Healing Adventure Trauma: Julia Yanker on How Adventurers Can Get Back Into the Activities They Love

Julia (00:00:00):

I really felt like I was going to have a mental breakdown or something because of the amount of stress that was getting added onto me. And so when we do trips that have the leisure of time and space and pace, that if there are big rapids that we have all the time in the world to stop and scout them or for someone to portage around it. So that’s always an option. It feels so much different to me than it does if I’m with a group where I know that they want the pace to be hard and fast. And go, go. 

Lizzy (00:00:42):

Hello, my name is Lizzy Scully and I’m the co-owner of Four Corners Guides and the co-author of The Bikeraft Guide with Steve Fassbinder, AKA Doom. We run a Multisport Adventure Guide service based out of the very small town of Mancos, Colorado, home of Alpacka Raft, the Mancos Brewing Company, and many other incredible small businesses.

Our home lies a half hour south of town. Scullbinder Ranch is our 35 acre base camp on the border of Mesa Verde National Park in the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park. Late last year, we started this podcast, A Beginner’s Guide to Packrafting & Bikerafting to bring you another learning channel for these activities.

In this podcast, we’ll share helpful informational interviews with experienced athletes, guides, and others in the community along with how to episodes and storytelling. If you have any requests or questions, email us or comment on our social platforms. 

Lizzy (00:01:41):

Today we’re publishing an interview we did quite some time ago with Julia Yanker, a longtime packrafter, life coach and somatic experiencing (SE) practitioner, AKA trauma resolution specialist.

My primary goal with chatting with Julia for the “healing adventure trauma” podcast was to really find out what can be done for adventurers who experienced trauma that now affects the other adventures they partake in.

I had a terrible climbing accident six years ago that increased my levels of anxiety exponentially, no matter the activity I’m doing, but primarily in regards to packrafting. This manifests in irrational fear of whitewater.

For example, I’ve done the Grand Canyon twice. But despite that, I have an unreasonable fear of the big waves. On the other hand, I’ve swam a few dozen times in them and I have always been fine. Still, when I even just think about the Grand Canyon now my heart beats faster, my palms sweat, and I get a constriction in my chest. 

Lizzy (00:02:36):

No joke.

So I wanted to talk with Julia to see if there was anything I could do about this seemingly irrational fear. And she told me yes, there is in fact a way to deal with it. Thus, in addition to delving into her personal background and backgrounding history, we talk about how to alleviate trauma experienced while adventuring.

I hope you enjoy this podcast. Stay tuned because we will be publishing a podcast interview with Deane Parker, a New Zealand bikerafter extraordinaire, one of the best in the world. As well, we’ll be chatting with Huw Miles, the owner of Packrafting Queenstown. All right, here we go. 

Julia (00:03:16):

Thanks for having me, Lizzy. My name is Julia Yanker. I am a trauma healing specialist and adventurer and a transformational coach. So I end up working with a lot of adventurers or outdoor enthusiasts who’ve had some sort of outdoor accident or injury, some sort of trauma happen. And then they have symptoms that they have trouble getting back to their sport of choice.

Then I work with them to help relieve that as well as some other stuff with my coaching, like relational coaching and whatnot. So varied things, but yeah, I’m so excited to be here and to talk about Whitewater with you. 

Lizzy (00:03:57):

Cool. I’m excited to have you on board. Thank you for taking the time to do this with me. I appreciate it. Can you tell us, I’m kind of curious where you live and how long you’ve lived there and that sort of thing. 

Julia (00:04:09):

Yeah, I live in Bozeman, Montana. I’ve been here for I think about 16 years now. So it’s been quite a while. And it wasn’t until I moved to Bozeman that I really got into adventuring and stuff, so I was about 23. Now I’ve been doing this stuff for a while. It has been really interesting to sort of watch the evolution of how my life has changed since moving to Bozeman and all the adventure and everything like that. And eventually getting into Whitewater and yeah, it’s been fascinating.

I started out as a professional horse person. So I have all these different sports that I’ve become involved in since moving to Bozeman and have dabbled here and there. And Whitewater is the place that really, or just rivers in general actually. So that’s really the place that’s captured my heart. 

Lizzy (00:04:57):

Can you tell us a little bit about your whitewater background? I’m guessing you didn’t start with packrafting since packrafts weren’t really very developed back then. Or what did you start with? 

Julia (00:05:07):

Yeah, no, I actually did start packrafting, believe it or not. My good friend Mo took me out and I just had such a good time and I followed him actually down one of the more difficult runs here. But it was low water and it was pretty safe. And he’s just like, follow me stroke for stroke.

We went down the mad mile and Portaged House rock. I think I flipped and self rescued and that was it. That was the end for me. I was bitten by the bug. And ever since then I’ve been an avid packrafter and actually my packrafting career got started.

You don’t know what you don’t know until you know what you don’t know. And those things that you don’t know can kill you or seriously injure you.

So when my husband and I really got into it, we had our packrafts. And right after, we also went on a Grand Canyon trip where we were just on rafts, not our packrafts.

But that spring when we got them, we got on two rivers that same stretch, the mad mile at really high water. And then another local river at really high water. It felt like we were on the Grand Canyon because the waves were so big, we would be in different troughs. 

Julia (00:06:25):

And I literally couldn’t see him or his paddle because the wave between us was so big, it was ginormous. I know I ended up flipping and swimming on that one too.

I remember both times being like, if I don’t get out of this water, I am going to die. Also I just didn’t know what I shouldn’t be on, and we got ourselves into some trouble.

Those experiences really brought me to somatic experiencing. That’s the modality that I use as a trauma healer and with the adventuring trauma that after those two swims. I’ve also had skiing accidents and all kinds of and been thrown from horses like dozens of times. I have all this  trauma history within my body.

Eventually I started to have trouble being able to participate in the things that I loved doing. 

Julia (00:07:19):

And it eventually led me to SE. I call it for short somatic experiencing. SE really helped me work through my sort of load of trauma. So much so that eventually I was able to get back out and do the things I loved. I remember having so much anxiety getting on the rivers. And there’s so many different aspects to that.

But I remember after doing the SE work for a while, we went and did the Middle Fork of the Salmon at pretty low water in the fall. And that’s got some fairly substantial whitewater. It was the first day. maybe. Nobody really had their river legs yet, and nobody wanted to go first. I was like, I’ll go first.

