029 - Brigit Viksnins: Alchemical Alignment
Welcome, dear listeners. In this episode, I’m speaking with one of my beloved teachers, Brigit Viksnins.
Brigit is a life partner, a stepmother, mother, and grandmother. She is the creator of the international training program Alchemical Alignment, which is protocol-free, spirit-led, experiential somatic modality that draws on a range of bodywork traditions that she has trained in and is deeply experienced in.
Bridget is also a first-generation Latvian-American from a lineage of healers, midwives, authors, and teachers. Her parents fled from their homeland during World War II, becoming refugee immigrant children under bombs and in the displaced persons camps on their way to the USA. Now Brigit regularly travels to post-Soviet Latvia to relate to the land, eat traditional foods, steep in the wisdom, arts, and crafts of her ancestors, and also share her skills.
Together, Brigit and I have an open, unfolding conversation about trauma resolution, ancestral patterns, stabilizing our nervous systems, calming through co-resonance, and self-love as a relational practice. We also discuss:
The journey of Alchemical Alignment
Finding Heaven & Hell on earth
Cultivating a range of pace & velocity in our lives
Breaking trauma resolution into tiny, doable bits
The necessity of contraction & having healthy dark in our range
Sharing stillness to create co-resonance between bodies
When self-love can be self-less
This conversation is full of wisdom, and I hope you’ll listen with an open heart, then visit the Alchemical Alignment website to learn more about any topics you aren’t familiar with.
Connect with Sarah
Connect with Brigit
Learn more about Alchemical Alignment
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Today we have with us a beloved teacher of mine whom I first met through Eliza Reynolds, who was a guest on Threshold Moments.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:50]
Eliza said, hey, listen, I've been to some of the best somatic experiencing practitioners in the world. I've met all the people, done all the things, and this woman is the real deal. She's one of the best in the world. She is where you would want to go. And as you can imagine, someone with that type of recommendation would be booked out once at a time.
I'm Sarah Tacy [00:01:18]
I was reaching out weeks before I was about to give birth to my youngest child and Bridget was kind enough to put me in schedule for like 6:00 AM on Sunday. And I know that because of her, my birth experience with Sianna was supported. It was a four day birth and it was actually this evening. So it was every evening I would go into full labor and stop during the day and then start back up again at six O clock at night. And on the 4th evening when I was finally at the hospital and my water had broken and it's still taking hours and hours, and then it was hours of pushing, but every contraction and there was a sense that came about me that was IMC because in a session I did with Bridget, I could realize, oh, here all the things around my pelvis that would tell me I'm not safe, it's not going to be OK.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:14]
In this mantra of I am safe became combined with a mudra, a hand shape and a motion of the forearms. And when this combination came together, my pain disappeared and on any contraction in which I lost that meditation, it was unbearable and I just did not know how I can make it through another one. Continuing to work with her helped me in really honoring the 4th trimester and understanding the idea of Co regulation with my baby and the importance of nervous system regulation together and how to get more support. And I started taking her alchemical alignment teacher trainings, which are great whether you're a yoga teacher, you hold sacred ceremonies, you're there are many therapists that are in there. Anyone who is holding space for anyone, I mean even business leaders to understand how burnout is connected to the nervous system, how regulation works. And even the idea of like embodiment of spirit can be so useful. So I've been taking these programs, I think since 2020 and I now assist the programs and I hope to continue on with this work. I want to stay for the rest of my life, but we'll see how life shakes out. For now, I was just psyched to have her on here to share her perspective. And I hope you enjoy everything that she has to offer with a great gratitude.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:53]
I offer you Brigit Viksnins. Welcome to Threshold moments today I have with us Brigit Viksnins. I am sure if you've heard any of the podcast before this, you have most likely heard her name a number of times as she has played a really pivotal role in my life over the last five years. Maybe, but time feels a little elusive with this. It just ties in so well with life, and when I first experienced Bridget, I was in awe and in deep gratitude to meet somebody who could weave so many of life's facets together, from the science to the spiritual.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:55]
And so I will read a more professional bio and then we'll get to hear from Bridget directly instead of second hand through me. About Bridget Brigit Viksnins is the life partner, A stepmother, mother, grandmother. She has an undergrad and graduate degree from Georgetown University. She is the creator of the international training program Alchemical Alignment which is protocol free spirit LED experiential somatic modality that draws on a range of bodywork traditions that she has trained in and is deeply experienced in such as bodywork, massage and manual therapy, biodynamic cranial sacral therapy, osteopathic, neural and visceral work, polarity and pre and perinatal based body into being. She is trained in somatic experiencing, which is the way I might describe that.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:15]
A body based trauma resolution via completing incomplete sequences, Aikido, A Yin based Japanese martial arts and family constellations to name a few. Alchemical alignment is interactive, it's intimate, it's choice and awareness oriented. Bridget has had a successful bodywork and somatics private practice since 1996 and this feels important to add into the bio. Bridget is a first generation Latvian American from a lineage of rich healers, midwives, authors and teachers. Her parents and all childhood community adults fled from their homeland during World War 2, becoming refugee immigrant children under bombs and in the displaced persons camps on their way to the USA. She regularly travels to post Soviet Latvia to relate to the land, eat traditional foods, steep in the wisdom, arts and crafts of her ancestors and also share her skills.
