About Health Talk
Living with a chronic condition can feel isolating. Health Talk by Flowly was born from wanting to bring often isolated voices into the fold, and connecting different ideas, experiences, and tools to your own health journey.
We talk to health practitioners and chronic health patients to deconstruct the chronic condition journey— from how many have managed the challenging diagnosis experience, to new tools and tips that might help you. We cover conditions including chronic pain, anxiety, autoimmune diseases, and more.
Hosted by Celine, the founder of Flowly, this weekly podcast will dive into conversations with world class researchers, practitioners, and even more importantly, chronic condition warriors themselves.
Search “Flowly” on Apple Podcast or Spotify to find our Health Talk!
This week Celine sits down with a world class mind-body practitioner, Pierre-Etienne Vannier. In this wide ranging conversation, they touch on different manifestations of trauma, methods we can employ to begin to acknowledge and manage trauma, and the challenges we still face in recovery.
Pierre is a program development specialist for trauma recovery and resilience building through nervous system regulation. Pierre has done this work at Huntington Memorial Hospital, UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, USC oncology, etc. Pierre has worked with cancer patients, pain patients, and is currently a co-investigator in clinical research focused on fostering post-traumatic growth among cancer survivors.
You can also find Pierre at Healing Studio Online (www.healingstudioonline.com) for live classes for self-healing, using a wide range of approaches and modalities.
*This transcript is auto-generated
Hey y'all, my name is Celine and I'm the
founder of Flowly, your host today
for Health Talk.
As some of you might know Flowly is a
mobile platform for chronic pain and
anxiety
and mental health management. We use
biofeedback for relaxation training and
even virtual reality to teach you how to
manage your nervous system
so in our Health Talk we invite everyone
from chronic pain patients
chronic illness patients, people with
mental health, challenges and
advocates to talk about what tools help
them with their daily living
but we also invite industry
professionals practitioner
health experts to really share with us
what are tools and techniques and their
experiences that could help with this
community
I'm really looking forward today with
our guest
because he is a world-class mind body
practitioner Pierre-Etienne Vannier
Our team has
actually worked with Pierre
in designing some of the intro sessions
you guys have experienced
and we really respect his work in this
field.
Besides being a mind body practitioner
Pierre is a program development
specialist for trauma recovery
and resilience building through
nervous system regulation.
We're going to get into all of like what
that actually means later.
Pierre has done this work at
Huntington Memorial Hospital,
UCLA Center for East-West Medicine,
USC Oncology, etc. And Pierre has
worked with cancer patients,
pain patients and is currently a
co-investigator
in clinical research focused on
fostering
post-traumatic growth among cancer
survivors
Welcome to Flowly's Health Talk, Pierre.
Thank you, Celine. It's good to be here.
So my first question is a little bit
about your background because
I think one thing that really fascinated
me when working with you is how you
came to be working in the trauma space.
Because I remember when we first
spoke, you came from a background
of working with
low-income populations who have been
affected by HIV and AIDS
and then even worked in Cairo in
somewhat of an adjacent field.
So could you share a little bit about
your background and how you came to be
your background and how you came
to be working on this?
A little bit of the background,
long story short,
You mentioned I used to work in
Cairo, Egypt
I lived there for about 10 years
and I used to work for the
United Nations working with people
living with HIV supporting people
living with HIV, through with
Socioeconomic Empowerment
Program with leadership skills, etc etc
About seven eight years into it
I could see that the most profound
transformation that we were seeing
was when people had an opportunity to
really connect
at the emotional level. It was not so
much about the technical information
that was being shared with them rather
than the opportunity
to really feel right, what they were
feeling in a safe space
and so I started to try to understand
how to promote this
and I was hearing a lot people telling
me you know what
this great challenge
in my life is actually one of the best
thing that happened to me which was
very confusing
because that's not what i was expecting
to hear and so I started to look into it
I started to
learn about post traumatic growth the
learning that may occur
when we're dealing with challenging
experiences in life and try to
understand how can I help
people grow from their experiences
from the pain, from the suffering
This is when I started to study
hypnotherapy, this is
when I started to study different type
of somatic practices
which as you mentioned earlier was
really about
bringing our nervous system back into
balance
so 11 years later I finally went into
private practice because I found it
absolutely fascinating, started to work
with different organizations that were
focusing on
helping people to build resilience
and like you said today I'm working
primarily
I'm working with people who are
dealing with trauma which is let's face it
100% of the world population. We're all
dealing with it, right
we may let's not think about trauma as
that big thing that can happen but that
can also be an accumulation of small
things what we call small traumas
so all of us are experiencing
difficulties and all of us have an
experience to learn skills and tools
to learn from it to overcome and
to bounce back
and even to bounce forward, right?
