(Part 2) Picking up the Pieces After Burnout: A Conversation with Edina Leković

In this two-part episode, I'm joined by Edina Leković, a prominent spokesperson for Muslims in the post-9/11 United States. We explore her journey from defending Muslim rights to experiencing burnout and rediscovering herself.

With over two decades of expertise in storytelling and community-building, Edina shares her personal and professional evolution. This episode is a must-listen if you've ever felt overwhelmed while dedicating yourself to others' well-being, whether you're an activist, a professional supporter, or a community helper. Edina opens up about her toughest days and the healing journey that followed.

Edina is a community scholar at UCLA, narrating LA's Muslim history, and serves as the executive director of the Robert Ellis Simon Foundation, focusing on mental wellness services for underserved LA County residents.

Tune in for a candid conversation that delves deep into Edina's remarkable life story. Find her on Instagram: @lamuslimhistory & @EdLek.

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:19

I'm Dr Rose Aslan and I'm a transformational life coach, a rethroke teacher and scholar of religion who supports helpers, rebels, misfits, marginalized and spiritual and spiritually curious folks. Welcome to Rahman with Rose, where I create a bold space of warmth, understanding and pluralism in a world that often feels chaotic, polarized and judgmental. You are not alone, and the stories I share here will reinforce this. Each episode will delve into inspiring stories, practical tips and thought-provoking and heartfelt conversations with thought leaders, healers, coaches, mental health professionals and other individuals who are part of the quiet revolution of women healing around the world. So join me on this podcast exploration, as we explore what happens when we allow compassion into our lives, one story at a time.

Speaker 3: 1:47

So kind of the way to put it is, I was working in coalition with a small group of Muslims on behalf of a bunch of Muslim organizations to help create a crisis response system after all these years among Muslim organizations, and that was extremely challenging. Then we went into action after Trump got elected and I just went right back into that full-time mode and threw myself into it and then we came into 2017. I decided to do a podcast to start to reclaim my personal voice, because I had been speaking for we for so long, for us. I wanted to reclaim. There had been no I in so much of that work. It was only later, as I realized and owned the power of personal storytelling and personal narrative through places like Amcley, that I even incorporated my story into. And yeah, so the podcast. I respect so much what you're doing. My podcast was called meeting the moment and I wanted it to be a place where I could share my stories of meeting the moment, which is finding opportunities within crises, which is what I learned through my activism. And the most terrifying part of that podcast was the first two minutes when I would tell a personal story. It was so unfamiliar to me, and the whole journey in 2018, I think I did the podcast for about six or eight months, I realized even listening to them now, but I was so concerned with not perfection, but like presentation right, and I wanted every to be edited out. I wanted it to sound so professional, which it wasn't sounding like me right. And so this I can see how 2018 was this pivotal year where I was trying to figure out how to be me and what me, who me is, who, what I can share about me and what I can remember about me and what vulnerability I can begin to share. And I stopped working.

Speaker 3: 3:35

While I was doing the podcast, my husband and I asked him can you be the breadwinner so that I can just do this? When I have multiple things, my projects go on the back burner right, self-sacrifice, codependency, all of it, trauma response and so I was like I need to clear field so that this is like the thing I'm doing, and we agreed to that. And then, a couple of months later, he got bit by a flea in our backyard and it gave him some virus and he ended up in the hospital Hanallah and, alhamdulillah, he was okay, but it was a very touch and go situation for a day and then he was unable to work for a little while and that was the fight, like tell you this whole long story? Because I could handle all the professional things when it came home and I no longer had a job to fix the problem and I didn't control his health and I couldn't like again, like all my zone of influence disappeared is when that became the time where because I was like, okay, he's gonna be back to work and he's getting healthier and everything it wasn't like a long term issue, but our finances fell apart. And because he's self-employed and I was a consultant and not working at that point and we had savings, but again everything fell apart and I didn't want to ring the bell for him. I didn't want to tell him that. I was scared because he was just recovering in his own health, and so what happened next is that my back and my sciatica. The body keeps the score and my body started to talk. And that's what I have learned is that if we stuff it down, we stuff it down, I can take it, I can take it. Oh yeah, first time it showed up on my face and this time I was having.

