Episode 47 - Mandy Martini
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Mel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Permission to be Human, the podcast. I'm your host Mel Findlater mother, coach, and curator of Permission to be Human, the company and community. If you're a mom, know a mom, or want to be a mom, and you crave getting out in the world to make a difference, then you're in the right place. This is a space for moms like you to connect with yourself, your purpose, and your big audacious dreams.
Because when you feel your best, you can better you, your family, and the wider world. Let's do this.
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Okay today, I feel so privileged to have. Our speaker, come and talk to us today. We have Mandy Martini Chihuailaf yup. And she is here today to share her story. From a totally different perspective than, [00:01:00] than I am used to in my every day. Mandy is an indigenous writer and teacher. Who has spent the last seven years helping people around the world live without stress and trauma. Through her online work, she's been recognized by the global nonprofit organization. The crisis, text line. As a mental health leader to follow and learn from. Her dream is to continue sharing the knowledge and perspective of her people to show that indigenous wisdom can help us to not only survive the stress and demands of today's society, but also thrive. And I really loved my conversation with Mindy and feel just, you know, honored to.
Share in that wisdom that she has, and it gave me. Totally new perspective on the way my body is responding. Two times of stress. So stick around to learn something new and hear a beautiful [00:02:00] story.
Mel: All right. Welcome. Hi, Mandy.
Mandy: Hi.
Mel: I love, , that you're here with us today. Tell us a little bit about who's Mandy.
Mandy: Well, so my, , my Western name is Mandy Martini and my native name is K'wien Chihuailaf, which means, K'wien means moon and Choylap means Miss Birding of Royal Lake. I'm an Indigenous teacher. I teach mental health and trauma, stress specifically.
And helping people live a life without it. So helping them understand their bodies so they don't have to keep living their lives with trauma. Amazing.
Mel: And I'm really excited as a non Indigenous person to Learn some of the knowledge that you and the generations past have, have in all of this. Cause mental health is a, is a challenging thing for many of us and anything that we can do to [00:03:00] support that along the way and is yeah, needed definitely.
Mandy: It is. Yes. And what, whereabouts are you based? I'm in upstate New York between Onondaga Nation Territory and Catskills. Brilliant. Yeah. Excellent.
Mel: So, you've told us a little bit in terms of your, who you are. Maybe dive into that a little bit more.
Mandy: Yes. So, I, maybe I should start with how, how I got here.
I started teaching. Sure. So yeah, so I, I moved away from my family when I was 19, and almost immediately I went through trauma, about nine months into moving to living in Los Angeles, and went through sexual assault, and went through domestic violence, and [00:04:00] so school shootings. It was just one thing after another.
And I had for a long time, you know, since high school, I think, or middle school, always thought that, you know, we have to adapt to Western culture and listen to, because that's, you know, the, the main thing we hear. And there's the only thing we hear really around us. So I, I was trying really hard to fit in and to become, you know, westernized and I just listened to what this culture or this society told me to do with the trauma I've been through, right?
So I went through eight years of therapy and I did everything meditation, yoga, like every self help book and all these things. And it wasn't until I was living with domestic violence and I was like, this is, I really didn't believe I was going to get out of that. It was [00:05:00] becoming very dangerous and very, you know, I was counting my days and I I was like, this is, this is it.
I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna leave like without being part of, remembering who I am. So I actually got some, my traditional tattoos tattooed on me just as a reminder, because we say that, that's how our ancestors recognized us when we pass away. So, and then I started letting my body release the trauma I've been through the way I was, had been taught before.
And this had been like eight years of trauma that I just been, just been piling up inside of me. I was so overwhelmed and exhausted. I was, you know, for anyone who's lived with trauma for a long time, or even, or stress, you know, know how exhausting it is and just drains every part of you. [00:06:00] And the moment I started doing this I started getting my energy back and I started seeing a way out.
I started seeing like opportunities or ways for me to get out. So, that's actually like two months later is how I actually got out. So I think that when we live with trauma, you know, we, it's hard to see possibilities. It's hard to see different ways to You know, because we're so focused on just surviving.
So I think it's just to help my mind and my body to be more clear and to get that clarity. And I yeah, I made it out. And then I was actually in a support group for other women who had survived domestic violence. And they, you know, went around the table and everyone sharing their stories. And then when I was sharing mine and they're like, you're so calm, [00:07:00] like, how can you be so calm after what you've been through?
