• Visit Dr. Schwartz’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Joe Sanok 00:00:00  I'm so excited to introduce you to the best website designers out there. We have a brand new partnership with session sites. It is where good therapy meets brilliant design, and they get your website switched over or built in less than two weeks. They fine tune your messaging, use science backed user experience methodology, and work exclusively with mental health professionals. In fact, new clients right now are going to get three free therapy marketing strategy calls with their creative director of session sites. If you book today, you're not going to want to miss this. Head on over to session sites again that session sites. Com slash get the website of your dreams today. Session sites. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Sandbox session number 1212. I'm Joe Santos, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. Well, I hope you are doing great today. We cover so many things on this show, whether it's clinical or business or, just things we find interesting. it was. I just had coffee with, a new friend yesterday, who just moved back from Spain, and, we had, I had a matcha.

Joe Sanok 00:01:32  He had a coffee, and he had listened to a couple shows and and as we talked, he said, like, what's your theory of podcasting? And when I really thought about it, it was following my curiosity, to have these guests on here. They have backgrounds. You know, we always before we get rolling, I always ask my guests, like, what are you excited to talk about? And what are you sick of talking about? Because sometimes there's people that are experts and they're known for something, and then they're kind of sick of talking about that thing that they're known for. And I would much rather just have an interesting conversation with people and to dig in and say, what are you interested in right now? And that's why I think we sometimes get some, some unique conversations. Well, we have Doctor Ariel Schwartz with us today. Ariel is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified complex trauma professional, eMDR consultant, and yoga teacher. She's internationally sought out speaker, leading voice in the field of trauma recovery, and award winning author as faculty with the Polly Vagal Institute.

Joe Sanok 00:02:30  She is a course instructor and mind body approaches that apply poly vagal theory for trauma recovery. Ariel, welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:02:40  Thank you Joe, and I really enjoyed listening to your intro and just hearing who you've been able to speak to and the topics you've been speaking about. I look forward to going back and listening to some of those.

Joe Sanok 00:02:53  Yeah, well thank you. You know, it's been awesome. About a year ago or so, one of our staff really showed some interest in trying to find even higher quality guests and doing more research, rather than just responding to people reaching out to us. And Josh is just knocked it out of the park. So, he's been reaching out to people like you that every day I open up my calendar and I see people that have scheduled, I'm like, how the heck did we land these people? So it's pretty amazing.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:03:17  Oh thank you. That feels good to receive.

Joe Sanok 00:03:20  Well, so poly bagel theory. How'd you get into that?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:03:25  Alrighty.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:03:27  first of all, what is poly bagel theory might be?

Joe Sanok 00:03:31  Yeah, let's start there. Yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:03:32  For those.

Joe Sanok 00:03:33  That maybe.

Joe Sanok 00:03:33  Left that back in grad school or maybe haven't kept up with it. Yeah, that's a good start. Like what is poly vagal theory. How did you get into it. And then we'll dig in in a little more.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:03:42  Yeah. And honestly it's not really taught in grad most grad school programs. so that that might be even just a pause right there. And if I back up a little bit before how I got introduced to poly vagal theory and what poly vagal theory is, my initial interest was in somatic psychology and somatic being the body and bringing. Body or mind body therapies into the process of change and healing. And the beautiful thing about somatics is that in order to understand why the body is an essential part of the change process, and and I focus a lot on trauma recovery, we really have to look at the neuroscience and the neuroscience of that mind. Body connection helps illuminate why body awareness is so valuable.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:04:31  And probably vagal theory adds an additional layer to this, which is not just awareness of your body, but also awareness of the state of your nervous system, and recognizing that very often the impact of stress or adverse life events is held within the nervous system itself. There's imbalances where we feel kind of constantly keyed up, anxious, vigilant, or War. Sometimes we feel more shut down, heavy collapsed, or an urge to hide. So looking at those states of the nervous system, the the founder of poly theory, a man by the name of Steve Porges, it really started to illuminate what is happening within the nervous system itself, and more specifically, the parasympathetic nervous system that sometimes allows us to go into rest and digest and other times takes us into more of a collapse or shutdown, withdrawal or even a faint response. And this paradox within the parasympathetic nervous system is what led to the understanding of poly vagal theory. Poly means multiple vagal is referring to the vagus nerve, and essentially means that this bundle of nerves has two primary circuit, the vagus nerve that moves into the upper parts of the face, the heart, the lungs, and allows us to connect with others, and the lower track of the vagus that goes down into the digestive organs and when we feel safe, allows us to go into a rest and digest response.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:06:19  But when we feel threatened, it takes us into more of a collapsed or shut down response that that preserves our life energy for the sake of survival. So there's Polly vagal theory in a nutshell, and why I got so drawn to it is that it really helped explain the symptoms that I was seeing in relationship to trauma recovery, and gave a mechanism to work with the nervous system, rather than talk therapy, or working with the story, or working with the beliefs, which you can change all of that. But if you don't get to the root cause of the imbalances in the nervous system, all of that ultimately falls short.