And it was totally mind blowing to me that just all of a sudden I had the capacity to be able to say: “I can go first.” I did not need someone to lead me through because that was kind of one of my little, like a teddy bear, like, okay, I’ll just follow somebody else through and it’ll be fine. Seeing that I had the capacity to do that let me know that something in my system had changed. 

Lizzy (00:08:20):

Can you talk to me about your process a little bit? Did you find one in person in particular that does what you do now or what was your process there? 

Julia (00:08:30):

Yeah, well that process, so this is where it gets a little bit more complex because not only did I have all of the outdoor adventure trauma myself, but also what people don’t know. And if anybody else likes to nerd out on this stuff, I highly recommend the myth of normal. It’s a book by Dr. Gabor Mate.

Basically what I learned was that when we are raised in a stressful environment with our family origin, our caretakers, that it impacts our young little baby nervous systems in such a way that it impacts the way that we interact in the world for the rest of our lives. And so not only did I have all of this adventure trauma, but there’s all of this other underlying stuff from my own childhood that was really impacting the way that I was showing up in my world. 

So I remember we’ve been married for about 11 years now, and I remember one day think that it would be, I think it would be accurate to say that I was basically screaming at my husband and afterwards I remember being like, wow, that is not okay. 

Julia (00:09:45):

And that’s the same way I used to talk to my mother when I was a teenager. This is really not okay and I need help. And so this is when I really started on my journey towards healing because I’d been a coach for a long time already. I thought that I’d kind of made it, and I was there when I was 18. So I left the house being like, I am going to figure out how to be happy.

My entire childhood was kind of unhappy. My parents were unhappy, they were immigrants. They lost everything that they’d ever had and came to the US and that’s kind of the soup that I grew up in. And it wasn’t a very tasty soup. And so when I left home, I was like, I’m going to figure out how to make this better. And so that started my journey. 

Julia (00:10:27):

And then it wasn’t until after getting married and seeing some of these old behaviors come up that I was like, this isn’t okay. And started to really dig even deeper. And that’s when I found a therapist and she was like, I think that you need something somatic based, something body-based therapy.

And it wasn’t until I found that that things really shifted for me always up until then, all the different healing modalities I had tried had felt like they’d maybe moved the needle a little bit, but within weeks I was back to where I started it felt like. And with somatic experiencing, it was the first time I ever felt the needle move and then it stayed moved.

I didn’t try to necessarily stop yelling at my husband or shut down and stonewall, it’s called. I literally didn’t have the capacity to stay in conversation once it got intense in some way or whatever. 

Julia (00:11:21):

And I didn’t try to stop doing any of that. It just naturally faded away because I had the capacity to stay present and have a difficult conversation without shutting down. So I knew that it was working pretty quickly.

After years of doing it really intensively, the shifts within my own being and my nervous system have really been incredible. So not only on Whitewater and in the back country on skis or whatever it is that I’m choosing to do, but also in my personal relationships.

So it really impacts everything When we have some sort of trauma. It doesn’t just show up when we’re doing whitewater because we had a scary swim. But it also shows up around having conversations about getting out there and doing stuff or in our relationships, it’s not really confined to one place. 

Lizzy (00:12:08):

Interesting. So when you have trauma in one area, it just basically has tentacles that reach out into all areas of your life. 

Julia (00:12:16):

Eventually, I could use the example for instance of let’s say a car accident and you hear of people occasionally who just never go anywhere and never drive anymore.

At first, trauma basically starts to really limit our lives rather than dealing with what’s going on, we just start to avoid, okay, well ever since the car accident, I just avoid that intersection.

Now I avoid that corner of town. Then maybe a few months or years later, you totally avoid that side of town altogether, and then you just stop driving and then you won’t even get in a car anymore.

Over time, our strategy to cope is to avoid. And it just makes our life smaller and smaller and smaller. It does impact everything. So even if I was driving to go skiing when I had my accident, it doesn’t matter where else I’m driving, it’s still going to show up there, too. 

Lizzy (00:13:14):

So what you do, how does that bring the tentacles back so that it doesn’t affect all the parts of your life? 

Julia (00:13:24):

Yeah, yeah, great question. So whenever there is something traumatic that happens in our lives, there’s an energy cycle that completes right? When we see something, when we perceive something as a threat in our environment, our body mobilizes an immense amount of energy, and I mean literal energy, like the energy that you would use to curl a dumbbell or something, it immobilizes that energy so that you can fight or flee. Sometimes you end up freezing and fawning, of course. And then, 

Lizzy (00:14:05):

And what, I’m sorry, what was the last thing? Fawning. Fawning, yeah. 

Julia (00:14:10):

Yes, we mobilize an immense amount of energy to fight or flee. Sometimes our body freezes and sometimes we fawn as well, which is more appeasement or people pleasing.

So for instance, if a big dude came up to me, I’m only five three, if some big dude came up to me and I was getting a weird vibe from him and he’s like, oh, hey, I’m going to make an inappropriate joke here that I really didn’t like. I’m probably not going to be like, dude, that was really inappropriate. Please don’t say those things in front of me. I’m probably just going to be like, ha, ha ha. And maybe nervously laugh and then try to extricate my situation whenever I can.

Or for instance, think of your boss coming at you at work and saying something not very nice or critical or harsh, and rather than being like, Hey, leave me alone, dude, that wasn’t very nice. 

Julia (00:15:00):

Or whatever we might think to say to defend ourselves, we’re probably either going to freeze and just not say anything. Or we might fawn and try to be like, oh, no, I can’t believe that that happened, or I’m so sorry I did that. And what can I do to make it up to you? Rather than being like, oh, well, let me tell you my side of things, and this is kind of what happened. None of those things are bad, fight, flight, freezing and fawning.

None of them are bad. It’s simply that our nervous system decided in that moment that that is the best course of action to protect ourselves and to further our life. And this is based off of millions of years of evolution of the nervous system because our nervous system at its very basis is, let me see what’s in the environment and should I go towards it or should I go away from it? 

Julia (00:15:51):

Is this something that I want or something that I don’t want? And then we act appropriately. And so when we perceive a threat, that energy is mobilized and then it’s meant to eventually be used and then to demobilize and kind of go back down to a homeostasis.

However, sometimes we don’t use up that energy and we don’t discharge it to kind of complete the cycle. And what discharge looks like is we’ll notice that we’ve had some shakiness or trembling happen at times. Or that we’ve felt like crying after something like that or even had a rage response, like big anger.

And all of those things are ways that our body is trying to finish that cycle by moving the excess energy out of our system. It’s kind of like a dog when you get home and they’re so excited to see you and they jump around and they’re so excited. 