And I told them, told them about my people. And I told them about how we let. Stress and trauma, how we finish the survival response in our body, so we don't have to live with it. So you don't get triggered anymore, and you don't have to live with it anymore. So they asked me to teach them, and one thing led to another, and I now have an online program with people in the community.
40 countries. So that's how I got to start teaching it.
Mel: Thank you for sharing that. You know, a couple of things come to mind. One is that like, I just want to breathe into that. Like that's, that's a lot. That's a lot to, you know, we didn't get the detail of that, but I, and I can't even imagine what that trauma for so long was like on top of, on top of, you know, generations of trauma and stress as well.
And You know, [00:08:00] your, your calmness and your demeanor really shows that you have been able to take it, like, release it from your body, right? Because, you know, Permission to be Human is the name of this podcast, and a lot of that, for me, is really tapping into the fact that As a human, we have things that happen, too, that things that we do, but also we have all these emotions and these feelings and these things that, like, we are a body as well as our mind, and we so often want to, you know, I can think of some people, myself included, that at times don't want to talk about the hard things because it brings it up again.
Right? But what happens is we hold it all in and what you're expressing is this way of letting it out and moving through that. And it is only through that that we're going to heal and move on.
Mandy: And it's not even, you know, like a lot of people, you know, like [00:09:00] you said, they don't want to talk about it and you don't have to do it because of what's going on is it's your body is in this right response.
So it's your body that needs to finish it. Now, there's nothing you can talk about that will. Like it's, you know, you know, it's. It's like telling a plant to grow. It doesn't matter if the plant has to grow, you can't. So it's, it's a natural, it's a process, a cycle, just how we move through a cold or move through a period or move through a pregnancy and birth.
You know, all these are cycles and it has to happen inside of your body. And just going from that, you know, living so many years with trauma and getting to experience healing and how it feels like, you know, like all the weight lifting from you. It just made me realize how, like, this is the reason why my family fought so hard since like 1880s when we were putting [00:10:00] reservations, when the whole reservation system started and they fought so hard ever since to protect our traditional knowledge and to protect our land because that's where we were able to practice our knowledge and our culture.
So I just like, this is the reason, you know, there's how important it is because once we get into like these societies and my great grandmother, she warned about that when we got in, put into reservations, she said that. that is going to make us forget. It's going to make us forget how to listen. And that's what we're seeing in this culture, right?
People don't know how to listen to what they're going through. They don't understand that they're in survival. They just automatically go by like, you know, like some people would describe it as robots or like zombie, you know? Yeah. And we have to remember that's not a natural way of living, like survival is just how we you know, our survival response is how to save our [00:11:00] lives, not how to live our lives.
So it's a big difference.
Mel: Wow, that phrase alone, our survival response is how to say that one again, because it was
Mandy: So we haven't, I don't know if I can say exactly the same, but yeah, we have our survival responses to save our lives, not to live our lives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not how we live. Right? Yeah, exactly.
So beautiful. And that's why we, you know, our whole culture is based on balance, you know, understanding, the dualities of the universe and creating balance. Because if we are in balance, if the earth is unbalanced, if the water is balanced, that creates, you know, you know, it's a domino effect. It's just, we get sick, the earth gets sick.
A lot of you are sick, you know, everything. So, and yeah, yeah. So how do
Mel: [00:12:00] we, how do we do that? How do we get to that stage where we help our bodies move through that cycle?
Mandy: So that's what I, I teach in my program is I help people understand these responses we have and be able to, so like my great grandmother said, you know, we forget how to listen.
So I help people listen to their bodies. So people are able to recognize whenever they get into a survival cycle and they know exactly what to do to let the body finish it. Yeah. Can you give an
Mel: example of like one thing that we would do to help listen?
Mandy: Yeah. So, well, something that you might have noticed yourself that your body does, and it's whenever you're angry or nervous or upset or anything like that, right?
Your body starts shaking, right? So that is your body or after you're a mother, right? So after your birth, your body probably started shaking. So that's how your body resets itself back to balance. So [00:13:00] that's how it resets all the adrenaline and cortisol, which is what we call survival energies or what my people call survival energies.
That's how it reset it back to balance. That
Mel: is super interesting. I've never thought about that response. In that way before, because that's definitely my response when I'm super anxious or worried my daughter as well. And, you know, and I've never thought about it in that way. That's such an interesting and lovely way to think about it is that it's actually doing its job.
