Somatic Healing: Learn What Your Body is Trying to Tell You!
House Of Peregrine (01:04)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the House of Peregrine podcast. I'm Mickelle Weber and today my guest is Amanda McRae, a somatic coach and founder of Be Your Total Self. She is a woman whose journey from high-paced world of advertising to the slow embodied work of healing has helped many, myself included, to begin a journey back to the body as a way healing and finding a way back to self. Amanda's work is rooted in love. Yes, love is a word that is so often sidelined
yet she names it as the missing ingredient in most healing journeys. Through deep body wisdom, curiosity, empowerment and trust, she guides people back to themselves, to their home body, as she calls it. She's originally from Australia and Amanda has lived across continents from Sydney to LA and now back in Amsterdam. She brings a global tender perspective to her work, especially for those in positions of leadership and influence. She holds a particular sensitivity for what it means to navigate transition, cultural,
personal and relational.
House Of Peregrine (02:01)
Welcome to the podcast, Amanda. I am so excited to have you on today.
Amanda MacRae (02:06)
Hello, what a beautiful introduction. Thank you so much for rewriting my bio for me. It's beautiful. I'm going to cut and paste that one.
House Of Peregrine (02:16)
You're welcome to have it. You don't even have to steal it. I'm so glad to you on because we've worked together. Now it's been a few years ago, but listeners to the podcast know a little bit of my story of kind of going through a big transition. And so even when I started this podcast two years ago, I knew I wanted to have you on. So this is kind of a good full circle moment for me. So I'm so glad you're here.
Amanda MacRae (02:38)
Yeah, I often say that tracks were laid. Like I always feel like there's certain people that come into your life and you go different ways and then you come back and you're one of those people that I feel like these tracks will continue to cross and here they are crossing again. So it's great to join you.
House Of Peregrine (02:56)
Right. So to begin with, really think maybe most people know, but I don't think most people do. What is somatic body work?
Amanda MacRae (03:06)
So I call myself a somatic coach. And my understanding, the way that I look at it, my business name is actually Be Your Total Self. So somatic for me encompasses the whole of the body. So when I think about the body, it's not just the mental body or the emotional body or the physical body. It's the history. It is our behaviors. It's our nervous system. It's the totality of all of these things. So when I'm...
Looking at a person, I'm realizing that the body keeps score of all of these components. And my lens actually is the pattern that is in the body. So I see the belief system, we talk about the history, we look at the emotional charge, but actually where we create the change is from the body, how it's holding it, getting it to release it and allow whatever resource or energy that is stuck to be sort of freed or felt.
House Of Peregrine (04:03)
Yeah, nice. And in my experience, this was something I didn't know before that I got to learn. A lot of times if you're having not always illness, but for me it was, I couldn't explain why I was having these things in my body and I would go to the hospital or the emergency room. Like I have a lot of things going on. Now I would probably say it was something like burnout, but from caregiving. But going to talk therapy or sitting down and talking to someone didn't work.
because what was coming up in my body wasn't able to be processed by my mind and out my mouth. And so this was a really powerful way. Maybe it's called a healing, maybe it's called coaching. It's a combination of things. But why, in your words, does the body, do we not always know what's going on in our body?
Amanda MacRae (04:53)
think actually when you talk about like what you're talking about is symptoms and I think our body's communicating to us all of the time whether it's through the sensations or these symptoms that are calling for our attention. And what I like to say is that these symptoms or these sensations have a lot of wisdom for us. But sometimes because we are human and we have this nervous system that is wired in survival and emotional connection.
sometimes there's a misunderstanding or a dulling. We turn these things down or we disconnect, we don't attune. So what I really, the first step in any kind of session or any kind of teaching that I do is actually the awareness of like coming back and hearing and attuning to what is actually there. So when you talk about burnout, what I often find is people will have ran over the top of these red flags or these sensations that would have said, hey,
actually maybe you need to rest today or hey, actually you need to drink more water or hey, ⁓ this connection isn't good for me. Yes, exactly. When I'm teaching in the burnout prevention workshop that I do is all of a sudden everybody wants to go to the bathroom and everybody wants to drink. All of a sudden people get hungry. These are the kind of signals that we're not always attaining to. So that is generally a first step.
House Of Peregrine (05:54)
I'm drinking.
Yeah. And when we are ignoring these signals, it's we've talked, we've talked quite a bit about burnout on this podcast, but I would love for you to go into the language that your body's speaking. And we didn't even start first. Let's talk about how you got here. I wanted to jump right in. I was so excited because I want the world to know about this type of modality. But first, tell us about you.
How did you get to this line of work?
Amanda MacRae (06:43)
Well,
yeah, yeah. Well, I grew up in Sydney, well, on the northern beaches of Sydney in Australia, and I was an athlete. If anyone knows the Australian culture, there's lots of sports. And I sort of fell into athletics really early on, played hockey at a high level. And I was exposed to performance visualization, so mind-body connection practice to make me a better athlete.
So that's where I think the spark was ignited. And then I was just always curious. It was just a hobby. I used to meditate and I used to teach my friends how to meditate. And then when I gave birth to my kids, felt like was the inner doula in me was just like, I know how to do this. So there was like sort of like this curiosity, I guess. And then I was in advertising.
on the board of an agency in Sydney and then my then husband and my two young kids, we moved to LA chasing the Hollywood dream. And while there, I lost my sister unexpectedly. And so everything flipped on its head and it really turned me inwards. And when I really connected with myself through this, that
that healing process. I just realized I just couldn't do another car commercial. I had to do something with meaning. that I didn't love, it did not not love my work. There was a lot that I loved about it, but it just, it just felt a little empty for me. I often say, actually, I'd love to go back now in this embodied way to go back and doing it again and see how enriching it could be. So.
