Connecting Your Emotions to Overall Health [Podcast with Emily Francis]

At the heart of the PCOS Diva philosophy, we are striving for connection to our bodies rather than control over them. Today’s podcast guest Emily Francis and I agree that you must treat the physical body, the emotional body, the energy body, and the spiritual body together for true healing to occur. Healing PCOS is so much more than going on a low carb diet or beating yourself up at the gym. Listen in or read the transcript of my conversation with Emily as we discuss taking back your power and living your best possible life.

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Mentioned in this podcast:

• Healingourselveswhole.com
• All About Healing on Healthy Life Radio
• Emily’s Book: Healing Ourselves Whole: An Interactive Guide to Release Pain and Trauma by Utilizing the Wisdom of the Body
• PCOS Diva Podcast #121: Childhood Trauma & PCOS [Podcast wit Keesha Ewers]
• Sparkle Cleanse

Complete Transcript:

Amy:

Today’s guest on the PCOS Diva Podcast is Emily Francis. I met Emily when I was a guest on her internet radio show, called All About Healing. It’s on Healthy Life Radio, so definitely check that out. Emily has a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and wellness, as well as a master’s of science in physical education. She graduated from the Atlanta School of Massage in Clinical and Neuromuscular massage therapy. But when I was talking to Emily, I found out that her real passion is about healing ourselves on a really deep level. If you have been listening to the PCOS Diva Podcast, you know that healing PCOS is so much more than going on a low carb diet or killing yourself at the gym.

She has a brand new book out that I’ve read and it is fantastic. I invited her on to talk about it. The name of her book is Healing Ourselves Whole: An Interactive Guide to Release Pain and Trauma by Utilizing the Wisdom of the Body. I’m so glad that she’s going to be sharing her wisdom about healing on today’s podcast episode. Welcome, Emily, to the PCOS Diva Podcast.

Emily Francis:

Thank you, Amy. Thank you for having me, and thank you, all of you, who are tuning in for giving me this time and attention and focus. I’m grateful to be here.

Amy:

Well, a couple episodes ago, I think it was episode … I wrote this down, 121. I had Dr. Keesha Ewers come on, and she talked about childhood trauma and PCOS. That episode really resonated with so many women. It seems that there’s somewhat of a common thread between women who have PCOS and some type of incident in childhood. I know I’m a child of divorce, my parents were divorced when I was five. I do think that that trauma somehow played a part in the manifestation of my PCOS. Your book talks a lot about healing ourselves of trauma. I don’t want to reveal too much, because I want you to talk about your story, and we’ll get into those things in our life that we have to address in order to heal our bodies.

Emily Francis:

Well, thank you. It’s really amazing to me, and I have to just jump right down in it. I don’t know any women that don’t have a story to tell, where something in their body … When I say this, a lot of people assume that all women were sexually assaulted, and I’m not saying that. But there is some sort of sexual thread, most of the time. It might not be an assault. It could be something that was said. It could be something that happened. You going through your parent’s divorce, they’re your lifeline. They’re your pulse to the world. Where we choose to store the pain, it leaks to what the original trauma was. You have to think about when a person experiences any sort of assault to their body in any way, and we call it a trauma, it produces a negative experience. The mind ejects. It separates itself from the body. The story that we tell becomes hazy.

Because in the moment of impact, whatever impact that is, we are out of there. But your body can’t. It can’t leave. So the memories inject right into the cells and into the tissues, and my work is really around muscle memory. When my hands, because my hands are on the body. When my hands are on a person’s body, you have to think, for a massage, a person is undressed, or at the very most, in underwear. They are draped accordingly. My job is to setup a safe space, drape properly, which makes me oh so crazy on people. You must be draped. Those boundaries have to be enforced and in place and people need to be safe. So I drape accordingly.

But because you’re so vulnerable, that when you’re in that place, I would always come in and say, “You’re in a safe space, you can say anything you want, you won’t be judged, I don’t know any of the people in your story, you don’t have to talk at all, it’s completely up to you.” But a lot of times, when people would come to me, what I would work around was ovarian cancer. I would speak at the Ovarian Cancer alliance and things like that. So for specific to the work that I would do a lot of, those people did have some sort of sexual thread. It doesn’t mean that they were raped, necessarily, or a victim of incest. But there is a story. There’s definitely a story in there.

