Topics: Somatic Therapy and Self Healing, Healing Journey

 

Your Self Healing Journey…with Shazia

 

You know that ache in your back that never really goes away?

Or the knot in your stomach that shows up every time life feels heavy?

What if those weren’t random annoyances—but notes from your body, asking you to slow down and listen?

I sit down with Shazia—kinesiologist, somatic guide, and emotional release practitioner—who’s spent years helping people understand the quiet ways their bodies try to protect and heal them. Think somatic therapy but even deeper.

If you’ve ever felt “not yourself” but couldn’t explain why, Shazia’s wisdom will feel like a deep exhale you didn’t know you needed. We take you deeper into your self healing journey.

From years of her own unexplained pain to guiding people back home to their bodies, she shares how one simple but radical act—listening—can shift you from disconnected and depleted to feeling safe, strong, and alive again.

 

 

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Your Body’s First Whisper: The Self Healing Clues You’re Missing
02:27 – Stressed Out? How Somatic Therapy Finds the Real Source
05:45 – When Symptoms Speak: The Hidden Stories in Your Healing Journey
10:05 – Releasing What’s Stuck: The Power of Somatic Therapy
18:12 – Your First Step to Self Healing Without Overhauling Your Life

 

Listen in and discover:

• Decode Your Body’s Language: Finally understand what your symptoms have been trying to tell you.
• Free What’s Been Stuck: Gentle ways to release old tension and emotions without reliving the pain.
• Find Your Ease: How to swap “fixing yourself” for feeling whole, just as you are.

 

Because your body is not a battlefield—it’s a book of stories, waiting for you to read.
And sometimes the softest whispers carry the loudest truths.

 

🎧 Listen because this is your sign to pause and go inward.

 

 

ABOUT SHAZIA
Shazia is a kinesiologist, somatic guide, and emotional release practitioner who helps people decode the messages their bodies hold. Through a holistic blend of physical, emotional, and energetic tools, she guides clients on a path to ease, balance, and self healing.

 

CONNECT

Instagram: @shine_with_shaz
Website: https://mettleandmaven.com/

 

LISTEN TO NEXT
Episode: How She Healed 10 Years of Pain (ep #315)

 

RESOURCES

7 Steps to Feel Good Nakd book
The Rio Home Workout Plan
Podcast Mentorship

 

CONNECT
Instagram: @itschardet

 

 

MORE ON THIS SELF HEALING PODCAST EPISODE

 

“When the body is speaking, how well can we listen?”- Shazia, Kinesiologist & Somatic Guide

 

• Your Body Speaks First: Somatic therapy reveals the hidden messages in your pain and tension.
• Beyond the Symptom: Your aches and fatigue are signposts on your healing journey.
• Stress in the System: Stressed out? Learn how to release pressure from the inside out.
• Emotions in Motion: Self healing starts by finding where unprocessed emotions live in your body.
• The Path to Ease: Simple daily practices to reconnect, restore, and flow.

 

Have you ever had a pain that wouldn’t leave? Maybe it’s the ache in your back after long days at the desk, the knot in your stomach when life gets overwhelming, or the tightness in your chest that arrives at the worst possible moments.

We write these off, medicate them, stretch them away… until they return. And then, we tell ourselves it’s just stress or just getting older. But what if these aren’t random annoyances? What if they’re messages—your body’s way of whispering, “I need you to notice me”?

In this week’s episode of Feel Good Nakd, I sat down with **Shazia—kinesiologist, somatic guide, and emotional release practitioner—**to explore how pain and discomfort can become doorways to something far deeper.

 

Why Somatic Therapy Helps You Hear What’s Hidden

We live in a world that worships the mind—logic, strategy, endless thinking. But the body? It often gets treated like a machine we drive until it breaks.
Somatic therapy flips that script. It’s a way of tuning into the subtle language of your body—the shifts in breath, the tension in your shoulders, the knots in your gut—that reveal what’s really going on beneath the surface.
Shazia puts it beautifully:
“People come in with the mind… then I listen to what the body is saying too.”
When we pay attention to these physical cues, they often lead us straight to emotional patterns, unresolved stress, or past experiences that our minds have long filed away.

