When you’re stuck in fight or flight, it’s impossible to sleep well. 


Chronic illness, trauma, or stress can keep your body in stress mode instead of relax mode.


Listen to this episode where I interview Emily Neumann of Primal Trust, a membership and community created by Dr. Cathleen King, that focuses on retraining the nervous system for people with chronic illness, trauma, and stress. 


Here’s what you’ll learn: 

  • What’s happening inside your body at a cellular level when you’re dealing with chronic illness, trauma, or stress
  • 2 ways that chronic health issues contribute to sleep issues
  • How to heal your body from chronic issues
  • Tools that will help you retrain your nervous system so you can sleep better and feel better


If you feel wired and stressed all the time and don’t know how to turn it off, you don’t want to miss this episode! 


Learn more about Primal Trust and how you can retrain your nervous system to heal chronic illness, trauma, and stress. Sign up using my affiliate link.


We’ll help you consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently in the Complete Sleep Solution program! Learn more and book a free consultation with the Sleep Detective™.


Resources



Episode Transcript


Have you tried everything from natural to pharmaceutical just to get a good night's rest? Join me, Martha Lewis, certified sleep expert and functional health coach. As I unpack what's really keeping you up at night and how to change it, this is the Sleep Detective podcast and I'm going to show you how to sleep well so you can enjoy your life.


Martha Lewis: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Sleep Detective Podcast. Today I am so excited to have Emily Neumann here from Primal Trust, which is a nervous system, brain retraining program. I will have her explain more what that is, but I am just so excited to find out more about this from her and the program. Primal Trust is something I've already been recommending to some of our clients who I think need this work. I really think this is going to be of such value not only to all of you listeners, but to my clients who are already in the program. So I'm really excited to share it with everyone. Thanks for being here, Emily.


Emily Neumann: Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Martha. Super excited to have this conversation. I think, like you said, it can be a piece of the puzzle that's really important for people in your community, so thank you so much for having me.


Martha Lewis: Yeah, definitely. And I always talk about everyone has their own unique puzzle with their own unique puzzle pieces, so this can be one of them, and it's not something that can be overlooked because if we don't address it, then you're probably not going to get better. So I'd love for you to briefly start by explaining what primal trust and retraining the nervous system are and what you're doing.


Emily Neumann: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So Primal Trust is an academy and community created by Dr. Cathleen King. So she is a doctor of physical therapy, she's a neuroscience based educator, and really the material is focused on assisting people with chronic illness, chronic stress, chronic trauma, sometimes all three. I'm sure you see that oftentimes that can be the case, but to really empower people in that space to take healing into their own hands. So by gaining an understanding of your own nervous system and just our nervous system in general. I think I was 35 years old when I was first explained that the nervous system controls the immune system to a certain degree, and I wish we were taught that in kindergarten, but we're not. And so understanding the role that it plays in chronic illness is massive. And I think that it's Frontier medicine. I think that it will be part of the fabric of the mainstream before we know it.


But as far as the academy, level one has about 30 hours of content. So I always say it's like a college course on your own specific nervous system. So that puzzle that you just mentioned, it also has about 40 science-based tools in just level one to get your nervous system out of a state of threat and into a state of regulation. And really the reason why that's important, and I always say I think that the reason Primal Trust is so successful for people in their healing journeys is because of the very specific chronological order of the program. So level one is all about regulation, introducing those tools, getting a nice daily structure in where you are regularly practicing these tools to rewire your brain to perceive safety in your body. Level two gets a little bit deeper into some parts work and some trauma work and things like that. And as I said, I think the order is really important when you jump right into trauma work, but you don't really have tools to regulate any responses that might come from that trauma work. It can be re-traumatizing.


