Why Nervous System Regulation Is the Missing Link in Mental Health with Dr. Christian Gonzales
Show Notes:
In this powerful and deeply human conversation, Tonya sits down with Dr. Christian Gonzales (Dr. G) - naturopathic doctor, host of the Heal Thy Self podcast, and founder of the Integrative Psychology Institute - to explore the true roots of healing. Together, they discuss the nervous system as the foundation of mental and physical health, the somatic connection between emotion and disease, and why we can’t truly heal without addressing the body’s stored experiences. Dr. G shares personal stories from his mother’s cancer journey, the evolution of his medical path, and the transformative breakthroughs he’s witnessed through psychosomatic healing. This episode is an invitation to reconnect with your body, release what’s been held, and remember that you were never broken to begin with.
You’ll hear about:
- Dr. G’s integrative approach to medicine
- The connection between repressed emotions and physical illness
- Why somatic awareness is key to lasting healing
- How the nervous system shapes our relationships and daily behavior
- Practical tools to feel and process emotions safely
- The vision behind the Integrative Psychology Institute and a new model of therapy
Resources: Metaphysical Anatomy
Connect with Dr. Christian Gonzales:
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- Rainbo.com and @rainbomushrooms
- Try Fungki Mushroom Coffee
- Try Fungki Herbal Mushroom Coffee
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Show Transcript:
Tonya: Hi Dr. G. Welcome to the Rainbo Podcast. It is awesome to have you here today and be catching up, dropping in and yeah, thank you.
Dr. Gonzalez: Thank you Tonya, for having me. I can't wait to go into our conversation. I mean, I know you're passionate about the health and wellness through the mushroom lens and know you have your brand and I remember trying it before and meeting you, and now I'm excited to be sharing with your audience my passions.
Tonya: I am so looking forward to this conversation and, we typically start conversations in the same way every episode, which is a moment of gratitude. So I would love to know what is a moment in your own healing journey that you are grateful for?
Dr. Gonzalez: I have a really great partner. And I think that her reflecting the capacity to hold much light and darkness within me Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: itself so healing for my nervous system.
Tonya: Beautiful. I love that. I will share, what was coming up for me today was, the, I think just listening. Listening to the symptoms of my body, and having a conversation with those symptoms ever since I've been a teenager, my healing journey started when I was like 15, which got me into this whole field. So I think even when nobody was really having those conversations, I brought a curiosity and I wasn't. Ignoring those signals. It was always like a, oh, what's here? Why is this happening? There was this curiosity, and even to this day there's this kind of, conversation and dialogue and listening that happens that I feel grateful for.
Dr. Gonzalez: Amen.
Tonya: So you are doing incredible revolutionary work, truly within mental health. And I would love to maybe just ground into that for a moment.was this always what you knew you wanted to do as a doctor? How did your path leads you here? where is the state of mental health in America? there's so many different stats I pulled some actually just to help ground listeners into, where we're at and the scope of this. And please feel free to, interject if you have any updated, figures. But this is from National Institute of Mental Health from 2025. So one in five Americans suffer from mental health issues annually. One in eight people globally live with a mental disorder. Anxiety is the most prevalent mental health issue in the us. So suicide is a, leading cause of death for young people in America. There's youth mental health, which is, likely a rabbit hole of its own. So I think really setting the stage for the prevalence of where we're at as a society. And you speak so much to the root cause of that, and We're gonna dive into the nervous system. I think there's also spiritual implications of these things, but how, that was like probably 40 questions, but how did you get here and how do you, speak to this from a root cause perspective.
Dr. Gonzalez: Yeah. Thank you for those stats too. Very important to ground,sort of this epidemic that we are seeing in medicine. And I will say also that more younger populations are dying earlier to suicide too. that's a whole nother problem. Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: no, I didn't come outta school wanting to work in mental health. I came outta school wanting to work in oncology and cancer because that was my experience. My mom had cancer my first year of medical,
Tonya: Wow.
Dr. Gonzalez: went through that whole process with her And . I never been around anyone, at least immediately who had cancer, and I didn't know what that process looked like. And at the time I didn't even understand the physiology of it, what was going on. I just knew that you get chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery and everything will be okay. And it was like that for a while until it came back and ultimately killed her. And for me it was,
Tonya: Oh my gosh. Sorry.
Dr. Gonzalez: thank you. it was really shifting my perspective and like, The way we are approaching cancer here, at least from the nutritional Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: isn't comprehensive enough. And that's all I knew at the time and that's all I really cared about was nutrition. And so that's what drove most of my passion. As I got into oncology and I did my residency, I worked at a hospital for two years and I saw so many people with cancer and then I did my own practice in San Francisco. And amongst that path, I really began to see that. I learned earlier on cancer's, not just nutritional, I thought it was just like, oh, just fix the diet and no more cancer, Tonya: Right.
Dr. Gonzalez: put them on an alkaline that's a big, myth that people are looking at. like, then I started to see there's different big components, especially when I went through my residency. we learn about the evidence-based things like exercise and lifestyle and smoking and drinking and genetics. then there was two things that were not emphasized in my residency, not emphasized in any of my learnings for cancer, and it was the environmental medicine and it was the stress. We mentioned stress as this ambiguous umbrella term where we don't really have any grounding in it. We just go, I am Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: And environmental chemicals, we don't. It's not sexy, so no one really talks about it. Well, I did, and then I went down that road and I started really, and all of a sudden I was being asked, all of all my medical expertise. I was being asked like, what's the best rug to get? And Tonya: Interesting.