Brigit Viksnins [00:07:28]
It's so funny that there's either a typo or a little bit of a word displacement in the middle of that lineage rich with as opposed to lineage of rich.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:38]
Yes.
Brigit Viksnins [00:07:39]
So I was like, oh, look at that, the rich like a golden flow through the lineage that has accessed me through the trauma resolution work is here now. However, I would not have ever said that before now, much before now because it was rife with war and bombs and poverty and struggle and density and freeze and so much going on in there. And So what a beautiful transposition of words right in there as I receive the gifts of what's possible after some drum resolution work.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:20]
As I read that, I noticed that that was my misreading and I was like, I think this is OK. And I love that you listen like this is such a beautiful example of you that you listen with such an acute ear that you notice and then you also Orient and contextualize. Just maybe that that there is like this one word that was missing in between that could change the context so much.
Brigit Viksnins [00:08:53]
Yeah, catalytic fulcrum point for understanding and presence. And if it works like why not revel in? So I'm just reveling in this golden stream coming from history. Thank you so much for bringing that in so that we don't start with suffering, you know, we start with a gift.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:15]
There was one more paragraph on that bio and I am pausing. It's like, oh, you know, maybe it'll become self-evident, this next part of you being a lifelong learner, so that not only are you teaching alchemical alignment, not only are you holding space for the other teachers who are teaching, you know, levels one through 7 and various teachings with an alchemical alignment, but that you are continually learning. And as I was even writing that this morning, and I was like, there was this part of me that wanted to really hold the space for the possibility that someone could do what you're doing in this world and still have a pace and a rhythm that is not necessarily overwhelmed or stressful. Because it's like, or you could find her singing, or you could find her practicing aikido for, you know, healthy fight release. Or you could find her walking in the. Woods. And so I look at that range with awe and also as I can kind of hold as a possibility that one could have, I'm using the word rich again, this richness of life and pace. Am I projecting that onto you? Do you find that you have pace and space within it?
Brigit Viksnins [00:10:47]
Oh sure, because risk and then rest, or sympathetic, parasympathetic, The tidal nature of going into and then out of the activities, the yin and the Yang of it, the sustainable life formula that we talked about. And how can we call him? How do I stay within my flow of river of life and watch with a watchful eye How much am I creating and how much am I allowing and receiving and surrendering and do I have choice along the way within it? Another thing that is with woven within your question is person from we might say one generation looking at someone from another generation. And I'm already 100 years into child raising since 1991 to when I joined my stepchildren. And so all the way till now where we're on the edge of being empty nesters. The idea that I'm not in the midst of a life with toddlers or anyone under 10 at this point, my grandchild comes and goes and to visit, that's not part of the household. And so it's such a different reality.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:04]
Either they may not.
Brigit Viksnins [00:12:06]
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:08]
I do see amongst my friends those who are in business or running their own businesses and, you know, really trying to find how can we be our full selves and be moms and run a business in time for ourselves and be relational. And I also appreciate orienting to the time in life in which there is just more demand on our resources because there are little ones who actually really need us and schedules and food and that it's just different than other times in life.
Brigit Viksnins [00:12:47]
Exactly, the years with infants where the schedule needs to get as empty as possible so they can be the priority daytime and night time and then years of school where all self needs to fit into school hours, etcetera. I was blessed to have my children born into a five generation family in the DC area and blessed to have and Helen and my mother Oma taking care of the children and over and over and over and over again. At one point, the richness was such that if one person couldn't drive the carpool, which was a ways away from our house to get to school, I counted I had six people I could call. This is part of the richness of a building, a web of community after the massive breaks of the web, which were related to trauma, which I grew up in. Like, you know, I feel like I grew up alone in a bedroom and we went to school six days a week. And there was not a lot of feeling of being mad or seen or anything like that. Existential annihilation type of feelings. Just I'm bringing that in for the massive contrast of like, Oh my God. She had six people lined up for carpool. Yes, and part of developing a massive range is tiny doable pieces on the way there. It wasn't always that way, is part of what I'm saying here. Yeah, you.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:20]
Use a term in the alchemical alignment heaven and hell on earth. And this was another pause point when the word rich came up in the bio and you said, and we're starting with hell. And then it's like, should I go into the heaven or hell now? Because I kind of want to hear a little bit about the trauma resolution and where it came from. And my experience is that sometimes when I see people who are on the heaven side of things and if I'm on the hell side of things, I might say the phrase, oh, that's nice. That must be nice for them. And it might seem like they must have had everything given to them. And it's not accessible for me. So part of the purpose on this podcast of touching into the storyline is accompaniment is possibility, hearing different forms of where people came from, where they are, and then even where you are now, how that freeze continues to live.
Brigit Viksnins [00:15:41]
Yeah. So if you imagine that everything here on the planet is within a toroidal field, which means that you're in a sphere with a central channel and there's energy moving through it. And if that seems impossible, it's very possible that there are layers of density or layers of freeze that are in the system that do not allow for a flow, for a breathing, for a sense of existing, for a sense of self. And the incredible thing is that living life on this planet within the third dimension, you would have a body and a household or any place where you are located can be the location, the coordinates of hell on earth or heaven on earth. It's not like you're going to go and get a new body when you're moving into heaven on earth. It's not like you have to move into a new household possibly to find heaven on Earth that it's actually the coordinates go with you wherever you go. So we've got decades, centuries of wise people saying wherever you go there you are basically or be here now or something like that, or the power of now and all of that. And so how do you access that? It is through work like we do, in order to touch into the difficulty and to build capacity for the resonant parts of life. It's not a duality of positive negative.
