Healing Your Body with Verdell Jessup

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:00:00

trigger warning, the Resilience Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this podcast may include topics that you may find difficult, the listeners discretion is advised.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:00:19

Hello friends, welcome to radical resilience, a weekly show where I learned Kaplan Venables have inspirational conversations with people who have survived life's most challenging times. We all have the ability to be resilient and bounce forward from a difficult experience. And these conversations prove just that, get ready to dive into these life changing moments while strengthening your resilience muscle and getting raw and real.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:00:50

Welcome back to another episode of radical resilience. It's me, Blair Kaplan Venables, and I'm so excited about today's guest Verdell Jessup. I actually met her on social media. I love I love her. I've only been, you know, working with her for a few months. And as soon as I met her, I knew she had to be on the show. A friend of mine told me about a very profound healing experience. In fact, it was on my birthday August 8, and she told me all about this experience she had with the specific healer didn't say any names. And to me, it was such a profound experience. I was thinking, wow, I have to meet her. And within a couple of days Verdell came into my life by divine timing. So Verdell is a somatic experiencing and developmental trauma specialist. She is based in Vancouver in Canada's but helps people all around the world. She works primarily with, you're probably going to have to fix this fix the way I say this auto nomic autonomic does that right for now. Oh, she's not okay, autonomic nervous system and the vagus nerve to help the nervous system become more regulated through somatic touch work. Friends, the nervous system is so important. If you've gone through a trauma or a challenge or something hard. Your nervous system gets all out of whack. And trust me, the last three years through my nervous system into a complete tizzy. And starting to work with Verdell, it was actually one of the first times I felt like I was able to sleep. Laughter My first session working with rodella actually felt like I was able to relax and sleep my body and my mind felt safe. And that is what she does. She helps you with your nervous system. Hello, Verdell

Verdell Jessup: 00:02:27

Good morning.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:02:30

Good morning. She has such an extensive bio. And I'm gonna put it all in the show notes. But I'm just so excited to bring her to you, because she has quite the journey to get to where she is today. And I'm sure a lot of you haven't even heard of somatic experiencing. Tell us about it. And tell us about it. How did you get into it?

Verdell Jessup: 00:02:51

I got into it from my own adverse experiences. At the time, I didn't realize that I hadn't really any trauma. If someone asked me, I wrote a report. No, my childhood was normal. I had great parents really supportive parents, I didn't come from a family where anyone drank, I didn't come from a family where there was any abuse or any yelling, if anything, my family was shut down. And so it was really fascinating when a friend said, Hey, we should study trauma. And there's this modality called somatic experiencing that works with how the body stores trauma. And through the first years of the training, it's the training set up over three years, and the first two years is just talking. And so if I'm the practitioner, I'm directing you, if you tell me about a story, I'm gonna stop you and ask you where in the body Do you notice that? And then see, if you're able to tune in, and even go with your mind's eye inside, I'm going to maybe ask if there's a color, a texture, an image, is there a sensation there? Or is there a movement and from there, we can start to pull apart the traumatic event and how the event is stored in your body. So just to go back into kind of give a definition of trauma. Trauma really isn't the event traumas, how it's lasting in your body, how your body has catalogued it, and it how it continues to affect you day after day. And it doesn't have to be a severely traumatic event. Anything stressful, can create a dis dysregulation or disease in the body. And so, through going through the training, it wasn't until the touch component came in to the somatic experiencing which is in the third advanced year that I realized Whoa, my body has been storing all of my trauma. And so the moment someone started touch work with me, I realized I had all these coping and management strategies to prevent someone from even touching me. It was like I had this armor that would come on when someone tried to touch into my trauma, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is fascinating. And that's where I really realized that the friend that introduced me to somatic experiencing, possibly knew more about my system at the time than I did. And this is where I started to really unravel my own nervous system, almost like an artichoke one piece coming off at a time. And the more curious I was, the deeper I wanted to go into my own physiology, my own healing.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:05:51

Wow, that's really profound. And I really like your definition of trauma. It's kind of like the residual effects of what happened, but the long lasting, and you're saying you didn't think you had any?

