This podcast episode featured Dr Peta interviewing Dr. Emma Leigh Senyard, a clinical psychologist who shared her personal journey with chronic illness and how she incorporated mind-body approaches to heal.Emma-Leigh described developing medical symptoms after having her first daughter in 2021, which led to a diagnosis of mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) and heart condition, followed by a challenging recovery process involving various treatments and alternative therapies. Through her journey,Emma-Leigh discovered the benefits of meditation, vagus nerve exercises, and fourth-wave therapy approaches like EFT Tapping, Inner Child work, EMDR and Internal Family Systems, which helped regulate her nervous system and improve her physical symptoms. She now integrates these mind-body approaches in her private practice, working with teenagers and adults and focusing on nervous system regulation, while also advocating for better integration between medical and psychological approaches to address the mind-body connection.

Takeaways

• Emma-Leigh developed serious post-birth inflammation that went undiagnosed due to medical gaslighting, pushing her to explore alternative approaches including Joe Dispenza's meditations.
• Visualising healing while experiencing associated emotions led to significant mindset shifts and gradual physical improvements over ten months.
• Vagal toning exercises — including humming, singing, laughter yoga, and dance — helped alleviate her symptoms within just six weeks of starting.
• After developing PTSD and trust issues with her own body, she successfully navigated a second pregnancy using visualisation and hypnobirthing techniques.
• Her personal health journey reshaped her clinical practice, drawing her toward EMDR, energy psychology, meditation, and nervous system regulation approaches.
• Traditional CBT alone was insufficient for her own medical PTSD, which deepened her openness to more holistic and integrative therapeutic models.
• She notes that mind-body concepts remain poorly integrated in both psychology and medical education, and hopes this will change for future practitioners.
• Client interest in IFS and nervous system regulation is growing, signalling a broader cultural shift toward fourth-wave approaches in mainstream therapy.

Please note: this script is unedited.

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Alrighty.

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Welcome back, everybody, and thank you for listening in to the Fourth Wave in Therapy. I'm very excited today to actually be joined by a fellow Aussie. I'm going to introduce you now to Dr. Emily Senyard. Now, Emma is… Emily is an ARPRA registered, so same as myself, clinical psychologist, she's also a registered supervisor, board approved, she has a PhD herself.

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And she's passionate about bringing, you know, mental health into the spotlight, and supporting, in particular now in private practice, teenagers. So, again, close to my heart, because of all my work in eating disorders.

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adolescents and adults, but very much about nervous system regulation, and not only psychological well-being, but different kind of evidence-based modalities that support that. Of course, EFT tapping is included in that, but internal family systems.

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meditation, a range of other kind of processes. So I'm really excited to kind of talk today with you, Emily, about the intersect, I guess, between psychology and spirituality, mental health, psychological well-being. Thank you, and welcome to the fourth wave!

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Thanks for having me, Peter. So excited. Excited to be here.

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And I just want to start with you, and we talked about this off-air. Your journey, you are a registered clinical psychologist, but also a board-approved supervisor, so you are working in a mainstream capacity in those kind of roles. But at the same time, you've had your own journey here, haven't you? And your own, you know, kind of…

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progress or process, you know, to wellbeing. Do you want to talk a little bit about, you know, what I know you've shared with me?

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Yeah, sure, sure. So, up until, end of 2021, I was very much, working with, yeah, children, adolescents, families.

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parenting, mainly in the autism, ADHD, anxiety space, also working in academia as well. And then I had my first daughter at the end of 2021.

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7 weeks after that, I unfortunately developed some inflammation in my body.

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So that was quite… quite full-on. That resulted… so the inflammation was… was in my heart, was in my stomach, was kind of, to be honest, in all different parts of my body. Quite traumatic with the little one at the time, but…

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For that next 12 months or so, my health was… was really, a bit… kind of a bit all over the shop. It wasn't really…

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I wasn't textbook, I wasn't black and white to all the specialists that I was seeing, and to be honest, if I was that medical professional as well, I'd be like, oh, I don't know what I'm dealing with here. So there was some medical gaslighting initially, there was some, I think it was 7 months until I was actually diagnosed.

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With… with initially the heart condition at the time.

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Because at the time, I was still continuing to work with clients, I was still continuing to work in academia, I just, I didn't really know what was going on. Some days, I felt like I was totally fine, and I was… and I was like, oh, maybe this is just kind of like a flu or a cold, and maybe it's just got to go away. And that's kind of what I was expecting. So I was like, oh, I feel fine today, it's just going to go away tomorrow. That wasn't the case, unfortunately.