Julia (00:16:50):

And then when they’re done, you’ll notice that almost every single time they’ll shake really hard and then they’re just done. They’re calm, they just stand there and they go about their day. And that’s basically what our system needs to do. It gets that big uptick in energy, and then it needs to get rid of the energy. Sometimes the energy is used to actually save ourselves by swimming or getting back in our pack graft or whatever.

But even then, when we’re back in our packraft, we have some residual energy left over, and if we don’t move that out of our system, then it kind of gets stuck in there on this loop and doesn’t have anywhere to go. It’s kind as the founder of SE calls it Peter Levine, it’s all dressed up with nowhere to go, and if we don’t find a way to discharge it, then we will have it stuck. 

Julia (00:17:33):

And that’s kind of what those tentacles are that move out into our life. Because then that energy is in there. So the next time we’re in a situation similar enough to the original situation that created that energy, it will want to come up and out so it can complete the cycle. That’s the natural normal thing to do. There’s a great book called, I think it’s called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, which helps explain this.

The founder of SE, Peter Levine, was like, why don’t wild animals get PTSD? This is so strange. They almost die way more often than we do. Shat he basically learned was that with our prefrontal cortex, we have the ability to inhibit that discharge phase of the stress cycle and that energy gets trapped inside. And that’s what creates symptoms of PTSD and trauma. 

Lizzy (00:18:28):

So I’m curious. So I had a really terrible accident and I quit climbing because of it. My friend fell because I took him off belay because we miscommunicated and he fell a hundred feet, and he almost landed on me, and I went through a couple of years of therapy, but I still, and I wonder if this relates to my, I have an irrational fear of the Grand Canyon. I’ve done it twice, but I’m so scared. But I do, I’m so scared. That’s what I wanted to work with you on at some point.

I want to be able to go do the Grand Canyon again, but I wonder mean it’s got to be related to that fall. And even the fall was like, I mean, both Thad and I had been climbing 25 years each. We are very experienced climbers. We had a miscommunication, a very, very bad one, and he almost died. And I wonder one how I would discharge that I spent the next month after that just screaming and shaking and lying in bed and doing all these things.

It didn’t seem to discharge really though because, and then I did therapy for a couple years after that, but how does this live in your system? And I guess apparently it’s still there in my system, even though I had therapy and whatnot. 

Lizzy (00:19:57):

I’m just curious what I can do or what other people in my situation can do. 

Julia (00:20:01):

Right. Well, I think it’s really important to talk about the sort of mental health options that people have available to them in this culture. So these somatic therapies that are becoming more and more available weren’t really available for a long time.

Psychologists had no idea what trauma was or how it got into the body, what the mechanism of injury was. And the crazy thing is is that our institutions still basically don’t know. So even though there’s pioneers who are figuring it out and spreading that information, I guess, I don’t know if the word would be anecdotally or a little bit more informally, the institutions that are hardwired to be in certain ways and have their curriculums, they’re not really picking it up and incorporating it in. 

Julia (00:20:49):

The vast majority of therapy is usually cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, they call it. And it’s literally just talking about what happened and trying to process it that way and trying to make little changes in your behavior to get better. And it really doesn’t work. They’ve found that it’s only 50 or 30% effective for most people. And the reason that is, is because when you get into it, I think that we are spirits in bodies and our body is how we interact with the world. And so this is what happens.

Our body perceives our environment, it reacts to it. It creates sensations within our body that send messages up to our brain. Those tell our brain:  “Hey, something needs attention.”

And then from there we have thoughts and emotions and those things dictate our behaviors. So that’s the sort of process that happens if you think about how we’re perceiving our world and reacting to it. When we come into that whole train of events to behavior at the very end and just try to change it there, we are completely ignoring the sensations at the foundation, the emotions and the thoughts that come before the behavior. 

Julia (00:21:59):

So trying to just change the behavior is putting a bandaid on things without ever looking back to see, well, what’s actually going on that’s causing you to behave in this way? That’s the real question. And CBT does not really get to that. And so for anyone who feels like they’ve had therapy and it hasn’t really been helpful, I really recommend going to see a somatic experiencing practitioner. 

Lizzy (00:22:24):

But how would you get to the root of the issue with somatic experiencing versus the other? 

Julia (00:22:32):

Yeah, totally. That’s a great question. And so basically what I’m trained to do or any SEP, is to sit and be in communication with the nervous system itself.

So I will watch my client’s body to see if I can detect that their heart rate has increased or their breathing has changed, or that they’ve become tense. There are cues that the body gives us that lets us know where it is within that stress cycle. And then I also ask questions, what are you experiencing? Are you noticing some shakiness or tres? Or they might be like some fear arose or something.

And then I know where we are at in that cycle and I can help facilitate and guide us through the successful completion of that cycle. So if you said to me like, well, there’s the accident, and I’d be like, well, let’s just stop right there. 

Julia (00:23:18):

I don’t want to hear anymore. I just want to work on this tiny little chunk. To me trauma, I like to compare it to drinking kombucha, but you dropped it on the floor or you kind of swirled it around. You wanted to get the sediment from the bottom and you crack it, but if you just leave the lid off, it goes all over the place. And so what you really want to do is you crack it and you go, and then you shut it, and then you let it settle, settle, settle, and then you crack it a tiny bit again, and then let it settle, settle, settle.

And that’s what an SE session is like that we are going to work with your nervous system to have it what wants to arise, come out. We allow it to go through the uptick in energy and then down into the settling cycle. And then there’s some discharge and stuff that can happen and we move on from there. And we just do that a whole bunch of little times. And so it’s called titration so that it’s not a big explosion, it’s more gentle. And so that’s kind of what an SE session looks like. 

Lizzy (00:24:22):

And how is it, you had mentioned EMDR to me at one point, so what does that have to do with it? 

Julia (00:24:28):

Yeah, so EMDR, I’m not trained in EMDR. I’m not super well versed in what it is. My faculty, for SE, who is really well versed in all this stuff, when I asked her the same question, she’s like, EMDR is only really about 50% effective for some people.

And the reason that that is, is because it’s actually unrated that we open the door to all of this trauma energy, and it’s really overwhelming to the system. And people either have some big cathartic, sort of more like a freak out event that is kind of re-traumatizing. Or they just go into freeze mode and shut down and the material isn’t even available to be worked with.

