In This Body

What is your face communicating beyond what you see in the mirror? In this episode, Ailey sits down with Shelly Marshall, founder of Beauty Shamans and Skin Within Studio, to explore the relationship between beauty, embodiment, and the nervous system. After years working as an aesthetician, registered nurse, and nurse injector, Shelly shares why she ultimately chose to step away from injectables....

What happens when being "good" comes at the cost of being yourself? In this episode, Ailey sits down with Sara Hirsh Bordo, author of Autoimmunity and the Good Girls, to explore the connection between people pleasing, self abandonment, and chronic illness. Together, they examine how perfectionism, self silencing, and the pressure to keep others comfortable can become long term strategies...

What is your voice communicating before you say a single word? In this episode, Ailey sits down with Jordan Dann, a psychoanalysis informed somatic practitioner and relationship therapist, to explore the connection between voice, embodiment, and nervous system regulation. Together, they examine how breath, tone, tension, and resonance shape the way we connect, communicate, and respond to one anoth...

What if your nervous system is asking to be understood, not managed? In this episode, Ailey sits down with Alexis Florentina, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, to explore how nervous system regulation has become another form of self improvement, and why that can leave us feeling even more disconnected from ourselves. Drawing from her own experience with chronic illness and medical trauma, Alexi...

What happens when you leave a belief system, but your body is still living by its rules? In this episode, Ailey sits down with poet and spoken word artist Arielle Estoria, author of The Unfolding , to explore faith deconstruction, embodiment, and the journey of coming home to yourself after years of being taught to be smaller. Arielle shares how embodiment became tangible through everyday choices,...

What happens when the grief carried inside the reproductive body is never fully named? In this solo episode, Ailey speaks to miscarriage, endometriosis, adenomyosis, infertility, reproductive surgery, and the quiet grief so many people are forced to hold alone. Drawing from both her clinical work and personal experience, she explores what it means to live in a body shaped by pain, loss, diagnosis,...

What if anger is not the final destination, but the doorway to something deeper? In this episode, Ailey sits down with depth psychologist and author Vanessa Bennett to explore the complexity of anger, healing, and what happens when righteous rage becomes the place we live. Together, they examine how anger can protect us while also shielding us from deeper emotions waiting underneath. Vanessa share...

What if pleasure is not about learning new techniques, but learning how to feel safe in your body? In this episode, Ailey sits down with sex therapist and sexologist Aleksandra Trkulja to explore the connection between body image, nervous system regulation, and intimacy. Together, they unpack why shame, self criticism, and disconnection from the body can create real barriers to pleasure, arousal,...

What if your body is not betraying you, but asking for a different kind of relationship? In this episode, Ailey sits down with Dr. Ann Saffi Biasetti, psychotherapist, yoga therapist, and mindfulness teacher, to explore what it means to stay connected to the body through chronic illness, pain, and uncertainty. Together, they unpack the grief of living in a culture that treats the body like a machi...

What if somatic work is not failing you, but simply not the right approach for your body? In this solo episode, Ailey explores how somatics has become a catch all term for healing, and why that can lead to harm when practices are used without context. As a somatic psychologist, Ailey has seen how well meaning embodiment work can overwhelm the nervous system instead of supporting it. Ailey offers a...

What if psychedelic healing is not just about the experience, but about what your body can actually integrate? In this episode, Ailey sits down with Valeria, a counselling psychologist and depth practitioner, to explore the realities of psychedelic assisted therapy beyond the hype. We name the parts often left out of the conversation, including harm, power, and the complexity of what comes after....

What if understanding your patterns is not the same as changing them? In this episode, I’m joined by Rebekah Ballagh, a counsellor, somatic and nervous system coach, and author, to explore the gap between insight and real change. The place where the mind understands, but the body does not yet feel safe enough to follow. Rebekah shares her experience with panic and illness, and how it revealed the...

Alcohol can look like the problem, until you notice what it was solving.  In this episode, Ailey is joined by writer and speaker Laura McKowen, founder of The Luckiest Club and author of We Are The Luckiest, for a conversation that begins with sobriety and opens into something deeper. Embodiment, shame, appetite, and the hidden intelligence behind the ways we cope. We explore how alcohol can both...

