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Episode 14: Stories of Healing, Place, and Belonging with Mahshid Hager

In this rich conversation, Mahshid Hager joins me to explore the deep connections between healing, place, ancestry, and belonging. We talk about what it means to reconnect to land after displacement, how our bodies carry the memory of where we come from, and the ways somatic practices help us rebuild relationship with place even when we feel far from home.

Mahshid shares her own story of growing up in Iran, living in diaspora, and finding her way back into a sense of rootedness through land-based ritual, creative expression, and nervous system work. Together, we reflect on migration, inherited grief, cultural loss, and the longing to belong — as well as the resilience, beauty, and wisdom that emerge when we let the body guide us back into relationship with the world around us.

Throughout the episode, we weave in conversations about slowness, pleasure, the seasonality of healing, walking as a somatic practice, and how land teaches us how to stay connected, even through change.

Timestamps

00:00 — Welcome & introducing Mahshid
02:00 — Mahshid’s early experiences of land, childhood, and cultural roots
04:00 — Growing up in Iran and the imprint of place on the nervous system
06:30 — Diaspora, migration, and the grief of displacement
09:00 — How the body remembers what the mind forgets
11:00 — Rebuilding relationship with land from afar
13:00 — The role of somatic practice in finding belonging
15:00 — Walking as a healing practice & listening to the land’s cues
17:30 — Creativity, ritual, and seasonal attunement
20:00 — What belonging means when you’ve lived in many places
22:00 — The tenderness of not feeling “from” anywhere
24:00 — Working with inherited grief & intergenerational patterns
26:00 — Softening through pleasure, presence, and sensory orientation
28:00 — The body as home: redefining rootedness
30:00 — Mahshid’s perspective on healing across cultures and continents
33:00 — How slowness supports nervous system repair
35:00 — Land as co-regulator: reciprocity, listening, and care
38:00 — Returning to ourselves through nature-based practices
40:00 — Closing reflections & what Mahshid hopes listeners carry forward

Resources Mentioned

• Learn more about Mahshid's work 

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

Photos and links from this episode: www.mindandmountain.co/podcast 

 

Transcript: 

Sarah:  Welcome back. I am here today with my friend and teacher Mahe. Hagar. I'm so excited, mace, to have this conversation with you and you're my first interview guest on the podcast, so Yay.

Mahshid F. Hager: first.

Sarah: you,

Mahshid F. Hager: I do.

Sarah: that's great. 'cause we'll, we'll see how this goes. My, I haven't done an interview like this before, but I feel really good starting out with you since we're so comfortable together.

Mahshid F. Hager: yeah. It'll be great.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: having a conversation with you under any circumstance,

Sarah: Aw.

Mahshid F. Hager: thanks for having me,

Sarah: Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. So, um, mace is, was one of my primary teachers when I was a student in somatic experiencing, and I've learned so much from you over the years. And then as after I [00:01:00] finished my training, I started assisting and we, I went to, we went to Columbia three different times for modules that you taught there, and then we roped you into coming up to Alaska.

Mahshid F. Hager: Twist my.

Sarah: Oh yeah. And now you've taught up here a couple times and we, so we've had a lot of really neat experiences both in class and outside of class together. And so, oh my gosh. I'm just really excited to talk about the work and talk about, learn from you a bit more and just have a nice conversation.

Mahshid F. Hager: Sounds fabulous. Yes.

Sarah: Yeah, go ahead.

Mahshid F. Hager: said first, uh, Columbia was my first experience there too. First se training there and first time I've ever traveled to Columbia, so I, I really do like first.

Sarah: That's true. Yeah. And it was the first cohort[00:02:00]

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: in Columbia too, which was, felt really special to be a part of.

Mahshid F. Hager: Totally. Yeah. And, you know, being part of the Alaska cohort has been just such a gift. been really nourished by it, by the experience. Just you all up there and meeting the land and the seasons there. It's been really, uh, it's been really good

Sarah: Hmm. I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. What do you mean when you say, like, meeting the, the people on the land? Like what, what feels different when you're up here?

Mahshid F. Hager: I mean, Alaska is just not like any other place I've ever been to in some ways. Uh, I think I shared this story with you that when I first landed in Anchorage, even just coming out of the airport, was like. This is, it's a very strange, familiar feeling, and I know I've never been here before, and so it doesn't [00:03:00] make sense, but I feel like I have been here before.

There's something very familiar about the land. And then I shared with the class that I looked up pictures of Alaska, just while I was waiting for my hotel shuttle at the airport. And the pictures of, of Anchorage reminded me of Tehran. And so I looked at pictures of Tehran is Tehran, Iran, where I was born, and the landscape is shockingly. I shared those pictures with the class and with the

Sarah: I remember.

Mahshid F. Hager: just like shockingly similar. So my, my, I don't I mean, I, I don't explicitly think about my time in Tehran a lot. I left when I was 10 years old. But apparently my body still really remembers the visual of the landscape.