I don’t know a woman who doesn’t have a story. It’s something along whether they were hitting puberty, or whether they were a child. Any part of their life, the trauma goes into wherever it needs to be. Our female organs is the place of creativity. It’s the place of safety. It’s the place of the womb, the sacred womb. It’s our mother place. It’s our connection to the mother place. It’s also our connection and our holding spot for some of the deepest most sincere traumas of our life. Now in the muscle, which is right near the ovaries, is the psoas. That’s P-S-O-A-S, psoas. That muscle is the second most emotional muscle in your entire body. Clinically, if you’re treating somebody’s psoas, which it’s your primary hip flexor, it makes you be able to bring your knee up to your chest, or sit in a chair, or drive a car.

If your low back goes out, it’s because the psoas cramped up. It’s not actually because your back went out. You have to know those muscles. What we learned in massage school a million years ago is that people will often cry when you’re in that space, because you’re now hitting the muscle of one of the most vulnerable places in your body. It’s not like a, “I’m uncomfortable, or I’m embarrassed, or this.” It’s a trigger. It’s a trigger area. I think maybe people have heard about trigger points in muscles where you have a pain in one area, and then it refers, and the pain releases in another. So you actually have to treat both, not just origin and insertion, but the place where it hurts, and the place where it’s referring and hurts.

That’s the same thing, the psoas generally has these trigger points in it. But it can go so deep into emotions. That whole area in your body is the most sacred, the most vulnerable, and the most exposed. You also have to think about, we don’t ever think about this, we are the only animals in the world that have all of our vital organs exposed. We’re up on two’s instead of four’s. All the other animals, the mammals, have that whole area down to the ground, it’s safer. Ours is widely exposed and open. And with it comes a great deal of responsibility. Unfortunately, not everybody respects the responsibility that comes with somebody’s body. Let’s start there.

Amy:

That is so interesting. I’ve never heard of that muscle before.

Emily Francis:

Wow.

Amy:

Yeah I know. That’s really interesting. Two comments, I often, in my coaching, tell women that I have found that those that I coach who are suffering the most from their PCOS symptoms have often lost their touch with their creative selves. By encouraging a woman to think back to what they enjoyed doing during childhood. You know, did they like to dance? Did they like to sing or music or art? Arts and crafts. Even just coloring is a great release for your creativity and I think that helps healing. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that I do a detox program, it’s called the Sparkle Cleanse. One of the things that I recommend during the two weeks that I’m with clients, as we’re doing the Sparkle Cleanse, to have them go and get a massage as a detox modality.

It’s so interesting when women come back and say, “It was such an emotional release, that they really didn’t expect to go to a massage therapist and be detoxing emotions as well.” That whole idea of muscle memory, and it makes sense when you’re riding a bike, right? You don’t really forget to ride a bike, right?

Emily Francis:

Right.

Amy:

I grew up golfing. I don’t get to do it that much anymore, but whenever I get a golf club in my hands I can swing it pretty well, that muscle memory comes back. It makes sense that our memories are stored in our muscles. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that, and how it relates to trauma.

Emily Francis:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to go back just for a second to the massage thing. Because a lot of times, when you receive a massage, that person’s hands might be the only person that has touched you in a very long time. Different clients that are divorced, widowed. I used to work on a man who’d had an aneurysm, he didn’t have a partner. I clipped his toenails for him, because nobody else would touch his feet. I would come down with a warm bowl of soapy water and wash his feet before we got started, well, because they were really dirty, and I wanted them to be clean before we started. But I was the only person that touched him. It’s a gift, because I take that work so seriously. It’s such a sacred piece of work to me. Because I am giving loving touch with no expectations of anything coming back at me.

It’s an unconditional touch of love that doesn’t have any particular meaning, it’s just a beautiful offering. Now what really makes me crazy though, unfortunately, is that so many people, they’ll go to the spa or some of these really McDonald’s-esque massage places, and some are still great, because the power of touch is beautiful, as long as the person is respectful, understands proper boundaries, and handles your body with care. But there are a lot of people out there that don’t handle your body with care, and then people leave there more traumatized than they were going in. Just, I want to put that out there, because you hear more stories than I like to about that.

You, as the client, have to be your best advocate. You have to be draped. You have to be draped and fully covered, and feel safe. If you don’t feel safe, it’s okay to get off the table and take your power back. I want to put that out there, for everyone that’s listening. Because I had, my very best friend went to a spa and it was a male massage therapist, and he lifted the whole sheet and looked at her naked body. She never reported him. She’s the same person who lost her virginity by being raped by her boyfriend. This is the same pattern. Even though it’s a massage, somehow she stumbled into the same pattern and didn’t stand up for herself. Usually, she’s a loudmouth. She’s an improv comedian, she’s hilarious. She didn’t stand up for herself. She never talked to the manager, she never left.