Joe Sanok 00:07:06  Now you brought up, you know, kind of talk therapy and going back into our narrative. what I love about this show is that I get to have these experts on and sometimes just get to apply my own personal life. So I went through a pretty tough divorce back in 2021. you know, near sole custody of my kids and have really worked with my therapist. And, you know, he also does eMDR on all sorts of things within that, but then also kind of what goes back even even before, that, you know, those stories that have been throughout my life, or mindsets that have been throughout my life, when you think about, you know, some of the ways that people are personally applying poly theory in their life, what does that look like? You know, whether that's therapists or clients, like, because I think when we're in that, that trauma response where we aren't allowing ourselves to rest and digest.

Joe Sanok 00:08:00  It can be really hard to pull out of that. So how are people, kind of practically starting to then use this, in their daily lives?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:08:08  Beautiful question. And thank you for your share. And I'm sorry you went through a rough phase there. we also hope that post a rough phase, especially something like a divorce, that there's also a recovery phase and that there's actually a way to claim or reclaim a sense of balance in your life and doing things like going to therapy and experiencing eMDR therapy. Receiving that is such a generous gift to yourself that that you allow yourself to go deeper, deeper than maybe even the surface story of what happened in in the process with your ex or with your divorce. But really going into some of the origins of where those relational patterns started, which, you know, we often talk about that and in relationship to our earliest attachment figures, our earliest developmental experiences within our family of origin. And when we look at the kind of interconnection of all of that with the poly vagal theory in the vagus nerve, how our nervous systems get, get shaped occurs within those earliest relationships in our lives.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:09:22  Whether we felt safe and and held and understood and supported on an ongoing basis, or at least the good enough version of that, where if there were ruptures to that, to those moments of connection, that those were attended to, acknowledged and repaired. Now, you might hear this, or some of our listeners might be hearing this going, yeah, no, that wasn't my childhood, right. Maybe it was one that was marked more by just ongoing neglect that needs weren't met, Recognized. Maybe your basic needs of food and shelter were were met, but beyond that, there was a lack of emotional connection. Or maybe the early experience was one of ongoing threat. And, and not knowing what to expect and when to expect care and and the, the experience of the instability of those early relationships or the, the lack of safety in those relationships. And you can start to get a feeling of how did how do we cope in those early life experiences? How did that shape us? Did it shape us to be chronically on guard and again, vigilant and stressed and worried about when when our needs were going to get met? And if so, did it shape our nervous systems more into that fight flight system that we call the sympathetic system? Or was there an ongoing feeling like no matter what I did, it didn't make a difference.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:10:56  What was the point of trying? Or I coped just by retreating into my room and being alone and, you know, maybe just reading lots of books, which is a fine way of coping. But nonetheless, there's there's a way in which the nervous system retreats into more of a shutdown, a low energy place. When we look at the health of the autonomic nervous system and the vagus nerve helps us cultivate that, what we're looking at is a version of nervous system flexibility that we can move between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, and that the sympathetic nervous system doesn't just help us fight or flee, but it also helps us feel empowered, feel joy, feel playful, climb a mountain, go to a dance class. Right? We also want to reclaim our ability to rest. So if we were chronically anxious and on guard, maybe it disrupts your sleep. Maybe it disrupts your ability to relax at the end of the day, you constantly feel like you have to go, go, go and doo doo doo.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:11:58  So poly theory gives us a set of practices, or a applied poly theory gives us exercises to reclaim the health of the autonomic system, where we learn how to to kind of energize or enliven the system as needed. And we learn and practice how to relax our nervous system as needed so that that's more available automatically throughout our day.