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So, initially, there was really something medically going on.

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When I got the diagnosis, unfortunately, it kind of, and whether or not I… we can speak about this more, but whether or not I kind of got in my head a little bit, and that just kind of made things worse, or perpetuated it, and kind of worsened where I was at.

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That then resulted in a few different hospitalizations for a week at a time, and so on. Me exploring lots of different other alternative health methods to heal, at that time, because medical professionals were like, I don't really know, you're just gonna have to kind of live with this forever.

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And at the time, I said, I'm quite stubborn, so I said, no, I'm not going to live with it like this forever. I, you know, I'm young, I'm a mom, I've just, you know, my daughter was only, you know, around about 1 at that time when I was having the first sort of hospitalizations. I'm not living like this. So I, you know, with my research hat on, I started researching everything, and, you know, I was doing oxygen therapy and hydrogen therapy and so on.

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Anyway, in a few months' time after that, a lot of these inflammation and these symptoms in my body had actually resolved.

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I wasn't showing inflammation on my blood tests anymore. However, my body still continued to produce symptoms every now and then.

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And, again, my medical team was going, oh, what's going on? You know, we don't know. So, at that time, someone handed me, initially, it was a Joe Dispenser book.

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You are the placebo.

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And I said, okay, I don't know, I'm, you know, I'm kind of, you know, I'm open to this.

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I was open to everything, at that stage. I started reading it, and Joe talks very scientifically, so that was helpful with my science brain. So I started reading, and I started doing his meditations, and for those who don't know, a lot of Joe's meditations is visualizing yourself as healed, a lot of that mental imagery, and then also while you're visualizing, experiencing or feeling the

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emotion of what it feels like to be in that version that you want to view. So at that time, I was so… after this was, like, 16 months in, at this stage, I'm going, I've done everything, what's going on? And at this stage, I was so, disbelieving that I would get back to where I was.

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that in those meditations, I would literally be crying, because I'm like… I just couldn't believe that I would be able to get back to that stage.

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So I was processing a lot of emotions. But very quickly, I started… the first thing in my brain that sort of… well, shift that I noticed, both

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physically and psychologically, was just an improvement in the way that I… I guess my mindset was initially the first thing. I started to feel hope, which we know, in the research, hope is a massive protective factor, both for physical and psychological conditions.

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So I started to feel like, okay, maybe, maybe I can improve.

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maybe I can get somewhere with this. Started to feel hope, and then I started to, my body started to feel lighter, I guess. I started to have…

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Started to experience slowly less and less symptoms.

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And so I was continuing to do these meditations daily, sometimes for an hour or more a day, for maybe 10 months or so. Was seeing improvements, improvements.

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But then it just… it wasn't… there would be times where there would be certain triggers, like, food, even smells, overstimulation of environments, which would then bring about symptoms in my body.

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And some of those symptoms were, quite scary symptoms, like PVCs, or premature ventricular contractions.

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In other words, skipped heartbeats, a racing heartbeat, kind of feelings of itchiness, feelings of my throat closing, lots of symptoms that were quite

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oh my god, am I dying? Sort of experiences.

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And then I… it sounds a bit woo-woo, but then one night we were camping, and you know, we know that nature and forest bathing actually has fantastic, you know, evidence-based, you know, positive effects on the body, but being in nature, I thought, oh, people… people have mentioned these brain retraining programs to me.

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And initially, my ego kind of got in there a little bit, saying, these brain retraining programs, like, these aren't psychologists or psychiatrists or doctors running these programs. How could it possibly help me, and what are they talking about? So, but you know what? I surrendered and I said.

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Maybe this will help, maybe it won't. Let's… let's give it a go.

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So I started doing some online brain retraining programs, and they were really talking about the polyvagal system, which

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There's some scientific debate around… like, there's definitely parts of the polyvagal theory that is

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there is plenty of support for that, like the autonomic nervous system, which we can talk about. And then there's some other parts that are more debated, like the ventral vagal system, of the polyvagal theory. Anyway, and I was also talking about that, and it was also talking about, the vagus nerve.

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And look, to be honest, I didn't know a lot about the vagus nerve, and the research is probably still… well, it is still evolving in that area.

