217. From Disordered Eating To Embodiment: Elisha’s Journey Through Breath, Dance & Joy
217. From Disordered Eating To Embodiment: Elisha’s Journey Through Breath, Dance & Joy
From Trauma to Transformation: Elisha Light Angel’s Embodied Path to Healing
In this soul-stirring conversation, Kayla sits down with Elisha Light Angel—a bodyworker, podcaster, and spiritual seeker whose healing journey is nothing short of luminous. Together, they explore the deep roots of disordered eating, authoritarian upbringing, and the relentless search for freedom inside the body.
Elisha shares how Qigong, ecstatic dance, and slow breathwork helped her reconnect with her body after years of bulimia. She talks about the importance of environment, playfulness, and reclaiming movement not for aesthetics—but for vitality, aging, and joy. They discuss the overstimulation of modern life, the overstated rigidity of healing, and why “lazy stretching” might be your secret superpower.
This episode is a celebration of micro-changes, breath as a homecoming, and the radical permission to play. Whether you’re looking for grounded tools, soothing reminders, or a breath of fresh laughter—Elisha delivers in spades.
Listen in for:
A beautiful story of body reclamation and nervous system healing
The spiritual science behind breath and sound
Why laughter is one of the most underrated healing tools
A daily challenge that’s simple, powerful, and free
Connect With Elisha
Embodied Activation
"Slow It Down With Your Breath"
Throughout your day, gently bring awareness to your breath—especially during the boring, everyday moments:
Driving in your car
Doing the dishes
Sitting on the toilet
Taking a shower
Your practice:
Simply notice your breathing without needing to change it right away.
Then, when it feels available, slow it down just a little—aim for a 4-second inhale and 4-second exhale.
Tune into the physical sensations:
The cool air through your nose
The soft expansion of your chest
The feeling of settling as you exhale
Bonus reflection:
The places in your body that ache the most—your neck, back, shoulders—might be where you unconsciously brace when you’re stressed. Softening the breath here can offer deep, quiet release.
Why this matters:
When practiced in non-stressful moments, this breath awareness becomes easier to access when life does get stressful—creating a calm, embodied anchor in real time.
Transcript
Kayla: Alicia, welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast.
Elisha: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Kayla: I'm excited to have you. We actually connected just before this and it turns out we have a bunch of things in common and your story is the perfect fit for this show, and I'm just excited to dive right in.
So why don't you start by just sharing a little bit about who you are and some of the work you do in the world.
Elisha: Some of the work I do in the world who I am, well, I'm enlist a light angel, and I, by day I'm a massage therapist. So I would say that's the, the big amount of work I do is I help people to feel good in their bodies or get them out of pain or keep their bodies going.
I recently started a podcast because a lot of my journey has been learning about my own body getting into my body. Empowerment, embodiment, and through just being able to observe my own process and what that's been like, and then also observing so many other people's bodies. I get to hear all sorts of stuff about bodies and I'm learning more constantly, whether it's.
Just what the body does or even what doctors can do with our modern medicine to help bodies. And I don't believe that we have to buy into the stories that we get old or this is just the way it is. I really do believe that we have more power over our bodies, through our minds, than to just let life take us over and be.
At the mercy of whatever happens in life.
Kayla: Thank you for sharing that. I think there is so much power in reclaiming the narrative, reclaiming the stories, and reclaiming what we know to be true about health. Our bodies aging, all the things. So can you take us from your origin story, to where you are now, and how that embodiment and that empowerment has really shifted things for you.
Elisha: Yes. We'll try to put that in a nutshell. So as a child, my upbringing was in. A very authoritarian household, and it was like a fundamentalist Christian Pentecostal flavor. Very, very strict rules that I had to adhere to. Nothing ever felt like it was. Like I couldn't have anything that I wanted. If it's something brought me joy, it probably wasn't allowed in my life.