Joe Sanok 00:12:28  Now, I know that you've been applying a lot of this just through kind of going beyond just kind of what your, your teaching at the institute. you and I, before we started recording, you're talking about a story that you have of launching kind of some new and different things. We'd love to dig into that story.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:12:45  I'd love to share it. So years ago, I was a grad student in, my PhD program. I was studying all of this. Actually, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to learn poly theory in my doctoral program and started to as I was exploring this mind body connection within my clinical psych program, I, I came across this theory and I just was kind of smitten by it in I started reading about it in about 2006.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:13:18  I started writing about poly vagal theory, in about 2010. and, and I, I wrote a lot of papers about that. I got an opportunity to meet, Doctor Stephen Porges. Around that same time, I started to teach poly vagal theory, and to teach how to bring it into eMDR therapy or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. And in and I had launched a private practice around 2008, and I didn't even have a website. Right. This is, I don't know, maybe a little bit on the on the, the, the beginning edge of when we started to use the web to search for things like therapists and in, in about 2010, 2012, I was like, I think I need a web presence. And I was a new therapist. I, I found a blog. This is the beauty of the internet. I found a blog on the internet that said, build your website in a day. And I was like, I can do that. And so I literally just followed every step and I built my own website and it's still there today.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:14:27  Doctor Ariel Schwartz. Com and it was a beautiful website, but nobody could find it. You know, it was out there in the ethers on the world, you know, wide world web. Right? But it was it was not findable. It was not searchable unless you literally just typed in der RL Schwartz. Com. Right. So I hired a web support person. Best decision I ever made in my career. And this person basically helped do the things that I couldn't do in building my own website. He built my SEO, which, you know, search engine optimization. he helped me recognize that the best way to increase that visibility on things like Google was to write a blog. And he sent me home, and I had already written a dissertation, for my PhD program. I had written a master's thesis the years before that. I like writing. and he sent me home and he said, write about something that you're passionate about and bring it back when we meet next week, and we'll put it up on your website.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:15:40  And so I go home and I wrote, typed five single spaced pages of stuff that I was interested about. And I came back and I met with him and he said, You know, I give this assignment to everyone that I work with, and I usually get five sentences. So you like to write? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, all right, well, go home and do that again. And so I started to every week commit myself to writing. And every week I would meet with Joel. That was his name. And he would upload, you know, help me upload and taught me how to upload my own blogs onto my website. He taught me to fish. And so I would every week add another blog to the website. And at some point I wrote a blog on poly bagel theory. Shortly after that, I wrote a blog called Natural Vagus Nerve Stimulation. That was basically how do you stimulate the vagus nerve in a way that creates that optimal health and nervous system balance everything we're speaking about.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:16:45  And for my version of being a new writer and a new blogger, that blog went viral. So suddenly I started seeing that that blog was being clicked on 100 times a day, a thousand times a week. It went up to something like, you know, several thousand clicks a week. And I was like, oh, wow, I'm on to something. Like, we're we're in the zone. And it really changed everything. And it was actually Joel, my, my web person, my support, and who became a dear friend who said, do you think you want to write a book? I think you're writing a book. And I was like, well, I don't know. I hadn't really thought about that. But he planted a seed and I started to see how the various topics that I was writing about all strung together trauma recovery, specifically complex PTSD, which is the impact of ongoing repeated traumatic events and and kind of looking at the intersection between the science of poly vagal theory and these various topics, and maybe one more beautiful part of this story.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:17:53  The unexpected moment was that the blog, which continued to get increased visibility, at some point landed, I think it was through LinkedIn because I was putting the blogs up on all of the platforms, and it was through LinkedIn that it that it was discovered by a publisher who then reached out to me, said, hey, would you consider publishing a book with us? And there was the magic of going from a website that had zero visibility and within two years, becoming a published author.

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Joe Sanok 00:19:24  Absolutely free. Again, that's therapy notes. Com and use promo code Joe on the website. If you're coming from another EHR therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me, don't waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout. So for those that want to become published authors and, you know, are taking their messages, out into the world. Would you say just just write more or like, I mean, is there something you did that you would say you kind of discovered lightning or did lightning just strike and you got lucky? Like, are there any things within that that you'd say people could replicate?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:20:07  I'll say maybe the most important thing, which is follow your passion. Right. Like, not everybody needs to be a writer. But if you have that longing and that desire, follow it. Right. Maybe your desire is is more in artistic realms. Maybe. Maybe that passion shows up more, through other forms of expression.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:20:30  But don't limit yourself to some box that you might inadvertently be putting yourself in just because you think, well, I, you know, I couldn't do that, or that doesn't fit with, with the, the role that I have for myself in XYZ places. For me, the passion in writing. And it started with the blog and now I've just finished my eighth book is very much about feeling the sense of privilege that I have as someone with two, you know, two degrees, beyond my BA, right? I got a master's in somatic psychology. I got a doctorate in clinical psychology. And with that, those opportunities in education, I was afforded many opportunities to learn really powerful information. Information that empowered me to change my own health and well-being, mental and physical health. And there was such an important feeling within me is still of what I would call the give back. The feeling of, you know, once you you have a position of power, in what way can you use that power for good or to help others.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:21:49  And so that's always been a motivating factor for me in my writing. And and I think that when we're in the flow of our passion, people feel that they feel the generosity or they feel a connection, a spark. Oh, wow. I want to read more about what she has to say, because it resonates somewhere in me, or it's helping me, and that makes me feel good. And it becomes this, this generative upward spiral if we want to think about it that way.