Being in a city where you're surrounded with mountains, snow, top [00:04:00] mountains, you know, it's part of my upbringing. And then from there, just conversations with, uh, students and with you and the rest of the assisting team and just experiencing, my first time in Alaska was February, so I came in the, in the winter months. Uh, Alaska was kind to me. It was much milder. I had been warned about and had, I had worried about, you know, I was, I'm a desert girl, so I was a little bit scared of what I might encounter in February in Alaska, but it was, it was like in the mid twenties and we had some sunny days, but definitely cold, definitely dark, There is something about that, those rhythms of the seasons they're felt so acutely. Like you are, you have to be in constant relationship with the land and the landscape and the climate and the weather. [00:05:00] when you live in a place like Alaska, that's very apparent. And I think that relationship between people and the land and the seasons also changes something about the relationship between the people, because times of year you have to rely on each other more, you know,

Sarah: It's true.

Mahshid F. Hager: have to have to look out for each other in a different way. And then also just how big Alaska is and how, uh, how small its population is. I still, we had a conversation in the car about that, that I still often think about those numbers, you know, living in a densely populated area in Southern California, that still baffles me. But the beauty of the. The wildness of the land because there's just not that many people there.

It's just so obviously different.

Sarah: That's so fun to hear. You know, how much I love [00:06:00] Alaska and it's, it's really fun when people come and get, get the bug and, and get it like feel.

Mahshid F. Hager: I, I have the bug. My husband has the bug. We've totally caught the bug. Yes.

Sarah: That's so great. Nice. Well, I look forward to having you back again.

Mahshid F. Hager: Thank you. Thank you.

Sarah: Okay. Yeah, that's right. That's right. We're gearing up for another cohort of Alaska students and anyone's welcome if you wanna come visit Alaska too.

Mahshid F. Hager: Come get the

Sarah: Yeah. Nice.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Would you share, I, you know, I love your hearing, your stories and I, when I thought about having you on here, I just thought about like, how could I get mahi to tell a bunch of stories?

So you've already,

Mahshid F. Hager: to

Sarah: you've already started off on that. It's so good. It's just like a really fun way to connect and learn. Um, so I was wondering if you would be up for telling your story about [00:07:00] how you came to somatic experiencing and nervous system work

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. You want the full story?

Sarah: as much as you feel like you wanna tell.

Mahshid F. Hager: I came to somatic experiencing after reaching a real, a real low point in my life. I think. Um, I was, uh, I was going through a divorce that was really, really challenging. I was a, single mom. 85% of the time, you know, uh, I had, uh, I was still finishing grad school, so I had the, uh, the intense responsibility and stress of, of that degree looming. My dad lost his 10 year battle with cancer. Uh, him and I were close, and that, that was like the first big, big grief, uh, in my [00:08:00] life.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Um, and like I just reached a point where I was grieving and stressed out and overwhelmed most of the time. And then I was responsible with the, these, these two little ones.

My, my boys were toddlers at the time. They were five and

Sarah: Wow.

Mahshid F. Hager: six and four maybe. Um, and, um. I just, nothing worked. Nothing worked. I'd been in therapy before. was almost done with my grad school degree in marriage and family therapy. Uh, I, I, I knew all the lingo. I knew what to do. I'd been familiar with, cognitive behavioral skills and solution focused skills.

And I had been in therapy for, uh. A bit with, uh, first with my [00:09:00] ex-husband as, uh, as we couples therapy and then alone with the same therapist after my marriage ended. And I was just like, nothing works. None of the skills I've learned are for this time. And I, I don't know what to do. I, I felt like I'd graduated out of therapy.

You know, like I would imagine what my old therapist would tell me if I told him what was on my mind. And I was like, doing that, or I'm already trying to think that, or I'm using that tool already and it's just not working.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: And I, I spoke with, uh, man I was dating at the time about, about this, this was like two years post-separation and was like, I really need to.

I get back into therapy, I feel like I need support, especially if our relationship is, is going to work. I really need, need some support. Um, and he introduced me to his [00:10:00] therapist who was a somatic experience practitioner here in town. And he didn't call it that. He just said, you should go see my therapist.

She's different. And I was like, different How? He's like, I don't, she's just not like any therapist I've ever encountered. She just uses these tools that are really, you know, really unusual but have really helped me. And so I was like, what do I gotta lose? I'm gonna go try it. she was the first person that directed my attention to my body.

Yeah. even during my first number of sessions, she didn't tell me she was a somatic experiencing practitioner. She would just, uh, at certain times in our work together, just say, let's pause. What do you notice in your body? And I'd be like, what is she talking about? What do you mean what I, what do you mean? Like, she mean whether I'm hungry or not. Does [00:11:00] she mean, you know, like I didn't have

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: of relating to my body.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: could tell when body had a, like, I'm sleepy, I'm hungry, I need to use the restroom. I'm in pain. But beyond that, I didn't think my body had information for me. And so I remember in the first session when I told her about this divorce and having to present myself, represent myself in court and how ang, you know, how like at the moment that I start speaking, I start crying and how frustrating that has been.

