Mindfulness in Motion: Rewiring the Nervous System Through Movement

Chandler welcomes Hero and certified Rolfer, Moylan Ryan, back to the show to discuss what moving beyond talk therapy practices and into embodied change looks like. Moylan introduces his developing practice, Mindfulness in Motion, and explains why lasting healing requires retraining the nervous system through various types of movement rather than solely understanding your trauma at a cognitive level. 

Together, they explore protection versus connection, vertical responsibility, and how safe, relational movement can help shift ingrained patterns of fight, flight, or freeze. 

What You Will Learn

• [00:07:30] How fragmentation shifts into integration when someone “remembers” who they are and moves from living in parts to living as a whole
• [00:11:30] The physical signs of a dysregulated nervous system, including held breath, elevated shoulders, tight jaw, and living in a startle reflex
• [00:13:30] Why understanding your story cognitively does not override trauma stored in implicit memory
• [00:15:30] How safe environments with sympathetic activation and ventral vagal influence help retrain the nervous system
• [00:17:30] The difference between traditional movement practices and movement that introduces low-grade threat to interrupt reactionary patterns
• [00:23:30] How shifting from protection to connection changes the way the brain functions and supports embodied equanimity
• [00:28:00] Why exercise alone does not retrain habitual reactivity without relational challenge
• [00:40:30] How movement that includes low-grade threat becomes the doorway to rewiring fear-based responses into grounded choice

Let’s Connect!

Moylan Ryan

Website | Instagram

Chandler Stroud

Website | Instagram | LinkedIn 

Mixing, editing, and show notes provided by Next Day Podcast.

Transcript

Chandler Stroud: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it's Chandler and welcome to The Healing Heroes. I promise you.

I'm Chandler Stroud, an executive wife and busy mom of two who after years of living with anxiety. Health struggles and an unshakeable feeling like I should be happier, made a profound discovery that changed everything. Join me on a journey where unexpected paths lead to [00:00:30] healing and more happiness. On this show, we will explore unconventional ways to unlock more joy in your own life with the help of my very own healers.

And trusted advisors, the Healing Heroes.

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Healing Heroes podcast. I'm your host Chandler, and I'm so happy to welcome Hero. Moylan Ryan, back to the show today. In [00:01:00] past episodes, we've explored Moy Lynn's work in Rolfing and Neurodynamic breath work practices that help the body release what it's been holding onto oftentimes for many years.

Today's conversation is for anyone who's done the therapy, read the books, understands why they are the way they are notices. Yet still feels stuck in familiar patterns of tension reactivity, or even shutdown. [00:01:30] We'll be talking in depth about how gentle, intentional movement can help the body feel safe again, and why some healing has to happen through the body.

Not just through talking or thinking. We'll also explore a movement. Practice Moylan is currently developing called Mindfulness in Motion, which is all about practicing presence in real time through movement. Before we dive in, here's a quick refresher on Moylan background for new listeners joining us [00:02:00] today.

Moylan Ryan is originally from Ireland where he trained as a somatic psychotherapist, but eventually relocated to the US nearly 21 years ago to study at the Dr. Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Moylan has a private practice as a somatic therapist in Tempe, Arizona, where he offers. Rolfing structural integration, neurodynamic breath work and movement education as integral parts of his healing process.

He's taught [00:02:30] somatics and embodied movement as part of the dance faculty at Arizona State University where his practice is based on the non-violent martial art of a keto in which he holds a sixth degree. Black Belt. Moylan is currently completing his book, living Aligned, a compilation of over 40 years experience exploring the landscape of both the inner and outward world.

Welcome, Moylan. It's so great to have you back on the show with us. Thank you so much for being here today, 

Moylan Ryan: [00:03:00] and thank you gentler. Thank you for this beautiful opportunity to share my work and to get this message across to people who need to hear what we have to share. 

Chandler Stroud: Yes. I love our conversations together, and you bring such a unique perspective, not just to your work, but how you think about healing more holistically.

So I'm really excited to get into this conversation today, especially. Because I wanna hear more about mindfulness in motion, [00:03:30] so I have a lot of questions around that that I'm excited to get to Moylan. Before we get into the crux of our conversation today, in case there are new listeners joining us for the first time, can you share a little bit more about your work in Neurodynamic Breath work and as a Rolfer, just so that everyone's on the same page and kind of has the same starting point for this conversation.