But there’s something very powerful to say, “You know what? You’re not allowed to have your hands on me if you’re not completely professional and appropriate, I’m going to take my power back and I’m going to leave this space.” Just everybody who’s listening, because we’re talking about, you, potentially, you’re going to attract one of two ways. You’re going to attract somebody who gives you the most loving, appropriate touch, and it’s going to change your life, and it’s going to give you that space to fully release and exhale in a way that you have not exhaled in so long. That’s what I want for you. But if that’s not what you’re getting, then get off the table. Take your power back. Take it back with your PCOS, take it back with your doctors, take it back with anybody who puts their hands on your body. That’s really, really important.

Okay. You asked me a question and I got sidetracked. But I think it was something about the muscle memory?

Amy:

Well, honestly, I think after reading your book, I would love for you to describe the heavy four. And maybe walk us through that. Because I think that women listening can really resonate. I know I certainly did. Those are sort of … Well, I’ll let you get into it. Then I want you to kind of take us through sort of a process on how to begin healing.

Emily Francis:

Okay. When you use Dr. Google and you look at feelings and emotions, different things will come up. There’s a feeling wheel, there’s an emotion wheel, and then a lot of discrepancies. Then tons of different words. I don’t believe the body does that. I believe there are very specific emotions that the body holds, that when I place my hands on a body, the tissues have a message. That is four basic, deeply held, painful emotions. That is trauma, which I said was anything that causes an impact or a negative effect inside your body. Shame, guilt, those two are the most dysfunctional best friends in the world. They are such a pattern. So trauma, guilt, shame is a cycle. Then you have grief, and grief is a different player. It’s a totally different player.

So trauma, guilt, and shame work together, in tandem, into the body. So something happened that was traumatic, there’s your trauma. Then, you feel guilty because now you think, “Okay, I did this.” Then you have shame, where this was done to me, but I’m the bad guy. I’m always the bad guy. It’s always this beat-up. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of pure hell. You’re the bad guy, it’s your fault, you did this wrong, you’re this person. Or whoever used to speak to you in unkind words, you took it on and decided that that’s who you are. So whenever something goes wrong, the beat-up internally is the same verbiage. That’s the trauma, guilt, shame cycle. They play off of each other.

But I believe that the tissues, the way that I feel, shame and guilt, one hardens the tissues, the other makes it cry. I think shame makes the tissues cry. Shame is an internal beat. And guilt hardens.

Amy:

When I was reading this, I really saw myself, my younger self, when I was really suffering with PCOS symptoms, namely insulin resistance, blood sugar control. I didn’t know it at that time, but I had horrible disordered eating patterns. Compulsive eating, sugar, I could never get enough sugar. I felt so shameful about it. Then anytime I had an episode, I would just feel tremendously guilty afterwards.

Emily Francis:

Tremendously guilty, it’s the beat, it’s the beat-down.

Amy:

Yes.

Emily Francis:

Shame and guilt, I don’t believe that you can actually have one without the other. But I don’t believe they’re the same. I believe they’re incredibly intertwined with each other. But they are two different actions inside your body. That’s why I said guilt hardens the tissues, shame makes your body cry. Shame makes you feel like you’re five years old again, no matter what age you are. My mom used to say, “You should be ashamed. You should be ashamed.” She would say it all the time. “Aren’t you shamed?” It’s like I still, I work very hard not to talk to my children like that, very hard. I work very hard not to use the guilt to get what I want. Because that’s how I was … I was raised through a system of guilt.

My mother’s a wonderful person, but to get what she wants, she will guilt. She still guilts me. I’m 46 years old and she still guilts me. I find myself, I couldn’t give myself a break. Even silly, silly things. Like if somebody gave me a gift, she thought that it was really bad if I opened it and enjoyed it. Because what I’m supposed to do with that gift is give it to somebody else. Never am I supposed to enjoy it myself. It got to the point when I was sort of blooming within myself, of trying to learn how to feel happy and be okay with that feeling. I went to a white elephant Christmas party once, and I got this big, Ghirardelli hot chocolate thing. I pulled into my mom’s garage, and I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to eat any of this, because she’s going to make me feel so guilty. Because what friend should we give it to right now?

I opened it up in the car, before I got out of the car, and started eating some of the things so that it would be disheveled so there was no way she could make me give it away. Because I was never allowed to just enjoy. Even when I started writing books. She was like, “What are you doing all day long?” I said, “I’m going to write a book.” It was like, “Yeah, right.” It was like, okay, wait, why? Why do we always think that everybody else is somehow entitled to something great, but when we try to give it to ourselves, it’s like no way, no way are you allowed to be happy.

