“What’s in the brain is in the body, and what’s in the body is in the brain.”

In this episode, Nick speaks with Ava Dasya Rasa about how trauma changes the way we interact with the world and how various therapies like EMDR, DBT, Brain Spotting, and even talk therapy can help us process, heal, and move forward with joy.

What to listen for:

• What it means to be trauma-informed
• How trauma affects us throughout our entire lives
• How we have more power than we actually believe we do in all situations
• Listen in as we discuss brain spotting, EMDR, talk therapy, and other ways to process and heal from trauma

“I can feel safe in the dark night. And it’s about feeling safe, both somatically and psychomotionally. So, most people have to enter some kind of a container relationship.”

• Learn how Ava sits in the deep end of her feelings and what she’s done to be able to do this on her own
• How important it is for us to truly face our fears, emotions, and traumas and that it’s okay to not do it alone
• The importance of having a “safe container” to be able to do our deep and personal healing work
• The power of being intentional and unmoveable until you’re healing is complete

“Have a beginner’s mind, begin again, and take baby steps. And you may not be able to know what self-love is at the beginning or compassion or empathy.”

• Show yourself grace and just keep beginning anew
• How this life is a journey full of starts and stops and starts again
• Hear how Ava has handled this and how she works with her clients around this topic
• How we can brace ourselves and love ourselves while we heal

About Ava Dasya Rasa:

Ava is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, LCSW-C, Transpersonal Psychotherapist specializing in Trauma, Grief, and Contemplative Spirituality & Renewal. She is an author, poet, speaker, teacher, and spiritual director. Ava Dasya holds two graduate degrees: a Master of Social Work and a Master of Arts in Theology. And she earned a graduate Certificate from Vanderbilt Divinity School in Religion, Gender, & Sexuality.

She is the Founder of Dragonfly Trauma Counseling Center in Albuquerque, NM, where she serves clients using somatic and neuro-based trauma therapies and Mindfulness-based interventions. Ava Dasya is the author of TRANSFIGURATIONS 30 Meditations Inspired by Transforming Trauma & Spirituality.

• www.dragonflytrauma.com
• www.avadasyarasa.com
• www.linkedin.com/avadasyarasa
• www.instagram.com/dragonflytrauma

Resources:

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

Nick McGowan (00:00.078)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and today on the show I have Ava. Ava, I’m not going to attempt to even try to butcher your last name, and I know there’s a meaning behind it. So why don’t you just get us started with your last name?

Ava Dasya Rasa (00:20.058)
So my name is Ava Dasya is my first name and my last name is Rasa. And my birth name is Rasa and it is found in many languages and it is especially important in Sanskrit. And it’s found in the Hindu sacred scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita. And it has two meanings. One is the taste, flavor or sweet nectar of the divine. And the other meaning is found in Hindu aesthetics and it means passion.

for example with rasa you play with passion. Now dasya is a type of a rasa. There’s like seven or eight nine types of rases and dasya means to serve or service and eva means the living one. So my name means the living one in service to the divine.

Nick McGowan (01:06.382)
Jeez, so I guess that’s what you were meant to do then. Like you were kind of set up for that. And it’s interesting.

Ava Dasya Rasa (01:14.555)
Well, in full transparency, I wasn’t born Ava Dasya. I was born with a different name and I took Ava eight years ago on a spiritual path that I’ve been on and I was able to reverse at that time a terminal diagnosis by going plant-based and I was in my meditation one day and

Nick McGowan (01:23.127)
Okay.

Ava Dasya Rasa (01:36.602)
in this particular path that I’m on, you can take a new name or not. And it came to me in my meditation that I ought to take the new name Ava, meaning the living one, because now I’m going to live. They gave me a year, year and a half, and I was able to reverse everything plus a whole host of other chronic things by going plant based. So that’s how that name came up.

Nick McGowan (01:46.007)
Hmm.

Nick McGowan (01:55.402)
So I always ask people to tell us what they do for a living and something that’s a little odd or bizarre about them, but I think you just kind of kicked us off with that. So you want to run with that a little bit more, tell us something terminal, and then there you go.

