Pearl Cicci
===
Pearl Cicci: [00:00:00] Feeling is an actual really good thing for our body. Allowing your emotions to complete the cycle and release and let go from your energetic body, that is like so healing in itself. And then the body, the physical body is how do we take care of our physical body?
Getting enough sleep, working out, making sure we're reducing stress, eating balanced meals, balancing our hormones, like all these things, reducing cortisol. So these are the daily habits we build together. And then the mindset work is the, mindset, the pause of self-talk, the. Pattern interrupting the, a lot of the other techniques that many people might be aware of, but working on rewiring your brain to think in a way that supports you to feeling better.
'cause your thoughts affect your energy and your frequency of course. And so I integrate all of 'em in different ways for different people, depending on what areas they need more support with.
Welcome to the Wild and Well Collective Podcast where we believe empowered health is your superpower. We have combined our expertise in medicine and nutrition to bring you the latest research expert insights and success stories of people on a mission to live a big life. So buckle up and get ready to learn how to [00:01:00] live wildly well.
Welcome back to another episode of the Wild and Well Collective. Today's guest is the beautiful Pearl cc. She is a state optimization expert for high achieving women with a focus on somatics nervous system and elevated states. She helps women overcome mental and emotional blocks to step into their most powerful version of themselves by coming back to their bodies and their innate wisdom.
I'm so excited for us to dive into this conversation.
Sheree Beaumont: Today we're joined by the beautiful Pearl whose energy is such a vibe. I was just attracted to her magnetism right through ig. We're actually talking about it just before we popped on in terms of, everyone's like, how did you meet? I'm like, we physically haven't met, but that's how most of the good stories starts.
So I'm excited for you to be here, Pearl. Like, thank you so much for your time and just showing up with the energy that you bring to the world. Thank you.
Pearl Cicci: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and I love the nature of online world where you just meet people who vibe and [00:02:00] connect and you're like, Hey, come on my podcast.
And so thank you. I'm excited to chat and connect with you.
Sheree Beaumont: Love if you could start us off telling us a little bit about not just what you do, because the magic that you share with the world is amazing, but how you got there, because I've been following you for such a long time and seeing your journey from, the nutrition side of things to being the sober, brave fest, girly, like, there's so many facets of you that I like, adore, and can relate to, and I'd love for you to share a little bit about your journey, if you can.
Pearl Cicci: Thank you so much. Yeah. How I got here, man. It's been a wild ride, and it's been so beautiful. Looking back on a trajectory I. I started out in dietician. I went to school. I was really focused on, well, backtracking, I always wanted to be a dancer. So like I literally, my soul basically is meant to be a dancer.
But of course we go through life. So I wasn't allowed to be a dancer. My dad said, wasn't a good job. You can't make money, so go find a real job. I'm like, okay, I'll find a real job then. But I decided to pursue dietetics, so I was interested in [00:03:00] health and I liked food, and I wanna do something with like.
Eating nutrition health, and I was like, let's do this. So signed up for this five year program, which took me six, and I ended up learning a lot about nutrition, about the body, about physiology, about basically just how to thrive through eating and nutrition, which was really fascinating actually. And then knowing that I also love movement and fitness like I did of track and I love dancing.
And so I started to go to the gym a lot and optimize my health so that. Got me to creating and getting my personal trainer certificate. So personal training. So combining those two, and as I work with women, I'm realizing, oh yeah, like we're working on your healthy habits, working on your fitness. But there's still this like gap and there was this mental emotional piece that I wasn't quite sure of and I was like, there's something here.
So really diving into my own world, honestly. 'cause I believe being the full embodiment what you do is so important. So really addressing my own inner world. And like I was eating, I was doing all the things, but I still had. Really bad cramps, really horrible [00:04:00] periods. My hormones were all over the place. I was dysregulated.
I was anxious, I was pretty like negative most of the time on myself, really hard on myself and just not in the best place mentally. So. Fast forward to diving into somatics, diving into nervous system work, mindset work, and also experiencing deep grief with the loss of my sister a few years ago.
So navigating all these big emotions that I didn't know how to, process and learning how to process them through movement, through dance, through their body, and now just combining all my passions to help women do the same and really help them feel. Good on the inside, help them heal. And so using what I've learned in my journey to now support other women in that as well.
Christa Elza: Oh my gosh, you're speaking to my soul With the integrative kind of approach to health, because I think it's definitely important to address things like nutrition and movement and the science and the physics behind it. And I think what's missing in a lot of techniques, methods, approaches, is that. Coming home to the inner world of [00:05:00] yourself and like coming home to the, your thoughts and how your thoughts create health or disease.