Speaker 3: 5:10

Over the course of that summer, I started having some lower back pain and I would like remember we would sit on our back stairs at night and look at the stars and I would get up and I couldn't quite stand up straight, and that I let that go on for a couple of minutes. It'll get better. It'll get better all walk right, until one day I sat it down on the couch and I had a shooting pain from my left hip, all the way down my left leg pretty much, and I got up and I was like that's weird and I tried to find another comfortable position and every time I sat down from that point on, I had this shooting pain. Long story short, I lost my ability to drive. This was from, I want to say, october 2018.

Speaker 3: 5:56

And again, it was getting progressively worse until I couldn't drive and that was my body fell apart. And that was when I decided I needed to do some because I didn't want to spend money. I didn't have money. Like we were like trying to deal with our finances. Everything's uncertain. We're parenting, right. That lack of control to deal with our own life scared me more than anything else. Like I was on my wall and I was unwilling to admit. I was afraid to my husband and the body keeps the score.

Speaker 3: 6:25

And so when I developed sciatica that was debilitating, I lost my ability to drive and I couldn't figure out how I had done this to myself. I kept being everywhere, like I was, like did I lift my son? Like again I was looking for physical reason. How had this happened? How did I injure my back? Like where did it was such a trip.

Speaker 3: 6:42

And then a friend sent me an article, a link to an article that described how sciatica had emotional roots and that even pinpointed finances as one of the kinds of fears or uncertainties and fears that can come up. And so I was so in denial and it just all made me so mad. It made me so mad and because I was like I can't afford to fix myself, but if I'm not working, nothing else works. And subhanallah, again that was my rock bottom, because I didn't want to spend money on myself. I kept going to the doctor and what I was told was it'll heal on its own between six and nine months. I cried and cried. I was at a point where, again, I wasn't driving. I could only sleep for an hour and a half at a time because it could tell me the doctors had no they had no solution.

Speaker 3: 7:30

They gave me a pain shot, like at some point in my hip. I would say it in this long way because it was not purely physical. I, realizing that the doctors couldn't help me, was this oh my god, I have to save my own life. That was my rock bottom was I can not wait six or nine months, like how can I heal this faster? Because again, it ruined my life you can't even describe anyway, with no money.

Speaker 3: 7:57

I first went to acupuncture. I remember was Thanksgiving of that year and I went to acupuncture and paid $125 for an hour of acupuncture and cried that I was spending the money and cried that I wasn't so much pain and I was like weeping from the pain of even just laying there and let alone everything. But it gave me even 30 minutes of relief and at that point I was like debilitated. And then a friend said you know what? Go see my body worker. She does acupressure and craniosacral, which is about the fluids between things, and yeah, and your vagus nerve and all this stuff. And I'm like what, the what? But I'm in so much pain that I'm desperate. Right, I take two metros to go see this woman and she begins to work on my body and she's pushing around my torso and she pushes on my lower belly, top of my pelvic bone, and I scream and she takes a pause and she says how old were you? And then and that's the beginning of the rest of my journey, and which I knew exactly what she meant and she was right, which was that how old were you when you were violated, molested, abused and like I felt so exposed and confused? And I said to her I think I was a young child, I think I was between five and seven, something like that, and this is not what I expected to come in here for. And yeah, I think, god, I can laugh with the. It's just the stuff again, the stunning things.

Speaker 3: 9:28

Just entering the journey of addressing my physical pain uncovered these other things and this woman began to work on my body and my soul at the same time and we came, not even a therapist but like a. We talked through those stories and all the stuff that was going on in there and that's when I began to make this connection to the body keeps the score. How could she put, just push on a plate, like not even intensely, push on a place in my body, right and no, and that like idea again that the body keeps the score and what is everything that's been trapped and like it just came together in this moment around? Oh, it is emotional pain and, oh, my God, and so many things. And so it was the beginning of the healing journey, because I realized that everything I had gone through was still in there and that I don't know that I had to begin to face that and go back to the beginning, because my professional activism in so many ways was about fighting for my little girl, fighting for my little Edina, and all the ways and my childhood and my extended family, my direct family, that I, yeah, didn't feel like I could stand up for myself and, yeah, god bless my family. It wasn't anybody in my direct family who was my abuser, but I never told anybody At that point. I hadn't my family, I hadn't told my family, I told my best friend and my close friends, but this was also around the me to time, right, the me to care.