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But I started to come across vagal toning exercises. And then I started to kind of put two and two together, and I'm kind of realizing, okay, there's throat tightening that I'm having, these symptoms that I'm having in my heart, these… this stomach issues that I'm having.

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maybe it is related to the vagus nerve, because it's not medically explained anymore, and the vagus nerve runs through all of those areas. So, I'm going…

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Oh, okay, maybe this is what's going on. So, very quickly then, and this was, quite some time later, two, three years after my initial presentation of symptoms.

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Very quickly after doing these vagal tone exercises, in terms of humming.

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Breathing, deep, deep breathing, singing, and even doing some inner child play, joy-based things, like, laughter yoga, which…

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Always sounded ridiculous when we would practice for those who have been forced to do that in honors or undergraduate psychology, where you… where laughter is contagious and you're laughing together. I was doing that on a daily basis. There's a free online, group by, a professor in India that runs that. So I was doing that.

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And also just doing, like, online dance parties, and just really…

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stop being so serious, is what I was doing. And so, all of these things, within probably 6 weeks, I was really starting to feel myself again.

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I've spoken a lot there, Peter. No, this is fantastic. I know anyone listening is probably writing notes, and we'll absolutely put in the show notes that link to the online, laughter that you were talking about. No, keep going, please, keep going.

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Sure, sure. So then I… what was, I guess, a real test for me was in January last year, so I was starting to feel really good, and then in January last year, my husband and I said, you know, are we ready to have another baby? My daughter was now, like, 3, and I… so this was a real test of that mind-body connection of.

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do I trust my body? Because I would have never have said that I was very an anxious person. But after the third hospitalization that I experienced with these conditions, where I was hospitalised for a week at the time I was really unwell.

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I started to have a lot of doubts in my body, and not trust my body anymore. And so, and started to develop PTSD-type symptoms, as a… eventually, it was going to happen to me. So, I said, you know what?

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like, I'm just gonna surrender to that. It felt like the right thing to do. I didn't want my daughter, for me, personally, just to… to grow up as an only child for me. In my… that's not what I had in my head as a… well, my visualization.

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So,

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we… we were successful, and last year I spent my year predominantly being pregnant. And so, that, these… the first trimester was a real, kind of me managing my… mentally. You know, I was having still some physical symptoms as well.

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But…

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a real shift in my mindset around, can I trust my body through this, and my mind-body connection, and really strengthen my relationship with my body as well.

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And so, I had a really uneventful, largely uneventful pregnancy, and, a really good, well, you know, a good birth, although it ended up in emergency C-section.

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And so, my daughter is now five and a half months, and she's… she's perfect. We all say that, but she is, as well. So, but within the few months after that, my body, I think, just…

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an emergency C-section. I wasn't prepared for it, had 15 minutes to prepare. I had been, and we can talk about this more, but I had been kind of using Jo's techniques around visualization, around what I wanted to achieve, and hypnobirthing as well, around what I envisioned my, birth to look like with my second daughter.

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And it wasn't what I wanted it to be, unfortunately. But…

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I think, I didn't walk out of that experience with trauma, birth trauma, or anything like that. I think all the work that I had done before that, around imagery, around nervous system work, around helping my body really be in that parasympathetic state as much as it can be.

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Really set me up for a really good birth, albeit an emergency in the end.

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And then after my birth, my postpartum has been, good, but also my body's thrown out symptoms since then.

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And it's been… and of course, there's hormones, and there's, you know, hormones on the vagus nerve, and things like that. When your vagus nerve is more sensitive, it's, you know, may react in certain ways. But, I've been working with my body, I've changed the language, as I was saying before, rather than being

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as I was a few years ago, like, angry and saying things like, the stupid body, like, why is this happening, and why aren't you listening, and why aren't you just healing? I've changed it in terms of what is my body trying to tell me in this situation?

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Am I listening to my body? Is my body just trying to protect me?

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M, is my body just on high alert because

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of what has happened in the last 4 years or so, and now we just had an emergency C-section, and it's going, oh, what's happening? And so, my nervous system skills have come back on board with that. My vagus nerve work has come back on board with that, having to do more of that, but that…

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I get back to my baseline much quicker with that. Also using tapping as well, energy approaches. Yeah, it's… it's been a great alchemy, I guess, as I would say, in terms of my relationship with my body.