How, you mentioned grief, how we've got to face some of the hard stuff head on and move through it, or we store it in our body and that can come out through all sorts of manifestations in our body, right? Yeah. And so, I would love to know what. So we know how you've gotten there.
How do you integrate that and do you combine what you do with nutrition and movement in somatics, or do you focus strictly on somatics? And what approach do you take for helping people recognize that and realize that?
Pearl Cicci: Such a good question. So it's all the above. I do, I have a method called the Lit Method, and so my, the main focus of my coaching is to help women become lit, but for me that's like from a very holistic, like from an inside out place.
And so we work with the four bodies, the spiritual body, the emotional body, the physical body, and the mental body and the mind. And so I have certain approaches and things in all these different areas. So for me [00:06:00] it's really tapping into your spirituality and. Your essence and who you are at your core, and are you truly living like the path you're meant to?
Like, do you feel aligned to what you're doing? Because I know for myself, for the longest time I was doing something else, I was trying to, chase the milestone or get the nine to five or do this and that. When truly, deeply, that's not what I want to do. And that also causes, resistance and negative energy in your body when you're not fully doing and pursuing your soul's path and what lights you up.
And so aligning women to what that is for themselves. Also like uncondition, the narratives and the stories of what your life needs to be based on other people's projections, all the things. So that's like the first part really coming home to your spiritualness and what you're called to do here. And the second piece is your emotional piece where I really dive into, yeah, the emotions and nervous system regulation, the somatic practice, learning how to process the big emotions we feel and navigate that with grace and allow yourself to feel like a lot of women I work with, like they're scared to feel.
And so I really helped normalize that. Feeling is an actual really good thing for our body. Allowing your [00:07:00] emotions to complete the cycle and release and let go from your energetic body, that is like so healing in itself. And then the body, the physical body is how do we take care of our physical body?
Getting enough sleep, working out, making sure we're reducing stress, eating balanced meals, balancing our hormones, like all these things, reducing cortisol. So these are the daily habits we build together. And then the mindset work is the, mindset, the pause of self-talk, the. Pattern interrupting the, a lot of the other techniques that many people might be aware of, but working on rewiring your brain to think in a way that supports you to feeling better.
'cause your thoughts affect your energy and your frequency of course. And so I integrate all of 'em in different ways for different people, depending on what areas they need more support with.
Sheree Beaumont: So powerful and I think that really just encompasses such a holistic approach, which is what we're really about here, is making sure that all facets of you are taken care of and.
Also, one of the things you touched on was the expression or the feeling. I'm wondering if we can dive into that a little bit more, because often as women we're just told, we're super [00:08:00] emotional. Right? And like we're told that like, oh, she must be feeling all her feelings. And sometimes they can be the flip of that where we shut it down.
Like, we tend to be either emotional or avoidant, or if you're like me, I've done the work around it, it's like I'm a combination of two. I'll avoid, avoid, avoid, and then I'll feel or I'll feel, feel, feel, and then I'm like, I don't wanna feel it anymore. And so when we think about this somatics and we think about this nervous system regulation and even like a, a term I'm loving at the moment is.
Like the capacity to be able to hold it all, to be able to be going through a really challenging time emotionally, whether that's from a business perspective, whether that's from a parenting perspective, whether that's from a health perspective, and still be able to show up in a way that you wanna show up.
So when you're working with your clients, how do you help them navigate that? How do you help them navigate this? I'm holding myself in a regulated state, and I'm not just positively thinking my way out of it. But I'm also moving through, like you said, with Grace. [00:09:00]
Pearl Cicci: Yeah, that's a great question. So I. The way it's for my clients through this is just giving them a practice.
A daily practice of allowing them to feel all the feels they need to and give themself the space and time to give their bodies what they need. And so when you think about like an animal kingdom, whenever animals go through a challenging or a stressful thing, like a lion chasing a zebra, but the zebra gets away, right?
And the zebra, after that experience, it was like gonna die. So it's really scared. Shaking and the zebra shakes and it undulates, right? So undulation is that process of shaking and it releases attention and its body does its thing, whatever it needs. And then after a few minutes, it's. Back to normal, back to regulating.
It's like, okay, and it goes back to eating grass. And so humans are actually meant to do the same thing, but our bodies aren't conditioned to do that. So basically in the practice I help my clients with, it's understanding how to allow your body to do that on a regular basis. And because we haven't done it for so many years.
I truly believe it needs to be a daily practice to start to normalize. [00:10:00] Feeling the feelings, letting them come through, express what you need to express, whether that's anger, grief, sadness, like whether that's crying, stomping, yelling, shouting, punching, like whatever it is. But give yourself permission to actually process and feel and experience and express whatever it is.
