Healing Your ADHD Mind and Body Through Somatic Movement
This week’s episode with movement and embodiment expert Manuela Mitevova focuses on the power of somatic movement in releasing emotions and healing trauma – particularly in women with ADHD.
Manuela teaches people to release trauma and rid themselves of mystery pains and unprocessed emotions in the process.
In this deep conversation, Manuela shares her journey to discovering the profound impact of gentle movement on emotional wellbeing.
Togetheron the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast, we talk about:
- Somatic movement for emotional release: how gentle movements such as neck rolls and pelvic tilts can release stored trauma.
- Polyvagal theory: understanding the body's survival response, and how core, back and pelvic muscles help with emotional regulation.
- Practical movement tips: how simple movements such as neck rolls and pelvic tilts can release tension in the body.
- Emotional dysregulation and perfectionism: how somatic movement helps to manage emotions, particularly in ADHD women.
- Children and emotions: how encouraging children to express their emotions through movement prevents long-term emotional issues.
I loved this empowering chat with Manuela and loved her recommendation to start gently and listen to your body compassionately – without the pressure of perfectionism.
Connect with Manuela Mitevova on Instagram, discover her free somatic movement resources on YouTube or explore the Hips Like Honey course.
Timestamps
The role of polyvagal theory and somatic movement [08:20]
Gentle movement practices for emotional release [13:23]
Addressing emotional dysregulation and perfectionism [20:11]
Specific movement practices for different emotions [23:30]
The importance of somatic practices for children [31:23]
Try Kate's new Apple podcast subscription, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, here
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Have a look at some of Kate's workshops and free resources here.
Kate Moryoussef is a women’s ADHD Lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity.
Follow the podcast on Instagram here.
Follow Kate on Instagram here.
Find Kate's resources on ADDitude magazine here.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EfT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Kate Moore Youssef:After speaking to many women just like me, and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with ADHD.
Kate Moore Youssef:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm, and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Kate Moore Youssef:Here's today's episode.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm so happy to bring my guest in.
Kate Moore Youssef:Her name is Manuela Mitibova.
Kate Moore Youssef:She is based in Lisbon and she is a movement teacher who specializes in releasing emotions through the body.
Kate Moore Youssef:Now, if you know me and you will have listened to the podcast, you know how much I think about somatic movement and somatic healing.
Kate Moore Youssef:And this is just yet another conversation to dive a little bit deeper into how we can release so much of our stuck trauma and our stuck unprocessed emotions through our body and not necessarily having to intellectualize it and have to talk it through hours and hours in therapy.
Kate Moore Youssef:We can gain so much from some movement and understanding it through these experts.
Kate Moore Youssef:So, Manu, welcome to the podcast.
Manuela Mitibova:Hi, kid.
Manuela Mitibova:Thank you so much for having me.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah, I'm just delighted to have you here because I followed you on Instagram.
Kate Moore Youssef:You've got a huge audience, and I love what you do because you simplify so much of the movement side and you help teach people, through gentle movement, through different somatic tools and strategies, how we can access these emotions and move through them and release them in a very gentle way.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I guess I would love to start with Rahel, did this begin with you?
Kate Moore Youssef:Because very often when we do these journeys and we're guiding people, there's always a personal story.
Kate Moore Youssef:Would you mind telling me a little bit about what led you to this work?
Manuela Mitibova:Yes, of course.
Manuela Mitibova:So I started with movement pretty young.
Manuela Mitibova:I was into so many sports.
Manuela Mitibova:I still am into so many sports.
Manuela Mitibova:I started yoga when I was about 18 years old.
Manuela Mitibova:I'm 35 now.
Manuela Mitibova:So this is a long way that it's been brewing.
Manuela Mitibova:And I think I got into it very much like everyone else.
Manuela Mitibova:I was just looking for a movement practice to move my body, completely disregarding anything emotional, completely disregarding any kind of mental therapy, anything.
Manuela Mitibova:So it was all about moving the body.
Manuela Mitibova:Yoga was just starting to come up, and I thought I might as well do some stretching because I was doing a lot of sports and I was lucky enough to have a wonderful teacher.
Manuela Mitibova:Back in the time when I was living in Holland, I didn't know anything about yoga.
Manuela Mitibova:And I remember sitting there in class one day and the only thing she had us do was just do some simple neck rolls, just side to side, back and forth, and just releasing the neck.
Manuela Mitibova:And I felt such incredible release in my body from such a simple thing that I'm able to do at any point of the day.
Manuela Mitibova:I don't need someone to tell me to do that, but I was there in this class, just rolling my neck around.
Manuela Mitibova:And the release that I got from that was so incredibly powerful, that informed kind of my whole path forward, even though nothing really happened in terms of me going more into somatic movements for many years.