And, by the time I was a teenager, I developed bulimia and I was in theater and I just wanted, like my only goal at the time. Was to move to California and become a famous actress. That was it. There's no plan B. My dad didn't want me to be an actress. So it was kind of, fighting against that and other issues that were arising, during your hormonal period of being a teenager.
And that started that whole process. So it started with a desire to just stay skinny because I lived in the nineties where if you weren't like a size two, then you were considered fact. And my skinny is like a size 12 because my body's like I have an Amazonian build, but nobody ever told that to me when I was young.
And so I believed. That I was really fat and I just needed to stay skinny because the only way I was gonna get work was being skinny. And in the industry that was perpetuated a lot more at the time. Now you see a lot more larger bodied people on the screen, but it was not that common back then. You had, Kathy Bates and Queen Latifah and that was about it.
So, that lasted until my early thirties. It was an ebb and flow. Sometimes it might be like a couple times a week that I might binge and purge the worst of it was like 21 to 24 times a week, meaning like three or four times a day. At that point in time, I would say it was an all consuming.
Process. No matter what was going on in my life, whether I was at work, interacting with friends, going to school, there was always a background playing of what am I going to eat? How am I gonna purge this without letting anybody know because I was good at masking. One thing that you get really good at when you.
Grow up in an authoritarian household is how to mask because you're not allowed to have any other emotions besides the happy emotions. And then showing the world that you live in a perfect family, even though it's not. And I discovered, let's see. I went to massage school, and that's a whole story in and of itself, how I became a massage therapist.
It was like. A dark night of the soul. This wasn't ever gonna be my career or anything I had given thought to. It was an impulsive sign up. I just happened to be good at it, and it has changed the entire trajectory of my life. So at the time I went to massage school, they're telling me about energy transference and stuff, and I am over here going, y'all are full of.
Can I cuss? Yes. Okay. Y'all are full of shit. Like I don't know where you're getting this whole idea that people are gonna transfer energy or this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen, and I just didn't believe it. Well by the second month of school, I didn't know it at the time, but I was transferring energy.
It was like, something in me turned on as an energy worker healer that I was then I now know about, but was then oblivious to. I was just like, Hey guys, my hands are heating up. This feels cool. All my other classmates wanted. To get massage from me and the first continuing education I ever did was Qigong.
I didn't care about at the, everything I've been in resistance of that I've actually pushed through has been my biggest. Biggest, lessons and have brought me the most growth and change and healing in my life. And so it was cheap. It was $99 for this four days, 32 hours. It was close enough to home that I could make it happen, but at that time, I was a single mom.
I was stressed. I was so stressed. My nervous system was in fight flight. Freeze fond response 100% of the time. Like any little thing could set me off and I would either start crying or I would start yelling. Those were the two reactions and there wasn't, wasn't a lot else going on when I came into Qigong and I just like, oh, that's that.
Like Eastern something or other. I don't care. Well. We did breath work and that was a third day and that changed my life. So after doing the breath work, I said I have to become a Qigong instructor so I can teach people this specific breath work because the world is missing this. And so I went on this journey to become an instructor, which meant I then had the practice Qigong
all I knew is I didn't have any crazy like healing stories like other people had. They're like, oh, I had this disease and now I'm healed from it. And I was like, well, I just feel peaceful. Like I don't know what to tell you. I just feel peaceful. Fast forward about a decade, I realized that that was. Vagus, it is a somatic therapy that calms the vagus nerve, which was completely shot.
And for the first time in my life I was able to feel balanced, to feel like I could be strong and centered. So no matter what chaos was going around me. I had the ability to still actually think, and this is what started some of the steps of being able to process out of some of those patterns that had kept me like those anxious patterns, keeping me where I was.
Because when you are in a state of survival mode, when you're in a state of constant anxiety, you don't think right, you can't logic through anything. The decisions that you make are not gonna be beneficial for your life. Qigong introduced me to ecstatic dance, and that has been one of the most amazingly healing things.