Brigit Viksnins [00:17:26]
It's not a bad or good or a good or evil type of duality. Actually. We get to build capacity for the whole continuum of human experience and then begin to make friends with neutral and then begin to have the possible like secret that there's a self in here. And the possible idea even or willingness to have an intention and intentions begin to spin fields of energy around them with a vortex of attraction for that intention or even cultivating conditions of presence within the self that begins to magnetize these realities that are meant specifically for you. So many of our threat responses keep at Bay movement of life because life will bring difficulty and it will bring great gifts. Do we have tools for either of those? Do we have tools for the whole spectrum of human experience?
Sarah Tacy [00:18:36]
I often have in my head, I'm like, I'm hearing you. And so I hear this, I'm like, oh, wow. Like at somebody's range of resonance, at somebody's capacity expands and they can hold the duality. They can hold more of what life has the, the painful parts, the joyful parts and still stay present. I think I'm hearing you say. And what happens though, when the demands are so much greater than the resources that it feels like there's less choice? So you named like ancestors who were being bombed, who were displaced. We briefly named like early parenting perhaps where there is no sleep and physiologically it just becomes harder to access central channel. The idea that there could be a troidal field, the idea that I could have an intention or that I exist. So from those places I know I'm like, OK, it's small doable pieces.
Brigit Viksnins [00:19:49]
I know what like to do and the answer tends to be stabilize and practice small doable pieces when you've stabilized. And so if you haven't stabilized yet, stabilize is the answer and. In our culture, we have so much of A mind body split, which is like Icarus flying so high to the sun and then dropping, careening down, down, down into the ocean on fire. That is the go, mentality of gun to the adrenals and the huge sympathetic charge of you've got potential on this planet, get there now. And it's a recipe for disaster for burnt out adrenals and endocrine system that's not functioning anymore and microbiome and immune system and etcetera. All of them just struggling and struggling and struggling trying to stay up with that scream and how is it possible? And I'm slowing down now in order to embody that which I'm speaking about. Drop in and drop in and drop in and drop in with some stabilization. What's stable? A tree is stable. Some bone somewhere might be stable. The gravity and magnetics of dropping onto the amazing living planet Earth and receiving its bounty, her bounty, their bounty. The life energy that can come into a body part of what I do when I'm speaking is experience that which I'm speaking about so that it can be shared with everyone listening. Instead of having it feed yet again into your 6th chakra, which is super powerful and possibly overwhelmed these days. Or, you know, could hold access to entire realms of information like Akashic Records.
Brigit Viksnins [00:21:44]
And it's not useful to you if it cannot come down into your body and into your manifested life right now. So we stabilize. We stabilize, we drop in, we learn how to pause, we learn how to make friends with neutral. And the amazing, incredible magical thing is that from neutral, there are impulses into movement which can feel so out of reach for somebody who's lost in double binds and frozen and has no life energy and movement available to them. And so the rocket ship fuel that it takes to get into the next movement, if that is the only pattern I know, it brings me into huge expansions and then collapse. And the other piece of information that's really relevant in this is that the smaller your potential is, the smaller your range of regulation is, the smaller your potency within your body is, the more you will gravitate back toward early childhood unmet needs and unfinished threat responses and stress management patterns from self or from family. That was a huge piece of information in the last couple sentences that says this is how family patterns get passed along. Is that when your range of regulation gets tiny or does not exist, the body security system reaches from that vibrational level into the DNA to continue to transmit what was. And so from that spot, you could feel like, Oh my God, there's no hope. And So what are the small pieces of hope that could even come into that empty and hopeless place? What are like? How does nature do it once there's been devastation? There are tiny little sprouts. If you just even imagine any natural area that has rehabilitated itself after destruction. The amazing thing with human bodies is that once somebody has moved through that themselves, their field begins to carry with it the vibrational resonance, the transmission of I have done this, and the other body doesn't need to take the 30 years the other person took, or 50 years or whatever it is. It's that much faster because it gets shared from the inside of 1 to the inside of the other. And that's what we're practicing in alchemical alignment is like 20 minute doable pieces of I can do a little bit of being that which I can be and then and then run away from it later.