Speaker 3: 11:00

And so, again, the convergence of so many things. It was like a volcano that's the only thing I can describe is it's just so many factors that led me to my rock bottom where I could no longer ignore these things and throw myself into work, and until that point, right like anytime, I was uncomfortable, I could just go back to work, like work made more sense than other things. And so I went to that woman every week for the next six months and even though I couldn't drive and she's on the other side of town, and my life slowed down completely when I came to learn I have come to believe that when we don't lay down although we'll lay us down I was unwilling to slow down and face it all and that this pain stopped me in my tracks and it forced me to slow down, and I spent a lot of time with myself and a lot of time with myself. And so when you talked about the body keeps the score, it was while I was taking the metro once or twice a week all the way from Pasadena to Santa Monica because that's where my body worker was. So, again, an hour each way, like my husband is making fun of me because I'm taking an hour metro, like walking to the metro taking, because I can't sit down, so I'm standing on the metro, yeah, taking this long journey to Santa Monica and then walking and then getting the treatment and then doing it all back. It was like a four or five hour thing and I'm like I don't, I can't do anything else anyway. It's not like I'm wasting my day, I don't, I can't, even I couldn't physically think straight enough to work like it was just parenting. That's when I listened to the body keeps the score. I will.

Speaker 3: 12:32

That's when I started to try to figure out what the hell is happening here, what is going on inside of me and how do I begin to take this apart. I also and I read a book called parenting from the inside out that made me realize that attachment styles from childhood and childhood trauma and all these things were all connected and so I. It was just all these things were beginning to. I was beginning to be exposed to myself. And then I went into the yeah, I went into therapy, deep and hardcore as well. I did so many acupuncture therapy, the body worker I was through I vitamins and supplements. I was doing everything possible to try to accelerate this healing journey and it did end up.

Speaker 3: 13:17

I so the first me think October to March was I was able to get the pain down, so that was like five months where I'd shortened. I was. That was my goal is to shorten those eight or nine months. And then I had this. It was the false confidence. I was like a month or two where I was good, I was good and like through myself, back and everything. False confidence. And it came back and again it was like these this is how a law spoke to me, that's just so. That's like again. If you're, I'm like, this is why I'm like. The body type, the body of my body, kept talking to me and that's my. That is what I have become more connected to. Oh, I also. What tools that I've been used.

Speaker 3: 13:57

I also started going to Kundalini yoga a long time ago, but I doubled down during this time because the stretching and the breathing I realized through my body worker that I, like at my Vegas nerve, was the, and the freeze response is what was happening, like this was just the ultimate freeze response is that my body was freezing and that's what sciatica was. Is that, like the Vegas nerve was caught in there because of the freeze and so, for the first time, I felt like I was in my body is the shortest way I could describe all of this is the first time that I was acutely aware of my body and that I was no longer a brain on a stick and it was that extreme and there is no going back. Everything I do now is in service of my future self, because what I realized I was 4043 at the time, maybe I'm 46 now and I'm 42 that, like this, is my midlife realignment, my midlife reawakening. It's not of just a crisis, it's a wake up. And if I'm at the halfway point in my life like this is a calling and an invitation to realign myself for the second half, because I've been doing like. What I have been doing has been in survival and in service, right and in hustle and improving and in growing and but like just and now, in shall live. I am blessed with this being the beginning of my second half. In shall what? What do I leave, what do I take, what do I leave behind and what do I reclaim? And I decided I wanted to reclaim little Adina and let her speak and really fall in love with her and bring her forward, because I did not talk about my childhood to many people at all. Yeah and yeah and so, yeah. So I stepped back into myself and it's been a beautiful journey.

