Conversations on Healing

Welcome to the Conversations on Healing podcast, where host Shay Beider speaks with renowned healthcare leaders, practitioners, and thought leaders to explore the world of wellness, the incredible powers of self-care, and what it truly means to heal today. Join us on this journey to become more whole, healed, and connected.

Shay Beider Welcome to another episode of Conversations on Healing. I’m your host, Shay Beider, and today we’re excited to welcome Nicole Sachs to the show. Nicole is a dynamic speaker, writer, psychotherapist, retreat leader, and podcaster who has dedicated her life to helping individuals overcome chronic pain, anxiety, and other debilitating conditions. With her impactful work, Nicole has reached hundreds of thousands and is the author of several transformative books, including her latest release, “Mind Your Body: A Revolutionary Program to Release Chronic Pain and Anxiety”, recently published by Penguin Random House. Nicole is the driving force behind the Cure for Chronic Pain brand, which includes a popular podcast, YouTube channel, Instagram presence, and a newsletter that keeps her community engaged. As a faculty member at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in New York, she leads retreats that draw participants from around the globe, fostering a rich sense of community and healing.

As one of the few direct disciples of Dr. John Sarno, Nicole has masterfully blended teaching, writing, and social media to share his pioneering theories with a diverse, multi-generational audience. Her own personal healing journey, along with her profound impact on others, continues to evolve as she guides individuals towards self-healing. In today’s episode, Nicole introduces her powerful technique known as Journal Speak, a practice designed to help individuals work through various chronic pain conditions. This empowering episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to alleviate pain, anxiety, or to enhance joy in their lives. So, join us for an inspiring conversation with Nicole Sachs.

Welcome, Nicole. We’re delighted to have you on the Conversations on Healing podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Nicole Sachs Thank you for having me.

Shay Good. We’re going to have a fun conversation. I was thinking about just the history of Mind-Body Medicine and where we started from, because today we’re going to talk about your book, “Mind Your Body”. That’s really a revolutionary program to release chronic pain and anxiety. And when we think about, before we delve into the book itself, I wanted to go all the way back to Descartes and the idea that we had this split between the mind and the body, that they’re separate things, and really kind of a disavowing of the concept that our emotions can have a huge impact on what we experience physically in our body. And it’s really much more recent that we’re saying, “Wait a minute, it’s not all in your head,” right? It’s not like you’re making it up, but you are allowed as a human being to have emotional experiences that impact you physiologically.

And we know that even in our language, we say, “My heart is broken” when you feel a big emotional loss, and there’s even- cardiologists know- actually syndromes where it’s like a broken heart syndrome, where they can see structural changes in the heart after someone’s heart breaks. So we know it, but there’s been a resistance to owning that reality. And I think the premise of a lot of your work is to kind of say, “Well, wait a minute. Why are we disavowing that reality?” And what if we actually were to teach people that there is this relationship between their emotions, their nervous system, the way that their brain then interprets signals and processes information, and can create pain that’s actually in response to emotions that seem very physiologically rooted and oriented. So I wanted to start with just the big picture concept of the history and where we are today, and how you see your work as fitting into this greater understanding of how we perceive emotions and physical illness and pain within our bodies.

Nicole Yes, it’s a great way to open the conversation. The first thing I’ll say is it’s really not a bridge so far for pretty much anyone. As soon as they start understanding the way I explain it, and it’s funny, I just did a talk last night. I’m in LA, and so we did a West LA book signing and reading, and I open with this often, and it was really, really helpful to the audience last night, which is explaining to people at the front end that what I’m about to teach them, they already believe. So I do a little exercise where I say to the group, “Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a stressful day or felt very overwhelmed and gotten a headache.” And invariably, every hand in the room goes up and I say, “Okay, okay, okay, keep your hands up high if you ran to the ER that night for a CT scan of your brain, panicked you had a brain tumor.”

And of course, everybody- we have a little laugh- and everybody puts their hand down and I say, “You see what I’m teaching you? You already believe emotional stimuli, stress, and overwhelm cause a physiological reaction, a headache.” And then we move on to just quickly label a few others” “Who’s ever been broken up with and lost their appetite? Who’s ever heard of a comedian about to go on stage who runs to the bathroom and throws up? Do you think that person just got the stomach flu? Do you think they have a virus?” And everyone’s like, “No, no, no. They were scared. They were nervous,” right? So we all agree emotional stimuli causes physical reactions, but as soon as anything becomes chronic, all of that understanding, all of that general, obvious understanding of the mind-body connection goes out the window because chronic pain is an epidemic of fear and meaning that is affecting our nervous system regulation.

