00:00:06 Sana: Trauma doesn't live. Only memory. Listeners, you would have listened to so many episodes on the Mindful Living podcast. And one thing which I personally have learned is our body knows more than we know. And yes, trauma lives in the body in the way you hold your breath without even realizing it in the way certain sounds, or maybe places or locations make you tense before your mind even catches up in the way. Safety feels like something that belongs to other people. And for so many women, healing has meant going back over the story again and again and again, and still not feeling free. Today's guest has built her entire practice around a different truth. You don't have to really relive to feel it. And that changes everything.

00:01:07 Sana: So yes, welcome to the Mindful Living Show, where we explore what it means to live with genuine presence, genuine safety, and genuine connection to yourself. I am Sana, as always for you here and listeners, I'm really glad you're here today because my guest, well, she's the founder of Phoenix Women Healing, a trauma informed practitioner who blends neurosomatic therapy, hypnotherapy, and mind body practices to help women heal from trauma without having to relive it. As a survivor of sexual trauma, herself a daughter of Vietnam veteran and a military spouse, my guest brings both lived experience and deep professional expertise to work. That is about resolution, not just coping or dealing with and Hermitian. It's straightforward and it's powerful to help women stop surviving and start fully living. So let's begin and let's welcome our incredible guest, Anisa Hudak. Anisa, welcome to the show and I'm really, really thankful you're here today with us.

00:02:20 Anissa Hudak: Thank you so very much, Sana. I am so excited to be here.

00:02:25 Sana: Alyssa, um, I want to start with you personally because you came to this field not just through training, not through a profession, but through your own experience. And I find it powerful. I find that, you know, it's, it gives you a very different kind of sense of, you know, having a purpose. Um, but, but I think, um, and I also think that distinction matters enormously in trauma work also, unfortunately or fortunately, but what do you think was the moment for you when you understood that healing was possible for you and that you wanted to dedicate your life to making it possible for other women to know?

00:03:12 Anissa Hudak: I found myself in a teacher training program for yoga and specifically for PTSD. And I remember being on the mat and how my body felt afterwards. And I was listening, you know, to the lectures. I was listening to the science. It wasn't, um, smoke and mirrors. It wasn't voodoo, it was science, biology specifically. And I was like, wow, this really works. I feel amazing. And that's really what started my journey. I, um, I had no plans of ever teaching yoga. I just kind of found it, got the bug and started taking more classes. Um, I live in a huge military community. I wanted to bring that back to be of service to my community. And I never, I wasn't in the equation Until that moment where I was sitting there in this class and, and not only physically experiencing the release and the relief, but then listening to the science and learning about it and saying, oh boy, the first person I need to work on is myself before I could ever offer this to anyone else. And so that started my journey.

00:04:48 Sana: Wow. Wow. And, and I find it, um, it makes me so curious, Anisa because, I think it's a huge misconception. because, I also used to believe, and I'm really, that's why I'm thankful that I'm in a position I am privileged enough. or maybe, I've got that opportunity, uh, to, to Have conversations to host these conversations and host guests, sharing their lived experiences and the work that they are doing. And, maybe even if it's for one person who is listening to this show and they find something useful that connects with them. yeah, for me, for me, that would be more than the numbers or, um, the, you know, quote unquote conventional achievements. but, but I also used to believe that, you know, our body doesn't have any, any connection. It's mostly about, our mind and those sometimes horrible or horrific experiences, um, those emotions and feelings. But then through these conversations and through some of the life events, I am realizing, and it's, it's once again, work in progress for me that, our body, it keeps us going. And of course, there's a popular book as well. And van der Kolk, you know, by by this name. So I, I totally connect with that. What you just shared.

00:06:18 Anissa Hudak: I love that.

00:06:23 Sana: Okay. and so I would also like to stress upon something, which I believe, most people think about healing from trauma. Um, we either imagine like, something like talk therapy, nothing against that. Um, but the imagine a process that involves talking through what happened, uh, going back over the story, reliving that, processing it verbally until it kind of, loses its charge. But your approach is different. Uh, what is the most important thing, we must understand about where trauma actually lives and why talking alone often isn't enough.