'cause the more you do that, the less you're afraid of feeling, the more you can normalize. Oh, I can process this in five, 10 x whatever minutes it takes, and then come to a nice grounded state and then move from there. So your feelings never actually get the chance to take over your whole entire day or life or week 'cause you're giving them space to express what it needs to.
And honestly, it's very powerful to see what happens when you give yourself just even 10 minutes to feel the sadness you're feeling and address it and acknowledge it. And it just like gets lifted from you and then you can go on and show up the way you need to for your family, friends, business, whatever it is.
And so, yeah, it's a really powerful practice. That's what I help people do in their own way that feels good to them.
Christa Elza: I think this is an interesting. Conversation because [00:11:00] for high achievers, and I'm just speaking for myself I was raised by parents who were very vocal or emotional, right.
But my dad was more emotional and like the just negative stewing vibes, right? But then my mom was overly emotional, but in like the crying and the kind of way, and neither one of those made me feel safe. I didn't like it, it felt. Unsafe as a child, but I didn't really realize that until I started doing the work as to why I would i'm one of those people that's like, everything's fine, but on the inside maybe it's not fine. Yeah. And through some of my personal development work and through some of the, really sitting with emotions and going through some processes, which are not comfortable by the way, but it really gets you to the root of some of it.
I realize that. I viewed emotions as weakness, as not safe as I'm never gonna be like that. And so, and it's to no fault of my parents. They were young, they're humans. It's just how I perceived it as a child. And so then I created that story [00:12:00] about myself of like, you won't show emotions that are not like fun and bubbly and let's have a great time.
But you know, that creates, you hold that in. And so once I hit, my teenage years and early college years, that's when the anxiety like really started to brew up. And I think it's that typical age where, mental illness or mental challenges start to bubble up a little bit and it's uncomfortable and and then we wanna throw medication at the problem, which there is some validity in mental health medications, but.
What is underlying that? Like what is actually driving this depression or this anxiety? And it takes some time, I think, to unwind with that. And it takes some discomfort. It takes some being willing to say, wait a minute, maybe there's actually something going on. Maybe these emotions are actually trying to tell me something.
Yeah. And that can be tough, that can create this feeling that you are walking, climbing the ladder of life without any rungs anymore because your coping mechanisms from [00:13:00] the past are no longer healthy. Or you're like, well, this isn't healthy to stuff things down, but it feels unsafe to be emotional.
So how do you help? Yeah. How do you help individuals maybe like me who I was before or how I, my way of being before? How do you help? Let's say high achievers who want to come across as like, I got it covered. I'm good to tap into that maybe more vulnerable state, that feels uncomfortable.
Pearl Cicci: Yeah, that's such a good question. Also, I still resonate with you too. I was also, the version of me in the past had this idea that I can't feel that I, emotions are bad, that, showing negative emotions and I would ball them up. Like, remember, there's a period of time I didn't cry for literally three years, like.
I won't let myself cry. Like I was like, I cannot cry. It shows weakness and that's like the conditioning for my parents, right? And again, they just did the best they could. And child, children, we perceive things, make stories, make it mean something about us, and create these really big imprints actually that it dictates how we operate moving forward.
And so for clients like [00:14:00] me or you, the things that I help them do is honestly just meet them where they're at. 'cause depending on where, depending on their experience and their past and their wounds, it's like they may not be able to just be like vulnerable all of a sudden, but it's just really meeting them where they're at, saying, creating a safe space for them on the calls to create little baby steps towards feeling and what's present for them.
But what I've noticed with my sessions is that. I don't know what's my energy or what happens, or like the people who are just like able to be really deep and vulnerable with me, even within the first few sessions. And so despite maybe they had a lot of resistance to feeling there's this beautiful energy that I create in this space that they're just like, oh, I just feel so safe.
And they'll feel, they'll cry, they'll express, they'll emote. It's been super beautiful. But yeah, just meet them where they're at. I do a lot of like grounding activations and helping people feel safe in the space, and also just reinforcing the fact that. It's okay to feel, and I really believe feelings are our fuel and just allowing them to feel good in their bodies.
And I [00:15:00] always say like, this is all an invitation. Whatever you feel like doing. So yeah, just really creating a safe space really supports them and. Showing and expressing whatever needs to be said and done and the body leads and they're able to really express whatever's alive for them. And so, yeah, I think it's obviously a journey and a process and very, something I do is also helping them address these deeper wounds and deeper stories that keep them stuck through thematic and through the sessions.
So after that, they're able to just shift a little bit and the more you know, you work on it, the more it shifts and it's just like a process. It takes time, but it's been super beautiful. And so yeah, that's what I'll share around that.
Sheree Beaumont: Yeah, I love that. And you've, you mentioned the word safety a lot, which I just really wanna hone in because when we're not used to feeling our emotions or we're not used to even being connected to our body, which is huge piece of the somatic work, it can feel really scary.