Amy:

It’s so true. I think women almost have to force themselves to experience …

Emily Francis:

Happiness.

Amy:

… pleasure and happiness. Yep.

Emily Francis:

It’s true. Because I think when we enjoy ourself, it’s like an immediate thought of, “What did I just set off? What’s going to happen next? I just had a really great time.” That is what happens after grief. Grief changes the memory tracks of your entire system. Grief wasn’t anything you played in. This is something that happened in your life that you had absolutely no control over. Most of the time, grief is due to loss. Usually through death, but also through a tremendous breakup or a friend that leaves your life that you were not ready to lose. But grief is loss. It does change the memory track. So you become a different person immediately when grief takes in.

Amy:

Yeah.

Emily Francis:

It’s like somebody did a surgery to you and said, “I’m going to remove this part of you.” Every time you feel happy, guilt is going to come into play, and shame is going to come in. Because you’re not allowed to be happy anymore. Because then you’re like, “Why? How could you be happy? Because you lost this.” There’s always a because. But guilt is something that you can help rearrange the depth that it is, but you can’t heal. When people would say, after I lost my dad I was 13. I was very young. I loved him more than any person on the planet. I was given two weeks to grieve, then I was not allowed to talk about him anymore. It became this really stuffed down, I say this to everyone, take your child to therapy. Take them to counseling. Let them have the memories. Let them work through whatever trauma it is.

Because all this stuff really does lay its tracks in childhood and adolescence. To be a 13 year old person and go to your gymnastics class and your dad couldn’t be there because he went to play tennis and then you never saw him again is like, so unbelievably traumatizing, that every time I started to feel even remotely happy, I would guilt myself so bad. Because how am I allowed to be happy? How? Where’s the permission in this? It takes an adult to say, “The permission is you.” You are your own permission slip to find happiness, and to be okay when happiness comes to play. But that’s really difficult, because women are taught not to enjoy. We give away our gifts. We give them to our kids. We give them to our husbands. We give them to our partners. We give them wherever.

But God forbid you sit down and just have the gift. Have the happiness. Have the experience. That’s like you being rebellious. It’s hard to be rebellious in your own system. But learning to be rebellious in your own system gives you freedom and power that nobody else can give you. But dang, that’s a trek to do. The eating thing, I do want to do this, when I went back for my master’s in human performance, I was very surprised, we did a whole section on eating disorders, specifically bulimia, and its connection to bipolar disorder. They are almost always diagnosed at some point. There’s no order of first you’re bulimic, then you’re bipolar. First you’re bipolar, then you’re bulimic. But they go super hand in hand.

You’re talking about hormone chaos, and emotion chaos, and a total inability to figure out. Again, this is a beat down cycle. These are all things of self-punishment that somewhere really early on, we got on the cycle of and to break that cycle we feel like we’re faking it anyway. Don’t do that fake it till you make it crap, I hate that. Actually do it. Learn, we have to learn little steps, but be for real. Not just trying to play through it. Because there is a point where you have to become a little bit rebellious. In your mind it’s like, a little naughty. But you’re not naughty. It’s just that you’re finally allowed to feel some sense of happiness.

Every time I get really happy, I have to give myself a talk that it doesn’t mean I’m inviting trouble. I still have to do this. I moved across the world sight unseen to a foreign country with my family and turns out, it’s the greatest place ever. Every time I relish in it and thank God and do the big thing, I have to have a little follow-up in my head to go, “This doesn’t mean the trauma’s coming, just because you love this and just because you’re happy doesn’t mean that bad things are around the corner.” But it’s so hard to accept that today, just today, I’m really, really happy. And not worry about tomorrow.

Amy:

Those are some great points Emily. That was my big aha, is really realizing that I had to kind of be a diva in order to take care of myself and heal. That’s where PCOS Diva came from, is kind of being a little rebellious, and making sure that I had everything I needed for myself, so that I could manage my PCOS symptoms.

Emily Francis:

I think taking your power back is life changing. But I think taking your power back is an all encompassing, and can be done over and over and over on all kinds of different levels within your being, until you feel fully empowered. Which is the final fabulous four emotions, is empowered. Because that’s what we’re going for, is to become internally, fully empowered. I’m taking this over for a second, but the heavy four emotions do have an action bridge to take you to fabulous four emotions. Because I don’t want healing to always be about pain and trauma. The fabulous four emotions, which are happy, joy, connected, empowered can change your life, and they’re already inside the muscle memory tracks.