And so I think starting in a place where we're actually going to do some science-based work on our nervous system on the front end is why the program is so successful. One thing that I definitely want to speak about right off the bat is why I bring up regulating the nervous system to get out of a state of threat. So many people in this community, people who are chronically ill, people who are chronically stressed, this is so much an issue in our country specifically with just this stress, this hypervigilance. So when we have an illness or some kind of toxic load can certainly be the cause of this, but as we said, it's a puzzle for many people. Our cells we're learning go into a state of cell danger response, and that's coined by Robert Navio. But what it means is, and thank God for it, it's kept our species alive for generations.


But the analogy that I always give to my clients is a gazelle in nature is being chased by a tiger. All of its autonomic functions shut off because it has to focus on survival, digestion, hormone systems. Certainly sleep will shut off because the body has to focus on survival when it escapes and it survives in nature, we see this gazelle physically shake and do things to kind of discharge that trauma that it just went through. Well, we don't do that. And so what happens is when we get into this state of threat, people in communities like this can't get out of it. And so they get stuck in something called cell danger response. And what we're seeing is the cell wall will actually become hardened in this demographic. When the cell wall becomes hardened, it's great. It keeps us alive in states of threat, but we begin to not absorb nutrients properly. We can't detoxify properly. We're seeing this in blood samples from people in high stress or in this type of demographic. And so when we regulate our nervous system, it can actually soften that cell wall which restores function in those autonomic processes again. And that is when we really see healing in this community. So level one is focused on softening that cell wall, perceiving safety enough that your body can start restoring its autonomic functions again.


Martha Lewis: Yes, I love that. And people come to me saying, I just feel like I'm stuck in fight or flight. And it's like, and they are. Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. And in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, it's so frustrating to be so tired and yet just also wired and just not able to fall into a restful sleep. So that's definitely what's happening. So before we talk more, I'm just curious how you became interested in this and what your journey is?


Emily Neumann: I think so many of us in this space, my own healing crisis really brought me here a couple of years ago, got bit by a tick and got horrible neurological, late stage Lyme disease, all these co-infections. I had digestive issues, it activated Epstein Barr. I had this list of diagnoses. Conventional medicine had no ideas. They had no lifeline, really, they didn't. And I know a lot of people with Lyme and certain autoimmune conditions relate to that. So I was, yes, and I was fortunate enough to find a functional doctor who turned everything around for me. I owe her just such a debt of gratitude. But she said to me, I will get you started on a protocol, but I need you to start this program. It's called Primal Trust. And she explained the nervous system to me, and I should mention my background. I'm trained in acupressure, Reiki one and two, I've been trained in energy work.


So many of us are like, wow, I was helping others, but I just never brought it home to help myself. And there was a part of that, but also I had two young children. I was working full time. I was just functioning for far too long. And so I started Primal Trust. And for those listening that you say have already kind of started, this is going to really resonate. You're going to say, oh, me too. And those who haven't yet, there is this validation when you first join the program where you just can't believe that there are others like you. There are others stuck in this place with these cascading symptoms or these mysterious diagnoses or just years of not being able to sleep or digest or things that most people don't really have to think about. And that was certainly me. So I noticed right off the bat with Primal Trust, I was able to actually tolerate some of the supplements that were prescribed to me much easier.


Now I realize that is the cell danger response theory. I finally was softening my cell walls and I could let certain nutrients in. I was starting to perceive safety. And then from there I was asked to come on and be a one-on-one mentor in the program, which is an incredible feature. We have live classes almost 365 days a year, sometimes multiple times a day, taught by myself, other mentors, Dr. Kat. We have study groups. I mean, there's really a community aspect and one-on-one mentoring is sort of a piece of that as well, if you just need help with blind spots or resistance patterns or things like that. So that's where I find myself now. I think it has been a massive part of my healing journey as well to sort of bring it outward to other people. I think sometimes we're wounded in community, we can heal in community. And so that is how I found myself here in this community.