Or, I, Chris, where Christopher and I met, like we met through a container where it was learning how to coach women and people in this space to feel safe [00:16:00] and to. Use somatic tools and use unconditional unconscious programming and that sort of thing. But for your average human, even the word somatic is not something that's normally in their vocabulary.
Exactly. What they don't, they may not be realizing is that they're doing things each and every day that are actually helping them regulate. Or maybe that's why they're not feeling safe in their bodies to even process this emotion. And one of the things I love, and I would love for you to talk to a little bit more.
Is the idea when it comes to somatic that it doesn't actually, we don't actually have to know the story. We don't even have to know what the emotion is. We don't have to get into the mind at all. And it's something that I think can be really freeing for a lot of high achievers because we operate up here in our brain.
We live in our minds so much. And as someone who, I guess was probably the opposite of what the two of you have shared, used to sit so heavily in the emotion. Like anything happened, I'd cry. Anything like I was just like. Such an emotional being to the point there'd be like a happy ad on TV and I'd be in tears, like such [00:17:00] an emotional being that it was very hard for me to, again, reconnect like I've always danced, but I didn't know that that was giving me a sense of freedom to process things naturally, like moving your hips or moving your body.
I do wonder if like having, and I'm curious about your experience too, like having those tendencies to have that sort of either athleticism. Or, I think about strength training now, or even like the movement of dance, being able to use those even as tools to help us process some of the emotion we don't even realize is sitting there.
Pearl Cicci: Yeah, for sure. So for me it's been really beautiful to explore just through my own movement and dance and to just allow myself to just feel. So when it comes to somatics, if you're listening, you're like, what the heck are they talking about? The word somatics is just. Experiencing in the body. Really.
That's the basic of it. And you can do somatics through breath, through movement, through dance, it's through whatever you're experiencing through the body, right? So a lot of experiences can be somatic, but the [00:18:00] difference is the intention of feeling and experiencing what's happening in the body. So if you're someone that's a little more disconnected and you're like, oh, I don't know, it's just really like sitting and saying, what am I feeling right now in my body?
And it's funny when I have sessions with women that are super up in their head and really like in their mind, overthinking, it's the simplest thing is no. What are you feeling in your body? Take a deep breath. I. What are you feeling in your body? And they'll be like, oh, I think this is, no, no, no.
Don't say think. What are you feeling? And eventually we'll get there. It's like, oh, I feel okay. I feel maybe in my stomach. And of course, is it in your stomach? Is it in your chest? Is it light? Is it soft? Is it heavy? What's the density? Is there a temperature? Is it warm? So really just trying to tap into the feelings in the body.
And the more you just ask yourself that question and just like connect to, oh, when I'm stressed out, I notice my stomach contracts. Oh, when someone says something to me that triggers me, I feel my neck tighten up. Like these little things. And these are signs of what you're experiencing in the body and once [00:19:00] you connect to those, we can dive deeper.
But really that's the first step. And then you practice more and more being in your body. I'm a big proponent of daily body check-in. So just like throughout your day, just take a moment, Hey, how am I feeling? What do I need? Like just asking yourself simple questions to really connect. I dunno if I answer your question, but that's what I wanna share.
So.
Christa Elza: Yeah, I know for me it keeps me like the I, the somatics really keeps me like accountable to myself with exercise. Like exercise comes easy for me because of the change that it creates in my. Outlook on life, on regulating emotions, on working through things that I feel overwhelmed with. That's my go-to.
If I can't at least go on a walk I feel it. I just, I feel like the weight of the day or because I do tend to be in my head, and I think a lot of. High achievers, just people who are trying to achieve things in life in general. We get up in our [00:20:00] brains, so we get up in our heads.
We're in that mental aspect of things. And it's easier, in my opinion, in my experience, to work through where we are mentally when we're integrating that with our body. Like how are we feeling that? And one thing I teach my patients too is. When you think of something that stresses you out, how do, how do you feel in your body?
Yeah. Do you feel that tension? And then once they realize that and feel it once, it's like, cool. Now use that as your blueprint daily. If you're feeling and you notice that shrugged shoulders or that tension of your neck or that tightness, and sometimes I just feel like. Wow. Let me just wake up to the fact that I feel like I'm swirling in my body, like tight and just, and then if you just stop and you take five deep breaths, the difference that it makes and just your clarity and your relaxation and then your creativity and your ability to not, chew out everybody around you is powerful.
And I really think [00:21:00] there's so many people that walk around that are not. Aware, they're not aware of the tension that they're feeling day to day to day. They just don't like it. They just don't wanna feel whatever they're feeling. And the answer is not to just blow it off and hope it passes on its own.