 

Your Symptoms Aren’t the Problem

A recurring headache. An unsettled stomach. The fatigue you can’t shake. These aren’t the root issues—they’re signposts on your healing journey.

As Shazia shares, “When the body is speaking, how well can we listen?” The aches and discomforts we feel aren’t there to punish us. They’re there to point us toward what needs attention, whether that’s an old wound, a lifestyle change, or simply permission to rest.

This reframing is powerful because it shifts us from fighting our bodies to partnering with them. And when you’re no longer at war with yourself, you create space for self healing to happen.

When You’re Stressed Out, Your Body Knows

If you’ve ever been “fine” emotionally but your shoulders told a different story, you know this one. Stress doesn’t just live in your head—it settles into your body, quietly altering the way you breathe, sleep, and even digest.
Shazia sees this all the time:

“I think a lot of people come to me with stress in their bodies, in their digestive systems, in their patterns of sleep.”

The problem? We’ve been taught to treat these issues in isolation—sleep problems get melatonin, digestive issues get diet changes—without asking what’s creating them in the first place.

 

Clearing the Clutter…somatically

One of the most fascinating ideas Shazia shares is that emotions can get stored in the body. Moments we couldn’t process at the time—whether from childhood or last week—can linger physically as tension, aches, or even posture changes.

“Trapped emotions go to places in the body and store as a vibration.”

Imagine your body as a home. Over the years, these unprocessed experiences become boxes in the basement. They don’t seem urgent—until the space runs out and you can’t move freely anymore.

Somatic therapy offers a way to start unpacking those boxes without re-living every painful memory. You don’t need to force the process—just making room can create profound shifts.

 

Finding Your Path to Ease and Healing

Healing doesn’t always have to mean grand gestures or drastic overhauls. Sometimes it’s as simple as pausing long enough to check in: Where do I feel tension right now? What happens if I stay with it instead of pushing it away?

Shazia reminds us that “Coming into a place of balance is the goal—whatever that means for each person.”

That balance might look like a few minutes of stillness each morning, a walk after work, or learning to say no when your body says it’s had enough. It’s not about doing more—it’s about listening better.

 

Why This Matters Right Now – for your self healing journey

In a culture obsessed with productivity and quick fixes, slowing down to listen to your body can feel almost rebellious. But here’s the truth: your body has been with you through every high, low, and in-between moment of your life. It remembers the things your mind has long forgotten.

When you start treating those aches, tightnesses, and restlessness as information instead of irritations, you begin a healing journey that’s not just about feeling “better”—it’s about feeling whole.

 

One Small Step You Can Take Today to heal

You don’t need an hour-long meditation or a week-long retreat to start. Try this: before you go to bed tonight, sit quietly and scan your body from head to toe. Notice where there’s ease and where there’s tension. Don’t try to fix it—just listen.

It may feel small, but it’s these moments of tuning in that build the bridge between disconnection and true self healing.

Because as Shazia shows us, the body is not a battlefield—it’s a book of stories, waiting for you to read. And sometimes, the softest whispers carry the loudest truths.

Listen to the full conversation with Shazia on Feel Good Nakd to hear exactly how she helps people release what’s been stuck for years—and how you can begin, no matter where you are on your healing journey.

 

 

 

Full Transcript on Healing Journey and Somatic therapy with Shazia

 

Chardét Ryel (00:00)
Do you ever notice how the smallest thing like a back pain or a gut issue, it keeps going for months, for years, we ignore it, we write it off, we take the medications, we try everything and we only start to realize that maybe it’s the sign of something deeper. That’s what this conversation is all about. If there is something in your life that you are feeling either physical pain, discomfort,

anxiety and you just can’t really pinpoint what that source is. Our guest today is Shazia and she is an incredible guide, a person who can take you into your body and help you really release a lot of what might be stuck there. And so we’ll be talking all about everything from emotions to a lot of the physical symptoms you’re experiencing to the thoughts that are really holding you down.