Verdell Jessup: 00:06:04

No, no. And there's another like phrase that everyone uses they used to. And I mean, this comes into your work resiliency, they used to say kids were resilient. And now they know that kids aren't resilient, they're malleable. They are malleable to the environment they are in to their parents, their grandparents, their community, they are just going to adapt for survival reasons to whatever environment they are in. It's not that we're resilient. And so here we are, as adults unpacking we don't know why we have this behavior. Why do we retreat? Every time someone wants to have a conversation with us, or even bring up a difficult conversation? And so there's all of these things. If we look back in our lives to say, Wow, maybe that's where I developed it. It's really not to blame anyone. All parents were doing their best, their very best. And some aspects of our life and time periods of our life. Our parents were struggling more, maybe they were struggling financially, maybe their relationship wasn't doing very well, possibly, they had other influences in family stresses. Maybe there's a war on the brink. These all factor in to how our parents are doing and managing. Not to mention, they are just a byproduct of their upbringings.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:07:38

That's, like that's so well put, because I know growing up as a child, like I didn't know at the time I had trauma. But what I was going through was hard or difficult, like as a kid, you don't really know, you survive. But now as an adult, I'm able to look back and be like, Wow, that wasn't okay. Well, that was inappropriate. Oh, wow. Now I see. And like for me, it was very clear that I have trauma. But for you with your trauma, are you able to go back? Because I know people listening also are like you who like, oh, I had a great childhood, or I'm fine didn't have any trauma? Are you able to go back now and think of moments in your childhood that may have caused you to have trauma?

Verdell Jessup: 00:08:18

Most definitely. Minor, probably not the typical ones unless possibly you grew up on a farm. So some of my first traumatic experiences are more medical based. So it was all only in advance somatic touch. Training, that I realized that I had birth trauma. And it was only because I was on the table as the really playing client, and one of my colleagues in the training was working with me. And we were working that morning with gasp reflexes. And all of a sudden, my autonomic nervous system had me wiggling and squiggling on a table. And what I was reporting was that my inner palate in my mouth was getting narrower and the plates on the top of my head, were actually getting smaller as if I was going to be squeezed through the birthing canal. And I was wiggling away with going away. And one of the trainers, Steve Terrell, who's based in Austin, Texas came over and he just said, your birth was ugly. And I looked at him because you can come out of the experience you're having. And I said, What does that mean? And he says, nevermind right now. We'll talk about it later. And so there I am squiggling. My shoulders are getting all really tight and squished and my head has all this pressure because all the plates are trying to get smaller as if I'm navigating through this tiny little hole. And then all of a sudden as I feel as if my crown in my head is cracked sting out of my mother, I can't breathe. And all of a sudden on the table, I'm starting to go blue. And bluer and bluer and bluer. And so here, you know, the, the teaching that day was gasp reflexes. So just a matter of fact of me listening to the lecture, watching a demo, elicited my body to say, Today's the day, we are going to work on this. So there I am. And it's my friend who's being the practitioner with me. And she's like, You need to breathe, you need to breathe. When are you going to breathe. And so Steve comes back circles back to me. And he's like, just tilt her head a little bit, tilt her head, and then all of a sudden, I take the biggest gasp of my life. And then my body is flooded with oxygen, and all of these sensations. And I even start wiggling more. I'm not a crier, typically, due to being at the time I was so shut down, that all of a sudden, I'm just flooded with all this emotion. And then the time is up. And, you know, he comes along and says, Okay, sit up, get off the table. When I go to get off the table, I can't walk. I collapsed to the floor, and I regressed or digressed into a baby. And he's like, You need to figure out how to walk. Like, we don't have time for this in the class. And I was like, Okay, well, like let me figure it out quickly. But it really took me two days to feel like I was back in my adult body. But what I noticed different in my physiology, was that I could actually breathe. up into that point. Everyone said, You're hardly breathing. You're a shallow breather. Here. We should work with your diaphragm. We need to be doing breathing exercises with you. Every time in my Feldenkrais training, there is exercises that are lessons that do seesaw breathing, I would get this mass panic and not realize why am I panicking? When I'm asked to hold my breath and to move my breath from one area of my body to another? Well, after this experience, and somatic touch of me realizing, wow, I had birthing trauma, and it involved my airway. My mom passed in 2005. So I only had my father to call. My father isn't a man of details or many words. So they're on the phone. I'm like, Dad, were you at my birth? And he was like, Yes, I was allowed in. My dad was in uniform. He was a police officer, he retired police officer. And so they allowed him in the room. And so I said to my dad, well, did I come out crying? Were there any complications? My dad says, No, it was normal. And I was like, clearly from my experience, a week ago on the table in somatic touch practice. During the Gasper flex, it wasn't normal. So I was like, digging, digging, digging, and I was like, Dad, something was wrong. What was wrong? And so I was like, if I wasn't crying, and I wasn't doing what was I doing? And my dad said, Oh, you weren't breathing? And I was like, how is that normal? How is that normal? Then my dad said, in a very calm voice. Well, they fixed it. They rectified it really quickly. And I was like, Okay, how dad, my dad said, They hung me, they held on to my ankles. And they just beat me until I started breathing. And that was regular protocol for a baby who's not breathing. So then I say to my dad, well, dad, imagine a newborn, my first life experience, I'm not breathing, and then I get beaten. How on earth is that normal. And so then I started realizing how that had impacted that was the foundation of the rest of my life. And thank goodness, I had found somatic experiencing and then the somatic touch work, which is the work of Kathy Cain, to help my physiology, be the strongest, most vibrant physiology that I can have, because if not, if I was to keep going, and be a shallow breather, and all these other things that have been just stacked on top of that experience, my allostatic load, which is a medical term of how much my nervous system my body is physically holding. It stresses me vascular ly, so my capillaries, my arteries and veins are stressed. So They can't pump the blood, it affects your digestion and how smooth your digestion is and how easy it is my pupil dilation, my hormones and so all of these things are can be affected by one event in our life. And so I'm really on a journey of reducing my allostatic load. So I can be vibrant and live a life with little medical invention as I age.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:15:34