That kind of leads to
one question that we've been grappling
with which is
I think also to do with your work in
managing the nervous system which is
exactly what we want to do under
Flowly as well right
and in the context of what's happening
in the world now
a lot of experiences with trauma are not
necessarily
physical but how can or do we
experience trauma in the body even if
the trauma wasn't
physical to begin with and then how can
it manifest?
To answer this question, I think we need
to understand that the the separation
between
the mind and the body I think is a very
simplistic way to view things because
Yes, the trauma may not
be physical yet there
are physical consequences
and implications to a traumatic
experience
right so if I experience something that
is fearful to me
and we can't even you know at some
point, look into what's going on
right now with
with covid with
uprising with social unrest with
whatever's going on in Washington,
here the question is that may not be
something that bumped or scraped
or hurt my body but the stress the
anxiety
that my nervous system is going in the
stress response
my nervous system is going to trauma
response saying
what do I need to do to keep myself safe
and so I want to say your body
our bodies are always impacted
by what's going on
and there are a lot of literature out
there what i'm saying is not even
closely, you know, close to be
controversial I think right now we
understand
very clearly that when we're going
through
emotional adversity we there are
physical consequences to that
when I will go in a stress response a
fight or flight freeze response there
different types of stress responses
there will be physical implications
I may find myself
having difficulty sleeping having
difficulties to digest, I may find myself
experiencing increased pain increased
anxiety etc etc etc
right
So all of this eventually translates
and manifests
in the body and so it's important for us
to acknowledge that
and to allow ourselves to
and create a container.
Safe container for us to say, okay,
What's going on with me? Let me
connect
to my body because your body is really
just
your body's talking to you. Our bodies
are talking to us and they're saying hey
let's, can we do something about that?
I'm personally dealing with
back pain I've been dealing with back
pain for many years
when I start to get a little tidal
stressed out
I know this back pain will start to
you know
say, hey, should we slow down here?
and the pain maybe
may not be that great but it's there.
If I ignore it
my body will start to talk to me louder
and say hey
okay I told you two days ago we're
getting tired
and I manifested just a little
pain you're not hearing me
you're not doing what needs to be done
right now to come back
to give me an opportunity to heal and
rest so let me
speak to you a little louder and this is
why sometimes I'm like oh this is
becoming you know
so amazingly painful and that's when I
have to listen to my body
so what I'm saying is that here it's
important for us to listen to our bodies
to listen to the cues
of our body so that we can take the
necessary steps and measures
to bring ourselves back to a place where
we can heal we can rest
we can recover and you know
and we can deal with life.
Does that makes sense?
That makes a lot of sense
and I think what I'm
hearing is that
the first step to learning how to manage
the trauma in your body the nervous
system activation is to a
acknowledge it and then to spend the
time and give it the space to listen to
your body.
Am I interpreting that right?
Yes
and having said that there are times
when it's okay for us to connect to the
body and there are times when it's
totally appropriate for us to maybe
just kind of disconnect because we may
not feel safe to process
it may not be the time for us to process
right and i'm saying that as a
as a call for self-compassion to the
people viewing or listening to us
because a lot of people are like how
come you know how come i'm not
able to
relax more and not able to feel better
and sometimes recognizing that well
right now it's just
the situation may be overwhelming and
i'm in a state of overwhelm
and that seems like at times to be a
space that is appropriate
that's normal for us to go there what we
want is not get stuck there for too long
because again otherwise there will be
physical
implications physical mental emotional
you know implications and consequences
so i'm saying let's not judge our
own response when we get stressed out
this is a protective this is a defensive
mechanism to use the words of a
of a mentor of mine that
response is well intentioned
it's just that sometimes the timing may
be a little off
so we want to adjust the timing, right?
