00:00:00 Sana: this version of survival that we don't talk about enough. Um, not the dramatic, um, you know, Instagram kind of, but the quiet kind. The kind where you're fine, you are functioning, but then your nervous system, it's always like, am this warrior mode. It's always praised. I mean, you are doing life. You are, yet you are not in life. And then one day, stillness shows up like, uh, a foreign language. You wondered, but then your body, it doesn't trust it.

00:00:45 Sana: Welcome back, listeners to the Mindful Living. As you all know, this is the space where we talk about mindfulness. Living mindfully. Healing, right. Like real humans. Slowly. Honestly and without pretending that it's a linear. I'm your host, Sana. Us as always. And today listeners, we are going to explore what it means to move from survival to stillness. Not by forcing, but through awareness. And let me tell you a bit about my guest, Cindy Costly. Now, Cindy's story is not the kind that you forget. Early trauma, years of disconnection, and then her body speaking through intense physical symptoms, severe allergic reactions that shaped her entire life over decades, she began to see a pattern many of us miss. The body isn't always betraying us, but it's trying to communicate. It's communicating with us. And Cindy went on to develop what she calls the EBD t electromagnetic body desensitization technique, which is a method that brings together science, eastern practices, spirituality and Scripture, which can support healing at a deeper level. So once again, let me tell you listeners, it's not about the miracle, the miracle fixes or one size fits all fixes. It is about listening and what can happen when we stop fighting the body and start understanding it. That's what exactly awareness is, right, listeners? So Cindy, welcome to the Mindful Living. And I'm really, really happy and, you know, excited for this conversation.

00:02:32 Cindy Costley: Thank you so much. I am really excited to be here. And yes, this is a very important conversation that I'm really grateful that you bring to your listeners.

00:02:42 Sana: Super, super. Uh, Cindy, um, and listeners, before we begin, um, A quick note for all of you. If you are listening, if you have lived through trauma, just take this at your own pace. Pause when you need because this is a conversation for reflection, not a substitute for medical or therapeutic care. Okay. All right. So let's start and, uh, let's try to first understand survival here, uh, because it can mean differently for different people. So when you say that you lived in that survival mode for decades, um, can you describe like what it actually looked like for you on a day to day basis? You know, not the headline like moments if you can share.

00:03:32 Cindy Costley: Sure. Yes. For me, it the messenger, the way that my body responded to the trauma was through very physiological biological reactions. So I, at age fifteen, Suddenly became allergic to everything. And I mean almost all chemicals, all animal life, most plant life, and most foods. And for thirty four years, you know, I went about my business. I raised three kids, I got a degree, started my own business. But all throughout all of that, I was constantly being taken down by very, very, very severe allergic reactions. And it would show up as, um, rashes all over my body. And it would take a week or two to clear it and then I would be back to life again, and then something else would trigger it. And I just played this cycle for thirty four years, trying everything I could, Western and eastern, um, but never, never getting solutions. And over time, I just started labeling myself, you know, the girl allergic to the world. I won the allergy lottery. All those beautiful messages that we teach ourselves, that we tell ourselves. Because it became my identity. Being sick, having allergic reactions became my identity. And what I learned later was they were actually just messages from my body begging me to heal. Telling me there's something out of alignment. I need you to listen to me. MM.

00:05:07 Sana: Definitely. I mean, um, first thing is that that I, I know sometimes it can be so hard. Um, and especially you kind of get those labels, you know, especially from, from, uh, people around you. Um, and honestly, there are a lot of misconceptions, you know, especially because these are, uh, they either, you know, come as skin allergies or, um, any, any specific allergy in there. But when they're visible, it's quite susceptible that, uh, people will kind of, you know, have a lot of misconceptions. Uh, They'll kind of, you know, think or assume that it's mainly because you're not, um, you are unhygienic or I mean, lots of labels in there. So I, I completely understand and that that point that you shared.

00:05:59 Cindy Costley: Yeah. Even in high school, I was eighty pounds in high school because I, I could not keep on weight until I healed. I was always underweight. And, you know, the world thinks that's beautiful. And I knew it was not healthy. And my teachers at school used to think that I was anorexic or they labeled me with these big issues that I didn't have. I just had a metabolism that worked. So over over time, all the time that I couldn't, you know, I was burning so many calories, I couldn't keep on weight. And so, yeah, there's a lot of people that don't understand what they see and don't know. Right.