And, and she said, boy, you must be so angry. And I said, I mean, yeah, you know, but that's not the focus. I need to know how to function. And she said, I wonder if you could growl. And I was like, what? She said, I, I mean, yeah, if you are angered, like if you were an animal in the wild and [00:12:00] someone was coming after your kids, you would growl to scare them away. And I literally thought she was joking. I, I really thought she was kidding. So I kind of laughed it off and. She insisted. She said, no, I really want you to give this a try. And I very reluctantly had this like tiny little meek growl and it felt weird and embarrassing. And I was like, I don't know what we're doing. Can we please do something different? And she started weaving in a little bit of that education around this has nothing to do with your personality, this has nothing to do with the world out there in here.

We want to give your nervous system a chance to speak. at its basic, your nervous system is no different than an animal's. so that's what I'm trying to tap into. If you were a bear in the woods and someone was coming after your cups, you would [00:13:00] growl to scare them away. And something about taking it. Into like the image channel and into like, uh, an image of an animal made it easier for me to connect to it, like taking myself out of it. And so the next time I growled, I really felt it and I was like, oh, that one was different.

Sarah: Hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: And so slowly, slowly, so slowly we started weaving in the body these conversations that I'd had a million times already with therapists, with with lawyers, with friends, and uh, just including the body in those conversations really shifted something. And so I

Sarah: You.

Mahshid F. Hager: therapy, uh, for a long time, many, many years, and, uh, started learning more about nervous system, more about somatic experiencing Peter Levine's work. Started reading his books. Um, [00:14:00] really wanted to learn how to imp implement some of those skills with my kids. 'cause now they were in elementary school and we were blending, bringing my partner into our lives, even though we took that route super, super, super slowly.

I just really wanted to be mindful of the family systems, nervous system capacity, uh, at the, at, at every intersection. And so, uh, you know, eventually the training came back around in San Diego and in my town and I signed up for it. And the rest is history. Say,

Sarah: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like the tagline for nervous system work should be like. It's weird, but it works

Mahshid F. Hager: It's weird that it works. Totally.

Sarah: because, so

Mahshid F. Hager: be so

Sarah: it,

Mahshid F. Hager: sometimes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: yeah.

Sarah: And sometimes when we just like hear like that story about starting right [00:15:00] with growling, it's like, I mean, yeah. That's really not something we do in regular, our regular human days.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. That's still not something I would do attempt in the first session. You know,

Sarah: Yeah,

Mahshid F. Hager: my therapist

Sarah: yeah,

Mahshid F. Hager: but she must have seen something in me or had some confidence in her own work that she was like, no, this is the path right now.

Sarah: yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: My husband calls it, he just coined this last week and I was like, Ooh, I'm stealing that.

He said, SE is physical therapy for your nervous system.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: It, you know,

Mahshid F. Hager: you need to develop. Yeah.

Sarah: I love that. I, I think about that a lot in the relationship with like my previous body of work around fitness. And then the way that this nervous system, it really has so many similarities around like, we're really actually training the physiology of the [00:16:00] body.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah,

Sarah: not the big muscles the way we are with like squats, but it is, it is like the physiology is having to learn how to operate in a, in a different way than it maybe is used to.

Mahshid F. Hager: Right, right. Like has this tendency to make us overuse parts of our physiology, or underused parts of our physiology. so it creates this, uh, stagnancy, like some stillness, maybe some stuckness nervous system regulation work. Bring some buoyancy back, you know, some flexibility back, some access to maybe parts that are not well developed or, uh, you know, giving breaks to parts that have been overused.

Sarah: Yeah,

Mahshid F. Hager: in that way also, yeah, very similar to physical, physical exercise or physical fitness work. Yeah.

Sarah: yeah, yeah. Totally. [00:17:00] Yeah. How do you explain this work to somebody who's brand new to it?

Mahshid F. Hager: My like 15 second elevator spiel is that, know, whenever we have experiences in life, good or bad, they have an impact on our body, on nervous system somatic experiencing just makes space for the body and the nervous system to speak. So whatever our minds remembers, uh, whatever narratives we're holding onto the body has its own story and in somatic experience and experiencing and inviting that story to be told as well.

Sarah: Nice.

Mahshid F. Hager: And then the more detailed version of that, or a, a more nuanced version of that is that, I like that. I think it's a Steven Porges quote that says. Trauma is a chronic state of disconnection [00:18:00] and nervous system. Regulation work brings us back into connection, so that disconnection can be from, it can be from our bodies, it can be from connection with others, it can be disconnection from the here and now.

This connection from nature, from spirituality and trauma healing work can bring us back into connection with all of those layers of experience, including the connection to that innate rhythm. That's geared towards greater coherence and greater health. Like we were all, all born with this rhythm. physiology thrives on oscillation, on, on the contraction and expansion, uh, is just part of our biology and trauma, uh, interrupts that innate rhythm. to me, the most significant contribution of somatic experiencing is to, is that bringing us back [00:19:00] into, uh, that rhythm or like creating the conditions where that that rhythm can reemerge show itself again.

Sarah: Yeah. Nice.

Mahshid F. Hager: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Is there a way like I. A lot of people in my community who maybe wouldn't relate to the word trauma, like who, who wouldn't necessarily feel like they're navigating as, you know, there's this way that I think we understand trauma in the, in the broader culture as like one event that like really like changed me forever or whatever, and now I am not the same.

