239. Self-Worth, Trauma, & Getting Unstuck ft. Nigel Brown
239. Self-Worth, Trauma, & Getting Unstuck ft. Nigel Brown
The Simple Somatic Reset That Helps You Get Unstuck
If you’ve ever thought, “Why do I know what to do, but I still can’t do it?” you’re not alone. And you’re not broken.
In this episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, I sit down with Nigel, a coach who helps people get unstuck by aligning three core layers:
conscious awareness (what you think)
subconscious beliefs (what you believe)
the energy and emotion stored in your body (what you hold)
And one of my favorite themes from this conversation is this: transformation doesn’t have to be complicated to be powerful.
Why we get stuck (and why it often comes back to worthiness)
Nigel shared something that will land for so many of you: when you strip away the surface-level “problem,” what often remains is some variation of self-worth, self-love, and self-belief.
The tricky part is we don’t always experience it as “I feel unworthy.”
We experience it as:
food noise
weight fixation
emotional eating
procrastination
avoidance
visibility fear
relationship patterns
money stuckness
The external pattern becomes the mirror. Not because life is punishing you, but because it’s showing you where the work is.
A reframe I love: problems as invitations
Nigel offered a perspective I’m obsessed with: the point of healing isn’t removing difficulty, it’s choosing better difficulties.
In other words:
You don’t graduate into a life with no challenges.
You graduate into a life with challenges that match who you’ve become.
That reframe alone can turn shame into momentum.
Why somatic work can shift what talk therapy can’t
In simple terms, Nigel explains that conscious thought and subconscious belief speak different “languages.” Conscious mind is logical and slow. Subconscious mind is fast and emotionally driven.
So when we try to logic our way into change, it can feel like trying to break down a wall with a teaspoon.
Somatic work helps because it works with the body’s stored emotional charge. When emotion releases, the belief that was glued to it often loosens too.
The Pretzel Position: a ridiculously simple nervous system reset
Nigel shares a simple posture you can use anytime you feel stressed, overwhelmed, or emotionally hijacked.
It’s so effective his client nicknamed it “the Pretzel Position” 😄
You’ll cross your ankles, cross your wrists, interlace your fingers, and breathe while you simply watch sensation in your body without judging it.
Simple. Repeatable. Shockingly powerful.
A second practice: meeting the one who is aware
Nigel also offers a tool that creates instant inner spaciousness:
In your mind, say: “Hello.”
Repeat it a few times.
Then ask: Who (or what) is listening to that?
This gently separates you from your thoughts and brings you back into authorship, presence, and agency.
If you’re in a season of emotional release…
We also talk about what it can look like when someone is in identity expansion and suddenly they’re emotional, crying more, feeling tender or flat.
Nigel frames this as potentially part of a letting-go process: beliefs “dying,” grief moving, layers releasing. Not a sign you’re failing… a sign you’re metabolizing change.
Try this after the episode
Pick one:
Do the Pretzel Position for 2–5 minutes today
Do the “Hello” practice and notice what shifts
Journal: “What challenge is life offering me right now… and what might it be trying to show me underneath?”
Connect with Nigel:
Transcript
Kayla: Hello Nigel and welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast.
Nigel: Hello, Kayla. Thanks for letting me be here. I'm excited. Let's get down to it.
Kayla: Thank you so much for being here. So can you just share a little bit about who you are and the work you do in the world?
Nigel: I'm Nigel. I'm a coach. So I work one-on-one with a lot of people, and I help them get unstuck. So often it's about trauma, emotional stuff that we are holding onto and we are not releasing. But it comes in so many different forms.
It doesn't matter what you call it, it's whenever you feel like you're stuck in life. I can help you and pretty much what I do. Is I just help people align their awareness, their conscious thought, their subconscious beliefs and their energy in their body, and through a few different processes, we find alignment between those and it makes life, it doesn't solve all your problems, it makes life simpler.
So the hurdles in life just get a lot smaller. So instead of having to feel like you've got to jump 10 meters over this hurdle to get to the thing that you're tracing, it's like a small little step. And it's pretty simple and easy to do, to be honest. I, with people that are feeling emotionally about something, we can change a belief and line things up within minutes.
So it's kind of hard to explain. It's a little bit woowoo. So depending on how your audience loves their woowoo, that'll land different. But yeah, it's getting in touch. And I think the best part about that particular practice that I use is you don't necessarily need to talk about what's going on.
So if somebody's got something that is really, it's really hard for them to bring up. You can still process that without even needing to, to say anything. We go into the emotions. It's not easy. So this process is very, it goes to deep places and so it can get quite uncomfortable during the process, but on the other side, when everything is aligned and released, you're a different person.