And so that’s kind of the way I get into it, because truthfully, I want it to be very relatable, very accessible, very scientific. We do go through the door of brain science, and I spend a lot of time in my lectures in my book talking about the brain science, and even linking to specific studies so people understand that this is very rooted in commonly held beliefs about the human body. And it’s also just very part of the fabric of everyday life. And when people get it, it’s really a door into a very important paradigm shift that helps them change their lives.

Shay And you’ve been teaching about this work for quite some time, but more recently you released your newest book, “Mind Your Body”, and the subtitle is “A Revolutionary Program to Release Chronic Pain and Anxiety”. And I want you to have an opportunity to share a little bit about your own story and what motivated you to write this book.

Nicole Yes, as many people in the healing space, I came by this honestly; I was a patient. I was a chronic pain patient when I was 19. I was at college and my back went out so completely that my parents had to bring me home before exams, and I underwent all the tests, as any responsible parent would do- the child is suffering, we go to the doctor. And there was a finding on my x-ray, which was called degenerative spondylolisthesis, which is a pretty severe abnormality of the lower spine. I have, in every orthopedic surgeon’s opinion that it’s ever seen it, a very severe case, a jarring film. And what they said was, “You’re 19, you’re otherwise healthy, so spinal fusion surgery is not immediately recommended, but just you have to change your life. No more travel, no more exercise, no more riding in the car for more than an hour.”

And the likelihood that you will have a biological child is slim to none, because the real danger of destabilizing your back in a catastrophic way with the weight of a baby could be a pretty serious situation. And I’m 19 years old, so hearing that is just kind of epically huge. And I really think that at the time, I just used a lot of dissociation and denial- our favorite guys that run into help when we need them. And I moved from acute pain to chronic pain with enough steroids, and muscle relaxers, and time, and I went back to school with a handicap sticker on my car. And I started my life as a person in chronic pain and as a person who was incredibly limited. And it was something that I think just became part of who I was, which is true for a lot of people with chronic illness.

I’m that girl with the bad back, where everyone rushes to help me, or I’m that person with migraines, where I have to really be careful about what I eat or if I go in the sun. And I, of course, now, many, many years into this, being a clinician, have seen cases of chronic issues of so many varieties that it’s impossible to name them all. But I’ll just throw out a few: fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, chronic fatigue issues, many issues associated with long covid, anything related to hip, neck, shoulder, knee pain that is perpetuating in the human body that doesn’t seem to have a source or a solution. And so essentially, that’s what was happening to me. And through my understanding of Mind-Body medicine, which came through the door of Dr. John Sarno- he was the grandfather of Mind-Body medicine, practiced for over 50 years at the Rusk Center for Rehabilitation at NYU Medical Center- a medical doctor came up with this theory: mind-body of a misunderstood and confused relationship between the brain, the nervous system, and the human body, where pain signals were being sent as a form of protection against this emotional overwhelm, against the stored trauma that was knocking on the door of consciousness.

And once I started to understand it and implement the work and the theories of mind-body medicine in my own life, I was able to completely eliminate my chronic pain. Now, that’s two decades ago. I had three babies. I exercise till the day they were born. I travel, I exercise, I can run five miles- there’s nothing wrong with me. And my film remains exactly the same. So I know now, and also through many, many scientific studies that have finally caught up, that my structural abnormality, which Dr. Sarno called a “normal abnormality”, just part of the way I’m shaped, was never the reason for my pain. So I really spend a lot of time helping people understand part of this prescription is knowledge, so they can start to calm down and center enough to do the work.

Shay Fantastic. And really, through your healing journey that you just invited us into, learning more about you, you developed this technique. The technique that you’ve created is called Journal Speak. It essentially involves a 20-minute writing practice with specific prompts, along with 10 minutes of a self-affirming meditation- so roughly a 30 minute total practice that you can do daily. And I’d be interested for you to share how you developed Journal Speak and why you think it’s been so effective with people that you’ve worked with.

Nicole Yes. So, a great way for people to understand why Journal Speak has been so… the reason I am always- it’s hard for me to grab my words when it comes to Journal Speak- is because I’ve had this podcast that I’ve been doing since 2018, and I have interviewed hundreds of people from around the world that were… I mean, the range of severity is large, but some people were bedbound- truly, they were not able to leave their beds. Some people are housebound, and some people are just going through life and not really able to fully be present or have any joy because of their chronic pain. The whole spectrum, people use this tool and are completely eliminating their pain. So I want to kind of just load it in as it’s pretty insane that an emotional exercise like that can have such an impact on the physical body.