Dr. Gonzalez: on here?
Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: I, I became reduced into like this person tell me what product to get. So I did a reshift in My work. And then I said, okay, let me go back to that stress thing that I had on my whiteboard years ago that I wanted to explore about what's driving cancer. And when I look at that stress thing, I said to myself, well, what is stress? I know that there's physical stress if you work out too much or starve yourself. Physical stress. I know there's chemical stress. 'cause I just came from the environmental medicine field that if you're exposed to mold or BPA or
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: that affects you. For Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: that and we even know how. But for me it was like, what about the mental, emotional stress? What is that? And it was a moment in my career where I said, okay, stress. something more than just this umbrella term. And for me, it's this felt experience in the body of when we abandon our true expression, what authentically wants to come up in that moment. And when we abandon that, we feel the physiological expression of stress. We feel tension in our belly, tension in our throat. We may have a headache, we may feel inflamed, might be triggered a symptom. Worsens, ultimately it all comes back to the same thing. It is the lack of authentic expression when the body is wanting to express, since your body talking, you saying, Hey, you've abandoned me again. And I went down that route, and that ultimately introduced me to Somatics Psychosomatics, and I started going more into mental health. And I found a passion and I found a gift in it that, I really, really have become obsessed with nervous systems and I can sense people's nervous systems. I can sense what's happening in their nervous system. I can sense what emotions they're holding in. And now I'm teaching people how to do that.
Tonya: Hmm. And is that, kind of the root of where a lot of mental health disorders issues are coming from, you feel
Dr. Gonzalez: Yeah, I think there's two major overarching umbrellas, and the one umbrella is the mental, emotional. Repression. it is the parts of me that have been unexpressed since I was a child and have been held in by my nervous system through the fascia for years, is the thing that is keeping me in a chronic state of stress looped in a cycle of sympathetic or even just. Completely just burnt out Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: and then there's a group of other things. There are things that affect our nervous system on a physical level. One's right next to me, it's my phone. It's one of the most
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: disruptors for our nervous system. It's sleep, it's environmental exposure. It's blood sugar dysregulation, it's nutrient deficient. There is a physical umbrella. I tend to think that because the umbrella of the mental, emotional repression, the parts of us since we were children have been abandoned because that is so prevalent in everyone and it is so negligent In medicine, we don't look at it that that's a bigger umbrella. So often pound for pound. When people address that, they often feel. Way better than addressing all the other things, usually comprehensively because they've done a lot of those things. They've seen the Instagram posts, they've seen the functional Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: know about
Tonya: They've done,
Dr. Gonzalez: they know about nutrition. yeah, that umbrella, the somatic one, the repressed emotions and the fascia. Tonya:
Dr. Gonzalez: That's, a revolutionary one. And I have seen with my own eyes, with my own clients, medical Miracle Healings. you don't learn in medicine, say, what is happening? When the Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: finally becomes liberated from what it's been holding in.
Tonya: I love that you said that because as you were talking about oncology, my mind just went to those creative spontaneous moments in the body where, there is a release. And I think you can get that from psychedelics. sometimes you can get that from those, energetic healings or nervous system healings where like we think things need to take sometimes longer than they. do. And I think every person is so unique in that path and journey and for themselves, but there's also the capacity for there to be instantaneous, dissolving of tumors. Like people have witnessed that with their eyes through some of this powerful somatic releasing and working. I think when you were just speaking, what came to me. Is, where does somebody start with this? Why does talk therapy, fail so many people? How does somebody, I love one of the teachings that you shared, just about, how it's so easy for us, you mentioned the phone. Like it's just so easy for us to abandon the body and move from the body into the mind and into the ego, and so. There's so many things, in so many places that are just like vying for our attention and ways to get out of the body, where does somebody start on, the journey? does the talk therapy still hold, value?
Dr. Gonzalez: It does hold value, but it doesn't hold value at getting to the root.
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: I am a firm believer that talk therapy will show you as a tree, but won't get to the root. And the problem is because it's looking downstream at an upstream problem,
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: looking the lens of psychology. And the psychological cognitive expression is oftentimes the expression of something way more dysregulating upstream, and it's usually in the body. So the most effective therapists are the ones who look through a psychosomatic lens, who are informed that the nervous system and the body come before the psychology. The anxiety, which the person is going to talk therapy for is the downstream manifestation of a. Repressed emotion. It's protecting that repressed emotion. It is protecting the repressed part of you that is upstream. So when the facilitator, or the therapist have a psychosomatic lens, they're able to say, I hear that you become anxious every time that you walk into work. I hear that you become anxious every time you're out socially. But let's ground that anxiety into the body. Where do you feel it just doing that, and do you wanna talk about where to start? Just having the sematic awareness about the psychological experience completely changes. That's when healing starts. It's very difficult for healing to start when you, my therapist and me are sitting and I'm telling you about all the things that make me anxious, and you're giving me tools to work through the anxiety or communication skills that are all still on the psychological plane.
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: You need to ground it with the somatic experience of how I relate to my own body. And when anxiety comes, when you're able to track that experience, then you're able to become more empowered if there are physical mechanisms at play throughout the day. Sure. I get anxious every time I eat broccoli. Wow. I didn't know broccoli was a source of my anxiety or. Maybe it's my sleep. Maybe it's the broccoli and maybe it's every single time that my partner triggers me and I wanna get angry. But I people, pleas instead. Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: pleasing is a form of anxiety.