Wow. That's a that's really profound Verdell like that story about like how you started your time on this earth. And decades later, learning about it,

Verdell Jessup: 00:15:46

it is and then the other component of growing up on a farm is I've gotten when I was seven years old, I got caught in electric fence. I was on a an ATV, a three wheeler and went around a corner and got caught in the electric fence. And they're not sure how long I was zapped for. And so I have a lot of electrical trauma in my life, which I think also led to having sensitivities to electricity. So now I'm hypersensitive to electricity. I don't wear a watch for a reason. But any medical procedures that have any electrical component to it, I have to really stress and over. Over the years I've gotten to be really having conviction when I tell a medical and individual doctor that I'm a fainter I've had seizures being at physio, hooked up to these little rapid fire machines that I can't do what the average person can do. Even all these healing machines that are coming out the Healey Gosh, what are some of the other ones that are big names right now? I am hypersensitive. So when you put on a machine, I often say this is too much. And what a practitioner often reports to me Oh no, it's on the lowest setting. Know anyone who's experience near electrocution, near drowning or near poisoning, we'll have what's called fluid trauma. And when we have fluid trauma, electrical charges don't move through our system the same, because the way my system my physiology has dealt with the fluid trauma is it has shunted all of my fluid just to my core, which explained why I had all of these long lasting skin conditions. And everyone looking at me being like, oh my gosh, like, why are you flaking? Why do you look like your skin is like a peeling snake or an old elephant. Until I had that experience and another training with Kathy Cain and Steve Terrell, where my fluid started. Well, it actually didn't start moving in the training, I nearly fainted and required five different assistants and Cathy cane working with me to get me from not fainting, when they touched in to my fluid. And all my defense mechanisms showed up. And I was going down that dark tunnel with a light at the end, which I knew very well because I had spent a life up until that point fainting anything stressful. My body's only defense mechanism was to freeze. I didn't have fighting available and I didn't have running available. And so this then explained why through all these events in my life, I was just collapsing onto a floor into a puddle and realizing oh my gosh, like this has to change I can't every stressful event in my life I just can't collapse and try to get out of the situation. And so I'm ever so grateful for somatic experiencing and somatic touch because it physically and emotionally has changed has altered the way I live life. Yeah, wow.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:19:38

Those are really like the, you know, learning that you had those traumas and going through the process of healing sounds very profound and obviously extremely life changing for you. And you know, when we first start working together, you shared that a lot of people only come to you as a last resort.