Moylan Ryan: I've, I've noticed that over the years of working at this stage, probably thousands of people, there's a [00:04:00] habitual pattern of constraint and contraction and reaction that takes place in a person's body and mind. And it makes their movement and their thinking mind effortful. They seem to move through the world in the experience of an internal opposition, and that unconscious internal opposition that takes up residence in them is often projected out into the world.

So it takes the shape of polarization, of duality. [00:04:30] People come to me mostly because they're exhausted and tired and overwhelmed from living a life in this type of encapsulated state, and they have maybe physical pains, chronic type of illness, but also they realize that they're living a life. That is too small for them, and there's a threshold that is presented through their consciousness that they're eager to step across.

A portal has appeared for them. [00:05:00] In the work that I do, I help unwind this. As I said, encapsulation this conditioned contraction that appears, and it's very much reflective in the way a person breathes the way they move, and the rigidity of their thoughts and the opposition of their thinking. When we start to unwind those, paradigms, stories and narratives that are taken up, residence in them. There's a realization that they hold a key to their own [00:05:30] emancipation, a key to their own, the alleviation of their own suffering. So it's a very much a collaborative type of experience. You have a tendency to breathe new life into aspects of themselves that had become exile from.

And yes, it does sound quite esoteric. But it has a really deep impact on the psychobiology of a person. We think in a more expanded, inclusive way, and we move through life in what I call the posture of [00:06:00] equanimity. The body is no longer supported by gravity because it's aligned, it's integrated, and it's that at warm with itself.

The body and mind are at warm with itself. We no longer. Project indifference into the world. We're not against anything, and I, I love that, you know, that we can be in this sense of equanimity as we move through space, and so we don't experience opposition. We move what I call in a flow state. Again, it's, it's sharing this with you and a person listening to [00:06:30] this.

Yes, it sounds pretty wonderful. The actual experience of it is such an emancipation from what we've been accustomed to accepting as our way of being. The work I do is really reshaping, reshaping your beingness the way that you are in the world, and the way the world is in you moving beyond the conditioning and allowing yourself to really step into a more expansive yeah, [00:07:00] version of yourself.

The magnitude. Experience the magnitude of yourself, the magnificence of yourself. Sometimes we, we, we miss out on that opportunity. 

Chandler Stroud: Yeah. How, I'm just curious because that was so beautifully articulated. Thank you. How have you seen women in particular step into the expansiveness of themselves after either working with you or having this type of kind of aha moment?

Moylan Ryan: They often give up anything that's too small for them. Jobs. 

Chandler Stroud: Mm. 

Moylan Ryan: [00:07:30] Relationships, opinions, stories, belief systems. And I have someone that's going to my mind now who was on the chapter 13 of a book that she's titled, remembrance, and I came from our sessions together. She remembered who she actually is, and the word remember means to put back together.

She lived in a fragmentation. Lived in parts of herself and through doing the work of fin and breath work and somatic therapy, she felt this [00:08:00] shift from fragmentation to integration. So she felt that she needed to write about that. She didn't realize there was, that ability was within her. Until she began to emerge and, and this was the author in her came to life, I find that people step into a bigger version of themselves.

I, I'm, I'm often amazed when I hear from a person or I meet them maybe a few years later, and their, they've stepped into their potential, their capacity, their intention, and I'll sum it up [00:08:30] in one word, purpose. A person that moves beyond. Being incapacitated, being limited, being curtailed, being suppressed, depressed, they really set intention and align with their life purpose.

So they're on a trajectory that's unstoppable, really, you know. Because they have the lial energy is freed up and it's, it's sustaining them constantly. But when we're subjected to the [00:09:00] living a life in accordance with other people's demands of who we should be, we have to curtail our life force energy, our, our, our qi, our prana, our key energy to, in order to meet the good opinion of others.

So we're often sitting at these desks and, you know, working for other people. Looking out the window. Wonder why we don't dance anymore. Why we don't write, read or write poetry. Why we don't do art. Why we, why we've given up the rhythm. We've lost the rhythm in ourselves. [00:09:30] And what about this for a sake, the rhythm of purpose.

Imagine that. Imagine realigning with that. The rhythm of your purpose. Oh my gosh, that sounds so magnificent. 