So for some people it’s helpful. For some people it’s not. I feel like if EMDR was more titrated, there are EMDR practitioners who come to SE trainings and apply it, and they find it to be helpful. And so that’s why general therapy isn’t as helpful is because it really doesn’t get to the body where all of this stuff is held. 

Lizzy (00:25:31):

Sounds like what inspired you to get into this line of work was your own experiences. 

Julia (00:25:37):

Absolutely. 

Lizzy (00:25:38):

Is there any more that you want to say on that, or did you feel like you covered that? 

Julia (00:25:43):

Yeah, gosh, yeah. Life is so complicated, and I really felt like when I traveled into adulthood, I was lacking so many skills that would help me to lead a fulfilled life, mainly in the realm of relationships.

Because when you are a tiny little baby nervous system and you’re surrounded by these giants who have to take care of you. And if they do not, you’re going to die, that’s literally what’s going on.

It’s called attachment theory, and it’s basically like if I can attach to these caretakers, then they will keep me safe and take care of me and I won’t die. And then we live out this thing for the rest of our lives of this battle between what’s called attachment and authenticity. This is where it’s like I have my own needs that I want to follow, but sometimes that is in conflict with what I feel like the group or the people around me need. 

Julia (00:26:47):

And then we tend to abandon ourselves to prioritize the attachment with the people around us. So for instance, this is what got me into really big trouble with my ski accident where I was in a WORD? and I head over healed tumbled a bunch of times. And then when I finally came to a stop from the tumbling but was still high speed going downhill, and I looked, I was headed right for a rock fin. But I managed to flip like a gymnast… I felt like a gold medal gymnast. Anyway, and stomped the landing. I could have reached out and touched the rock with my hand from my landing spot.

I almost died.

I don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d have hit it headfirst going that fast down like a 40-degree slope in spring conditions. And so what I really learned from that, besides all the healing from the trauma portion of that, but I was like, I never belonged to there in the first place. 

Julia (00:27:44):

I should not have been out there with my friends. And basically what led me there was my attachment to this group of friends that on some level, unconsciously, we are all being encouraged by our nervous system to stay with the people who are familiar to us.

So even though these people who are familiar to me had been skiing since they could probably walk, and I was an adult learned skier, I didn’t start skiing until I was maybe 25. And I wasn’t very good. I basically was with this friend group who was like, we’re here to no friends on a powder day. No friends on any day. We’re going to go ski whatever we want anytime, and if you want to hang out with us, you’re just going to have to come with us or we’re going to leave you behind. That’s how these folks were. 

Julia (00:28:30):

And to some extent, me putting myself with that group of friends who wouldn’t be in care of me and our relationship by toning down the objectives on the days that they chose to go with me was also a product of my sort of trauma development as a child. Where I don’t expect people to treat me with respect or value because I wasn’t treated that way as a child.

So that’s why I had those relationships to begin with. And then because I knew that I wasn’t valued and that they didn’t care about having me around, that I needed to insert myself. If I wanted to stay attached to my people, I needed to just go along with whatever the group was doing. Or I would have to be alone. So there’s that conflict between attachment and authenticity, and I would just choose to go with them. 

Julia (00:29:23):

And even though I can ski crazy things, if I had to, I could probably ski just about anything. I really don’t want to and I don’t like to. It scares the crap out of me. And so I found myself in this WORD? because I was following my friends. After that I came to this realization that every time I choose to go with them, because I don’t want to be abandoned by them, I’m actually abandoning myself.

And so that became its own long process of me learning to prioritize myself and my own needs. And then I started to ask myself, why am I hanging out with other people who are not respectful of my needs or if they are respectful of my needs? And they’re just like, whatever, go do what you want. And they never come around to be like, oh, I totally get that, Julia. 

Julia (00:30:15):

Well, how about this? Obviously I don’t want to ski green runs all day long. That’s my favorite. I don’t want to ski green runs all day long every day. But I tell you, how about next Friday you and I, we can ski together without the rest of our friends or something. And we’ll just do some green runs and maybe some blue runs if you feel like it. Right?

So that’s my question is when my friends won’t do that kind of stuff with me, that makes me feel good. If they’re requiring me to feel anxious and afraid in order to get to hang out with them, are they really my friends? They’re not in a relationship. Being in a relationship means to be in care of another person. And that even though you might prefer doing triple black diamonds, if you really want to be with this other person who can’t or won’t ski that, where’s that negotiation? Right. 

Lizzy (00:31:07):

So when you realized that, I mean obviously it took you a long time to realize this, but I imagine you have a whole different group of friends now. 

Julia (00:31:14):

Yeah. Well, and to add to that, just a couple, about two years ago now, I stopped drinking and that was a really big thing. I still a sip passes my lips, or I might have a drink here and there, but in general, I’m not drinking as a way of, there’s party trips and there are non-party trips, and I just don’t do the party trips anymore. And I find that those typically, those same friends are the ones who really like to party and I don’t anymore. And I just find that being in that situation doesn’t serve me.

And so it’s really hard, in my opinion as a 30-year-old, or I’m not 30, I’m almost 40, but in my thirties to find new friends, and I’m actually a point of struggle for me right now and challenge is how do I make and find new friends? Because typically what’s happening with my age group is they’re available, but then they’re quickly getting married or having children, and then they’re not available anymore.

So literally finding a new friend group that’s cohesive, that other friend group has been a really big challenge. And I have not figured it out yet, but I can’t continue to abandon myself. I will end up dead if I do. That is basically the understanding that I came to. 

Lizzy (00:32:26):

That’s so interesting. I mean, I’ve had a really similar experience except that I came from the front range where I had tons of friends and I moved down here to be with Steve, and it literally took me five years to build my, Steve’s are my friends and some of them have become my best friends. But it took me a long time to develop my own friend group in the way that I like to be friends, which is not to drink accessibly and it’s to exercise regularly.

But sometimes for my friends who’ve just had babies, now it’s just walking. Whereas before it was mountain biking and pack crafting, but I don’t mind actually going walking with them, whatever. So it’s like, yes, I see some parallels. I wonder if this is just something as we come into ourselves as we get older, hopefully. And especially those of us who spend a lot of time in therapy to help with our childhood traumas.

But I wonder if it’s a normal part of maturing. What do you think change? Maturing? Well, just maturing as we get into our thirties and forties. 

Julia (00:33:29):

The change is a normal part of that. 

Lizzy (00:33:30):

Well, no maturing and maturing and finding the people that match our personalities a little bit better, not the people that we think we need to be friends with. 