Yea that resonates so strongly with me
becasue even remember when we were
first talking to you about designing the
intro sessions for Flowly
like we knew that we had to approach
it in recognizing that not everybody was
ready to confront their bodies or ready
to acknowledge what was happening in
their bodies and
there needs to be a way of
gently kind of coaxing people into like
hey
let's start to listen to it but we don't
definitely don't want to force you into
it
and i think that even leads into my
um and i think that even leads into my
next
quite a few questions because I had
the opportunity to actually ask
people in our Flowly community on
the app in the community but also on
social media
what are some questions they might
have for you and
our community is pretty widespread as
you know like we have people with
severe chronic pain to people that are
just kind of stressed out
and one of the questions that came
kept coming up and up which is
what are some tips techniques
methods we could self-employ
to manage symptoms around trauma
and a specific question came up is
how to manage an
oncoming anxiety flare-up or panic
attack?
That's a big question and I wish
I wish you know I had a magic
wand for you
So let's break it down here.
Because as a reminder what I've
mentioned earlier which is sometimes
it is okay for us
we feel safe enough to check in with
ourselves to notice what's going on
so we're working on improving that
body awareness
to be connected to ourselves
and so oftentimes i want to say that the
first step
to deal with these challenges the stress
the anxiety
the pain often starts with
and the word that you use earlier is
very important gently
gently come back home gently we connect
to the body we disconnected to the body
from the body for a reason
there is there is a wisdom there right
and so
we have to acknowledge that wisdom to
respect that wisdom and ask ourselves
okay
is it okay for me right now to go back
and check it with myself and reconnect
with my body
gently and here
when i say gently i mean the place at
which you're gonna reconnect to the body
is even more important than how you're
going to reconnect to their body
meaning the tools they have many tools
out there there there are many
practices there are many models
some people will meditate some people
will do some more somatic practices
there are a lot of things out there but
it's really important to understand that
regardless of what you do
you have to be gentle in this process
because when you come back to your body
and let's take the
the example of
people will
a lot of people took on meditation
recently
and they would sit with their
discomfort
for whatever amount of time being told
to just be okay with it and
and here I, it can be actually
counterproductive
because what may happen is that i will
not
i'm disregarding you know what my body
is telling me
and so when i talk about feeling
safe feeling gentle
this is crucial here maybe i need to
sit with it for just a few moments for
just a few minutes
and when it becomes too uncomfortable
maybe i need to listen to my body and
start to move around readjust my
position
do something so working with your body
not against your body
and this is crucial what when
it comes to healing
it is about integration it is about as i
mentioned earlier like coming home
how can i be with myself
feeling
okay and so here that's
that's the number one right feeling safe
gentle pacing yourself
because bringing things up is not
necessarily the most difficult things
right when you checked out you sometimes
people will go see
some practitioners and the practitioners
will help them to get things
out this is not exorcism right you a lot
of people will get overwhelmed because
they will be connected to just
too much of what was actually being
suppressed in the body
and so here pacing yourself is
crucial now when it comes to
tips how can i manage if i notice myself
going into a
state of anxiety having a panic attack
this and that
as i said number one the earlier you
catch it
the easier it will be for you to manage
it
meaning if i'm more in tune with my body
if i'm not paying attention if i know
what are my cues again just to give the
example of my personal back pain
if i was to not pay attention to it for
several days eventually at some point i
will find myself paralyzed on the floor
but there's there were a lot of
opportunities for me to engage with my
body before that
so paying attention to the early cues is
very important that panic attack
will have most of the time
initial cues it is about it's coming
it's about to come
what can i do and what can you do
oftentimes is
there maybe i mean some simple
practices may consist
potentially maybe breath focused
i know some of the different models i'm
working with and we can look into
some resource we can talk about
resources later on today
or later on during this interview
the simple fact of just making sure that
you exhale
long enough to give an opportunity for
your nervous system to start to
settle to deactivate that stress
response when we breathe in
our heart will speed up when we breathe
out our heart will slow down
and so knowing that panic attack is
a sympathetic activation it's you going
into that stress response
and just working with your body to say
no actually
let me slow down my heart rate let me
send a signal straight from my body to
my body
saying no actually here i don't have
to engage into that
that state of mobilization
i can slow down my heart rate as i slow
down my heart rate
i'm gonna start to mitigate
right what's going on with that state of
activation
something else that can be helpful when
your body is actually bringing up
that state of that all that energy or
that stress
could be to also start to move
because a lot of people will just sit
there
understandably because they feel
overwhelmed by what's going on
when sometimes starting to just move
around starting to diffuse some of this
energy right as the energy is being
mobilized in your body
saying no actually may try to shake it
off a little bit
maybe try to maybe push against the
chair
push against the wall the primary target
of that
that stress response will be your limbs
everything will be affected but the
primary target will be your limbs
your legs and your arms and so using
these arms in these legs
will help you potentially to kind of
diffuse that energy
as the energy is being mobilized from
inside. Is that making sense?