Manuela Mitibova:But I think that was the first 1st spark of oh, I actually don't have to get into some crazy back bends and God knows what and do all these crazy flows, which anyway, I got into doing because of course that was the path for all the yogis at the beginning.
Manuela Mitibova:But I was lucky enough to get this guide and to realize how powerful, very simple things can be in the body and to actually listen to that and to not forget it.
Manuela Mitibova:Because I think that a lot of people experience it in their practice even early on.
Manuela Mitibova:Because when you start moving your body, everything is very sensitive.
Manuela Mitibova:So if you've never moved at all and you start to move, it's enough to do that tiniest little bit and you will notice such a difference.
Manuela Mitibova:It has a huge impact.
Manuela Mitibova:So I think the important thing there is to just go slow and notice and listen to all of these small things that the body is trying to tell us.
Manuela Mitibova:And so back to your question.
Manuela Mitibova:This was kind of me back in my teenage years still, how yoga can be very daunting on one way, but also very transformative with the simplicity that it can bring.
Manuela Mitibova:And then I went into Ashtanga, which is a very rigorous type of yoga.
Manuela Mitibova:I was practicing that for many years and I absolutely loved it.
Manuela Mitibova:It's basically set poses that you do every time exactly the same.
Manuela Mitibova:You can do it by yourself, you don't need a guide there.
Manuela Mitibova:But it's nice to go into a community of people doing that.
Manuela Mitibova:And it was the ritual of it.
Manuela Mitibova:And that, I think, was my breaking point, where I realized that yoga can be much more than just going for a random class to move your body.
Manuela Mitibova:Because Ashtanga yoga is a very much spiritual practice.
Manuela Mitibova:It's all about deep breathing.
Manuela Mitibova:It's all about connecting to your body, to your limits, to your boundaries, what you can do.
Manuela Mitibova:And every time at the end of my practice, I would just lay there in my shavasana, and I would be the most emotional human being ever.
Manuela Mitibova:I cried, I was angry.
Manuela Mitibova:I was experiencing all of these emotions just at the end.
Manuela Mitibova:And at the same time, it was not overwhelming.
Manuela Mitibova:It's a very different experience to experience those emotions after you've physically moved your body in a very specific way that it was designed to move stuff out, rather than to experience emotions just in the moment where you don't really know what to do with them, for example, when you're in your car or in an office or having a fight with someone.
Manuela Mitibova:So it kind of teaches you how to navigate a lot.
Manuela Mitibova:And for me, that was absolutely wonderful.
Manuela Mitibova:And I did have a lot of cry sessions in my savasanas.
Manuela Mitibova:And I wondered, how does this work?
Manuela Mitibova:Why does this happen after I spend 2 hours on my mat?
Manuela Mitibova:What is it that is driving my nervous system to experience this?
Manuela Mitibova:So from there, it kind of developed into me exploring much more about somatic movement, much more about trauma studies.
Manuela Mitibova:This was also back in the time where polyvagal theory was starting to kind of become quite popular, because it's not such a new concept, I think, but it's just gained so much popularization in the recent years.
Manuela Mitibova:And with the book, the body keeps the score, but also going more into Stephen Porsche and all the polyvagal theory content that suddenly there was out there.
Manuela Mitibova:And I was so interested by that, and I studied so much about it and how that can be applied to movement, because it can be, and it's just such a light bulb kind of moment when you realize that, oh, okay, this is why.
Manuela Mitibova:This is how we function as humans, and this is why we do the things that we do.
Manuela Mitibova:This is why we feel the certain ways that we do.
Manuela Mitibova:It was kind of like a full circle moment for me, where all of the somatic practices and all of the somatic theory and everything that I was learning and studying kind of brought me back to all those years ago when I was in that yoga class doing my simple neck rolls and just noticing how it feels in my body and being present in that moment without being completely in my head and just thinking about all the work that I still have to do, about what I have to cook for dinner and so on.
Manuela Mitibova:So I think it was, everything was brewing from the beginning, and I think for so many people, there's all these small signs along their path.
Manuela Mitibova:And at some point, it does come full circle.
Manuela Mitibova:Maybe sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it takes less.
Manuela Mitibova:But we are already gravitating towards what we are meant to be going forward, I think.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah, I love that.
Kate Moore Youssef:I mean, there's so much to say on that polyvagal theory.
Kate Moore Youssef:For me, I had a very similar experience.
Kate Moore Youssef:I did a week's course with Deb Dana, who is like the queen of Polyvagal, and it was the most enlightening week ever.
Kate Moore Youssef:But similar to you, I was applying it to my knowledge in ADHD and seeing how powerful it was to understand our nervous system and understand how we can regulate and we can calm it and we can reset, we can reheal through this understanding.