Martha Lewis: Yes, yes. I love it. And I just want to say to all my clients and everyone listening, if you're super sensitive to supplements and dealing with mold toxicity, which about a third of my clients are, then this is such an important piece that we need to work on because after working with many people and seeing some people just can't get better, this is the missing piece. So if that's where anyone is, then we definitely want to do this program.


Emily Neumann: Yeah, absolutely. And mold toxicity is huge in this community as well. There are certain modules where she speaks very specifically to that issue, and there are exercises and tools that are based on because people have lived in mold forever, if you really are at a place where you're not detoxing it properly, I think like you said, it is time to look at nervous system regulation.


Martha Lewis: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So let's talk about how this applies to sleep in particular.


Emily Neumann: So sleep's a big one. The two things that I see in my clients', especially with sleep, and I'm sure you do too. So I see paired associations a lot. You have wired these neural networks together to associate nighttime or even something very specific like your bed with the inability to sleep. Paired associations are very strong. This is a silly analogy, but I like to think about, you're watching TV and a commercial comes on for a cinnamon roll or something and you start to salivate. That's a paired association and they're very strong and you can actually wire to associate anything. I know Dr. Kat has done things with people where she'll have them put a dot on their wall and feel fear every time they walk by it. Think of something scary every time they see it. And then before you know it, that.is scary. So we can associate, we can wire anything, any networks together.


But the beautiful thing there is we can also rewire our brains are incredibly neuroplastic with sleep. There are such specific tools that we have in the program to help with those associations. It's just storytelling. And I think so much, and I know that people listening can relate to this, so much of the suffering when we're in this space comes from the stories that we're attaching to things we talk about top down, bottom up processing and top down is really our brains. So it's the part that is attaching stories as we process things bottom up is more sensory. So going back to a cinnamon roll example, you walk into a kitchen and maybe you smell something delicious. Your body says, I smell cinnamon rolls. And it's a reaction and your brain says, I remember when my grandma made me cinnamon rolls. And so it attaches a story and so much suffering is sort of born from that.


So I think with paired associations with sleep, there are so many amazing visualization tools that are provided. We have such an incredible pattern interrupt. I know for those of you who have done pattern interrupt before, I know that maybe people think it can be a little bit too general, but we really customize pattern interrupt so that it resonates with you. It has to be the backbone of really regulating your nervous system anyways because of those thought patterns. So we have some really beautiful tools to reassociate things and to rewire that pairing of neural networks that can create that story around sleep around, like I said, even nighttime. The second thing that I see with sleep, I always like to use the analogy of a computer. So we need to process things all throughout the day, right? It's just like when you're getting those update reminders on your computer over and over again, that's like we need to organize files, we need to process information.


We need to shut down so that we can process this menagerie of files and information. And so our brain is a lot like that. We'll kind of hear a little knock, a little alarm, a little hello, it's time to process, but we just keep scrolling on our phones or we obsess over our symptoms or we overachieve or we bring forth these coping mechanisms that we have. Well, when is your brain going to force that shutdown like your computer would do? Okay, I've given you all these warnings. Time to force a shutdown. It's going to be when you're laying in a dark room at night with no distractions. And so it's going to trigger that it's time to process, it's time to update. And so like you said, you're physically so tired, but you're wired and it really is just like that. And so as far as primal trust goes with processing breaks, if you are in this community and you're starting your daily structure out and you're making time and space for these tools, they're built in processing breaks. And so it's sort of a win-win. Not only are you regulating your nervous system, but there's so much less to process when you're laying there at night. So I would say those are the two things that I see that are just so fixable. They're so fixable. It took work to get you here. It took trillions of influences to get you here. It's going to take a little work to get you out of it. But like I said, our brains are so neuroplastic, especially around those two things.


Martha Lewis: Yes, I love that. And I am already incorporating a lot of those in my program. So it's really good just to hear this reinforced of pattern interrupt and helping change your thoughts is part of it. And then taking time during the day to calm your nervous system is also really important. Otherwise then the only time it has is in the middle of the night, and that's not when you want that to be happening.