Ava Dasya Rasa (02:05.281)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was an imminently life-threatening progressive illness and they gave me about a year to a year and a half. And I said, well, that’s unacceptable. And they just thought I was nuts and in denial. And I said, well, you know, I’ve got work to do on the planet. And I know and my body wisdom knows that this isn’t my time. And they gave me a diet to go on and I looked at it and I said, I’m not going on this. If I go on this, I’ll be gone in 72 hours. So I went home and I did some research and I found somebody else with the exact same blood values, same gender, age.

on to a specialist and the specialist had told them to go get a book called Forks Over Knives, which is a cookbook that’s based on the documentary. And I have never even seen the documentary to this day because I choose not to have a TV. So I haven’t even seen, I’ve never been on Netflix. I have no clue what this, I know it’s about plant-based stuff. But I, the doctor told her to just take the book and go away for three months and come back and she did and she was able to reverse it. So I thought, well hell, I’ve got nothing to lose. So I

Nick McGowan (03:03.575)
Yeah.

Ava Dasya Rasa (03:06.508)
And then we redid my blood work and it reversed a stage. My doctor came out and said, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean? She’s like, well, what are you doing? I said, why? She’s like, these numbers, these numbers, like it’s improved, it’s gone back a stage. I’m like.

Fabulous, now I’m on a mission. Now I’m really on a mission. You can’t stop me now. And so 12 weeks later, we did the blood work again and it went back another. And a few months later, it was rolled back to normal. And I’ve been able to sustain really great health of the first time in more than two decades. And it was so good that I felt like Lazarus being risen from the dead. And I was like, well, I am gonna seize this moment. So at the age of 60, I went back and did my master’s in social work.

Nick McGowan (03:21.029)
Yeah.

Ava Dasya Rasa (03:50.11)
Yeah, I know, I don’t look it. But, I mean, that’s how good I felt because I had been plagued by chronic illnesses for two decades that left me really debilitated. And so I was just shooting to live. I wasn’t even thinking about the chronic stuff. So when that reversed and then all these other things went, I literally had energy I hadn’t had in two and a half decades and I thought I am on a mission now. That’s it, I’m not stopping, I’m not looking back. So that’s it in a nutshell. I am a licensed clinical social worker.

And I’m a trauma therapist who specializes in neuro-somatic trauma therapies, particularly brain spotting. I do EMDR, somatic attachment mindfulness based stuff, grief repair and recovery, and post-traumatic spiritual growth and contemplative spirituality. But the neuro-somatic, which means brain body, is really kind of my specialty.

Nick McGowan (04:49.822)
There’s a lot of different ways that we can go with that. I want to touch on The fact that you were able to see progress and then go okay. Well now I’m on a mission like you can’t stop me at all Did you also think about the traumas that you had and the things that you’re putting in your body like why you were sick? Did you start to piece that together?

Ava Dasya Rasa (05:10.186)
Yeah, yeah, fantastic question, Nick. I mean.

I didn’t have an epiphany then about my trauma history because I’m intimately familiar with my trauma history. I came from a family of origin that was rife with domestic violence and child abuse and poverty and undiagnosed on managed mental health stuff. So I knew very early on, and when I left home as a teenager and moved into New York City, I knew that I wanted to change.

And change for most people is terribly terrifying and scary and frightening. And there are different stages of change. I kind of skipped all these intermediate stages and went right to action plan. I knew that if I wanted to live a life radically different than my family of origin, I was going to put myself in therapy, in recovery, and I was going to work it like nobody’s business. And I was like a teenager. I was 19. And so I knew about the dynamics in my family and that trauma. And I had medical trauma on top.

Nick McGowan (06:04.722)
Mm-hmm. Damn.

Ava Dasya Rasa (06:14.528)
of it. So my entire life has been committed to personal growth, evolution.

spiritual development. And so for me, change was like my salvation. That was my ticket. Change for me was going to get me my freedom and my liberty. And so I’ve always moved toward change. I’ve always moved toward the fire. I always go deep. I don’t struggle with going beneath the surface. That’s where I live, move, and have my being is in the deep. So that’s, I think, a gift I’ve been given and a grace. And I’ve really just been

Nick McGowan (06:28.27)
Hmm.

Ava Dasya Rasa (06:52.004)
deeply engaged at that level. And my whole life I’ve incurred other traumas. And now answering your question where I am now, I yes, absolutely look back and I’ve done, I’m very involved in academic research right now and I can tell you that.