The answer is to sit with that. Ask yourself, what is going on? What am I feeling? How do I step out of that fight or flight or freeze and get back into that rest, relaxation, digestion, parasympathetic, right? So. What are some of the quick techniques that you teach people to become aware of it and move through that?
Pearl Cicci: Yeah, the quick techniques, the awareness honestly is just doing some check-ins and so I really just encourage people to start is in the morning, like give themselves time. I always am such a big advocate for morning routines and again, your routine doesn't have to be this crazy long thing, but just taking time, 2030, whatever you can make in the day.
To just have space. No phone, just [00:22:00] breathe, meditate, or just connect or stretch or whatever. Sometime in that space, you ask yourself, how am I feeling? What's alive in my body, and noticing what's there, and that I have a process that I guide people through, but it's a little more steps. But the first step is just aware awareness and being like, okay, I'm feeling this.
Okay. I'm a little bit tight here. Oh. Like my neck is tight or my back or this, my stomach and tapping into the emotions that are there. Right. Oh, like what am I feeling under that? Okay. I'm feeling sad. Oh, interesting. And just being really observant. I think there's. It's, I used to get very easily caught up in why am I sad?
I shouldn't feel sad. Like, no, oh my gosh, like life is great. I should be grateful. And like, these are things that, I was conditioned to be like, there's no reason to be sad. You have a great life. Like, yeah, why am I sad? Oh my gosh. And start overthinking about the fact that I'm sad. Instead of being like, oh, I know it's that I'm sad.
Okay, that's fine. Let me just sit here. Let me allow myself to be sad. Like give yourself permission to feel and then you need to express maybe something comes up and it's. Oh, there's always an [00:23:00] underlying message under the emotion, I believe. So then you sit and see what comes up. Oh, I need to shift this in my life.
Oh, I'm actually unhappy about this area of my life. And I really believe in empowerment, like, what can I do about that? How can I elevate that? And then we, work through whatever that is. So every moment you have an opportunity, and of course you can just do step one, which is amazing, or you can do all five steps and that's cool too.
But just starting with awareness and connecting to your body every morning is a great place to start. And then you can start to dive deeper as you feel comfortable.
Sheree Beaumont: Hmm. And you beautifully mentioned a number of times as we've been talking this. Spaciousness, which I think the society that's being created at the moment, the way that we live, I observe quite frequently and not from a place of judgment, just as an observation.
The people that I'm often around and their notifications, ping, ping, ping. They have, they don't have the do not disturb mode set up on their [00:24:00] phone. And so the first thing they're doing when they wake up in the morning is looking at all of the emails that they've gotta reply to, or the missed calls or the, the things that have popped in overnight from things that might be overseas.
Like when we think about what we have to deal with on a daily basis, it's no wonder that our nervous system is so overwhelmed all the time. And so one of the things that I just wanna really drive home that you've mentioned so beautifully is. Having this space, whether it is 10 or 20 minutes in the morning, whether it's the daily check-in because the amount of mothers that we work with, the amount of women that we work with, or business owners or high performers.
They aren't your, and this is not to like put down your standard person, but your standard person's nervous system is overwhelmed when you're dealing with someone that's then out there trying to achieve big goals, managing a household, trying to juggle work, trying to do all of the things again, to come back to like holding all of the balls in the air at one time.
It's no wonder we get to the end of the day and like we don't wanna [00:25:00] reply to text messages, we wanna go and hibernate, we go into avoidance. We don't wanna feel the feeling 'cause it's like. I've already had a whole day of feeling all of the feelings, like I've been pissed off by the person that drove like cut me off in traffic.
I've been overstimulated by my children. I don't feel like I get a minute's break. Like there's so much that's going on and so, and I can't remember who said it. I dunno if it was like a bullet quote or something, but it was like, if you can't find 20 minutes to meditate, you need an hour.
And it is such a beautiful reminder that these daily chickens don't have to be massive. This. Processing. And I think that's one of the other things that can be really scary or overwhelming is processing the emotions or feelings can feel like, I've gotta sit down, I've gotta cry and I've gotta let it all out.
And then I've gotta try, and then I've gotta try and get on a meeting. It's like I don't have time for that. I don't have time to deal with my own child. I don't have time to deal with my nervous system. But what you're saying is that there's this spaciousness we can create and if we're actually doing it as a daily practice.
You're very like gently and [00:26:00] lightly, and there's always room for depth as well when we have the capacity to do that, but we're allowing the healing to occur, but also the nourishment to occur in the space that we're giving. So. When you think about that and when we think about the work that you do, when it comes to, I'm just thinking there are probably women listening to this or people listening to this right now going, yeah, Cher, that's cool.