But yeah, so through that process, I went into a psychology process, met beautiful psychologist in LA who actually is my friend. I'm not sure if that is even ethically or legally, okay? But we're now very good friends and we got to a point in talk process where I was just, I said, look, I'm showing up here. I understand it completely, but I just feel so stuck. And she introduced me to a body worker.
LA and the first session I had, I remember there was these two parts of me, there was this part that was like, ⁓ like it was unfolding and I couldn't kind of get in my own way sort of thing. was like my body sort of allowed it to feel the intensity, I guess, of the grief and in a way that also felt empowering because when I say this other part of me was
House Of Peregrine (08:54)
you
Amanda MacRae (09:23)
also knowing that or trusting the innate power of my body. So it was overwhelming and new and also known somehow. And so that part in me that really was like, ⁓ I know this. I wanted to know more, wanted to understand more. So three months after that, I was flying from LA to Berlin to study the work.
House Of Peregrine (09:26)
Trusting the next
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda MacRae (09:53)
And then opened up my practice in LA. Years later, we moved from LA to Amsterdam, ⁓ then with teenager kids and found Amsterdam and my practice is here. Yeah, so that's the road to this moment.
House Of Peregrine (10:10)
Yeah. When you describe that first moment when you were working with a body worker, and it sounds like you're a therapist at the time, who's now your friend, she recognized that there's a, she had taken you maybe as far as she could for that point, and then you needed to go into the body. And of course, maybe you were working in tandem with both modalities, which I also find extremely powerful, especially for children. think children, teens,
Amanda MacRae (10:33)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (10:39)
It's like they don't always know how to talk about. So if you send, if you're having trouble with something that just can't be named, like this grief you're talking about ⁓ with your sister, which that's an incredible story. So you were in LA and your sister passed in Australia. That's ⁓ like everyone who listens to this podcast will understand the extra layer that is being so far away from something like that.
Amanda MacRae (10:57)
Yeah.
Mm.
Mm.
House Of Peregrine (11:09)
But as you're processing it, and it's not, it's unexpected. So things like this, we don't have ceremony or ways of understanding culturally the actual depth that our bodies might experience something like this. So it's like, yeah, you agree if you go to the funeral, maybe, and then it's done. And so then your body and your own life is left to process what that means. I think, is that?
Amanda MacRae (11:33)
Mmm. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (11:37)
what maybe your experience was, is actually touching the depth of that grief through your body, through the lens of your body, allowing your body.
Amanda MacRae (11:45)
Yeah, I don't think there's anything more intense actually than grieving. I think it's just overwhelming in so many ways. But when you talk about the audience, the expat audience or the international audiences, so much of I think was also delayed a little bit because I didn't have all of the pop-up reminders of Leanne in LA. Like it's almost like we had the funeral and I flew back and then I sort of just was back in this.
life, another life. So I think it also is the you know I think that's probably interesting for the audience about that experience or relatable. Two different lives and then and really compartmentalizing so I think it slowed down the grief in the first part but then when I could actually move it to the body I could I could meet all of that I could meet the Sydney me and I could meet the LA me and I could meet the future me.
House Of Peregrine (12:26)
You have two different lives, two different lives.
Amanda MacRae (12:42)
in the body.
House Of Peregrine (12:46)
And that's so powerful, especially when we talk about place. I had a guest on who ⁓ she used the word biolocate, biolocate ⁓ as a word for living in two different places. one half of the year, and the other place, another half. And I know other people who use it as a way of like existing in two places energetically at once or multiple places. ⁓
Amanda MacRae (12:57)
Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
House Of Peregrine (13:13)
And I think that the way you're using it now is super interesting as well, whereas like you have your Sydney life and in your LA life, you don't have the grief as much for one reason or another, the reminders, the energetics, whatever it is. And so I think it's really important that in some way, eventually, if you're abroad a long time, you find a way to integrate it, integrate those two.
Amanda MacRae (13:25)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (13:40)
worlds or three or four or however many countries you've been to, what do you see that's, I mean, I think you work with a lot of international people. What do you see as the common things that you see come up in people's bodies who have moved a lot?
Amanda MacRae (13:42)
Yeah. Yeah.
⁓ well it's just it's the grounding piece, it's the home piece, it's the belonging, it's feeling like the outsider, all of these ⁓ these things but I also think I also see the the person that actually really chooses to be to step out in this way they are the risk taker, they are generally the they're breaking new ground as well so often often they're seeking something, they're curious so
I think what I have to do is actually bring this nature of theirs that actually has them stepping outside of the norm and towards something and still feel at home in their body, belonging to their body so that they are, yeah, wherever they are, feel at home, they feel connection. And I believe if we feel connected to ourselves, then we feel connected to our environment.
House Of Peregrine (14:51)
Yeah. Yeah. And that rooted sense of self is, is, can sometimes be elusive. How, how do you bring that? Maybe this is a good time to talk about your work is, when you come to see you, ⁓ for most people, it's probably the first time they've done this kind of work. Do you have a lot of people who you're explaining what you do?
Amanda MacRae (15:14)
over the years is now becoming more common. Like people are now actually Googling somatic coaching and therapy like but when I first started I think people came because they had no other option. Like they tried everything else a bit a bit like through the sensation that I felt but so yeah more people are coming at least informed because they've they've seen it on Instagram or somebody's talked about it on a podcast. They talk about the nervous system from an informed way.
