How my body helped me make up with my husband

What if the key to breaking through relationship conflicts isn’t in the talking but in the listening… to your body? In this episode, Gervase reveals how shifting from mind-based strategies to somatic and soul approaches (read: dropping out of the mind and into the body) transformed a weeks-long rupture in her marriage into a moment of deep connection and repair. Listen in as she shares her struggles with “circling the drain” with repetitive arguments, how the mind can get in the way of reconciliation, and the power of the body in moving through relationship stalemates. Keep listening for questions you can ask yourself to explore the practice of dropping into your body wisdom, and for a powerful reminder that healing doesn’t always come from trying harder but from thinking differently.


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How my body helped me make up with my husband

Episode Full Transcript

I try to convey to all of you, as often as humanly possible, that I am a human just like you. I’m humbly working through so many things over here on my own, alongside you—maybe a few steps ahead, maybe having learned a few more things and sharing them with you. As a facilitator, it’s different. I have a set of gifts where I can sit with someone and really see them, see their blind spots, and intuit what’s needed. But it’s impossible to do that for yourself.

I need everyone to always know this. However you’re shopping around, finding the right facilitator for you, know that you want to see yourself in your teachers and you also want to see what’s possible.

So I want to share a story about how my body helped me repair a big rupture with my husband, in the hopes that you can see yourself in my marriage. I often talk about how happy and grateful and proud I am to have such a wonderful marriage—and also, we work through things, same as everybody else. My hope is that you can also see what’s possible for you and your partnership, whatever that looks like.

Without getting into details, there was a recurring theme between my husband and me that was causing frustration and resentment on my part. We had gotten to a stalemate. Two loving people willing to do the work and have hard conversations kept circling the drain. Maybe you’ve been there: you find yourself having the same argument over and over, not making progress.

For me, being who I am, doing the work I do in the world, being as self-aware as I am—this is infuriating. Finding myself in the same place in the drain I was weeks ago in the quest for repair and connection with my partner is maddening. That was maddening.

One stormy night we reached the point of, “We’ll just deal with this tomorrow.” We had said everything that could be said. For whatever reason, we could not hear each other. The words weren’t penetrating our egos, our need to be right, our need to feel seen and heard, our need to self-defend or self-protect. All normal, natural parts of being human—especially in conflict and especially in romantic partnerships. All your childhood wounds come up.

Sometimes all the talking in the world isn’t going to do anything. We went to bed. I laid awake, fuming and also feeling deeply sad and discouraged. After a fitful sleep, I woke up at 3 a.m. There were other big things happening at the time as well. I went downstairs, started journaling, watched a little TV, lit a candle. I just tried to enjoy the quiet time in the middle of the night because my mind would not stop.

Through journaling I had a moment of awareness: my body missed my husband. If I was really honest and humble and let my ego pause, I didn’t need to be right or heard; I just wanted to lay with my husband. Then pride showed up. We all have pride. For me, this is a part I care about working with in partnership because I’ve seen what happens when you let pride get in the way of love.

I kept having this visual of my body showing me the way: just go lay on your husband, just go be with him. I got curious about it the way I invite my clients to get curious. Ask the body a question: would you like to go be held by your partner? The body responded with a longing yes. Ask the soul: would you like to go be held? The soul gave me an image. Then ask the mind: the mind said, “Yeah, but they won’t get it. That’s giving in. You can’t be wrong. You didn’t resolve this.”

That, to me, is an opening to see things differently. What might happen to this pattern we’d been stuck in if I allowed my body to lead me back to bed into his arms? So up I went back to bed into my husband’s arms at 4 or 5 a.m.

I’m grateful he allows me to share our story. It speaks so much to his confidence and trust in the work I do. I climbed into bed and he welcomed me with open arms. We lay like that for 20 minutes, then changed positions and lay like that for an hour. I fell deeply asleep—better than I’d slept in many days. I felt my heartbeat syncing with his, my soul relaxing, my body co-regulating. I felt safe.

I woke up the next morning and the problem that had felt absolutely impossible just a few hours ago truly felt dissolved. I couldn’t access the anger and righteousness I’d felt the night before. All I felt was deep intimacy, love, and connection with this person I share my life with. Not rose-colored glasses, not forgetting everything that happened. I still cared about what mattered to me. But I had patient, loving, wise, embodied trust: we’ll get there. We’re going in the right direction. I can let him make the next move. It is safe for me to be loved by this person.

For those listening, remember: the part of us that’s activated and triggered when our childhood trauma comes up in partnership does not remember anything about safety. You cannot believe anything it says. It’s a protector rising up to defend because that’s what it had to do when you were younger. But the steady, wise part of you—the part that knows it will be messy and imperfect—lives in your body and soul.

We need a somatic and soul strategy to get through circling-the-drain moments. We have to try something new to get a result we haven’t gotten before. The mind can take us so far, then we dead end. We stalemate. We put up walls. We close down. We suffer. Personally, I hate going through my day disconnected or in a fight with my partner. When I let my protector part be in charge, nobody wins.