Speaker 3: 15:49

I stopped doing the podcast because I was in so much pain and I wasn't ready to tell people. So that's why I can remember now that I got through the second bout by summer. And then that's when our mutual friend, samaya Abu Bakr, who was the managing, who's the engine of Amcly, the American most specific leadership institute for a decade, she was suggesting to me that I bring my story to the Amcly reunion and we just said burnout and it was like it was the burnout workshop and I was like, oh God, samaya, I'm not like, really, really Like. Yeah, I'm not sure that I'm ready to talk about it, because I was withdrawn so that I could just focus on myself and talking about it beyond safe people was so hard, like the tears were always just right under the surface.

Speaker 3: 16:34

But it was a leap of faith because, just like in 2006, before we started Amcly and New Ground, I knew that other people were feeling. When I was feeling, I just knew it and I didn't want anybody to feel as alone and is without tools and as helpless as I felt like I had to save. I felt really truly like I had to save my own life and I didn't want other people to feel that way and so that's why I agreed to give that workshop and it was the most terrifying thing I've ever done publicly, because talking about all the bullshit is so much easier. Talking to Bill O'Reilly about bullshit is so much easier than talking about my body turning on me and not turn. It's so sad, even when I'm trying to work on that language, but my body really waking me up to everything it was carrying and waking me up to myself. Enough, adina, enough.

Speaker 2: 17:23

Yeah, adina, as someone who was there, I can say that it resonated so strongly with me and it really helped me wake up to hear two really powerful women leaders in the community telling that like it was and just explaining like what happened, what they needed to change your lives, what went wrong, and I don't know if any other people came around and shared with you what they took away, but it was such a powerful session I've been to many workshops in my life, but that one definitely stands out it was for me too, because this was like wasn't there like 50, 75 people there?

Speaker 3: 17:53

It was quite large, I think, because everyone was feeling burnt out Really that's the thing it was in the air, and especially because we were years into Trump by that point. It was again like when we just think about everything that we've been through in these younger generations, and it was such a gift because many people, women and men reached out to me from that group and to be that vulnerable in front of my peers who, many of them I knew, looked up to me.

Speaker 2: 18:17

So someone who's at the workshop and I was really moved by your authenticity of you and Sada just telling it like it was, because I was also at the end of my burnout as a professor and I hadn't contemplated leaving at that point, but I was so burnt out and I didn't know it and I also had physical health issues and I was also going to healers and doing all the same things.

Speaker 2: 18:38

And just to know there's others like myself in leadership positions was really impactful for me. And as I'm listening to you tell the story of how your body broke down and then, as you started to heal, wow, I felt very tight in my chest. I was like I could just feel that like those challenges right, like the financial challenges of that's why I had to leave the United States, because financially it wasn't viable to stay in the United States as a single mother, literally Like how, when you didn't have a job, your husband got sick, how all of us are so quickly lose our lives, the current status of our lives, just with the succession of incidents, medical issues, losing a job, everything we can lose everything. It's also a reminder of to walk, a why we need to depend on God. But so I just felt that all my body tightened up. I wonder how you felt that telling this story, especially because I know you haven't shared it too much, I feel to tell that story.

Speaker 3: 19:26

It feels really sad. I talking about that time, my body goes back to that time and I often disassociate, right, I lose myself and go back to that place. It's sometimes hard to talk about that time because, yeah, I just sink back into that time and I remember, oh my God, I cried so much. I cried every day. I cried every day. And just from pain, from sadness, and like the pain is a cause of depression, and the connection I felt to anybody in chronic pain, the connection I felt to my mother, who had been in chronic pain for most of her life, the guilt I felt around not having compassion for people before, like again, until you feel deep physical pain, like every moment, there's just nothing like it, right, and so it just changed my orientation to life. I'd be walking down the street and I would see somebody limping and I would like physically feel connected to them. Right, like spiritually. My eye, that empathy link, was oh, like my heart goes out to you. Right, like just the fullness of myself began to develop. But, oh, my God, that time I've never felt more vulnerable.