But most people, would say, they are a curious kind of person to kind of want to meet themselves also in this way. So yeah.
House Of Peregrine (15:53)
Yeah.
But when you come to, what systems are you, you're working kind of in the nervous system. Would you say like, and you don't have to name it if you don't want to, but like, what is the, we've got the system that we work with with like talk therapy, which helps to figure out what's going on in your brain. Why you may be feeling this way, processing feelings maybe. How would you explain both
like when someone comes in the room with you, but also what's actually happening for their body.
Amanda MacRae (16:28)
Yeah, so any session we are having the cognitive, the talk upfront. Yeah, and when they are talking, their body's expressing something to me too. I, and because of my way to sort of interpret the body, it helps me to get to the core root very quickly of where the, where the part of themselves is actually being suppressed or contracted or resisted.
And I kind of want to circle back to something you said earlier about the importance of talk therapy, because we do have to have these words, particularly for the teenagers. I think you really highlight that, that is an important thing. We need the language. We need to be able to relate to ourselves. So often when I am first coming to the body, we are, like I said, the awareness is the first thing. I'm getting people to describe it with words. What do you feel? And many people are like numb.
They don't have the mind-body connection. So at first they're saying, I don't feel anything. Or I feel a lot and it feels overwhelming. Or I feel hot, I feel cold. And that's the door that we start to sort of relate to ourselves. And then we start to notice maybe we could actually take that numbness and just feel that there is a little bit of sensitivity around it and then start to expand it. Notice where we're resisting it and just sort of open up the
the experience to feel safely felt for the individual. And that's where we start to really relearn or unlearn that we can feel these feelings or that we can connect with that part of ourselves that maybe was offline.
House Of Peregrine (18:10)
Yeah. And so this, this you're helping them connect back to their body. The language of their body is speaking to them. The body, your body would maybe go numb because you stopped listening and now it's just in protection.
Amanda MacRae (18:27)
Yeah, we have lots of defenders and protectors, of course, and many of these patterns that you and I hold and all of us hold come from the earliest time of life inside of our original family system. yeah, so many times we're not even aware of the patterns. We might understand the belief system that says, I'm not good enough or I don't belong or I need to work hard for this. Like we might hear these, but we don't actually feel how we're holding them in the body.
So once we actually notice, oh, it's actually in the right shoulder, a symptom might lead us here, but you know, an aching shoulder or maybe an upset tummy, but it's also, it's not always screaming at us, our bodies in those ways. If we've got a symptom, we've gone way, way past the first expression of it. So yeah, but I think what I would want to add to this, and I think that you said it in the intro really beautifully,
is that because we are human and because we learned so many of these things in our original family system, often the missing ingredient is love. And when we had our conversation ahead of the call, I shared with you that I didn't realize that I was working with love until sort of probably four or five years ago. And I was kind of like, my gosh, can I?
Can I work with love? Can I hold these people with all this love? But actually what it is, just a, it allows me a lot of freedom to meet an individual wherever they are, because there's no judgment. There is just what is. And sometimes that is the piece that just allows people to be like, I never felt this. I've never shared this. I've never experienced this.
⁓ And that's so powerful for this human system.
House Of Peregrine (20:33)
Yeah. And I think that the love door is where we learn a lot of, it's like love, acceptance, safety has to come first before we can heal or integrate or relax enough to allow deeper healing or, I even think like shamans use, you can call it something different, but it is this universal force of something. Love is a really good word for it.
⁓ And I think that, do you see a lot of people coming to you saying, I've never felt this level of acceptance and love? Yeah. And that comes from family systems, from parenting. I'm a mother myself and that's that I consider that my number one job. Basically I'm head snuggler in chief and like nervous system regulation is my, you know, has become my top priority because of that. But it is very,
Amanda MacRae (21:10)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (21:30)
It's astonishing to you how common it is that people haven't felt this before.
Amanda MacRae (21:36)
Yes and because
I believe...
Yeah, it can be like even when you ask that question, I feel a little overwhelmed. I'm like, wow, wow, there's and I feel an urgency to help more people somehow like it triggers something in me. I think, I think it really does just speak to the humanness of us. It is not the fault of the original family system. You know, I think I also have showered my kids with love, maybe even too much.
House Of Peregrine (21:48)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda MacRae (22:13)
if that is possible, like where, you know, maybe I disempower them to sort of feel their own, ⁓ you know, their own, their own spirit in it or something. But I think we are all, we're all just doing our best. but I'm sort of getting lost in this because that experience of understanding that we're all craving this really, really touches me.
House Of Peregrine (22:36)
Yeah, yeah, I see it as an, well, there's the expression, we're all just walking each other home that comes to mind because can't just happen in your own family system. Like there's many, many ways to feel this universal love. And I think it's as simple as recognizing that it's essential
Amanda MacRae (22:49)
No.
House Of Peregrine (22:58)
it can come from many places, like your work, or a teacher at school, or a colleague, or a spouse. There's many ways. A dog, a cat, these things, it's abundant. ⁓ But I do think that recognizing these things can help us ⁓ in our own healing and understanding of what we may be going through how to maybe even make ourselves more resilient.
Amanda MacRae (23:24)
Yeah, I think actually what you're referring to is the co-regulation. Because as humans, we are wired for survival. Yeah, if this candle was to knock over and it would start to light things up, I would get up and move and take care of business. But we are wired for that emotional connection. And if you think about the expat that is moving from one family or one system to another to another, often we are looking to connect, but what
I want to empower somebody is that they don't need to look like the other. is empowering this to feel the love of the uniqueness that it is alongside of the other. inside of that session, when I'm providing this container for people through that lens of love, they start to access that part of themselves that maybe has been adapting or maybe has been whispering quietly inside or maybe
House Of Peregrine (24:04)
Mm.