Emily Neumann: And it is a win-win because I doubt a lot of people in your community only struggle with sleep because it's a wheel and it's a chicken and the egg, and it's that whole thing. And so why I say it's a win-win is if you're incorporating these tools, you're also going to experience symptom reduction. It's proven. And so that's also going to contribute to better sleep depending on what you're dealing with. So it really is a win-win.


Martha Lewis: Yeah, definitely. Awesome. So I know when we were communicating, we kind of talked about the importance of not talking about your sleep. I know, and this is something I tell my clients too, when I wasn't sleeping well, I talked about it all the time. First thing in the morning, I would get out of bed, my husband would say, how'd you sleep? I'm like, horrible. And then I get to work and I complain to my coworkers about how tired I was and how bad I slept. And then I'd see my friends and complain to them. So one of the first things I learned when I first started diving into adult sleep is, okay, let's stop talking about it. So I'd love to hear your perspective on that and why it's so important to not talk about your sleep and how tired you are and your symptoms all the time. 


Emily Neumann: Your symptoms. Yeah. This is a philosophy that is, we do this with all symptoms in the community. It's brought in very early in the community where that's sort of a rule in the beginning is it's no symptom talk. And that absolutely includes sleep. And it's funny to be the one speaking on this because of all the 40 tools in the first level, I had more resistance to this than anything. I was like, I'll do all the breath work, I'll do all the eye movements, I'll do all the visualizations, I'll do all the tools, but I will be speaking about my symptoms because I think so many can relate. You do feel misunderstood and you feel alone. And if there's a way that anybody can even sort of understand what you're going through, you're going to long for that. And so you want to talk about how you're feeling and what's going on.


And I do understand that. And the other thing I want to say is it's not about gaslighting yourself into believing that they're not real. Your symptoms are so real. They're not the only thing that's real though. So it's very important to think about that and to think about. It's not positive thinking, just look on the bright side. We're talking about your brain, we're not talking about your mind. And that differentiation is very important. Your brain is experiencing some kind of trigger or stimulus, and then it's just a windup toy and it starts rehearsing sound familiar to a lot of people listening. It starts rehearsing what it knows. The brain would rather be certain and miserable than uncertain. It's terrifying to go out into the unknown. And so what happens when we speak about our symptoms is we are validating that brain process, that this is negative, that it's causing suffering.


We're using those adjectives. And so we're reinforcing that it's okay to, if you just need to communicate that you are suffering, that something is causing you discomfort. We in primal trust say use a neutral word. So in my journey, I would just say to my husband, I'm having a lot of it right now, and I would just say that because you're telling your brain, then it's just neutral because guess what? It's here. So let it be here. And I think if your brain could figure it out, it would have by now. And it's certainly not going to make leaps and bounds of progress by continuing the narrative. This is awful. I'm a victim of this. I am suffering. And so just bringing in a neutral word, I can't tell you, Martha, the impact that made on my symptoms, and I did resist it a lot.


But I am here to tell you, I was astounded by just reducing it to maybe once in the morning or once before bed. If you just feel that you need to communicate it to somebody close to you, just saying, as I said, I'm just having a lot of it right now, it will shift things massively. I have a client who uses, she lives in Hawaii, and so pineapples are everywhere there. And so she'll just say, I'm having a pineapple day to her husband, and he knows what it means and he'll bring in a little extra support. It's just telling the brain, this is here period.


Again, it's the sense, it's the bottom up. It's the body feedbacking the brain. It's not the brain feedbacking the body attaching a story to it. It's here and it's this and it's burning and it's pressure and it's pain. And it's all those words that our brain associates with remaining ill. So I think that that is why it's so important to not symptom talk, talk about your sleep, sleep specifically. I think people will be astounded by how much that relieves the story around missing that sleep.