I wasn't allowed to dance growing up. I was afraid to move my body because of the upbringing that I had, you know, shaking it like. Definitely you don't shake the booty or anything that could be seductive or draw attention of a man. Like that's not what godly good girls do. And so I had played into that because that's what I was told and I broke free of that.
And when I broke free of that, I broke free of. So many different things that were holding me back in life. For the first time in my life, I experienced like what it was truly like to be inside my body. And for the first time in my life, I felt free inside my body and I had never felt that before.
With the bulimia and stuff I had already been working at trying to not, but I really think that through the Qigong and through the dance and the breath work that, it just helped regulate everything and part of the Qigong was also food healing through Chinese medicine. So I learned a great deal and have a great knowledge about different foods that heal the body for different diseases because, and I really do subscribe to the thought system that food is medicine.
And so I shifted. What food was for me. And so food became this like nourishment, this medicine, like what am I putting in my body so that my body can feel good? And, um, taking a, taking a moment like the Buddhist philosophy of um, really just getting. Slowing down when you're about to eat and thinking about how did this food get to me?
Thanking every person along the way, thanking the sun, the ground, like however this food came to be on my plate. It took so much to get here and just to be in gratitude for that, and then to thank the food for the nourishment that it was going to give my body, and even thinking about food. As if it looks like food and physical form, but imagining like each of this is like bits of light moving into my body.
And so all of this light is like filling me internally so then I can become a brighter vessel of light and it heals me from the inside out. So now, it's been a dance back and forth in what I'm doing, what I'm not doing, and I have. Had a really wild, spiritual journey. Like I've studied with the Native American church for four years.
I had a family that allowed white people to come in and pray with them and take part in some of their ceremonies. It was another thing that I was initially resistant to, but changed my life. It taught me so much about getting quiet. Or just being graceful when things are hard. And now I'm just putting a podcast out there.
'cause I feel the urge to do it. It feels kind of like a dharmic thing. I had the idea back in 2015, I didn't even know what a podcast was. I was just like, yeah, I should do a podcast. I don't know anything about them, but I should do 'em. And, I'm good at having conversations with people. And so now, because the human body just fascinates me and people's journeys just fascinate me
because I don't believe that we have to give into the common narrative. I wanna put as many stories out there of people who aren't following the common narrative and how that's working out for them in their lives. So maybe it inspires somebody else to make a shift because one teeny tiny little change that you make can literally shift the entire trajectory of the rest of your life.
Kayla: Absolutely. And two of the things I love that you especially touched on were the power of both thought and story, and even just your practice of having that gratitude for your food and imagining it being light going into your body. I imagine that alone was so healing for bulimia, because if you're putting light and energy and goodness into your body, the last thing you're gonna wanna do is purge it, right?
And then just the power of story of your story and then getting other people onto your show to share their stories so that. There is that rebellion against the common narrative, and you're inviting people to see this possibility for what's possible when you embrace the energetics, the spirituality, and even the little bit of the magic.
Elisha: Yes. And one of the things I've noticed, we all put out a frequency and maybe it's like the healer vibes that I get people that are more, I guess, sickly in their bodies or, lots of friends and people that have different autoimmune diseases and. How they're trying to deal with that.
And I've watched people who just give into it saying, well, this is just how it is and I'm presumed for the rest of my life, and life is miserable. So I've seen that mentality. And then I have other friends who are like, I'm not gonna let this take hold of my life and I'm going to seek out whatever I can do to try and heal this, or at least put my body in a place where I feel better on the daily.
And because I've observed the differences in people and. It really is that mindset that makes such a difference because the mindset influences the actions that you're gonna take as well.
Kayla: Absolutely. And I think in addition to influencing, influencing those actions, it's also going to influence our actual bodies in our state because when we're in that place of.
I'm just gonna give in. This is what it is. There's that defeat and that heaviness and that contraction, and that's gonna have different impacts on everything from our digestion to our respiration, to all those things, versus if we're in that place of enthusiasm and creativity. And let me. Do what I can to figure this out.