Tonya: Hmm
Dr. Gonzalez: people go to therapy for people pleasing? Not really. They go to therapy because their heart's beating and they have social anxiety and they're getting panic attacks. Well, that's downstream of the people pleasing.
Tonya: hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: So you see what I'm Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: when people walk into conventional therapy, they're presenting. With late stage expressions of something that's been going on in their body since they were children. So the work that I'm teaching my students to do, and I have been doing with clients is reverse engineering. Let's go back upstream. Let's take that hike all the way to the fountain head. You and I can actually see what the heck is going on, and when we change that water that's coming outta the fountain head downstream, the expression of that water is a lot clear, cleaner, crystal clear, lot pure, less toxins, less heavy metals. Oh yeah. By the way, the physical adjusts to the mental all the time. The more clear and expressive and nervous system regulated we are, the more our immune system and our hormones are gonna be expressed. The same way. It's just waiting for our nervous system to go, Hey, I'm finally safe to be me.
Tonya: Are there, are there two types of. People or, clients, patients that you see that this is unconscious for them and they're not even aware of, what some of these emotional triggers are, versus. guess, what is the symptomatology express as, is it a trigger? Is it, anxiety? Is it any emotion that feels really alive in the body? and what if somebody gets really good at numbing? I.
Dr. Gonzalez: Mm-hmm. it depends on where they're at, right? If their nervous system state is in a frozen, collapsed state, those people. Are not going to feel, they're not gonna feel emotion, they're not gonna be able to mount the emotional expression. When you have an emotional charge, like a repressed anger that's being expressed, that's not gonna come from someone in a collapsed, depressed state who can't get
Tonya: Right.
Dr. Gonzalez: couch. it's important for. People who work in this space to be able to read where people are at. Now, if they're in a sympathetic dominant state where they're in a mobilized, adrenaline filled fight or flight state, oh yeah. They can mount the charge and the expression of emotion. I built out these archetypes, five of them, five archetypes That are the expression of certain repressed emotions. One of them, the numb one, the numb I call it, is the person who gets really, really good at disconnecting from their body. These are the people that are oftentimes. Really, really successful and logical based jobs. They're in tech, they're in the academics. Jordan Peterson,
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: People value his intellect and I think he has a really iq, but I think his somatic IQ is very low. it's that of a child. he has a really genius iq, but a sematic IQ that's really low. So his. Healing his prescription would be him over time because he's numb to, and I've seen videos. I can read it. There's a numbness in the body. There's a numbness of what's going on. So his actual remedy in prescription would be to start connecting back with his heart. especially men, a lot of men are numbs, a lot of men are really successful in the intellectual arts,
Tonya: Dr. Gonzalez: that's a contradiction in itself, but. he would need to feel his heart, feel grounded in his body and begin to let what's in there actually come up. And I actually don't think it's a lot of anger. 'cause sometimes he comes off as really Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: deep, deep, deep, deep deep sadness and deep, deep, deep shame,
Tonya: Mm
Dr. Gonzalez: around the hips. I saw a video of
Tonya: mm
Dr. Gonzalez: There's
Tonya: mm
Dr. Gonzalez: So numb people oftentimes have really tight hips because they're not in flow, they're in their head.
Tonya: He does cry a lot in some of his episodes too.
Dr. Gonzalez: Right, right. Tonya: Sadness? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: It's not just anger and sadness. There's, there's a deep, deep, deep shame in the hips. And this is in speculation. I know what I see. I've seen thousands of people. when you see so many people, there's a pattern and you can sense, and I know I can sense this, so you see his hips really tight. For me, that is a lack of fluidness in the body, lack of femininity, there needs to be the balance of the feminine, the masculine. And so what I'm trying to say is that not everyone will be able to mount an emotional response depending on where people are in their nervous system or these archetypes that I had developed. Depends on how they express that emotion and what they need. Different people need different things. Like a Donald Trump is very, very expressive, very hot, very angry. That's someone who's living in a sympathetic loop. He is always being attacked, always ready to be Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: Well, that's the type of person who can mount an emotional response. he's not collapsing a depressive state. He's fi, he's hot. It's also a lot of sadness inside of him,
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: that's really, really hard to access We all see the anger. So that's what I'm trying to say is that emotional aspects for people or bio individualized.
Tonya: I love, I love hearing the examples. Um. who do you meet that is regulated because of the world we live in, and every day is so different. Every day there's new triggers. There's all of the things that we're constantly facing as humans in our modern lives. What is an appropriate response? Because something I've been sitting with is. Okay, so let's say we have the self-awareness. We've done some nervous system healing. We have self-awareness where, you somebody's blowing up at me, I am gonna have the awareness to know how to respond in that moment, to not elevate the issue. and, maybe it just flows through me. other times maybe that triggers me. But I guess the question is when you have awareness and you can regulate. Your emotional response, how do you then know if you have properly processed the emotions involved in that versus breezing past it?
Dr. Gonzalez: Great question. There is. Emotional regulation through our prefrontal cortex. And then there's emotional reactivity through our limbic system. The Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: the centers where we actually need to react and survive. People who undergo complex trauma and even small t over time trauma have really active limbic regions in the brain where they're in fear, where they're hypervigilant, where they have poor memory, where they're impulsive, where they're reactive. Okay. important to understand. So depending on what your life experience is, your resiliency, your constitution, your brain capacity. Yeah. Some of us are living in that loop of the fear state and it's really hard for us to go to the prefrontal cortex to go, okay, I'm actually gonna regulate this emotion. I actually gonna take a moment and have a pause and I know how to express. We all have that capacity 'cause we all have prefrontal cortexes. It's not fully shut down, but some people are just really active in their limbic brain now. There is an appropriate response. The response is not only to feel what is wanting to be felt in the moment, but also understanding through the prefrontal cortex how is in this moment the most socially acceptable. Version of me going to express, if I'm at work, I'm not gonna a tantrum and step on the floor and cry and scream. What adult's gonna do that? Unfortunately, we've never created a space in society where people could just express and go back about their lives. it doesn't stop there. It's not just the emotional regulation. I'm gonna emotionally regulate and act like an adult. That's okay. Where does that energy go? Where does the energy go when your boundary has been crossed and you
Tonya: Right.