Kate Moore Youssef:And especially, you know, we were talking just off camera before about ADHD women, especially, that until we're diagnosed, until we understand, we will have had a history of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, autoimmune issues, gut issues, anxiety, sleeplessness.
Kate Moore Youssef:I mean, the list just goes on and on, and the dots have never been connected.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I'm not saying that if you go and do half an hour of, like, gentle somatic movement, everything is cured.
Kate Moore Youssef:But it's a really lovely, gentle exploration to seeing if that potentially could help you begin this new journey of letting things go and being really sort of compassionate and gentle in yourself.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I want to ask you, do you notice an area in the body that holds the most trauma?
Kate Moore Youssef:And I wonder, is it the hips?
Kate Moore Youssef:Because I hear this so much.
Kate Moore Youssef:And why, if it is the hips, why is it the hips?
Manuela Mitibova:So, for this question, I always answer that every person is completely unique and different, and at the same time, we are built in a very similar way.
Manuela Mitibova:So we all have certain muscles that are much bigger muscles.
Manuela Mitibova:So, for example, your hip muscles, your glutes and your hip flexors and so on, they're much bigger than, for example, the muscles on your wrists, right?
Manuela Mitibova:So just because of the surface area, just because of energetically where they are positioned around your.
Manuela Mitibova:Below your organs, your pelvic floor and so on, there's a lot going on there.
Manuela Mitibova:So there is a much bigger, energetic charge to your core, to your back, to your pelvis, rather than to your limbs, for example.
Manuela Mitibova:Of course, it's easier to think about it that our core, which is basically our torso, is the part where the most amount of energy is being stored.
Manuela Mitibova:That's where our organs are.
Manuela Mitibova:And if you go into traditional chinese medicine, you will see that the organs are what holds the energy.
Manuela Mitibova:We have the meridians, which go through the whole body that are basically moving this energy, dispersing it.
Manuela Mitibova:But the meridians are the energy holders.
Manuela Mitibova:So the torso is very important.
Manuela Mitibova:And I also, I always like to focus on the torso on, as I said, the back, the core and the pelvis.
Manuela Mitibova:So these are the three big areas for me that can potentially hold so much tension.
Manuela Mitibova:And if we go back to polyvagal theory, the reason for that is that these are the biggest muscles, the big muscles that we need to fight or flight.
Manuela Mitibova:Of course, if you want to start running, you need to brace your core.
Manuela Mitibova:You need to start, you know, you need to create that movement in your body.
Manuela Mitibova:And how you do that is by engaging the biggest muscles.
Manuela Mitibova:Of course, if you want to run or fight, this is how you do it.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's not so necessary to kind of engage your fingers or your wrists or your forearms.
Manuela Mitibova:Right.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's the bigger muscles in the body that are directly connected to our survival response.
Manuela Mitibova:And therefore, if we experience trauma or events that potentially can be traumatic to us that we were not able to process at the time, that energy, of course, as you know, does not dissipate out of these muscles.
Manuela Mitibova:And then it's as if you're stuck trying to run, but there's a wall in front of you.
Manuela Mitibova:I really like to use this example because it really exemplifies very well what that feels like in the body.
Manuela Mitibova:So if you're trying to run as fast as you can, but then just as you're about to begin, there's a wall in front of you and you can't, and your body still holds all of this energy, but it needs to go somewhere.
Manuela Mitibova:However, when we experience these events, we are not necessarily given a way to process that.
Manuela Mitibova:So we are not allowed or trained or shown how to, for example, do the natural shake or to scream or to stomp our feet and to shake off the body.
Manuela Mitibova:Right.
Manuela Mitibova:We are not allowed to do this, and therefore, that energy just has no way of dissipating.
Manuela Mitibova:And it stays in the muscles and mostly around the muscles of the core, the back, the hips, the hip flexors and so on.
Manuela Mitibova:So this is why it's so important to talk about the big muscle groups and how they're connected to our survival response, because this is then how we begin to understand how stretching them, moving them, activating them, can help release all of that tension that has been stuck there because of that traumatic or potentially traumatic experience.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah, it's so fascinating.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I was just, when you were saying that, I was thinking about, like, when, you know, a child has a tantrum, you know, like a two year old.
Kate Moore Youssef:And they will not hesitate to throw themselves on the floor and stamp and bang their fists and shake and cry.
Kate Moore Youssef:And then you kind of think, oh, my goodness, like 20 minutes.
Kate Moore Youssef:They're like a different child.
Kate Moore Youssef:They are laughing and they're joking and they're hugging you and you kind of go from day to night so quickly with kids who are not afraid to release those emotions in the moment.
Kate Moore Youssef:And that's why we, as parents say, it's okay.
Kate Moore Youssef:Let them experience it.
Kate Moore Youssef:Let them do it.