Joe Sanok 00:22:21  Now you have a book that just came out earlier this month. Tell us about that and how that fits into all this.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:22:27  Well it certainly fits into all of this. It's called the poly vagal workbook for trauma. And I think the point of this book is it's differentiated from some of my other books out there on trauma recovery is that it's a workbook that guides you to take care of your nervous system step by step and to not have to go back and relive or even revisit your trauma. It doesn't mean that there might not be some point in your trauma recovery journey that you do go and do something like eMDR therapy or or, you know, IFS therapy, somatic therapies that help you work more deeply with those specific memories and events.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:23:06  But this workbook is really meant to help you take care of your nervous system on a daily basis to to enhance a felt sense of ease and balance and, and compassion and sweetness within your daily rhythms. To work with the places where you feel the out of balance places. Right? Like maybe you're not sleeping. Maybe you're not digesting your food. Well, maybe relationships are are a sticky spot for you. And how does poly bagel theory, in a sense, kind of clean that all up? Help you put you in the driver's seat of your nervous system so that your life feels easier. From that place, you're better equipped. If you are going to go on that deeper dive of working with the traumatic memories.

Joe Sanok 00:23:58  So, in using the workbook, if therapists get it for their clients or using it with their clients, what would be kind of the best way to introduce it and the best way to, to use it collaboratively with their clients.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:24:11  There's there's several forms that are special about this workbook. One is that it's absolutely built for therapists to use with clients.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:24:21  It gives clients tools and skills to practice between sessions that are really short and really sweet ways, just to be like five minutes a day, you can do something that's going to help you take care of your of your body through this nervous system. Care. We call it toning. The vagus nerve or natural vagus nerve stimulation is the name of that initial blog. And there's simple short practices that create greater balance. So what I find is that when clients are doing that between sessions, the time that we spend in session is actually, really being able to be maximized and to kind of build on that, that stable foundation that clients are getting through these regular practices. But what's also special about this workbook is that it's, it has an accompanying course that goes with it. So the publisher that I've worked with is New Harbinger. They're kind of very, very well known for therapeutic workbooks for for Positive change. And they also have a partner group that creates courses to accompany the workbook. So for the cost of basically one therapy session, you can then also add on the course where I am.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:25:39  They're guiding you through each and every practice. And so you can actually go through the workbook. And you can go through the course simultaneously. Again, it's going to be that between session support. And then even if you don't buy the course, you will have URLs within the workbook that you can click on that will have audio tracks of me simply leading you through the practices. And those just come with the book. So it's a multimedia experience.

Joe Sanok 00:26:10  Wow, that must have been fun to to put together, to think about a book in a different way that's a little more interactive than your typical book.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:26:17  It's probably, you know, like we can think of technology in the way that we can use it in our favor, or we can use it to our detriment. Right? Scrolling, endless scrolling, doom scrolling. But I think that, you know, if we can embrace the use of technology and, and see the tremendous benefits that come out of the degree of connectivity that's available now. I had so much fun.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:26:43  It's the operative word here. I had so much fun creating that course. Working with the course development team and really honing in on how are we going to create a visually beautiful experience for the for the viewer so that it's actually incredibly soothing, beginning to end in terms of the level of quality of video that that goes into creating this course.