Dr. Gonzalez: explode on your boss? You can't just act like an adult in public and abandon yourself in private. your responsibility to have the somatic awareness to know, okay, at work, I felt really freaking angry and I, said very professionally. Okay, boss, you're right. I'll get that to you Even though you
Tonya: Fiery and yeah, like
Dr. Gonzalez: even though there was a fire inside of you. what are you gonna do with that fire? Because I promise
Tonya: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: out and you may numb it, but if you come home that night. Or later that afternoon and you close your eyes and you feel your belly, I promise you that fire is still there. So how are you not gonna abandon yourself and express that in private? How are you gonna through breath, through sound, through movement, through screaming, through hitting pillows, whatever works for you? How are you gonna express that energy so you go back to your normal, resilient capacity of your nervous system? Now it's also in our. Integrity and dignity as human beings do. I always wanna be in an environment where I have to keep abandoning myself and my truth and not seen and my boundaries across. That's a
Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: conversation for you to explore, and we also, part of being an adult is not just emotionally regulating, it's also not abandoning our body and the privacy of our
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: own home.
Tonya: And what do some of those practices look like? You mentioned like shaking and would something like writing be a way, is that more intellectual or is that, I guess it's not really traditionally somatic, but where does that play in
Dr. Gonzalez: I think writing is a portal, but it's Tonya: mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: release, you're thinking about it, definitely it's not a release. If you're channel writing or
Tonya: Flow.
Dr. Gonzalez: Flow. writing come through the paper through your hand, that's different, but it's not a matter of like rereading what you wrote and be like, oh, I'm really mad at
Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: It's not
Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: unless what you're writing is a listening, a feeling in
Tonya: Mm.
Dr. Gonzalez: but you have the somatic awareness to go, as I write, I'm really damn angry at my mom, and you feel in your body heat starting to form in your chest or your belly, well then that's really important for you to start witnessing. So you ask how the first step is always the same step for every single human being on earth. It's to have a somatic awareness. You cannot do anything without being able to feel your body. And that sometimes for some people comes with time and exercise. We go to the gym to work out, but we don't take the time to actually feel what the heck is going on in our body. When I'm stressed, I know exactly. I can pinpoint it with my finger where I feel it in my upper left belly, and I know upper left belly for me means fear. That way I know when I'm stressed. Oftentimes, it's fear. Now if I'm stressed. Quote, unquote stressed. I'm having the experience of stress and my whole belly feels tight, and I feel hot in the middle of my chest. I know I'm angry. I know I have something in the day. I've abandoned myself. It doesn't have to be someone got me mad. I could
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: abandoned my own self and I'm angry at myself. Okay? I know what that feels like now. I also know what sadness feels like. I know that immediately, my throat gets really dry. I have a lump in my throat and my chest feels tight, and I wanna smile. I wanna smile through it like everything's okay. Well, I know my body's trying to express sadness,
Tonya: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: and my job to drop into my body and go, okay, whoa, I see that you're here. Thank you. Okay. There's a part of me that wants to be expressed and I have this opportunity to express it. Now I could do it around people or I could do it by myself, whatever. It makes me feel most safe, but I know what's gonna be really most important for me to not abandon that stuff it down and then begin to suffer with physical health issues down the line and mental health issues.
Tonya: Thank you. So good.
Tonya: I'd love to hear a bit more about shame, blame, guilt, fear, those kind of lower energy center emotions that are insidious and kind of hidden in some ways. what are the kind of physical correlates of that or the symptoms that are expressed in that? or any specific, disease states or issues that are a result of that?
Dr. Gonzalez: I mean, it's a fun stuff, right? I think traditional Chinese medicine did a really good job of mapping out meridians and emotions and, the energetics of emotions and how it manifests its disease. what I've seen. In my practice is that yes, there are correlates between where emotions are held. it's pretty consistent, and Chinese medicine got a lot of it, right, at least in my experience and also disease states. Now, I say this, not saying this is medical advice. I just say this as something that I've
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: Oftentimes, fear and anger manifest as gut issues. issues often aren't. Sadness. Gut issues because they live in the belly, are oftentimes the expression of that tight tense fascia in the belly, bracing through fear or anger. Now, anger is a major fiery one, and when you see someone release 20 years of anger, you see how explosive that
Tonya: mm.
Dr. Gonzalez: you look at that and you go, imagine this person has been holding that much energy in their body. There's a coolness, there's a relaxness, there's a nervous system regulation. After an anger release, everybody has anger. on some level, women generally speaking tend to have more anger than men because men socially okay to express a little bit more anger than women. the reverse is for sadness. Whereas oftentimes sexual shame is repressed in the hips or the lower back or the sexual organs, reproductive organs, and that is often manifesting as
Tonya: Right.