Julia (00:33:41):

Yeah, I do connect that with change because what does maturing actually mean? It’s that literally you’re changing and becoming different in the decisions that you make and everything in your life.

And what do all the spiritual texts say that change is the one thing that you can really rely on in life? And so I remind my husband who’s had a friend group since he was five, because he actually grew up in Bozeman and I did not that I’m like, change is a part of this. And just because you started being friends with them when you were five doesn’t mean that all of those relationships are going to stay exactly the same throughout your entire life. 

Lizzy (00:34:21):

Absolutely. So it sounds to me like you’re one of those guides that might be helping people through times of change and purposefully making change, especially in regards to people who have dealt with a lot of trauma and then trauma in sports. Is that about accurate? 

Julia (00:34:43):

Yeah, I know, right? I know that you, with your marketing background can really appreciate this, but it is hard to know how to describe my business because you’re right, I have that really specific training to deal with literal physical shock trauma that happens psychologically and in the nervous system.

But then I’ve also got all of this, so bring it back to all my life experiences is I’ve got all of this experience of the relational side of things where my husband and I almost got divorced, and I totally threw myself into figuring out how do you have relationships?

So attachment theory is that we either are securely attached or insecurely attached. An insecure attachment looks like it’s called anxious, and then there’s avoidant attachment.

And avoidant attachment is what I typically come up with when there’s difficulty in relationships, which is basically like, I’m just not going to let you be close to me because that way you can’t hurt me and I will be super independent and alone and you can’t touch me. 

Julia (00:35:45):

No big deal. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like me because I don’t like you. It’s that’s kind of the best that our baby nervous systems can come up with when we have parents who are stressed out or inconsistent somehow and we don’t get that secure attachment.

Thus, as a result, I basically came into adulthood being super hyper independent and literally not knowing and having the skills to have lasting meaningful deep relationships with people. And so that’s really what I figured used my adult life to really figure out.

And so I dove into all the research and everything like that and pulled all these things together. Now I look around me and I’m like, oh my gosh, so many people struggle with having healthy relationships and fulfilling ones. We didn’t learn the skills from our parents because they didn’t know them either.

So right now, I’m actually about to launch a monthly group that’s going to be about developing healthy relationship skills and how to have tough conversations and all that kind of fun stuff. So I’m really excited to be doing that too. So yeah, there’s a lot of different branches that my work kind of goes.

Lizzy (00:36:51):

You’re good. Can you talk to me a little bit more about your training when you decided to embark on this path? And yeah, talk about the training and talk about, because you’ve been doing it for a while, but you’ve really started focusing recently. So is that because of training that more training that you’d done or why? 

Julia (00:37:11):

Yeah, I guess when I first started at 18, I dove into Buddhism and meditation and yoga and all that stuff, and I got a lot from, it’s called Eastern psychology basically, and that way of thinking about things.

And then I took my life coach training and that was really helpful. But I felt like something was missing. I had clients and they were paying me money and coming back to see me again and again. But part of me was like, am I really helping them? Now with the SE, when I took that training and found it and I was like, oh my gosh, this is the thing that’s been missing.

We are literally all walking nervous systems. That is the one thing that’s constantly scanning our environment and impacting everything about our behavior, including our thoughts and our emotions. And when we know what and why the nervous system is doing what it’s doing, we can really change and shape and mold our behavior by going to the root of what the issue is and sort of helping it to transform from that direction. 

Julia (00:38:08):

And so that’s really what led me to the training. It’s a three year training that you take over. It’s three weekends. Year one and year two that are four days long. Then year three is six days twice And there’s even some touch that goes in there.

So touch can be really regulating to a nervous system. There’s studies of, for instance, I think it’s Russian orphans that literally they get changed, they get fed and they don’t get touched otherwise. And the challenges and the way that their nervous system is molded as a result are really drastic. And so we need touch to be okay. And so it’s really cool that SE also brings in the touch element to help stabilize nervous systems, help people learn to regulate. Some of us have literally never learned how to be regulated and how to just be at this homeostasis. 

Julia (00:39:02):

We all operate at this high level of like go that our nervous system is sort of stuck on. And this high energy, that’s what anxiety is. Or we get stuck on off, which is what depression is. Depression is literally just a nervous system state. We’re in freeze mode for some reason. And underneath the freeze, there’s always a ton of unprocessed stuff that we never feel have felt safe or that we have enough resources to really handle. We’ve never really learned the skills to deal with it.

So yes, the training was basically how to be, I’m a nervous system guide. 

Lizzy (00:39:34):

Can we go real quick to an example of, you could use me as an example, my being petrified of the Grand Canyon, even though I’ve done it twice and it was fine, but the swims, I mean, I had a couple that were not pleasant, but they were sure not that big of a deal. So can you go through what you would do with me in the first two sessions and Yeah, 

Julia (00:39:56):

Yeah, totally. Well, the first thing that we would do is you would fill out an intake form, and it’s literally just this list of check boxes. Have you experienced a car accident? Have you experienced an animal attack? All these different things.

And that alone tells me a lot coming in of what it’s called allostatic load, getting super nerdy of what’s going on the load on your system. Because trauma is cumulative. It’s not like something happens and it either sticks or it doesn’t and it doesn’t matter. It accumulates and accumulates and accumulates until finally there’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This could be something as silly and simple as slipping on the ice and falling on your butt and not even getting injured. But it’s this spike in energy and it just unravels us. And so sometimes we’ll have something that’s seemingly minor that happens that was just the last straw. Then we all of a sudden find that we have PTSD like symptoms. And we have no idea why, because we do not equate slipping on a sidewalk and falling to this sudden unleashment of all these PTSD like symptoms. 

Julia (00:40:57):

And so what we would do in the first two sessions and maybe 3, 4, 5? It depends on if you have also that developmental trauma from that relational trauma from being a child. Or if you were born into an environment where your parents were really stressed out all the time and they were never regulated.

It means that you are never regulated because as babies, we cannot regulate ourselves. We can only regulate through our caregivers. And so if that is the basis that we’re coming from, we’re going to spend a long time in many sessions just developing a sense of safety and okayness within the nervous system because we’re going to go into the trauma vortex.

It’s like this whirlpool that wants to suck us down and under a big black hole. And we’re going to dip our toe in it. But if we don’t have an island of safety to come back to and to stand on while we dip our toe into the trauma, we’re not going to be able to do the work. 