What I do, every chapter of this book has a meditation. Each meditation is lengthy. When the book releases on May 11th, my meditations on audio will also release on my website for free. So as you’re reading the book, instead of you having to read the meditation and try to keep up and then journal, put the book down. Go to my website, and play the chapter meditation for it. Then journal after it. But I take you through the happy, the joy. Because we really don’t let ourselves have enough of that. I think everybody getting close to the end of their life, and especially right now in the world, people are starting to re-evaluate. I don’t want to be happy the last 10 minutes. I don’t want to wish that I would’ve let myself be happy.

For me, I suffered years of anxiety and panic, because it was me finally dealing with the death of my father so many years later, when I became and adult and started going to therapy. Because every time I would say, “Mom, I’m going to go to therapy.” She felt like it was the shame brought on my family. “No, we don’t do that.” When I became a certain age and it was like, “Hey I have insurance and I’m going to go to therapy.” Well, this isn’t actually up for debate, because I can pay for it, and I’m going to start the work. Because I have really severe anxiety and panic, and I’m starting to become agoraphobic. I don’t even want to leave my house anymore. I went from being an aerobic director, a yoga teacher, a kickboxing instructor.

Which kickboxing, by the way, you cannot even believe the thing that happens in women who have been a victim of some sort of assault when they’re in kickboxing class. Because you get them up to a heavy bag, and first they start punching, then their eyes shift and they become somebody else, and they start beating the holy ever living hell out of that bag, because they have to. I loved being part of that whole thing. Then I went flying down myself and couldn’t get back up for a number of years with really severe anxiety. I had to start doing the healing in therapy for myself, and learning how to become okay with feeling okay. You know how people say, “I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired?” I had to actually do the opposite. I had to become okay with actually being okay.

Because I constantly felt like I was dying, but nothing was actually wrong. I even went to a Shaman, a Native American medical person. You’re not allowed to say anything about yourself. I didn’t come in and go, “I’m Emily, I lost my dad.” Nothing. She is talking to my body and she got near my heart and she went, “Your heart has a false belief that it’s defective, but I don’t see anything wrong here.” My dad died of a heart attack. Of course I’ve been dealing with a false belief. When she said false belief, I had never heard that false part before. It was like, yeah. Yeah. That’s true. Nobody had ever worded that. For someone who’s never had a conversation with me to talk to my body and go, “Oh, I don’t actually see anything here, though.”

I had to become okay with actually being okay. That took years. Years of, “You’re not dying, today is not the day, so wait.” I couldn’t’ get past, like I would get out in public and think, what if I dropped right here? Who knows CPR?” I would start looking around, and have my exit plan. The I would think, what if I do drop and it’s totally, it is an anxiety attack and now I’m an idiot and everybody knows that I’m crazy? It became just this beast. For PCOS, the beast is in the ovaries and in that area. For anxiety, the beast is in your head. But they all go together. Nobody walks out with only one area hurting, that’s just not how that works. We have to follow the lines and then kind of unlock and unleash. But it was really hard to unleash happiness. Isn’t that silly? It sounds so crazy, but it’s so hard to do.

Amy:

I love that idea of unleashing happiness. You said it’s hard to do, but you’ve been working on it.

Emily Francis:

I work on it every day, every day. Happiness, it’s a present feeling. That’s the thing I like about happiness. Joy is deeply embedded into the system. It’s something physiological. It’s an actual physiological response and it’s a certain hormone release. Happy is a hormone release, but not the same hormones as joy, which is so interesting to me. Fascinating. But happy is something that happens often, but it doesn’t stick the way joy does. First, I just started to kind of play with happy. I feel happy. What is this feeling? The it kind of comes and goes, then you recognize it. You have it enough to where you recognize and your body goes, “Hey, I like this. Bring it to me. Bring it over here. I would like more of that.”

But joy, joy is that thing where you deep belly laugh, where your face hurts, or where you cry because you cannot believe, you can’t contain the emotions but they all happen to feel good. Joy is something really, really deep, connected. Imagine that all the cells on your body, when you’re going through a personal crisis such as PCOS, the cells don’t line up. They’re not working in unison as a team, for the best of your health. When I think of it, in my head I think of all these teeny tiny cells like trains, with a positive and negative ion, that are supposed to line up and work together. But instead it’s like a train wreck in there. Then we start to dialog with our bodies. We start to give permission for the healing to occur.

It’s interesting, my naturopath would say, of all the people he ever worked with, the hardest thing to ever do is give permission to heal. That’s the hardest part and the last part of real healing.

Amy:

I don’t mean to interrupt.

Emily Francis:

No.

Amy:

But I also think it’s women don’t feel they’re worthy of healing. I think there’s a belief of not being enough.

Emily Francis:

It’s true.

Amy:

And not being worth the expense, the time.