Verdell Jessup: 00:19:56

They certainly do and you know it's a wealth It could be a good thing or a bad thing. Some individuals, our souls need all of these lessons, they need to experience talk therapy, they need to experience CBT, they need to experience tapping, they need to try meditation they need to try and microdosing whatever it might be, they might need those lessons. But if we're looking to be most effective, and efficient, if you can jump some of those lessons, and find a somatic experiencing touch practitioner, who is extremely versed in the touch work, who can handle the biggest things that show up. And so I urge individuals to go and to interview a few different practitioners to make sure that that practitioner is right for you. Because when we are going to touch in to trauma, and into our physiology, we want the environment to be as safe as possible, we want a very secure container, so that our autonomic nervous system is able to say, Oh, my goodness, I feel safe enough. And it will bring up specifically what it is ready to process. And, and this is really key in life is really seeking out someone who's the right fit. And they might only be the right fit for a couple of years to when you both grow each other, and you're ready to go and seek out the next practitioner or the next modality. But I think it's really, really important for individuals to really take a deep look at Somatic Experiencing somatic touch work, before going to talk therapy, where I mean, so many of my clients have spent 3040 $50,000 on all of these modalities. Yeah, you're indicating that you have,

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:22:07

I've spent a lot of money on it, and I needed it. But what you offer is so much different than talk therapy.

Verdell Jessup: 00:22:15

Yeah, and when someone comes in, I'm getting a little bit of the story. It's interesting, some clients have more of a need to tell the story. And I just let them tell the story, I'm not really engaging, I'm not being curious to, you know, check out this component of it or go here. Because I'm getting the story of the body, how it's stored in the cells in the fascia in the fluid system. And it will be a completely different story than the verbal story. And anything prior to four years old, we don't really have a verbal story. We weren't really in our prefrontal cortex making you able to reason and everything. So the stories we walk around telling about our early childhood are what our parents or aunts and uncles or grandparents told us, or when we look through a photo album, we are making up a story about the picture. But when you come on to a table, and are working through the trauma, the story is very different.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:23:27

So true. I think that's that's so true. And it's interesting, because I'm in I'm from a family who took a lot of photos and a lot of videos, my data, my grandfather was actually into photography, that was his passion, he was in a camera clip. So we have we have a lot of moments documented. And for me, I'm piecing a lot of it together. So it's what you're saying just makes so much sense, because I don't know if how I remember it, or when the story I'm making up is actually how it happened. And as I'm on this healing journey, I'm starting to learn more and remember more, and it's really interesting. I want to switch gears a bit because we're gonna, I feel like I could talk to you for hours Verdell. So you might have to come back again. But I think something that we've talked about, I think, if we can dissect it a bit, what is the autonomic nervous system and the vagus nerve like what are those things? And maybe we can talk about how like when you come to people how they are and then what your your work does to unravel them or like to heal them.