Chandler Stroud: It does. I mean, it's great. That's great. No, I love hearing you talk about this because this really was the profound realization for me that encouraged me and that pushed me to want to start this podcast was that we so underestimate how our beliefs, the [00:10:00] stories that we tell ourselves, often subconsciously, all of those lived experiences create this fracturing of ourselves and.

It's so often that physical symptoms are a direct result of that emotional state of having been fractured. And it took me a long time to realize that a lot of the physical discomfort that I was experiencing. Some of it I [00:10:30] just didn't even realize was physical in nature. Like sometimes you don't even know that you're uncomfortable until you realize there is another way to exist in this world, and it often comes back to.

Our emotional state. Again, the beliefs, the stories we tell ourselves. So I am very passionate about that point in particular because coming back into my body and regulating my nervous system and trying to stay grounded from that space all day, every day is like my North [00:11:00] Star. It really is. It's what I work toward and I'm not done yet.

I don't know that you're ever done, right? Your life is a healing journey in many ways, but I love hearing you talk about it, and I'm trying to think of ways that we can bring that experience to life for women listening. So I'm curious what. Can you offer maybe some everyday ways that women might experience an overactive or a dysregulated nervous system, that feeling of potentially living in a fractured [00:11:30] way, even when life looks fine on the outside?

I. 

Moylan Ryan: I think that people that I have encountered, the first thing I see is they have some type of limitation with their breathing. They have a tendency to hold their breath and to breathe in their shoulders. Rather than allowing the diaphragm to go down into the body, there's a tendency for them to be in a startle reflex.

So everything's going up. Their pelvic floor is tied. The diaphragm is, is stuck here under the, under [00:12:00] the ribs. The shoulders are elevated and there's tightness in the jaw and, and reflected up into the eyes. So these are people who were living on the edge of things and, and even reflected in their thinking mind of, there's occasions of joy but not happiness.

They don't live in, in a, in a constant sense of happiness. It's like as if there's some place they visit every now and again, occasionally, you know? 

Chandler Stroud: Mm-hmm. And even then it feels [00:12:30] kind of dulled 

Moylan Ryan: and there's a sense, sense of numbness in the person. You often find a sense of disassociation. So they don't really, if you ask them how they feel, a person will often respond with and tell you how they think they feel.

You know? Yeah. Ask the person to be in their bodies. Yeah. And that's why we call it reacting versus we're reacting. Reacting the script, acting out again and again. We're calling that loop. The nervous system is in that hyper vigilance, and it's difficult to move. [00:13:00] It's difficult, impossible to talk your way out of that.

Chandler Stroud: Yes, I agree. I think a lot of women listening have done a lot of talk therapy or even personal growth work in their own ways. Why is it possible to understand your story so deeply but still feel stuck? Is it, does that really come back to what we were just talking about, the body? 

Moylan Ryan: Yes, because the body is in a state of what we call it, reaction.

It's hardwired. So when a person has a traumatic experience, [00:13:30] you, the nervous system is set in a pattern of response at that time. It's a startle reflex that's in the body, so it's reacting, even though your circumstances have changed experiences in the past, but the nervous system every day, it's in that cycle of.

You know, releasing cortisol and adrenaline and flooding the body with these hormones. And so we're, we're in that excitable type of reactionary type of pattern. So it's, it's very difficult unless you start [00:14:00] to retrain your nervous system. And that's, I suppose, something we'll be speaking about in this podcast is how do we do, how do we retrain the nervous system?

How do we get out of this fight, flight and freeze the imprisonment of that and how can we get into, and that's what my work is about, helping people to get into the, the other state which is flow. And most people, you know, they, they might visit that occasionally, but I would rather have a life that I'm like a river flowing.

There's no river ever [00:14:30] turns a bend and feels fear. Because it knows its destination. Its destination is the ocean. It's fearless in its flowing state, and that's where we wanna be. We wanna be fearless in the flow of the rhythm of our purpose. 

Chandler Stroud: So how do we get there? How do women get from this place of fight, flight, freeze, or fa as they often say, into a state of flow like a river?

Like how, what is your prescription for that? Type of journey. 

Moylan Ryan: The [00:15:00] way to return to and, and I hope everybody understands that our nervous system is like a pendulum, so it swings. And sometimes you might be in fight or flight, and sometimes you might be in rest and restoration, you know, but sometimes that pendulum can be stuck.