Get ready to feel good naked. I’m your host, Sade, and if you’re here right now, means that you are ready to strip away all the crap, all the rules holding you back from feeling good in your body, in your mind, and in your life. Let’s get into it.

Shazia (01:19)
You know, when we’re talking about ourselves, like we’re not broken beings. And this is something that I’ve been kind of contemplating is even the word heal and healing, you know, it’s become so misconstrued. It’s become work. So it’s like, just change your obsession from work, work to healing work. If I do my breathing and if I do my yoga and if I do my this, then I will become, or I will get to here. Where do you give the space for actually acceptance of like,

I am a whole being. For me, I like to kind of relanguage that a little bit to finding a path of ease. How can we ease the things that are poking every day? We just maybe don’t have an understanding of what that looks like or the permission.

Chardét Ryel (02:04)
What people say, do you think, when they come to you or that you hear, that they mean ease, but it’s presented as something else initially? Or maybe they mean flow, but they don’t say it because it’s something else that they’re thinking it is, but it ultimately is this idea of just feeling, you know, comfortable, regulated.

Shazia (02:27)
Yeah,

I think a lot of people come to me with stress in their bodies, in their digestive systems, in their patterns of sleep, in their day-to-day. And actually what I found most recently, like I’ve had a few people recently say, I don’t feel myself. I don’t feel right. Something doesn’t feel right and I no longer understand how to be functioning in the spaces that I used to understand.

And that is exactly what it is, that kind of jarring moment when you’re like, I’m not where I was. I’m maybe not kind of who I was understood to be, how we are and who we are and all of those existential questions. I’d love to talk about more, but in this thread, how do I get closer feeling less jarred by life?

by the things that are happening to me, by the people that are around me. This confinement that they’re starting to become aware of, but don’t really understand that it’s awareness. That’s what I want to pull on, get into it from there. But you’re right. is not something that we are accustomed to. It’s not something we’re taught is acceptable or is okay. And the second that we are in a place of ease, there’s discomfort. So people don’t really…

consider it as an option, but it’s like, it’s more generic, right? Because of what now language is accessible to people. So it’s like, okay, I want to be healthy. I just, I want to be able to eat food and not have pain or I, I’ve had lower back problems forever. What are each of these things telling me as I’m deciphering it? And when I have a body on the table, the body is speaking. People come in with the mind.

And then I’m like, okay, I’ve now heard what your mind wants to say. Let’s see what the other side is saying too. And how can we understand where the disconnect is? And is that disconnect from now? Is it from five years ago? Is it from when I was three years old? How long has my digestion been unable to digest and process the way my life has been going? This is like the crux of it.

When we’re talking about something that is functional in the body, the organ has a job, the body has jobs to do. What’s in the way of them being able to do this with ease?

Chardét Ryel (05:07)
Because you always think that the dysfunction comes from the physical versus it is often so much deeper than that, isn’t it? Like you’ll come in and I could say, ⁓ my hormones are out of whack, something’s wrong with them. But it’s not actually, that’s a symptom, right? It’s not the actual presenting problem. It’s what I see and I communicate to you. And then you can see in my body as you explore in different things. What are some things that you see that the body speaks? Ways that it

tells that when you have someone on the table that you see and you maybe it reaffirms what they told you or maybe it contradicts.

Shazia (05:45)
Often I have people with digestive issues. I have people with back pain, shoulder pain, sleep problems and high stress. That would be probably the bulk of it. Also anxiety and ⁓ anxiety depression going in between. And a lot of people come now more with emotional stuff, which is interesting because then it’s the opposite way.