So here’s why, and it all is rooted in brain science. The pain is not in your head, as you said at the top. You are not hysterical, you are not overly sensitive, you are not making it up, and you’re not at fault. And we have to start there, because I’m about to talk about emotions. And anytime we talk about emotions, there’s the danger that somebody might think, “Are you dismissing my pain? Are you saying I’m making it up because I’m too upset?” And that is absolutely not what’s happening. What’s happening is, I would like you to picture an imagined reservoir inside of you, like a glass science speaker. And in this reservoir is the shame, the fear to the point of terror, the sadness to the point of grief- really big sadness, the embarrassment, the regret, the things that we log as human beings that are totally normal, that every person has.

And every time something triggers you back into your childhood stuff, or something in daily life feels too much to handle, or your own personality- that is a people pleaser, or perfectionistic, or your own worst critic- every time something gets you in life, it’s like pouring a cup into the reservoir. And by the way, this is not for people with chronic pain. This is everyone. This is the human condition. Well, when that reservoir reaches maximum capacity, what happens is it starts knocking at the door of consciousness, because a lot of this stuff is happening unconsciously. Because who has time to- every time you’re triggered into some bully in childhood or the way your mother shamed you- we don’t have time for that. So that is part of our unconscious process, similar to circulation, respiration, heartbeat. We have a human system that takes care of a lot of things unconsciously.

So a lot of these feelings are living there under the cover of darkness, but when it reaches maximum capacity, it starts knocking at the door of consciousness and saying, “Hey, this is too much for you. You cannot handle one more thing. You are not going to be able to parent your kids if you really feel how you feel about this right now. You are not going to be able to be kind to your ailing parents if you’re dealing with that trauma of your childhood. You’re going to scream at them, and you can’t. You’re their caregiver.” We are people in life with responsibilities. And here’s what happens: your nervous system goes into fight or flight. There’s a predator afoot, similar to our earliest versions of ourselves where there was a saber-tooth tiger walking on the Savannah. The whole system feels that there is danger. And when there is danger, the system responds.

Changes in respiration, heart rate, circulation, and digestion start happening because we are actually perceiving that we’re in danger. Pain, by the human body, is a protective posture. Pain allows us to slow down. It allows us to soften our demands on ourself. It allows us to ask for help. It allows us to be people that have an excuse to take a break. We all know this, right? So here’s what happens: the emotional reservoir is at the tippy top. You have work, you have responsibilities with children, you have your money issues. You have your partner who has certain issues with you, and all of a sudden, a migraine starts. Now, you don’t want this migraine. I call this “safe in the unsafest way”. You don’t want to be in bed. You have stuff to do. This is actually really inconvenient, but all of a sudden, you have a blinding migraine.

Maybe you need to throw up. You definitely have to go be in your bed and close the shades. Well, that is not what you choose, but your nervous system feels that you are safer right there. The predator was about to eat you, and now you have total safety. You’ve had to cancel work, where your boss is a huge trigger. You’ve had to tell your ex or your partner, “You have to take the kids,” somebody who usually you would not want to have that conversation with. But now you have an easy excuse: you’re sick. And so, although this sounds really, really inconvenient to your brain and your nervous system, this is a chef’s kiss perfect situation. And until we understand this and rewire the situation, it will keep us right there. Now, Journal Speak, as you mentioned, is a tool that I came up with in my own darkest hour.

And it is a vehicle that puts a ladle in this emotional reservoir and dumps it out systematically, safely. I give total instructions on doing it so you know exactly what you’re doing. And as that reservoir goes down, it stops triggering the nervous system into fight or flight. When that happens, the pain signals stop firing. And I can’t tell you, Shay, how many times I hear from someone all around the world that says- because I don’t meet a lot of people anymore, my work is everywhere- so they’re doing it, and they find me on a DM or a comment on one of my communities, and they say, “Nicole, you’re never going to believe it.” And I always go, “Try me,” because it is astounding. They’re like, “I have 20 migraines a month, and I’ve been doing your work, and I cannot believe it’s been two weeks, I haven’t gotten a migraine.” And I go, “I know, honey. I know.” Because when there is no fire, the alarm stops going off.

Shay And so let’s talk about that brain science, that you think what is actually going on in the body. You’ve described some of it in terms of it’s basically autonomic nervous system activation of the sympathetic response, which is that classic fight or flight response that’s getting triggered because of these unresolved and unprocessed emotions that are trying to get our attention, but aren’t sufficiently getting our attention. And the only way that the body then figures out how to actually get our attention, is to create a physiological pain signal that then sort of shuts us down to a varying degree. Is there more that you would illustrate about the brain science for our listeners that you would think would be helpful to their understanding of what’s actually going on behind the scenes?