Verdell Jessup: 00:24:27

Our autonomic nervous system is a system that's virtually invisible. Medically, it's really hard to monitor or test because our autonomic nervous system is automatically responding to every millisecond of the environment we are in. So it is assessing the situation all the time and it is going to respond because it has been pre programmed pre historically, our systems have written out these plans. And the plan can be that if there is a stressor, it can respond with fight, flight or freeze. And now they're adding a semi one in there that is fawning. So, fawning is where we are being submissive to whoever our caregivers are, we are doing what they want us to do, because we need them to shelter us give us food and water, particularly when we're really young. So our autonomic nervous system is responsible for everything that is happening. Like in the morning, I don't get up and think, oh, I need to remember to turn on my digestion today. And maybe I should also open up the trap, so that my stool can freely move out to me. These are all happening autonomically the vagus nerve is the second largest nerve bundle next to our spinal column. The vagus nerve is responsible for hormone releasing, pupil dilation, respiration, heart rate, and our digestion. And this really the the vagus nerve, the polyvagal theory really comes out of Stephen Porges work of looking at how the vagus nerve is dysregulated, from events in our life stressors in our life. And what he noticed was that little stressors really affected all elements of the vagus nerve. And we wonder why our digestion is off. And so an example of that is some people are extremely constipated. Some people are extremely loose. And then we have individuals that have IBS. So irritable bowel syndrome, that are almost like a light switch, someone's flicking the switch, and now they have diarrhea, and then someone flipped, flips the switch, and now they're constipated. This is all happening in the vagus nerve. Our sleep can be affected from our hormones and what's being pumped through. In order for us to actually have a healthy, rested sleep, we need to be moving into our parasympathetic nervous system within the autonomic nervous system. And so there's two divisions, there's a sympathetic with the fight and the flight, and then the parasympathetic. And within that we have high tone dorsal and low tone, dorsal, low tone is rest and digest high tone is fainting, or into a coma is where we're really going dorsal. We are shutting down and going into the depths of conservation, basically just being alive enough to survive. And so we'll see individuals coming into my office who some, their systems are really stuck in the sympathetic. They run, maybe they're a marathon runner, they have a high profile job. They're running on a hamster wheel. And what they report is that they have a really hard time going to bed. They just can't get their body to relax enough. They do better if they're constantly over program over scheduling, that holidays are really tough, because their system just can't come down. And so we're really working on their nervous system to see how, why is it stuck in that? Go Go Go State. And by working with them often, like what you reported, is your system noticed something different? And then you went home and crashed? I think you reported for 12 hours, where you your whole system went, Oh my gosh, like I need to repair and rest as much as possible. where someone might come in to see me who's really shut down. They've lost joy in their life. They're really, really frozen in many ways. They have a hard time leaving their house or being motivated even to see friends. They're really retreating into a hole And in the last two years, we also seen that because of COVID, a lot of people retreated into that hole, and are having a hard time now moving out and being in crowds again. So they might have already been shut down. But then society as a whole pulled everyone back, and starting to be in social situations is extremely stressful. So those individuals really need help to get their system with more tone, and more of the sympathetic system on board. But we can also have individuals come in to see me where the best analogy is where their car, and the gas is pedal to the metal, but someone is holding the emergency brake. So really, they have the sympathetic energy that wants to go, but someone pulled the emergency brake, and now they're just burning out all over their adrenals. So they have adrenal fatigue, we get into a lot of autonomic or autoimmune diseases kind of fall in here, a mystery illnesses that the doctors can't figure out, but they'll be locked somehow in the physiology that's in this gas pedal down with the emergency brake polled. And so individuals come to see me. And often, they're coming through word of mouth or from a functional Doctor recommendation referral. And they're often with really medical issues that they can't figure out. So more recently, I'm working with a lot of people that have heart conditions. And they've had heart condition. Some of them, it's more recent, but for some of them, they've had it for the last 10 or 15 years. And I'm working with their kidneys and adrenals, their nervous system, autonomic nervous system, to help it realize it could be in a different state. And I'm looking just to change or to sport, the nervous system just to shift a tiny little bit. Because of what's really important for us to integrate, and absorb the work, it really needs to be these tiny, little bikeable digestible little increment changes. If it's too big, it again, is considered too overwhelming for the system. And what what individuals clients report is very different. Even though I'm doing the same thing, every time someone comes to see me, what they report happening is very different. And they report they're sleeping better, their digestion is better. They're calmer, anxiety decreases, they have more space in their life, have difficult conversations with individuals. What are some of the other ones, I mean, it's just amazing. I work with a woman who's in her 70s. And she just says, you know, she struggles going upstairs, that she just can't get enough breath. And after having a session with me for weeks, she's fine. She's like, I don't know how it works. But all of a sudden, for weeks on end, I can breathe. And then her system kind of slowly retreats back to this old behavior. And she comes back in for another session. And it's not that our system has gone to where we started working. It's just when shit hits the fan, we go back to our old well worn patterns of survival.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:33:53

I love that. And I think, you know, as someone who has gone through a lot of stuff as my whole life, but even the last three years, I'm not someone who wants to know, I'm not going to do this unless I understand how it works. I'm someone who like, I know how I want to feel and other people who have done this and feel that way. I didn't even look into what you did. I literally like a friend of mine had very profound experience. And I was like, Yeah, Sign me up. And I think sometimes we need to take that chance. And it might not be something read in a textbook or like you know, traditional medicine or traditional healing. And that's okay because not every modality is right for everyone. But everyone wants to breathe better and sleep better and we all have trauma.