Kate Moore Youssef:Don't shush them, don't tell them to be quiet.
Kate Moore Youssef:Don't be embarrassed if it's happening in the supermarket, because let them just move through that process.
Kate Moore Youssef:But as we, especially as women, are told to contain ourselves, to not go crazy, all these words, to not be hysterical, and we are frozen in the moment, like you say, and then we don't have any place or space or safety to then process them with somebody that can handle it.
Kate Moore Youssef:And very often in a traditional male female relationship, the male can feel maybe quite threatened or scared or not know what to do with us if we want to process.
Kate Moore Youssef:So I agree with you.
Kate Moore Youssef:I wish that we are taught from a really young age, you know, from our.
Kate Moore Youssef:From the age of like, whatever age it is that we're told as girls, especially, to keep a lid on it, to keep quiet, that actually some hip stretches or shaking, whatever, is like a really healthy way to process emotions.
Kate Moore Youssef:I wonder what you could say to somebody that's listening right now.
Kate Moore Youssef:And they want to start with very gentle movements, somatic movement, whether they're experiencing the jaw release or the neck pain.
Kate Moore Youssef:For me especially, I have had years and years of lower back pain, tight hips.
Kate Moore Youssef:It's something I have to work on pretty much every day to loosen it all up.
Kate Moore Youssef:I know that's a lot of stored emotion, a lot of childhood stuff that I've kind of like, stored.
Kate Moore Youssef:What would you say?
Kate Moore Youssef:Or kind of like, where would someone begin and what resources do you have?
Kate Moore Youssef:If someone saying, yeah, I would love to just start very gently.
Manuela Mitibova:Yeah.
Manuela Mitibova:So starting very gently, as I mentioned at the very beginning, it's extremely important because I wouldn't want people to think that movement means that they're going to do a sweaty session or they're going to do a super bendy session where it just becomes unaccessible to even begin.
Manuela Mitibova:And then it becomes unsustainable to keep doing it for more than once.
Manuela Mitibova:So setting the bar kind of low for yourself in terms of what you're willing to do, I think, is very important.
Manuela Mitibova:And especially with people who live with trauma or chronic stress, in burnout, or with.
Manuela Mitibova:Live with anxiety or chronic fear, it's really important to start being very accepting of yourself or where you are and not comparing yourself to others and saying that you now need to do a 1 hour movement session.
Manuela Mitibova:That's not realistic.
Manuela Mitibova:That's just not happening.
Manuela Mitibova:It's enough to do two minutes.
Manuela Mitibova:That's all that you need to do.
Manuela Mitibova:Maybe it's even a 1 minute.
Manuela Mitibova:Maybe it's even 30 seconds.
Manuela Mitibova:It's just that moment that you dedicate to yourself and to spending some time with your body.
Manuela Mitibova:It's not the length is the quality.
Manuela Mitibova:So even if you just sit in your chair, in your work, in your office, and you just do those neck rolls or you just do some gentle pelvic tilt, it's the practice.
Manuela Mitibova:That's it.
Manuela Mitibova:There doesn't need to be anything else.
Manuela Mitibova:And I have some wonderful resources for free on my YouTube channel about somatic movement, expressing emotions, moving emotions.
Manuela Mitibova:And they are very gentle.
Manuela Mitibova:They are extremely accessible to any beginner who has never moved in their life, who cannot sit on the floor, do a downward dog from yoga.
Manuela Mitibova:It's just moving energy.
Manuela Mitibova:It's energy work.
Manuela Mitibova:This is what we need to do at the very beginning, and it's not difficult to get into.
Manuela Mitibova:So I invite people to just start with very small movements.
Manuela Mitibova:One of my favorite ones, and I have this a lot in so many of my classes on YouTube, is just the pelvic tilts.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's just laying on your back and just tilting your pelvis up and down.
Manuela Mitibova:So you're kind of arching your back and then flattening your back, I find that a lot of people are almost unable to do the movement.
Manuela Mitibova:If I tell them, tilt your pelvis up and down, like they cannot move the pelvis, it's so stuck, and there's so much stuck energy there that is so difficult for them to do that.
Manuela Mitibova:So I usually lead with actually doing flattening the back and rounding it because that seems to be a little bit more easy.
Manuela Mitibova:And it kind of moves into the same shape that we want to get the body into.
Manuela Mitibova:And it's such a deeply restorative and awakening movement for the body.
Manuela Mitibova:And that's all that there is to it.
Manuela Mitibova:You can just spend a few seconds to a minute or a few minutes just tucking and untucking your pelvis.
Manuela Mitibova:It's just like doing a small wave with your lower back, and that unlocks so much stuckness around your hips and lower back as well.
Manuela Mitibova:So many people are struggling with lower back issues, and they don't realize it's actually tight hips.