Saray Tacy [00:24:55]
Hey friend, if you are feeling depleted today, or even if you're feeling well, I want to offer you my free program called 21 Days of Untapped Support. What this means is that you're tapping into resources that are all around you, possibly within you. That could help shift the equation of stability means more resources than demands. So some resources we look for depend on our financial state. If I have more money, I could afford a babysitter. If I have more money, I could afford better health insurance. I could afford to go to the retreat. I could afford to take that program. And it becomes very dependent. 21 days of untapped support begins to look at what resources are already there, already in front of me, around me, inside of me that I can tap into. I've put this program together as small, doable pieces of nervous system support. I've also taken it myself. When I first launched it, I took it myself and each day I thought, man, this is an awesome reminder and so useful today. And I would even say as you take it, if it's serving you, you could do it on repeat because again, it's free and it's digestible and it's highly useful. So check out the show notes at the bottom and go ahead & up if it feels like it's calling to you in any way.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:40] When you say stability and you name the things, I'm like yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I think about times in which I might loop or I might be stuck on a thought and I know it's not serving me. It's not that I'm coming through to a better resolution. It's just a thought pattern that is keeping me in a place in which I'm feel stuck and I feel victim. And I go, OK, I know I have all these tools and they're hard to reach as I'm here, even though I know all these stabilization tools. And this for me brings up that idea of those six people of being relational. And I'm thinking about the path of becoming relational if relational didn't prove to be safe in the past. And I'm wondering if you could tell us anything about your path to becoming relational. And actually maybe I'll give a little more context. I guess what I'm saying is if I'm looping and I can't on my own find a way out, it's really great to have someone I can call. I do know that like, it could be a tree that I go to, it could be a walk that I take. It could be being relational with nature. But part of alchemical alignment is being seen, I would say, being seen in the middle of being witnessed on the way through. And so that is why I kind of brought that up with a stability piece of there are all these things we can do on our own. And one of the conditions that you speak of is becoming relational on the way through as well. And that is why I'm now asking you about your path to becoming more relational.
Brigit Viksnins [00:28:33]
That's so great. I have like 100 stories that are coming to mind. A funny thing is somebody was recently saying I can't stand these false relational pieces and that trauma resolution that's happening where they're told to rely falsely on a therapeutic support. That's so sachiriny and fake and like they wanted to blow it up. And I was relating thinking humans, if they are the cause of what is unsafe, if existential annihilation, gaslighting or betrayal is part of your history, then hell, if you want to turn to another human for any support, you become isolated deep on the inside and think, well I'll just take care of everything myself and there's a wisdom in that. I will just rely on myself. Others are not trustworthy. That's also an incredibly young response to life and it's incredibly injured response to life with after boundary violations and ruptures. It's so normal. And so how do we begin to create the tiniest doable bits of allowing anyone to exist? And in our right now, we have 14 modules probably. You don't have to rely on any humans through all of the modules. You could just say no and stay 100 miles away from me and I'll be witnessing myself while you're at right distance somewhere. And I will use your presence as accurate reflection to begin to be within a field where I can have a chance to, through the witness of the other, be recognized as existing, which marks a shift in reality. So the first thing I wanted to say was the honoring of that.
Brigit Viksnins [00:30:46]
Absolutely not. I don't want to be relational. It would be the first thing. The second thing would be over a billion times the possibility that somebody sitting with you might not fail this time. Or even if they fail and we possibly see them as a fallible human as an adult right now, and not give them the entire smallest self of you or most intensely injured self of you to hold. Thus, placing 100% of yourself into the other person's care as the deepest parts of what the body is holding begin to be held by consciousness, then you begin to have a little bit more space. I'm remembering that your question was about me personally, and I had to go there first in order to say, you know, blow it up if it turns you off to hear anything about relational capacity. And for me, I was one who said I'm who felt completely frozen from top to bottom, like every aspect of me. And I said I have no emotions. And then I had a family member in rehab and I was at my first al Anon meeting and it felt like a freight train of the topic of anger was coming around the room around the circle. And it reached me and I was talking through a shaking body. And at 20 years old, 21 had zero emotional capacity, thinking that I was like made of wood or something that I would have no or maybe metal or disappeared, but I would have no need for emotion. And that was a Safeway to live. And then slowly over time since then through also being in an introvert, which means that I have a select few close people that I might share more private or secret depths with the select few. Being able to show up through soul contracts and soul lesson landscape and learn to trust the select few and then study as the semblance of a human being that I was.
Brigit Viksnins [00:33:03]
I was studying human behavior. Like wait, am IA star seed? Am I just dropped on this planet feeling like I have 0 ancestors and just waking up in my 20s? And have I just dropped here? No. The point is that I was coming out of freeze and waking up into a frozen life, slowly beginning to relate to other people. So that was something about the beginning of being relational. And you had at one point asked me about acting as if versus going with the flow and the acting as if and prime the pump for real relationships. And so to say I'm being kind and polite and relational as practice, even if it's not authentic, might be a first step toward rehabilitating my social engagement capacity. So priming the pump for possibility.
Sarah Tacy [00:34:05]
As you're saying, the acting as if well, first, thank you for sharing that in between of acting as if or almost like pretending or maybe even like stepping into a personality that would verse waiting for an impulse. But maybe it's even the impulse of I don't know how to do this. So I'm going to copy something that resembles where I would like to go. But I also sometimes feel that of like, do I step into this next version, or do I wait until there's an authentic impulse that would show me the way?
Brigit Viksnins [00:34:49]
It's a fascinating question, especially for people who have betrayal in the history and gaslighting that's deep in the history, where some commander within the self tyrant maybe even says, and you will behave this way. You will do this in you know, ABCDNE and allow to because what we take within ourselves and we're the place from which we function, we get to differentiate. Wow, what is my adult self bringing me along in the healthiest way toward the next doable bits verse. What is my history that's saying and now we do this and now we do this and you better or else, Yeah, the, the OR else part of it.
Sarah Tacy [00:35:49]
Yeah.
Brigit Viksnins [00:35:50]
The cracking of the whip or the abuse of many kinds that's waiting that this is a delicate place of discernment which requires a little bit of space and time, which is what we get from stabilizing. So everything always go back to stabilization?