And there is that aspect of the trauma that you're talking about, but there also is like a broader way to understand that. Can you speak to that?

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah, I think any type of pervasive stress

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: have an impact on the nervous system. [00:20:00] So I often talk about how our current world just moves so fast,

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: it just moves so fast, and the expectation Both the expectation that's coming from the outside and the expectations we put on ourselves based on what we see on social media.

Sarah: Right.

Mahshid F. Hager: You know, there's just this drive towards productivity and there's just, even without anything bad happening, the pace is just not sustainable. And so our nervous system has to, has to condition itself to move at a pace that's much faster than it originally was designed for. And so a lot of us have become accustomed to a certain amount of stress as our baseline. And so now we're using [00:21:00] stress physiology that was designed to be used when we're under threat. When it, you know, it was designed to be used, uh, very temporarily, and we're now overusing those systems, those mobilization systems, those threat response systems, because are just under stress all of the time. You know, it used to be you, you'd ask someone how they're doing, they'd say, good, or, you know, whatever. Now you ask someone how they're doing, they say busy.

Sarah: See?

Mahshid F. Hager: You know,

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: like, that's just part of life. Now we've kind of accepted a certain amount of busyness our baseline, and there is, you know, there's a cost to that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: a cost to that long term. Yeah. I'm finding that, I'm having that conversation a lot with people these days about what does rest look like in a system that's demanding so [00:22:00] much activity or activation.

You know, do, how, when, or how can we create pockets where that system gets to actually settle and come down again.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Which is really tough when there's so many social problems around, and

Mahshid F. Hager: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: so many of our systems are collapsing in front of our eyes, and, and then we have the personal life challenges around too. So it's like, it's a, it's a real struggle.

Mahshid F. Hager: Absolutely. Yeah. there's, you know, judgment and guilt and shame with

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: needing rest.

Sarah: Right.

Mahshid F. Hager: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yeah. There's a, there's a term, um, stress injury too that is being used in the outdoor recreation world. It like to.

Mahshid F. Hager: heard

Sarah: Instead of, instead of trauma. I think, I mean, in my mind it, it's getting at the same thing, but maybe it's a different way of understanding that, um, [00:23:00] because trauma can be misunderstood a bit and, and maybe people don't wanna relate to being traumatized, but, but the, the concept being that like if we're, if we're under significant stress over time, and then at some point this something fractures in that, in the way that, that becomes less functional.

And, and we can, we might be able to understand ourselves as injured from the context of like having a physical injury, but we could also understand the injury to our stress response system maybe in that same way.

Mahshid F. Hager: yeah. Yeah. Any, any system that's under a prolonged, um, think of another word than stress is going to eventually give,

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, it might work for a long time, and it's well rewarded, right. [00:24:00] While it's working,

Sarah: Right.

Mahshid F. Hager: which is what, what makes it so hard, but then, you know, at some point else has to happen to compensate.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. I wonder if like, the idea with the term stress injury is trying to also destigmatize the experience, which hopefully we're, we are also de-stigmatizing trauma along the way. But, but if I mean it, yeah, like you said, it's only logical that, that over time there would be something that would stop working and would, would need a different approach.

Mahshid F. Hager: right. Yeah. I was, um, I was, I picked up kickboxing,

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: before the pandemic, I think in like 20 19, 20 18. And it, loved it so much, and I was going like three times a week [00:25:00] and working out really, really hard. It was like a group kickboxing gym, mostly women. Uh, super, super fun environment, high energy, good music, you

Sarah: Nice.

Mahshid F. Hager: And, uh, we would have these contests with other gyms. It was like a chain, uh, chain, uh, brand.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: and I. We used to have these contests with the other gyms and like, it would be like all had these calorie trackers and heart rate trackers, and based on those numbers we would like collect points and whatnot.

And during, and during a few of those, I really pushed myself to heart, like doing back-to-back classes, uh, doing longer Like the rounds are three minutes with a one minute break, you know, typically. But I would push to like a five minute round

Sarah: geez.

Mahshid F. Hager: break, you know,[00:26:00]

Sarah: I'm exhausted hearing about this. Okay.

Mahshid F. Hager: and lo and behold hurt my shoulder.

Sarah: Yep. Dang.

Mahshid F. Hager: yeah, stress injury, you know, it's like you, you can, you can do kickboxing if you really want to and if you keep pushing the edge of the stress. And continuing to, you know, it hot, uh, keep the iron hot, hot. your body might have opinions about it. And so then I hurt my, my shoulder had to take time off.

Was so mad about it.

Sarah: Saying, yeah. Oh,

Mahshid F. Hager: it. And I remember going to physical therapy and I was like, my number one goal is to get back to the gym as fast as possible. I don't care what you do, get me back into the gym as fast as possible,

Sarah: this is so relatable.

Mahshid F. Hager: and, and my [00:27:00] PT was like, okay, but I can get you ready for the gym.