Emily Francis:

Gosh, where could they get that from? Where? Where? Where could women possibly get all that sensory input that they’re not enough? I mean, I’m 4’11”, and you know what? I used to work. Now I used to be much thinner, like I said, I worked out all the time. So I used to have this great little body. Back then, I had more attention drawn to my body, for people telling me, “You’re fat. If you lost this kind of weight, you’d look good.” I was a college cheerleader. Imagine, you weigh in in front of your whole team every Monday. Then they go after you. There was a coach at a university, at an SCC university where I cheered who said, “If I even see you come out of a restaurant, you’re kicked off.” They want you to not eat.

Amy:

Wow.

Emily Francis:

They want you to have that control over your body. That’s a scary, scary thing that you’re supposed … I used to actually feel bad because I couldn’t not eat. I couldn’t. I would honor my body. I’m hungry, I’m going to eat. But then I would feel terrible. So you know what I did instead? I smoked all the time. Because it was like, “I’m hungry, I’m going to smoke a cigarette.” I mean, I haven’t smoked in 20 something years, thank God, but that was my way of dodging the eating disorder bullet, per se, and skipping, so I wasn’t as hungry. But collegiate cheerleaders, gosh darn they’re so cute, but what they go through is pure hell.

Amy:

Yeah. You know you said control, and I’m thinking control is very different from connection.

Emily Francis:

It’s very different.

Amy:

We’re striving for connection to our bodies, rather than control over them I think.

Emily Francis:

You’re right. Those are opposing forces. So if you go into the connection thinking you are in control, it’s never going to connect. This actually, it’s sort of like an over/under. You can be overbearing, and it’ll never work for you. Or you can drop all the armor and just go vulnerable, go into that, you might not be perfectly safe, but you’re going to trust the space anyway, and I’m going to give my body a chance. I’m going to give my body a chance, because truly, your body knows how to work at an optimum level. Let me give you this mantra for everyone. This is my personal mantra that I do every time I get overwhelmed. Every cell in my body is reprogramming itself to function at healthy, optimum levels now. I’m going to say it one more time.

Every cell in my body is reprogramming itself to function at healthy, optimum levels now. You say it enough times, you start to not believe it, but you start to let it in.

Amy:

Yeah, that’s really powerful. I’m a huge fan of mantras like that. Just it’s like, when you feel like you’re spiraling, it’s something to hold on to. It’s kind of like an anchor. Yeah.

Emily Francis:

I can’t even … When you actually have a diagnosis, then you can really clinch into that area, and you can go down really deep with it in a danger zone. You can also go down really deep in a power zone and become an empowered person once you do get that connectedness. But you have to be soft in order to get strong. It’s a weird sort of way to get there. But you cannot come in blazing. It’s a love fest that has to happen. That’s hard. Because you get something, especially in the female area, how much more of a disconnect could you possibly have when your livelihood is at stake because the women are the child bearers? There’s no getting around that. The woman is the one gifted to bring the child through, and to feel like you can’t or have a huge road ahead of you, makes you feel like such a failure.

Or that there’s something degenerate that happened, that you don’t even know what’s going on. It becomes your whole internal mantra, which is dangerous. Really, really dangerous. Because you don’t realize that the next person that you think’s super healthy also has a diagnosis, it just is something else. I mean, everybody’s got something. It’s just, how do we learn to play with it enough that it can actually start to heal? I do believe that you can heal from within. I believe that with all my heart.

Amy:

I do, too.

Emily Francis:

I believe that miracles happen all the time. I have a child who recovered from an autism spectrum diagnosis. People get really excited or angry and they go, “Well you were misdiagnosed.” Guess what? We went to three different places. Guess what? We went to two different places on the recovery, and we were given the, “Your child no longer meets a DSM-5 criteria.” We are in no special needs anything anymore. But we have been through hell and back. That’s a whole different day and a different story. But I know, I already knew from my own healing, that if I didn’t trust that miracles happen and that unbelievable amounts of healing are possible when you create a nutritious environment.

I’m not just talking diet. I’m talking about a whole life nutritious environment, where you feed the memory systems of the body. This is my biggest work, too. You have to treat the physical body, the emotional body, the energy body, which is different than the spiritual body. So all four. Physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual. Energy body, like the chakras, your second chakra is the area of creativity. It is orange. It is the place of the ovaries. It is the reproductive area in your body. In western allopathic medicine, we don’t even know that that exists. We only know about the heart chakra, that there’s a physical pericardium and a place that actually hurts emotionally.