Saray Tacy [00:36:08]
I noticed in myself as I am moving more slowly at this point in my life, and I have many friends who really have these fantastic businesses that are moving at a different pace. And I came from a place maybe where there I once had a business that moved at a certain pace and, and I keep having this inquiry. And so I'll, I'll at least celebrate that there's an inquiry instead of like, you will die if you move slow. But there is like, will I survive at this pace? And as I sat around a table of women just the other night, this word velocity came up and there was kind of this like general agreement, like, yes, I would love some velocity in my business. And I said, wow, I'm really wanting to like I really need to maintain slow for a while. Like I'm just practicing slow and they were just really beautifully reflected that sometimes when their experience that when slow can be the pace that then the right things will have some velocity behind them without the added effort. And I love the moments when I can see things that seem like opposites, where I can see how they coexist together and feed one another. But I guess what I'm saying is that for a while and it still lives in me a bit, is will I die if I go this slow?
Brigit Viksnins [00:37:58]
Yeah, I have maybe 10 points to make up.
Sarah Tacy [00:38:01]
OK, please.
Brigit Viksnins [00:38:02]
Yeah. So are you getting velocity anywhere? Because sometimes there's a thought that behind healing practices, there needs to be a monk and the monk meditates all day long or none is, you know, prayerful and whatever. No, let's blast that concept. Can you have greatest speed anywhere? Love to walk really quickly. I'm not a runner in the mornings or go to Aikido and fill my day, fill my morning, fill an hour at a minimum with some greatest power and velocity. And then I could be so kind and slow and soft throughout the day so that there's that contrast and there's the range and building toward that is what I've done over decades as opposed to like blowing something out and then a ligament is dead. You know, if at all possible working within my range so that I am not abusing this being this body in order to get that which meets me and the push and dynamic creative opposition, which is a term from Ray Castellino. The ability to push into have anyone push into me. Part of the intensity that my body holds from tyrants and massive vortices of need within other people as I was a child created the greatest compression within me. And if that is not met, I begin to have a charge within me that says I need something now. And if that gets projected into a business change or a family member needing to change, or a marriage needing to change, or something that begins to spin from me outward it, the depths of me have not been met with that type of intensity. And so finding my own intensity, my own passion. Is part of meeting that need for velocity and it's mine doesn't to anyone else or you know, Lord help them if I protect it outward on to anything else. Yeah, it's within me. The other thing is about the fear of death and slowness is for people to know that it's possible to do freeze related trauma resolution work touching into even in tiny doable bits. You don't have to go there and stay there, but tiny doable bits of what story is the security system sharing with that fear of death? Something is still here saying as I slow down, I might die. That's part of what we do within somatic trauma resolution is feel for how can we come to the edge and back away. You don't even need ever any content or context. No story or narrative needs to come along with that because it can be pre verbal. Where there is no story, there is not yet consciousness, cognition, yeah, that goes along with that. You might know the story at some point as meaning drops in after the experience.
Sarah Tacy [00:41:25]
I've noticed I'm thinking about at the. I believe it's level 1, maybe day 2 where we bring in the Anachiti resonance exercise which includes naming contact of parts of our body. Perhaps like I feel my right thigh meeting a metal chair and the bottom of my right foot on a soft rug. And each round the person noticing would be asked to go slower and slower. And as I've done this work with individuals and in groups, I've noticed the pattern. I'm like, oh geez, I hope it's not my pattern others. But I do actually think that it lives in Society of you want me to slow my speaking down. You want me to notice. And I know you've all, you've also mentioned the fact that there's a reason why it might not feel safe for people to notice that they have a body. So they're the two elements of both noticing that you exist in a body. And I always think, oh, well, we're starting with the outside of the body, We're starting with surfaces. This will be easy. This is fun. And it's not for everybody. And I remember the first group I did it with and people sharing just how intensely uncomfortable it was to slow down or to have any pause where somebody wasn't speaking. And when I just look at the way that schools are run or sports or you know, just so many things that are how much training you can get done, how much homework you can get done and this To Do List for me, it's just so deep in my DNA so that although I think I move with more ease slowly, like more than I have before, that it still lives in me. This is this survivable? Like not even and could I thrive here? Could I thrive? And then, as you said, choose places to have velocity and have times where I feel urges and impulses to move. And so I think I am just living into the possibility and I am on the lookout. And I'll say my particular formation is like, who's doing it surviving and like really living their life the way that they'd love to with choice. And yeah, my, I'm on the lookout.