The needle can be stuck. So there's a tendency to be more in the fight or flight or, or, or, or freeze. So to answer your question, what I've realized, and, and not just what I realized, but people like Stephen Porges and, and, and [00:15:30] people who work with increasing vagal tone in the body, they've realized that.

To get back into the parasympathetic, the corridor for that one must get into a sympathetic tone with ventral vagal influence. So you must be in scenarios where you are active, but you're in a safe environment. And when I put mindfulness in motion together, that these are pockets, these are environments that are created with groups of [00:16:00] people.

Where you can come in and practice self-regulation of your nervous system through co-regulation, it's impossible to practice to to develop self-regulation in isolation. Self-regulation is created in environments social engagement. So in these environments of groups of people, we train our bodies. To have a neurological shift because what we do is we replicate low [00:16:30] grade threat and that hard wiring.

So therefore you are able to get out of this. Sympathetic dominance or freeze dorsal vehicle freeze and get into, into the portal that brings you into a parasympathetic influence. You know, when we talk about movement, we often think of things like dance or tai chi or, or yoga or whatever, you know, but, but.

But they don't have the same, they don't offer a challenge. They don't offer the low grade threats that's required for the [00:17:00] person to experience the shift from the habitual ingrained patterns into a new, upgraded version of themselves. That's why when we go to therapy, for example, and we're sitting in therapist's offices, and I have great respect for therapists, but we're working from the top down.

Especially in, in talk therapy and we're understanding and, and that part of the brain is what's called the explicit memory. So we're talking and we're realizing, and we're understanding what happened and all this kind of stuff, but mm-hmm. [00:17:30] Trauma in a part of the brain is called implicit memory. It's triggered by the amygdala, which has an emotional type of attachment to it when movement, movement, and especially this training mindfulness emotion.

Over the years, what I've seen is that this is the number one way, putting yourself back in scenarios that are safe, but offer a mild remembrance of threat [00:18:00] to your nervous system so that you can take charge of your response to it. Now as an adult. That you weren't able to do that when you were maybe a younger person or a child or whatever, or more vulnerable.

So by doing so, you step into your power. And I would say that that powerful person that you become now goes back and rescues the party yourself. That's still vulnerable, that's still existing in you. We call this the inner child or whatever. So really powerful stuff and, and those other [00:18:30] practices like I named, they're all unchallenged.

But in, in, in the, in the mindfulness, in motion, we actually replicate challenge. We touch each other. A person will, in a safe environment, will receive touch and receive pressure, and then they will learn how to respond to that pressure in a way that's supportive of their shift in the, in their nervous system.

Does that, does that resonate with you? 

Chandler Stroud: Yes, it resonates so much and it's making me wanna buy a plane ticket out to [00:19:00] Arizona to do this because like, it's 

so 

Chandler Stroud: funny. 

Moylan Ryan: I 

Chandler Stroud: just, 

Moylan Ryan: you know, 

Chandler Stroud: I. I feel like there's so many significant changes that I make in therapy and talk therapy has been absolutely life changing for me, specifically with accompanied with EMDR in particular, because that is a somatic element there.

But even today, like as I believe myself to be this future person, if I'm behaving in a way that. Is in line with how future me [00:19:30] wants to act. My body is resisting so strongly that often I start shaking uncontrollably like. When I step into a space where I've convinced myself cognitively in my mind, I'm ready to be brave and go do this thing, my body is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We're not there yet. Your mind maybe is there, but physically you are not there. And I just, I shake when I get nervous or angry or scared at something. Freaks me out and I know it's my body Releasing [00:20:00] that energy and telling me that we are in a state of fear and it, this happened recently actually during a difficult conversation I had, and I just was like, wow.

Like my body is still there. How do I graduate from this? Like I don't know how to get there. So I'm super fascinated to hear more about this because I'd be curious to hear like how do you create that tension or that mild threat in real life? I know you've [00:20:30] practiced a keto and we still have to do an episode on that, but like I'm very interested.

Moylan Ryan: Yeah. 

Chandler Stroud: Yeah, I know that's, maybe this is it. Like, I'm so fascinated to 

Moylan Ryan: hear how you do this is definitely yeah. All, all the work I do is like kedo based. But let me just go back a little bit and I'll use a simple analogy. Say a person wants to learn to, to swim, so they go to somebody and they sit in their office and they spend maybe an hour or two talking about swimming.