00:06:39 Sana: Exactly, exactly. And that is something that I kind of, I have a very different, um, point of view here from others. Um, especially, you know, when you kind of address this in jokes or something, even if they are your very close friends or your own family members, um, that any of the physical traits, I mean, like your weight, your appearance, I mean, how I'm not gonna feel any bad here, but it's pathetic when you kind of label or identify a person with just their one physical trait. That's how the reality it is. But then it's pathetic. It's, it's kind of, you know, you're projecting your own insecurity into their, it can be expressed in jokes as well. I do understand sometimes, you know, jokes have to be taken as jokes, but then, uh, every person takes it differently. So I kind of, I personally because I also suffered with a lot of weight issues, um, a few allergic issues, mild allergic issues. Um, and I got kind of, uh, sometimes bullied because of that. So I'm very sensitive, uh, especially when it comes to any physical trait of a person that yes, acknowledge it, but don't just put a simple label because of that physical trait of that person.

00:08:10 Cindy Costley: Yeah. And I'm sorry to hear that. I, I understand what you've been through. I, I can't say that I was bullied, but people didn't understand and, and I kind of felt more like people were ignoring me. Like, I don't want to get involved with her. She's got problems or, yeah, she's got some disease or. Right. Like they labeled it. And, and what I've come to learn is that's their own, um, discomfort that they're, they're not willing to sit in. right? And so when we talk about mindfulness, being mindful of why we judge people, why we think certain ways about people, because that comes from somewhere. And of course, when you're young and you're a child, it's hard to sit down and be mindful about that. But as we get older, we get to really look at and be mindful about what patterns of behavior do we have that's not actually that kind or that, um, you know, supportive of our highest good. And, you know, we get to be mindful about looking at some of the patterns in our life and the way we act and the things that we do. And where does that come from?

00:09:18 Speaker 3: Oh, sure.

00:09:20 Sana: Um, Sydney, uh, moving on. I mean, I don't want to deflect into another topic, but, you know, sometimes feelings come out of you, but then let's, uh, move on to the next part, you know, especially about the body. Uh, and you you've said something very, very powerful. Um, that your body wasn't betraying you. It was communicating to you. That's exactly what you did. Um, so how do you see that in a way that doesn't make people feel blamed for their symptoms? You know, they don't start to judge their bodies. I don't want to be in this body because this body is not accepting. Uh, yeah.

00:10:00 Cindy Costley: Yeah, that's such a beautiful question because we do tend to see symptoms in our body as physical ailments or our bodies failing us, right? We're doing everything right because on the outside, we might look like or think we're doing everything right, going to see the doctors doing mindful practices, whatever it is that we need to be doing, we feel we're doing it all. And the biggest turnaround for this, and the way that I really encourage people to look at it, is that is to start seeing all of your symptoms as a message, not a betrayal. Because when we look at our symptoms as a message, then we get to start going a little deeper and asking, what is that message? It's important to realize that stress and trauma activate survival biology by triggering the sympathetic nervous system, right? So stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, inflammatory signaling, all of that happens in the moment of a stressful situation or trauma. And it happens first in the body. We think of stress and trauma as happening in the mind, but it actually happens biologically. First, it's a biological event. The mind experiences it, but the body has to survive it. So what happens for many of us is in the moment of that chronic stress or that, you know, the trauma that happened, our body will go into that sympathetic nervous system state that it's supposed to, but it never fully comes out of it. It creates patterns of behavior to try to keep us safe. For me, the message was the world isn't safe. I'm going to keep you safe by keeping you away from the world, right? That was kind of the underlying message of all the allergic reactions. Everything that I quote unquote, was allergic to was actually in my environment during my traumas. So one of them was in a house, one of them was outdoors. So they were, you know, it was the grasses and the trees and the chemicals and the from the from the carpet and the like, the fabric of the clothes that I was wearing, the food that was in my digestive system, all of that became a threat because my mind at the time of the traumas associated all those senses, sensory items, right? What I could see, what I could hear, what I could feel, and what was even in my digestive system as a threat. So it was a protective mode. Oh, I'm going to keep you away. These are no longer safe. And the more allergic reactions I had over the years, the more I told myself I was allergic. Then I became a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, because my body believed more and more that I was allergic to more and more. So the older I got, the more trauma that happened. You know, my dad passes away like he had cancer. All the things that happened to us and our experiences in life. Our body uses that same pathway that it originally used to keep us safe through those future events, life events that happen. So, you know, we have you hear of some clients that just suddenly have autoimmune disease. No they don't. Their body's been working this pattern for many, many years. It's just now physically showing up. But it's been the underlying root of the trauma and the message for many years. So when we are mindful to stop and ask our body, what do you want me to know? What is this? What is this? Is it what message are you trying to tell me? The way I look at it is the symptom. Is the way the body provides the message. It's not the message itself. And what we get to do is sit in curiosity. And that's my favorite word when it comes to mindfulness is being curious about the body. And what is it you're trying to tell me? What is where is the link? What is the message, the underlying message behind these symptoms?