Martha Lewis: Yes, and that's great to hear. That's definitely one of the first things I start working with my clients on in the program. It's like it's going to take a while for the physical imbalances to resolve themselves, but we can start with how your mind is perceiving this and everything's connected. It's so similar to life coaching tools and cognitive behavioral therapy, and I teach about how the circumstance is actually neutral, and it's our thoughts about it, the stories we tell that are going to determine how we feel and what we do and what's going to happen. So we can start before your sleep gets better at all or any symptoms get better at all. We can start changing how you're perceiving that.


Emily Neumann: It's huge, and it's brought in early in our program too. It's one of the first things that comes in. I was seeing a very talented acupuncturist in the beginning of my journey, and I was telling him about this type of work, and he said, there are navy seals who can light their arm on fire and not react to it. And if that's not brain retraining, what else could explain it? And it's the story. It's just that story. Yeah.


Martha Lewis: So if you wouldn't feel like you want to talk about anything else, but I'd love to get into some tools that people can use as well.


Emily Neumann: Yeah. So as I said, 40 tools in level one, and they're all regulation, brain rewiring, pattern interrupt tools, but it isn't. I like to break it down into really three categories. So there are breath work tools, there are emotional elevation tools, and there are movement tools. Some of the movement is if you're sitting there like, oh, well, I can't do movement. We have eye movements that are so impactful that absolutely count as movement. So if that's already a turnoff for you, just know some of them are just eye movements a little bit kind of halfway through level one, we do bring in some somatic movement just to kind of drop back down into the body and become sort of a curious observer of what's going on and really working that muscle. One of our breathwork tools is called V breathing. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it physically tones the vagus nerve like a muscle at the gym.


You've probably heard this. They're actually finding that type of intonation, that type of humming can ease anxiety more than sleep can if you're practicing it regularly. And so that's probably my favorite breath tool. It's very impactful. And then we have, as I mentioned, we've got eye movements. We have visualization tools that are so powerful because you go through a visualization and you're speaking in the present tense only that way your brain really doesn't know whether it's had that experience or not. And it rewires the brain to expect good things, which is really important. I certainly remember the days where I was waking up in the morning just so I could be that much closer to just going to bed. And so when you can rewire to expect good things, that's really powerful. And with our visualizations, at a certain point, we recommend you bring a little bit of a trigger into the visualization.


So for people struggling with sleep, I've had them go through this visualization, it's going so well, and maybe they just walk by a bed. It's not their bed, but they just bring a bed in somewhere in there, or they notice that the sun's starting to set, but then they keep going with their visualization. So we bring in some triggers as well so that you can kind of learn about intrusive thoughts and all of that. We have attunements, which are really amazing. They are sort of guided meditations, but really focused on reorganizing memory structures to deal with resistance. One tool I would like to kind of go into detail, it's called dual awareness. So the reason that I want to sort of walk people through this one is because it's really powerful in the moment. So let's say you get a trigger or a stimulus. For some people it's a body symptom. For some people it's nighttime now, or I've just gotten in bed and there's fear.


When we're in fear as animals, our eyes are darting around for predators, we are dipping into that cell danger response space, and that's not going to help us sleep. That's not going to help our autonomic functions restore. And so one tool that is so powerful, as I said, it's called dual awareness. So you start by just looking ahead of you, and your brain at this point is saying, we're in danger, we're in danger. So you start turning your head very slowly, and the pace of this is very important, but you turn your head very slowly all the way to the right. And during that process, your brain is still saying, we're in danger, but your body's kind of feedbacking. How can we be in danger if we're moving this slowly? And so your body is sort of feedbacking upward, and then you're going to focus on something you've probably seen a hundred times to your right and you're going to narrate it.