And the person says, here's a book. Read this book on swimming. And [00:21:00] so after doing that for several weeks or months, you arrive at the pool in your swimsuit, you dive into the deep end, and you realize that you're drowning all the cognitive approach to swimming and learning and reading and talking. It didn't really get you very far, really.

And so if we don't do this embodiment, we're drowning in the emotional pool that we've never, never learned to swim in. And that's why mindfulness emotion is a [00:21:30] bottom up approach. It's not like therapy. It's you. And I love that word and I, I, I love the word, but the word is understanding. Understanding. So understanding can be cognitive.

You go to therapy and you under, and now I understand what happened to me, but I use it differently. A somatic understanding is, think of the word under, under understanding. What's your standing, what's your platform? What's underneath you? What are you building on? [00:22:00] So that's a bottom up approach. An understanding is really a bottom up approach.

If I change my understanding, my rootedness, my centeredness, my connectedness, my, my safety within myself, my responsiveness, my expansiveness, my inclusiveness, my own. All these aspects, but can I retain it? Because you see each other life is dynamic. Life is [00:22:30] not static. And so when you are out in the world and the world is in you, everything is moving constantly, you're, you're never at rest.

You are never really, still, life is not still, so you're constantly going to be pulled out into these riptides. How do you survive those? How do you return back to and retain a centered, the founder of Aikido Maria? Yes. Sheba. He was asked, do you ever lose your center? And he said All the time. [00:23:00] But our return to it so quickly, no, we'll never notices if we don't experience our center.

Never have anywhere to return to. So we're always gonna be in this chaos in the external, and that's going to have an impact in our thinking mind. Let's go back to the mind again. So a person who's always in the external world. Their brain function is at what's called a beta function, so it's at a high level, so they're focused mostly on the external world.[00:23:30] 

When you have a an experience of centered, your brain function shifts into an alpha state. It's a meditative state, but you're still highly functional. You're at one with yourself. You have what I call enlightenment, and as a somatic therapist, we consider enlightenment to be an embodied feature.

Enlightened person has peacefulness, calmness, inclusiveness, responsiveness, ease, equanimity, all those qualities [00:24:00] within themselves. They're enlightened. And so we we're not just changing the body, but we're changing the brain function and obviously the neuroplasticity. And that's why this whole work, you know, is around changing your fascial plasticity and your neuroplasticity and integrating both the psychobiology or psychobiology needs to be changed, not just, and I would say, you know, this whole work is, is physiological.

It's, it's not really psychological. It's physiological. It's your body has [00:24:30] these physiological reactions. That's why when you were in the scenario, you felt this thing. But, so we have to change the physiology of the body and we have to put it under pressure. It's like what we talked earlier about the alchemy, the forge, you know, for the, for the blacksmith changes.

It's kind of uncomfortable being in the heat of that, you know, but the mold and the reshaping that takes place. It's when we have a little bit of intensity and the that intensity that's in a safe environment replicates. [00:25:00] Something that might have happened to that person before. So now they're able to respond rather than be constantly reacting to that.

And they're in the present moment, awareness of now. So it's very empowering for them. 

Chandler Stroud: So how is mindfulness in motion, this new practice that you've developed, how is it different from traditional a keto? 

Moylan Ryan: Well, a keto is is often considered as a, as a, as a martial art. Mindfulness emotion is about developing responsiveness.

And not aggressiveness, mindfulness, emotion is, we're not aikido as well, they're not [00:25:30] competitive arts. We have a tendency to neutralize the intention of the person rather than the person. So Aikido is, has, and that can be in a conversation. We, mindfulness emotion teaches us to move from a point of view to a viewing point.

It gives us the ability to, to blend, harmonize and redirect forces. So they're very similar. Our objective in, in mindfulness and motion is to create a [00:26:00] much safer environment for people who have specifically come with traumatic memories and embodied memories so that the level of touch is very conscious.

And I'm not saying it's not in Aikido, but akido can be more brisk if you understand. And so we, the nervous system of the individual is not surprised. Nervous systems change when it's safe enough for them to change. 

Chandler Stroud: That's a quote. [00:26:30] It's so true. I love that. Yeah. But it's so true. I mean, your, your nervous system will change when it feels safe enough to do so.

I mean, pretty straightforward, but sometimes we get so wrapped up in the complexity of trying to regulate our nervous systems. We forget that simple fact. Right. Like that's really what we're trying to achieve. 