Trauma causes your inflammation markers to increase very, very exponentially. And a lot of my illnesses were all inflammation based. And I am absolutely, absolutely convinced that so much of my somatic challenges, my health issues were, the root of them was the trauma that was stored in my body and it was manifesting in these various kinds of illnesses. And there’s evidence-based studies that show that people have certain kinds of trauma

responses. So for example, if somebody goes into a phrase mode, let’s say a parasympathetic mode rather than flight-fight, they often manifest issues that are gastrointestinal in origin, like Crohn’s disease, IBS, GERD, that kind of thing. And then people who go into fight often present with cardiac issues or neck-back issues. There’s a correlation. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was a combination of things, but certainly the plan

Nick McGowan (07:47.093)
Mm-hmm.

Ava Dasya Rasa (08:08.868)
Camp Base is the catalyst and I wasn’t going to look back.

Nick McGowan (08:14.81)
like there are some people that are going to listen to this or that just listen to this and grab their stomach or grab their back or grab their throat and thought about the places that they can feel that trauma without actually understanding that that’s what they’re feeling. And I think this is an important thing for us to be able to get into because there are certain people and really only kind of a handful of people that can really do this that I’ve actually met

really just sit in the deep end and fucking stay there and not get out of it and not get out until you’re done. Because a lot of people, they fear change, they don’t want change, it’s the fear of the unknown. Like we all think of the unknown unknowns in that sense and you don’t have no idea what sort of monsters are down there or whatever. There are certain people that can just go down there and sit. My partner is one of those people. She’ll just sit in the deep end and work through the shit and when she’s done, she’s done and it’s done. And it’s a, it’s a skillset.

in some ways a superpower, but there are people that actively listen to this show that really do the work and feel like they’re doing the work but can’t fucking get past something, or have such a difficult time maybe allowing themselves to sit in that. So can you give us some practical steps of like how people can actually do that from the space of their house?

Ava Dasya Rasa (09:17.322)
Yeah.

Ava Dasya Rasa (09:38.654)
Sure, I’m happy to do so and I think that’s a fantastic observation. I am an outlier. The majority of people on the bell curve move through stages of change like pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. I think it is a superpower and I think it’s a gift from the divine. I…

I can feel safe in the dark night. And it’s about feeling safe, both somatically and psychomotionally. So most people have to enter some kind of a container relationship, whether it’s with a trauma-informed coach or a trauma therapist like myself or even a spiritual director or companion that’s trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed that can hold space, providing what you might think is a metaphoric container. So relational, and particularly with relational wounding and attachment wounding, that’s key.

Ava Dasya Rasa (10:45.1)
the surface unless you feel really safe. And it’s not just psychological, it’s neurobiological. So one of the things I do as a therapist is I help my client that comes to me very dysregulated to co-regulate with me. So I have to be regulated. I can’t be activated by this stuff. I have to have the ability to hold space when people are in a fight, flight, or freeze mode. I can’t be reacting to that.

I have to do my inner work. That means I can’t give what I don’t have. So I think one of the reasons I can be with people who are acutely suicidal and deeply depressed and stuck and feeling like they’re working their tushy off and they can’t seem to get out and they can’t seem to get unstuck is because it’s stuck in the body. But first they have to have relational neurobiological regulation and safety. Another thing is, and this is long before the

Ava Dasya Rasa (11:45.8)
and Judith Herman going into the early 90s, I had a contemplative practice, first with Zen Buddhists and then eventually with some kind of contemplatives that were living in community in Manhattan and it was modeled on Thomas Merton’s vision of contemplation. And I entered that world and have had that practice for many decades and when I reflect back, like how the heck did I

this stuff just came out, the neurosomatic, because I was doing like Woody Allen’s psychoanalysis stuff in the 70s and then you know in the 80s and 90s I was doing more depth psychotherapy and like Jungian based stuff and insight therapy, really good stuff but still working with the prefrontal cortex and not the limbic system where trauma is stored and in the body. And I kept thinking you know in the last few years what was what was the define

variable that helped me and I realized it was my contemplative practice because what that did is it cultivated me having to be present in this moment and I had to breathe.