Like five minutes, whatever. You don't have kids. Or like, there's gonna be a lot of excuses coming up, even though I just called them all out. How do you help people navigate those blocks or that resistance to the. I don't have time or I don't have space. Do people come to you in that state?
Pearl Cicci: Oh yeah, for sure. All the time. I think that's the human condition. It's, we always try and think of ways to stay in our same cycle and stay in our safe zone, which is our normal. So the brain will look for any reason to not make the change that seems uncomfortable. So many times I've worked with moms in the past.
Oh, I don't have time. My kids get up early. Oh, I have to drive them to school. My husband gotta cook for my husband. Oh, I gotta do this. I have client job, blah, blah. There's [00:27:00] always a reason not to, but then I'll also challenge, there's always a reason too, as well. You can decide whether or not you wanna.
Fulfill the story of I don't have time, it's not gonna work. Oh my gosh. Or okay, how can I make time for myself? How can I make this work? Is there something that I can move? Or can I create more space my morning? And I always challenge my clients. They might say, I don't have time. Like, yes you do.
Let's look at your day. Like literally, lemme, what's your calendar look like? What do you doing? I do a lot of time audits. I'm very much of a hands-on. Like whenever someone's like, oh, I'm too busy. I'm like, is that true? Like, let's talk about it. What are you so busy doing? How can we make you more efficient or take out.
Most of the time people I've worked with are just doing busy stuff. I don't even need to be doing it. It's like, okay, yeah. Half those things you don't have to be doing, but you feel you have to. And it's like this pressure of doing something that someone told you had to do 'cause it was a good idea.
But deep down, I don't even wanna do it. I'm like, does that truly light you up? And so really creating a life where you're doing more of the things will light you up. You are taking time for yourself in the morning and you are understanding that you can make your own space. You [00:28:00] can. Ebb. And of course things ebb and flow, especially as mothers.
But I've worked with moms and I'm like, take your kids with you likes, like, Hey, we're gonna, you can start conditioning your kids at a young age to start to regulate. Like, that's how beautiful is that. I always have a positive twist on everything. My clients always to make a joke. But take your kids with you, like, Hey honey, we're gonna sit down and breathe for five minutes with mommy.
Amazing. So you can regulate with your kids and you can teach them tools that'll help them be more efficient in the future. So there's always a way to make it work if you're really committed to improving your life.
Christa Elza: Yeah, I often say to my patients too, like, if you're at a red light, instead of grabbing your phone to re, refresh Instagram or whatever, just spend, take five deep breaths.
It is amazing how it, and you have to do these things, and I say this all the time, you have to do it every day when you're not having a stressful. Period of your life because then you can more quickly get there. Your brain and your mind already know the jam. They already know the routine. So you can more quickly Yes, [00:29:00] get there.
If you're doing it as a routine, and it doesn't have to be overwhelming. One of my philosophies just in medicine and, life hacking and biohacking and all of those things, there's so many people out there that are like. Let's live our best life, but you have to spend a lot of money or spend a lot of time or both to achieve what they're preaching, right?
And the thing is. We aren't designed to have to spend, three hours a day on biohacking our life. It's just that's not the way God made us. Like we, we were made and like from the foundation up, we can be healthy and whole and all of the things. And I think a lot of it is unlearning that belief that it's gonna take so much time and that we're, we just, we don't know how to meditate.
We don't know how to sit still. We don't know how to do those things. And it doesn't have to be. I going back to what you said, like start where you are. Start where you are with five minutes, start with five breaths. Start with recognizing the difference between how you feel now and taking five very deep, slow [00:30:00] breaths and how you feel after.
And I think once we see as humans, once we see a positive effect and an immediate positive effect, for me, five deep breaths. Really does change just my relaxation. It kind of changes that brain chemistry immediately. And so trying it on, it comes with those atomic habits where if you can't get to the gym every day, start with putting your tennis shoes on every day and laying out the clothes.
Yeah. And oftentimes you put the tennis shoes on and then you're like, okay, hell, I'll put the clothes on. Okay, fine. I'll go for five. So you do that. And so that to me is also how I make those own my own changes. With taking more time. It's just gonna be small bites and be okay with that because it does make a difference.
Yeah. A lot of those little micro movement snacks or meditation, snacks or, deep breathing snacks as I like to call them, do add up to a more calm moments in your day. Right,
Pearl Cicci: exactly. And I love that because it gets to be so much more approachable to people and really breaking it down. And that's why I do too.
I love the book Atomic Habits, just start with five. Just start with whatever you can [00:31:00] do. Like start with a little bit and the more you can just dip your toe and you realize, oh, I actually felt good. And you're like, oh, maybe I'll do more like, oh. And you like you keep peeking out and it's like, oh, it's okay over here.