Moylan Ryan: As I said to you earlier, you know, getting into a sympathetic and ventral vagal requires movement.

So it's, this is [00:27:00] a safe, and it couldn't be a safer environment for moving your body, but in relation to others, it's not moving your body in isolation. Because we, our trauma was experienced in relationship to others. So we have to go back into those relationships to be able to heal them and heal our, our change our reaction into responsive present moment awareness of choice.

Chandler Stroud: That makes sense. 'cause I was gonna ask like how [00:27:30] this kind of movement you're referring to is different from someone saying, okay, I'll just go, you know, exercise or do something performance based or, you know, it really is like, how is the kind of movement you're referring to different from exercise or the types of performance activities that I think a lot of women are doing today?

Moylan Ryan: Yes. Well, to reiterate what I said is that. Because all those activities are individual. You go to the gym, you go and dance. Yes, you could have a dancing partner or whatever, but if it's, [00:28:00] they're not replicating any mild threat to you. 

Chandler Stroud: Got 

Moylan Ryan: it. And the slight, so to reformat the nervous system from a habitual, reactionary, hardwired and in the body, you need to experience the threat.

So you are replicating and then moving through and moving beyond the. What's already fabricated in your nervous system, you are breaking the pattern and you're in a safe environment to be able to find ways and, and [00:28:30] build intelligence of response rather than be stuck in this, on this island of reactivity.

So, but the other, to answer your question, the others will be beneficial for you, but they will not retrain your reactionary self. 

Chandler Stroud: Got it. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you for explaining that. I'm sure it varies individual to individual, but do you have a sense of like how often or frequently you need to practice this type of movement to start to feel [00:29:00] change in your body?

Moylan Ryan: For a person who decides to live a more embodied consciousness, for example, take a start today by realizing a few things when you go out in the world. Ask yourself the question. Be aware. Am I moving? I. From fear, is my movement effortful? Is my movement constrained? Is my movement oppositional? Or am I moving from love?

Is it effortless? Is it inclusive? Is it expansive? So that's just one simple question to ask as [00:29:30] you move through the world, if you're in whatever you're doing, be conscious of, of how you're moving through space, how you're navigating space. And that's just because you're gonna meet opposition. You know, some of the greatest oppositions that I've met ever.

Are people with chopping carts in the, in the aisles of sprouts. And then how do I dance around that? How do I move around? I love it. You know, when I practice my, my, my mindfulness in motion when people are out pushing carts or whatever they're doing, you know, so I can, I can [00:30:00] say, oh, here's a great opportunity to practice my movement.

How do I feel when I turn into that aisle and suddenly there's someone in the aisle in my aisle? Two people in my eye, how do I, how do I respond to that on a visceral level? How does my nervous system respond to that? So they become my practice. Everything becomes your practice. And so I'm confident to say that it will move into a retreat, you know, where people will come for a weekend workshop and be able to bring things, qualities, [00:30:30] that they develop a way with them so they'll be able to recognize their patterns.

I, I, I think that, I honestly feel that it's like when one experiences the liberation that comes from this experience, you want more of it. You want. And then that is a powerful feeling of emancipation and freedom. And then you have an upsurge and, and you see your nervous system only falls into two ca categories.

It's either gonna be in protection or connection. All this work and mindfulness and [00:31:00] motion is all about moving from protection to connection. So now it's in this world at this very moment. It's such an important for experience to, for us to be able to feel the gravitational pull of humanity to build community.

So this work is integral to contributing, to really meaningful life changes that are not just individual, but that's spill over into our communities and to prioritize [00:31:30] connection, but not just on a cognitive level. It's, it's actually to feel connected. And what's the number one? Connection, empathy type.

Empathy for yourself and for others. What a beautiful quality, but that comes to your body. You can't think empathy, you feel, you feel, and, and that's why people long, they long to be seen, to be heard. And this one is the very most important thing to be felt by others, to be felt by other, another human being.[00:32:00] 

That's the kernel of intimacy, you know, into me see connection. So I would say that these classes, people will come and people will long for them. Because they'll feel the experience of at home. See, our body is, our body is like a house, Chandra, you know, we, up here, we have the library, and then we have the communication room.

And down here we have the heart, like the heart of the fire, and then we have the arms, the, the workout room, and then our tummy maybe bit the kitchen and, and the [00:32:30] back, like it's the bedroom. Mm-hmm. And then below that you might have the, the basement and then the foundations. And so a lot of people spend time in, in the basement, in the darkness of depression.