But you have to work out very differently. You can't push the way that you did before and you have to take it easy and build up strength. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Soon as I was back in I was like, you know, maybe two sessions of gentle. And I was like, I'm feeling great.

Sarah: Let's go.

Mahshid F. Hager: Let's go my other shoulder

Sarah: no.

Mahshid F. Hager: and, and I teach this stuff. I mean, like, you know, it's like I, I know, I know. Or, or rather I should know. I should know that. And, you know, all, uh, all of my well-meaning friends and people in the exercise community were like, you know, with these injuries, your body is really telling you something. Maybe you can find other way of ex, maybe you could take up swimming.

And I was like, oh [00:28:00] gosh. To go from like the high power, high energy experience of the kickboxing gym to a pool. Oh gosh, that was such a Such a challenge, uh, for my little global high system, but I had to really, like, I had to really tune in and listen and grieve

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: the continuous stress of high impact on my joints was really not what my body wanted.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: You know? It was just like, I am telling

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: twice now, you know,

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: you need something different. And I had to like really work to find something else that felt good where I felt like, Felt like what I loved about kickboxing was how strong I felt.[00:29:00]

Sarah: It's a good feeling. Mm-hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: in, in another way of exercising and even though it might be shorter or slower, that I could like find that connection to my strength again through a different avenue and just give my body and rest.

And now I, now I really try to, I try to really listen. Like if I'm, if I'm super sore and I have, know, haven't worked out as many days in the week, uh, as I want to, maybe my, my muscles just saying like, one more rest day.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: You know, can I, can I give myself that? Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Gosh. That really weaves in with what you were talking about at the very beginning about learning to listen to your body and, and trust that what it's saying has some wisdom in it.

Mahshid F. Hager: Right.

Sarah: I mean, we learned that the hard way [00:30:00] even. I know.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah,

Sarah: Yeah. You mentioned, you just briefly mentioned global high there, um, and I feel like it'd be worth giving a little bit of background into what that, I've mentioned that in other episodes too, but I'd love to hear your, your, um, take on that.

It's something I relate to too, by the way, is something I've been personally untangling over the last few years myself, so,

Mahshid F. Hager: Takes a while.

Sarah: yep.

Mahshid F. Hager: Um, high is, this is, uh, a term coined in somatic experiencing global high intensity activation. And, uh, the, it's, uh, what it is is really in the name. It's this global response in the physiology with. Intensity and high activation to everything. So for a system that's global high, some point in, in the, in the [00:31:00] history of that nervous system, uh, the body received the message that, uh, settling too far might be dangerous, that a certain amount of activation as a baseline is the wiser choice. so, um. The, the, again, the baseline experience is just, uh, more activated, more, uh, more charged, more energy than we would anticipate. And then because of that, the system is really easily stressed into high, high levels of activation. these are folks, and I, you know, I'm a card carrying member,

Sarah: too.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, folks who like their schedule super busy, super full. They might have, uh, you know, really intense jobs, really intense relationships. Um, they're kind of, uh, in a constant state of go, go, go, go, go. Because [00:32:00] the message from the nervous system is don't slow down, slowing down is dangerous. And so their lives will then reflect that. that's, that's one of the. of the ways that we see folks who are using that kind of threat response mobilization that was supposed to be just temporary in cases of extreme threat, more chronically, uh, you know, then the, the impact, the cost of that on the nervous system becomes, uh, becomes real apparent because sometimes the only way to modulate that intensity, the activation in the nervous system, is through the avenue of making things even more intense. So that, uh, the physiology. Defaults into a free state because there is a way that the dorsal vagal complex comes in to conserve [00:33:00] energy when we're expanding too much energy. And so, uh, these folks have a pattern of, high intensity collapse, high intensity collapse, high intensity collapse. And both of those systems were meant for, uh, extreme threat.

And now we're using that, those systems, uh, more chronically. And then that's when functional organs begin to break down and start to scream.

Sarah: Yep.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. It's real.

Mahshid F. Hager: show

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, it's a slow, a slow thing to unwind and especially tricky because of how reinforced it is inside of our culture these days. And rewarded, and then you get like, you get degrees and you get, you start businesses and you can

Mahshid F. Hager: promotions and

Sarah: Yes.

Mahshid F. Hager: and everyone's calling you Superman or Superwoman and Yeah,

Sarah: Yeah.[00:34:00]

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. Super tricky. And it takes years because the threat that establishes global highs is not, are not small threats. You know, it's like when we teach global high intensity activation, the subcategories are things like fetal distress, drowning, choking, poisoning. We're not talking about small threats, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: because of that, the physiology is not, not willingly giving up that pace. It's been a good friend, not only in terms of. Um, survival strategy, but also because of what you just mentioned, there's a lot of reinforcement for it in the culture, and so it's really tricky to attempt to drop into a different rhythm.

It doesn't feel natural. It feels dangerous for some, um, and because of that, the, the process is really, really slow. [00:35:00] I am not shy about sharing. I was in regular SE therapy for seven to eight years. Every other week

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: takes time. It

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah, yeah,

Sarah: Yeah, that's been really, really similar for me too. Uh, weekly, weekly for years, and things have definitely been shifting, but it's a slow process, but it feels so good. Oh my gosh. I was just thinking about how, what a relief it feels to have a different baseline these days, not to be so close to the overwhelmed threshold all the time.