Amanda MacRae (24:21)
Yeah, it's been shy to come out or has been numbed for different reasons. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (24:26)
Yeah.
Do you see it as helping people? What it feels like to me, and this is coming from a different lens that I have with relationships, is that every crisis is asking for an evolution of some sort. And so your body is, maybe you're not listening to it, but yes, that's one thing, but that it wants to keep moving. It wants to keep growing. It wants to keep experiencing things. And so if it can't,
then it's asking you to evolve. So learn new skills. Yeah.
Amanda MacRae (24:59)
Yeah, think, yeah,
yeah, I think that I would use probably the word transformation is like we can get stuck in those things like in the crisis, we can, you know, bunker down or we can, you know, we can resist it. But if we can really allow that's where that growth happens. That's where we meet new parts of ourselves. That's where I think we have the opportunity to expand and learn and, and, fill into the potential that we all
that we have that maybe is not always kind of given space.
House Of Peregrine (25:32)
so when you come to your practice, it's very much like you sit down, you chat, and then it's kind of like you experience like a, a massage, but like you're on a massage table. And so for you, you're sensing different things, blockages that are happening in this person. through your work, you are helping
Amanda MacRae (25:44)
Yeah. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (25:55)
the body to move it. Is that right? To move or change, encouraging it. How would you describe that process? I think every person probably describes it differently and it's hard to describe so I apologize for the question. walk us through what that is kind of.
Amanda MacRae (26:12)
Yeah, so after we have the conversation, we also set a sort of a collective intention. So the intention of the people that are on the table for many different reasons might be vitality or it might be a creative process that somebody is on or it could be somebody that's transitioning in a divorce or it could be many things. So we would use the current situation that is going on in their life and how it is actually being held in the body.
So, but then when we go to the bodies, we have this intention. So the mind has got a job to join us in it. And the very first thing, and this is like, it's so, cannot over emphasize is the awareness, the attunement of what is, and whether that is numb or pain or discomfort or disconnect, that's where we come to first. We come to it with that curiosity and love.
And then we can start to hear the needs of this part of the body. And then with that, we start to have that conversation between the mind and the body that actually, ⁓ it can take space. It can let go. It can be soft. So my touch is very, very gentle. It's why I call myself a coach today rather than a practitioner. So I'm really supporting the individual to
to feel something that they can't yet see or just to notice. I'm never pulling or pushing them towards something. I'm really inviting them to see that there is an option now to do something with what is here. Yeah. And then actually probably what's nice to, I think this is more answers the question is what happens when that transformation or that change happens is we connect with a lot of the energy that was stuck.
House Of Peregrine (27:44)
Yeah.
Amanda MacRae (28:00)
So for me, when I was first on the table, all of that energy that was being controlled because the grief was overwhelming was also my love and my creativity and my connection with my kids and my partner. All of that had a lot of energy. And so my body trembled. I got cold and shivery. And so when a client releases trauma, for want of a better word, ⁓ from the body, it comes with this beautiful, beautiful charge.
House Of Peregrine (28:00)
Mm, yep.
Yeah. So if I were to play that back to you, that is like ⁓ you're doing a lot of effort to not process something big. So you're having to really, your body, whether you know it or not, taking a lot of resources that it uses for other things just to keep this grief in a little box or inside and not fully processing it through the system. ⁓ And that cuts off your access to other, to energy, to other things like this.
Amanda MacRae (28:56)
Yeah,
yeah, one of my favorite words is effortlessness. Effortlessness, how can we be more effortlessly ourselves? Because in any kind of pattern, there is a contraction of sorts. so resistance is a contraction. Yeah. And I work with a lot of leaders, a lot of people of influence, and I love working with women too in these kind of positions. But because of culture, they've had to do a lot of effort to get to these places.
House Of Peregrine (28:56)
⁓
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda MacRae (29:24)
So they're so used to putting their elbows out and to leaning in at the boardroom and to coming with, proving themselves with great effort. So often that's a really kind of ⁓ scary even intention. Like, well, I'll lose my productivity, I'll lose my place, I'll fall behind.
And so, but actually what we find, and if I use myself as an example, when I first started this work, I could only see two clients in a day because I would be exhausted. And that's because I was doing so much effort. I so wanted to help people. I so wanted to get them across the line. But actually today when I see, you know, I have an eight client day, several days a week, and I am coming with an effortless way. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (30:07)
Yeah.
Amanda MacRae (30:16)
And that's because I'm trusting this love. I'm trusting myself to be able to, that I don't need to carry a hold and I can meet these people with so much energy from that place. ⁓ yeah, is a, effort would be a great thing for all the listeners to just notice. Where are you doing effort right now? And could you just soften it a little? And it doesn't have to go from zero to 10.
Yeah, if we just dropped the effort from our shoulders by just 2%, there is a little bit more space for something else.
House Of Peregrine (30:56)
Yeah, that gets tricky because so make that tangible. like you said, maybe make it a goal to drop your shoulders every time you notice. That's one step. But when I, from when I started working with, when I ended working with you, it went from, I have to do everything. I am alone. I have to do everything to
Amanda MacRae (31:07)
Mm-hmm.