So I love being able to do that to people. It, it's just amazing.
Kayla: I think there's something so powerful about two of those things you touched on. One is not having to do the talking and the rehashing, because that often does get us stuck way in the mind, and it's often the body and the energetics and all that.
That is so much more powerful for creating. Grew sustained shifts. And then also the simplicity of it. I would love to hear more about that. You don't have to share your secrets, but just share why there's so much power in simplicity. 'cause I think sometimes we think it's gonna be this big complicated journey and that can, it is keep us stuck, I think.
Nigel: I'm happy to share anything. There's nothing like crazy about what I do. , A lot of the techniques I used are based on a process called s Okay. But I don't strictly use. Okay. I've taken bits and pieces from it and I've kind of added my own little bits to it along the way, but you can do something. So for anybody listening now are, are people watching as well?
Who, or just listening?
Kayla: Who's listening?
Nigel: Just listening. Okay. Well there, there are some techniques that you can do, and I'll try and describe it really quick so anybody can do this. So if you're sitting down, just cross your feet at your ankles. And cross your arms at your wrists and bring your palms together into lock your fingers and repeat that if you need to.
Yeah, that's tricky. So cross, cross your arms at your wrists and then turn your hands so they're facing each other and bring your fingers together. Okay? Now you can put those hands in your lap or you can tuck 'em under your chin. And all you need to do, if you're feeling stress about anything, anytime of day.
If you're feeling stressed, like something's just happened and you're like the world's kind of falling, feeling like it's falling down on you, if you can hop into that position and just sit there and watch your body and then just breathe, that's it. I just want you to sit, watch your body and breathe.
Putting your hands and your legs crossed over helps the two hemispheres of our brain communicate better, and it helps us to find more calmness. And if you just watch your body, you'll probably feel, if you're feeling tense, you'll feel the tension somewhere in your body. And if you just are aware of it, don't judge it, just watch it After, you know, sometimes it's a few seconds, sometimes it's a few minutes, that tension will disappear.
So as simple as that, without words, you can change your state and it takes a little bit of practice if you're doing it on your own. But to me that's like things that are that simple where you just, while you're in that position, you breathe. As you breathe out, just relax your shoulders, watch that tension.
It'll move and it will change your life. It's pathetically simple, but, but it doesn't need to be more than that. And you know that, that's what I like. I like things that are simple and repeatable, so I can go through with. With clients and, and help them through some of their harder stuff. But on a day-to-day basis, they need the skills to be able to help themselves through it as well.
'cause it's gonna come back. So there's no point me going, well this is this mystery and it doesn't work. It's better to teach people some hacks, get them through what they need to get through, and then me or somebody else can advise them on the really tricky bits. To me, that's, that's the way it should be.
Kayla: I think that's a very beautiful approach to coaching as well, and that's something I always live by is I don't want anybody to become dependent on me for their progress. I wanna be able to guide them so they learn how to do things for themself and they build the skills. And like you said, they do get that initial guidance with some of the bigger picture stuff and some of their blind spots.
But at the end of the day, we are all so powerful too. Create this transformation on our own. And I truly believe there is more benefit to doing that cross wrist, cross ankles for a few minutes every day than having to get like a two hour healing session all the time. Absolutely. So thank you so much for sharing that.
Absolutely.
Nigel: Yeah. That's cool. And a client of mine nicknamed, but the pretzel position, so if anybody feels like they're a bit of a pretzel while they're doing it, you're doing it right.
Kayla: I'm gonna have to practice that wrist hand thing. 'cause I'm like, how, but I could see how just sitting there and that like left and right brain hemisphere thing is very interesting as well.
Nigel: It's one of those simple hacks. I mean that I think they're the best hacks personally, so, yeah. I love that. I just want to help people get to the next level. Because for me, I've learned that no matter where you are, and no matter how far you progress in, in, in, air quotes, there's always another level, there's always some other challenge.
There's always a difficulty in life. So none of this healing and all that sort of stuff is about removing difficulty. It's about choosing the difficulties that you want to have. And so to me it's just, let's get through. If something's holding you back, release it. Move on and find a challenge that's more worthy of, of who you choose to be.
Kayla: That is a powerful perspective for sure. And I would love to know, what are some of the biggest places you find people get stuck or like biggest beliefs that hold them back? Oh,
Nigel: oh, wow. Um, I think most of it, when you boil it all down, comes down to self-worth and self love. So when you strip away all of the bullshit that's on top, sorry, I hope I'm allowed to swear 'cause I just can't help myself sometimes.