00:14:18 Speaker 3: And then so.

00:14:19 Sana: one hundred percent makes sense and makes sense, especially the part where you mentioned that, um, it may take years and years of of that build up. And then suddenly your, your body is kind of, you know, now those, uh, symptoms or, or, uh, it's, it's visible. It's kind of, now it has visibly manifested in your body.

00:14:42 Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:14:43 Cindy Costley: Yeah. And it's not a bad thing. And we look at symptoms as something bad, annoying, difficult, right? We label them ourselves, which of course, it's not comfortable. You know, my allergic reactions were not fun. They were not comfortable. They were not fun. But now I look back and think, wow, they were kind of a little bit of a miracle because my body had been trying to tell me something for so long, I just didn't know how to listen.

00:15:10 Speaker 3: It's okay.

00:15:12 Sana: Um, Siri also, um, I think listening and awareness, I mean, such a, such a vast, uh, part of, uh, mindfulness, I mean, people think that, you know, um, meditation, mindfulness, healing, wellness, these are all like you, you need to run away from everything just to feel good and relaxed. It's all about calm and relaxation. No, it is not. I think all of these are, you know, they provide us that possibility that those options to navigate through the challenges in a better way. Either we become proactive or we at least react in a better way without losing ourselves in that process. So that is something that I, I kind of, you know, have been realizing through so many conversations out there that this, this is a huge misconception that, you know, this is all for running away from your challenges, from your woes and your, um, your, your traumatic experiences.

00:16:21 Cindy Costley: Yeah, I would say it's definitely the complete Opposite. The key is we don't often want to stop long enough to figure out what. What kind of mindfulness practice. What do we need? What does our body need from us in. I'll give an example. Yesterday I had a full day planned for work and in the morning I could feel my body and I'm going through a stage in my own healing, where I'm reminding my body that the past does not have to bring up a is not a current trauma. And it's super important to remember that the reason that we're constantly triggered is because every allergic reaction I had was my body bringing me back to the original trauma, as if it were happening right now. So even though I've cleared and healed all my traumas, my body still relates things that I think of in the past to a current situation because of this pattern that it created over the years. So this week I'm healing and telling my body we no longer have to look at the past as a threat. And so as I sat down yesterday, I felt super emotional and I went for a walk on the harbor, which is my favorite place to heal and to go. And I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried almost all day long. And it was because my healing journey was hard. It was long and it was hard. And I and I spent thirty four years in chronic illness before I healed. And my body was wanting me to feel that yesterday my body was wanting me to say, let's pause. Let's stop moving forward for a moment and recognize what you have healed. Recognize how difficult this was and how you did it, how you lived your life, how you still thrived while you were choosing to heal so much of your past. So yesterday, I got to really be with myself in that acknowledgement of, wow, this was a long process. This was a lot that I went through, and I don't want to bypass that. I wanted to allow myself to feel it. And you can hear I'm a little bit plugged today because my body's this will take four days to heal this. Like when I heal something, it takes four days to clear out of my body. So I stay plugged in. Then it goes away because it's my body releasing that old message, that old pattern that the past is brings up like that, that, that when I think of something from the past, it shows up as a current trigger. So all of this is beautiful. And I don't want to get too advanced because that's pretty advanced healing. But the reality is, is when we pause and listen to our body, we're giving ourself a gift. We're not bypassing anything. When we sit in meditation and we give ourselves that gift, we're saying, I want to listen. I want to be curious to what my body has to tell me, or what spirit has to tell me, or what you know, whatever it is that comes to you during meditation. What, what that is what that brings for you. That is a gift. That is a gift that you give, that we give ourselves. Because as humans, we tend to be always in the past or the future. And the gift we give ourselves is by being in the now and me stopping everything I had planned for the day yesterday, including, you know, a couple podcast interviews, pause me and being willing to listen to what my body needed for me at that time.