Dr. Gonzalez: reproduction, issues with menstruation, prostate issues, anything hit between the hips, a little bit lower down into the legs. That's usually manifesting. Chronic pain in the lower back is a big one. That's usually guilt for me that I've seen it is the weight of carrying so much through your life. Maybe it starts in the upper spine that you're carrying something, and over the years it goes lower and lower and lower as guilt,
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: guilt, guilt them, and it's heavy guilt all the way at the base of the spine, I've seen it. I've seen guilt manifest multiple times. Whereas when you look at the chest and the throat, this is where we often think of sadness, where we think of repression, of like say thyroid issues, repression of speaking
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: of expressing your sound, your true voice. look at the lungs and the chest and the heart. It's often deep, deep, sadness, grief, heaviness, the weight of that. So yeah, there are disease states, complex disease states are a little bit different. Definitely autoimmune disease. I mean, Gabor Mate has laid out
Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: Oftentimes the expression of people who abandon themselves, who have, repressed anger. People who, abandon themselves for others. Usually this is the mom who abandons everything about herself for her children and her
Tonya: Yeah.
Dr. Gonzalez: Great. Honorable on the surface, not honorable to the
Tonya: Hmm.
Dr. Gonzalez: And so, yeah, there's disease correlates. I wish. There's different books. There's like a book called Metaphysical Anatomy, which is really cool. I like that book. some consistencies on what I've seen and what I read. but yeah, there's a lot of things to start mapping out in this, but there's a truth
Tonya: Mm-hmm. there's so much interconnection in the human experience and from a spiritual perspective as well. When you were talking about guilt, I was remembering that. When I was processing that, I learned about how ancestrally held that that is and how sometimes some of these emotions aren't even ours, but they're passed down to us through our grandparents and parents and of course they manifest in their own way in our lives, but they can be something that is passed down to us. What does your work. look like from a collective perspective of pain, sadness, horrors in the world, and how we as humans also try to digest some of what's happening?
Dr. Gonzalez: when we think about when ancestral wounding, there is a consistency that we see throughout life and people who usually come into this work wanting to see what's inside of the body, start working with their nervous system, start bringing their nervous system back to a healthier state so they can feel better in their body. They're often carrying a lot from, the generations before them. so when someone presents and they go, look, I haven't really had much trauma in my life. They can also be holding a lot for their mother or their grandmother, or their father or their grandfather. And it happens multiple times. I've seen it. actually, at this point, I think it's a mix of,What they inherited, but also what they've experienced. I don't think that any family system is perfect. Everyone's doing their best. At least I would like to think so, but we do oftentimes abandon our own authentic expression for that attachment or survival. it just happens as children. Mm-hmm. It just depends on the extent of how it happens. So I think it's a combination of the generational pieces that we're holding for our family, and I know that this to be true because I've seen it so many times with myself and with clients, but also the things that we've held in for our own safety and attachment and survival. The combination of that often will be expressed into the body.
Tonya: Hmm. I also find it so fascinating how the nervous system is kind of inherited from our parents, especially from our mothers, and one of the first things to form in utero. So it's kind of like when you are doing this work, you're doing so much mm-hmm. For healing, like healing backwards and forwards to some extent. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. breaking some form of a generational pattern and inheritance and redirecting your destiny and the future offspring and, there's so many people that are affected. When we start to do this work, Dr. Gonzalez: it's so true. And this work is, I mean, you want to give the biggest gift to your children is to do this work. really? Mm-hmm. Because your children are going to respond to your nervous system. The words that you say the presence or lack of presence that you have is going to be a function directly of your nervous system.
Dr. Gonzalez: And so the nervous system work is essential. It is the most loving thing you can do for your children, aside from providing, food in a home, is to actually uplevel yourself to your healthiest nervous system state, because I promise you, a child feels it. They see what you do, they hear what you say, but they feel it without words, without doing anything. When they walk into the house or when you walk into the house, they will feel your nervous system. This is why this work is imperative.
Tonya: what are some of the success stories? I can only imagine what you've seen in the world and the transformation in people. Can you share some of those stories, instances, anything that stands out?