The essence of it is, you know, we are in essence love and fear as, as humans, but the core thing that keeps coming back again and again is worthiness, love, self-belief. Tho those three pretty much incorporate you can. Yeah, split them off into any direction. You'll probably find some resonance there in whatever is troubling you, and that can come back to childhood.
It can be, it doesn't even have to be anything in particular, but some little things can just creep up on you, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I don't quite feel that about myself. You're not gonna read it as that necessarily. You're gonna read it as There's this problem and it's holding me back. But if you keep digging under, if you're willing to look and dig under, you'll probably find there's a self-worth, a self-love issue in there somewhere.
Kayla: Absolutely. And then I think that we hyperfocus on, for a lot of my audience, it's food. Or the weight. Mm-hmm. Or you know, and for other people it's relationships or money stuff because those feel a little bit more tangible and we can actually see them. Whereas when it's this inner thing, it's a harder to see.
You do have to dig for it. And then it's also generally, if not always more painful than dealing with that don't like external situation.
Nigel: I, I would look at it different. I love those external situations 'cause they just show us where it's at. We don't see it otherwise because we, you know, the simplest analogy, we are in a forest and all we see is trees.
We don't actually see the big forest there. So if those challenges in life are coming to us, that's amazing because that, that's where we can grow if we choose to, you know. If there's something that's beating on your head and it's, it's been this pattern that's developed and just it stuck with you for time, awesome.
Deal with it. Let's, let's go through it. And I say, deal with it, making it sound easy. And yes, it can be easy, but it doesn't mean it's easy in the moment. Takes courage and you've gotta step into that courage and be willing to go there. For at least a little bit. And if you fall down, that's all right.
Get courage and go back. So even with my techniques, they're not perfect. It's not a one and done because we change and we can fuel whole about something and then something else might trigger it from a different direction. And it's a different aspect of that feeling that, well, in this case, lack of worthiness or something like that that's coming out.
And so we get to explore that and see who we choose to be in that moment.
Kayla: I love the perspective reframe around these challenges that come up. 'cause when you do look at them as those opportunities to find the deeper inner challenge that you can actually grow, like that is such an epic reframe. So thank you for that.
Nigel: It's my pleasure. I think. But, okay, I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent 'cause there is something I'm starting to develop.
Kayla: Mm-hmm.
Nigel: And this kind of hits in on it. I think it's something we don't get taught and there's a hell of a lot we don't get taught as kids. And because we, you know, our parents didn't know better, their parents didn't know better, so on, so on.
I'm in the midst of trying to create a, basically like a toolkit for kids and young families so that. They can work on the things that schools and probably your family heritage hasn't taught you how to get in touch with your body, how to feel and understand your emotions, how to think in a, in a certain way.
Like do you, do you think about problems as problems or do you think about problems as something awesome, something to play with, that kind of stuff. So there's so much that we can reframe in our lives and it's just exciting.
Kayla: Absolutely. Yes. So do you find that your clients come to you with some resistance, whether it's around the reframe of problems or even just the, is there any resistance to feeling that discomfort and the big emotions initially?
Like are they, do they have a lot of fears around going there and how do you coach them through that?
Nigel: Us, usually with me, no. But it depends on the personality type. So. I can say for me, my journey, I was a person who was not in touch with my emotions at all when I was growing up, even into my twenties, maybe in my thirties, I started getting used to it and understanding them.
So for people that haven't played in that space, it's tricky, but far from impossible. It just, it might mean we take a bit longer in the buildup to those processing moments, so we, we make sure that we are at the same level. And we're working in conjunction. And you feel safe. It's a safe space and you can explore it.
And I think the key for me is it doesn't have to be perfect. None of this has to be perfect, make it messy. It doesn't matter. Like do the best you can and if it didn't work, so what if you come to me and what I do doesn't work for you? That's okay. There's plenty of other modalities. There's plenty of other things that will help.
So it's not a has to be done. Now it's a, oh, I wonder if this will kind of work. Kind of a modality of what's possible. What's possible here, and I like to bring that in when I'm talking to my clients and generally speaking, not always there. There are exceptions for sure, but generally speaking, everyone's pretty calm and they go through it.
Some of the processes, there's one I do with where your arms are outstretched and you have to hold them there while you're processing. That can take a little while. So for some clients, that one's nasty. Very nasty.
Kayla: Is it nasty in like, oh my goodness, my arms are killing me. Or is it nasty of like, wow, my heart is so open, I'm feeling all the things, or both?
Nigel: It's a bit of both. Your arms will kill if, if you're there stuck for a while, your arms are gonna ache like, like nobody's business, and you're gonna hate me for it, but that's what I'm there for. You can hate me. I'm okay with it. But in, in the processes you're releasing so much that when it's finished you'll feel different.