00:07:02 Anissa Hudak: It's a great question. So most people live their life from their neck up. They think everything happens there. You know, we're attached to this other part. It's the rest of our body. And a lot of what happens, happens to the body first before the mind can even catch up to it, and vice versa. So that being said, you have to treat the whole person. Here in the West, especially, we like to compartmentalize each and every part of the body. Mhm. However, you have to treat the person as a whole in order to treat the whole person. And so talk therapy is a great first step. It brings you into awareness. Awareness that there's a problem, awareness how it's affecting you, awareness how it's affecting your relationships, your life, your career, what have you. Great first step. However, there's more to it. You need to move the trauma out of the body because we hold trauma on a cellular level. Trauma, when it happens, happens to the body first and then in the brain. Not only do we need to move it out of the body, we also have to move it out of the unconscious. You see, when you're in talk therapy, you're coming. You're talking from the conscious part of your brain, but you're only there five percent of your day. How could you possibly solve anything when you're only there five percent of your time? Trauma happens in the unconscious. That's where it's stored. That's where the mechanism is. The fight flight freeze fawn mode is in the unconscious. You have to dig into that as well. And what's important is that, yes, telling your story is is important. However, when you tell it again and again and again, as you would do in talk therapy, you're only re imprinting that on the brain and you're only making it harder to get it out of that unconscious. You're when you talk and when you think your brain hears everything and it logs it all. And so in order to get it out of that unconscious, you do need someone to help you assist. You do that. It is quick. It is easy and effortless. It is incredibly effective and it does not require you to talk about it. So you need to move through all of these things, the body and the unconscious. You can do it in whatever order works best for you because, you know, trauma is so individual. So there is no prescribed way of doing it. It's really what works best for the person. And so moving out of the body and then out of the unconscious or vice versa. There's no right or wrong here. Just do it.

00:10:36 Sana: Oh.

00:10:39 Speaker 4: And I didn't say a word. Um.

00:10:44 Sana: And I'm, I, I, I'm not sure. because, every, every one has a very unique or a different way of, of approaching trauma. But, especially as a woman. if I can, if I can, you know, kind of. I do not want to relive the most horrific memories of my life. sometimes and it's, it's, it's not very frequently, but there are moments where probably, something I'm watching or maybe a particular word that a person I know has mentioned. Maybe it's the location. That's why I mentioned in the intro. It could be a location, it could be a place. It just gives me that, immediate, um, flashback of that moment. And instantly I kind of, you know, I, I become aware of something happening in my body. Maybe, it's, it's, um, a sudden, increase in my heartbeat or, um, sometimes my hands getting cold. I mean, I don't know, there, there are various, you know, signals or signs. Um, and I cannot, you know, I cannot bring back all those memories. I, I, I don't even remember everything, but it's just that shock that I remember. It's just that that jolt that I remember. And I think that's why what you just shared kind of connects with me. Um, although, from the talk therapy perspective, I do not have that adequate lived experience to, um, connect, but however, the kind of, what the responses that you just mentioned and how, uh, our unconscious or subconscious, it stores those memories, maybe our conscious mind. It doesn't, it's not able to, uh, recall everything. I think that is something which I can definitely, definitely, um, validate that. Yes. And this was something I feel like.

00:12:49 Anissa Hudak: Wonderful. Yes. In fact, you're absolutely right. And, you know, you mentioned that you, um, on the good bits and pieces.

00:12:58 Speaker 4: Mhm.

