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Alina Soto, ND, LMHCA
“The mind as an emergent property of the body and relationships is created within internal neurophysiological processes and relational experiences. In other words, the mind is a process that emerges from the distributed nervous system extending throughout the entire body, and also from the communication patterns that occur within relationships.” -Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are 1
The greatest obstacle to Mental Health is the illusion of a disembodied mind. It affects not only how an individual looks at their own healing, but also the healing process in others. Without understanding the physicality of emotions, thoughts, and beliefs, an individual cannot effectively utilize the full power of the mind. Much of thought is non-verbal, an internal language of sensation processed through the entire nervous system.1 I found that traditional therapeutic approaches neglected this understanding, creating blind spots to crucial pieces of awareness (for both patient and provider) that would allow a patient to untangle the self from external events occurring in the present or past.
Trauma can be defined as the past replaying in the present.2 The thing about memory is that it captures an experience, including all the senses. The meaning we derive from the whole experience becomes our conscious narrative. This narrative shapes our beliefs and sense of self, which creates our personality. However, a belief in a disembodied mind leads to a focus on external interpretations, leaving much of the internal experience unconscious and unprocessed. This disconnect between physical sensations and psychological events can create a feeling of being out of control,2 leading to an unstable sense of self and the belief that one’s identity is synonymous with their trauma (or external events). Thus, the past remains trapped in the present.
Unfortunately, when providers believe in a disembodied mind, they become blind to how their own nervous system impacts the healing of others. Through clinical practice, I rediscovered a powerful truth: you cannot lead someone beyond where you yourself have not gone.
As human beings, as a social species, we have developed the capacity to communicate between individuals with the state of our nervous system.1 When a patient is still caught in a sense of disempowerment due to unresolved difficult events, entering a vertical dynamic where a provider is seen as a person of power and not an equal, raises the likelihood of over-reliance on an external resource (the provider)—reinforcing a sense of disempowerment and a low sense of self–a key contributor and indicator of declining mental health.3 This will be especially true if the provider feels disempowered due to their own unresolved events.2 Why? Both nervous systems have no model for regulation, and they unconsciously communicate their distress to each other through speech, tone, and body language.1 The vertical dynamic present creates a lack of authenticity between two persons as both mask a missing component, one through authority, the other through low agency.
Authenticity must be present for true resolution within a therapeutic context, much like in any other healthy human relationship. A provider mustn’t be afraid to be seen in their own process.
When I awoke to my own realization of what my body still carried from the past, yes, it was a frightening experience that produced a very powerful illusion of being trapped, repeating the exact moment again and again. At the time, I was able to recognize I had PTSD, and I was able to do something remarkable–acknowledge the internal fear creating the illusion (fear of failure) and step out of it. I would spend the next 12 years pondering how and why I had been able to do that, and could it be recreated? A journey that took me to Naturopathic Medicine, Neuroscience, High Performance Development, and Trauma Studies. Every revelation coalesces into my current work body: Focal Neurocognitive and Physioemotional Integration® (FNPI®).
“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.” -Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma 2
Personality, as we have come to understand, is quite malleable.4 Down to our most unconscious, implicit biases.5 When it comes to Trauma, personality is impacted by anchoring not to the self, but to a painful event or series of events outside the self.6 Meaning, a person begins to believe that they are the pain: I am a person to whom bad things happen. The only way to heal is to shift the anchor back to self.
In clinical practice, I aimed to use the lens of Naturopathic Philosophy to apply psychotherapy to teach patients how to redesign and restructure their personality so it is anchored to an authentic self. Over time, I found that this could only be accomplished if a person shifted all areas of life.
A way of being is not limited to what happens at a cognitive level. If a person believes I am an anxious person, all facets of their life will reflect this, producing a powerful positive feedback system. This system includes emotions, thoughts, beliefs, relationships, physical body responses, and physical behaviors down to the choices made of food, clothing, exercise, career, and ways of relating or communicating.7 Now, although helpful, addressing only one of these aspects did little to affect a personality anchored in: I am an anxious person. Why? Because the other aspects were maintaining their anxiety. Eventually, even the positive shift would become part of the system to maintain anxiety. Taken to an extreme, Orthorexia is an example of this. Simplified, a rigid person chooses to take control of their health by creating an inflexible approach to “eating healthy.” At first, this change of choosing different foods may create a benefit, but eventually, it will become part of the pathology if the main way of being is not addressed.