And you're getting more comfortable doing these things, but you'll never know until you start. And also, that's a beautiful way to help your nervous system just open up and feel okay and safer doing these things. 'cause you get the reps in, right? Repetition creates safety, so that's amazing.
Christa Elza: Yeah. And also to acknowledge and realize that the body is the unconscious, right? So we often feel something in our body before we even know mentally what it is, which is so crazy to me. But the more in tune you get with tension in your body, the more you're like, oh yeah, my body knew before my intellectual brain knew.
And so, like you said, body awareness of how you're feeling, I think is such a cool, powerful tool that's just available to us. Like you don't have to pay for it, you don't [00:32:00] have to do anything. You're like already in there. So just start to be more aware and and taking into account, like, how does movement make me feel?
How does breath work make me feel? Why do I feel tension and don't know it? And I think you, you touched on a bit like of heavy topics with grief and we're talking about big things here. It's not just like, oh, I've got a lot on my plate today. And it can be scary to feel those big feelings and being willing to sit with it and not.
Just shove it down and chase it away and to really sit with it. And that's where I think learning these tools, even on feel good days, is good. Because when,
Pearl Cicci: yeah,
Christa Elza: when the shit hits, the, hits the fan, so to speak, in whatever area of your life that is, whether it's loss or of money or of a human or of a, whatever it is, you already have some of these tools and so you don't feel quite so.
Scattered and alone and anxious and frazzled. Right, exactly.
Pearl Cicci: Yeah. Being able to build like your toolbox or your toolkit on [00:33:00] the good days, so you can have that backup like you're building like a backup, saving support system for yourself. Right. It's like you're putting it in the rep, so when you do feel really overwhelmed, like, oh, right, like I can just go to my breath or, oh, right.
I can just. Do my somatic practice or I can journal whatever your tools are. And I believe the more tools you have, the better. And I believe in equipping people with like as many tools as possible over the X amount of time. And then they can just select, oh, I know this one works really well for me, or, oh, this is what supports me in these moments.
You get to know yourself on a deep level and you just get to. Navigate life better and feeling better. And of course big things happen. It's scary to feel the emotions. And man, there was so many times I was like, this sucks. Like why do I have to feel it? He is like God, and the more you do it, the more you realize, like this is the beauty of being human.
And we get to embrace the duality of everything that we navigate and do as humans. But the more you can equip yourself and support yourself and experience all the feelings, the more you will feel liberated and free. And. [00:34:00] Yeah, just more at ease with yourself. And I think it's beautiful, that inner feeling is what most people really, really desire.
So
Christa Elza: did
Pearl Cicci: you see the Barbie movie?
Christa Elza: I didn't, no. Okay. Well, you should. But what, Barbie is like, it looks like a surface-y movie, but if you really analyze it, there are some really deep concepts in it. What stood out to me is how, towards the end of like, Barbie wanted to feel she wanted to be human, even if that meant going for a pap smear and seeing people crying and like.
Because that is really what being alive is. It's not all of just the good stuff and the pink and the, the perfect body. Like, that's what the point of that movie is in my mind of like, it's not like living is not just being perfect all the time. It's in the depth and the ups and the downs and the lights and the darks and all of that makes the human experience so cool.
And then you start to find. Peace and resilience easier, and I think you start to really thrive. We've talked [00:35:00] about this before, the difference between surviving and thriving, like you're not just surviving a situation in your life, you're thriving in it because you know there's depth to learning and you'll come out the other side of it.
Stronger, better, more in tune with yourself, you start to eat differently. Not because you wanna be just skinny, because you really value your body as a physical vessel that needs, that recognizes food as a messenger, right? So it, I think it affects all areas when you're more in tune, you start to treat your body with more self-respect in terms of like, I exercise not just for aesthetic reasons, but I exercise because that's.
What I need and turns out I feel better when I eat right and I work out. Cool. It's a side effect of honoring your body and yourself and your emotions all at one time.
Pearl Cicci: Amen to that. That's so beautiful. I really believe that once you get to a place where you realize your body is the vessel, and it's the, honestly, the messenger, it's everything like the.
How you eat, how you sleep, how you talk, how you think, how you feel, like everything you do and as a spiritual being. And we all are, [00:36:00] but I'm quite spiritual and connected. It's like the more I take care of your vessel, the more you can unlock your potential. The more you have access to your higher self.
The more you connect to your intuition, the more you attract more abundance, more opportunities, more people, more like life just becomes this. So for me, my daily habits, my eating, my nutrition, my fitness. It's a spiritual practice for me to elevate and become more of my higher self. And that's like my goal in life is to become the highest version of me.