00:12:59 Anissa Hudak: And there's a couple of different reasons for that and the triggers that you mentioned. Um, and that's how the brain stores the memory and our brain is the most incredible computer in the world, and it logs everything in real time. When we experience a traumatic event, the wires get kind of scrambled. But if you were to think of all five of our senses as a different filing cabinet, so you have audio, you have sight, you have sent, you have smell, you have taste. And as something is occurring in real time, your brain is logging all of this into those filing cabinets. When you go to recall the memory, it goes to these filing cabinets, and it brings out all of those different parts of the memory and brings it together. However, when we've experienced trauma, sometimes the wires got crossed and things get misfiled. So when you recall the memory, maybe only three parts get brought back instead of all five. Well, the brain does not like an incomplete memory, and so it'll actually help you out and give you the other two parts. Now, because of the cavemen, this is going way back. We are actually wired to think negatively. And that was out of protection. You know, don't leave the cave at night because you're going to be eaten by a bear, you know? So everything is kind of more of a negative connotation. And so these memories that the brain helps us with, they'll put in parts that probably didn't even happen and are way more negative than they actually occurred. This is not you lying. This is just your brain having the wires crossed. So it's okay though. Okay. It happens and it's totally acceptable. So what we need to do is we need to help the brain bring the entire memory back in its totality. So we need to find where those items were misfiled. And by getting into your unconscious, you can do that. You can help the brain find those pieces, bring the memory back. Most people, when that happens, they're like, oh, it wasn't as bad as I recall. And from there you're able to then deal with the real memory and move forward. Triggers and memories and flashbacks. These are breadcrumbs that your brain is giving you, saying, hey, you need to deal with this.

00:16:11 Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:16:16 Sana: Absolutely. Makes sense. Absolutely. And here I want to bring in your approach. Um excuse me. Um, Anisa um, neurosomatic therapy, hypnotherapy, mind body practices. So what, what exactly does a healing process actually look like? You know, when it doesn't require reliving the trauma? Because I think, you know, especially for a lot of women, um, the fear of what healing might ask of them is itself, you know, one of the barriers to starting because, because I also believe that, um, many of us, we kind of normalize, uh, this state, this, survival mode, rather a chronic survival mode, uh, because we have been in this for so long and it's, it's just like, this now has become my identity. This is how I operate either, uh, we would try to mask it by overworking or overthinking or just overanalyzing everything or just kind of, trying to be more secluded or just trying to be always around people so that you, we cannot process or even, you know, realize what we are feeling. I mean, how exactly does this healing process work?

00:17:35 Anissa Hudak: Great question. So the first part is awareness. And one of the things that I specifically work with is women who, you know, sometimes when you've experienced trauma, you collapse. There are other women who armored up. They got strong. And those the women that I work with, because that's me. I put on armor. So the first thing, um, is awareness. Not only is it talk therapy to potentially bring you into awareness and you could utilize talk therapy for that. Um, also at my website, I have a free quiz that you can take that will tell you, are you a strong survivor and what type? Because there's actually three different types. There is the anchor and the that is the woman who does everything for everyone. You know, the the p t a woman president calls her at nine p m and says, I need, you know, thirty dozen cookies for nine a m tomorrow. Can you do it? I know you can. And of course you can do it. Um, everybody relies on this woman, right?

00:18:52 Speaker 4: Yep.

00:18:53 Anissa Hudak: That's the anchor. She controls everything, and everything is under her control. Then there is the shield. And the shield is someone who really armors up and is very protective. You know, nobody is going to be taken advantage. Under her watch. And so she plays really close mind to, um, injustices. Standing up for people. Um, sometimes people think she's a bully because of it. And then there is the integrator and that person is a little of both. And it depends on the situation. They bring out whatever skill set they need depending on the situation. So you can take the free quiz at my my website. It's three minutes and you can figure out where do you lie within that. And then the second thing is moving the trauma out of your body. You know, once you know what you're dealing with, okay, now let's get it out of the body. And I utilized yoga therapy for that. I'm a certified yoga therapist. I have a membership there for women who can join. Um, we have live classes. We have classes that are recorded. So, you know, at three a m when your mind is racing, you can jump on a mat. The beauty of it is that it is not like your typical yoga class. Um, it's very interactive. There's always talking going on. You're not talking about what happened to you because we're not there for that. We're there to move your body and move the trauma out of the body. So talking about what happened. We're I'm usually yakking about something. Um, and then the third is getting it out of the unconscious. And what I found was when I was working with women who were like me, and we were having a great time moving it out of our bodies. And we were, we were really being very effective. However, then we'd go back to talk therapy. We'd feel like crap again. And I was like, you know, in this day and age, there's got to be a better way. And that's when I discovered these unconscious techniques that can be utilized to help move the trauma out of the unconscious. And again, you don't have to talk about your story. That's not what you're there for. You're there to break a pattern. You are there, um, to really get deep inside and, and remove that trauma. And it's easy. It is effortless. It is, um, very effective. And it's very quick. It only takes about thirty days. And so when you think about people who have been in talk therapy for five, ten, twenty years, we can do this very effectively in thirty days. And you can get back to life. I mean, who wants to stay stuck in trauma?