That makes a lot of sense and i think
that's counter to i think what a lot of
people would
respond and so that's a really good tip
because i think it would help a lot of
people to know
that's another strategy they could
employ a lot of people will say
employ a lot of people will say
themselves
I'm calm, I'm calm
or calm down. my favorite meme
on facebook is that nobody ever calm
down by being told to calm
why is that? right it's because we
we get stuck in that conscious mind
which is about five percent of who you
are, five percent of everything you are
when 95 percent
of you is saying ah what's going on so
we have to engage with that 95%
of us we have to engage with the body
right in that process of
of reclaiming that sense of safety
and saying okay
right here right now let me engage with
my breath
let me engage with my environments right
let me reorient to my environment
instead of going into that
that tunnel vision instead of getting
stuck there
then it expands right
yeah i love that
the idea of like
focusing on something outside of your
body to get back in tune with your body
body to get back in tune with your body
because
because
i mean that's essentially all our work
based around the vr
biofeedback things that we do is just
we're giving you an access point into
your body
that doesn't start inside it starts
external which in a lot of ways i think
is especially helpful for people that do
have trauma and i think
one other thing i wanted to highlight
about what you were saying that i think
is so important
is that timing and understanding what
triggers or cues that might be coming up
for you
to trigger whatever trauma response or
anxiety or panic attack
it's really important you start to
recognize when those cues or triggers
might be coming and to address it
beforehand
because i think in our case studies when
we were at hospitals
people would tell us like in the
afternoons i get really bad pain
flare-ups and then
i'll take a bunch of medication at the
point of my flare-up to chase it away
but that's just using medication to
chase away pain whereas you could even
use medication or any other approach or
technique
beforehand so that you're mitigating a
lot of the effect instead of trying to
chase it away once it's already hit you
so and i think that's really not a
lot of people realize that
you're raising a really important point
which is
i hear from a lot of clients telling me
for example this week i didn't
experience any stress
so i didn't practice any of my
tools and my skills
and what i'm hearing is it's something
similar to saying well
i didn't exercise because i didn't
notice that i gained weight
right and and here it's really the
question of the conditioning
and that's a much bigger issue
around like how do we approach
healthcare
in this country right, are we
managing symptoms
or are we looking at the person
holistically and
and are we being proactive
because again when we talk about giving
agency giving
power to people because that's
power to people because that's that's
that's
what i do what you do this is how i see
it. It's about
empowering patients and clients in their
own journey of healing
what are the skills what are the tools
that they can acquire so
they are in control of their own
experience so they have more agency
so many clients and patients i'm working
with are telling me
i feel like a project i feel like you
know people working under my body and i
don't know what to do
and my message is there's so much that
you can do
there's so much that you can do and
maybe you've been told indeed that just
leave it to the doctors and i'm
saying that you know with a lot of
respect god bless them
doctors nurses you know thank god for
them
but i'm saying let's be proactive in
this process
because if i'm waiting for the pain to
be excruciating before i do something
there's gonna be so much more work i'm
gonna have to do
but like you said if i'm if i'm catching
the cues if i'm
training myself to pay attention to the
cues early on
or if i even like make a habit
of practicing wellness
on a regular basis without waiting for
me
to experience that pain it's just you
know it's just like a professional
basketball player is not waiting for the
day of the game, before he or she's
practicing hoops
right, there there's practice and so
That's one i was very excited
when you first started to work together
because Flowly
is offering an opportunity for people
here to say okay let me practice
being healthy let me practice wellness
what is it what does it feel
not only for me to be able to manage my
pain
but what is it for me to be able to be
aware when i feel good
and that's that's the thing here right
it's like how do i know
when i talk to people they maybe have
such an amazing awareness of their
stress response
but they've forgotten what it feels like
for them when they're not stressed out
when they're not in pain and these
moments may be fleeting
but it's still important for us to be
aware of these moments
and work towards expanding these moments
right, because again we're amazingly
flexible that body of ours is a
remarkable machine
we're amazingly resilient but resilience
is a skill
it's something that that is to be
practiced right?