Mahshid F. Hager: All of the time.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It's,

Mahshid F. Hager: just the gift of like slow feels good.

Sarah: yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: That's so nice.

Sarah: It is so nice.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. You know, I, I

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, I ask clients where, when I have the, the hunch that they [00:36:00] might have, you know, global high system, I ask this question, I ask, how are you on vacation? What are your vacations like,

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: know, and if they're, if they're the kind of person who are like, oh, I like, you know, if they're doing extreme sports on their vacations.

Sarah: I know. I'm like, raise his hand, but like if you're going on a backpacking trip in the

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: I mean, there's a

Mahshid F. Hager: I

Sarah: Yeah,

Mahshid F. Hager: in the wilderness, depending on your pace, it

Sarah: yeah. I know. I was just thinking that there really is a different, there's different approaches that can be really slow and

Mahshid F. Hager: like,

Sarah: too, but Yeah. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: I used to vacation back in the day with my husband and my, my family, it'd be like, okay, we are five days in Maui. What are we gonna do every day today? We're going here tomorrow, we're gonna do this excursion that day, we're gonna go snorkeling

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: you know, hiking. And now we just go. [00:37:00] We just go. And every morning at breakfast, we're like, what do we wanna do? Do we wanna just like lay low today and be by the pool and maybe go for a walk later? Or should we, should we drive into town and like take a walk around? Or just what a gift it is to have choice,

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: to have options.

Sarah: Oh, and you're making decisions really emergently, like following the whims of your body in the moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: last night? Do we have it in, you know, we have enough capacity to do something today, or do we wanna just rest? And it's been so nice. It's been so nice.

Sarah: Hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: That's really cool. Yeah. Thanks for sharing.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you? Um, so, you know, I named this podcast Co-Regulation Conversations because of the, how important it feels to me [00:38:00] that we practice the skill of co-regulating in these times we're living in. And just how, like, under develop that, that felt for me for so long and what a resource that's been over the years of developing this nervous system work.

Um, but I, so I, can we just bring that in? I'd love to hear what does, what does co-regulation mean to you? How do you think of it?

Mahshid F. Hager: Hmm. I think we teach co-regulation in the SE classroom as two nervous systems coming together where, uh, let's say a practitioner comes into the session with their own regulation so that when the client comes in and they might be dysregulated, can kind of be held in the regulation of the [00:39:00] other person. Like, I'm going to, as the practitioner, be the container for your dysregulation, for your stress response. My nervous system is not gonna get caught up in your activation or in your distress. I'm going to be able to empathize. I'm going to be able to witness, I'm going to be able to validate, but I'm going to continue lending my own regulation regulated nervous system for you to lean into, for you to be held in and something about that that kind of connection. Uh, something about that is co-regulating, right? I think about, you know, caregivers and infants. Infants are either calm or screaming. They're just, there's no in between.

Sarah: Right.

Mahshid F. Hager: And infants [00:40:00] often are relying on a co-regulate caregiver for soothing, for holding, for witnessing, for, for someone to meet their needs.

And that's how they learn initially to regulate themselves is through another regulated caregiver. And then some of those, some of those skills, uh, become, more theirs. Right. And I've expanded that for myself. I feel like it's like I still, I still rely on connection for co-regulation with certainly my partner, but also with close friends and colleagues. But I'm using nature more.

Sarah: Yes. Yes,

Mahshid F. Hager: You

Sarah: exactly. Me too.

Mahshid F. Hager: this summer in San Diego, the water was like 70 to 73 degrees

Sarah: gosh, that sounds so dreamy.

Mahshid F. Hager: And [00:41:00] so any two hour window I had during a week, I was like driving through the beach and jumping in the water. You

Sarah: Yes.

Mahshid F. Hager: there is just something about, and I live, you know, I live over this canyon and there's trees and there's mountains in the distance and I can see the clouds and the birds and is something innately regulating about nature. You know, no matter what is going on, nature just kind of moves with whatever's coming. You know, sometimes over this canyon I can see high, high wind, or I can see, you know. Thunder and lightning and rain. I can see really, really dry conditions, and I just watch these trees just kind of like through it, you know, like,

Sarah: It's really amazing.

Mahshid F. Hager: really soak up water when they can and really get still during those hot, hot, hot weeks in the summer and [00:42:00] really move with the wind at palm trees that just like sway, you know, and, and then, and then the ocean.

I mean, you, I don't, you know, I don't know how you can sit next to the ocean and, and watch the waves just gently splash and retrieve and splash and retrieve and, and not, not tap into that, that regulation piece with, uh, with Mother Earth, you know? So, yeah. So for me, lately, it's been a lot about. Connecting to non-human life around me

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: for that source of connection.

You know, I feel like the world is hard right now and lots of people I know are dysregulated or stressed or anxious or fearful or hopeless and, I, I found that nature is a more reliable source for me these days for co-regulation.