And when we box breather deep diaphragmatic breathing, that releases a hormone called oxytocin. And oxytocin counteracts the adrenaline and cortisol that’s being released from the amygdala and hippocampus when it’s activated from traumatic stress. So when we breathe, that gets regulated. So I did a lot of like grounding, deep breathing, walking meditation, very similar to Buddhist insight Vipassana meditation. This is a practice I have that’s called Centering Prayer, but it comes out of the deep

contemplative tradition.

Ava Dasya Rasa (13:33.362)
in the Christian tradition, but it crosses over east-west. I sat with Buddhists. I used to go to Spirit Rock in California and sit with Kornfeld’s group. And it’s all about being present and grounded and in your body and breathing and in this moment. And if we cultivate that kind of what we might say is mindfulness, it is a grounding. It’s semantically grounding. It’s neurobiologically grounding, because it acts as a different part of the brain.

than the prefrontal cortex that’s always kind of engaged in rumination and intrusive thoughts and automatic negative thoughts, it acts as a different part of the brain. And it helps ground and regulate. Does that make sense?

Nick McGowan (14:17.922)
to with the people.

That does make sense. I feel like there are certain people that are probably gonna have to go back and slow that down and kind of break that apart. And there’s, no, not at all, not at all. There are certainly listeners that get all of that and follow and track with it. I think one of the biggest things is for people to understand the presence, as you pointed out, and being able to stay present, get into the present moment, and understand what’s going on with that. So what sort of advice, and again, practical sort of tip, do you give somebody that comes in and says, I hear you, I’m along with you,

Ava Dasya Rasa (14:24.318)
Oh, sorry.

Nick McGowan (14:49.081)
in the moment, what do I do?

Ava Dasya Rasa (14:49.962)
Right, so I will say there’s a caveat, right? Because asking somebody who has a neurobiological history of being highly dysregulated, or maybe somebody with ADHD, or ADHD compounded with PTSD or complex PTSD, to ask them to sit still and be quiet can actually reactivate, and they can become dysregulated. So it can’t be done haphazardly or casually. It really, the best way to start

and doing somatic exercises. So you know one thing I tell my clients when they come to me and if they’re telling me they had an anxiety attack last night or a panic attack, this is something that’s coming out of dialectical behavioral therapy because I’m intensively trained in DBT. But one of the DBT is a skill-based therapy and it’s built on mindfulness and it’s built

Nick McGowan (15:35.934)
Mm-hmm.

Ava Dasya Rasa (15:49.796)
emotional regulation, the third is distress tolerance, and the fourth is interpersonal communication. So if somebody comes to me and says, I can’t believe it, Ava, I can’t believe it, it’s only been two days, I had an anxiety attack last night. One of the most important things they can do is something called the skill called TIP, T-I-P-P. And T stands for temperature, and what we wanna do is go get an ice pack and put it on the back of your neck, or your forehead, or your cheek.

And what happens is within 30 seconds, our heart rate goes down. And that’s called the mammalian dive effect. And for those listeners who are listening and curious, you can go on YouTube and you can put in the search bar mammalian dive effect and you can bring up a video with people with their face in a bucket of ice or water or a sink and they have a monitor and you can see the experiment. You can see how their heart rate goes down within 30 seconds because panic, anxiety, dysregulation is neurobiological.

So we have to deal with it on the biological soma body level. So the first thing is ice. The second thing is to do the box breathing if you can. If you can’t, then the next best thing would be doing something like intense exercise. And that might look like bilateral movement, like going for a really brisk walk around the block. So the T stands for temperature, I for intense exercise, P for paced breathing, which is like the boxed breathing, where you breathe in four seconds,

open your mouth, blow out for seconds, rest for seconds. And that’s it. For some people, they’re not gonna be able to do that. So it’s gonna be easier for them to just go for a brisk walk or put Motown on and start dancing. Something that’s going to get them moving, right? And especially if it’s bilateral, right? And then, because bilateral movement helps regulate neurobiologically. And then the other piece stands for paired exercise, muscle relaxation. So that would look like this.

muscles like this and then release and then do that with you know different your different limbs. But the big thing that changes is a big game changer it’s a crisis intervention skill is to get the ice. It immediately changes the landscape so that people can at least hit the what I call the pause button for 90 seconds and re-regulate.