The second discovery was that the keys to this massive shift are: proactive awareness & generalized simplification. Hear me out:
When a person anchors their personality into I am an anxious person, a very simple pattern occurs, which begins to play out in the entire system of their life. This can vary, but for most, it is a restriction pattern. The pattern will appear in how people nourish themselves, such as forgetting to eat, skipping meals, or limiting food types. What happens to the nervous system with low caloric intake and dysregulated glucose levels? Anxiety. The pattern will appear relationally, such as limiting the amount of contact with others, limiting self-expression, or limiting physical contact. What happens to the nervous system when there is little opportunity for co-regulation and social support? Anxiety. It will even appear in the forms of reduced contact with nature, lack of joyful movement, limiting beliefs, lack of sleep, limiting life & career choices, all of which contribute to this way of being by maintaining it. So even if a person addresses improving their relationships, if they are still not eating well, nor sleeping well, then anxiety will continue. To become I am a joyful person, in contrast, the system must become one that maintains joy.
When I encountered the perfect conditions to unleash what I had buried, my system barely resembled the past. Although not fully articulated, I already knew that I am not my trauma. Before that moment, I had actively chosen to change my life in a way I enjoyed by recognizing what I didn’t have in my childhood that I could give myself now. This was proactive awareness. However, I had not intended to change every aspect of my life, just how my life made me feel. This was the generalized simplification.
Micromanaging all areas of life will create overwhelm. I guide patients to identify the simple recurring patterns. The more general the better, as the attempts to complicate the pattern by a patient including narratives about “gray areas” would produce confusion and indecision. Unfortunately, this would reduce motivation and confidence in their self-efficacy. Once the general pattern was identified, a person could practice a new one in any area. I encourage picking the easiest one. As the goal is not the level of challenge, but attaining a new pattern to anchor their personality into a new way of being. Proactive awareness is practicing the new pattern consciously until it spreads. The brain is associative; therefore, the more something is consciously practiced, the more it becomes second nature and seeds the next area of life.8
Of course, healing also happens in layers, which is why consistent guidance is important as obstacles and realizations unfold. For this reason, there must also be a provider team—a community for each area of life.
“All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions. Of course, medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies. The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness can connect their physical sensations to psychological events with practice. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma 2
Any modality or tool can lead to significant change with the right intention. FNPI® helps a person understand how to approach learning a new way of being by identifying a focal (intentional) direction and broadening the understanding of the multiple aspects of mental health, regardless of life area or modality. In my practice, I focus on psychotherapy as my primary tool, guiding patients on how to apply the framework to other areas or modalities. My goal is not to steer someone to use only one specific tool. An important part of patient education is helping them understand that tools may need to change across their lifetime, and that’s okay. The point is to empower a patient with the ability to autonomously interpret meaning from their own experience (verbal, non-verbal, physical, mental, emotional, etc) and use it to direct and build confidence in their power of choice.
FNPI® begins by offering a horizontal “playing field”, where both patient and provider understand that it is not the material medicine that leads to healing. Still, engaging in the horizontal therapeutic relationship leads to profound change. This approach fosters a sense of shared responsibility, where both individuals acknowledge their equal roles in the journey and their impact on each other.
Secondly, FNPI® then addresses designing a new foundation to anchor a new personality and by helping a patient identify a focal point (the new pattern) and the current foundation (generalized pattern, ie, restriction), then creating forward movement with patient education on the integration of mind, nervous system, and behavior. As a patient learns to see their narratives and connect them to the physical sensations of the body, they will practice intentional change (proactive awareness), healing not only the limiting belief of I have no choice but also repairing the connection to the natural attunement every organism has to their body and heart. For this new foundation to take hold, the changes must occur in the following identified areas:
FNPI® 5 Areas of Balance:
Purpose
Structure
Nourishment (Input)
Movement (Output)
Community/Relationships
During my clinical practice, I have found that all of the above can be addressed and changed within any area of life or healing modality. But, as aforementioned, without the added intentional awareness or a focal point (intentional direction) to these areas, very little will change.
Take nutrition, for example, a nutritionist can address the above by outlining a general goal (Purpose), a meal plan (Structure), adjusting for essential nutrients (Input), teaching cooking (Output), and getting the person connected to others with similar goals (Community). Yet, if the person believes that it is solely the nutritionist who has to do the work of these areas in their stead (a vertical relationship), or the goal identified hasn’t been tied to an overall pattern to change, or the person doesn’t know or understand how these areas affect the relationship to self & food, one of two things will likely happen. Either the person may achieve their goal (or not) and return to an old habit afterwards, or the change becomes part of the old habit (like the previous example of Orthorexia). There is surface change, but the overall foundation remains the same.