Nicole So, there are two ways that I could answer that question. The first is super, super science-wonky, where we get deep into the brain science. And I’m going to not answer the question that way, because it’s all in the book, and it’s very, very detailed. And people who need that kind of real scientific studies and the delineation of that have it. I mean, one of the things that I’m very grateful for writing this book in 2025, is that the science has caught up to something that I have been seeing working in people for 20 years. But it’s really important that people let it land where it needs to land for them. What I’ll do here is I will give more of a metaphorical example, and then if people do want to follow up with the recent studies from Harvard, and UCLA, and Michigan, they’re in the book, because it’s very, very important that all of it is there.

The best way I can describe it, and I kind of just mentioned something along these lines just now, is I want you to picture that a house is on fire. And I want you to picture that this house has an automatic fire alarm. So the smoke gets to a certain point, now the alarm goes off, and the alarm is loud, it’s screaming, it’s jarring because the alarm needs to get someone’s attention. There’s a problem. So now I want you to picture that the fire department shows up at this house and gets their hoses out, and they start dowsing the- they are dousing this alarm. They are just all hoses at this box on the wall that is screaming, screaming, screaming, because it makes total sense. The alarm is really getting their attention. The alarm looks like the problem. And now what we all understand is that nothing is ever going to stop that alarm until they turn their hoses toward the fire.

And so what I see in my work is people chasing the symptom- the migraine, the fibromyalgia, the back pain, the stomach issues- and they’re going from specialist to specialist, and then they’re going maybe to alternative practitioners, and they’re going everywhere. But where they’re focusing on is where in the body is the problem being expressed? They are dousing the alarm, all of these things. And I often say to people in a big lecture, “Her migraine is his back pain. His back pain is her pelvic pain. Her pelvic pain is his long covid. His long covid is her…” And we go on and on and on. Chronic issues are so often all coming from the same place, which is this dysregulated nervous system. In an attempt to protect us, is sending pain signals to slow us down and to help us take care of ourselves. And so what I say is the fire is the overflowing feelings.

Is our stored trauma similar to Bessel van der Kolk who wrote “The Body Keeps the Score”, or Gabor Maté, who wrote ‘When the Body Says No”. This is really commonly held understanding that if there is trauma in the body, it will need to be expressed somewhere. And so the fire is what we need to turn toward. We need to stop chasing these one-at-a-time alarm bells because the brain science is explaining why the fire is setting off these alarms. And so when we go into a Journal Speak practice, which, like I said, is not regular journaling, it is a very specific guided practice to get to what you need to get to in order to put out this fire. Now the fire will never go out completely. We are human beings. There will be embers smoking in that reservoir. It’s funny because the reservoir is a water reference, and the fire is a fire reference.

But in many ways, both of those things can cause destruction if there’s too much. And so it’s really, really beautiful to kind of look at this through the lens of the human condition and our experience of being alive with the elements that we share this world with. And so basically, I just teach people: if you want to really understand the science, if you want to see the studies where people are extremely statistically significantly improving via this work, it’s in there. And if you just want to say, “Give it to me simple, help me do the work to heal myself,” it’s in there that way too.

Shay Yeah. And the book, it’s very accessible to read. So for those who are listening, and when I was reading it, there was a story in there that I thought might be a fun one to share. You have a number of stories in the book. One is from an NBA player who is dealing with chronic pain, and after using your Journal Speak method, he shared, and I’ll share his quote, so: “This process has changed my perspective on pain. It’s changed my perspective on life and how we need to deal with our emotions. The body does not operate all alone as muscles, organs and nerves. It’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. You can’t just pay attention to the physical and expect yourself to be thriving and healthy. Being human is multifaceted. The biggest gift that this healing journey has given me is the understanding that pain is part of becoming a whole person.” So that was his quote, and I was interested in what you understand about that last thing that he said about the way that pain is part of becoming whole as a person. What do you understand about that?

Nicole One of my favorite spiritual teachers is Ram Dass, and one of the things he says is, “Pain is not inherently negative. It’s information, and it’s strong stimulation.” And I really believe that pain is the alarm bell, because pain is saying something is amiss, but we are confused because it’s so loud. And so we think what is amiss is the shoulder, or the stomach, or the head. But what’s really amiss is that there are truths, there are pains, there are inner children, there are places inside of us that have really not been heard that are begging for our attention. And I know that sounds a little silly, like, ‘Okay, who cares about my inner child? I have life to get to.” But what I’m saying, and what Michael is saying in that quote, is if my inner child is screaming and I’m not willing to listen, so I have migraines, or I have huge gut issues that are keeping me from eating more than three foods on my elimination diet, or whatever the case may be, I have no idea how that’s also blocking me from full and deep relationships, from love I didn’t know I could have, from joy and presence that is completely being stolen from me.