Sarah: Yeah. Gosh. I feel that definitely

Mahshid F. Hager: know you [00:43:00] do.

Sarah: I do. I know I've got fall leaves outside my window these days and it is really beautiful and it's, yeah, I feel the way it lands in my body too, to be able to connect with the, even just the fact that like, things can change in nature and that can be okay and

Mahshid F. Hager: yeah,

Sarah: the way it is.

Mahshid F. Hager: yeah, for sure.

Sarah: Do you have a, um, do you have like a, a co-regulating practice or any other nervous system practice that you are leaning on these days that you might be up for sharing with us?

Mahshid F. Hager: Yes. Um, I know I've shared this with you, I believe, this is one that I share often with classrooms and maybe we can even link it to this podcast.

Sarah: Oh, great.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, Kathy Kanes, letting it be. So there's a link that you can just look up Kathy Kane letting [00:44:00] it be so that, uh,

Sarah: link it too.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, pops up a clip of her walking us through this exercise and should we do it together

Sarah: Let's do it.

Mahshid F. Hager: do one round

Sarah: Yeah. I love that. Mm-hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: So the practice is to just become present to your body in whatever way that you can, in this moment. Okay. Right away. Notice my breath. I notice my hands making contact with each other, my feet on the ground. And then once you feel fairly present, fairly grounded and settled, you can bring to mind something that is objectionable. Now here we're not gonna find the deepest, darkest, scariest thing, but maybe something that's, you just wish wasn't so something that you wish [00:45:00] different in this moment. It might be in this moment right where you are. It might be something about your life, it might be something about a relationship. might be. About the state of the world, something, something that you have your you. You have this objection to. You don't want it be. You don't want it to be. So. And then when you have that thing in your mind, notice if there's any way that your body's responding to that. Me, when I do this exercise, a place that I right away notice a contraction is in my diaphragm. Some, something about my breath shifts right away. then almost like a lump in my throat, feeling like something constricts here. And you might have one or two things that you are noticing. [00:46:00] And when you notice that the practice is uh. Direct some breath to that place. invite some movement, maybe do a stretch, doing something different than that. Contraction. Allowing, allowing for the possibility of something different besides that contraction. I mean, movement helps, directing an intentional breath to certain areas helps. And then an, uh, when you feel a shift in that system, maybe taking another look around, becoming present to the here and now. [00:47:00] This is an exercise that during hard times, like we're living through now, might do every day. I might do a couple of times a day. Um, I typically set aside time to run through this two or three times when I sit down to do it, bringing in the same objection, the constriction in my system, inviting the possibility of something other than the constriction. And it, it shifts response, if I practice it regularly. And over time, um, what tends to happen is that when the world gets intense, uh, of course our physiology is going to have a response

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: it. then that response, like. The contraction that shows up then also sends the message back to our brain that something is really wrong.

And so we get stuck in these feedback loops[00:48:00]

Sarah: Right,

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, aren't helpful. And so one of the goals of this exercise, and Kathy explains it on that video, much better than I can, is to uncouple these responses, uh, you know, to, to be able to have, an objection, to be able to have grief, to be able to have a response to the world, but then also, uh, you know, allow oxygen to still flow.

Allow our bodies to still move. Right?

Sarah: Yeah. Oh, that's really, really lovely. Yeah. Thank you.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: I can feel, yeah. Thanks to you both. I really appreciate the returning to the practice of it too. And, um, yeah, like these, you've, you've introduced that in classes before, but remembering to practice it is a one thing and then

Mahshid F. Hager: a

Sarah: it's Yeah. And it, and it really does shift something in [00:49:00] my system when I return to it, so

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: you.

Mahshid F. Hager: You're welcome.

Sarah: Yeah. Um, how are we doing on time? Should we start moving toward closing?

Mahshid F. Hager: That sounds

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. This is a nice place to, to be landed after that. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you, um, I am, I wanted to ask if there's anything just kind of like. What are you, what are you engaging? What are you reading or watching or listening to these days that's been fun or supportive?

Mahshid F. Hager: Oh gosh. Um. I like reading. I, uh, at some point last year was like, I need to give myself permission to read books just for fun. 'cause all these

Sarah: Yeah. Yes.

Mahshid F. Hager: on my, uh, on my [00:50:00] nightstand, you know, and it's like, I want to be able to also read for fun and then come back to like a, a workbook, uh, you know, periodically. of the books that I read, uh, earlier this year that I really liked, I don't remember if it was earlier this year or, um, uh, or towards the later part of last year. Let me, let me look it up. Sorry. My memory is really, uh, okay. Uh, apprentice, Hemphill, what it takes to Heal,

Sarah: Hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, was one of my favorites last year.

It's such a good book.

Sarah: That's awesome. That's on my list to read.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: uh, is coming to the work through the, uh, generative somatics lineage.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: And, you know, I follow them on Instagram and I'm familiar with their work, and I really thought that I, [00:51:00] I, I would know what's in this book, you know, I, I've been a big fan of their work, but the book blew me away.

It's like a, it's like a mix of memoir and like these really profound learnings and somatics, uh, that they're so generously sharing. So that's a really, really good one. Uh, that was from last year. Right now I'm reading a novel called The Measure, which is like fascinating.