When a patient learns how to shift these areas of balance in one aspect of mental health (such as nutrition) over time, it takes less effort to apply to another aspect (such as exercise, partnership, emotional regulation, etc.). The mind becomes more efficient in the practice, and some areas may begin to shift at the level of the unconscious.
A profound example of this occurred during my first year as a psychotherapist. One of my first patients, at intake, directly stated that they would refuse to address their smoking, so not to ask about it, before I even started the session. Over that year, we addressed the aspect of relationships, applying my FNPI® framework, and never once discussed tobacco cessation. A remarkable physical transformation began to occur, they began to look healthier and younger. Eventually, I mentioned the observation towards the end of the year, asking if they had done something new. They said, “Oh, I stopped smoking 6 months ago.”
As a new personality takes hold, anything unaligned with this new pattern will fall away. I am a joyful person, and I cannot thrive in the same system conditions as I am my Trauma. Making the conscious choice to positively reinforce one versus the other through changing the 5 Areas of Balance towards a new foundation has led to incredible transformation for those in my practice. With FNPI® as a framework, I teach those who have suffered painful histories how to reclaim their power of choice and nourish their authentic selves towards an unfolding of joy. Stoking the vis from flicker to flame through the way of the mind. The path I walked to step out of an illusion is simple; this is not easy, but it can be done with any tool of your choice.
Alina Soto, ND, LMHCA, Owner and Founder of Terra Dusa Clinic & the Terra Dusa Academy for Integrative Growth. Co-Anchor & Co-Owner of Love & Logic: the Unfolding of Joy Podcast. Creator of the Focal Neurocognitive and Physioemotional Integration® (FNPI®) & Provider First Methods. Dr. Soto is a leader in innovative healthcare design and aims to impact the healthcare system as a whole for the better. They are a passionate guide for those who choose change, teaching them to step out of Trauma Loop and into an unfolding of joy.
Alina Soto, ND, LMHCA
“The mind as an emergent property of the body and relationships is created within internal neurophysiological processes and relational experiences. In other words, the mind is a process that emerges from the distributed nervous system extending throughout the entire body, and also from the communication patterns that occur within relationships.” -Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are 1
The greatest obstacle to Mental Health is the illusion of a disembodied mind. It affects not only how an individual looks at their own healing, but also the healing process in others. Without understanding the physicality of emotions, thoughts, and beliefs, an individual cannot effectively utilize the full power of the mind. Much of thought is non-verbal, an internal language of sensation processed through the entire nervous system.1 I found that traditional therapeutic approaches neglected this understanding, creating blind spots to crucial pieces of awareness (for both patient and provider) that would allow a patient to untangle the self from external events occurring in the present or past.
Trauma can be defined as the past replaying in the present.2 The thing about memory is that it captures an experience, including all the senses. The meaning we derive from the whole experience becomes our conscious narrative. This narrative shapes our beliefs and sense of self, which creates our personality. However, a belief in a disembodied mind leads to a focus on external interpretations, leaving much of the internal experience unconscious and unprocessed. This disconnect between physical sensations and psychological events can create a feeling of being out of control,2 leading to an unstable sense of self and the belief that one’s identity is synonymous with their trauma (or external events). Thus, the past remains trapped in the present.
Unfortunately, when providers believe in a disembodied mind, they become blind to how their own nervous system impacts the healing of others. Through clinical practice, I rediscovered a powerful truth: you cannot lead someone beyond where you yourself have not gone.
As human beings, as a social species, we have developed the capacity to communicate between individuals with the state of our nervous system.1 When a patient is still caught in a sense of disempowerment due to unresolved difficult events, entering a vertical dynamic where a provider is seen as a person of power and not an equal, raises the likelihood of over-reliance on an external resource (the provider)—reinforcing a sense of disempowerment and a low sense of self–a key contributor and indicator of declining mental health.3 This will be especially true if the provider feels disempowered due to their own unresolved events.2 Why? Both nervous systems have no model for regulation, and they unconsciously communicate their distress to each other through speech, tone, and body language.1 The vertical dynamic present creates a lack of authenticity between two persons as both mask a missing component, one through authority, the other through low agency.