00:20:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And that's.

00:20:10 Sana: Such a, I really appreciate you sharing that because it's, it's a very, um, sensitive. It's, uh, it's kind of, you know, those vulnerable moments, they kind of sometimes bring, they kind of center us. You know, they kind of bring us back to ourselves. And sometimes it feels so relieving. Um, I mean, and it can happen. It can happen through so many, you know, triggers like you are listening to some kind of, um, song. Maybe it gets you nostalgic and from that nostalgic feeling you get to, uh, maybe your, your mind or your body is kind of remembering back those maybe difficult moments. Then you think, oh my God, so much has happened. I'm, I'm still here and I've come here. And then those sudden tears that, you know, come out of your eyes. Yeah. I think, um, these moments, they really help us come back to us. Sometimes it is good. It is good to cry.

00:21:19 Speaker 4: It's important.

00:21:21 Cindy Costley: To. And I love what you said because even if you're listening to a song. So let's use an example. If you're listening to a song and suddenly you feel nostalgic. Mindfulness is about recognizing, acknowledging that you're feeling nostalgic. Yes, we can listen to a song and feel good and not even realize that we're feeling good through that song. But mindfulness means we paused and said, you know, this song really is making me feel good right now. This is bringing me back to my past and a good time in my past that I feel so nostalgic and it's so wonderful, and it's allowing yourself that 30s of acknowledgement. Two seconds of acknowledgement. Like, wow, I am recognizing and acknowledging that this song means something to me in my body right now.

00:22:10 Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely.

00:22:13 Sana: And, uh, and it's not just your feelings or your thoughts, it's, you know, your body also responds in that way. I mean, you get those hormonal, uh, drives, you feel that happiness or you feel that kind of excitement or, and that's why, you know, it kind of physically manifests in either tears of happiness or, uh, those tears of relief. Oh, goodness, what I've gone through and where am I right now? It's all different. I've come from far from there. So let me just now be in the present.

00:22:48 Cindy Costley: Yeah, yeah. We can't always be in the moment. We can't live that way. Right? We have to plan. We have to like our forward motion comes from us looking at the future and picking what we want and moving forward with that. The past is also very powerful. But what happens is we often spend too much time in the past, in the future, and not enough time right now, which is where pleasure comes from, right? That's like I said, with the nostalgia. If we're thinking about what, like, oh, I'm going to sit with this for a moment. Why is this making my body feel so good? You know, after I cried and cried and cried yesterday, I was so joyful last night. I was hugging my husband and I'm like, I just felt like I let go of so much sadness. And I had been holding on to about how difficult my journey was. And letting that go was just such a gift. And then I was just happy and joyful and living in the moment and feeling good and excited and. But it takes making those pauses and I call it a purposeful pause and really being willing, you know, you don't have to give up a whole day like I had to yesterday. I'm just on this really deep healing journey. That's different for most of us. It's taking two minutes, five minutes to be curious about what that symptom, what we're feeling, what our body might be trying to tell us.

00:24:19 Speaker 3: Yeah. Beautiful.

00:24:22 Sana: Beautiful. Uh, before we conclude, um, uh, one kind of final question. Uh, that I think when someone moves, you know, that shift from survival to stillness. What, what changes first? Is it the, is it our thoughts, our emotions or the body symptoms? Or is it completely something else? Well.