I’m just getting through it. I’m just getting through my life and what I consistently hear- and I’m not going to say 90% of the time, I’m going to say 100% of the time- what I’m consistently hearing from people who do this work and get to the other side, to the point where they’re no longer afraid of pain, they no longer feel that their body is against them, they feel like on most days they feel great and well, the same thing always: “I can’t believe I’m saying this, Nicole. I’m grateful for the pain. It woke up. I didn’t realize that I was yet to truly live. I was just skating on the surface of my life. I had never understood how deep this experience of being alive could be.” So one of the things I say is, “Pain is the biggest littlest part.” It’s the biggest part because without your health truly you have nothing.

The cliche is correct. If you are in chronic illness, you’re not there for anything else you have to deal with. That alarm screams too loudly. But once you do this work and start living in a space where you’re not a person in chronic pain, oh my goodness, here you are. What kind of mom do you want to be? What kind of partner do you want to be? You’re concerned about your financial insecurity. How can you expand? What might you want to do with your life? These are the things that start happening. And so that’s what Michael’s talking about because when I first met him, he was in so much pain, he couldn’t even get off the couch. And it’s adorable because he’s almost seven feet tall. So when I first met him, he was on a whole couch and he’s amazing. Not only is he completely free of chronic pain, he’s living his life to the fullest, and that is what we want. That’s what we all really want.

Shay Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back a little bit because you lectured with Dr. Sarno. He was a very pivotal person, obviously in your own story and life. He referred patients to your practice, and he was, as you mentioned, a pioneer, somewhat controversial, obviously, because a lot of pioneers are, because they’re saying things often ahead of the times in which they live. And he was the one who first told you that your pain was due to tension myoneural syndrome, or TMS, which is something that you now talk about. And he had developed an approach for treating chronic pain to help people to find relief from those symptoms. And he emphasized that there is this psychological role and factors that are at play in chronic pain conditions, or can be at play in certain types of chronic pain conditions. How do you feel, because you’re now working with his daughter since he’s passed on, and in many ways with your own spin and twist on it, but carrying on the legacy of his work? So how do you see your relationship to what he first put forward in the world and then what you’re choosing to teach and speak about and your contribution in the world today?

Nicole Yes. Well, he started as my doctor. So Dr. Sarno was my- opened my mind and my heart and my whole life to understanding this. And so, when I found myself completely free of chronic pain, I reached out to him and I said, “Dr. Sarno, how can I be of service? I’m a therapist. I had just had my third child. I was just about to go back into private practice.” And he said, “I love the way you explain this. Come into the city and let’s do a lecture at NYU,” which was something called an alumni panel. So, a few of us would come in and we would tell our stories, and then Dr. Sarno and the panel, we would answer questions for two hours. It was a really, really great night. And as I started speaking on it, it makes me a little bashful to say it because it feels like I’m complimenting myself through the mouth of the grandfather pioneer, genius of this work.

But he would say to me, and Christina, his daughter knows, and she says it too, she says, “He would come home after these panels, and we’d be sitting at dinner”, because Christina and I are exactly the same age. And he would say, “I have this young girl, this therapist on my panel, she explains this stuff better than me.” He’s like, “I just put her on the stage and she just gets this.” Because the thing is, I was a trained therapist, and sometimes to speak in the world of emotions, a medical doctor in his eighties at that point has a little trouble. So what we would do is we would start a tag team, whereas he would go in with the medicine and then I would go in with the therapy, and I would go in with the recovered patient and he would go in with having seen patients all those years.

And we just created a thing where we were really good together. And then, when I went back to work, he would refer into my practice and so we could do consultation on different patients, and he was the best. He was really generous in wanting someone to carry the torch of his legacy. And he kind of handed it over to me, and Christina knew. And so when we reconnected after years to write our practitioner training, which we just launched last year, it’s called the Sarno Sac Solution. And it’s a way for practitioners all over the world and all different modalities to bring this work into their practices, into their communities, even school teachers- like anyone who is willing to understand and carry this message, this is for them. And she just basically said, “This is it. We are trying now to take his legacy and make it accessible for everyone.”

So he was a pioneer. The truth is, there is nothing I’m saying that is different than what he said. I am just privileged to live in a time where I believe the collective consciousness is rising to desire this kind of solution. I say, Christina and I were at the 92nd Street Y the week before last for book launch, and for anyone who’s not from New York, it’s a huge deal to speak at the Y. The week before I was there, I think Hillary Clinton was interviewing Bill Gates. It’s just a cultural hub of New York, and I was so grateful to be there. And so we were talking, and we were talking about how moved she is that the science has caught up, that the conversation has caught up to stuff that her father was incredibly ostracized for saying.