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Yeah, and what an amazing story. Not only is there so much for us to unpack in there, but yeah, it… you just sort of hit the nail on the head, I guess. The alchemy of…

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And I don't know whether you'd put your finger on any one of those approaches, or it was the combination of all of them coming together, and maybe the meditation calmed things down to a level, and then the vagus nerve information came in, and then you found those strategies, and then the inner child, and wrapped around all of that might have been tapping in a few other things.

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I mean, if you look back, you know, 2021, you said it started. Obviously, we'd come out of a worldwide pandemic.

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at that point as well, so there'd been sort of stress anyway in the world. If you kind of look back and sort of think, wow, the last four to five years has sort of been a very different journey as far as even being a psychologist with what you've done for yourself.

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Do you kind of look back and kind of think.

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Why would… why was I never taught this stuff?

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earlier. Like, do you ever have those moments? This is what I would think. I'd be like, why didn't I learn this earlier? And maybe, maybe you did, but it got put aside. Like, do you reflect back now and kind of think.

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Right. Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

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I think… I think it's tricky, like, I… I was working in the Masters of Clinical Psychology and the Masters of Professional Psychology program for a few years, and we do, you know, we do speak about the autonomic nervous system, but we don't, really speak too much about the vagus nerve.

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about emerging approaches, such as the polyvagal theory, even emerging approaches like IFS, which was also a part of my journey, EMDR, like, we are getting better at that, but the mind-body connection, I think.

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both… on both sides, both within the medical profession, like, in terms of a… I mean, we are medical, but in terms of general practitioners or medical specialists versus psychology and psychiatry, there's… there's not a great

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overlap between the two, that mind-body connection is… is not, you know, very good in my… in my, you know, in my experience.

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And so, I really would hope to see that evolve in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Anyone listening in that knows my classes knows that we teach it all, so we're trying to get there one class at a time.

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And I guess as a psychologist, because throughout, you know, both these pregnancies, but also listening into your body, what your body's message was for you.

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How has that impacted your own work in the world now? Like, you're obviously seeing clients in private practice. Obviously, you know, we don't always disclose our own journeys to clients, but has that made a difference for you? Like, are you different as a psychologist now, having been through that?

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I'm 100%. I'm different as a person, as a mum, as a psychologist, as everything. Through it all, similar to what we would do in trauma-focused CBT and even EMDR,

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is… I had to find meaning, as well, through these experiences, because there were times, when I was hospitalized, and when I was at my worst, where my cardiologist… I asked for reassurance, and my cardiologist couldn't give me reassurance that I wouldn't just… I know it sounds awful, but I wouldn't just…

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you know, go the next day. And that was really difficult with a really young child. It was very traumatic, and difficult for other people to understand, of course, what was going on.

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So, I had to find meaning, and for me, that looked… I explored, spirituality and different, different, different ways of viewing life, and… and also then looking at my values in life, and realigning myself

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better, I guess, with my values, or living in line more with what my values were in life.

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And prior to this happening, as much… I really see this whole experience as there's a lot of silver linings in it for me. And, prior to this… all of this experience, I will admit that I was, you know, biting off more than I can chew, that I was doing…

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far, far too many things, and unfortunately, I think in psychology, I'm mindful of saying this, but I think in psychology, it is that bottleneck approach. It is really competitive. We are expected to, perform

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At a really high level, and in some degrees.

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Work an awful lot to achieve that success, or achieve, you know, what we need to, to get into the next degree, to get the dream job, or what have you.

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So that, coupled with, I think, just the general society of pandemic, and, us these days needing… there's FOMO, there's needing to survive, you know, just financially, and just so many things, and then my own experience of some childhood trauma. Just so many things, I think, set me up for that experience of

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being vulnerable, but then…

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going through that values, you know, and finding meaning and spirituality and what that meant, what the whole experience meant for me, shifted then what I did with clients clinically, and what I was passionate about.

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And as much as I really enjoyed working with, and I still do work with kids and families and in autism and ADHD, I've shifted more into, I guess, this fourth wave, modalities in terms of EMDR, in terms of tapping and other energy psychology and meditation, and just the nervous system.

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getting into that parasympathetic state more often, because I think so many people are not aware that they're, and I certainly wasn't, aware that they're in sympathetic drive, or fight or flight, all the time. Yeah, it's a normal baseline, yeah. Right. Yeah.