Authenticity must be present for true resolution within a therapeutic context, much like in any other healthy human relationship. A provider mustn’t be afraid to be seen in their own process.
When I awoke to my own realization of what my body still carried from the past, yes, it was a frightening experience that produced a very powerful illusion of being trapped, repeating the exact moment again and again. At the time, I was able to recognize I had PTSD, and I was able to do something remarkable–acknowledge the internal fear creating the illusion (fear of failure) and step out of it. I would spend the next 12 years pondering how and why I had been able to do that, and could it be recreated? A journey that took me to Naturopathic Medicine, Neuroscience, High Performance Development, and Trauma Studies. Every revelation coalesces into my current work body: Focal Neurocognitive and Physioemotional Integration® (FNPI®).
“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.” -Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma 2
Personality, as we have come to understand, is quite malleable.4 Down to our most unconscious, implicit biases.5 When it comes to Trauma, personality is impacted by anchoring not to the self, but to a painful event or series of events outside the self.6 Meaning, a person begins to believe that they are the pain: I am a person to whom bad things happen. The only way to heal is to shift the anchor back to self.
In clinical practice, I aimed to use the lens of Naturopathic Philosophy to apply psychotherapy to teach patients how to redesign and restructure their personality so it is anchored to an authentic self. Over time, I found that this could only be accomplished if a person shifted all areas of life.
A way of being is not limited to what happens at a cognitive level. If a person believes I am an anxious person, all facets of their life will reflect this, producing a powerful positive feedback system. This system includes emotions, thoughts, beliefs, relationships, physical body responses, and physical behaviors down to the choices made of food, clothing, exercise, career, and ways of relating or communicating.7 Now, although helpful, addressing only one of these aspects did little to affect a personality anchored in: I am an anxious person. Why? Because the other aspects were maintaining their anxiety. Eventually, even the positive shift would become part of the system to maintain anxiety. Taken to an extreme, Orthorexia is an example of this. Simplified, a rigid person chooses to take control of their health by creating an inflexible approach to “eating healthy.” At first, this change of choosing different foods may create a benefit, but eventually, it will become part of the pathology if the main way of being is not addressed.
The second discovery was that the keys to this massive shift are: proactive awareness & generalized simplification. Hear me out:
When a person anchors their personality into I am an anxious person, a very simple pattern occurs, which begins to play out in the entire system of their life. This can vary, but for most, it is a restriction pattern. The pattern will appear in how people nourish themselves, such as forgetting to eat, skipping meals, or limiting food types. What happens to the nervous system with low caloric intake and dysregulated glucose levels? Anxiety. The pattern will appear relationally, such as limiting the amount of contact with others, limiting self-expression, or limiting physical contact. What happens to the nervous system when there is little opportunity for co-regulation and social support? Anxiety. It will even appear in the forms of reduced contact with nature, lack of joyful movement, limiting beliefs, lack of sleep, limiting life & career choices, all of which contribute to this way of being by maintaining it. So even if a person addresses improving their relationships, if they are still not eating well, nor sleeping well, then anxiety will continue. To become I am a joyful person, in contrast, the system must become one that maintains joy.
When I encountered the perfect conditions to unleash what I had buried, my system barely resembled the past. Although not fully articulated, I already knew that I am not my trauma. Before that moment, I had actively chosen to change my life in a way I enjoyed by recognizing what I didn’t have in my childhood that I could give myself now. This was proactive awareness. However, I had not intended to change every aspect of my life, just how my life made me feel. This was the generalized simplification.
Micromanaging all areas of life will create overwhelm. I guide patients to identify the simple recurring patterns. The more general the better, as the attempts to complicate the pattern by a patient including narratives about “gray areas” would produce confusion and indecision. Unfortunately, this would reduce motivation and confidence in their self-efficacy. Once the general pattern was identified, a person could practice a new one in any area. I encourage picking the easiest one. As the goal is not the level of challenge, but attaining a new pattern to anchor their personality into a new way of being. Proactive awareness is practicing the new pattern consciously until it spreads. The brain is associative; therefore, the more something is consciously practiced, the more it becomes second nature and seeds the next area of life.8
Of course, healing also happens in layers, which is why consistent guidance is important as obstacles and realizations unfold. For this reason, there must also be a provider team—a community for each area of life.