We don’t even know that the rest of the body holds emotion centers and energy centers. So going to different practitioners that can work with that. Let’s say an acupuncturist, a traditional Chinese Medicine. They can tell you which organs and which energies are blocked and work through that. In Ayurveda, they call it the chakras, of the energy systems. But it’s really, really important that we feed and treat all of the aspects of the whole body in order to have that miracle happen, because your body, in my opinion, has to be reminded how to work at its healthiest. Because somewhere in there, it knows how. You weren’t always with these symptoms. These were not always your life.

In that big motherboard of your body, in the nervous system, are memories of perfect and complete health. So the work is to get in there and remind the body what it needs and how to function the way that it knows how to deep, deep down. If I didn’t believe that then, watching my child become verbal, watching my child go from a strictly autistic school to a regular school, who just had to skip a grade coming here and rocked it, who’s making friends, who’s loving life. Who, when I do tell her story, people are shocked because you don’t pick it up anymore. You would have to have a very sharp eye. A sharp eye could pick it up. Other people cannot. It’s amazing.

But I watched her heal in ways that I had no idea was possible, because everybody told me it was not. I knew better. I knew better. You guys, whatever place you are at with whatever thing, and we’re going to say PCOS because that’s what this is about, nobody has any right to tell you what it takes to heal, how long it takes to heal, how you heal, and absolutely nobody has the right to tell you that you cannot heal. Because that is not true. Miracles, a miracle is just an act of anonymity by God, that’s it. It’s a coincidence performed by God anonymously, it’s a miracle. It happens every day, all over the world. Why not you?

Amy:

Gosh, Emily, thank you for that encouraging talk. I’m just thinking about all of the women listening that have been told, like I was told, doctors would have to jump through hoops one day to get me pregnant, or you’re going to have trouble having children. It brings up all of those heavy fours, the trauma, shame, guilt, and grief.

Emily Francis:

Grief.

Amy:

To just say, “No, that’s not my story and I’m going to write my story, and I’m going to connect and partner with my body so that I can get on the other side. Which is, tell us again what you call that?

Emily Francis:

The fabulous four.

Amy:

The fabulous.

Emily Francis:

The fab four. That is happy, joy, connected, and empowered.

Amy:

So you gave us a great mantra to take away. I was wondering if you could give us another tip from your book on how to move into that fab four.

Emily Francis:

Okay. Well, so the moving into the fab four is the action bridge, and that is three options. One is to suppress, which we’re not going to choose as our option, because that keeps everything down. One is to process, which doesn’t mean that anything changes. It only means you’re willing to let the memories lift slightly from where they have been embedded, and you can decide later what to do with them. Right now, it’s just an acknowledgement. Then last is release. That’s a cord cutting. Now you get into a certain space in healing where everybody does cord cutting, so you almost don’t offer it, because you make a poor assumption that everybody knows what that is. That’s just not true.

So, I do want to talk about it. I had no idea I was going to talk about this, but I think it’s important. Cord cutting means that there’s an energy cord between you and some situation or person or place that is holding you back. I’m going to use the easiest example. Let’s say I had a boyfriend, he cheated on me, he treated me like crap. We break up, I’m heartbroken for months. He never calls. He doesn’t think twice about me, he’s totally in love with somebody else, I’m devastated. I finally pick myself up and I meet a new guy. And guess what? That old guy starts calling.

We always think, “How weird, that’s such a crazy coincidence, I can’t believe it, it’s like they feel it.” They do feel it. Because an energy cord has been created, okay? The energy cord was created between you and him. Let me just go really deep, because we’re on PCOS. An energy cord that is created through sexual activity, a lot of people say it stays for seven years, it stays in your energy field for seven years. It’s a deeply embedded and attached cord. This is why I wish that I could really … I used to teach sex education to high school. I wish I could do it more often.

Because it’s not that I want you to be a virgin, and it’s not that I want you to be at all promiscuous, I want you to be very vigilant about who you share your body with. Because you’re not just sharing something physical or you might be in love, but understand that you are creating an energy cord, and that cord stays for a really long time, or until you consciously sever it. So I want to go through the idea of cord cutting, and I’m going to give just an outline because it’s very personal and it needs to be done alone, in a quiet space, when you’re ready. So I’m just going to give the parameters. When you decide, and you really need to sit with it. Because if you really cut the cord, you don’t get to go running back.

So don’t do this when you’re fighting with somebody. Don’t do this when there’s still an attachment. Do this when you’re begging for that attachment to no longer be there, because there is no part of it that serves your good. Then you get very deeply quiet with yourself. I, personally, think you should sit on the floor with a nice, straight spine, turn off the lights, have some candles or outside daylight, be very natural space. In your dark space, and your eye, and your mind’s eye, think about that person, place, or thing standing in front of you. See the cord. Where it goes from you to them.