So at five in the morning, I softened my mind and received the wisdom of my body and soul. I treated it like an experiment and noticed how my system felt before, during, and after. It was so powerful. Obviously I already believe the answer to everything is to stop—stop what you’re doing and drop into the body, stop ruminating, drop into the body and soul. But having this specific example was wild for me.

A few years ago my husband and I did a bunch of work and it was so helpful. Our disagreements went from not a ton to about half. Since this experience, I’ve noticed we’ve cut them in half again. There are so many battles the mind wants to pick that the body knows are just a little child throwing a tantrum, a fragmented part picking a fight. In relational dynamics, there’s always more than one thing in the room: inner children, finances, moon cycles, personalities, stressors. Thousands of beautiful acts of love and kindness alongside the harm. But in rupture we simplify it down, dilute it, because we’re uncomfortable with the wound.

The first approach is to consult somatic and soul strategy. Check yourself before you wreck yourself living from one part of the mind. Ask: have I actually checked in with my body? When I allow myself to be held by this person who loves me so much, I feel settling, safety, repair happening—not by talking it to death. As a passionate talker, that’s revolutionary.

This is just one thread of a ball of threads when it comes to the body solving our problems for us. If you unravel all the threads and hold them out into one big thread, the one consistent thing is: the body is the shortcut. We want a tool, we want a strategy, but we’re not willing to travel from the mind and ego into the body and soul. So we circle the drain forever. We get the same results over and over.

If that’s where you’re at, it’s understandable. We glorify talking and mind strategies and are greatly undereducated about the body and how it all works together. There is so much research about how mind, body, soul, mental health, and physical health all work together. One of my favorite speakers on this is Dr. Gabor Maté. But if you want the shortcut: stop ruminating, stop aligning exclusively with the story you’re telling yourself in the mind, and drop into the body.

An exercise I like for myself and my clients is to ask a question and notice what it feels like in your body. Start simple. “Do I want to go to that birthday party?” What does your body do? Is it heavy or is it light? Your body has its own language and you can start speaking it slowly, one little choice at a time. Then you build up to the big things.

As always, it’s nuanced. You could be in an actually devastatingly toxic relationship where your body pattern is to go back to someone causing harm. In that case you may need the opposite. Your tangle of threads is different from mine. Where do you start? With your own tangle. Knowing yourself. Untangling mind, narrative, story, body wisdom, soul voice.

I teach you to untangle so you can consult the body for wisdom and get transformation with less energy. Being in physical proximity to other people, allowing bodies to co-regulate, allowing bodies to inform what we do in relationships is such a shortcut to repair. Gathering with people when you’re grieving or celebrating is the quickest way to change your state—not because you’re thinking about it but because your body is reacting to community.

That’s one of the threads. I’ve navigated this in relationships beyond my marriage—family of origin, friendships—watching and listening to my body every step. Do I want to stand closer or farther apart? Put a room between us? Go for a walk? Sit next to them? Fascinating science experiments that ended with connection and repair I could never have anticipated.

And of course, sometimes the other person isn’t ready. That’s okay. They get their own safety line and somatic response. But if you’re pushing against your own without even knowing it—overriding it with the story you’re telling yourself—you’re missing out on the best-kept secret of being human, the best-kept secret to powerful, resilient relationships.

This ninja skill of knowing what to do, say, and choose next is how I do it—with somatic and soul strategy, deep attunement to my soul voice, my inner knowing, and a deep intentional way of relating not just to everyone in my life but to myself. It makes the way forward easier. I’m rarely in self-doubt, self-questioning, overthink, or overwhelm because I stop and drop.

This is not unique to me. All of us can do this. Women have lost touch with the feminine art of being complex, ever-evolving humans. We’ve tried to woman by being men, and it’s backfiring, leading to stress and noise. If that’s you, you’re one of bajillions. It’s so normal based on the modern culture, climate, and education we’ve had. Now we’re ready to step into a new paradigm and do things differently to get results we haven’t seen before.

We didn’t see these results in the generation before us because they didn’t have these strategies, this lived wisdom, even the science and research to back up that integrating the mind, body, and soul will take you places the mind alone never could.

I want to share a new offering for January. Somatic Soul Sessions are 60-minute one-on-one coaching sessions with me where I’ll help you drop into your unique body wisdom, get unstuck, and access your soul vision for 2025. These are $299 when purchased now through January and will increase to $349 after that.

December can go by fast and then January hits and you’re left depleted without ideas or resources for replenishing all you gave away. You can think of this 60-minute call as having me in your back pocket for when life happens—which we know it will. As I’ve been swiping my credit card for gifts this season, it inspired me to invite you to swipe for you. Plus, I love a good sale.

Purchase this offer now through January and redeem it anytime something tough comes up, or you feel stuck, trapped in your trauma, or can’t see the forest through the trees. Or use it to clarify your wants and needs versus your shoulds in the new year. Remember, this one-on-one with me will be offered at the discounted $299 price only when you purchase now through January.

I appreciate you so much for spending time here with me today. I love you so much, and I’ll see you back here in two weeks.

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Breaking the Cycle of Fear-Based Parenting with Wendy Snyder