What if coming home to your body feels unfamiliar because you were taught to see it as something outside of you? In this episode, Ailey sits down with somatic educator, author, and artist Abigail Rose Clarke to explore what embodiment actually is beneath the noise. Not a concept to master, but a practice of curiosity, presence, and relationship rooted in lived sensation. We talk about what pulls u...

What if Botox is not just changing how you look, but how you feel and connect? In this episode, Ailey explores the quiet bind many women live inside, where beauty culture tells you your body is a problem to fix, and wellness culture tells you it is something to optimise. Both can sound supportive, yet both can pull you away from your lived experience. Using Botox as an entry point, we look at rese...

What if the reason you struggle to speak up in medical spaces is not weakness, but your body recognizing it is not safe? In this episode, Ailey Jolie is joined by Dr. Tracy Shevell, a maternal fetal medicine specialist and women’s health advocate, to explore what happens when women enter rushed healthcare systems and leave unheard. Drawing from her experience as both a physician and a patient, Tra...

What if the hardest moments in parenting are the ones pointing you back toward yourself? In this episode, Ailey Jolie sits down with Dr. Genevieve von Lob, a clinical psychologist whose work weaves together trauma, mindful parenting, and embodied healing. She shares her journey back into the body, and the role that protection, not failure, plays in our patterns. We explore the reality of parenting...

What if your biggest fear isn’t a flaw, but an echo from a story that began before you were born? In this episode, Ailey Jolie sits down with Mark Wolynn, author of It Didn’t Start With You , to explore how inherited trauma can shape our fears, patterns, and relationships. Mark shares how intergenerational stress can be passed through families, why symptoms often appear around key life milestones,...

What if the responses that seem most confusing after sexual violence are actually the body’s most intelligent survival strategies? In this episode, Ailey explores how culture has taught women to doubt their instincts and how institutions have historically silenced survivors. She unpacks what truly happens in the nervous system during trauma, including tonic immobility, dissociation, the fawn respo...

What if the most radical thing you can do for your life and relationships is to feel your body right now? In this episode, we’re joined by somatic psychotherapist and movement pioneer Christine Caldwell to explore bodyfulness, the embodied counterpart to mindfulness, and why attention belongs in sensation, not just thought. Christine shares how her work integrating dance therapy, body psychotherap...

What if the thing blocking pleasure isn’t technique, but a long war with your own body? In this episode, we talk with Emma-Louise Boynton, creator of Sex Talks and author of the forthcoming book Pleasure , about her journey from disconnection to desire, and the moment she realized pleasure and self conflict cannot coexist. We explore how naming shame softens it, why body neutrality can be more sus...

What if the wisest part of you isn’t your thinking mind, but the sensations already alive in your body? In this episode, executive coach and Enneagram expert Courtney Smith joins us to explore how fear quietly shapes our choices and how learning to feel what’s here now can restore agency, presence, and pleasure. Courtney shares her path from Yale Law and McKinsey to a body first approach blending...

In this solo episode of How To Be In This Body , Ailey Jolie reflects on carrying breast implants for 15 years and the moment she finally had enough capacity to hear the “no” she couldn’t access almost two decades ago. This is a conversation about consent, power, and why trauma tools designed for single events often fail to address lives shaped by repetition, surveillance, and the gaze. Ailey expl...

What if the stories your body carries are the map back to belonging? In this conversation with Palestinian–American poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan, we explore how narrative, trauma, and the nervous system meet inside a living body. Hala shares how displacement shaped her love of books and oral histories, why writing still arrives as mystery, and how creative practice can offer coherence...

What if a devoted practice is quietly pulling you away from your body instead of deeper into it. In this episode, we sit down with Megan Campbell, yoga teacher, trainer, retreat leader, and psychotherapist, to explore what embodiment really asks of us beyond perfect poses or polished language. Megan shares how grief surfaced unexpectedly through practice, the allure and limitations of modern welln...