In This Body

What if the wisest part of you isn’t your thinking mind, but the sensations already alive in your body? In this episode, executive coach and Enneagram expert Courtney Smith joins us to explore how fear quietly shapes our choices and how learning to feel what’s here now can restore agency, presence, and pleasure.
Courtney shares her path from Yale Law and McKinsey to a body first approach blending the Enneagram, conscious leadership, and somatic awareness. We unpack three core fears: loss of security, approval, and control, and how they keep us looping familiar conflicts and drama triangle roles.
We move into practice by welcoming fear, tracking it in the body, and asking, If I weren’t scared, what would I be doing? We also explore pleasure as information, not indulgence, but a compass toward aliveness and truth.
You’ll leave with tools to notice sensation, spot fear driven patterns, and choose presence over performance. If this resonated, subscribe, share, and leave a review, then ask yourself: if fear disappeared for one hour, what would you choose?
In this episode:
0:00 – Opening And Embodiment Mission
5:14 – From Head To Body-Based Presence
10:02 – Enneagram Beyond Typing
16:42 – Presence Begins With Sensation
23:57 – Bypassing With Self‑Knowledge
28:53 – Why Growth Is Uncomfortable
34:55 – Socialisation, Fear, And Scripts
41:48 – The Drama Triangle Explained
You can read the transcript here
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In this solo episode of How To Be In This Body, Ailey Jolie reflects on carrying breast implants for 15 years and the moment she finally had enough capacity to hear the “no” she couldn’t access almost two decades ago. This is a conversation about consent, power, and why trauma tools designed for single events often fail to address lives shaped by repetition, surveillance, and the gaze.
Ailey explores how trauma research centered on male bodies overlooks a common female experience: disembodiment without a clear origin story. From self-objectification to the dulling of interoception, she traces the cultural and clinical forces that teach bodies to doubt their own knowing.
Rather than chasing perfect regulation, this episode reframes healing as capacity—the ability to feel fear, grief, and hope while still moving toward what is right. Distinguishing “scoreboard” healing from “story” healing, it invites a different question: not what broke you, but what you were shaped to hold. This episode is for anyone who’s tried every somatic tool and still feels far from home.
In this episode:
Opening And Embodiment Mission
The Gap In Trauma Theory
A Child’s Wish And Split Survival
Patterning Danger And Adolescence
Violations In Medicine And Aftermath
Self‑Objectification And Losing Interoception
Beauty Culture’s Profitable Wounds
Choosing Explant And Choosing Trust
Repair Through Consent And Care
You can read the transcript here
Learn more about Ailey Jolie:
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What if the stories your body carries are the map back to belonging? In this conversation with Palestinian–American poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan, we explore how narrative, trauma, and the nervous system meet inside a living body. Hala shares how displacement shaped her love of books and oral histories, why writing still arrives as mystery, and how creative practice can offer coherence when life feels scattered.
We move beyond buzzwords to talk about embodiment as a political act—how storytelling becomes witness and resistance when institutions fail. Hala offers practical ways to return to your body: hand over heart, 4-7-8 breathing, hot baths without a phone, and the simple mantra “this is just what’s happening.” She also unpacks why perfectionism makes somatics feel inaccessible and how choosing to feel—even discomfort—builds resilience.
This episode is for anyone curious about creativity as healing, building distress tolerance, and holding grief and agency at the same time. Expect clear language, grounded tools, and gentle guidance for reconnecting to your body and your story.
In this episode:
0:00 – Welcome And Episode Setup
3:37 – Narrative As A Unifying Thread
9:53 – How Narrative Works In The Body
14:46 – Displacement, Reading, And Early Survival
20:47 – Creativity As Conduit And Mystery
30:17 – Safety, Downregulation, And Rewriting
36:52 – Storytelling As Survival And Alliance
42:12 – Memory, Erasure, And Resistance
49:07 – Embodiment As Political Practice
You can read the transcript here
Learn more about Ailey Jolie:
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What if a devoted practice is quietly pulling you away from your body instead of deeper into it. In this episode, we sit down with Megan Campbell, yoga teacher, trainer, retreat leader, and psychotherapist, to explore what embodiment really asks of us beyond perfect poses or polished language.
Megan shares how grief surfaced unexpectedly through practice, the allure and limitations of modern wellness culture, and the steady courage it took to move from the studio into the therapy room. Together, we examine the ways embodiment can become performative, and how returning to sensation, cycles, and nervous system awareness creates a safer path back to self.
This conversation offers a compassionate look at healing that values both story and somatics, honors fluctuation rather than fixing, and reminds us that sometimes the most therapeutic move is to slow down and feel more, not do more.
In this episode: 
0:00 – Setting The Embodiment Intent
7:08 – Teaching Early And Finding Voice
10:02 – Women’s Bodies, Ritual, And Safety
17:06 – Seasons, Cycles, And Chakras
20:28 – Naming Burnout And Aging Out
27:32 – Pedestals, Patriarchy, And Credit
34:27 – Fixing The Body Or Feeling It
39:42 – Seeing Nervous Systems In Motion
45:42 – Windows Of Tolerance In Practice
You can read the transcript here
Learn more about Ailey Jolie:
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What if your body isn’t a barrier to spirituality, but the place where the sacred actually meets you. This is the heart of the conversation with spiritual teacher and retreat leader Brandon Nappi, whose work weaves together Christian mysticism, Zen practice, and somatic healing.
Together, we explore a spirituality that is grounded, honest, and lived through the body. Brandon shares how his understanding of faith was transformed through contemplative practice and relationship, learning to hold both insight and belovedness at once. We name the ways body and spirit have been divided through history, and we also remember the quieter traditions that insisted on an embodied faith.
This episode offers a practical, compassionate invitation to begin where sensation and breath are available, to build capacity through daily practice, and to meet discomfort without bypassing it. For anyone engaged in leadership, healing, or inner work, this conversation is a reminder that the body can be a place of refuge, devotion, and return.
In this episode: 
0:00 – Welcome And Embodiment Framing
3:26 – Body As Home: Defining Embodiment 
11:11 –  Meeting Buddhism And Somatics
16:43 – Practice Grounding: Zazen And Breath
22:24 – How The Body Was Split From Spirit
29:27 – Slow Repair: Somatics And Unlearning
32:42 – Men’s Work: From Fragility To Feeling
39:34 – Why Spirit Still Matters In Somatics
46:00 – The Bandage Story: Sitting With Pain
You can read the transcript here
Learn more about Ailey Jolie:
Find: Website
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Explore: Substack
Experience: Insight Timer
Sign up: InBodyMethod
Email: [email protected]
To follow along with the In This Body podcast:
Follow: Instagram
Find: Website
Email: [email protected]