He was incredibly misunderstood. People did accuse him of saying, “The pain is in your head,” but now not only do we have a better language around the brain science, we also have the studies. And so it’s a great time to be alive. And also people ask me this question often: do doctors feel threatened, or does the medical establishment that I’ve interacted with feel defensive? And to be honest with you, yes, 10 years ago, now, no. Now they are grateful. Doctors and practitioners are in this field because they want to help. They love people, they love getting people well, and it is not working. It’s not working the way we’re doing it. Surgery does not alleviate pain almost ever. So these orthopedists, they’re coming to me and they’re saying, “How can we integrate?” because it is not working to take a disc and do what we used to think was the right thing to do. Bulging discs actually don’t cause pain. They’re a normal abnormality, just like my spon. And so that’s what we’re feeling. We’re feeling a real partnership and a much better energy than poor Dr. Sarno had to deal with.

Shay Yeah. So another facet of your work that you talk about in the book is around self-compassion. And you’ve also mentioned in the conversation today around inner child practices, and I’ve heard you also talk on your podcast about the importance of forgiveness. And so I’m curious these different emotional facets. I know with Dr. Sarno’s work, he felt a lot of cases had suppressed anger was one core emotional element that was really strongly at play, but obviously there’s many other facets to this. And in terms of how you then manage this healing process as you do a technique like Journal Speak, part of how you’re discussing and describing this in your book is to look at these ways that we foster a sense of self-compassion, that we deal with that inner child and those voices. And it’s literally a part of the framework as you go back into childhood experiences and in some cases, past events or traumas that really needed to be given voice and attention and speak to that in this expressive writing technique. So I’m interested in how your understanding the role of self-compassion and inner child practices as being important in the healing journey.

Nicole Yes, yes. I often say that my work has three facets if we’re going to look at it in the most broad sense. And the three facets are three legs of a stool, and any stool without one of the legs, it will not stand. And the three facets are: believe, which is understanding the brain science (a lot of what we’ve been talking about); do the work, which is a Journal Speak practice; and the third is patience and kindness for yourself. So, let’s talk about self-compassion. I often say that doing this work without understanding the importance of self-compassion is bailing out a boat with a hole in the bottom. We have no conscious concept of how awful we are to ourselves. And it’s so quick, it’s so reflexive, it’s not something that you necessarily would even hear yourself saying. When we speak to others, when we speak to other people we truly love and care for, and let’s say they screwed something up…

Let’s say they made a mistake. Let’s say they really missed the mark. We are kind, we pause. We’re patient, we point out places where they did do a good job. When we missed the mark, when we fail, it is a barrage of, “What the hell is wrong with you? My god, it’s so embarrassing.” We lay in bed and we replay the moment over and over, just punishing ourselves, and it’s so unconscious. And so I feel like it’s so accepted. You know what I mean? It’s just the way we understand that we relate to ourselves, that we have to consciously put up our hand and say, “I need to do this differently.” So I talk in the book about specific tools for self-compassion because it’s not easy just to turn that voice off.

And I talk about inner child work because I used to think things like self-compassion and inner child work were stupid, light, an add-on for weird people.

I always begin as the skeptic. I was the skeptic and I still always see it through the lens of skeptics because I want to be the best champion, protecting you from yourself, because you will discount things that you are programmed to think are unimportant. And inner child work is like… think of the most ubiquitous mind-body connection, which is when you’re really sad or you’re really moved, what happens? Water falls out of your face. The most basic emotional stimulus that leads to a physical reaction is crying. Okay? We literally have a physical thing that happens to our body, not only water, our face gets contorted in the way we don’t enjoy. It’s ugly crying, okay? No one’s asking for that, not usually, but it happens because you felt something emotionally. So what inner child work essentially is, is a person who has been crying for many, many years, decades, often, and you have not moved a muscle.

Imagine the enormity of that emotional repression. It’s heartbreaking, actually, when you think about it and imagine what your body is doing in order to suppress that level of emotion. And so what I do in my inner child work, which is a signature practice, this is not something that I took from someone else or I adapted. I actually created this in my years and years of… because I did private practice for 18 years before I started just writing books and exclusively putting my energy toward teaching and speaking and community and stuff like that. And what I teach people is that inner child work often is misunderstood as sort of… not that I’m against this, but affirmations and telling your- calming- and telling your inner child that it’s okay, but actually, it’s about listening. We have been unable, and we have not known how to listen properly to these parts of ourselves.