You'll feel new.
Kayla: Absolutely. And can you share a little bit more about why this is so effective in places where something like traditional talk therapy alone might be helpful? Absolutely. But not quite. Touch the layers that you're reaching.
Nigel: Okay. , In really simple terms, so. We've got our conscious, which is where all of our thoughts sit.
We've got our subconscious, which is where our beliefs and values and things like that kind of sit. Their languages are different. The conscious has a logical language, and the subconscious is really driven by an emotive language.
And so when we try and change our beliefs at a conscious level. We are doing it with thought, but our conscious mind moves really slowly. It's about a millionth, I believe, depending on which studies you look up a millionth of the speed capacity of our subconscious mind. So if we, it is kind of like trying to break down a wall with a teaspoon.
I prefer to use like TNT or something a bit more effective if I'm, if I'm trying to get rid of a wall. So if we get in touch with our emotions, then we can release them. We, we, the, the beliefs that we held onto, we held onto because of the emotions that we didn't wanna hold on, that we didn't wanna experience.
So if something bad's happening, there's an emotion that's going with it, and the emotion might be too much for us. So we hold it. And that experience of what's happening in the environment, the emotion, and. The, the feeling around it, the, the not wanting to experience all of it forms into this thing. Some would call the emotional part of samskara, depending again how woowoo you feel like heading.
And it just sits there and it won't be released until the emotion's released. It can't, the, it's stuck there with the emotion and until you unlock that emotion, it's just spins around in your head. And you can't stop it. But once we let go of that emotion, it's not as triggered and those things that would normally trigger you, they just melt away.
Then you'll find different things to trigger you, and that's all the fun.
Kayla: Of course. So let's use a completely hypothetical situation. Mm-hmm. Say that someone is going through like a big identity expansion and they're like noticing some patterns that have been around for a long time and they're doing, you know, not just the mindset work, but also the somatic work around it.
And all of a sudden they're like crying all the time and they're just really sad. Is that just like. Part of the emotional process that the subconscious is doing so that person can move forwards
Nigel: quite likely. Um, it de it is gonna depend. So, I mean this is a hypothetical. I probably need a little bit more nuance to really define it, but it's could be part of a grief process.
Letting go of whatever emotion it is could well be part of like a grief cycle. 'cause effectively what we're doing is letting beliefs die and nothing wants to die. Not even our beliefs. They wanna hold on. So if it comes with tears, if it comes with with a bit of melancholy, that's okay. It's part of, it's part of it.
Usually with my process, you might have tears while it's happening, and you might be a bit flat a day or two after because there's so much emotional change that's happening. But on the other side of that, everything's usually pretty good. But if needed, we can do extras like, 'cause sometimes us humans, we're very complicated creatures and we think we've got the heart of the problem, but it, there's roots all around it.
So we can remove part of the problem, but there's all these other parts that are still attached in different formats, in different formations and they're just, sometimes you just gotta prune the garden a little bit more.
Kayla: That makes total sense. There are so many layers for sure. Um, so I have enjoyed this conversation so much.
One thing I get my guests to do is give the listeners an embodied activation of some kind, and now you already gave them a really powerful one. Cross the ankles, cross the wrist, get the hands together, and just sit. Is there any other bonus embodied practice that you'd suggest the listeners try after this episode?
Nigel: I'm gonna go with something super simple. Just wherever you are, take a moment. Take, just remove yourself from some distractions for a minute, and just in your head, say hello and just repeat that. Okay? Now I just want you to think about who or what it is that's listening to that.
And the purpose being, you are not your thoughts. You are the thing that is aware of your thoughts. So don't get distracted with your thoughts being who you are. Your thoughts are changeable. They're not you. They're something you are using to navigate the world. But they are not you at your, at your core.
So if you can do that and you can tell that, yes, I'm the one that is aware of these thoughts that I'm creating in my own head. That is you explore that thing that is aware.
Kayla: I love that one so much. It really does create. A lot more narrative agency and really puts us back into like that authorship of our life, not the the stories being told in the head, but the actual authorship.
So thank you so much for that. Yeah. And
Nigel: my absolute pleasure.
Kayla: And when people do want to connect with you more, learn about the work you do, where are the best places for them to go?
Nigel: Best places, probably on my website.
Transformational alchemy all one word.com au and you can find everything you need on there. That's it. And
Kayla: yeah,
Nigel: that's pretty good.
Kayla: Perfect. And just thank you so much for being here. This was awesome.
Nigel: My absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. Yeah, and if you've got any other questions, shoot away.