Brigit Viksnins [00:44:06]
Yeah, I'm in love with slowness and stillness now. And for me, there was a deep freeze within, slowing down. And I started in a modality where there was silence for 60 minutes with somebody else's hands on you in different hand positions for a long time. And for me, there was an abandonment within, very little interaction, very little verbal contact. Nobody was asking really from my experience, unless they were asking in order to train the practitioner. And so it wasn't about the client's experience, which is part of what led to a chemical limit being created was what's it like for you as we slow down a bit, even for one second, let alone 60 minutes being lying on a table, one second of slowing down. And can anybody begin to share their regulation, their resonance, Co resonance with me because they've practiced something? If my body doesn't know how to get there, does anybody's body know that's around me? So for me, there's this. I love to look at the range of things where like my professional self could be so still and deeply quiet and share that with 10 people, 100 people, one person, 1000 people, we could share that around the globe. The size of me spiritually and the depth of me in terms of embodiment that I've reached so far. And there's, there's always more. And I professionally share that so that other bodies begin to pick it up and say, oh, she did something and she didn't die. Or maybe my dying and scared part could be within the range of her. And just like the pendulums on the grandfather clocks begin to swing in harmony when they're together, that Co right resonance begins to be shared between bodies. If one has a field powerful enough to keep their stillness and slowness while the other highly fearful one is nearby, the fear begins to melt toward ease. Not because we're trying to make something happen. It's just what bodies do. This is what cows and horses do for each other all the time. It's totally normal mammalian behavior. Yeah. And then I mentioned one side of the range being super competent, professional self. Then on the other end where the personal aspects of self that are still needing support, that's part of somebody's mastery. You know, I'm not talking to the beginner anymore. I'm talking to practitioners and clients of somatic work, where as you meet more and more and more and more aspects or ages or body parts or areas depending on what type of work you're doing or what part your security system brings forward for some work next. As you meet each next doable bits, your capacity will grow. Sometimes you won't even notice it, but people will begin to remark you've changed in some way. Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:47:50]
If you're curious about somatic exploration or nervous system support, you can check out the link below to make a connection call. If you're feeling serious about it or truly curious, you can do a one off session. And because this work, especially in relationship to the nervous system, is small doable pieces over time, I would consider thinking about a one month, 2 month, or three month period of time that you might dedicate towards nervous system support. Again, you can start with a smaller step of a connection call if it's calling you. You've shared before with the class that when you first started practicing, you started taking better self-care for your community first. There's an idea out there that any you really can't love anything, anyone authentically until you love yourself. And I really loved when you also shared all the different ways that you can start to practice love or self-care and that it doesn't have to. Yeah. What if there is no self? And I wonder if you could just touch on that a little bit too. For anyone who is in the place of feeling like self love would be many hundreds of years away. And therefore I can't love anything if I can't love myself. To maybe give not null or nothing but variety of.
Brigit Viksnins [00:49:37]
Yeah, alternatives that beautiful all or nothing. Yeah, the very young. I'll give you everything I have in session as a massage therapist and then body worker and practicing manual therapy, etcetera. The names for it to change as you get more and more skills as a young massage therapist. I was in a young idealistic place of all this beautiful. I love to give and give and give and give and give. And then as I had more things happening, child care and the life to live and all of that, I would show up for sessions maybe a little depleted, but then it feels so good because there's oxytocin and there's giving to the other person and they feel better. And then once they feel better, you feel better. And the whole session itself can feel regulating. And then at some point I learned, oh, if the other person doesn't get regulated and I haven't been regulated, then we're both possibly in a mess. What would it be like for me to show up to a session having repaired for the other person? And so for the sake of the other person and I could begin to grow my range of regulation because or self-care practices because then they would be better served. And that line of thinking worked for me perfectly because I had no self to serve or grow or anything. It was just all about them. And so getting better sleep or better food and energy hygiene and pauses now and then, or, you know, listening and reading to things that were inspirational. I love metaphysical transmissions and channeled work. And Abraham Hicks for a long time was stabilizing for me, bringing me to a higher vibration. I could bring that type of all momentum into my sessions. Where my health began to hold the session and bring it higher than a deep young part of me that wanted to be like a battery for the other person. Where I was like, oh, just use me because that's what I'm here for.
Brigit Viksnins [00:51:52]
You know, your vortex of need should suck me dry. And then you leave feeling great. And I, I'll do something with myself afterwards. And so just even tiny bits of preparation and existing before would be great. And I would feel full during the session and then I would become more flaccid after the session feeling like, oh, I feel for them. And then my usual life is empty. And then over years of building capacity for that type of air and sessions, I built more and more and more sessions into my day and listened for what's an optimal number and wow, when am I not meeting that 6th, 7th, 8th hour of people. I learned how to, you know, at a high level, meet the people that I could meet and then say that's my capacity for the day. I have to stop there. Only after that did I begin to many years and receive the message, Oh, my life between the session. There could be when it was about other people, I would put the me on pause, let it be all about them. Like if even the family vacation, going camping or whatever for three days or something, the me was on pause. And then I'd be me again when I was alone or something. Or in the moments after a session or something, I would in the moving toward Felicity, I would be like, oh, I kind of enjoy this. And then boom, she's gone again. Then slowly through receiving the work over the years, that's where the capacity for having a self grew and grew and grew and.
Sarah Tacy [00:53:34]
So as that grew and as you move into where you're at now, would you say that part of that is that you can continue to exist during session like that? There is AU before middle, after integration, the preparation that there's an existence of yourself throughout and a self-care and like so nervous to say and a self love of self throughout. Like is that possible?