House Of Peregrine (31:25)
when I'm in my best self, when I'm trusting the most, I can flow through a day and not think about anything and everything comes when I need. And it sounds very mystical and or something or silly, but in a broader sense, that's once you've done the effort, let's say, would you say like, good job, that got you here. What's going to keep you here?
and generating things in a positive way so your body's not breaking down so you can listen to your body is this new skill of ease and letting things come in and you are not the power source anymore.
Amanda MacRae (32:00)
Yeah.
Yeah, I like this description actually. So what I hear is that and what I would want people to understand is not that I'm taking away the ability to sprint or the ability to actually rumble and to do all of that. We just don't want that to be our only way, our automatic way of being. So doing everything and the reality is yeah, being a mom and a working mom and if we're only doing
House Of Peregrine (32:25)
doing everything.
Amanda MacRae (32:33)
with that switch on that place of effort, then we are gonna exhaust ourselves. That beautiful expression of, like what you said, like when I actually really let go and I allow myself with all of the capacity that I have to walk through my days, things flow, things find me. think that this is what I would wanna teach everybody actually, that we have the capacity to be able to find the ground in all the daily stress.
that's the point is we will still have stressful moments but we won't suffer in them. We will still feel the chaos but we will actually be able to see the options. So yeah,
House Of Peregrine (33:15)
Yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. And this brings us back, at least in my experience, to the language of the knowing the language. Everybody's body is probably giving them different signals. And interestingly, there was one thing that came up in one of my sessions with you that I've used so much that is like this thing my knee does when there's danger. So I'll be like, oh.
Amanda MacRae (33:21)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
House Of Peregrine (33:39)
And I don't have, it's not coming here. I don't feel danger. don't think, but if my knee tenses up, I'm like, Ooh, I'm going to take a look at that. And that's my little sign with my body that I need to be more cautious and still I might do it, but at least I've given it because often our body is so wise to things that cognitively we can't see. that just knowing that that's my little thing my body does for me has really steered me in a lot of things.
Amanda MacRae (33:46)
Mmm.
House Of Peregrine (34:07)
But as you say, and a lot of people say, our body's talking to us constantly. It's sensing things we don't see. We have our intuition. We have our spidey sense. We have everything going on. the advantage to learning that system is something that comes from, it could come from crisis. Like you said, like your shoulder's trying to tell you something. It's hurting, you have tense shoulders. Everyone has tense shoulders. I have tense shoulders still. But.
Amanda MacRae (34:31)
You
House Of Peregrine (34:33)
we can then learn the meaning of these things in a way that really can benefit us. And so how do you begin to teach people the language of their body?
Amanda MacRae (34:44)
Yeah, and I think this is probably a little bit unique to my approach actually, is that what I really like to do is help somebody really translate that. often, and everyone has different approaches, of course, can, there's many different ways, you know, I'm seeing somatic yoga classes and there's somatic experiencing and there's, the word somatic is everywhere right now, but in my approach, what I really wanna do when I feel into your knee,
that is actually in contraction. What I would wanna do is just unpack a little bit more about the quality of play. If you think about our knees, it wants to run, it wants to jump, it wants to have freedom, it wants to pivot. But also our legs store a lot of our childhood stuff. So this is where we would need to go probably more to the core root of where this knee of yours had to hold where it wanted to run and jump and play or jump outside of the box, but it had to stay.
in one place. So when we can start to also connect it to core root of where this need learned this, there's also an opportunity to, I to also not just feel it as a symptom, but also feel into that younger part of you and to choose for her today to skip and to dance and to be the one outside of the box.
House Of Peregrine (35:52)
He
Amanda MacRae (36:10)
Cheers.
House Of Peregrine (36:10)
Yeah, and choose.
For me at least right now, that's the big lesson, right? Thank you for your input. And now I'm going to choose yes or no. You're scared and I will take that in consideration. It's a little bit parts work, right? Recognizing it's coming from a younger part and a wise probably younger part and then using my current self to make the decision. But knowing that, and again, I feel like I'm always learning which
Amanda MacRae (36:19)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (36:38)
is another really cool thing about this. You think a mid-age person that you know yourself really well maybe and who you are, your work, Be Your Total Self, it feels like you're opening up of knowing yourself and learning about yourself through your body and through your experiences. And that's really powerful your life.
Amanda MacRae (36:56)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (37:04)
for your family, of course, if you're having sickness, it can be very helpful. What are other reasons that people would come see you? Would you ever have someone come to see you preventatively? no. Okay.
Amanda MacRae (37:17)
absolutely. Absolutely.
And I think today, like when we talked about where the work has come from, people used to come because they didn't have any other option. I had a lot of very unwell people on my table. Today people are coming and doing a vitality process where they just come, you know, the authors and the, you know, the artists and the mums and the...
the expat that's just landed. It's like they come once a month for a tune up to connect to self, to learn some new tools. ⁓ and I really, I love all of my clients, but I really love that part of the work where people are really coming from an empowered place because it's a very different session. If I have somebody that actually were just working to regulate.
the nervous system, really getting them to just feel what is and to feel that safety versus if somebody comes in already attuned to self, we can really stretch into that potential piece in a different way. so lots of reasons.
House Of Peregrine (38:22)
Yeah, cool.
Yeah. And I would say for me.
There's healing that happens, right? And then there's growth that happens. And my story of coming and moving abroad definitely was the beginning of a self-knowledge. Like it was the beginning of a new era of knowing myself. And that has come in the form of working with you, working with a very intense couples process with ⁓ psychedelic training with someone we've had on the podcast, Janine and Hans. And then just through my kids getting to know another language.
Amanda MacRae (38:32)
Hmm.