Manuela Mitibova:We have so many students like this.
Manuela Mitibova:It's just crazy.
Manuela Mitibova:So there's always a gentle way to start than you think there is.
Manuela Mitibova:I think that would be my biggest advice to anyone who's listening and who's just finding the prospect of, oh, now I have to start moving.
Manuela Mitibova:Daunting.
Manuela Mitibova:If that is daunting to you, then please know that there's a very simple way to do that, very accessible way to do that.
Manuela Mitibova:You don't even have to have a yoga mat.
Manuela Mitibova:You don't have to have space.
Manuela Mitibova:You can do it in your bed.
Manuela Mitibova:You can do it on.
Manuela Mitibova:On your couch.
Manuela Mitibova:It is all accessible, and it is there, and it's.
Manuela Mitibova:It's a portal to something that is potentially so extremely healing to you.
Manuela Mitibova:And as you.
Manuela Mitibova:As you mentioned at the beginning, it's not that one session is going to heal all of your problems all of a sudden.
Manuela Mitibova:Of course not.
Manuela Mitibova:But it's a portal.
Manuela Mitibova:It's about choosing the right way to move your body rather than just having this umbrella term of, now I need to be moving in order to heal my trauma and my.
Manuela Mitibova:My stuck emotions and my pain.
Manuela Mitibova:So, yeah, it's always starting like this.
Manuela Mitibova:Just very, very simple and accepting towards your body that you're not.
Manuela Mitibova:No one's asking you of anything.
Manuela Mitibova:You don't own anyone.
Manuela Mitibova:Anything.
Manuela Mitibova:You don't have to show up for a 1 hour practice.
Manuela Mitibova:It's all your choices.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah, I love this because you're speaking so directly to so many women, ADHD women, neurodivergent women who have spent a lifetime of perfectionism, and this all or nothing thinking of, well, if I don't do it perfectly, and, you know, like you say, this hour, brutal class where I'm sweating and I feel like I've done, like, a huge workout, then it's just not worth it.
Kate Moore Youssef:Or if I'm not doing it all perfectly, then, you know, I've done it.
Kate Moore Youssef:I've done it wrong, and I'm just not going to even bother.
Kate Moore Youssef:And this loop that so many of us have been in of perfectionism, of this very negative, self critical voice that has been driving, I call it sort of like this drill sergeant that has been running the show, and that internal dialogue is much more difficult to remove than the external.
Kate Moore Youssef:Can I ask you a little bit about other movement?
Kate Moore Youssef:This is from what I was reading on your instagram, are the releasing emotions such as anger, sadness, fear.
Kate Moore Youssef:Like, what other movements would there be for these different emotions?
Manuela Mitibova:How I like to think about an emotion, for example, like anger, what is happening?
Manuela Mitibova:Something is arising in the body.
Manuela Mitibova:That is a very strong energy, right?
Manuela Mitibova:How do we usually, if that wasn't, if, if we take away the polarity of the anger, if something strong arises in the body, how would we usually get that out?
Manuela Mitibova:So we would either strongly push away something or we would jump around or we would try to disperse it in one of these ways.
Manuela Mitibova:Right.
Manuela Mitibova:So for anger, I really like to use pushing.
Manuela Mitibova:You can even just sit in your chair, pray your hands like this, and press, press, press super strong towards that.
Manuela Mitibova:And that's already helping you navigate that surge of energy that is happening in the body because of the anger.
Manuela Mitibova:And at the end of the day, all of these emotions are just energy arising that wants to be expressed so that it can leave your body.
Manuela Mitibova:That's the only reason for that there.
Manuela Mitibova:Of course, then we have the part that maybe it's guiding us to try to understand why that is arising in the body and maybe to fix something that is causing us to be angry.
Manuela Mitibova:But at the same time, that energy is not meant to live in our body.
Manuela Mitibova:We're meant to process it.
Manuela Mitibova:So if we're angry, we're meant to scream it out or punch out something or punch a, punch a pillow, or scream into a pillow or just move the energy out.
Manuela Mitibova:So I think for everyone.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to ask you, because with ADHD specifically or neurodivergence, we see emotional dysregulation as one of the hardest things for us to manage.
Kate Moore Youssef:And especially, it's one thing when it's a child, and it's kind of expected for kids to have this dysregulation.
Kate Moore Youssef:But when you are an adult and you find it hard to contain your emotions, or you feel your emotions so intensely, I don't like the thought of saying, right, we have to contain because that means it's being suppressed in the body.
Kate Moore Youssef:But we do feel a roller coaster of emotions and this sort of just not being able to feel completely in control when we want to feel in control.
Kate Moore Youssef:I love the idea of the pushing.