Nick McGowan (18:08.43)
I’m so glad that you got into DBT and talked about some of that because I think that’s one of those things that people can…

not know what to do and then get even more freaked out in the moment in the middle of a panic attack or anxiety or anything then you just get more and more and more flustered and frustrated. I often think back to when I was younger how quickly I would just go off the rails basically because I had no idea what the hell to do with all the energy or what was going on. And that can be a thing that really shows its face later in life. So I want to talk about how childhood trauma really affects the things that we do later

how we need to go back through and what we can do about it. Where do you wanna start with that?

Ava Dasya Rasa (18:49.578)
Well, you’re spot on. You’re spot on because developmental trauma, which is childhood trauma, usually is rooted in attachment wounds or attachment ruptures and relational trauma. So, you know, whether a kid is physically abused or has sexual violation or has absolute neglect, it’s an attachment rupture and relationally things are ruptured.

Nick McGowan (19:00.562)
Mm-hmm.

Ava Dasya Rasa (19:18.986)
And so there has to be, so here’s the deal. And again, I’m an outlier, but I wholeheartedly believe that.

In order for us to radically transform the stuff that we hold in our brain, in our limbic system, in our body, we can’t do talk therapy alone. Talk therapy is fantastic, something like CBT and DBT. They’re brilliant modalities. And they work with the prefrontal cortex, right? They work with the part of the brain that is responsible for our executive functions, right? This part of the brain here. It’s the youngest part of our brain. Neo meaning new. It’s 440 million years old.

The oldest part of our brain is back here, the subcortical area, the primitive or lizard brain. And this is where it’s scanning 24-7 for perceived threat or danger. And then it sends signals to the amygdala and the hippocampus. And all that’s the limbic system. So if you’ve got stuff in the limbic system, you have to bypass the neocortical area and access it. And the only way to access that is to do bottom-up soma-based,

like brain spotting for example. And then we believe that there’s, from a brain spotting perspective, there’s memory capsules that are held in our brain and in our limbic system.

based on a relevant eye position and a physiological eye position, we can access those, identify them, desensitize them, process them, and resolve them. But you can’t do that just through talking. People can spend 10 years in therapy, talk therapy, the best of talk therapy, the best, and they show up in my office and they’re like, I’ve been doing this crap for freaking 10 years and I’m just being polite here. They say other things. And you know, what, WTF, right?

Nick McGowan (21:11.074)
Yeah

Ava Dasya Rasa (21:15.032)
Okay, that’s one type of client I get. The other type is somebody who’s never been in therapy and just knows something about somatics. But so we have to tend to that from the inside out. So you need both trauma-informed counseling that’s going to look at attachment wounding and maybe some grief and loss and maybe reparenting the inner child and dealing with fragmented dissociative parts. That’s called a kind of a neurobiology of integration that echoes Dan Siegel’s work. And that has to be kind of butt-

seeing the soma, the neurosoma stuff. Does that make sense?

Nick McGowan (21:49.49)
It does, it absolutely does. I find it interesting that a lot of people will think right off the bat, well I need to go talk to somebody. And I know that I’ve said on many of my episodes, if there are problems, if you feel like there’s something happening, at least go talk to somebody. And I typically will say it along the lines of at least go talk to somebody, or just start with talking with somebody. Even with some close family member or something, somebody that you feel sort of

Nick McGowan (22:19.624)
talk therapy in any sort of way is only going to get you so far. I recently read through the body keeps the score and…

Ava Dasya Rasa (22:28.634)
Right.

Nick McGowan (22:28.682)
God, that was eye-opening. And it’s absolutely true. I do find it funny how your body changes every six, seven years, but your body still keeps the score of the trauma and instantly pulls us back into that. But being able to actually see that it’s not just about talking, and that was what I was alluding to earlier, of like, what’s deeper than that? So you’d mentioned about EMDR and DBT, but I really.

Ava Dasya Rasa (22:41.791)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (22:58.716)
not DBT, brain spotting. And I want to talk about those a bit because I do processing, I have processes that I walk through and that people work with me on, acupressure, and I’m interested in literally exploring every single bit of it to be able to try it on my own, to be able to say here’s how it worked for me, or here’s how it did not, or what have you. But it’s not just about talk therapy and I think that’s a big thing for our listeners to take away from this is you can’t just talk, you have to do deeper, it’s about the body too.