Joe Sanok 00:27:12  Now I'm wondering how you stay creative. So like how do you apply, you know whether it's poly vagal or just some of the things around the mind. How do you apply this to your own life to, to stay creative, to figure out new ways to think about this work you're doing.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:27:25  Oh, I like that question too. I would say there's a few things that continually spark my own creativity, but also form the foundations of my self-care. One is the work that I've done with my mentor, who is both a gestalt and existential therapist. She she wrote the foreword to my book, The Post-traumatic Growth Guidebook. Her name is Betty Cannon. And having a really, really good mentor with whom you can show up as your full self in where you're stuck and where things are flowing without any judgment.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:28:08  And b really, really held. Those those relationships are golden. And I've been with her since 2008, the when I was really launching this version of my my current private practice in 2007, 2008, I had I set myself up to a task which is to go around and ask as many experienced, successful therapists. What was the key ingredient? And it feels like a nice match for your podcast here, because I think it's a lot of what you do. And so I went around and I just asked people, and the most valuable answer that I received was have a really good supervisor and that's that's Betty. That's that's who she's been for me. And because she doesn't approach it just from what I would say, the left brain of like, do this, do that, she approaches the process of supervision and mentorship from a whole brain perspective, where she really allows the whole the whole way of working with our stuckness to be experiential, to look deeply into ourselves. So having support, whether it's your own therapy or a great mentor or both, is is really key.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:29:26  The other parts that to me feel like they fuel my creativity are my own personal yoga practice and my meditation practice. They complement each other both in the sense that I feel like the movement gets me to feel playful. It gets blood flow. It gets my cardiovascular system. It tones the vagus nerve. All of that is is, you know. You know, I'm also a yoga teacher. I teach the applied poly vagal theory in yoga model. I have a book by the same title. And, and my meditation practice complements it because it's an opportunity to go into stillness. It's like for me, the stillness state is like planting the seed in the dark earth and trusting that for however long I go into that meditation, you know, 20 minutes, whatever it might be, that I don't have to be creative or generative, that I just let myself rest and that it's like it's like turning off the device and then pressing the reboot. When I come out of those states of meditation, I often feel a surge of creativity on the other side.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:30:37  It's like now the seed is ready to sprout.

Joe Sanok 00:30:40  So awesome. Well, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:30:49  Well, certainly the mentorship piece, right. Like find find the supportive people. And it doesn't have to be just one. Find the supportive people that see you, that reflect you to you. Right. Joel, who looked at me and he said, I think you've got a book in you, maybe more than one Betty who sees me and just so deeply appreciates me in a way that helps me, appreciate me. and trust yourself. Trust that you get to step out of just one lane in this field. And I think it's so important that, you know, it's like a burnout prevention that we keep our own creativity alive, whatever form that takes.

Joe Sanok 00:31:40  Arielle, if people want to get your book, if they want to connect with you, Where should we send them?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:31:45  Well, certainly my website's and there's two of them now are the best way to get to know what I'm doing and sign up for my newsletter.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:31:53  You can do it from either side. It's the same newsletter. Site number one is Dr. Ariel Schwartz. Com doctor Ariel Schwartz. Com and the site number two is resilience informed therapy.com. And either of them will kind of reveal different bits of information. The resilience informed website is much more about the partnerships that I have with other like minded practitioners and communities, and providing lots of opportunities to know about the trainings that are coming up. The blog still lives at Doctor Ariel Schwartz. Com and and there's lots to discover there. You can probably hang out hang out in there and, and, have a scroll of an upward spiral of the heart. How about that? I also will recommend go check out my YouTube channel. YouTube. is Doctor Ariel Schwartz or Facebook. It's doctor Ariel Schwartz, Instagram, it's Ariel Schwartz bolder, and all of those will be places where you can find the free yoga classes that I have on YouTube. You can find out about the offerings that I have in general.

Joe Sanok 00:32:59  So awesome.

Joe Sanok 00:33:00  Well, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz 00:33:03  Thank you for having me.

Joe Sanok 00:33:12  I love how today was a mixture of clinical and and then also just business. You know, that idea that the work that you're doing in your sessions, there are people in the world that you may never meet that you can impact, that you can bring that together, whether that's through just starting to blog more or doing more articles on on LinkedIn or other places, find that place that you can maybe double down a little bit or test things out to try to this this year, just do a little bit more, something a little bit different than maybe what you've tried in the past, you know. We also couldn't do this show without amazing sponsors like Therapy notes. Therapy notes is the best electronic health records out there. They will help you switch over from your current EHR. they also give you two months for free or just money off if you use promo code Joe at checkout. they are phenomenal. They help with automated billing.

Joe Sanok 00:34:04  it's going to make it easier to outsource your billing. So many reasons to switch to therapy notes. Just head on over to therapy notes. Com read about it and at checkout. Just use promo code. Joe. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.