Verdell Jessup: 00:34:40

We we do we do. In the last three weeks. I started working with two osteopaths in Vancouver. They are husband and wife. And it is profound. So, you know, the husband comes in and he reports that he's had a skin condition He has kind of sleep issues. He's maybe struggled with self assurance. And he had one session. And then he quickly contacted me again and wanted another session. And so I saw him yesterday morning. And I was so curious, like, Okay, why did you book a session in between your two sessions? And he just said, I just wanted to understand what the hell happened in that session. I love it. His skin condition flared, yeah, after the session. And he said, I just spent a week where my self worth or knowing of the work I do was questioned, with every client I worked with, is that it's not a bad thing. I'm not blaming you. But he's like, Wow, I can't believe my body has bought brought these two things, my skin condition back for me to see. And for me to work on my inner knowing trusting myself. Wow. And so I can't wait to see him next week.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:36:10

Do you think his skin condition has gone? Well,

Verdell Jessup: 00:36:13

it's coming up for a reason. Yeah. And it's in a particular reason where I'm like, Well, you know what that is in that area. And so often, we need to, and I know skin conditions are really traumatic, especially if they're on our face, we can't hide them. But we must think our physiology for one is presenting it on our skin, we need to do a happy dance, that it is visible. That we can actually see it is our body messaging to us a big signal sign that something is going on. Where if it's not visible, and it's happening inside, you know, there's so many people that go to the hospital eventually. And they figure out that they have stage four cancer of a tumor, the size of a grapefruit, where skin, it really says hey, look at me, there's an issue here, we need to deal with this. And it sucks that it's on your skin, but be grateful about it showing up. And so I kind of laughed at him. And I said, Well, you see where it is, you know, it's there. Let's let's really tap this and explore maybe what you've been blocking. And we had this beautiful conversation about where it is. And he's like, I'm not sure I'm ready for this. And I suppose this is a good question like, and for you to continue asking of like, you know, I think your body is ready, but you're blocking it. And until we kind of step out the way and truly trust that our body, our guts know better than our brain that we can move through this. I love working with individuals that have medical backgrounds

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:38:15

is so good. Oh, Verdell, you're amazing. And okay, so you work in person, you will go to someone if someone's like, oh, in Hawaii, or Egypt, or wherever they may be, you will fly you, you'll fly, you'll go there. And you've told me stories about working with families for multiple days on and all over the world. You also do work virtually. Right. So, you know, if you're listening to what Verdell has to say, you know, contact our her informations in the show notes. See if she's the right practitioner for you. Don't let this be your last resort. I think coming from someone who has explored many different healing modalities, that this is definitely a piece of the puzzle that I needed. And I'm probably going to always be working in some capacity with Verdell, because we're humans, and we have all this healing to do and I'm responsible for me and you out there are responsible for you and your healing. And you don't have to wait for a last result or last results last resort. And, you know, Fidel, it shouldn't be the last resort. And I can tell you that. I've been in a state of was it fight flight or freeze, right? I've been in, in in that state of being chased by tigers, probably my entire life. I as early back as I can remember is probably age six or seven. And working with her after one session. She said I you know, I slept for 12 hours and like I remember having a deep sleep and I actually woke up feeling rested. And I can't tell you the last time that that's happened. I mean like Now it happens more often and I have a long way to go. But you know, we don't have to walk through life. With this deep trauma, and there are people out there who are magical and they help us heal like Verdelland so, Verdell, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your gift with the radical resilience community. You are such a treat here is such a gift. You're so special. And thank you for everyone for tuning in to another episode. And with that, know that it is okay to not be okay. You are not alone. We are gonna get through it together. There are people like me and Verdell who will help you through

Unknown: 00:40:32

it. And it's really important we find a support network. We are social creatures. We need to heal in community, we can not heal alone.

Blair Kaplan Venables: 00:40:44

We can't heal them. We don't have to go through life alone. You are not alone. So with out further ado, thanks for tuning in. You can catch us next week on your favorite podcast player. You missed some episodes. You're just discovering us and you love us started episode one.