00:24:52 Cindy Costley: When they're shifting from survival to stillness, it can feel uncomfortable at first. Everybody's different. So I don't I don't want to put an idea into someone's head, because the reality is we're all so unique and different and every moment is unique and different. So for some of us, in certain moments, shifting from nostalgia, from survival to stillness is easy because of the of whatever the situation happens to be that's happening in that moment. Many of us, it's uncomfortable and it feels like we can't really get to the stillness. Because when our brain is constantly trying to bring back those past memories, when we're constantly being triggered, you know it. Our brain and our body won't necessarily allow us to be still because it's trying to tell us. And I think, I think there's a misconception about stillness. Stillness is not always what we need. Curiosity is what we need. If that curiosity can come through a meditation. Fabulous. If that curiosity comes from touching your skin and asking your body what you need. Fabulous. If curiosity comes like for me, a lot of my curiosity and the way I get my answers is taking my walks. So for me, a not with headphones on, no music, not, you know, I'm not watching anything. I'm just it's like a walking meditation for me. So many of my answers come that way for me.

00:26:30 Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:26:31 Cindy Costley: So we want to be careful that we that we don't associate, that we're either have to focus on stillness in order to get us out of survival. What we want is to figure out what is our body need, what, what is the best way for us to recognize what that survival is? Because that's where mindfulness comes from, not trying to be still through a message your body's trying to give you instead trying to be curious about what that message is trying to tell you.

00:27:03 Sana: I absolutely love that. That is so, so powerful. More than stillness, curiosity in here. Because, um, that's, that's what kind of keeps us, uh, driven and I think human at the same time. We are pausing because we are curious. We want to be aware about this. We want to get into the root cause of this. And especially when you mention about the walking meditations, I think that's kind of the misconception that, you know, meditation is always this sit still, close your eyes and, um, sit for hours and hours and you meditate and then only you can be, um, healthy or you can be mindful. No, there are different ways you can practice meditation through art, through music, through cooking, um, through different, different, you know, uh, ways and those are beautiful. You can meditate in the nature, as you mentioned, about the walking meditation. So I think I really appreciate that you shared that before we are wrapping up.

00:28:04 Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:28:04 Cindy Costley: And I just want to add one last thing. My doesn't always mean meditation. My mindfulness might mean I need a friend right now.

00:28:12 Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:28:13 Cindy Costley: Mindfulness might look like I need to step out of this chaos. If my kids are screaming and yelling and I can't take it right now and I'm about to blow up, mindfulness might look like a shift in what we're doing. I. My sister calls this a state shift, and I love that. Yes, that's. Mindfulness is just. I need a state shift right now. I'm spinning in my head. I'm reeling over something over and over and over and over again. And I need a state shift so that I can get out of my head and into my heart. So mindfulness looks like a lot of different things. The key is taking that what I call the purposeful pause and being in curiosity to what we need.

00:28:51 Speaker 3: HMM. What?

00:28:54 Sana: Super Sonia. Of course. I have to ask you if they would like to connect with you. What will be the easiest way.

00:29:04 Speaker 3: They.

00:29:04 Cindy Costley: Can find me at Cindy dot com? And, um, that's my handles, my social handles as well, as well as the underlying answers that Cindy. Com is where I have all my information.

00:29:18 Speaker 3: Awesome.

00:29:18 Sana: Listeners, I'm going to have all the links mentioned in the show notes. So yeah, find them attached along with this episode. And, uh, I listeners, I mean, to me, this was such a, such a powerful, powerful, you know, kind of a homecoming episode to something as, um, foundational yet sometimes so complex, you know, like mindfulness, stillness, curiosity, survival. And, and I believe if you are, you know, if you are listening, maybe you're not in stillness yet. Maybe you are still in the in between the messy middle. And that doesn't mean at all that you are failing. It might mean your system has been working overtime to protect you, and it is learning a new way now, so it needs time. And Cindy, thank you so, so much. Um, I really appreciate you speaking with honesty and, and, uh, being very, very open with us. Thank you so much.

00:30:24 Cindy Costley: Thank you for having me. It's been a great conversation.

00:30:27 Speaker 3: Yes, yes.

00:30:29 Sana: And, uh, thank you so much, listeners, for tuning in to this episode of The Mindful Living. Um, before we close, if this episode gave you language for what you have been carrying or even just a moment of exhale, um, I, I want to invite you to follow the mindful living and until next time, this is Sana and I will catch you in the next episode. Thank you.