Other people spend a lot of time in the workout room and, and the majority of people spend time in the library up top up here. So they live in, and we used that word earlier, fragmented. They live in parts of themselves. It's like living in a house where you only occupy certain rooms, but every room. [00:33:00] Has a window that has a different view.

So it's very important that in our home, coming to ourselves in doing this work of embodiment, that we take up full residence in our whole beingness, and by doing so, we turn our house into our home. We're at home in ourselves. We feel the ease. We're in charge of our ability to self-regulate and we feel connected with ourselves and connected with humanity.

We [00:33:30] feel safe enough to be ourselves. We feel safe enough to align with our own identity, our purpose in life. We are constantly expanding in our natural divine state. We're compassionate, loving, kind human beings. And we're healing not just ourselves, but healing one another. Now, who would not want to do that?

Chandler Stroud: I mean, you just speaking through that so beautifully and articulately, literally brought tears to my eyes, so [00:34:00] I don't know who wouldn't want to do that. That was just so perfectly said, Moylan. Thank you for sharing that analogy. And yeah, that is the goal. 

Moylan Ryan: We've been exiled for too long. We've, we, we, we, we've been exiled and so the body only knows now.

Your mind will have you in the past or the future, your anxieties, your stresses and whatever, but the body only knows now. And, [00:34:30] and, and the good thing about the body, it'll never desert you. So you may as well develop a good relationship with it. You know, befriended. And and love it. Love it, love it, and love being in it, and take up full resonance in it and experience the, the, the bliss and the absurd of your magnificence.

You know, it's, it's, it's such a profound relationship to have the number one relationship is with the self, you know? 

Chandler Stroud: Yes [00:35:00] it is. It's profound indeed. Oh, Moylan, this is really, thank you. You've given me a lot to think about today already, and we're not even done yet. I'm so curious. How does. Movement, the kind of movement you're speaking of in mindfulness and motion compliment the work that you do with Rolfing and Neurodynamic breath work.

Moylan Ryan: So when people come in to me for roling, for example, and you've been to obsessions with me and. 

Chandler Stroud: I have, yes, I've [00:35:30] done both. 

Moylan Ryan: Yeah. So they lie on this table and they're in a horizontal position. When people do a neurodynamic breath work, they lie on a yoga mat and they're in a horizontal position. But life isn't on horizontal, life is on the vertical, and I love the words, and I, I have a chapter in my, in my book is called Vertical Responsibility.

So vertical means that we live in the complete length of ourselves, that we have a [00:36:00] beautiful experience of our own evolution, that we are an experience of heaven and earth at the same time that we're grounded here, but we're in our spiritual type of realization at the same time. We are able to experience not just lengthen the body, but we're the breadth and the width of our body, and then the depth of our body.

We live in the entirety of ourself in this expanded version of ourselves. And then we take that beautiful expanded version because when I'm expanded, I'm inclusive. So now there's room [00:36:30] in me for you. Because there's room in me for me, but if I'm in a contracted state, there's no room in me for you. So I can never empathize.

I can never really connect. So, and it's this, it's, it's a beautiful expansion that takes place through Rolfing and the release of the contracted breath. The beautiful respiration brings with it the wave of inspiration where live is inspired living and that's welcomed in us. Then we bring that into movement because life, as I said to you, [00:37:00] is not horizontal.

It's. Vertical, but it's also, there's a, there's a invitation for movement in that life is dynamic. So we watch the body as it moves in this beautiful vertical responsibility. It's responding constantly to the challenges of life, to the invitations that are offered to it. Pulsations and the sensations that it's experienced into the [00:37:30] rhythm.

And that's why Rolfing and breathwork are, I would say, a precursor to living in a body that's able to be informed by its rhythmic pulsation, which is your li life force energy. Your, your, yeah, that's, that's what I would say is, and then how we allow that life force to influence us and the lives of others that encounter us when we're in our.

That spiritual evolution, so it's like horizontal to [00:38:00] vertical and then taking full. When you're in vertical responsibility, you're taking responsibility for who you are in that moment. In the now moment, you are not holding other people responsible for how you feel and a plethora of other things that we have been conditioned to do.