Kate Moore Youssef:So would you say you can use, you use your hands, but can you use the wall?
Kate Moore Youssef:Like, what are the ways if you're in that moment and you feel like you want to be able to feel in control and not feel so reactive, what.
Kate Moore Youssef:What else could someone do?
Manuela Mitibova:So pushing the wall is a wonderful practice as well.
Manuela Mitibova:You can split your stance and just push into the wall with, with your elbows bent.
Manuela Mitibova:I always suggest people never stretch out their joints too much when they're doing anything, because then that's stopping kind of the flow of energy through the body.
Manuela Mitibova:This is why when we're doing any kind of qigong practice or anything that's more inspired by traditional chinese medicine, we're always doing it with soft joints.
Manuela Mitibova:So we're always kind of sinking to the ground with soft knees and with soft elbows so that the energy can flow through the whole body.
Manuela Mitibova:And since we're working with energy, which is the emotions, we're trying to open up the meridians and the channels so that all of that can move.
Manuela Mitibova:So if you're pressing against a wall when you're just experiencing a surge of anger, just try to still kind of keep a small bend to your elbows and keep that softness, even though that you're very kind of activated and tense, but sinking into the ground and allowing also the wall and the ground to take up that energy and connecting with those points of contact.
Manuela Mitibova:So your hands and your feet are now the place where that energy can drive out of your body.
Manuela Mitibova:So we do a lot of this as well in yoga.
Manuela Mitibova:Well, in traditional yoga, I don't think that people do this very often in classes these days, but it's noticing where the body is in contact with the ground and then guiding anything that is excessive in the body, any emotions, any energy out of those points, because now we can imagine how that is moving out.
Manuela Mitibova:Right?
Manuela Mitibova:So we need to give it a place to go.
Manuela Mitibova:So always thinking of kind of connecting to something that is a hard surface, the earth, and allowing that to be dispersed there, giving that energy a place to kind of go.
Manuela Mitibova:So if you're doing this pushing practice, it's just wonderful to imagine that all of it is kind of being driven out of your hands and of your feet out into the earth and the walls of.
Manuela Mitibova:So, of course, then there might be a different practice, like shaking.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's just starting to skip on 1ft on the other and shaking off the body completely.
Manuela Mitibova:And this is now more about just dispersing the energy out of the muscles, and it's just relaxing the whole body.
Manuela Mitibova:And this is wonderful.
Manuela Mitibova:I also have these practices on my YouTube channel, and it's just beautiful to notice how people are experiencing in their bodies, because it is all about getting rid of any kind of toxic energy, even though if you don't know what that is.
Manuela Mitibova:So some people might be experiencing a surge of something that they identify as uncomfortable, and they don't necessarily know, what is this now?
Manuela Mitibova:Is this anger, is this frustration?
Manuela Mitibova:Is this jealousy?
Manuela Mitibova:And in some sense, sometimes there's not even such a point in naming that.
Manuela Mitibova:Just let that go.
Manuela Mitibova:Because as soon as we start labeling all of these things, it becomes, once it becomes a story, and once it becomes a story, now we start asking questions.
Manuela Mitibova:Now we start going into the why and what if this and what if that?
Manuela Mitibova:And then that emotion, that energy lingers because we are creating this whole thing around it versus it was a surge of something.
Manuela Mitibova:If we let it go, then there's no story around it because no longer are we attached to it.
Manuela Mitibova:So I would say that whenever something that is very overwhelming arises, allowing that to exit the body through having some practices that work for you.
Manuela Mitibova:So for some people, the shaking is a really easy practice to do because they can do it everywhere, or even stomping your feet, just being somewhere and just starting to stomp your feet and just throw a tantrum.
Manuela Mitibova:Basically, if you're experiencing some of these more agitated emotions.
Manuela Mitibova:And then of course we have emotions that are a bit gentle and not so agitated, not so frustrated.
Manuela Mitibova:So we would have grief or we would have sadness or depression.
Manuela Mitibova:And then how we would deal with that is slightly different also depending on the state that the person is in.
Manuela Mitibova:So some people might be stuck a lot in free state, and this would be the survival response that they have been kind of nurtured to keep because of any of the experiences that they had in their life.
Manuela Mitibova:And now they're kind of stuck in this numbing freeze mode and they cannot, they cannot even move their body.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's very difficult to do something as a practice like shaking or pressing because this is already activating my sympathetic nervous system even more.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's very difficult for people who are in a free state, for example, experiencing depression, which is very common with free state, that it's just such a lowering of the, of the energy.
Manuela Mitibova:Everything is numbed down, everything is, is going kind of downwards, and there's no joy and there's no agitation at all.
Manuela Mitibova:So what we want to do in this state is kind of introduce just very gentle activation to the body just by maybe nodding the head yes and no, just side to side or even just looking around the room.