It's resetting. My body said it's
Mandy: balance. That's so interesting too, because when I see people go through the program, so there's like different lessons and they get to write in the comment section and they, they're like, Oh my God, my, my body's been trying to help me this entire time. You know, like it's been trying, but it's just been like one thing after another.
It's just. kept it trapped, right? The survival response hasn't been able to finish. So it's, and that's what [00:14:00] our, our healers keep saying that, you know, stuck energy becomes sick energy. So that's where the illness has come from. You know, it's like it's, It's like stopping a river to create a dam, right?
You put, they put up all those concrete walls, keep it trapped. After a while, we start seeing imbalance with the water, start creating toxicity and start affecting the life in the water, right? Same thing with us. So we're keeping that survival energy trapped and all the adrenaline and cortisol, it's just wears us down and start to make us sick.
Yeah. Yeah. And yet
Mel: if we shift the story in our mind about what our body is doing and why, then it releases that, resistance. Yeah. Remove the
Mandy: dam. Right? Exactly. And it's almost like people in the society forget that we are like a river, right? We are. [00:15:00] That's how we are. You know, they believe that, you know, it's been a dam for so long that people really and you like everywhere you see is like people living the same way.
So you sort of believe that's natural, right? That's normal. But it's, but it's not, right? So like understanding, like, well, how does balance actually look like? How does living in balance actually look like? How does health really looks like? And it's not learning how to cope with your pain or learning how to live with your struggle with trauma and stress and anxiety and depression.
It's living without it. Right. So that's, that's what I'm trying to help people see so they know that they don't have to live like that. Yeah,
Mel: yeah, that's a really interesting one, you know, because so many people are like, I don't, I don't want to cope anymore. Right. That's what we're taught
Mandy: is that's exhausting, but it is
Mel: absolutely exhausting.
Yeah, it is. [00:16:00] Yeah. And how to like help that move through. through and allow that actually to just simply
Mandy: do its job and move through. It is. And once you start paying attention to your body too, you'll notice that these, like symptoms or the, even your person, the way you think of your personality is actually a survival response.
So like people start to identify as like, Oh, I'm an introvert, or I'm, I'm an anxious person. I'm a nervous person, or, you know, I'm just not a happy person, you know? But it's, it's actually a survivor response, you know. So anxiety and stuff like that and pushing people away, you know, that's your flight response and always getting angry and frustrated and, you know, it's your fight response.
And, you know, we have all these things. It's just your body letting you know the state it's in. Yeah.[00:17:00]
Mel: Yeah. My mind's going all the, all these stories. I'm going through each of those in my mind. I'm like, yep, I was in that one then and I was in that one then. Yeah. As you
Mandy: speak. Yeah. Yeah. And you cycle through those usually, you know, it's not always the fight goes, you know, you go through all these different and usually, usually when you, your body has tried to fight or flight for so long.
Like, it gets so tired that eventually, like, our second or third survival response becomes often numbing because you're so exhausted. So, another survival response we do have is numbing ourselves so that we can keep going. Hmm.
Mel: Yep. Yeah. Identify with that one. And you know, finding whether that be internal or finding that's where addictions and everything come into, right?
We have different behaviors that we can take up and, and use to numb [00:18:00] because we don't know how to
Mandy: move through that. Yeah. Distractions even.
Mel: Yeah. Yeah. Scrolling the phone.
So tell us, okay. So what would you say your big audacious dream
Mandy: is? It's to keep sharing this knowledge for more and more people to live without trauma and to understand, like, what stress is, like, stress is what's, like, living with stress is what becomes trauma, right?
That's becomes that wound that we live with. So, For people to understand the power of that relationship with their body and understand that no matter what they're going through in their life, there will always be be okay, right? Because they have the knowledge to let it go and to keep sharing that and to keep sharing with other generations.
Like, I think I mentioned to you quickly that. I don't, [00:19:00] me and my partner are working on a project in the Catskills of creating like a learning center, Indigenous learning center. So, I have, my online program is for anyone around the world, but we also letting it fund our project in the Catskills to help other Indigenous people, relearn this knowledge.
That's amazing. Yeah. So next thing. It's it's beautiful when you can, you know, share with other people who are from all different walks of life and have them, you know, be a part of what we're trying to do in our community as well.