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So true. And it's interesting, and I wonder if it's happened to you, because it certainly happened to me over the years, just when I was, actively seeing clients. It's like, whatever you were doing or embracing, they were the clients that walked through the door as well, that, you know, as different phases of my own

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personal growth journey changed. So would my clients walking through the door, I don't know if that's sort of been reflected, too. I was having existential conversations with 14-year-olds, you know, about their eating disorder, and…

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yeah, it was so… and I'm… and a wise old mentor kind of pointed that out to me as well, once in supervision, kind of went, yes, it's just a reflection of where you're at, and I'm like, what? So, I don't know if you've noticed that as well, but, you know, where you're at in your journey, yeah, that… that's, you know, maybe reflected in the private practice work.

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Yeah, totally. I think, I… I've… as I've shifted as a person, I, attract

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different people, I guess, that are aligned with… with my… now, my approach. But of course, like, I… I always look at a client and look at what level one evidence exists for working with the presenting symptoms, but sometimes, if it's clinically informed, that… that is maybe not going to answer or help

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in its totality, then let's look at some of these emerging therapies that do have evidence, but are not that Level 1 just yet. And so, that's been an evolvement. Like I said, I really like IFS and EMDR and so on, but it's not… because of where it sits

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particularly IFS, because of where it sits in terms of the levels of evidence, it's not something that I will.

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immediately say, right, we're going to do IFS. I'll look at a formulation, I'll look at what the Level 1 one is, and I'll have a conversation… Level 1 evidence is, and I'll have a conversation with the client and say, okay, these are our options, this is what I'm formulating, this is what a Level 1 is, what do you think, or this is our other options, and what do you think, and discussions around what they can expect.

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the, outcomes to be. Yeah. IFS, Internal Family Systems, everyone, if you're just wanting that acronym. And, I mean, Emily, when you have those conversations now with clients.

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and you present those different options, and we like that co-design, co-collaboration kind of approach, I know, just generally in the field.

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I mean, are clients…

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Where are they drifting to? Like, what is their answer when you offer these things and kind of go, well, here's this, and that could be the level one, that's the evidence base, that's, you know, obviously got loads and loads of, research, that's why we have them, here's some other ones emerging. What do clients choose?

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Sure, and I do think it depends on, you know, of course, on the client, but,

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what I was seeing, just to digress a little bit, what I was seeing at the same time I was kind of going through my journey, or just before, I was starting… I was seeing some clients that were going through similar journeys to what I was, but similar or different symptoms of what was happening.

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And, you know, they were going down the medical route, and they were getting, you know, all of these different tests, and endoscopies, colonoscopies, and all these different tests, and that just… they… it was kind of getting a dead end, roadblocks, and so on. There was no… no answers for them, not medically explained.

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And so, for me as well, that gave me an opportunity to, when I was going through my own journey, going, oh, okay, maybe this is what's the missing piece of the puzzle for them as well. So that has then since allowed me to, I guess, be more holistic in my approach of looking at, okay, not just the mind, as we're very much trained about in psychology, but more about the embodiment

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the body connection, and so on. So, I think… I mean, it depends. I mean, I definitely have clients that are

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much more, you know, that are open-minded, especially when I present

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the potential and what research actually exists, here and now. There is, I guess there is online a bit of a buzz around IFS and EMDR. I mean, EMDR has substantial evidence now, even though we don't quite know the exact mechanism for how it works, that it's a bit of a…

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I mean, a buzzword, I guess, with IFS online, and also the vagus nerve and nervous system and so on, but I think, you know, we'll get there in terms of the research and where it's coming, slowly.

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Absolutely, and that's why we do what we do. Because,

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Things change, things do evolve, and you touched on, obviously, the title too, but also this whole fourth wave kind of approach. I mean.

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If you sit back, you reflect, you're very,

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trained in the third wave approaches. Anyone listening in might be familiar, you know, with our, you know, behavioural approaches, but also our cognitive behavioural approaches. Mindfulness might be attached in there, even acceptance and commitment therapy, all of which have huge amounts of research to

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Show how they work, and they absolutely indeed work.

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But if we think about the next phase, perhaps in our world, our shared kind of, you know, discipline area here.

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I mean, do you hold… do you use the word hope when you were, obviously, doing the Jodis Spencer meditations? I did want to ask you, were you doing them just purely from his book, or were you actually listening to his voice guiding you?