House Of Peregrine (38:57)
and learning my own culture from the other side. moving abroad can be a catalyst for many things, changes. So I want to, I'm always trying to recommend this type of work as part of people's arsenal. Because when you land somewhere new, what's happening in your body that, so obviously new patterns, any patterns you had are gonna repeat.
Amanda MacRae (38:59)
Mmm.
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (39:21)
are gonna repeat where you go. Wherever you go, there you are, right? So there's that, but then what additional does it bring, this ungroundedness you talked about, what can people come to you to not prevent, but what's the concept that people can come to with you? It's like, I've landed in a country, I need to do this, this, this, this. I think somatic processing of some sort is one of those things. And so how would you say that?
What part of the process should that be?
Amanda MacRae (39:52)
Well, I think actually you raised a couple of points. So change actually creates change too. Yeah. So we do bring ourselves, we will find those things, but I think there is also a fertile ground. So what I would be looking at is that, ⁓ how do we create the structure that you want? Yeah. So structure would be the things that would kind of give us some rhythm in our days. Yeah. And you know, in those first sort of three to six months, like, like everything is new, like where to
by the milk or where it is even located in the supermarket. And so like the structure has to be kind of rewritten. And that's great opportunity to find a new way of those beats that we want. Our bedtime routines is a structure that has the opportunity to change when we But if I think about like somebody who's just landing here and is wanting to use the work,
What I would be doing is looking to get them to embody their bones. Our bones are the structure that's inside of us. Our bones are the earth that is grounding us to ourselves. They are quiet and strong and solid. if we just, like even now as I start to kind of feel my bones, I start to feel a different kind of vibration in my legs. It's just like, there is a...
there's a grounding quality. I would be giving strategy around these patterns and behaviors that we could put in place. And I would be also attuning them to their legs and the bones that are actually inside of them. But often our muscles are trying to do what our bones do. They're trying to hold structure. There's that effort piece again. So if we can get them to soften and to actually trust this beautiful collarbone and to feel all of the parts of ourselves.
House Of Peregrine (41:34)
Yep. Yep.
Amanda MacRae (41:42)
in an embodied way, we'll find more of that flow and freedom. And newness, I think that's too actually is what we're often really terrified of. But actually what the expat is seeking is the newness. It's like, I want it, can I have it? I want it, but how do I understand that I'm going to be okay if I've never really ever experienced it? And that is that trust of self. Yeah, to be able to take the steps to be able to stand in what it is and to.
House Of Peregrine (41:54)
Yeah.
Amanda MacRae (42:11)
to able to walk away or to have that trust.
House Of Peregrine (42:16)
Yeah.
Yeah. And so when we're talking about transitions like this, there's lots of transitions. So having a baby, I think is a really great time after having a baby or before having a baby. ⁓ Moving country. When a relationship dissolves, I know you have personal experience with this, but also many of your clients, when a relationship dissolves, a partnership, a marriage, ⁓ what does that do to your
to your body, your systems, and what does that process look like?
Amanda MacRae (42:48)
think it creates again an opportunity to connect with something a little bit deeper. So I was in a marriage for 25 years and my kids that I talked about earlier on, are now 23 and 21. My 23 year old lives in Stockholm. My 21 year old's in Sydney. She's currently here with me right now. And the father of my kids is still living in Amsterdam. We still live in the same city. But going through that transition,
For us, it was not just COVID and divorce and kids moving from high school into university and leaving the house. We had so much kind of change going on. And I really think if I hadn't done the work, I probably would have found myself back home. I probably would have packed my bags and gone somewhere that I knew that I could just...
be safe, yeah. But actually, I think knowing that I could take the steps through it, that this change was part of my process and the journey to actually being the better mom, the better partner, the better me, the better coach. It allowed me to keep walking towards what was unfolding.
House Of Peregrine (44:16)
Yeah. So the safety and love you felt in your own body allowed you to be able to do the right thing for yourself, for your own. Would you call it progression? Would you call it your own path? What would you, how would you call that?
Amanda MacRae (44:31)
I call it my unique me. I think it's also an inner being. use many words. That inner being is also love, but it's also potential. Sometimes I shy away from the word potential, but it's like we all have a different kind of capacity. Usain Bolt can run really fast. That's because he's got a capacity for it. Other people are really creative because they have a certain capacity for it. So I think
When you asked this question now, what I felt into was actually it is that adult part of me being able to choose to be able to express Amanda to be an Abhidhat, to live from this place.
House Of Peregrine (45:15)
Yeah. And so if someone comes to you saying, don't know what, like I'm in a relationship, I don't know, especially long-term relationships, especially when you're in a different country together, it's a big, it's a foundation shake to change relationship. And so is that how you help people process it? Like should I stay or should I go is a massive question for therapists, for any kind of things.
Amanda MacRae (45:38)
Mmm. Mmm.
House Of Peregrine (45:42)
Do you help people find that safety if they're having that question within themselves? Is that the first step?
Amanda MacRae (45:47)
Yeah,
I think what actually gets entangled, like when you give this as an example, sometimes it's fear telling us no or yes, but actually that's not our truth. So when we come to the body, we can actually really connect. actually, I really love this person, but I'm really frightened of taking the next step with them. but actually they, so this is where, where sometimes, yeah, we can misinterpret the, in that contracted place.
House Of Peregrine (45:59)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Amanda MacRae (46:16)
that this resistance is telling us something that is our truth. No, no, no, no. This resistance is actually trying to protect us from the change that will come if we just said yes to this. So that's what happens is that there's a certain clarity that comes. is a certain, yeah, knowing, yeah.
House Of Peregrine (46:29)
Hmm. Yeah
When you're using all of your resources, it turns out you get better answers.