Even when we were
looking at this technology early on we
were like
oh all these like olympic athletes
get access to all these ways of managing
their nervous system and health but
really the people that really need it
the patients
they're not giving they're not given
this access to learn about their bodies
right and like we
I come from a family of doctors
like we respect doctors but it really
should be a two-way conversation between
you and the doctor right you and the
health care system
it's not just one way so i think that's
really important
and you also brought up something that i
was going to ask later on but i think it
just
it beautifully segues into that concept
of
you're saying okay we also should focus
on the times we do feel good
we do feel comfortable relaxed because
often we're only focused on the negative
experiences
and one thing that we are incorporating
to Flowly and we talked about early on
is doing body scans
of pinpointing where you do feel
uncomfortable but actually doing
another body scan where you pinpoint
wait where do i feel comfortable or just
neutral and i love that concept i would
love
for you to dive into that more and
what's the idea behind that
yeah and i remember that conversation
early on that we had
and again it's going back to the
concepts
and here i'll mention another mentor
i'll quote another
mentor of mine because when we
we have a negativity bias
we will naturally pay attention to what
hurts
what's wrong with us so in case we need
to take care of it right
for survival purposes but
by doing so we get conditioned
and we forget
again these moments of or we forget
to pay attention
to what doesn't hurt as much what or
what may even feel neutral
when my back doesn't hurt i don't feel
amazingly relaxed in my back but
the absence of pain is in itself to me
an amazing relief
so being able to acknowledge that
and to see that oh indeed in that space
there is more flexibility
there is more spaciousness when i talk
about spaciousness
i'm talking about the ability to the
ability to breathe
the ability to think more clearly to be
more creative
not only in regards to you know
decisions for your health but
maybe even for your job for you know
i've been stuck at home with my
kids what to do with kids, how to
you know change the way we work with
what's going on lately
so here the question is when you pay
attention to your body
you may notice something that may feel
tight a little tense
you may notice some discomfort you may
notice some pain
the question is, are you able to expand
that awareness to notice
what else is true
what else is true we're not saying don't
pay attention to what hurts
we're not saying pretend it's not there
we're saying respect it
acknowledge it and ask yourself all
right
this is true is there anything else
that's true because
when i work with people dealing with
chronic pain i teach pain management at
huntington
to nurses to healthcare workers to
patients
there's often a phrase that comes up
which is like everything hurts
and that may be true
but that may also be a conditioning
that gets us stuck in that loop and
sometimes when we like well
let's break it down this and this and
this and this may hurt
what about this and this and this and
sometimes we may go down to like
earlobes say
okay my earlobes right now they're not
they're not in pain
the tip of my nose you know is not in
pain my fingertips may not like
we may be able to identify a few things
in the body
that are kind of creating space in that
experience
right this is this is what we're making
even in the name Flowly for me
that flow that space is important it's
like
okay let me see if i can regain some
flexibility
and i'm not necessarily just talking
about flexible physical flexibility i'm
talking about
mental flexibility saying i acknowledge
this i
also acknowledge that and and by doing
so
this is my whole experience i can say
that i can acknowledge and respect the
truth this is my body telling me
something that i have to deal with and i
have to acknowledge and work on healing