Mel: Yeah. And, and so needed. Definitely. You know, for me, from a very different walk of life, I, with my strength of curiosity, am so curious and [00:20:00] about, you know, what is that life like and what are these learnings and and what can, what can I learn from this, right?
From this history that, you know, is horrible in so many ways and yet has so much survival to offer. In it in other ways. And I, I love that you are opening up to the wider world whilst also working with the indigenous world. And the knowledge that you're sharing is. incredible. Like that's, that's a world changing if we can all get in tune with our bodies and finish our trauma cycles and, and trauma.
I, I, I have a question around how would you define trauma? Cause we keep using that word.
Mandy: Yeah. Trauma is a wound. So I keep, Using an example of, like, let's say you have a knife in your hand or arm, [00:21:00] something like that, like a, like something, like a physical wound that you can see, and trauma is like living with that wound all the time without removing that knife.
So, that's what the adrenaline cortisol, when it stays in your body, creates a wound inside of you, it's only that you can't see it. So, when you release these, the survival energies, when you let your body reset itself and come back to balance, it's like removing that knife from the wound, so your body can actually heal.
So we, we can absolutely live without trauma. Like we cannot prevent stress because we never know like we're living in a world where all kinds of things can happen, right? And, but we can prevent it from becoming trauma. So we can let your body move through the cycle, the survival cycle that it's meant to do, finish it so you don't have to live with it and it doesn't have to become trauma or a wound.
Brilliant. [00:22:00] Yeah.
Mel: I'm excited to see the physical space come into fruition. That sounds really exciting to me. These online world opens the door to so many things and we can reach so many more people and there's nothing quite like getting together in person.
Mandy: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm excited to see that. Okay. So if you were to
Mel: give a tip to our audience of something, so, you know, we're talking to moms and people in the mothering space, whoever that might be, who have these big audacious dreams who want to get out there and do.
their thing in the world. Some of them know what that is and some of them don't yet. Some of them might be stuck in that survival mode that you're talking about and not able to see possibility, as you also mentioned. So I'm curious what you would [00:23:00] like to say to those people
Mandy: listening. Yeah, I, I have a lot of, Mothers coming into into my program and, you know, talking also about like, you know, not wanting to, you know, wanting to show their children, that they're not just angry and frustrated and stressed and, you know, uh Mm-Hmm.
wanting to show them a better way of living. Right. That's, I think that's what's every mother wants to do. Right. Just show a good example and teach your children how to, you know. Be okay as well. Right. And, that's something that's something that's completely possible. I want any, if any mother or any person is listening to this to know that, like, this.
response or reaction to survival, like the anger and frustration and the stress, and it's not part of who they are. It's not who you are or who you're meant to be or stay there. You know, you don't have to do [00:24:00] that at all. Your body is completely possible. It's, it's, it's, It was meant to always release these responses.
You can never forget that, you know without our ability to heal, the life wouldn't even be possible. Like healing is a requirement, right? Otherwise it's, it just can't continue. So just being, I mean, like I mentioned before, like pay attention to these. Responses you have when you're angry or frustrated, you know, when your body is trying to release and reset itself, when it's starting to tremble or shake or, you know, or you have a twitchy, some body parts are twitched and stuff like that, just let it do it, you know, let your body move through that to release, any adrenaline and cortisol or any stress you have in your body.
So paying attention and being [00:25:00] aware. You know, what is the response and what is you, you know, there's two different things. You know, you're not the same person if you are in survival as you are, you know, really you. What's the response and what's just
Mel: you. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes me think of how.
You know, mothers who have, have, have birthed their children, like that's a, that's a trauma. So all of us have had it, right? We've all been, you know, been through that. And I think so many of us still do have that, that wound there that is not being healed.
Mandy: Allowed to heal. Yeah. So for us, like after my birth, it's very important that then we let the mother release.
And, but it's not something you see in Western society. So a lot of, you see a lot of postpartum depression and, you know, struggle after birth that would not be [00:26:00] necessary if people, but, but the good news is that it's, you know, it's never too late. So, yeah. Yeah. What would
Mel: that release, what does that release look like when you say, you know, in your culture, that's what you, you do.
Mandy: So I don't know if you remember your body shaking after birth. Yeah. So, so for some people who reached out to me, they say that their doctors or, or nurses had them stop shaking. So, so trying to prevent it from shaking or they were stopped by the epidural. So what I meant is we place a lot of focus there to let the mother go through that.