Speaker 3: 20:37

Going through it and then standing up in front of my peers, people I respected and admired, to say I could no longer do it. Even though I knew it was an act of courage, it felt like an act of weakness, right, because the grit your teeth, stay strong. We're activists, right Like persevere. All the Islamic messages are changing around. Yeah, exactly, she had enough patient perseverance and I believe in staying power and the denial of the self. Just go back to Allah. If you're feeling tired, it's all, just go pray and just seek more help from Allah.

Speaker 3: 21:12

And so feeling like this was weakness, right, like that it was failure or weakness, more than it was like a natural consequence of my life and of my environment and everything else. It was extremely overwhelming and I was, though God, doing that workshop. I was sweating. I was more embarrassed, like afterwards, somebody came up to me who I didn't had never really seen me speak before. I went in this network because that was the thing I was. Like some of these people I know and know me, but for the ones who have no reference point, like, this is how I'm introducing myself was so vulnerable and let me tell you my rock bottom story, like it was so awful.

Speaker 3: 21:49

And so this one woman came out to react towards you. She's like I loved your presentation and I noticed like you could use a little smoothing out and like there she like suggested I go to a speaking workshop and I felt so she did not get the message. It was okay, but she can't where she was coming from and I only share it because I felt there was like this deep, like oh yeah, man, it was like holding up a mirror around. I felt so unstable giving that workshop, or so vulnerable and so sweaty and talking about like naked right, like to be talking about my pain, instead of yeah, guys, we can do this. It was, it was a lot. And then I was just barely out of the woods, it was still so fresh, which is why I was resistant to doing it.

Speaker 3: 22:29

And, thank God, sareeah Ahyudin, who now runs Amgly, she suggested that Sarah and I pair up to do it, which was such a gift because it was so complimentary and she brought a different side to the conversation that especially was focused on women of color, which is a different, obviously different experience than I or you would have. And that, yeah, that spoke to even more people and women in the room. Yeah, and it was so sad, like how many on the spot after the workshop the rest of that day, there was at least a handful of men and women who came to me and said, uh, oh like it was, yeah, that there was like uh, oh, and tell me about the books and all, just the thirst for it.

Speaker 3: 23:10

It was sad and it was also really cathartic, yeah, if I felt I went to Sareeah and said thank you for pushing me and having this idea, because I also, once again, I felt empowered, right like that, all of this I had been through and all of this figuring out for myself and saving my own life, right, that I could share those other people and be in service again, like it started the next chapter and and it has shaped everything that has happened since. But my God, that was the most vulnerable like public sharing that I have ever done.

Speaker 2: 23:42

I feel so honored that I was there to witness it and be transformed by it as well. I came across as incredibly moving and something I needed to hear, and so thank you for that. A few years later, yeah for sure. A question for you, now that you've gone through the roughest part inshallah, there will not be another part like that. What tools do you call upon? Do you use what's in your daily toolbox for regulating your nervous system, for being balanced in your daily life, especially as a mother of two younger children?

Speaker 3: 24:10

I'm using the tools. They don't always work, they're tools. It's a different kind of slowing down. The hardest part of it is not a daily thing. It is too, but it was the decision to live a different life. The hardest part and, just like you, it's the decision to live a different life. It felt like giving up One. It felt like giving up Right, which is a different period. Giving up on activism which, like I don't know like my relevance, all this work. There's some sense of ego, not even I don't know it's relevance, right. All of that stuff like self-worth, not ego, self-worth. This is not a real tattoo. My daughter tattooed me.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Let's give that a cure, mary, and it's something like that. Like, yeah, just for anybody who's anti-tattoo. But so I, making the choice to live a different life and to give myself permission to not be an activist and to not even retire activism but re-advance to another chapter, like that's what I came to, was this has been a chapter and it was really hard to release that chapter because I myself worse my identity, myself knowing and even the affirmations really that came with it. Working in a team and working in a community, I got more affirmation and as hard as that time was, I was affirmed on a regular basis. I was a privilege to be affirmed and valued on a regular basis, even though it was grueling.