Your body's gonna be in a very different spot and it's gonna respond physiologically differently as well, which I imagine you've seen so much in your work with many different bodies.
Elisha: Yes. I've even noted that it can take, it can start in the mind and move to the body, but you can also do the reverse and start in the body and have that, like, change your mindset too.
So, i've done periods of time in my life where I've consistently worked out, and last year I had committed myself to doing yoga about four or five days a week, and that lasted.
For about nine months until I got so busy with theater that I was too tired to wake up and do yoga in the morning. So when you're doing something on a regular basis, and at first it's really hard at first, you are really, you're trudging yourself.
You're making yourself go. Your body hurts. If it's inflamed, it makes it harder to do the movements. It makes the soreness last, maybe four or five days instead of one or two days after a workout. These are just things I've observed in my own body. So if I ask somebody else where they're at or to try and explain something to me, then I can kind of get an idea the state of their body.
I don't necessarily have a way to fix it, but I have an understanding of at least. Conceptualizing where it's at, and then maybe having suggestions on things that may or may not help an individual, but just noticing how the body gets a little bit stronger, it gets a little bit more flexible. There's it, it's literally like trying something every time you go and.
I'm a really good sport. I'm just like, oh, you're asking me to do that with my body? And it doesn't do that, but I'll try anyway. You're so funny. And then I just laugh. So I'm like the, you know, laughter yoga is, is really good. I'm I'll, I'll turn your yoga into laughter yoga. And and then one day you're like in TGA of which, if you don't know what that is out there, it's a, it's a pushup position.
And I used to just collapse and then one day I was like, oh. I held that for three seconds. That was like the best feeling. And it's something really, that's why I say micro. You have these little micro wins and then it motivates you to keep going. 'cause if you got there, then what else could you do with some of these other crazy moves that you can't actually do right now if you stayed consistent?
And so, it really showed me. It kind of changed some of my mindset. So I think it works both ways. If you take action on something, then it will shift the way that you're thinking about it if you continue with the action.
Kayla: Yes, absolutely. I think one of my favorite quotes is something along the lines of you can't think your way into a new way of, you have to act your way into a new way of thinking.
So I think there's something powerful about. Deciding how you want to think or how you want to feel, and then reverse engineering what actions would need to be taken consistently, and then almost creating that mindset through the actions and the embodied strategies that you're doing. So that's, thank you so much for bringing that up.
Elisha: I like the way that you put the spin on that, and I'm going to mole over that in my life because I do that for my environment. I went through a breakup almost a year ago and then. But we still lived together for like five months before we moved out, and I got to keep the house. And so I've been working on shifting the entire vibe in my house, but for each room I painted something different.
But I thought about what is the vibe, what is the feeling that I want to invoke when me or somebody else walks into this space? Mm-hmm. So I kind of like that applied in life. What is the feeling. That I want to have and how can I get there or what are the things that help me?
I don't do it as much like I've taught it a couple times and laughter, laughter it. Like in the Bible it says laughter does a heart like a medicine, and it really does laughter like it. It changes the entire vibration of your body. It like jiggles all the organs. It puts you into this nice state of rest because you can't be in the heightened anxiety when you're laughing. You can't be afraid of things when you're laughing. Like to truly get into that, you have to be fully relaxed, fully released, and having a good belly laugh as often as possible. Can really change the way that you're seeing the world. And with Laughter Yoga, if it's offered anywhere that any of your listeners are at, I really recommend just taking a class.
There's exercises that are done in there that at first might feel a little. Dumb, especially if you haven't done anything like that. But once you do it, by the end of the class, you are on the floor laughing, like any little thing just gets you into hysterics. You're, you got tears coming out your eyes. You feel like you've had an entire body workout from laughing.
And, and so it's something that, it just adds to life and we don't do it enough. So even taking time in the day to just, if you just force a laugh like ha. Ha ha. And you keep doing it. Well, the longer you keep doing it, at some point you're gonna sound so ridiculous to yourself that you will start laughing for real, but your body doesn't know the difference when you start faking something and when you're not.