Julia (00:41:53):

You’re just going to get sucked down to the bottom and re-traumatized time after time after time. So the first thing we have to do is create that island of safety. And anybody listening to this podcast can actually start to do that work on their own right now by noticing moments where things are just pleasant or neutral.

Sometimes some folks can’t even experience pleasantness and pleasure because their system is so overloaded and they’ve never had that sense of safety. So if you cannot feel pleasure or pleasantness and feel okay and good, you start with neutral. Start with what’s not as bad and just start to build in that direction.

So it could be something like when I get in my hot tub and I really sink down into the hot water, I’m like, oh, this is so nice. And I literally feel what that’s like in my body. 

Julia (00:42:45):

When I look out at the mountains from my window, I notice that my chest expands. I feel a little bit lighter and looser, and literally feeling that sense of okayness and pleasure in my body helps to develop that island of safety.

Every time we drag ourselves out onto our island of safety, it’s like a little bit of sand falls out of our pockets. It makes the island a little bit bigger. So every time we visit it, it gets bigger and more substantial. One way that you can do that now is just by starting to notice the good things or the neutral things in your life. So that’s also something that we’ll do in sessions.

And then eventually what it looks like is that you might be like, okay, well, it’s time to work on the stuff. Or you might be like, I had a fight today with my husband and I just want to talk about that. 

Julia (00:43:28):

And even right there, I’ll be like, so let’s pause and just notice what’s going on in your body, even just bringing this up right now because that’s going to have charge already. We don’t want to tell the whole story because our verbal brain can process things so quickly. And it leaves the soma body behind and the body doesn’t get to process these things. That’s another reason why we develop trauma and PTSD because things happen so fast.

Trauma is basically when something is too fast, too much too soon or not enough of something. And so if it happens too fast, we really need time when we’re telling the verbal story to really pause and stop and allow the body to process all of the sensations and go through that little cycle. The cycle includes the uptick in energy and stress, and then back down again.

And then once we go through that little mini cycle, we can do the next little chunk and be like: “OK, so you were saying that you had an argument with your husband, then what happened next?” 

Julia (00:44:30):

And then I might only have you say one or two more sentences, and then I’m going to notice that your shoulders are going up and that your breathing is changing and that your hands made some gesture. And I’ll pause you right there again and we’ll do the next little bit of work. You might never even tell me the whole story in one session. Yet the work that we did somatically is going to change.

And usually by the end of the session if I’m like: “So think back on this argument now.” You’ll be like: “Oh, it actually feels much different. It feels way less stressful, and I feel much more calm about it. And I actually feel like I could go have a conversation with my partner now and be more calm and regulated.” 

Lizzy (00:45:09):

Tell me about different experiences that people have, pack grafting that might cause trauma, and then how you can work with people specifically with that sort of trauma 

Julia (00:45:20):

Packrafting. Totally. Yeah, that’s a great question. So how do we potentially get trauma on the river. It could be from a scary swim. It could be from getting pander trapped somewhere. Somehow. It can be from just being on a really big rapid that scares the crap out of us, but no injury actually happens, it doesn’t matter.

The way that we would work with that sort of thing. So there’s the work that I can do in my office. And that would include just going through the little cycles and helping work that through. So you might come in, you might say: “Well, I had this really scary swim.” And I would be like: “So let’s pause right there. And even just starting to think about it, what do you notice happening in your body?” And they might respond by saying: :Oh my gosh, my heart is racing. I feel really tense. I really want to run away.”

These are all indicative of what’s happening in the nervous system. Then we’ll just work with that tiny little bit. Once I see that they’ve gone through that stress cycle and come back down, then we’ll do the next little bit.

“Okay, so you had this scary swim. When was the first moment that you knew something was going wrong?”

And they’re going to be like: “Well, it was when I saw the hole.”

And then I might see them freeze up and get really tense or their arms might do something. So then I’d suggest to them that we pause there again. And then we go through another little stress cycle and we might never even get through the entire story of the swim, right?

Because what we’re really trying to do is slow the body down or slow the cognitive narrative down the brain down to give the body time to get caught up. Because what really happens in trauma is that something happened too fast too soon and it was too much. It was totally overwhelming, or there wasn’t enough of something. 

Julia (00:47:15):

When it happens too fast, our body literally doesn’t have time to go through all of the stress cycle that it needs to in order to be able to really integrate it. And that’s what we’re doing in session is really pausing and slowing it down.

The other thing that we can all do is that when we see something happen on the river, let’s be advocate advocates for our friends. When somebody has a swim, one of the reasons this discharge never really happens is because we’re like, all right, well, we just got to keep on going. Or they don’t want to cry in front of their friends or tremble. You might think your friends will think you are a sissy or whatever.

And so when somebody has a swim, I don’t even necessarily acknowledge it. I actually do. I know the psychological first aid that I want to do with them. But let’s say that I didn’t feel comfortable doing that. 

Julia (00:47:59):

I would just be like: “Hey, can we take a snack break? I really need to pee and I’m hungry.” And I might not even make it about them. I’m just going to suggest we take a break. And that in a roundabout way, we call it stealth SE in a roundabout way.

That’s helping them come back to homeostasis, allowing their system to kind of regulate and get back together before we kind of move on. And so that’s something that we can all do with our friends. So when I went to the packraft roundup a couple of years ago in Idaho, 

Julia (00:48:29):

I was leading a trip where there was a swim. Even afterwards, I even felt shaky having helped rescue the person. And so we all pulled over and we literally just sat there together. And I was sitting with this person and watching them and noticing what was going on with their body. There was some shakiness and tremblings.

I’m like: “Hey, I noticed that your hands are just a touch shaky. That is so normal. That’s actually your nervous system trying to help you process what just happened. Would it be okay if we just sat here for a few minutes and you felt the shakiness and just allowed that to be there and let it pass?”

And that’s something that we can do to help our friends not develop trauma so that we can vote with them for much longer for the rest of our boating lives. 

Lizzy (00:49:15):

Cool. Thank you so much for that. And let’s see. Have you been working with a bunch of pack crafters or what kind of athletes have you been working with so far? 

Julia (00:49:26):

Yeah, let’s see. Let me think about that. I do have confidentiality with all my clients where I talk about the fact that they’re my clients. And I don’t necessarily share too many details about any of the work that we do.

So I’ve worked with a fair amount of rafters. I actually haven’t worked with a lot of packrafters. It’s been some folks in climbing and some other sports. So it hasn’t been a ton of packraft specific stuff.