So I teach a very specific practice, and I outlined it in the book, about going to different stages of our growing up. And sometimes your inner child is 35. A lot of my inner child work was centered around myself as a young mother because I was so unable to deal with the crush of emotions that came with having my own children, and all the stuff it was bringing up for me about my own childhood. So I really use that a lot in that stage of life. So it’s a child, but it’s just whatever age you are; it could be a childlike part of you. And I teach people how to properly listen, and it is astounding, astounding how different you can feel about a situation once you have allowed that part of you that has been crying alone in a corner for all these years to be heard.

And sometimes they’re not crying; sometimes they’re screaming, sometimes they’re giving you the finger, sometimes they’re silent and they will not speak to you, and all of that is welcome. And so it’s really mostly what I’ll say is, my message here, is there are things that are happening under the cover of the unconscious brain and nervous system that you actually could have a hand in. And I’m not going to use the word controlling, I think that’s a troubling word, but you could have power. You could have so much more power than you realize to affect your physical and emotional health when you realize that you can use certain tools. And I do see this book as a toolkit for life to get in there and to enact change.

Shay And you actually open your book, “Mind Your Body”, with a quote. It’s from CS Lewis.

Nicole Love that one.

Shay Yeah, it’s a beautiful quote. So he said, “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden. It is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.'” And I’m curious, after all these years of doing this work, what you’ve come to understand about why it’s easier for us to conceal mental pain. And it’s so much easier to say, “Oh, I have a toothache” than it is to say “My heart is breaking.”

Nicole I know It’s so a poignant. I love that quote. I’ve loved it for years. I think we could have a really deep conversation about this, obviously about the complexity of heartbreak and about how difficult it is to parse things when they are very complicated and when there’s conflict. “I love you, but I hate you” or “I need you, but that makes me feel too vulnerable, so I’m just going to walk away.” So we could really dive deep, and I could be a therapist here, but I really think, probably more for this conversation, what I’ll say is this: I was feeling really overwhelmed yesterday. I am on a book tour. I just had New York dates and now I have LA dates. I have interviews. I have children who need me. And I remember thinking, “My God, wouldn’t it be easier just to have a migraine?” I really thought that yesterday, and I laughed to myself because, without that understanding, you could be a person with a migraine disorder, because it is just harder.

First of all, there’s so much personal responsibility that comes with saying, “I’m just overwhelmed, and I need a break.” People could turn around and say, “Sorry, you can’t have one, girl. You got too much going on. Get on that call. You’re due there in 15 minutes. Get your makeup on.” But if I say, “I have the stomach flu” or I have, you know, “My back went out,” they’ll say, “Oh my God, are you okay?” or “Of course you’re going to cancel.” It’s just the human condition. And so, I’ve had an active Instagram account for a long time, and during COVID, when there was nothing but time, I used to create graphics every single day. And I remember one of them was, “You don’t need to have a headache to take a rest.” And I think that that’s a big thing in our society. We are full of shame if we pause for anything, if we give ourselves a break for anything, if we draw boundaries, God forbid, and tell people in our lives, “I’m actually going to need to say no to that.” It’s hard for us. And so I want to unmask that place where illness gives us that excuse, because you are not making the excuse; your nervous system’s making it for you. And you want control over that. You don’t want to be let around by the neck, by a nervous system that thinks it’s doing its best for you where you’re sitting around with chronic illness. So that’s the way I want to empower people.

Shay And empowerment is definitely, I feel like, a key feature of your work and what your intention is with your work. It seems that is also, I think, a big part of why you’re trying to get the word out there, so that more people understand that they have perhaps, one way of looking at it, is an untapped power inside of themselves that they may not even realize that they have. And then, by understanding more about that capacity and how others have utilized a different understanding and perspective on the cause and sequencing of their own pain, that they’ve been able to facilitate very significant changes. And when you think about that and all the clients that you’ve worked with- and like I said, you share a number of stories in the book so people can read about those specifically- what do you think it’s taught you about healing and what healing actually is?

Nicole I think the reason that I was motivated to take the step of really carrying this work to the global community started in my private practice, when person after person would come to me with tears in their eyes and say, “Well, the doctor told me there’s nothing they can do for me. I’m just going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. And my pain is a 10 out of 10. I’m not sure if I am interested in living.” Then that was the story over and over again, so ubiquitous. And so it really just led me to know that people need to understand that they actually have a role in their physical health and their emotional health, of course, because anxiety and depression are just symptom imperatives. They are similar. They can be a bit more complicated because they feel just so emotional, and they feel so- they block your ability to access human experience. But I teach in the book, and I really help people understand there, it’s just interchangeable with a headache or a stomach ache. But having said that, what people really need to understand is we are raised to believe and to give our power away,

And it’s not viewed as negative. We give a power away to a pill. We’ll give our power away to a specialist. We’ll give our power away to a surgery and we’ll say, “Please, please, I’m handing my power to you, happily fix me.” And I come with total empathy, and I’m like, “I get it. I want the pill too. I’ll take it. Just give me the happy life pill and I’ll go on my way.” And if it worked, that would be fabulous. And I’m not saying there aren’t pills and surgeries and alternative methods that do a lot of good. I’m saying until you understand that there is brain science underneath why the human being suffers, none of those things are going to do the whole job. They can help you. They can be great scaffolds, but they can’t do the whole job. And so I look at it kind of like we’re in a flat earth moment.