It's like taking that action. You're taking the action, and the body has no other thing to do except for it to follow. What it is receiving through that action, and then it helps you to release.
Kayla: I am so glad you shared that because I think laughter and humor are one of the most under news, personal growth and healing strategies out there because so much of what's out there.
Can feel heavy and intense and it feels like inner work, but what if it gets to feel like inner play? So I 100% am in agreement that laughter and humor should be integrated into our lives more often. And yeah, I have never tried a laughter yoga class, but I'm gonna see if they have some in town after this.
Elisha: It's a lot of fun. And you can even practice different exercises on your own. Especially if you have a day and you recognize if you have the ability to pause, stop, observe, self, and go. Wait a minute. I'm getting like way too serious. I know personally I can get really serious about life.
I have to remind myself to invite laughter to invite that play back in, to invite the joyful inner child that is curious and wants to just. Touch everything and see everything and experience the world as it is. I do remember when I was young looking at all of the adults and going, man, everybody's so miserable.
Like even, and even if somebody was faking happy, I've always had the ability to know just this deep intuition. That people aren't really being that way. And one of the things I made a commitment to myself as a teenager is that I would rather make less money and be happy doing what I do than to make all the money in the world and be miserable and dread going to work.
Like I just can't do it. But I see so many people that choose that life I think you're, you have so many things that can fill you up that that doesn't have to be your life.
Kayla: I agree. And I think that even bringing humor and play into our workplace more is one of the most valuable things can do.
So I think that. That's a powerful thing to keep in mind as well, is that yes, choose happiness over money every time, and then if you are in a job, can you bring some more lightness and humor and play? Yes.
Elisha: I think it's funny, I, I've gotten good at this. My son graduated high school and I took him and his girlfriend to Boston so we could like go around and just see, do some sightseeing and I would get excited about little things or like artwork that I would see or something.
And I remember my kid commenting, mom, you're such a child.
And I was like. Well, son, you're being too serious at 19 years old right now and I'm not gonna be that serious. I think taking things a little bit more lighthearted, so I like to be the person that lightens it up a little whenever I go into a space I would definitely not call myself a comedian, but on the fly, I'm funny.
Kayla: Totally. And I think being told that you're such a child is actually my praise. And I think of something that happened at one of my morning meetings at this job and I made a joke and it was so silly and ridiculous and my lead hand was like, you're 36 and you're more childish than half the 17, 18-year-old here.
I'm like, yeah, my inner child is alive and well, and I'm not sorry. So the next time, if you're listening, someone calls you a child 'cause you're being silly. Please take it as a compliment 'cause it is.
Elisha: Yes, I concur.
Kayla: Can you tell me some of your current go-to embodied rituals or routines or just things that really help you keep that happy shine alive in everyday life?
Elisha: So I like to practice breath work, which also helps me if I'm gonna be singing something 'cause then. Better breath. It also just helps me just be in my body and so if I am going through something that's stressful. It's something easy to come back to that and dance. So even just putting on a song in the morning and you know, just dancing through the kitchen while I'm making coffee or it, it's more, at this point it's more of a lifestyle as opposed to making specific rituals around stuff.
If I notice myself getting too serious, then I try to work something in that's a little bit more fun or playful or recognize maybe I need to go do something on the weekend. Music, and I honestly don't remember to put on music enough.
I listen to chill music all day when I'm massaging people, and then I'll listen to music in my car. So I forget sometimes other points, like sometimes I just like silence because I'm having a lot of input and having nothing is. Very nice. But if I'm in a bad mood, I could put music on that is maybe a little more poppy or dancey or just has the vibes.
And after a few songs, all of a sudden my own countenance begins to change because the music and the vibrations from that literally changes the way that we feel. It's changing the state of the cells. In our body and the way that they're responding. So if you think about how we're mostly composed of water and if you watch water, it will vibrate to music.