Because I also work online with unraveling the emotions that are stuck in the body and how they get trapped and how we can create different patterns of belief. When people are on the table, it’s kind of fun to see how is that actually impacting the body? Because people are like, I don’t have any physical symptoms. And then you’re like, push right here. ⁓ my God, that hurts so much. What is that? A fun one I had is somebody came with a problem with their toe.

And they’re like, yeah, yeah, I have a problem with my toe. And I’m like, okay. But the toe was actually connected to a problem in the gut with an acid alkaline imbalance going into the, well, really in the gut and the digestive circuit. And then it was actually further compounded by a lack of validation that was kind of coming in present time, but connected to a problem with the mother got into

the relationships, we get into the emotional side, the energetic side, because meridians are flowing through the body. And when there’s a block, it can be emotional, it can be nutritional, it can be energetic, it can be physical, it’s structural something. So pushing into a system here, there were some lymphatic points I was working on. And she was like, wait, I can feel my toe. These little kind of curiosities that we begin to see that

Anything can be the cause or cure of anything. When the body is speaking, how well can we listen? And I like to kind of consider myself a little bit like a translator. So the body’s talking to me and then I’m kind of translating it. And as we’re looking, we’re seeing, ⁓ this is a thing, this is a thing. What is kind of coming out in the session? And a picture begins to form. And often the client’s like, I had no idea that was still.

present. I’ve been doing therapy on that for 10 years. Why is that still coming up? Or how is that linked? I didn’t see that. I’ll actually come to think of it. My back problem did start 12 years ago when, you know, mom and dad got divorced or when, you know, I was taking responsibility for everyone or whatever it is. For me, that’s the coolest thing because it’s not just one element. It’s not just the mind. It’s not

Just the body, we’re looking into all sides of things. Emotional work, mental work, chemical work. Where is your diet not playing well here? What is your blood type? What are your supplements that are taking? How can we pull all these things together to create a path for you, connect, and find more union, more balance every day? Coming into a place of balance is the goal, whatever that means for each person.

Chardét Ryel (09:05)
And you’re doing it with the whole holistic view, which is why originally I wanted to talk to you so much because I think not many people are, right? They might straddle one or two areas, but it is like you were saying with a therapist, for example, if you’ve been doing therapy for years and you’re still struggling with kind of the same issues, it’s interesting to say, okay, what else is not being addressed here? If I’m just trying to work on it mentally.

what’s being held elsewhere or like away from my thoughts so I can’t heal it. And also for the therapist, can they actually feel where I’m holding all these tensions and issues? They can’t, right? Because it’s not part of the job. They’re there to speak to me and on Earth that way, but they’re actually there physically feeling where in my body is all of this. I could present it with hunched shoulders, but I also could not. It could be in my hips. How would you know? Very interesting to see that.

going a little bit deeper into more areas if it’s a presenting problem you’ve had for many years.

Shazia (10:05)
Definitely and the kind of like somatic sensing of can I sit also with myself for five minutes to say where is something stuck if I were to scan my body close my eyes and scan my body right now Am I getting a little? Tension somewhere am I getting a little stinging in this side of my leg right here or what is happening? Can I stay there? Can I sit in that for a moment and say?

Hey body, what are you telling me here? What is this? Who’s speaking? These are also really beautiful things that we kind of work with and more tools that I kind of bring is this sensing and curiosity to connect deeper into the body. So you begin to get a feeling of like, something’s not right. Or every time I walk into a room with this one person, what is that emotion? Can I feel it? Can I acknowledge it?

Can I maybe even give it a color or a texture? A sense. What does that represent to me? Okay. Why is it that every time I’m around this energy, I feel something in my body? Because I’m obviously not addressing it in another way. I’m not addressing it emotionally, consciously. I’m not able to sort of say, this is not a dynamic that I’m enjoying. This is not something that I feel safe.