We're taking full responsibility and that beautiful vertical responsibility allows us to turn our projections into perceptions. We're no longer projecting stuff 'cause we're not, we're not split. We're not, we're [00:38:30] integrated. So we don't have to project our internal dichotomies into the world. And instead of that, when we see and identify challenges in the world, we ask ourselves, where is that in me?

So I'm learn. Everybody becomes my teacher. Every situation becomes my teacher once I'm open to it. But openness only comes through expansion. And Rolfing and breathwork are the prerequisites to experiencing that expanded state. [00:39:00] And not just in the psychobiology, but in the consciousness of oneself.

Chandler Stroud: Moylan, I have learned so much from you today. Thank you for sharing all of that, and at some point in the future, I really look forward to doing mindfulness in motion with you, whether in Arizona or perhaps set a future Happy Camp retreat even we should, you know, just planting that seed Moin. For someone listening who feels disconnected from their body, what's one gentle way they can [00:39:30] begin experimenting with mindfulness and motion in their everyday life?

Moylan Ryan: What's important is to realize that the importance and value of listening to your body rather than trying to fix it, that's an important aspect to prioritize connecting with sensations and pulsations to create a practice of self-inquiry. And with that to create a practice of self-compassion. 

Chandler Stroud: Well, I co-sign that.

I fully agree. And moylan, if listeners walk away remembering one thing from our [00:40:00] conversation today, what would you want it to be? 

Moylan Ryan: That while speaking and developing cognitive practices and exercising and moving your body are all fantastic and all really support you. But to move beyond. The hard wiring that's taking you and keeping you bound in this reactionary state of fear [00:40:30] response.

You have to go through and find this doorway that brings you into sympathetic and ventral vaal. And it's worthwhile reading about that if you're, if you're, if you need to develop more type of awareness, and that comes.

Movement that also presents low grade threat. Is the kernel. It's the stepping off point [00:41:00] of retraining and reframing the reactions in your nervous system and being able to overcome them, being able to remain present, grounded, centered, responsive, expansive, inclusive at that time. Is a deal breaker. That's what's going to bring you in out of this habitual pattern into a new landscape, a new territory where you are now rewiring your nervous system.[00:41:30] 

'cause you have new responses that have created old ingrained reactions so that you are able to self-regulate. And able to co-regulate and be able to make choice of response. So I'm available if anybody needs to contact me or to chat with me about any of this. I just love all of this information.

I think it's extremely valuable and I've seen it. Chand work time and time again with, with, with lines of mind [00:42:00] that are becoming unhitched from old ways of of imprisonment and encapsulation to finding and discovering and remembering, remembering their freedom. 

Chandler Stroud: Well, moylan. You know, I don't know if it takes like two or three times for me to hear something until I take action at times, but I am going to speak with you more about this and finally sign up for that a keto class because you [00:42:30] convinced me today for sure.

So thanks there. 

Moylan Ryan: Great, great, great. And 

Chandler Stroud: I really 

Moylan Ryan: appreciate it. This is, this is my, my, my, my 36th year of Aikido practice. And I've enjoyed every, the journey has been tremendous. It's brought me, it's brought me all over the world, but the greatest journey has brought me in on, is in my internal world, you know?

Chandler Stroud: Yeah. 

Moylan Ryan: I'm very, very extremely grateful for what has brought to me, you know, and I, and now I'm working to bring it to [00:43:00] others. 

Chandler Stroud: You might be the most centered person I know, so I believe that you have been doing it for 36 years. I can't even visualize you getting dramatic or having a meltdown. Like it's just not even in my consciousness, like I can't get there.

So you sold me Moylan and I'm so excited to try your own mindfulness in motion. Practice at some point in the future. Thank you for developing it. Thank you for sharing your wisdom [00:43:30] today, and thank you for sharing your time. It was so great to see you, and I can't thank you enough for being here. 

Moylan Ryan: My pleasure.

And, and, and it's really heartfelt, the opportunity you've given me to share what I really love and enjoy. What is my dharma. 

Chandler Stroud: Yes. Yes it is. I have no doubt about that, and I know you don't either. So thank you for being here and expressing that with all of us, and to our listeners, tuning in. If you enjoyed today's conversation, [00:44:00] please share it with friends and don't forget to follow the show.

You can also visit healing heroes podcast.com to get resources, meet the heroes, and share your ideas for future episodes or guests. Thanks for listening, everyone, and until next time, remember. Be curious, be courageous, and be kind to yourself. You've got [00:44:30] this.