You can do this out loud. I'm a big fan of that, but I also understand that's not always possible. You're going to describe what you're seeing as if you're a baby and you're orienting to your environment for the first time. So I see the leaves on that tree are really starting to change color. There's a shadow behind it. This time of day, there's a little bit of water evaporating off the greens. There are hundreds of shades of greens on that tree, and you just describe it and your brain is going to fight you on this, and your brain is going to say, what are you doing? We are in danger. And your body is going to say, are you sure about that? If we were in danger, we couldn't sit here and notice all this, and then you're going to go back to the center and you're going to do the same thing on the left very slowly to the left.


By now, your brain is saying, well, I guess we can't really be in danger because we're not searching for predators. We're taking our time. And you do the same thing on the left, and you can do that a few times, but it is that bottom up feedback. It is that, okay, my brain is trying to, well, certain triggered parts of me are trying to make the decisions here, but I'm going to bring us back to earth and I'm going to start showing my brain that we are safe in this environment, or we could not be doing this. Look what we're doing. We are doing it separate from our rehearsal, our brain rehearsal. And so I love that tool because it's great in the moment for people who are ill and maybe they have a symptom come up and they start Googling or they have this, this tendency to kind of ruminate really, really big thing for people in this community to ruminate. And so it's a great tool you can use in the moment when you are triggered. And it's important to do it when you're not, so that your brain just kind of knows this is a safe thing to do.


Martha Lewis: Awesome. And I think for me, maybe point out your brain isn't saying consciously I'm in danger. Right?


Emily Neumann: Right.


Martha Lewis: To me, it's like I feel anxious or something in my body and I don't know why. And so I kind of pause and I'm like, why am I feeling anxious? Something triggered it. So trying to figure that out. But yeah,


Emily Neumann: And sometimes you don't know what that is. Sometimes it's obvious like, oh no, I'm having this symptom. And sometimes it's a person or sometimes it's a, but sometimes you truly don't know.


Martha Lewis: Yeah, totally.


Emily Neumann: Yeah.


Martha Lewis: Yeah. So your brain might not be saying, you might not be thinking the thought of I'm in danger, but it's like you can tell your body feels like it's in danger.


Emily Neumann: That's exactly right. Yep.


Martha Lewis: Yeah. So yeah, that's a great tool. I love it. Awesome. Well, is there anything else you want to add to this conversation?


Emily Neumann: I think I would just like to speak to the people who are listening that think, well, my circumstance is different. Nobody's as sick as me or nobody's as nobody's been in this as long as me. There is so much healing when you keep your heart open. And what I like to think about is when we keep our heart open, I like to actually picture that cell wall. I mentioned also remaining open when we close our hearts off. And what I mean is being vulnerable enough to maybe let a little bit of help in and actually just try it. There's nothing to lose by bringing in this nervous system component in your healing journey. But I do like to picture when we close our hearts off, there's suffering. It's some philosophers say it's the only cause of suffering.


When we start to close our hearts, I like to really remember if I can keep my heart open, I must feel some degree of safety. And just joining a community like this or listening to a podcast like this is an incredible first step in understanding, oh, there are others like me who have healed and I will heal as well. You can't overlook the nervous system. And like I said, I think it's going to be part of the fabric of mainstream conventional treatments at some point. Hope, I hope so. I mean, more and more when I talk to people, they're referred by their MD to this program, and so I have to believe it's taking that turn.


And then just one more thing for people going into their days today, just try to do something that makes you feel maybe 15% safer. So for me, I like to have my water near me. Maybe you notice that your feet are a little bit cold. Just stop and put on some socks for yourself. Maybe open your blinds and let a little bit of light in. We have a lot of agency over those types of things, and the impact that that will make is bigger than you think. So as you go through your day to day, just see, how can I be 15% safer? Because it's going to do so much for your overall health if you can perceive safety and kind of escape that threat state.


Martha Lewis: Awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for all of your expertise on this and sharing this. And yeah, everyone who's listening is really going to benefit. So thanks for being here.


Emily Neumann: Thank you so much, Martha, and thank you for the work you do. Truly.


Martha Lewis: Yes, you too.

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