Dr. Gonzalez: Anything from. persistent stubborn weight loss, which is crazy because imagine there's people suffering that, like I've done the diets, I've done all of the calorie deficits, the workouts, I've gotten trainers, but of course the body was protecting them with weight, right? So when you move through the emotion under that protection of weight, the weight starts coming off. I mean, that's one huge one people are so excited about. Mm-hmm. They're like, oh my God, I'm just losing so much weight. I can't believe this over. I haven't done this all my life. I've been overweight. And finally that's been like persistent. People are always happy about that, but that's to be expected. I wasn't surprised by that. The things that really surprised me are when you start to see chronic diseases or lifelong pain start to disappear. I'll tell you too, one was an older. An older man, I think he was like maybe 60 years old. He wasn't there for his mother's death because when he was in college, he was away in another country and he didn't come home ' cause he thought she had, more time left. But she ended up dying. He held that guilt in his lower back as I was saying before. And when that guilt came up from his lower back and it went up the spine and around the lungs, it was like that man was drowning in his own grief. You can hear the tears and the mucus bubbling in his lungs and in his throat. And that was really intense. 'cause it was a big man. It was a big, big man, bigger than me. Wow. and I'm working with his lower back and I'm moving that emotion and holding space for him and. The pain went away, never came back. the quote unquote injury that they said he had when he played baseball, but they couldn't find out on an MRI or x-rays. Right. And he's just lived with every day just, and it's affected the way he walks, the way he stands, pain went away. But my favorite ones is a woman who was infertile for about two years. She was gonna do IVF in about two, three months. She came to me, it was like a last stitch thing. She's like, I saw your videos on Instagram. And I just felt connected to come and we went through the session. I knew that there was things in the womb. I felt it. read it in the body, but one rule I teach students is never to name emotions for someone. Let the body express it when it's time. we never push for it to be there. We just work with what the body shows you meet people where they're at, and she said, oh my God, I just feel so much pain and I knew where she was gonna leave me. And she goes, it's right in my womb on the upper right side. And, I went to that area and I did this technique and I had my hand there and I pushed down and I could see her wincing. and I asked her to breathe in and she was really connecting, like meditating into that sensation. And then she very clearly saw that it was just this massive amount of anger. and she said, I'm just so angry. So we went through that process, that anger, I swear, shook up my back. A DU it was shaken. I swear the whole neighborhood heard that one. but I can feel her fascia under my finger. Begin to loosen, loosen, loosen, loosen, melt, melt, melt, and open. Wow. Then there was a lot of sadness after that. But here was the kicker, right? So she leaves. And, that was her last session, but we stay in touch for a few, back and forth, and I don't hear for her for a month. And she emails me and she very obviously said that she was pregnant. And It was two months after the session she was pregnant and she goes in her email. I realized after the session with you, that every time my partner would wanna be intimate with me, I would subconsciously close my legs to push him away, even though she loved him, it wasn't him. Mm-hmm. It was actually what she went through in her womb. And it was when she was raped in college and she never processed that rape. Mm-hmm. I'm sure she went to a therapist and they talked about it and she cried a little bit, but she never expressed the anger and rage of having her boundaries crossed. And she expressed that her body said, I'm safe to receive. What happened? She got pregnant. Wow. That's one of my favorite stories ever. I'm so happy with that. She said I could share it with everyone, so I have it in my emails. I put it sometimes online. It's incredible.
Tonya: It's incredible. Wow. and this is one-on-one work. 'cause I've also seen some of your group work and so what is the, like, you know, it's just anything allowed to come out. It can be loud, it can be like a lion's roar. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. what is the container for someone like what does that even look like? Dr. Gonzalez: Yeah. they could be one-on-ones. I do do, a few times a month, one-on-one sessions. I teach through the Integrative Psychology Institute students how to do this. We have a psychosomatic program, but we also have a master's program where it's part of the master's program. but I do group sessions in LA and the containers basically Uh, there's no judgment. All of you is accepted, and by all of you, I really want the audience to understand this too much of the spiritual community and health and wellness communities, love and light and mm-hmm. Absolutely love and light. You wanna be loving towards people. You wanna be a source of light for them. Mm-hmm. And you cannot do this nervous system healing work if you do not witness your darkness. I'm talking about not only witness and feel it in the body, but every single day talk to it and say, you are safe to be here. You are safe to be part of this whole, when I say. Healthy nervous system. I mean, all of your light and all of your darkness, that container that holds all the light and all the darkness is unconditional love. That's what unconditional love is. It's the same thing in a relationship. We can't just love part of our partner. We can't just love the parts of our partner that make us feel good or are safe, or the things that we can hold, but when he or she is really in pain and that pain is coming up, can we actually hold them? That's true. Love. Anything less than that is conditional love. Mm-hmm. Well, what do we do for ourselves? Do we conditionally love ourselves? Do we only express our joy, our happiness, our fun side, our connected side? Or do we actually honor. Express that darkness too. That's really, really important for people to understand. Healing is the acceptance of that darkness as part of you integrated into the hold, allowed to be expressed healthily without fear. That's true. True nervous system healing. And to me, that's the highest level of health.
Tonya: I love that so much. What does it look like for you personally in, you're holding so much space what is your safe space? You mentioned your partner, do you have any practices that you do individually?
Tonya: I know you've got so many things going on, so it's like Yeah. how does it look like for you? Dr. Gonzalez: That's a good question because there is a, state that I teach, it's a 50 50 state, and when you are an empath like me. Oftentimes people pleasers are empaths. I'm a recovering people pleaser, but being an empath isn't always a great thing, especially if you abandon your own body. So oftentimes people who are overly empathetic will fully be with the person and abandon themselves. Mm-hmm. Well, there's something that happens in the body when you do that. The body becomes anxious. So oftentimes empaths have an anxious tinge to their energy and it's because their body's like, Hey, remember me? There's a state where we can actually be with our body and be with a human being, and that's the best state to space hold the reverse. If I'm just with myself, it's sort of like that narcissistic energy. Like I don't even care that you're there. What did you say? I didn't even hear you. So I tend to be more, on the side of abandoning myself and being with someone fully. And it's been a lot of work for me to do that. And to do this work, you need to have that state. Yeah. Early on. I was completely with the person and I was taking on their energy, and I was becoming exhausted and overwhelmed. Mm-hmm. And oftentimes, even still sometimes when I'm feeling very sensitive or overwhelmed in my nervous system, if I'm out in public, it's too much. the sounds are too much. I can feel people too deeply. I need to be alone. So, to answer your question, I am a big extrovert and I have to take alone time. I have to, once a quarter, I'll leave no phone and I'll go to the desert for a few days just to reengage myself, recover. Mm-hmm. But even at the end of the day. I'll take about two hours not talking to anyone. Sometimes it's silence. Sometimes it's a really good movie, and just come back to my nervous system recovery. What works for me. I know walking consistently works for me. I know connecting to my heart is one of the quickest ways to balance my nervous system. I know singing, especially in the shower, is a way I know absolutely. Dancing aliven my nervous system. Mm-hmm. So So It just depends on where I'm at. restoration or expression mm-hmm. Restoration or expression. Both are gonna be really helpful to my nervous system and everyone listening.