Sarah: I read that. I did read it last year maybe. Yeah, it is really interesting.

Mahshid F. Hager: It is

Sarah: Uhhuh.

Mahshid F. Hager: and it's, it's interesting how it keeps drawing my attention when I'm not reading it, you know, because I don't wanna give it away.

But it's like it keeps unfolding these layers of things I hadn't thought about yet. These complications that can surface with the subject of subject of the book. So that's, that's my fun read right now. It's the measure.

Sarah: That's great. Yeah. I'm so [00:52:00] glad you're getting to read for fun these days. Yeah. We had to balance, balance out all the hard work and all the learning even.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. You know, I, I've been mean, I would, there's so many things I wanna ask you. So, um, it's hard, it's hard to, um, hard to wind down here, but I, I really have been wanting to, I saw you write about and share some about how you have, um, just like.

Been making decisions about staying where you, where you are these days, even in the midst of all the uncertainty that we're in, uh, like, like the way and naming the way that a flight response might show up. But, um, we might not need to follow it every time, which, yeah. Is there anything you'd be open to sharing around that?

Mahshid F. Hager: Trying to figure out what you read then.

Sarah: I feel like, well, I, I've heard you talk about it, but I I do. Did you [00:53:00] write on Instagram about how you were like deciding to, to stay in California?

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah. I've, you know, my history, my family escaped around when I was 10 years old. It's like life just became, Unsustainable there, uh, for my parents. And, uh, they got us up

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: I was 10, my sisters were three and two at the time, and we ended up in Germany. And I grew up in Germany.

My teen years were in Germany. I, I definitely have German parts to myself, you know, and Germany is one of my homes. it never temperamentally, I don't think it ever was a good fit for me. And so I had my sights on Southern California because my uncle lived here. And it was always an option that I come out here to, to study. so after high school, I moved to San Diego [00:54:00] as soon as I landed, it was just like, it was one of those like, oh, this land, you know.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: This climate, this land, this vegetation, these animals, this ocean, this is where I need to be. And I've lived now in San Diego longer than I've lived anywhere. I moved here in 91 and I've stayed here.

I went to uh, I got my, uh, graduate, uh, and undergraduate degree here. Did all my internships here. I never left San Diego, uh, after I arrived. And is, uh, you know, work in refugee communities and immigrant communities and there's a lot of fear right now, even amongst those of us who have legal status. a lot of fear, uh, people are anxious about, uh, anxious about their status, about their livelihood, about what else might be happening, what else might be [00:55:00] coming. There's a lot of conversation around where are we gonna go next and when will we know that it's time to

Sarah: Right.

Mahshid F. Hager: I had that flight response certainly, uh, through much of, uh, much of the past, I don't know, uh, five or six years, you know, on and off. And I'd at some point a few months ago, I was on a hike I just was like, I don't, I don't want to leave again. I really don't want to leave again. Like done that. There's a cost to leaving each time that I've left both Teran and Cologne, Germany, there's a cost to leaving a permanent cost, I've grown roots here.

I've, I chose this place. You know, it's like, it's one of those things where, when I was a kid and we left Iran, I didn't [00:56:00] really have a say. I didn't really have a choice in. When to leave, how to leave, where to end up, how long to stay. And I feel like I made a choice to make San Diego my home. I made a choice to have kids here. you know, I was like, uh, my proudest accomplishment for a while was that, you know, my kids in 25 years of their lives lived in the same zip code. It's like that consistency was important to me,

Sarah: Hmm.

Mahshid F. Hager: And it's like, I love everything about place. I love my neighborhood, I love my neighbors. You know, I, I get excited when the plane lands in San Diego every time, you know,

Sarah: Nice. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: I love California.

And I, I just, I don't want to leave again. And there's, there is relief with that. There's grief with that because, uh, I, I know it's also scary right now here, you know, but I get a lot of inspiration from [00:57:00] my family members who are still in Iran. Made a choice to stay there under very difficult, challenging circumstances and, and, you know, focusing their energies and attentions to smaller circles, community, neighborhood, city, you know, what can I do even in the midst of chaos?

Sarah: Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Where do I want to spend my energy, my time, my money, my efforts? Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah,

Mahshid F. Hager: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: yeah. That piece that you named right at the end there is so important about the, like, focusing where we can, where we can put our efforts and, and the smaller circles might be one of those answers. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: That's a whole other podcast

Sarah: Right.

Mahshid F. Hager: Sarah, because, because the world would have you believe that you need to be everywhere, doing everything. And, you know, and that's just, again, not [00:58:00] sustainable, not long term.

Sarah: Mm. Yeah.

Mahshid F. Hager: Yeah.

Sarah: Well, thank you Rashid so much for bringing your stories and yourself here. I always appreciate having time with you.

Mahshid F. Hager: Thank you so much for inviting me. This was super fun.

Sarah: Yeah, great. It's been a pleasure. Okay. We'll take good care of yourself and we'll see you next time. Yep. Bye everyone.

Mahshid F. Hager: Bye.