Manuela Mitibova:And this already is helping to bring the system alive so that all of those emotions, even of depression or sadness or grief, can start to be moved outside of the body.
Manuela Mitibova:So there's kind of, there's, it does get very specific based on the, the state that the person is in, the emotions that they're experiencing and so on.
Manuela Mitibova:So I invite people, if they're very curious about this, to check some of the classes that I have on YouTube that other people have on YouTube about expressing kind of emotions thematically.
Manuela Mitibova:And I would even say going through all of the emotions, not just going, oh, I think I'm angry now, so I'm gonna skip the grief and I'm gonna skip.
Manuela Mitibova:Skip the anxiety.
Manuela Mitibova:I would invite people to actually go and do all of the practices and to see what comes up for them, because oftentimes we are holding so much more than we think and that we put a label on it and we think this is what it is.
Manuela Mitibova:And actually, there's a lot of layers behind that.
Manuela Mitibova:So anger can also be a result of.
Manuela Mitibova:Can be a part of grief.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's very important to acknowledge all of the different emotions that we might be holding in the body and just give the body a way to kind of express that.
Manuela Mitibova:And I really liked how you mentioned at the beginning that there's actually no reason for us to have to go into the history and the story of what has happened in order to heal.
Manuela Mitibova:And it's wonderful that in somatics and in more holistic therapies, we are basically working with the body to express and allow those energies and those experiences to be processed and to move out of the body without having to go back into it and re traumatize ourselves and relive the experience, because it is something that is stuck in the body, and we can remove that out of the body without having to relive it.
Manuela Mitibova:And I think a lot of people don't realize how potent this is.
Manuela Mitibova:And this is why we have so many thousands of students who are crying in classes, who are angry in classes, who are experiencing all of these emotions.
Manuela Mitibova:And a lot of them are, at the beginning, very confused.
Manuela Mitibova:Why is this happening?
Manuela Mitibova:I didn't think of anything.
Manuela Mitibova:I didn't.
Manuela Mitibova:I wasn't processing any kind of memory in my brain.
Manuela Mitibova:So why am I feeling like this?
Manuela Mitibova:It's very sudden.
Manuela Mitibova:And just goes to show how powerful these movements are, because they really press that button, that exact button that you need in order to release that without actually having to know what you're releasing.
Manuela Mitibova:And it can be confusing, but at the same time, it's so healing, because for once, you don't have to go back into history.
Manuela Mitibova:You don't have to go back into everything that you've been through.
Manuela Mitibova:Just let that go.
Manuela Mitibova:And it happens through the body.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah.
Kate Moore Youssef:While you were talking, all I keep thinking is this should be introduced as, like, a practice for kids, you know, in school, and it should be just part of, like, a daily five minute routine, especially as we're understanding more about neurodivergence.
Kate Moore Youssef:We're understanding that kids who are being sent out of school, being excluded, who are seemingly sort of, like, chaotic and disruptive, are actually have probably gone through some childhood issues and trauma.
Kate Moore Youssef:There's probably dysfunction and chaos in the house.
Kate Moore Youssef:And if we can get to these kids and have maybe a practice for five minutes that a teacher can do, it could be some gentle yoga practices, just stamping on the floor, pushing against the wall, and just allowing kids this moment to process so they don't have to hold on to all the things that we've held onto.
Kate Moore Youssef:I think maybe we're coming out of this generation of understanding.
Kate Moore Youssef:Yeah, therapy.
Kate Moore Youssef:Therapy is a good thing.
Kate Moore Youssef:But I wonder, the next generation, are they going to be realizing, like you say, that somatic work and not having to re traumatize ourselves and understand that the body knows a lot more than we can, we can articulate through our minds.
Kate Moore Youssef:And like you say, we sometimes don't even know what's going on.
Kate Moore Youssef:Like, we don't know.
Kate Moore Youssef:Is it anger?
Kate Moore Youssef:Is it fear?
Kate Moore Youssef:Is it resentment?
Kate Moore Youssef:Is it grief?
Kate Moore Youssef:And we don't have the words.
Kate Moore Youssef:And especially kids don't have the words.
Kate Moore Youssef:The kids don't have an understanding, but they know if something feels wrong in their body and it comes out in being naughty or being, you know, hyperactive or whatever that might be.
Kate Moore Youssef:There's so many different, you know, things.
Kate Moore Youssef:I think this conversation is vital, and I think it's so important.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I'm so glad that I've had you on the podcast, because I hope that this has just dropped a little kind of nugget or like a little nudge of curiosity for people who might think that maybe medication or therapy is not working for them or they've not seen enough of a change.
Kate Moore Youssef:And perhaps somatic movement therapy, healing, nervous system regulation, however you want to look at it, might be something that they consider.