Tonya: That deeply, deeply resonates.
Tonya: I also am, I will abandon and, have had to work so much on boundaries, within situations. Um, so will you tell us a little bit about the institute of. Psychology.
Dr. Gonzalez: Yeah. Integrated. Yes. Psychology institute.
Tonya: Yeah. Thank you. you have a master's program, you're working with practitioners, you're getting this work out there. Mm-hmm. Tell us about that. That's incredible.
Dr. Gonzalez: It has been a labor of love to get our program accredited. There has been so many loopholes, state, federal, God bless our team who's been fully focused on making it happen. But we are an accredited program where people can become integrative therapists. And when I say integrative therapists, I mean it. It's not just like this sticker that we want people to be like, Ooh, it's the next wave of therapists. No, we are absolutely training therapists. And when before we spoke, I was recording the lecture for integrative functional therapy and mental health, meaning that we're teaching our therapists how to look at the physiology and how that influences the psychology conventional therapist. You come in. You have anxiety, you have depression, you have addiction, you have something that's going on relationally, and I know how to work with it in the psychological realm. But what if there's a lot of physical impressions in your life that are affecting your nervous system, that are leading to the anxiety way upstream before the manifestation of, I'm anxious when I go out socially, I have social anxiety and that's all I can work with. No, no, no, no. Do you have neuroinflammation from poor sleep, from over phone usage, from nutrients, from blood sugar dysregulation? So we're teaching people how to work in the scope of therapy, learning about that, and absolutely all the nervous system and somatic stuff. Something that is missing from these therapy programs. I don't know how they're missing it because I don't think you can do healthy, true efficacious therapy without understanding the nervous system in somatics. So these students are becoming masters of both. While learning all the traditional stuff, but in the lens of nervous systems, somatics, and also the physiology, the physical interventions. That's true integrative therapy. So you come to my office and I look at you and we're talking about anxiety, but then I'm asking you, do you feel inflammation in the gut? Oh yeah, I've gut issues. How's your sleep? I hardly ever sleep. Oh my God. I have brain fog all the time and I have anxiety. Maybe Tonya's picture isn't just, she has social anxiety. Mm-hmm. Maybe it's, she has neuroinflammation. I'm gonna refer her out to a functional doctor to see if she has an infection or Lyme disease or things like that. That's how we do integrative medicine. Yeah. And we're so proud at the Integrative Psychology Institute to launch our first cohort in September of a new army of integrative therapists who are gonna change the face of mental health. And I mean it. And we've been getting two new inquiries a day for our program. It's been on fire because people are like, we need this.
Tonya: we very much need this. Are the
re prerequisites that students need to, like, do they need to come with a bachelor of science or Dr. Gonzalez: mm-hmm. Exactly. They need a bachelor's, have graduated college. we do have programs for people outside of that courses where they don't need any prerequisites. So we have a psychosomatic course, which I do a lot of the teaching on that, especially the last two months. It's a six month program, a hundred hours, some prerecorded, a lot of lives. But we really, really learned the technique that I developed to do this work that we've been talking about this whole session, all the testimonials have gone through the ELM Technique, emotional Liberation method. They all learn the ELM technique. You learn it in the Masters too. Mm-hmm. But this is for people who want to, let's say they're a yoga teacher or coach, or. They're a therapist, but they wanna just learn this one somatic practice. Yeah. We bring them through there. We've had five cohorts so far. It's really, really exciting. to me, it's one of the most important tools to learn if you wanna work with the nervous system.
Tonya: Beautiful. And all online.
Dr. Gonzalez: All online. We wanna make it accessible. Amazing. we have some in-person for the masters, two times a year. but all the content is online.
Tonya: Beautiful. I'm such a huge proponent of education and learning. I'm just wrapping up my master's as well, actually right now. Cool. I have two more semesters. I'm getting there. for me actually, I feel like learning is my zone of genius. It's where, especially if you are, here in service, It's so important. There's like an opening of inspiration and knowledge and like what that gives you and fuels you in the way that you can continue to just elevate the service you provide. so it's incredible that you guys have an accredited school.