Back in the day when people thought the earth was flat, of course it was flat. I ride my horse from here to here and it’s flat. I looked out onto the ocean down the street from my house, and the horizon is flat. It is flat. Don’t tell me anything otherwise. That is what I can see, and that is what I feel that we’re in. We’re in a moment where I think we are able to challenge that which we are so certain we can see, and what “we can see”, and I put that in quotes, is what I’ve always known. I’ve always known that you have a pain in your body. You go to the specialist, you go to the doctor, you take the pill, you do the thing. I’m saying, yes. And if you can pause and realize there might be other possibilities that are rooted in science, there is no controversy over this, then you have power and you can say, “Wait a second, maybe this earth is round, because I just heard a really interesting explorer, named Nicole Sachs, who told me she’s traveled it, and she came back out the other side. And if she says it, maybe there’s hope for me.” And that is what I want to be for people.

Shay And I think it is interesting how the science is revealing a lot of concepts that relate to this. When you think of the field of physics and an understanding that the material world is actually the smallest aspect of reality, it’s just the one we focus the most on because our eyes can see it.

What we know is it’s actually energy that’s predominant in the universe, not matter. And so when you think about our system as essentially an energetic system, then of course it makes sense that we would have a capacity at every level to impact our physical self through that energy body, through the thoughts, the emotions that percolate through that energy system. So it’s not far off at all from things that we’re learning and coming to understand through science, as you’ve said. And it is cool how also some of the pioneering aspects of understanding our nervous system differently. I think about more recently, obviously, Steven Porges’ work around polyvagal theory and social engagement. And then I think back even a little bit prior to that with Dr. Herbert Benson’s work around how you elicit the relaxation response, so kind of that counter response to fight or flight.

And that again, from a very empowering lens, we actually have the capacity to elicit a relaxation response in the body. And that there are things that you can do on a daily basis to help your system to elicit a relaxation response. And so it is fascinating that some of the science is starting to turn this corner, where we can see both the benefits on just a practical, in our daily lives kind of level, but also understand more what’s actually happening physiologically. So it is a neat moment. It might be a flat earth changing to around earth kind of a moment.

Nicole Yes ma’am.

Shay Well, I want to give you an opportunity if there’s anything else that feels important to share with those who are tuning in, who are like, “I never heard this idea before. This matters. I am suffering from chronic pain. I want to learn more.” Obviously your book, “Mind Your Body”, is a great resource. But I do want to hear what else you would recommend to someone who’s feeling that excitement of, “I want to learn more.”

Nicole Yes, I want you guys to know that I have heard that call and answered it. I’ve worked so hard on creating a hub where I can give everybody what they need. So just go to nicolesachs.com and there is everything. I have communities that I run where I show up twice a month on Zoom, and I help people personally. I have memberships that are a bit of a lower cost that people can just get exclusive content and really just dive deep into this work. If you’re a self-directed kind of person, I have courses, I have “Freedom from Chronic Pain” and “Freedom from an Anxious Life”, specifically about anxiety. I have retreats. I teach live every summer at the Omega Institute in New York.

So if you are a person in proximity to that, it’s the last week of June, June 22nd through the 27th. It is a life-changing week.

That’s my favorite week of the year because when you’re in person together for five days, nobody leaves the same person they came in. So that’s really powerful. And I have the podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain, and that’s just on any podcast platform, where you can hear story after story, symptom after symptom of people just like you that are totally better. And yes, thank you for highlighting the book. It is 20 years of best practices. It’s literally everything I have ever valued in my own body and in working with people, thousands and thousands of people around the world. It will teach you how to do this for yourself.

Shay Well, I want to thank you, Nicole, for sharing this work and your genuine effort to do what you can to help people to heal from chronic pain and anxiety, and to really have the capacity to feel more embodied and empowered in their own lives. And to just have another incredible, amazing tool, that they might not even know existed, to help with transformation. So thank you so much.

Nicole Thank you so much for having me, Shay.

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