Ava Dasya Rasa (23:28.63)
Well, absolutely, and I want to just really highlight, when you tell people, try to talk to somebody, it is really, really important to be able to externalize what’s going on inside, or it can lead to suicide ideation and even suicide.

attempts and completion. It can put people into extreme depressive episodes. So talking is important, particularly with a person you feel safe with initially, who can then maybe hook you up with somebody who’s trauma-informed. It’s a dialectic. It’s not either or. It’s not a dichotomous thing. It’s a dialectic. It’s both talking in a trauma-sensitized container therapeutic alliance relationship and working from the bottom up through the body. It’s both and that’s what I offer. Brain spotting has been a game changer.

Nick McGowan (23:49.741)
Yeah.

Ava Dasya Rasa (24:18.424)
just going to tell you right now in full transparency I am trained intensively in EMDR, enzymatic attachment, I’m a certified mindfulness therapist, but my practice is becoming more and more focused on brain spotting because it literally has cracked open a whole nether landscape for me personally and professionally and my clients. I’m all in, I’m all in, I’m in the process of becoming a consultant and trainer and it is

Ava Dasya Rasa (24:49.325)
It’s a game changer. It is a game changer. So it sounds like you’d like me to talk a little bit about that. Hey.

Nick McGowan (24:55.87)
Yeah, for the people that don’t know what brain spotting is, they might think of the 90s movie Trainspotting or any other random thing.

Ava Dasya Rasa (25:01.342)
Yeah. So it was founded by David Grand, Dr. David Grand. He has a practice in Manhattan. And he works with high-end athletes, professional athletes, and performers, as well as other folks. And he discovered this.

In 2003, when he was working with a 16-year-old skater, he had been working with this skater for about a year, and he was engaged in EMDR, like a lot of us. It’s a gold standard for trauma treatment. But when he was working with this person, apparently one of the challenges was that this young skater

I think she was training for some stuff professionally, and she couldn’t do the triple loop. She could do everything else but the triple loop. And he was doing an EMDR session, and at that time, he was using bilateral movement with his hands. And when you’re doing EMDR, when you’re doing bilateral movement with the hands, particularly in person pre-pandemic, this is back in 2003, the client is going to follow the hand, the eye movement’s gonna follow the hand, and you keep moving it, you don’t stop.

Nick McGowan (26:02.391)
Hmm.

Ava Dasya Rasa (26:11.968)
working with this client Nick, he noticed at one point when he was moving it that her eyes froze and started to wobble and he instinctively held his hand there. Something intuitively told him to stop. That’s not EMDR protocol, but something told him to stop, right? That’s intuition. That’s really getting in touch with your deep knowing and he stopped and then he witnessed this client

sense of EMDR with her, processed trauma in a way he had never experienced. Really deep, really substantial. And when she left his office, the next day she went to the rink and she was able to do the triple loop. And she’s never failed doing it since. So she called David and said, guess what, right?

So out of that, he started having curiosity and exploring this whole concept of a relevant eye position, because of the ocular nerve connects to the limbic, that where we look matters and that there’s a relationship between our eye position and what we might think of as a memory capsule in our life.

brain or limbic system that’s holding memories that have been unresolved. And so in brain spotting, sometimes we’ll use a wand to find an eye position and sometimes we won’t.

It depends on what’s called the setup or the kind of frame that we articulate around whatever the client brings us. But there’s a couple core values we have in brain spotting. And one is that it’s a deeply, it’s a practice that requires dual attunement.

Ava Dasya Rasa (28:16.798)
We have to be deeply attuned to the client and be incredibly present. You can’t sit there in body and not be present. It won’t work. And there are modalities where counselors show up in body, but they’re not really present, and you really may know or may not know. But brain spotting really requires this kind of witnessing and presence and empathy and mindfulness and being patient and persevering. It’s very culturally and racially

sensitive and it’s

Ava Dasya Rasa (28:52.446)
It’s a deeply contemplative and spiritual practice. I get really silent when I do brain spotting. I just kind of set up the frame and then I go mute. I go on mute and I follow the client’s processes. I trust the client’s brain and body to know how it’s going to process. I don’t go, it’s not all or nothing. Occasionally I’ll interject something if it’s necessary, but it’s very minimal. It’s kind of the antithesis

talk therapy paradigm, which is where we’re taught to reflect and mirror and restate and direct and maybe redirect and none of that goes on in brain-spotting. It’s deeply, deeply silent. It’s almost like a meditation practice and it’s really soul work, as David says, and as I write in my recent book that now I say grieving is holy soul work. Well, so is this. This is soul work. So