Dr. Gonzalez: that is, thank you. One thing that is really important is the embodiment, experiential learning. So we do not stress memorization. We stress understanding the concepts, but we ground it in the nervous system. So. Our students have work where they have work between lectures. We have live classes where they're actually integrating these practices to, to have more somatic awareness, but also, for example, on the functional integrative course, they're gonna be doing these practices of, let's say, blood sugar dysregulation, sensing blood sugar. What does that feel like when they eat something? what are the markers of blood sugar drops dysregulation? People are gonna discover experientially, wholly moly, like I may have neuroinflammation, I may have gut issues, I may have blood sugar dysregulation, and how these interventions help them. The reason why is because. They have to experience all of this before they work with clients. So through their own experience this is how people remember. You, remember what you feel much more than what you hear. So that's our main focus is experiential, embodiment, learning, and less just regurgitation and memorization. That's old school. Mm-hmm. S antiquated. It's boring. Mm-hmm. We're bringing in the true experience. Tonya: Can a nervous system stay regulated? what do you think about, that process of shifting it from, sympathetic dominance to parasympathetic
Dr. Gonzalez: this is the cohort truth, unless you have had healthy attachment growing up? We have to work. didn't, most people don't, I go back to my partner who has had, she's one of the unicorns that I've met who've had healthy attachment. Great family. She's always regulated and it's crazy to see. So she does her rituals and she'll do her work around it. But meanwhile, here I am taking an hour in the morning to just get back to myself. but unfortunately, it's okay. It's work and it doesn't mean that it's work, like it's bad work. It's work that we're doing to feel better for ourselves and it'll become less work over time. But you always have to check in. You always have to check in where you're at when you're feeling you're face relaxed. When you're feeling that there's less of the. Heat or the furnace on in the body when things feel calm, but mostly when you feel connected. Mm-hmm. The telltale sign of a healthy, regulated nervous system is that when I'm talking to someone, I'm talking to connect, I'm talking to feel like I want to connect with someone, not like I have to show myself in one light or I have to take something from someone or any other thing other than my only want in life is just to connect. That's when you know your nervous system is in a really healthy state. And yeah, we can shift there. And I know a lot of people viewing listening, we felt that sometimes we don't need to take psychedelics or any other drugs to feel that. Sometimes we feel that with our partners. Sometimes we feel it with our kids, but it's our God-given right to feel that every day, even in the most boring of times, to feel connected to the eggs that we're cooking in the morning or feel connected to the mushrooms that we're foraging when we're in the woods. That's true nervous system health. And that's available. Some people, we just have to keep working to maintain it more than others, and that's okay. Mm-hmm. Tonya: Yeah. I feel like it just dropped in so deeply into this place of relaxation with you, and it made me realize that's part of the gift that we give because When you are with somebody who's in that state of deep presence and who's making that connection so safe and easy for you. there's an invitation in there. There's a signal to another person's nervous system too. it's the ripple effects of what happens when we do this. Work and when we regulate Yeah. is really a gift to people around us.
Dr. Gonzalez: even people that we never talk to or will talk to, right. Imagine somebody regulated walking through the street. You don't think, we feel that there's a field around us and we feel people's fields. Mm-hmm. And we are sensed and attuned to them. So imagine just you, Tonya, who's regulated and you walk past me in Venice and I'm on my phone and I just feel a little something, a little shift in my own energy. That's you influencing it. It absolutely happens. Totally. It's through the heart towards field. It absolutely happens. Your influence of your field can influence the influence of my field. What a gift. You can bring humanity. You wanna truly help heal the world. This is where it comes back to that cliche statement. It starts with you. Mm-hmm. It starts with your field, and that field is a function of how healthy your nervous system is. Coming back to that, that's a spiritual nervous system connection. that unseen quantum field around you is a function of how healthy your nervous system is. And this is why this work is everything.
Tonya: You are such a gift and wealth of knowledge, and I love to ask our guests to If you could leave listeners with one wish prayer sentiment, what would that be?
Dr. Gonzalez: You're not broken. I promise you that. No part of you is broken. The healthiest, highest, most embodied, regulated version of you exists right now. It's accessible right now. So the moment you abandon these old stories that I am worthless, less than broken, not good enough. The moment you abandon those is the moment you start coming back to you as a healed person. Everyone's healed. Everyone is already healed. That's a fucking gift when we realize that. Tonya: Yeah. I love that so much. Thank you. We are gonna link all the places that we can find you in the show notes. Instagram, where else? I know you're doing some one-on-ones right now.
Dr. Gonzalez: Yes, we have one-on-ones. We're gonna send you, the link for anyone who wants to work one-on-one with me. We have three different tiers from just emotional release to Psychosomatics to even the functional doctor hat where we order labs and things like that. We look at everything. and then the Integrative Psychology Institute is where we do fantastic work if you're interested in becoming certified and or becoming licensed in therapy. And, you can find me on the swell score too. I have a online marketplace that sells some of the best. We gotta get the mushrooms on there? Yeah, we do. Oh my goodness. It just hit me. Because we don't have many mushrooms on there, so we gotta get Highlight on that. Would love that. We'll make that work. But yeah, just find me on Instagram. I'm doing a lot of stuff, but I'm excited about it.
Tonya: Thank you so much for your time and sharing all of this amazing wisdom and knowledge with us.
Dr. Gonzalez: I'm excited to spend more time with you.
Tonya: Mm-hmm. Thank you for this. This is amazing. And, I hope we were, are gonna see each other again soon.
Dr. Gonzalez: Wow. A hundred percent. What a gift. Thank you so much for, letting me speak to your audience too. This is passionate work and I know that you see that, so I appreciate you holding that space for me to talk about it
Tonya: very much, very much. and yeah, I would love to explore getting Rainbo on the shop.
Dr. Gonzalez: Let's do it.
Tonya: That'd be so cool. a hundred
Dr. Gonzalez: percent. Tonya: We're also launching like a caffeine free, amazing, delicious caramel rich, Herby ab epigenic, product. Ooh,
Dr. Gonzalez: like a tea or like a spray? Tonya: it is a tea. we have like a low acid, low profile mushroom coffee, and then we're doing a totally caffeine free zero calf, chicory mesquite, 3000 milligrams of lion's mane reishi.
Dr. Gonzalez: Oh, I want try it. I wanna try it. I,
Tonya: I would love you to try it. I would love to, send you that.
Dr. Gonzalez: Let's do it.
Tonya: Thank you again. Ciao. Bye.
Keywords:
somatic healing, heal yourself, nervous system health, psychosomatic medicine, integrative therapy, emotional release, repressed emotions and illness, mind-body healing, trauma and the nervous system, Integrative Psychology Institute