And this is not something that feels comfortable to me. But if I don’t have the language for that or the tools to express that language, the body is the one that’s having to do the response or take those things that are unexpressed and put them somewhere. And eventually there’s no more space. So it builds and it builds and it builds and it builds. So when I’m working from a top-down bottom-up approach, it’s like, how can we

the things that have been stored up, whether they are trapped emotions, things that get stuck because we don’t have a tool to process them. If you have an experience where you are seeing something quite sad when you’re a child and you have many emotions and you can only process let’s say five or six of them, the rest will go to places in the body and store as a vibration. So how can we clean the buildup?

so that every time you see something that’s a little bit confronting, you’re not exploding or you’re not incapable of being in that situation or you’re not having a breakdown seeing something that you don’t like. It’s a natural state without being clogged up. It’s like cleaning the basement and then also looking at what’s in the house. How can I kind of move things around, feel better in this space?

Essentially, in the end, it’s kind of like going into a software or hardware update. Oh, there was a break from this? Okay, how do we get that together? You know, somebody who’s had a really intense car accident and, you know, whiplash. How does the emotion that they experience in that moment, the actual trauma of the injury in that moment, get stuck in the body?

And then how can we recall that and clean the area so that actually there’s much more mobility and access in this place? Right? It’s like if it wasn’t treated at the time in a certain way, there’s buildup, there’s residue.

Chardét Ryel (13:41)
I can see that if you had an accident when you were really young, example, a whiplash, and then your physical response default becomes to something stressful, surprising, dramatic, that tension in your shoulders or your neck, because that’s what your body learned when you were young.

Shazia (14:00)
And even to go further within that, if you were somebody who had an accident when you were a child and you’re in the hospital, what does the hospital A represent to you? But B, who came to the hospital? You remember, dad was working a lot and like, even though he came once, I will just wanted him to be there the whole time and he didn’t show up. So what does that mean? If I’m sick or the opposite? Like dad’s never around and when I’m sick, dad shows up. Okay.

Body says, hey, when you’re sick, you’ll get attention. Okay. Now I’m going to get sick every time I feel like I don’t have enough attention so that somebody, especially dad, especially maybe a male figure will show up for me. Memory is in the next phase. So when I’m feeling like I’m having a lack of attention, my neck, gets tight and tight and tight and I don’t have the access to turn to this side. What a connection that you maybe don’t

pull together. So these are where we want to be looking. know, committing to yourself every single day takes courage, it takes vulnerability, something that you have to commit to and be dedicated to. And so often we don’t choose ourselves. We’re the last person we think about in the day. It’s like, how do we wake up in the morning and forget ourselves? When do we remember? Maybe a glimpse in the day, or it’s like, ⁓ I should go and do…

Like, I know I need to work out, so let me go and do pilates, or let me go and do this because I need to have this structure. I need to have a routine that makes me at least feel like I’m doing something. In that should, in that forcing of doing or not finding a way to understand the being of it, you’re just continuing this intense way of life. For me, yes, it’s very, very important. Embodiment.

path of curiosity or how do I construct the things that I have to abide by if I could melt those things away and actually ask myself every day how do I want this day to be? What are my needs in this moment? Can I listen? Can I soften to that?

Chardét Ryel (16:14)
That separation we create, right, between the three, the mind, the body, the spirit. it is, even when you were speaking, I was thinking of how, even when I was in fitness for so long, the incentive to work out was should, because it’s part of the routine, it’s what’s expected. It’s what I need to do this because this is also a fear of if I don’t do this, what happens to my body then, what happens to my discipline then.

And so it was heightened as even well. And I think that actually poisoned it a little bit because it made it go from something that was before, like you said, of waking up, what does my body need today? What kind of movement do I want? If I don’t have movement today, is that okay? Because it no longer was at that point. And I feel like it’s interesting because a lot of the healthy habits you probably hear from your clients that they’re doing become less healthy.

because of the rigidity that they’re placing on.