Ava Dasya Rasa (29:52.72)
What’s in the brain is in the body, and what’s in the body is in the brain. And we’re the tail of the comet, the therapist, and you, the client, Nick, are the head of the comet. And I follow you. I follow you. I don’t direct. Because your body and the neuroplasticity of your brain and your neurology has its own wisdom. I kind of provide a frame and some tools, so to speak, or set up.

person when they’re looking, they might say, I might say to them for example, okay I’m going to hold this pointer here and I’m going to have you look at it here and I’m going to have you look at it here and here.

And I’m gonna say, which of these is the most activating, meaning that you’re feeling something either in your thoughts, emotions, or body. And they might say, oh, the first one, right? Then I’m gonna say, well, which one of these, can you hear me? Okay, then I would say, which one of these is the most grounding space? And they might say the last one.

And so, you know, depending on what the issue is that they bring and their level of distress and where in their body they’re experiencing it will take them through a process. But my role is very, very minimal. I’m witnessing, I’m companioning, I’m not directing. And it’s amazing. It’s been a game changer. I mean, people will come in and they’ll look up some place or they might have a gaze spot they’re looking at automatically. I don’t even have to use the pointer.

They’ll be on that for 10 minutes and they’ll start processing stuff they haven’t thought about in 20 years. They might start with the issue of like, you know, I hate my boss. My boss is always up in my grill, you know. And so they come in there like, I hate my boss. I want to work on my boss thing. I don’t want to lose my job. And they start on that. And then it’s like tentacles. It reaches back into all these other, let’s say, traumas that are intersecting. So they start with boss. And the next thing you know, they’re crying and talking about what happened when they, when their father berated them when they were seven.

Nick McGowan (31:57.807)
Yeah, yeah, what a wild thing and it’s so interesting how

beautifully complex our bodies and our minds are, and how even at a deeper level at soul work, as you’re saying, where we as the soul need to use our organism, but we actually need to use it and try not to always think our way through it. I remember being a little kid, my dad telling me, you need to think, think. He’s a very logical guy. I’m a four with a three wing, one the enneagram, so I feel all the damn things in the world. And I was like, I

Ava Dasya Rasa (32:29.122)
Oh, oh my God.

Nick McGowan (32:34.64)
Being able to tie our soul along with our body and be that witness, I think that’s a big thing for people to remember. So being your own witness and seeing what’s going on and understanding, just like you’re being the witness to that. It’s not you pushing things at people or you should think about it this way or how about this or whatever you get in talk therapy. But being able to understand that the body can move through that stuff. We just need to set it up almost like it’s a game. You have to follow those rules and follow the things

So it’s interesting how that stuff is out there. And I suggest that everybody look it up and go deeper with it.

Ava Dasya Rasa (33:11.07)
Yeah, and I think what you said about thinking, thinking your father is, you know, a product of his times. Look, we live in a culture. I’ve said this on other podcasts where we privilege thinking and doing over being and connecting. And we need both, but we really need to cultivate being and connecting. And so what a neurosomatic modality like brain spotting offers or somatic attachment or mindfulness is it helps us to cultivate being, being with.

Nick McGowan (33:23.726)
Mm-hmm.

Ava Dasya Rasa (33:41.044)
connecting neurologically and relationally.

Nick McGowan (33:45.358)
Yeah. And along that note, what sort of advice do you give to somebody that’s on their path toward self-mastery?

Ava Dasya Rasa (33:55.956)
So.

Ava Dasya Rasa (33:59.242)
So a lot of people that are suffering are profoundly rooted in shame. So for me to say, be kind to yourself, people who are rooted in shame can’t hear that.

Ava Dasya Rasa (34:16.086)
The shame is so deep and it’s so pervasive. So I would say…

Ava Dasya Rasa (34:24.81)
begin. Have a beginner’s mind, begin again and take baby steps. And you may not be able to know what self-love is at the beginning or compassion or empathy.