Speaker 3: 25:29

I always knew my job mattered, right, like I knew my work, my days mattered and giving that up is what it felt like. Giving that up and choosing myself. Ooh, that felt so nefcy, meaning like selfish, right, like for myself, like I'm choosing myself over the work, the activism, the service. Now, it's not a daily choice, but it's a daily reminder. That I have to do is that I'm still in daily service, like it's that was not the only way, but it was just the only way that I knew for so long and it was so valued and affirmed and so obvious right. But now I'm reclaiming and going personal and repaving a path like I'm now working on a new project, thank God. And when I left activism and went into consulting, I was afraid nothing was ever gonna be that good, that important, that soul filling just as much as it was soul dreaming. It was also so gratifying to feel so useful and so, yeah, so I waited and prayed and waited and prayed and my daily practices I'm still working on my five daily Salat hasn't clicked yet, but I talk to Allah all the time and I start my days with a cup of coffee on the porch. My kids know it's like not my coffee meditation time, which really is me sitting on the porch with my cup of coffee and I play a morning out good or a remembrance of God track from Omar Hashem and that's my morning.

Speaker 3: 26:51

Meditation is not looking at the phone, but just sitting there with my coffee and starting the day in remembrance and listening to the birds and just trying to be present. That's a daily tool that I really. When I don't do it, I don't feel centered. I also have learned to breathe. I've not gone through breathing classes. I have all that physical pain also is in my head every day. So I am called to move physically as often as possible and when I'm stressed, I now the sciatica is at like a one or a two every day. It's on a scale of one to 10. Again, if you're a pain measurer, right, and then there are times where I'm like, oh, I feel the pain right, where I just feel like when I'm driving I feel a little bit more in my leg somewhere. I'm like, oh, there's like a three right, like it's just these little reminders, and then that's my call to oh, I haven't been walking every day or I haven't been going to yoga. I try to, even if I don't go to yoga.

Speaker 3: 27:49

Stretching has really become an important thing because of learning about the vagus nerve, which is like your inner stick figure. There's one nerve that I love. That's when I looked at it. That's what I think about it as and so stretching helps move, that they call it your life nerve. I never knew all this stuff before this. I thought this was all woo. Straight up, thought it was woo, and then it's science. This is how a look created us. I am trying to learn more about this body that I look created and that's this perfect design and that it's again. It's speaking to me. Every time I feel something I'm like, oh, what's it telling me?

Speaker 3: 28:21

Sarah, in that workshop she said emotions are messengers that are trying to tell you something, which is something that she learned and that's the main tool that I use on a daily basis for my body is the emotions and sensations. It's again, these are signals, and so the choice is whether I'm listening or I'm ignoring, or I'm again diminishing, and so it's paying attention to those things and then feeding my body and soul every day a little bit, like it's, yeah, and so my supplement game. I'm gonna talk about physical movement. I have mostly been in weekly therapy this whole time. Since my mom passed, I switched to a grief group. Like a weekly grief group, talking and sharing with one person, a therapist or a support group, is critical.

Speaker 3: 29:10

Through Amculee and Newground and every other fellowship program that I've been a part of, insider out the power of circles, talking circles, healing circles, like it's the feminine and it's also as old as time, and that our bodies connect and our I mean with every. I see your life in Turkey and your thicker circles and music and all of this just reacquainting myself with my body. The last thing I'll say, too, is that I hot water for me is everything Like water is very healing for me. I grew up near the ocean in San Diego and so when I wanna connect to Allah and I wanna like going to the beach is a blessing when I can do it, and so that helps.

Speaker 3: 29:53

But then, on the other hand, when I had the sciatica, the only thing that would even give me temporary relief was insanely hot showers. Like somehow the heat would just like overwhelm, right, it's like when a baby's screaming and you scream to interrupt. I don't know, that was the beginning of it was realizing that hot water, hot baths and then now like a jacuzzi, right, like any submersion. I don't have a bath. The good bathtub at home it's like too small to, yeah, to really get a good bath in it. But the power of hot water and submersion I know for some, yeah, the ice, cold water and all of that, but it's kind of like God gives us the tools, right, like it's a different way of feeling into ourselves. So I spend a lot more time trying to feel every day.