but there's also potentially some things
that can be a place
that become kind of these islands of
safety that became
this place where like okay i may be able
to go back there
every now and then that may be a place
for me to
focus my awareness on and interestingly
when we expand
when we focus
where we
where awareness goes energy flows right
and so when we when we take a moment to
really pay attention
to this area of the body without trying
to make
the pain go away ironically
or paradoxically this is when the body
is saying oh yeah
something else is true. I'm able
to focus
on so I'm whole I'm able to hold
both experiences at the same time
and that creates space for people to
oftentimes to feel better
and to feel more hopeful
Yeah i know and
i even remind myself when i'm speaking to
someone some people that may be
listening in the community that aren't
necessarily chronic pain patients i
think this applies to
you know just if you're trying to
focus like in moments of even a moment
where i feel relaxed or i'm not feeling
anxious or i'm feeling not stressed i
try to remind myself like hey right now
i feel okay like i feel neutral and then
that kind of balances out the truth of
your day where it's not
all focused on the negative part but
rather you're also acknowledging the
neutral the comfortable the positive
parts of it as well
and what you're doing is you're training
your mind
and here we let, let's go to the
nitty-gritty of neuroplasticity
of the plasticity of your brain of
your
knowing that 80 to 90 of everything you
do is automatic
knowing that 90 of your thoughts or you
today are the same thoughts than
yesterday
we tend to get lost in this loop and the
question is
when i start to practice
being aware of things
that bring me a sense of comfort that
bring me a sense of peace or maybe that
that give me a break right from
some of what i'm going through
you're starting to build pathways in
your brain right
you're starting to change the topography
of your brain
and then it becomes easier and easier
for you
to access that response and
and i want listeners here to really
understand
the amazing gift that
that amazing remarkable machine in
between their ears
the brain is so powerful yet it's also
we have a responsibility
to train ourselves if we want to get
better when we want to get better
we already know our brain already know
how what how to focus
on things that hurt that are painful
it's important for us to create also
circuitry to create neural pathways
in the brain that bring that awareness
of what is actually resourceful for me
that person that moment that experience
that sensation
what brings me a sense of comfort a
sense of joy what brings me a sense of
relief
because the more we practice being aware
of that and that's why i'm going back to
the idea from earlier saying
don't wait for pain to practice practice
even and especially i want to say when
when the pain is less
or is not there, practice the
the awareness of saying oh yeah right
now
i'm actually i may be okay or right now
the pain is actually a little less
it may still be here but let's
acknowledge that it's a little less
because in that statement means
there is flexibility there is an ability
for me
to change my experience everything is
temporary
all sensations all emotions everything
is fleeting and temporary
so for us to be involved in that
transition from one state to the other
is a beautiful thing and i
I hope can feel really
empowering can remember people of their
own power
Because one of the questions we did get
was
from a long time user she was asking how
can you stay positive
when you have constant pain and you feel
limited and you know physical activities
you can engage in and i think what we're
talking about
does address you know a big way
and a big approach that you can take to
maintaining that positivity
simply to acknowledge when you feel it
or simply to acknowledge when you
you know moments little moments little
parts of your body that don't have
pain or feel neutral.