So I must be doing these things every day and that's my perspective. But when you have that thought about how you treat yourself, like really things shift like holy shit. Like how do I wanna feel every day? Like am I gonna really eat this 'cause it affects my, all these things. Right? And really looking at the type of version of you wanna be, and taking line action to become that and do the things that help you get there.
Sheree Beaumont: Yeah, and I think it's a really important conversation. I think it's starting to shift because, and you see this, right? Like even in marketing or even in the health and wellness space, like I'm starting to notice it as a trend. [00:37:00] This identity shift. It's not so much about the external goal anymore. It's actually the standard that you're willing to hold yourself to, or at least that's, and I imagine it's the type of woman that you work with as well.
It's, I'm. Noticing I'm triggered. Okay, why was I triggered? Was it that I've had too much coffee today and my nervous system's a little bit shaky? Was it because I haven't moved my body? Is it because there's something emotionally or mentally weighing me down? Am I stressed about something in my external environment?
What am I now going to choose in this moment to help me navigate through it? And so it's integrating this awareness with the toolkit that you've so beautifully talked about to actually help us feel empowered and. Again, like moving away from this, oh, I'm doing it to reach X. I'm doing it to drop the weight.
I'm doing it to not have period pain anymore. I'm doing it to have more energy. Everyone talks about this, oh, I don't have the motivation when we flip the script and be like, well, it's not [00:38:00] about motivation. It's about the standard that I'm a living from and that I'm holding myself to and the higher self that I wanna operate as.
Those become non-negotiables. The habits are become deeply ingrained. Yeah. You show up, like Krista has talked about, like yourself, has talked about pro, where you do those daily habits as a daily practice, not 'cause you're like, this is gonna help me get and achieve X because you know that's what you need because you know that you are honoring your body and your mind and your spirit in that moment to really help make the change as a result, the byproduct of the like, the byproduct of doing that work, the result happens the way it shifts. Your mind feels clearer, you're more productive, you have more energy. You don't have gut issues. Your hormones are regulated. You're feeling fantastic. But I really do feel like people are starting to understand now that it's not about this external goal.
It's not about this external motivation when we come home to ourselves, when we're regulated within ourselves. When we are [00:39:00] choosing ourselves.
Pearl Cicci: Mm-hmm.
Sheree Beaumont: That's when the power shift and the power dynamic happens. 'cause we're not giving our power to the result that we're trying to latch onto. We're actually going, I'm doing this for me.
And as a byproduct, the butterfly effect of my family and friends and clients or the people that I'm supporting are all gonna get that better version as well.
Pearl Cicci: Mm. Yeah. I see the shift too. You so beautifully said, Shere, and I think that a lot of people are shifting more and more to this mindset, which I love because that's really like.
The goal and like everything else in your life falls into place when you focus on choosing you what you need, putting yourself, your body first, your needs, your wants, your desires. Really expressing from that place of like, I'm devoted to me, I love me. I wanna be the best version of me for me, right?
Not for anything else. And so that really starts to change everything. And once you can tap into that, of course building slowly but surely. A lot of things, your life will shift and you'll see like miracles I call miracles will happen for you. So,
Christa Elza: well, I have loved this conversation. I think [00:40:00] anytime I meet somebody else who recognizes the entire being, the mind body, spirit connection, I'm like, let's have a conversation.
So I really appreciate you Pearl, being here with us today and just sharing your wisdom and spreading your magic in this conversation. How and where can people connect with you? Do you just do in person, do you do virtual? And we'll put it in the show notes, but I want you to share how people can connect with you if they're really looking for kind of a holistic approach to.
Making changes in their life.
Pearl Cicci: Yeah. Well, thanks much for having me. It's been a great conversation. I love jamming out about this, so thank you. Thank you. And if you're listening and you love this conversation, you wanna dive more into my world. You can just message me on Instagram at pearl cc. The main way I connect with people is through Instagram, so just DM me if you listen to this.
Send me a message that you liked it. And if you wanna dive deeper into my work, I do have one-on-one coaching available. I do in person stuff too. So if you're in Vancouver by chance. Let me know. Hit me up and come through. But [00:41:00] that's the best way is Instagram.
Christa Elza: I wanna come see you in person when I go skiing this next ski season through Vancouver Whistler's.
Amazing. So I would
Pearl Cicci: love to meet you.
Christa Elza: Yeah. I'll have to stop by. Thank you again for being here and spreading your, again, your magic and what you say and what you do. I think everyone's gonna appreciate it. Thanks again.
Pearl Cicci: Thank you so
Christa Elza: much.
If you love this episode, be sure to leave us a review, download, and subscribe. If you know someone that could also benefit from this conversation, please share. That's how we Spread Empowered Health. We'll see you again for another episode of the Wild and Wild Collective.