“All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions. Of course, medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies. The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness can connect their physical sensations to psychological events with practice. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma 2
Any modality or tool can lead to significant change with the right intention. FNPI® helps a person understand how to approach learning a new way of being by identifying a focal (intentional) direction and broadening the understanding of the multiple aspects of mental health, regardless of life area or modality. In my practice, I focus on psychotherapy as my primary tool, guiding patients on how to apply the framework to other areas or modalities. My goal is not to steer someone to use only one specific tool. An important part of patient education is helping them understand that tools may need to change across their lifetime, and that’s okay. The point is to empower a patient with the ability to autonomously interpret meaning from their own experience (verbal, non-verbal, physical, mental, emotional, etc) and use it to direct and build confidence in their power of choice.
FNPI® begins by offering a horizontal “playing field”, where both patient and provider understand that it is not the material medicine that leads to healing. Still, engaging in the horizontal therapeutic relationship leads to profound change. This approach fosters a sense of shared responsibility, where both individuals acknowledge their equal roles in the journey and their impact on each other.
Secondly, FNPI® then addresses designing a new foundation to anchor a new personality and by helping a patient identify a focal point (the new pattern) and the current foundation (generalized pattern, ie, restriction), then creating forward movement with patient education on the integration of mind, nervous system, and behavior. As a patient learns to see their narratives and connect them to the physical sensations of the body, they will practice intentional change (proactive awareness), healing not only the limiting belief of I have no choice but also repairing the connection to the natural attunement every organism has to their body and heart. For this new foundation to take hold, the changes must occur in the following identified areas:
FNPI® 5 Areas of Balance:
Purpose
Structure
Nourishment (Input)
Movement (Output)
Community/Relationships
During my clinical practice, I have found that all of the above can be addressed and changed within any area of life or healing modality. But, as aforementioned, without the added intentional awareness or a focal point (intentional direction) to these areas, very little will change.
Take nutrition, for example, a nutritionist can address the above by outlining a general goal (Purpose), a meal plan (Structure), adjusting for essential nutrients (Input), teaching cooking (Output), and getting the person connected to others with similar goals (Community). Yet, if the person believes that it is solely the nutritionist who has to do the work of these areas in their stead (a vertical relationship), or the goal identified hasn’t been tied to an overall pattern to change, or the person doesn’t know or understand how these areas affect the relationship to self & food, one of two things will likely happen. Either the person may achieve their goal (or not) and return to an old habit afterwards, or the change becomes part of the old habit (like the previous example of Orthorexia). There is surface change, but the overall foundation remains the same.
When a patient learns how to shift these areas of balance in one aspect of mental health (such as nutrition) over time, it takes less effort to apply to another aspect (such as exercise, partnership, emotional regulation, etc.). The mind becomes more efficient in the practice, and some areas may begin to shift at the level of the unconscious.
A profound example of this occurred during my first year as a psychotherapist. One of my first patients, at intake, directly stated that they would refuse to address their smoking, so not to ask about it, before I even started the session. Over that year, we addressed the aspect of relationships, applying my FNPI® framework, and never once discussed tobacco cessation. A remarkable physical transformation began to occur, they began to look healthier and younger. Eventually, I mentioned the observation towards the end of the year, asking if they had done something new. They said, “Oh, I stopped smoking 6 months ago.”
As a new personality takes hold, anything unaligned with this new pattern will fall away. I am a joyful person, and I cannot thrive in the same system conditions as I am my Trauma. Making the conscious choice to positively reinforce one versus the other through changing the 5 Areas of Balance towards a new foundation has led to incredible transformation for those in my practice. With FNPI® as a framework, I teach those who have suffered painful histories how to reclaim their power of choice and nourish their authentic selves towards an unfolding of joy. Stoking the vis from flicker to flame through the way of the mind. The path I walked to step out of an illusion is simple; this is not easy, but it can be done with any tool of your choice.
Alina Soto, ND, LMHCA, Owner and Founder of Terra Dusa Clinic & the Terra Dusa Academy for Integrative Growth. Co-Anchor & Co-Owner of Love & Logic: the Unfolding of Joy Podcast. Creator of the Focal Neurocognitive and Physioemotional Integration® (FNPI®) & Provider First Methods. Dr. Soto is a leader in innovative healthcare design and aims to impact the healthcare system as a whole for the better. They are a passionate guide for those who choose change, teaching them to step out of Trauma Loop and into an unfolding of joy.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution
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