At the same time
we live in a society where we're being
told that
we have to be strong we have to keep
pushing
you know if you're expressing
you know sadness pain this and that
that's the sign of weakness
and that's amazingly unhealthy on so
many levels
and so i agree with the importance of
i agree with you and myself from earlier
saying we have to really tap into that
wellness
having said that it's so crucially
important for us to also acknowledge and
give space for us
to be with what doesn't feel positive
because if i keep on
ignoring suppressing repressing
what my body is trying to say to me
when we keep on pushing down the sadness
the stress
eventually it'll come back you know with
a vengeance you know
it'll bite us in
in the later on so the importance for
us
at times to create space to say okay I
don't feel good right now
let me be with it and again the the
importance of
us to create a safe space whether it's
within a support group
whether it's with the help of
technology
of practitioners and we you know
there's so many ways for
for us to create that space where we
can be honest with ourselves
because i think we've been told even
lately recently i live in
in Glendale, California and i've
started to see
signs saying stay positive stay
optimistic do this do that
which reminds me of campaigns i've seen
other countries
telling people stay positive and here
it's dangerous because it tells people
well if you're not positive you're not
doing the right thing
and that's not fair because being
sad being in pain feeling depressed
these are
all normal human experiences and we're
entitled to them
we have a right to not always feel good
and so when we keep on always feeling
good or trying to feel good
number one this is not possible this is
not health so it creates
unrealistic expectations and it's just
gonna do nothing but really
you know make us push down
or ignore you know normal human
experiences
does that make sense, so striking that
balance here is so
so important for our health and so i'm
saying that
so that people can so we can be as a
reminder to myself to you to all the
listeners
to let's be human and
compassionate
we can't feel always good
there is a fun
book that's called the antidote
happiness for people who can't stand
positive thinking
by a british columnist to the
guardian yeah
and that's the idea it says if you keep
on trying to stay always positive what's
gonna happen is you're gonna get
detached from reality
because reality is not always you know
rosy and
and pleasant and great at times it's
painful and for us to be able to say i
acknowledge that
i'm gonna sit with it and i'm gonna
tap into the resources inner resources
outer resources available to me
and maybe just talking to a friend and
say i'm not feeling good right now
right and just acknowledging it
sometimes can have amazingly therapeutic
benefits of just that honesty with
ourselves because that's when we like
that's when oftentimes people will go
that's when there's a deep breath that
come that's when the tears
may start to be shed that's when we
start to reclaim our humanity
right and that's the
starting point for us to say okay
i can, all of what i'm
experiencing is okay
it's normal and now let me see what are
the tools in my toolbox
that i can use to move in the direction
i want to move towards.
And one of the
tools now that is
accessible to a lot of people i won't
say all because
there's a huge question of like how do
we make this accessible technology more
accessible to
populations that don't have access right
now but for
people that do have privilege of
accessing like apps and things like
Flowly
you know how do you see technology
playing into your work
and because you've been in this field
for quite a while how has it shaped your
work
where do you see it going?
you know
that's funny because
when you first approach me
you know what shall we talk about and
the first word that come to mind
when i thought of Flowly was
democratization of
of health right, of health care
giving power back to the people
everything we've talked about
in terms of like that self-empowerment
process of saying you can do something
Let us help you
practice some skills you know for you to
feel better to feel more
to feel healthier to feel more
imbalanced so technology
is honestly giving us
opportunities amazing opportunities
for us to reach out to some population
that may not be able to
reach out i'm working with some clients
you know who couldn't come see me
because they may have physical
limitations
they may not be mobile they may
not want to spend three hours in public
transportation
just to come see me and first to be
able to offer this kind of services
also will reduce costs drastically if
i don't have to you know drive for an
hour or two
that means these are all costs that i
don't that people don't have to
bear
and so that gives us opportunity
not only to work with people who
who couldn't be with us because of
physical limitations
but also in terms of
physical distance i'm working with
people from in many countries
around the world
and it's quite amazing for us
to be able to connect on that level and
many people tell us well
you know is it working like this and
online is it the same thing
as working together in the same room and
i would say yes
but no it's not these are different
experiences
but there are things that we can do
online that we couldn't do
in that we can do in person
it opened doors
that i think we're starting to see the
the potential and the possibilities
and when it comes to apps again i
think a lot of people can't afford
necessarily
to have physical therapy to see health
practitioners
but they may be able
to you know they can maybe afford like
this kind of technology because
that's an amazing
way for to accompany them into that
self-empowerment process into that
self-healing process
Pierre, I think we're gonna
have to come back and do a part two
interview with you because
we ran over time and there's a lot
more questions I want to ask you so
let's definitely plan on doing that
let's do another interview
before we end this i want to tell
everyone please check out Pierre's work
you can look him up by his name online
you know any more questions please
submit it to the Flowly social media or
in our app community send me questions
under the post that i just made and
we'll be sure to ask Pierre more
questions but
thank you Pierre so much for coming on
we'll talk about resources we'll talk
about Covid in our next part interview
but thank you i really appreciate it
Thank you so much Celine
Thank you very much