So to finish it until it's over. So that's why we do so that when I help people go through, like, years of trauma, like, so some people that come to me have been, some people haven't been through any trauma, it's more stress than being unhappy, but some people have lived through [00:27:00] trauma for 40, 50 years.
And we do something very similar to like helping them. The body basically get back to those situations and to release it. So, because the body still believes is still living in it. So it's a, but during birth is something that happens automatically. Like you can. It's very hard to get into stuff, you know, it's, yeah.
Mel: And I think there's something about the stories that we tell ourself around it though, right? So like, you know, I'm kind of reliving my birth right now and my shaking was during the, the pregnancy and we all thought something was, Totally awry, right? Which led down all these other decisions and roots that we went down.
When actually if I think of it with a completely different story and meaning behind it, then it's like oh, my body knows that like it's it's been this long and it's time to to let that go a little. Right? It's time to release. Which is a
Mandy: totally different mindset. [00:28:00] It is. And I keep having people that, you know, reach out to me and they'd be like, you know, they went through something like like an upsetting thing with a family member or something happened.
And they were really upset going to bed and then they like wake up in the middle of the night and the body is shaking, you know, and their partner is like, what's going on? What's wrong? You know, they're like, nothing is good. It's all good.
Mel: Just letting
Mandy: it go. Yeah. This is what I was supposed to do. So, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mel: That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I'm going to reflect on that a ton now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Anything else you want to say before I start asking you how we can find
Mandy: you? Hmm. No, I, I think yeah, I think I got it.
Mel: Awesome. No, that's great. I think that was so powerful. You know, just a, [00:29:00] such a meaningful reminder to.
Just be us, right? And that, and to me, what I've also gotten is that reminder that to be me isn't to be my responses. And those are two different things. And I think as, as humans, and especially as mothers who, you know, get our buttons pushed in all sorts of ways every day, that is a really powerful reminder.
Mandy: Yeah, I really love your podcast name permission to be human because it's something we I talked with the members in my program a lot is, you know, the society doesn't really allow us the space to be human. You know, you have so much responsibilities and so much pressure that you often like people usually.
that put themselves last and don't have the time to listen, or let their bodies be human, right? Like we're forgetting they were human beings were not robots going through even though we live in an industrial society. We are not robots. We [00:30:00] have these natural responses that we have had for, Forever, right?
They didn't stop just because we started driving cars and using cell phones. We're still human beings, so can't forget about that. That's
Mel: great. Okay, so if people are listening and they're thinking, yes, this is exactly what I need. I need to chat to Mandy more. I need to read more of what she's doing. How can they find you?
Mandy: I would say go to m martini. com and there's a free class right there at the top of the page and in that free class I go over much more in depth too about how traumas stay stuck in our bodies and how What happens when you release it. And I know a lot of people email me after that. And finally, after years of living with stress and trauma, I just feel hope that they can, that can change as well.[00:31:00]
So,
Mel: and hope is what so much, so much of what we need, right? Yeah. There's a way out of this trauma response and back to ourselves.
Mandy: Yes. And to teach it to future generations as well so that, you know, our children can grow up and, you know, be able to live in balance instead of living in survival.
Mel: Beautiful. Okay. Thank you so much, Mandy.
Mandy: Thank you.
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Mel: That is it, folks. This has been Mel Findlater on Permission to Be Human, the podcast, and I am so glad that you have joined us here today and hope that you have taken away some tidbits that will help you go away, connect with your big audacious dream, and make that massive impact in the world that you are dying to make.
If you liked today's [00:32:00] episode, please, please, please Like it, share it. Think of one person. Think of one person that you think would also like it and send it on over to them. Let's get this out there and more moms feeling like themselves. Inspired, Dreaming big and out there. Please do head on over to find me on Facebook with permission to be human or Instagram or you can even Off me an email and say hello.
Have permission to be human always at gmail. com say hello and let me know that you listened. What did you like about it? I would love to hear if you didn't like it. I don't really want to know. Just kidding. You can share that if you want. I would love to know, however, who you are. Let's connect. Let's find out what you want more of.
I want to hear from you and I want to make it what would be useful to you. [00:33:00] As always, remember that you have permission to dream big, permission to feel big, and permission to be you. You have complete and full permission to be human. For real, you do.