Brigit Viksnins [00:54:06]
You know, I was thinking about this in terms of chakras this morning where like in terms of coming down from the top down like we have, theoretically, I know there's a self or as I come down through my head and throat, oh, I can speak with my own voice. Oh, if it were really my voice, how would I speak? Oh, at first I'm just speaking for things that need to be said, or logical things, or semblance of a human being, of how humans communicate. And then as I begin to embody and claim the different parts of myself, wow. Moving up down into having a heart. Wow. If this were my art, if this were my body, how would I treat it? If this were my home, if this were my family, how would I treat any of this? If I had a heart oh yuck. And then moving down further into solar plexus. Is there any will of me involved in this? It's so much easier for healers to displace self and say it'll be the will of life or universe or something like I'm not really involved here. Which also comes from a history of beginning to either from western religions of give all of the power and presence over to the church or Eastern spirituality give all of it into the breath of life. But really, truly, if I were to have a self with the third chakra and my will give to me the agency to act within here overtime and studying the question of and I come into alignment with greater powers of the universe, the masculine and the feminine powers of the universe and blend them so harmonically that I actually too have an individual self and I am within the harmonies that flow through me. Oh my goodness. And we're moving down toward having a second chakra and a first chakra down toward having a lower torso. And I exist and have needs as a personal self, along with all of these highfaluting, beautiful, professional self and service to others themes that go with that. How deep could the self love go? When could it be 100% self and when is it 100% selfless? Could they both be important because of the tides of in and in and in and out, out, out, out, out of sucking in unabashedly so much life energy once that's available to you and then sending out unabashedly so much life energy? What would that be like?
Sarah Tacy [00:57:15]
Thank you I appreciate that the multi dimensional they also the different ways like when I just say self love or self-care as you bring it into each chakra. Wow, it had such a different feel. Such a different way to see it and feel it and sense it and to think into my own experience of how is that for me, it's really beautiful at the very end. I feel like at some point maybe you're talking about the flow of life. And it just brought to my mind containment and contraction, which I know they're not the same thing. But I'm again thinking about a society that maybe just the one I see, but the one that seems prevalent to me about expansion and what's next. And at the end of every alchemical I'm in training, an e-mail goes out and says, consider some time for contraction. And Kate Northrop, she shared this on Instagrams. She had a big launch, and it was the biggest launch she's ever had. And, you know, she was in her teaching and you could see her lit up and you could see everything just like it's in her body. But there's definitely an expansive nature. You know, she's been doing this nervous system work for a few years and has been influenced by alchemical alignment and some of the trainers from this program. And she shared how after she was building in days for Contraction and just like tinkering around. And I just like, it kind of tickled me to see, you know, just to see somebody else say it or do it or let it be known or let it be seen of. I'm just going to tinker around today. I'm not going to and just kind of bringing awareness to that ebb and flow instead of expansion and so much. You've named us a few times today already and then collapse.
Sarah Tacy [00:59:23]
But could there be something in the range of expansion and honoring? I guess what I'm wanting to really highlight here is the potential to honor contraction. And I'm wondering maybe if you could give us a few examples of what that might look like. If someone would say, wow, I had a really big weekend, what would contraction look like? Or big launch? What would contraction look like?
Brigit Viksnins [00:59:51]
So my favorite words at the beginning were cave time and yin time or Neptune time, which would be daydreaming what? Do as you take time and have like right on the calendar, yin time or pave time or nipped in time. How is it possible to have healthy dark within your range? Our culture has known healthy light and evil dark and so if we begin to expand the map and change the map to have healthy light and healthy dark, which is healthy menstrual cycles, healthy womb, baby gestation, healthy kidney re regulation where they drop down out of hyper vigilance and fight and flight responses to our lives. Healthy dark includes unplugging from electronics and devices and plugging into nature and visiting the forest or the beach or the mountains, or placing bare feet on the ground, or having a conversation with the plants that grow around your home. Can you feel them? And do you know that they can feel you as you open to something beyond a mental realm? Your body security system actually exists in every cell and goes around 360° from your body. Can you lean back and feel the tree behind you? This type of thing includes deep parts of your body that appreciate gentleness and the ability to soften and slow down. You have a fluid body with its own tides that flow through, and it can get excess fluids or dehydrated in different areas. And as you practice what we call parasympathetic re regulation, you drop down into a place where the intelligence of the system, it can begin to take over. If you can't reach this on your own, that's when you want to find another body that is able to do this. Whether it's animals or other humans, bodies begin to Co regulate. And if you can't do this with another regular body, you may want to find a person who's practicing this professionally because they practice helping areas re regulate to what's natural or that area. So the main point that I wanted to make was the healthy dark and being able to hold that within your body is something that's been in the cultural shadow for a long time. And so the ability to receive this goes to places of light conception. For example, can you be a vessel that is embodied enough to receive inspiration into your mind, inspiration into lungs and heart, or even the seeds of light conception, Immaculate Conception, things like that into your womb as well? This is where humans are headed once they can blend the human physical body with the light body, which has not been done very successfully yet by many. That's where we're headed.
Brigit Viksnins [01:03:49]
That many will have access to that type of thing. But the first basic steps are unplugging from fear and speed re regulating. You can be as fast as you want, but is it woven into the Symphony of your life as opposed to cycling in a threat response, using as batteries other beings around you or parts of yourself that are used to being abused in this way? Thank you. Yes, you're welcome. And a chemical alignment training program, chemicalalignment.com, where you'll find that we have several different teachers who are now teaching the first half of the program where we slowly go into exactly what I've been talking about, where people can move toward their potential of what they're here on the planet for. Like how do you ever get to upgrade your soul contracts or complete soul lessons and move on to the next one And like receive osmic guidance through an open vessel unless you have done the small doable foundational pieces first, you know, so you just do what's first and then you move on to more intensity and interesting things. I've got a lot of wise practitioners who are asking me, hey, can I just go to the second-half of the program where you cover juicy topics like death and birth, early timeline imprints, things like that. And I say, no, it's a new kind of program where everybody gets to be human 1st instead of only a practitioner. We get to weave in and out of being inside person and outside person throughout the program, which has not been done much until now on purpose. I also have a book coming out soon.