If it’s a trauma cord, think about where, from them, to you, the trauma went. So if somebody hit you, it would go from their hand to where they hurt you. That’s the cords. And you really envision those cords. And in that moment, let yourself feel it again, just for the moment. Let yourself feel it as an observer, but go there. Then you take the biggest pair of scissors you could possibly imagine, and you cut every fiber, like those PE ropes that you used to climb, back in PE. Big, thick. Watch the fibers, every one of them. Cut through all of them. The trick, after that, is there’s still a cord inside you with a rope that’s halfway now. It’s hanging on the floor.

The rest of you has to pull that rope all the way out of your body. Then when you have that hole, understand that self-healing immediately occurs, and the body replaces itself. It starts to run and function, normally and healthy. But you’ve got to pull the rope. Now, it’s your choice if you want to pull their side also, or just leave them with the rope. It’s not about them. And it’s not about forgiveness, understand that. I’m not preaching forgiveness, I’m preaching the disconnect. The forgiveness, if you do want to go to forgiveness, has nothing to do with somebody else. It just has to do with the part that you played in that situation. But I do believe that cord cutting is one of the most powerful tools, to get your intention there and to remove.

Actually I did a therapy, EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which pulls the frozen trauma out of the brain, and they do it by moving your eyes, and then you work through. I had never heard of cord cutting ever, and I was facing my dad, and I had this cord from my heart to his heart, and he handed me scissors. And I thought, no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to have anything that would separate me from you. And he had me do it anyway, in my mind’s eye. I cut it, and I pulled both of our ropes out. And guess what? I pulled both ropes to where we got closer, closer, closer, and we hugged. And it felt so real.

And it felt like we could actually stand heart to heart, instead of this really heavy rope that’s been weighing me down and costing me my quality of life. And nobody on the other side wants you to be miserable. That cord cutting doesn’t have to just be that somebody hurt you. That cord cutting can be, I love you so much, I want to love you in a different way without the heavy weight. So I really hope that that’s helpful. It’s a very deep and detailed meditation in my book, and it is on audio, that you can go and download it on the website in May, and do it with me, as I guide you through the whole thing.

Amy:

And there are, as I mentioned, I read your book last night. I haven’t had a chance to listen to your meditations, but reading through them, they are quite powerful, and if this conversation today has resonated with you, I highly suggest checking out Emily’s book, Healing Ourselves Whole. And Emily, tell us more about where we can find out about your radio show and your work.

Emily Francis:

You can actually go to Healingourselveswhole.com, I have a new website, it connects to my original website. So Healingourselveswhole.com. It’ll go to my show, I mean my website. If you’re listening today, and you pre-order a copy of the book and you email me, I will send you your choice, happy or joy, meditation. Those are the only two that are ready right now. So if you want happy or if you want joy, just send me an email and say, “I want this, or both.” It’s fine, I will send them to you. I’m so happy to offer them to you. The book is on pre order now. And of course, every author in the world needs, it takes a village to raise a book. It does.

Amy:

It certainly does.

Emily Francis:

And I need that village. So pre order, please. And I did just get word that it will be out on audio the same day. It won’t be my voice, but I know it’ll be a great voice. I’m super excited about that. Any of those that you want to order, get in touch with me. Also just, without promoting my book, if you want to get in touch with me, reach out. I never, ever don’t respond. I don’t know how to say that exactly right. I don’t ever ignore emails. Reach out, message me, ask me questions. Because my work is about the muscles, and why do we carry pain where we do? So if you want to go outside of that particular area and talk about where betrayal sits, behind those shoulder blades, behind the heart space, that’s real. It’s a real deal. I’m here for you.

Amy:

Yeah it’s so fascinating, you talked about people who have knee issues, and if they really can’t attribute it to running on hard pavement for 20 years, there’s specific emotions that are tied to your knees, which I thought was really interesting.

Emily Francis:

It’s like when you’re stuck at a fork in the road, when you’re in quicksand, when you can’t make a decision, guess what happens? Your knees act up.

Amy:

Your work reminds me a lot of Louise Hay.

Emily Francis:

I love her so much.

Amy:

I know.

Emily Francis:

I got to meet her, I got to meet her. And just oh, I love her.

Amy:

Lucky you. Yeah. I really loved reading your book and getting to meet you, Emily.

Emily Francis:

Thank you, thank you so much.

Amy:

And having you on today’s podcast show. I want to just thank everyone for listening, and I look forward to being with you again very soon. Bye-bye.