Kate Moore Youssef:And I know you mentioned that you've got free resources on your YouTube.
Kate Moore Youssef:How else can people work with you?
Manuela Mitibova:Yes.
Manuela Mitibova:So I do online courses.
Manuela Mitibova:These are longer journeys that are focused on a part of the body.
Manuela Mitibova:The most popular one, which is.
Manuela Mitibova:Which has thousands of students in it and everyone loves it, is hips like honey.
Manuela Mitibova:And it's about releasing kind of the tension, emotional and physical tension from the hips and basically dealing with anything that might be stuck for you in the pelvic area, and especially for women, this is extremely powerful.
Manuela Mitibova:We do have so many, many men in the practice as well.
Manuela Mitibova:I would like to say that it's also very, very important for men to take care of their pelvic health and for their hips, because it's almost as if, because we are now, as women, kind of coming out of this era of empowerment and so on, that men are also being kind of relegated to not have to care about these things.
Manuela Mitibova:And they do.
Manuela Mitibova:There's so much trauma that they have also experienced.
Manuela Mitibova:There's so much that's been held in their hips as well.
Manuela Mitibova:So hips like honey is a wonderful practice for anyone to do.
Manuela Mitibova:I still do most of the practices on a daily basis, and it's just such a releasing way of treating your body with acceptance and love without having to push it into anything crazy.
Manuela Mitibova:I do have other programs as well, for the back muscles and for releasing any tension that's stored there and for opening your heart, as well as the meditation program and so many more other things.
Manuela Mitibova:But I think hips like honey is the one that I know that has been the most transformative for people.
Manuela Mitibova:And, yeah, the hips just hold so much for us.
Manuela Mitibova:And I know that it's such a helpful way to just go into a journey of that rather than just do one class.
Manuela Mitibova:This is why I wanted to do something that is a little bit more journey like, so that people experience the progress, and it's something that also allows them to have accountability and not just give up after a first class, but also be a part of a community that are healing together.
Manuela Mitibova:So it's just been a wonderful way to see how that is making a difference in people's lives.
Manuela Mitibova:Even if, as you said before, with your audience, with a lot of people who are struggling with perfectionism and hdhd and really kind of sitting down and doing something, even if it's for 510, 20 minutes, this is a way for them to have something to just click on open every day, and they always know what they're doing, and they always know that they have a community there to support them throughout that.
Manuela Mitibova:And everyone is kind of in the same boat.
Manuela Mitibova:You know, we're all healing together.
Manuela Mitibova:We're all exploring the emotions together and kind of navigating everything.
Kate Moore Youssef:So is it a live class or they recorded classes and how long is it for?
Manuela Mitibova:Yes, it's recorded.
Manuela Mitibova:It's recorded prerecorded classes.
Manuela Mitibova:So everyone can do it at any time.
Manuela Mitibova:Anyone can join.
Manuela Mitibova:We have students from literally every part of the world.
Manuela Mitibova:It's for, I believe, one month you can basically also choose which I love.
Manuela Mitibova:You can choose what kind of focus you want to have.
Manuela Mitibova:So whether you want to focus more on flexibility, or if you want to focus more on releasing emotions, or on balancing your emotional and physical state, we even have ways and pathways that you can do for menopause and how to combine that with my other programs.
Manuela Mitibova:So there's a lot that you can do there.
Manuela Mitibova: these online programs seven,: Manuela Mitibova:So people are really kind of working through it, and it's, you can do it once, you can do it multiple times, and it's still going to work like magic because it is energy work.
Manuela Mitibova:It's not physical work necessarily.
Manuela Mitibova:So if you're interested in anything that is more about bringing you in contact with your subtle body as well as your physical body, it's the perfect way.
Kate Moore Youssef:Well, I just want to congratulate you because what you've done is amazing.
Kate Moore Youssef:You've built this huge audience and, and you are serving them in such a wonderful way that is so needed.
Kate Moore Youssef:And hopefully there's a collective healing that's going on through your work.
Kate Moore Youssef:And it's amazing to hear that you're hitting so many people around the world and may it continue.
Kate Moore Youssef:So, Manu, thank you so much for being here.
Kate Moore Youssef:Thank you for being on the podcast.
Kate Moore Youssef:And yeah, I would love to talk more.
Kate Moore Youssef:So, yeah, let's keep in touch.
Manuela Mitibova:Thank you so much, Kate.
Manuela Mitibova:It was such a pleasure talking.
Kate Moore Youssef:I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.
Kate Moore Youssef:If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Kate Moore Youssef:And please do check out my website, adhd womenswellbeing dot co dot UK for lots of free resources and paid for workshops.
Kate Moore Youssef:I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there.
Kate Moore Youssef:Take care and see you for the next episode.