Amanda MacRae (46:41)
Yeah, yeah and that answer is not always comfortable because if I'm choosing not to be with my partner that I've been with for a very long time, I'm also disrupting the people that I love. So if we keep ourselves small and stay small and stay small, this is a very unwell place to live from. This is a very disconnected place to live from. Yeah, so yeah.
House Of Peregrine (46:43)
hahaha
Yeah, and I think the biggest transitions we can go through are some of those. And when people do them abroad, that's why I put it, if I have a conversation with someone, I a lot of times do these consultations where I sit down with someone and I say, put together your team, your team of how to land well, how to live well. And this is often on my list because it just solves so many, it doesn't solve so many problems. gives you so many more resources.
Amanda MacRae (47:26)
Mmm. Mmm.
House Of Peregrine (47:36)
to thrive because it is a very intense experience moving countries. And you've now done it twice across multiple continents and for your kids and you become, if you're well resourced, it becomes a lot less struggle. And so that's, I think it's just a really important step. How, tell me, you've mentioned it a couple of times, but I wanna give people something really clear.
Amanda MacRae (47:48)
Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (48:00)
If people want to start just on their own at home with maybe peeking into what their body is trying to tell them, maybe they're not burned out, maybe they're just like, ⁓ I'm interested to learn what my body's telling me because obviously it's a vast resource. Where would you tell them to start? What's the few tips they could just use in their everyday life?
Amanda MacRae (48:14)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
I think movement, think breath, I think awareness and curiosity, they would be sort of first things that sort of pop up. But it is just like right now while I'm sitting with you, I can still feel a lot in my body. So I have a tingling sensation in my feet. I feel the heaviness of myself in my chair. And still I can have a conversation with you.
I could imagine myself if it was five years ago and I was doing a podcast, I'd probably be sitting up and I'd probably be overthinking it. And so I think what I would just encourage people to do is to look at ⁓ ways they like to move. So it doesn't mean going to the gym. It can be the walk in the park or the ride on the bike, or it can be the yoga.
There's just many ways and when you are in those places, you're really experiencing what it feels like. Yeah, so right now I'm really feeling what it feels like to sit here and talk with you. When I'm riding my bike, I feel the air touching my skin. I'm smiling at the people around me and I'm looking and I'm feeling my feet moving and my heart rushing and ⁓ so feeling what is, that would be the first thing. Breath is an easy tool for a lot of people.
and I love breath and I also have a resistance to a lot of the breath stuff that's going on right now where it's really active breath because a lot of people's systems are not ready for that active breath. It sort of pushes them even higher but just attuning to the breath and many times when we meet our breath we feel the discomfort of where we are contracting or where we're not allowing.
So there we would just play a little bit with choice. I would just say tactileness also, get your hands on your kids or your friends. And if you don't go and have a massage and really be active in the massage, like don't just let it happen to you. Really experience the touch, let yourself breathe with the touch, let yourself make the yummy sounds of the touch. Yeah, there's some sort of easy access points. ⁓
House Of Peregrine (50:22)
Hmm.
Amanda MacRae (50:33)
There's also a really big growing community of somatic practitioners now. I had a beautiful evening here couple of weeks ago with a room full of psychologists and I introduced them to ⁓ some practitioners that I would recommend that are in and around Amsterdam. When I first landed here, what, yeah, 10 years ago, I think it was me and maybe one or two others from different modalities, but now there's like 40 or so practitioners here. So there is a
There are many options out there. I would be very happy connect people if they can't get into me, but to connect people to other practitioners in the city. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (51:12)
Nice. Yeah.
And so I just want to play that back. if whatever you're doing throughout the day, choose something and just take a moment to really be in it and notice everything about it. And I would add this was, I don't know if this is next level. What if you feel a pain that can be scary if you feel a pain when you've tuned in, what do you recommend people do?
Amanda MacRae (51:23)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, good question.
Yeah, and that we are going to meet pain. Yeah, like even now I'm sitting with my legs crossed and as you say, I'm feeling pain, then I actually think I might uncross my legs. So I was not really feeling the discomfort that maybe I was causing myself. So but sometimes pain is chronic pain is is is it really is stuck in the body. So it just needs some attention first.
Often when we go towards pain, will increase. It may also dissolve. It might also express, like my leg just said, please un-cross me. Like I could attune to its need. But yeah, but actually going towards it, and this is where that love piece fits in. When we go towards it, if we're going towards it on our own, we might be like, ⁓ I don't have time for that pain right now. I've got to, you know, I've got to pick up the kids or I've got to, you know, I want to just...
just for you to be quiet or I'm frustrated by you. If we're coming with that kind of mind-body connection, the pain's just gonna either get tighter and contract and try and hide itself in some way. But if we can come to it lovingly and kind and be like, yeah, okay, I see that it actually needs a bit of attention. And pretty much we can feel what it actually needs.
House Of Peregrine (52:51)
yeah, and that's a kind of abstract concept for a lot of people, but the practice just starting with, for me at least, when I would feel pain, I would get scared. And so then it would turn back, I'd turn it back off. And so just even the practice of not being scared. So my first step was feeling the pain and as silly as it sounded to me being like, okay, pain, what do you need?
Amanda MacRae (53:03)
Mm.
Mmm, yeah.
House Of Peregrine (53:16)
And most
times it would just disappear. this comes from, yeah, and this.
Amanda MacRae (53:19)
Yeah, yeah. I often thought about how
would I go towards my kids with this kind of pain. I wouldn't be like, come on, like, let's go. I'd be like, ⁓ honey, what is it? Do I need to get a little hug or a little kiss? Can we just sit here and just maybe give it a little massage or just rest for a moment?