00:22:20 Speaker 4: Makes sense. Makes sense. And

00:22:23 Sana: sometimes it can be, it can be, it may sound like a bold claim as, as well. Um, so because you know, here people would say so does that mean that, in thirty days I'm going to forget everything. I'm going to like be completely quote unquote normal or everything is like going to look like very smooth. So what, what would you, would you, would you say to the skepticism if it is there around us, vis a vis, when it comes to talk therapy because, it's, it's kind of very, very, um, automated or organic that whenever we imagine trauma therapy, we always like to, uh, be, be shifting towards more of that long and long, five, ten, twenty years process of just, you know, talking and journaling maybe and, and still, it's just kind of, it's, it's like they're behind you maybe like just, you know, kind of a dark shadow.

00:23:22 Anissa Hudak: I love this. So. Everybody nowadays has a cell phone pretty much. Yeah. And every couple of months, you get this thing that says we have to upgrade the software. Right. Effectively, all we're doing is upgrading the software in your unconscious. A lot of the coping mechanisms that you put into place, you did when you were very, very young, like between seven and nine years old. Somewhat of seven to nine years old is not equipped to handle adult situations. And so what we do is we help. I help women upgrade that operating software. And that way they have better resources, better coping mechanisms available to them to deal with what they need to deal with. And in doing that, we are able to help them, again, effectively move through that trauma very, very quickly just by upgrading the software. Are they going to be the same person they were prior to it, that whatever the traumatic event? No, because they've lived. You're never the same person in any given moment. You're always changing. You're always evolving. And so you're going to be just a better version of yourself. You're going to have peace. You're going to have better coping mechanisms and more bandwidth to deal with more stress, because there always will be more stress. Yeah.

00:25:14 Sana: Absolutely. Makes sense. That's that's actually very well said. Okay, so before we wrap up, um, of course, you mentioned about the quiz and, um, once again, for the listeners, if, they would like to, especially for every woman listening to this who would want to explore what healing could look like for her, where, where they can find you.

00:25:40 Anissa Hudak: So my website is Phoenix women healing dot com. Again, that free quiz is there. You will get your results immediately. And I love that it took me so long to get that squared away. However, yes, women will get their results within moments. And um, there is the yoga therapy membership that's there. Um, also a, you know, opportunity if you want to work one on one with me to do the unconscious work. Um, it is all right there. I am on pretty much all the socials except TikTok. I'm not groovy for TikTok. Um, however, I, you know, you can find me on Facebook and IG and, um, you know, all the regular places, if you will, and, um, soon to be Pinterest. Um, however, I'm not quite there yet, but I will be. Um, so yeah, it's all there at the website Phoenix women healing dot com. Amazing.

00:26:39 Sana: So this is going to drop all the links in the show notes. So yes, to refer to them, find them attached along with this episode. And, um, and so thank you so much, um, for, first of all, being here and for the work that you are doing and, um, for sharing your experiences and the mission that you are on. Um, I, I'm really thankful that, you know, um, you chose a platform to share the insights.

00:27:14 Anissa Hudak: I am so grateful to you. Thank you for having me on, and thank you for allowing me to chat with your audience as well.

00:27:20 Sana: Amazing. And yes, thank you to every woman, every woman who showed up for this episode, whether you came looking for answers, for language, for permission, or just for someone to say what you have been feeling but couldn't put into words. You are not your trauma. You're not your survival patterns. You are a woman whose body learned to protect her and whose body can also learn to rest. So this is the mindful living show. And if this conversation reached something real in you, please share it. There is a woman in your life who needs to hear that healing doesn't have to look the way she's been afraid it would. And I'm Sara and I'll be back soon with another episode. Thank you so much.