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Right, so I… I generally like to listen, so you can purchase his meditations on his website. But I just want to say with a caveat, most people, when they start listening to Joe's voice, kind of say, oh, this is a bit, you know, abrupt, like, his voice is very strong, but there is, like, some research around why he speaks the way he does, and to slow those brain waves, and so on, so yeah. Yep, yep, great caveat. We've had Joe out here a couple of times.

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So we do know, why there is a method and a reason for the tone and the voice, so absolutely. That was me diverting, sorry about that. So…

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whole fourth wave.

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And the hope, you mentioned hope, you know, like, do you…

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Do you look at the landscape of your own clients, and your own journey, and kind of…

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Hold hope that perhaps this fourth wave will embrace in the psychological well-being and kind of counseling space these elements of… it could be spirituality, it could be more autonomic nervous system regulation, vagus nerve included.

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Is that something that you're kind of, you know, offering clients, but foreseeing, too, that this is a changing landscape? Are you noticing that?

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Yes, I've, I've spoken with and connected with several clinicians and

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researchers and other clinical psychologists and psychologists who… who are, very interested in researching these… these projects, or these areas, and so I think we'll start to see more and more of that, hopefully. I think, like, for example, with CBT, it is very, you know, that's the first thing that we're teaching, right?

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in, programs, and, you know, every psychologist is well-versed in CBT, but for me, on my own personal journey, like, experiencing the medical PTSD and so on that I was experiencing, it just wasn't touching the surface. Like, it just wasn't…

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for me, personally, helping, because in that instance, like, there was a, you know, if we're going to look at… one of the things that we do in CBT is look at whether it's a rational thought and whether we can challenge it. For me, it was a rational thought that something adverse could happen and I could end up back in hospital again.

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I then looked at acceptance commitment therapy. Okay, can I just accept this? I can, but it's very scary, you know? So, it just… neither of those were kind of really, really helping me. And so, that's why I guess I'm really excited and passionate about, okay, well, when they aren't working, and absolutely they do work for people, some people, but they don't work for everyone.

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What can we then explore that's going to supplement that? And for me, it was this fourth wave, like a combination of these fourth wave therapies.

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Yeah.

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And what excites you the most, I guess, about the future in terms of your own work, or even the field at large? What are you most excited? You know, maybe it's that you've witnessed something with a client, you know, maybe it's just the reading and the researching that you're doing yourself. What's exciting, Emily?

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I think, one, I would say client interest in these areas, because the more drive that we have of clients interested, the more, hopefully, research that we get and, you know, the more, potentially help, I guess, that we can provide if these therapies are found to be effective over and over again. But I also think greater, less division and greater, kind of connection and coherence between

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between our medical doctors and our medical profession and the psychology space, so that mind-body connection, I think it's one of the major things that we're missing, where people are being dismissed.

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in medical settings or gaslit, but there is actually something happening in their body, that is real, as I've experienced, very real. Like, my body went through significant medical symptoms.

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continued to produce them because my body was still in a fight-or-flight state constantly, or sympathetic state constantly, but when I was able to integrate mind-body work.

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then I was able to reduce that sympathetic activation and tone my vagus nerve and so on, and then see improvement in my body. So that's, I guess helping

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being able to see the research evolve, and then potentially help a greater deal of clients going through this. One of the things I was diagnosed with, for listeners that may or may not be familiar, was

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MCAS, or mast cell activation syndrome, and that is becoming very prevalent, and there is a large connection between MCAS and nervous system dysregulation, and some of those symptoms are what I was talking about with sensitivity to environment, smells, overstimulation, histamine foods, foods in general, histamine-type reactions, and so on. So, there is hope.

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Yeah, yeah, and the intersect, I guess, in what you've shared between the body is truly doing something, and there are medical symptomologies, and it goes without saying, anyone listening in, if there is something going on physically, absolutely make sure that you go and have the medical examinations, because sometimes…

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You know, there are genuinely things going on.

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It's just the intersect there between the mind and strategies that you…

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discovered along the way helped with that autonomic nervous system, and the reset, I guess, back to that parasympathetic. But I want to throw back in again, I heard you say the inner child stuff, and the joy, and reconnecting to everything doesn't have to be so serious, or…

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we don't have to be doing, like you were saying before, all the time, and I heard you kind of say that that was part of your journey as well, was really to…

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find you again, and… and you were a new mum, you know, playing, you know, with your… with your girls, yeah, as well. Yeah.