House Of Peregrine (53:28)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah. But just acknowledging it sometimes is the first step to, like you said, uncross. It'll change your entire pattern if you notice that you're crossing your legs all the time and then you stop crossing them. Or if you're shallow in your breath more often than you realize, these things over time cause enormous changes throughout your life. It's like the butterfly effect. And so I want people to come away with this notion. It doesn't have to be,
Amanda MacRae (53:57)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (54:14)
always starting this process with you, which it should like if someone and that's my last question for you is like, what are the processes with you as a coach? But they have a place to start. But if they want to come to you as a coach or someone like you, what are the moments? What are the scenarios that people might do it? And what does a process look like? I'm sure it's different for everybody, but like in general.
Amanda MacRae (54:36)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So I would say people will be listening to this and will feel naturally pulled to it. I would say, feel that pull and act on it. Like, this ⁓ is your internal being saying yes. Now make the movement towards it. And maybe it's not towards the coach, but maybe it is towards the breath work or it is towards the yoga movement that you are looking for. It is towards the lay in the park. So listen to that pull and follow through.
⁓ But what a process would look like, people can come for one session, that can wake something up and then they continue in their talk therapy process or with their chiropractor or with their acupuncture. But generally what I like to say is like around the third or fourth session, like there's a certain amount of tools and awareness that really lands with a person. So it's like I see them all.
tuning to my hands rather than me vocalizing it they start to to move towards it so that that happens for me around that third or fourth session and then of course like I said the process can be yeah for leaders or for for creative so I have an artist that's showing right now and she's working on a new project that's going to be in Paris and it's all about her voice so we're
where we're working very clearly on something that she's really wanting to create from an authentic place. So it's so varied and that's why it is Be Your Total Self. It's like we meet the individual, we meet the situation that you're standing in, we meet you where it's at.
House Of Peregrine (56:18)
Yeah. And if someone wanted to come to you to be a more attuned parent, that would be a different process.
Amanda MacRae (56:22)
Mmm.
Yeah, absolutely. But what we would find actually in that, like I have this often that it's the mothers or the leaders or the people wanting to do it for somebody else. What I would be able to do is to kind of bring them back here. There is an unmet need or an unexpressed expression that is happening here that would allow them to then parent differently. Yeah. Yeah.
House Of Peregrine (56:49)
Yep. Yeah,
that's it's such good advice. so that's the coaching I think that you're talking about is you're really coaching them back to themselves, teaching them about what their body is, trying to tell them. And that helps helps change patterns in every part of their life.
Amanda MacRae (57:08)
Yeah, yeah, so we would maybe if we were working with the mom and there will be absolutely a ripple on effect because the mom is also the sister or the mom is also the daughter, the mom is also the creator, the mom is also so when we this these shoulders are not compartmentalizing, they're a part of the total experience of that person's life.
House Of Peregrine (57:39)
Yep, yep. And I guess I have one more question. Men do this work. I've known a couple men who've done this work also. we're all humans. So we've talked a lot about women using this work, but I know you also work with men. ⁓ So I want to touch briefly on what are the struggles that men might experience that are unique in this culture?
Amanda MacRae (57:39)
Yeah.
Oh, okay. I mean, I probably have, I would say 45 % of my clients are men. So I see across the day, I see a lot of men. I would say the suppression of anger, power is often something that they want and know that they want to express, but they keep certain things small. think, yeah, feeling comfortable also in their feminine.
sides that and when I say feminine I'm talking about qualities like in their softer nurturing sides, their sensitive sides, they're sort of often an entanglement of like can I really see and feel all of this and still be the provider or the masculine, the strong have a lot of men on my table right now that are really struggling with sleep.
House Of Peregrine (58:45)
Strong, strong person.
Amanda MacRae (58:54)
like that are really restless in the rest, helping them sort of feel into the letting go of, and because there's so much change going on in the world right now, particularly, I think of that masculine role that they're having to sort of let go of some of these old ways and to allow the new that is emerging, not just around us, but inside of
House Of Peregrine (59:18)
Mm.
Yeah,
well, that's good insight. I'm glad I asked you that question because I think, it's helpful to see some of these things in yourself ⁓ as well. Cool. Well, tell us how people can reach you and your practice in Amsterdam. And I know you work maybe in Australia bit as well. Do I have that right or no?
Amanda MacRae (59:24)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, so I travel in and out. So I toggle between Australia, LA and here. My base is in Amsterdam. So people can reach me. I've got a beautiful new website just about to launch at Be Your Total Self dot com. And there you can find me with the same handle on Instagram or look me up on LinkedIn, Amanda And I'm happy to sort
to sort of also share other practitioners, yeah? So I really also want people to know that this work is an option, not just that I'm an option, but there are so many practitioners around the world that actually do very, very good work. And I would just love people to know that they can find their way. if that was a request or a question to where they're located would be really handy for me to know. And I can kind of point them in the direction of introducing them to somebody else.
House Of Peregrine (1:00:31)
that is incredibly, that's incredibly, I've never had anyone do that, say that before. But I know you're very busy and sometimes you have a booked schedule, so that's very generous. Okay, so we will put that down below and I want to thank you for joining me today and also just for the work you do in the world and especially for me, it's been extremely powerful. So I hope that everyone who's listening can, if this is helpful for them, they can reach out to Amanda or find someone
with this very powerful modality of work. I want to thank everyone for joining us and I will see you next time on the House of Peregrine podcast.