Sarah Tacy [01:05:50]
Yay.
Brigit Viksnins [01:05:53]
Which is so exciting. We're moving toward having some beta readers and then we'll move toward finishing it up. I'm in love with the idea of a print on demand book that could be even be like a living document that might have even some minor changes like version as of this month. Yeah. That something could be living and breathing like, oh, did we really put in accurate reflection as well as we wanted to, you know, or something like that? That it could be the life that that's kind of fun. However, it will probably be ready in the fall at some point. Wow. Yeah. And then we've also got alchemical constellations where people can do small group work or epic issues. Advanced clients and practitioners find that they have an ancestral aspect of the trauma. They've got a karmic part, they've got a repeating life pattern where they keep getting hyper or hypo at a certain part of their sequencing or so much more going on in those. Those are fascinating where one practitioner sitting with you might not feel like that's enough of the powerful field for you to reach something within yourself. And another fun thing that we do is our monthly hour long session with a different topic, which can be found under monthly healing session where we visit things like fight or flight response in the body. And maybe you don't want to sit with one practitioner or you cannot afford at this time. That's one way to have a group healing experience where you can get to a powerful piece of your own work, which is for practitioners and advanced clients of somatic work. If you are a beginner, it's probably best to start with some finding the practitioner page on the chemical alignment website, because those people will be able to take you through the smaller doable pieces necessary before the more advanced work.
Sarah Tacy [01:08:01]
Thank you.
Brigit Viksnins [01:08:02]
And we have the maintain alignment platform, which I totally forgot to mention, where we have six or seven events with me per month for the sake of continuing to upgrade self toward who you can be because we all have like inertial fulcrums where we begin to the lead balloons begin to drag us down toward ancient threat response patterns. And when you work with yourself regularly, like weekly or more often, you are able to bring yourself to a new state. This is from the Aikido model of lifelong learning and self development.
Sarah Tacy [01:08:42]
Yeah, I'll say to for myself, when I took alchemical alignment, which I first went through the program and then I decided to retake it and my husband was like, so how long are you going to be doing this? I was like, oh, just probably for the rest of my life, I'm going to do it on repeat. Because, you know, as you're listening to this podcast, there's probably a number of things that you picked up. And they're probably a number of things that if I were to listen to it again and again that I would pick up over time if I keep experiencing my life. And so every time I take the training, I hear a little bit more, which is so beautiful actually, to take the training knowing that I don't have to get it all. And that's not the purpose. The purpose is like what double piece that relates to me, will I alchemize, will I take into my life and my body? And some things that I've seen in my life, not like not even as a practitioner, but just in my life, were when I sent out some emails and they had typos. It was a 21 day program and when I first went out there would be a typo here or there and in the past I would have spiraled. Oh my God, I can't believe I did that. That's so embarrassing. It's so unprofessional. People will think I don't respect them that I didn't put the time in it deserved. And this was like, oh, that's amazing and I feel amazing that I feel amazing. I'm showing people it's OK to be, you know, it was just like, but I didn't have to go into the practitioner skills of OK, how do I now stabilize myself? Because there is some completion there at least in that time of the perfectionist. And that's not complete completely. But I'm saying it was one of those times where something that would have spiked me in the past just didn't actually like I felt happy about it and I was like, oh, this is different. And I think it's different because of the work that I've done over time, both as a student in there and then I know as assisting. And there was a time where I didn't show up perfectly and tell was like, I am so happy you're here as you are.
Sarah Tacy [01:11:01]
I was like, really, even in my imperfect state. And she's like, it's so perfect for the group. And so I got to have a lived experience of actually truly being welcomed as an imperfect person multiple times through this training. And I think that is part of changing a system is to get to have lived experiences of a new reality and that this training has offered that for me.
Brigit Viksnins [01:11:25]
The both. And as the range of regulation grows, there's more and more and more space for both. And we're like, yes, I have high standards. Yes, I excellence in some ways, and I'm such a fallible human. And yes, here's it. Like maybe a minor wave of shame, or maybe it's not here at all. Or, oh, I've dropped into a chronic shame place. Oh, my God. Does that mean that my IM statement is I am now forever a failure? No, we grow into the place of both. And sometimes I'm so amazing. Sometimes I'm such a fallible human. Yeah, totally.
Sarah Tacy [01:12:06]
Thank you. There was a quote on the website that maybe I'll ended up with and it says alchemical alignment is life changing. It truly brings you into alignment while allowing you space to heal and grow your own practitioner skills. It is a must for anyone wanting to work with trauma while continuing to heal themselves.
Brigit Viksnins [01:12:25]
And there we go.
Sarah Tacy [01:12:26]
Thank you. And there we go. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Brigit Viksnins [01:12:29]
Thank you. I'm honored.
Sarah Tacy [01:12:42]
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, it's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.