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Thank you. Sorry, yeah. No, that's amazing. I really wanted to just sort of, ask, as we're kind of finishing up, Emily.

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If there was someone listening in, and perhaps they've kind of related to some of the physical story that you've talked about here, the medical exploration, trying to find out, or maybe they've felt medically gaslit as well, which might happen because

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If there's no explanation initially, it can… it can be passed off as, well, maybe it's just psychosomatic, or maybe it's in your head, or…

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you know, lots of our chronic pain patients in our research over the years have said the same kind of thing. If someone's listening in and they're relating

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Ed, they want to explore further, I mean, what would your, kind of.

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Thoughts be to guide their process?

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Sure, I think initially just validating and affirming that

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these… the symptoms are very real, and you're not making it up, and they do exist, and even mine were showing up medically, in some, you know, blood tests of inflammation, and showing up here and there on heart tests, but they weren't consistent. So they would, you know, kind of just say, oh, well, you know, it's not consistent, it's not really a… there's nothing, you know, nothing to stress about.

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It's just random. But I knew, I was like.

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like, this is not me. Like, this is not normal. What's going on? And so, I think initially just validating that, but then also being able to, like, for me, as I mentioned, alluded to earlier, it was challenging from, I guess, from a clinical psychologist's perspective, from an ego perspective, to say, what? How can something that is not medical help with my medical symptoms?

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That doesn't make sense. And so, for me, it was just being really open to the fact that, okay, maybe some… that mind-body connection is far greater than what we realize, or than what's out there and what's taught, in my opinion, but being open to trying those vagus nerve strategies, or those nervous system regulation strategies was something that

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really helped me. And even… I said to myself, even if this is a placebo, I know, like, for example, the research with meditation shows that it reduces, actually physically, like, neuroplasticity, it physically changes structures in the brain, it reduces the gray matter in, like, the amygdala, which is around, like, emotional reactivity, and it increases gray matter in the hippocampus.

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around, emotion regulation and memory and so on. So, there is research showing that these fourth wave approaches can literally change the structure of the brain and get me into a parasympathetic state, which can then

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accelerate healing. Yeah. So, yeah.

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Amazing, and it's the one line I write, if I'm ever signing a book, like on my EFT tapping, or the science behind tapping, I just always write, stay open. And I think, you know, I think…

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to embrace anything new, whether we're coming in the therapy world or, I don't know, something else, you try new out there in the world, I think staying open is what keeps those doors open, you know, where someone said, hey, have you read this, or tried the

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brain retraining, or… because there was a part of you that was open, and then things came in, and I really heard that through that story. Yeah, so stay open, everybody, just to the possibilities of

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Yeah, different things that could impact and give you relief at that.

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Yeah, autonomic nervous system level. Everything that Emma Lee has talked about, her links, if you want to connect everybody, are below in the show notes. I'm going to make sure that Emily tells me, how you can find any of those online laughter, classes as well, or…

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you also said online dance classes, so we have to find some of those and make sure that they're featured there too. And of course, if you do want to follow Emily's work and also even connect, if you feel that there's synergy here and you want to talk further, details are all below everybody as well.

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Dr. Emily Senyard, it has been an absolute pleasure. I'm so glad to have connected and… and heard your journey, and… and felt validated myself a little bit, that it's not just me out there kind of going, this stuff really works, to actually hear someone, you know, in person talk about your own journey with, you know, Joe's meditations and, you know, tapping, but internal family systems work, EMDR,

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the full works, you know, that's… that's where it really takes on new meaning. Someone tells us that, yeah, here's where I was, here's where I am, and this is what I did in between. I just think, fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing the… yeah, just having the courage and the…

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yeah, like, being brave to share that story as well, because I think sometimes we do worry about behind our professional, kind of, you know, credentials, oh, I maybe won't share this, or… yeah, but I want to… I want to just say thank you.

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No, thank you for having me. It's been a great chat.

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Absolute pleasure.

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I hope you, give us a review and a rating, everybody, and join us for another episode here on The Fourth Wave, and of course, you know, let us know what you thought of our episode, and please reach out to Dr. Emily Senyard if you want to chat further. So, thanks so much, everybody, and we'll see you again in another episode.

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Website: www.drsenyard.com 

Mentioned Resources

Dr. Madan Kataria, founder and creator of Laughter Yoga. - https://www.youtube.com/@laughterguru