So our cells in our bodies are all vibrating at the same time with the music and it's a really good way to be countenance. If I go on for a walk outside, I really love to stop and look at the little stuff and it's stuff other people don't. Notice as much. It's the tiny, teeny, tiny little flowers that people call weeds that if you get up close and examine 'em, there's this world of richness in there.
Paying attention to small pieces of just environment that come out as art and to the eye. So it's, it's just. Paying attention to the little things in life, and I've created my own environment to be joyful. So as I go on. Making my life what it is. It is so that I walk into my house and it makes me feel happy.
I look at my walls, I look at the art, and it invokes feelings of joy. And as I continue, I'm also going to create a space where I have more decompression area, because that's important for me. I'm a busy person. Do a lot, and I'm around people a lot, so when I come home, it's really important that I have the space.
And I'm also finding now as I get older, extreme comfort to decompress. Like I'm highly considering a recliner. I've never had one. It was always something like, oh, my grandpa has a recliner, and that was that. And I'm getting at the age, I'm like, Hmm, I think I need a recliner.
Kayla: Yes. And I have to say, I've been looking at your background with like the pink cat tree and the pink heart background and then the lavender walls, and I could see how walking into that room would just make you happy.
So a couple things that I absolutely loved was how important environment is. That's huge. And then also. There doesn't need to be these like big drawn out rituals when you like weave this stuff into your life regularly and it becomes more of an identity versus I'm gonna sit down and do this thing, but it's not really me.
So you just are this playful, joyful, music loving person and it shows up in your daily life, which is so, so-called.
Elisha: Yeah, it's, and I've done the same thing with movement currently because I haven't been able to, go to the classes like I was doing last year, but I still want to keep my body moving. Like I guess you could say a big fear is getting older and not being able to move or pick myself up off the ground or go run around with grandkids or whatever I wanna do when I get older.
I want to move. Like it is literally the only goal. It's not to be some fitness, you know, junkie. It's not to be a bodybuilder. It's not. So I can lift something or do something specific that's, you know, athletic. It's literally just to keep moving. So, since I do massages, I have 30 minutes between clients.
Usually 15 minutes of that is spent between checking them out and cleaning my space, which gives me 15 minutes to myself to decompress and I can do different things. Sometimes I talk to clients for too long, but if I have time, I'll just stretch in between clients, so I get different movement in throughout my day, even though it's not like a solid 30 minutes, 45 minutes or an hour long, you know, really getting into it, it's still keeping my body moving and it helps keep some of the aches and pains that I can get from not moving and not stretching.
So it's currently, an experimental process of making it a way of life to invite small bits of movement throughout the day instead of one long workout.
Kayla: Definitely. And I have read studies saying that's actually more beneficial than doing the one big workout, but then sitting for the rest of the day.
So I love that you're doing that. And I also loved that you have this intention behind your movement. You know why you're doing it, and because you know why you're doing it, you can create the appropriate expectations that are gonna work for you instead of hearing from someone else that they hit the gym five times a week and they're there for 90 minutes, but maybe they have different goals or maybe they have a different lifestyle.
So you're really making this tailored to why you're using it and then building the movement into your life accordingly.
Elisha: Yeah, and like, I like the lazy workouts. I like the lazy stretching. Mm-hmm. So, I hopefully at some point maybe I'll make videos that kind of give small little stretches.
I give clients already. I tell them, I'm like, look, I'm gonna give you something that you can do while you're watching TV at home. And it's not too hard because things that are stressful or too hard, people don't wanna do them. I don't wanna do them. And if I don't wanna do them, then.
People who aren't used to doing anything, most definitely don't want to do, the things. So we are motivated if we're in pain and we're trying to get out of pain. And we might have a few other motivation factors, but taking somebody who's got a sitting job all day and they probably use a lot of the bandwidth that they have.
And so even though they've been sitting all day, they're still tired when they get home at night because they've used all of that brain power. Functioning, where I have the opposite problem, like I am using my body all day and, but I still can get home after a long, you know, I do like five or six hours a massage.