But I do know that Packrafters have a lot of stuff that happens. It’s scary in the water because we end up in the water much more often than the other whitewater sports because kayakers just have a role and they do that if they can hit it. So yeah, it’s an interesting thing all around the country because I work with folks mostly by video conference. And so I actually have only ever had one client in Bozeman, oddly enough. 

Lizzy (00:50:17):

I wonder because packrafting is such a, I mean, it is relatively new in the grand scheme of sports. And I wonder if trauma is like, there’s so many things that people that they don’t think about in pack rafting, just like this whole culture of safety that Luc, Mel and others. But especially spearheaded by Luc Mel, trying to get people to be more conscious of… I wonder if people just aren’t conscious of a lot of this stuff because it’s such a new sport and nobody’s really thought about this. 

Julia (00:50:48):

They don’t know what they don’t know. And you were even mentioning about how you think after your accidents that you’re still feeling pretty scared. And here’s the thing is that that’s actually really appropriate right now. If I’m going to do a Class I flow in my packraft and I’m having panic attacks. That level of anxiety or my skillset as an intermediate to advanced packrafter is disproportionate.

My level of anxiety for doing that level of a run shouldn’t be that high, really. That tells me that there is something off in my nervous system that needs attention, right? If I am feeling anxiety about doing a Class IV Rapid that is very appropriate. I might die. My nervous system should be kicking up a lot of energy in that moment. And if I have the capacity within myself to tolerate that high level of charge, it’s okay if you don’t have the capacity to deal with that high level of charge. 

Julia (00:51:51):

There’s something called the window of tolerance and SE, which just means how much capacity do you have to feel big things without either shutting down or freaking out and having a negative experience, an unpleasant experience with it. And so as my first therapist told me, she’s like, I can’t SE you out of being scared of skiing off the ridge at Bridger. Because that’s an appropriate time to have that level of fear.

And so I think that especially with these newer sports or when someone is new to a sport, they have a negative experience or a scary experience, and it’s because they didn’t know the level of risk involved that they got themselves into that situation. And now that they understand what the risks are. They’re feeling a much higher level of fear because they were a beginner and they didn’t know that they should be afraid. 

Julia (00:52:43):

But now that they’ve got more experience, they know that there are monsters lurking underneath the water. And that they should be scared and that they are actually putting their life in danger.

So our nervous system is actually doing exactly what it’s supposed to do when we feel fear in some situations. And then we can work with our nervous system to develop more capacity to tolerate those higher levels of charge. We can also do other things. Like I’ve noticed that when I am packrafting with two people, I get way more anxious than if I’m packrafting with three people.

If out of those three people I’m the best boater, and the other two are beginners, I have a higher level of anxiety. If I’m the lowest level of packrafter and everyone else is better than me, I’m like, this is fine. Which also has its own problems. I know. Is that the halo effect? So we must be careful there.

But still, I know that I can tweak the variables of the outing to make it more enjoyable for myself and my nervous system. 

Lizzy (00:53:43):

Interesting. That makes me so super curious about what, so maybe it actually is pretty normal. I mean, the Grand Canyon’s pretty scary. I guess it’s potentially pretty normal just to be afraid. 

Julia (00:53:57):

Yes, it is totally normal. And there’s some questions for you. Do you feel, if you imagine yourself doing the Grand Canyon in your pack craft, what does that feel like? Terrifying. Probably. If you imagine yourself doing it with somebody who’s been rowing for a couple of years and has done the Salmon Rivers and Deso and Ladore, how does that feel versus how would you feel if you were in the boat of someone who’s done the Grand Canyon like 15 times and rode it each time?

Right, right. Does your nervous system respond differently to each of those different variables? And that might be the clue that it’s like, oh, I just need more safety somehow. 

Lizzy (00:54:42):

Yeah. Although I wouldn’t do it in a big boat. I know I’d be bored on, and I also wouldn’t want to have to carry it. There’s so much crap you have to deal with when you go on big boat trips. I would never do it. 

Lizzy (00:54:56):

Yeah. So there have to be another way of figuring it out. No, I’m just kidding. No. Yeah. The idea of going down into Big Boat isn’t scary at all. It’s in the little tiny pack ups. And the last time I did it, I did it with Steve and Steve likes to go very fast. And so we did lots of miles and it was really exhausting. And then we did two days of canyoneering and that was extra exhausting. Then we had to do the whole thing in 12 days or whatever, 10 days. I don’t know. It was insanely quick.

But ever since that trip I have been, and that was two years ago, maybe three years ago. Ever since that trip I’ve been, the first time I went on the Grand Canyon, I was afraid, but it was 14 days or 15 and it was kind of chill. 

Lizzy (00:55:37):

And Dan Thurber went. I was like, and Steve is an amazing boater too. But Dan is the kind of guy who just takes care of everybody. He’s pretty much like anytime the whole first four or five days of the trip, he was like right there helping me. I was so afraid. And he was just like, and then giving me mantras to practice.

And this is really interesting actually, because then I went with Steve and the chip was really, really fast. I could follow him and tell him, but he, he’s not like Dan and the way that he takes care, Dan takes care of people on the river. 

Julia (00:56:17):

How about if I share a similar story? One time we did the Rogue River and I was not the trip leader and the group in general just really wanted to go and they wanted to go really fast and they didn’t really want to scout any of the rapids. And I remember, and at that time too, so here’s where sometimes our capacity to tolerate stress is different.

When everything’s going great in our lives, we probably have a huge amount of capacity to deal with stress. But when our cup is full of stress already and then we go to add more stress, it’s just going to overflow and get messy and not feel very good. And so what happened on the Rogue River trip was that everything around me was kind of falling apart in my personal life it felt like. And then we went and added all this stress of all these huge rapids. 

Julia (00:57:07):

I’m so curious to go back and see if my experience of it would be different, having more capacity or if they just looked bigger, but I just experienced them as being huge drops. There was this huge horizon line that you couldn’t really see it. You couldn’t really boat scout, I felt like, because by the time you got close enough to the rapid to really see what was going on, it was too late to get yourself into position. And so nobody really wanted to scout.

And this was back in my days of self abandonment where I didn’t feel like I could really stand up and say like, no, I’m not, leave me here. I’m not doing this trip. If we’re not scouting, I will hike back to the cars or something. So we ended up doing that. I remember a point on the river we were close to, we basically did all the big rapids in one day. 

Julia (00:57:49):

It was wild. And we were close to the end of the rapids for the day, and I was like, I don’t know if I can do one more rapid, I think it was Blossom Bar is the last one. And I was like, I might freak the freak out. I literally might lose my shit. I don’t know if I can do this.

