back to over and over, in any and all circumstances. And the education and tools that Erin and I offer in our workshop has allowed me to remain self-responsible and aligned with that baseline whenever I’m engaging online. Quite the miracle, considering how addicted and impressionable I used to be.
Both of these resources have completely changed my life — as well as the lives of hundreds of other people. And, as I now understand, they both also readied me in a way I didn’t know I was going to need to become the present and regulated person, and parent, that I am today.
And as I continue to grow and change and prioritize more intensive facilitation like hands-on somatic work and sober sitting for psychedelic journeys, these offerings remain the most accessible, foundational invitations into my work and modalities.
So, finally (for now, at least), I want to do something I’ve actually never done before and share a video lesson from my course here — the one I created about something I call “Inner Child Grief Work”. I still stand by everything in this course, but this one feels especially potent to share at the end of this reflection about parenting and re-parenting. I refer to + use this concept and tool in my facilitation work probably daily.
If you enjoy it, remember that my course is essentially half off of its original price now and forever. It’s a self-paced program with lifetime access, full of teachings and tools you can return to again and again… and is most especially supportive if you’re just starting out on your journey of understanding that your body is a living, communicative, wise, loving being that you can actually be in a beautiful dance of relationship with.
And if you’re starting to notice that your use of social media is disrupting your nervous system, and therefore your life, in ways that you would love to be different but you’re just not quite sure what to do or how to claim your time, energy, and attention back… Log Off + Tune In (to Your Body) is here for you.
And if, by any chance, you feel ready to go deeper, my 1:1 coaching program is currently open and you’re welcome to apply. Or send me an email to ask me about any other way you’re wondering whether or not my work could be of service to you.
And finally, Season 3 of my podcast Experiential Anatomy is coming this Fall! Joan and I will be exploring the realm of Imagination that comes after we’ve finally allowed ourselves to let go of what is no longer working — in life and relationships, in medicine, and everything in between. The wide open expanse of possibility that presents itself after Death (our theme for Season 2!). We’re getting really excited to welcome you all into these conversations with us and are looking forward to finding out what wants to emerge as we engage with the mystery.
I’m simplifying and clarifying my work these days as I continue to prioritize being increasingly offline — and as I prepare to move into a season of pregnancy and motherhood within the next year. Within that transition, I’m hoping and intending for more spaciousness to share more reflections here. If this past year has taught me anything, it’s that all that is required is my willingness to bring forth what desires to come through me… no matter how long it might take.
Until then, I would absolutely love to hear what this season of life is teaching you. What you’re unlearning, what you’re learning, and what you’re remembering how to powerfully choose.
P.S. As an extra little gift, I want to share a preview from my course: a lesson on Inner Child Grief Work. It’s an invitation to meet your younger self with compassion and curiosity — and I’m grateful to offer it to you here.
Inner Child Grief Work (from YBIAP online course)
We’re continuing to share bonus essays, conversations, and practices here during our midseason break. Thank you so much for being here with us in the in-between!
Stay Connected
Dr. Joan Chan
→ Website: joanchanmd.com
→ Instagram: @joanchanmd
→ Podcast: The Other Human in the Room is now part of the Hippocratic Collective—a collaborative home for physician-led podcasts and creators who are reimagining what care can look like across systems and relationships.
Jamie Lee Finch
→ Website: jamieleefinch.com
→ Your Body Is A Person: course.jamieleefinch.com
→ Log Off + Tune In Workshop: jamieleefinch.com/log-off
→ Instagram: @jamieleefinch
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