Shazia (17:12)
Absolutely, and that’s why I really loved what I’m doing now in terms of working as a kinesiologist but also bringing in so many tools because it’s bespoke and it’s totally personalized and at the end of the day I might give some guidance but if you as my client go home and are like, you know what really landed was this thing and feels best for me.

Chardét Ryel (17:35)
It’s interesting how you explain this because I think about how the body is like a finite amount of space, but your emotions are not. And I can see how that overflow happens if you’re not clearing like you’re talking about. And especially if it’s going to the same spot again and again, which it does. I think that that’s probably resonating with a lot of people. If someone’s listening, they’re thinking, okay, what’s the first thing that I can do to bring awareness to this?

to maybe just start that initial path of exploring, how do you usually recommend people start?

Shazia (18:12)
anybody who wants to go down a path of discovery or curiosity is to begin to cultivate a relationship with the body, with self. Basic time, let’s say, if you can commit 10 minutes to sit, to be in presence with yourself, to notice any judgment. I give this as homework a lot to my class.

because it’s a moment in time where there’s no goal. There is no destination. There’s no, have to do something in this time. Staying with it. Whatever begins to happen, it’s kind of coming back, picking a place of presence. And maybe that’s just like kind of looking at your hands, like, okay, I’m here. I’m good. It’s okay. Touching a little bit the body. Hey, reassurance. Cool.

Okay, but just sitting with self just for 10 minutes. Can I be here with me? Can I be present now with me? Waking up in the morning, I love this morning hug. It seems so simple. But how many of us actually give ourselves the tenderness, the moment of affection of just like, hey, good morning.

Hi, good morning, me. If I’m the last person coming back to that, it makes me think of like when you go to a restaurant and you’re alone and you’re like, it’s only me. It’s just me. Why do we have to say it in that way? Why is the languaging, it’s only me? No, it’s me. It’s equally important to have a table for one person than it is for two. So coming to that place of saying, I am important to, I matter. I’m the actually…

the most important person and that is not being selfish, that is selfing, right? It’s coming to a place of care for self that doesn’t require doing anything other than just placing the moment of attention into presence. That’s where I would start. It’s even just assessing when I’m choosing to do a type of healing therapy, what is my why?

And am I ready to take this as me doing this? I always try to check in with clients. This is about you. It’s not about me and what I’m going to tell you, what I’m going to show you or any of those things. I’m mirroring here and I’m just like, you have to choose to get into the car. On the path of life, are you the driver? And if you get in the driver’s seat, I’ll be your passenger. Let’s go. Hairy or not hairy?

I’ve got a torch, don’t worry about it. But you have to make the choice to be the driver and to take the responsibility for it. And when you do that, so many things open up for you. So many things, because you’re not placing that on anyone else other than you because you’re worth it. I deserve it.

Chardét Ryel (21:20)
That is the ultimate message. Are you prepared to be the driver? And for people who are like, maybe I want a passenger. Where can people connect with you? Because we have barely touched the surface of what you do and the work. There’s so much more. Some people might be curious or they might know people who could actually really benefit.

Shazia (21:38)
My Instagram is shine with shaz. Shine with shaz, that’s me, shaz. Metalandmaven.com.

Chardét Ryel (21:48)
So we’ll include links for all of it and thank you so much. It felt very much like for people who aren’t here, they don’t know, but the energy is you just feel like it feels like being hugged in a way.

Shazia (22:01)
Honestly,

my intention, and if we want to go back to the mission statement, is that anybody who needs or wants to feel like themselves, but also as if they are kind of held in this journey, there is safety.

Chardét Ryel (22:16)
Thank you so much for listening. Share this episode with anyone who you know is struggling with some of the things we talked about where they might think it’s something as small as just this back pain that never goes away or this indigestion, this inflammation, all of these different symptoms that we write off for years, for decades. Please share this episode so they can start to have a little bit of this awareness. And if you found that it was really helpful here, make sure that you connect.

And I will see you in the next one.