My brain's not functioning fully at the end of the day, even though it didn't take brain power to do what I was doing. So I think it probably goes the same way for people that have desk jobs and, I do think there's ways to integrate. Some easier stuff into our life to get the results that we want without having to be extreme about it.
I also think that there's. Too much information out there and trying, trying to sort through all of it. Or you listen to one person and you're like, oh, well this, this new trend is happening, so I better hop on this new trend and I better try that out. And you do it for a little while and then like, something else pops up so I better try this, or I better try this new diet.
I've, you know, I won't say I've done them all, but I've done, that has been a process that I have gone through in life, like, oh. I better try keto. Oh, I haven't tried carnivore, but that's the new thing right now. Go try carnivore. This is gonna heal your body. No, you should be eating only vegetables. Oh, you should be eating, you know, more fats and protein.
There's so much information, so much that's conflicting and I want people to recognize that no matter what information is out there, take what works. For you. Take what works for your body, for your lifestyle, for the way that it works, into the way that you have created, the way that your life is patterned.
If you don't like something in your life, then find a micro change to work toward getting your life to be on track for the way that you want it to be. Don't take 50 changes at the same time 'cause you're not gonna stick to any of them, but just one little thing. If you get used to that, then you can make another change. But this is the way that you create something that's lasting and it stays with you and giving yourself the grace and the forgiveness, not to be perfect, not to be doing things a hundred percent or to fall off the bandwagon.
Like it's okay, because that's how life is. Life's a little bit messy. And that's okay.
Kayla: Yes, you have that full permission slip to be human. Speaking of which, as we wrap up, two more questions. The first is when listeners wanna reach out and learn more about you, how can they do so?
And I know you have a podcast called that's just human. So just tell us a little bit more about your podcast and how people can connect with you.
Elisha: Yeah, I'm on all the listening platforms as well as YouTube for those that wanna watch our beautiful faces. And so you can look that up anywhere and find that I also have an Instagram, it's Elisha Light Angel.
If you're gonna find me anywhere, it's either Elisha Light Angel, or that's just human. That's what I've got going on right now, could change in the future, but that's where I'm at. Aside from massage therapy, if you happen to be in my city, it's very in person and personal.
I don't have any current offerings other than sharing wisdom through the podcast.
Kayla: Perfect, and I'll include links to that in the episode description. And finally, I always get my guests to give the listeners one embodied challenge or activation they can take away. And obviously we've touched on quite a few today from dance to music, to doing stretching throughout the day.
If you wanna just give the listeners one of your favorite challenges or things they can do after this episode, what would you give them?
Elisha: So I would tell people to pay attention. To their breath, not doing any kind of specific breath work. But when we are under stress and trauma, we unconsciously hold our breath.
When we hold our breath, we tense an area of the body. I would say most people, it's like our neck and our shoulders, but it might, it could be your stomach, it could be your lower back. So the areas that you find get more achy might be the places where you tense your body more. When you're holding breath and stress, so when you're not in the stressful situations, when you're in the boring situations like driving in your car, doing the dishes, sitting on the toilet, taking a shower, it's just being mindful of your breath, taking maybe slightly slower breaths, being intentional of slowing down, maybe a four second count in and a four second count out,
when you inhale, like what does the air feel like when it's going through your nose, through the back of your throat, into your chest? Just like those little sensations help you to become more present and aware of yourself. If you practice every day when you're not in a stressful situation, slowing down that breath and getting in touch with yourself.
When you do come to the stressful points, it will be easier for you to go back to that slower breath because you've started to cultivate it as a practice of an awareness, and that's where you can start bringing in other things that maybe do a little bit more work, but just pay attention to your breath, slow it down.
Kayla: Thank you for that reminder because I started breathing slower as you were talking and it does feel really good and it's amazing what few deep breaths can do for your level of presence and inner peace and just feeling better. So thank you.