Ava Dasya Rasa (34:44.086)
you to think about it as if this was my friend, how would I be kind to my friend? So to take baby steps and just to begin where you are.

to begin where you are. It’s not about perfectionism, it’s not about performativity, it’s about healing yourself radically in all these fragmented performative parts that are maladaptively functioning to keep you surviving and helping you to transform them so that you can…

touch your authentic self, your soul self. But that’s a journey. So you have to have the will and desire. So just, my thing is really just choose to begin. When you choose to begin, curiously the universe sends people, places, and things into your life that you need at that time. And you know, you may not trust yourself initially. You may not trust others. You may think of yourself as really being bad because of the shame. So just take a baby step and try to be kind to yourself.

Nick McGowan (35:46.69)
What a beautiful way to put that. We didn’t even get into shame. Shame is a whole different other animal, but that ties into trauma. And there’s a lot with that. I’m actually reading a book on shame, I think from Joseph Campbell. I think that’s the name of it. That’s the ticket. That’s it. That’s what I’m reading through. Most of it is yellow at this point. I’m like 60 pages into it. It’s all highlight.

Ava Dasya Rasa (35:51.802)
I know.

Ava Dasya Rasa (36:03.094)
Well, or is it John Bradshaw healing the shame that bind you? That’s okay.

Ava Dasya Rasa (36:12.146)
Oh my god. If you think that’s bad, when I used to read Melanie Beatty’s book, like back in the 90s, Codependent No More, I was highlighting so much I was like, you know, I should just like dip the book in a highlighter. What’s the point? You know? So I feel you. I feel you, Nick.

Nick McGowan (36:24.451)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (36:28.45)
Yeah.

Well, I started getting audible books now with the books that I’m reading, so I can listen to them more and actually get it saturated in and pick out different things. Like, Oh, I wonder if that’s highlighted. And I look back and like, Oh, yeah, half this page is highlighted. But shame is an important thing for us to get into. We’re basically at the end of our time right now. So maybe we’ll have you back for another episode. But look, I really, yeah, good conversations kind of move along. And I really appreciate you being on the show today.

Ava Dasya Rasa (36:51.486)
Wow, that was fast!

Nick McGowan (36:59.136)
your insight and wisdom and the work that you’re doing with people. Can you tell us where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Ava Dasya Rasa (37:06.098)
I really appreciate you inviting me to share that. And I wanna thank you for inviting me on the show. I really am very grateful. I’m the founder of Dragonfly Trauma Counseling Center here in Albuquerque. And so you can go to our website at www.dragonflytrauma.com.

And just FYI, I’m a former teacher educator, so I built it so that you could learn a whole bunch of stuff, even if you never work with me, it’s okay, I’m cool with that. I’m all about knowledge is power. So if you just wanna go and watch Bessel van der Kolk on his little spiel on video for seven minutes or whatever, it’s okay. I built it for that purpose. You can also find me at my author website, which is avadassiarossa.com.

Ava Dasya Rasa (37:50.786)
On the Dragonfly, there’s my social media links. You can tap into that as well. I will be, you know, I am gonna be, right now I’m licensed only in New Mexico, so I do strictly telehealth and I serve clients throughout New Mexico, but that’s gonna be changing. I’m gonna be offering some interstate stuff in the near future.

Nick McGowan (38:09.782)
Nice. And for those that are in New Mexico, look her up. Your website is great. There’s a lot of resources that are on there. And again, I appreciate you being on the show, sending the book, and again, doing all the work that you’ve done. So thank you very much for your time today.

Ava Dasya Rasa (38:23.754)
Well, I appreciate that you’re so engaged and consciously and intentionally engaging your own journey. That is a beautiful thing for me to witness. So, you know, I’m gonna say to you, keep beginning again, be kind to yourself and go on baby steps.

Nick McGowan (38:42.542)
I appreciate that and that’s part of the reason for the show to Encourage other people to be able to do the same and that’s exactly what we’re doing on this episode today. So thank you, Ava

Ava Dasya Rasa (38:45.588)
Okay.

Nick McGowan (38:55.202)
Right, good stuff. So how do you think that went?