And I ended up doing it and it was fine, but I really felt like I was going to have a mental breakdown or something because of the amount of stress that was getting added onto me. So when we do trips that have the leisure of time and space and pace, that if there are big rapids that we have all the time in the world to stop and scout them or for someone to portage around it.

That’s always an option. It feels so much different to me than it does if I’m with a group where I know that they want the pace to be hard and fast and go, go, go. And nowadays I just choose not to be a part of trips like that. 

Lizzy (00:58:46):

That’s really interesting. And that makes me think of, I really love being with my husband though, and I love doing stuff with him, but he’s turning 50 this year and he’s not slowing down at all.

So I’ve been thinking actually about putting a women’s trip on the grand together sometime in the next couple of years. Yeah, I think not, I feel like I need to do some work first, but maybe 2025, the end of 2025 if I can get a winter permit or something. But I don’t want to be the trip leader, so I’ll ask Jule Harle to be the trip leader and then just invite a bunch of rad women. You want to be on that trip? 

Julia (00:59:26):

Absolutely. 

Lizzy (00:59:27):

Cool. Okay. Well cool. Well, thank you for that perspective. I appreciate it. And maybe I won’t cut out that section. I just don’t want to throw my husband under the bus. But I mean, I think he’s like extreme. He’s such a wonderful guide and people absolutely love him. But his personal trips are really hard. And I go along sometimes on them.

When I was younger, I climbed big walls all over the world and I got really scared. But I sort of thrived on it. And now I have zero interest in getting my nervous system that elevated. I just want to be calm as much as possible. 

Julia (01:00:04):

And different people have different preferences. That’s okay. Some people love to do big, hard, fast trips. I don’t always know why. They just are the way they are, and that’s okay. It doesn’t work for me. And that’s okay.

So you might like pizza and I might hate pizza, and that’s okay. You get to eat pizza and if you invite me to go out for pizza, I might say, I actually dislike pizza. Can we go somewhere else? Or why don’t you go have pizza? Can we get together next week and go somewhere that we both enjoy?

Or we might negotiate to figure out how we can make it work for both of us if we really want to hang out that night. So it’s different. People have different styles. Some people really love to party and drink a lot. That’s great. Good for them. And that doesn’t work for me. I’m sorry. You go do what works for you and I’m going to go over here and do what works for me. And I’m sorry. I feel bad that that means that our level of connection is going to have to change as a result, 

Lizzy (01:00:58):

But that’s really a significant and important thing. I feel like also that women have a much harder time setting those boundaries. At least I feel like I did for most of my adult life. 

Julia (01:01:10):

And I don’t know, it might even be meant too, I guess neither of us is in that body, so we don’t know. But that’s why I love that book. The Myth of Normal is because it really talks about all of these phenomenon in our culture, and we’re literally, our entire culture is one of fawning and appeasement. It’s of attachment, prioritizing the attachment in that attachment, authenticity, conflict versus authenticity.

So we prioritize going with the flow and being sheeple versus standing up and saying, no, that doesn’t work for me. And many people don’t have the skills. For instance, me, I always had really good boundaries in the sense that I’d be like, no, F you go away, but that’s too far on the other side, right? There’s a way to do boundaries in a skillful way where we’re not shaming the other person for wanting to do what they’re doing or criticizing them or having any judgment.

It’s simply saying: “Hey, I see what you’re doing over there, that’s great for you. It doesn’t work for me, and I’m sorry. I’m going to have to go over here and I’m going to do what I need to do to take care of me.”

But you keep rocking on, so there’s a way to do it. And we just have never been taught how to have boundaries, and we just haven’t learned that skill. 

Lizzy (01:02:18):

So interesting. Wow. So there’s quite a bit of stuff that you cover in your practice basically. 

Julia (01:02:23):

There really is. 

Lizzy (01:02:24):

That’s so cool. Is there anything that I’m not asking you that you want to share with me to sort of wrap up the conversation? I know it’s getting on where you have to go to your next appointment. 

Julia (01:02:34):

Yeah, yeah. I think that if you’ve had some sort of experience and you’re finding yourself disconnecting from the world around you and making your life and your world small because of this bad thing that happened, know that trauma is not a life sentence. Things can be different.

And yes, maybe you’ve tried to go to therapy or something before. But if it wasn’t a somatic based therapy, there’s a reason why it didn’t work. So I really encourage people to try again. I hear so many folks who say, well, I tried therapy and it didn’t help. And I’m like, there’s a reason for that. Sometimes CBT has its place, it’s great in certain situations. And I will even use elements of that in my coaching. But if it’s the only thing, then it’s not going to be helpful.

It’s just like if you break your bone, if you only have surgery, you’re not going to heal very well. You need surgery and PT and a good diet and a bunch of rest. All of those things combined are going to help heal you. And so if you’re just doing one cognitive based therapy, it’s not going to help because it doesn’t address the body and the nervous system.

So don’t give up and don’t sell all your gear. Keep trying and find a way people can come find me. I’m sure there’ll be a link in the podcast to my website or whatnot. 

Lizzy (01:03:51):

Yes, there will. And also, I’d love to get a list of your recommended books that you mentioned in the conversation and put those up on the website as well. And there will also be a transcription of the interview on the blog. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time, and I better let you go because you only have 10 minutes. 

Julia (01:04:11):

Thanks so much for having me, Lizzy. 

Lizzy (01:04:13):

Yeah, nice to see you. Have a good day. 

Julia (01:04:16):

Alrighty, take care, Lizzy. Have fun in Mexico. 

Lizzy (01:04:18):

Thank you. 

Julia (01:04:19):

Alright, bye-Bye. 

Lizzy (01:04:22):

Thanks so much for listening in to a Beginner’s Guide to Pack Grafting and Bikerafting podcast episode #5: Healing Adventure Trauma. If you would like to learn more about Julia, check out her business life Untethered coaching and her website, juliayanker.com. The link to her site will be in the show notes. You’ll also find a full transcription on the Four Corners Guides website. 

If you would like to listen to our other podcasts with Luc Mel, Jule Harle, Jeff Cramer, and Steve Fassbinder, you’ll find those interviews on Spotify, Podbean, the website, and also if you on Apple podcasts, though it is quite hard to find them on Apple Podcasts. So I’ll add the link in the show notes. We’ll be back soon with a couple new podcasts for the months of August and September. Thanks again for listening.