Speaker 2: 30:37

I can relate so much to all this, hadeena. So many of my practices are very similar to you, and it's going from a brain on a stick to being in the body. That's what it is, and listening to what it has to tell us the emotions, sensations, pain. What a beautiful messenger it can be to remind us to take care of ourselves better. So thank you for sharing all that, and so it's very useful for people to hear what actual tools that someone like yourself use Very practical, useful tools. To wrap up, do you have any pros or wisdom you wanna share with people listening? So, on the healing path, what would you like to share with them? What's life lessons?

Speaker 3: 31:11

Oh, boy, the hardest and the simplest is I wanna go back to what you know, which is the power of breath. That, if we're believers in God as my mentor, dr Mara, too, taught me, and so many of us if each of us are a singular breath of God, that God said be, and it is right. And so each of us, god said be, and so we were right, and so we're a breath of God, and the breath that runs inside of us and outside of us is a connection between us and God. If we're a breath of God, our whole existence is a breath, and so going back to our breathing, to reconnect to God and ourselves and our bodies, feels like the most essential thing. And then I also have learned about the power of nose breathing. Yeah, nose breathing. I'm so mad.

Speaker 2: 31:57

So nobody's on your bell.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Nobody. I'm so mad. Then again, these, just these basic like how tools for being in a body. Things are not taught, like the, that when you breathe through your mouth it's just like status quo, basically. But when you breathe through your nose, you're sending that cleansing breath into your bloodstream, into your organs throughout your body that it's working. Your whole body is working so much harder and it's an activating. Yeah, I can't help but make these motions because that, when all else fails, going back to the breath is going back to Allah, the box, breathing the infer for hold for four, out for four, hold for four, just doing that for three minutes can reset your nervous system so that you can at least come to some kind of grounded place. It may not be fully grounding, but the longer that you do that, again we have the tools within us and what I spent my journey looking for was all of these tools outside. I was like doctors, help me, help me, fix me that in the therapy. Oh, and I forgot to mention EMDR Eye movement desensitization, reprocessing is a therapeutic tool that uses your eye movement, which your eyes are connected to your brain.

Speaker 3: 33:16

Again, this is all. The body keeps the score, because I've learned about my body. I can use my body to heal my body and heal my feelings. The eyes are part of the brain and so eye movement lateral, back and forth eye movement while you're thinking about traumatic memories can move them to the active part of your daily brain, move them from that side to the long term memory side of your brain where it's not a part of your daily vocabulary anymore. I call it the washing machine for the memories, like it's a really incredible tool and again, so it goes back to breath and it goes back to the reconnection with the body. So, whatever way you can find time to sit with yourself some people can't meditate If you're in struggle with prayer. I even just again my morning coffee meditation, some form of stillness and just stillness, breath and being in your body. That's the most profound thing I can say and the most simple thing. And it doesn't have to be a lot. That's the thing. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a lot.

Speaker 2: 34:20

Thank you, adina. I so appreciate your vulnerability today, just in offering yourself and your story without censoring yourself, just being yourself after a lifetime of censoring yourself, a lifetime of telling people what they want to hear Like it's just beautiful to hear you to hear your story on this path and I really hope and I really know that others will benefit from hearing as well. So thank you for sharing and for being so open.

Speaker 3: 34:45

Oh, it's a blessing. I thank you so much for inviting me. I am so gratified and grateful to God because I believed, entrusted and prayed that in sharing again like that, yeah, that it would help others see themselves and help them give themselves permission to save themselves before they hit bottom. Like so, for anybody who has made it this far into this podcast, look me up, reach out I run IG at EdlekedleK and and reach out because we're in a sisterhood and we're in this journey together, and aloneness is one of the hardest ways to go through this. So know that you're not alone, whether you are physically or not.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Yes, and I'll be adding her Instagram handles to the show notes if you need to find them. Thank you, thank you Rose. Oh are you looking for help bringing more compassion into your life and letting yourself out of the box and into the real you? I'd love to support you on your journey. Check out my one and one and group coaching offers and sign up for my mailing list to receive updates about my offers. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook under Dr Rosa Slan coaching or visit my website, compassionflowcom.