Defining trauma, ancestral + in the body, & steps to heal with Kim Fuller, Coach & Therapist

Please note: this is the full, unedited transcript of the original recording, so there may be content here that ended up on the cutting room floor. Bonus: more content for you!!

INTRO

Ready to have a deeper conversation about body and soul, sacred leadership, and our collective evolution? Welcome to the Wise Body, Ancient Soul podcast with me, your host, Charisse Sisou.

KIM’S BIO

Hey y’all, just jumping in with a little bio for my next guest, Kim Fuller. I am so delighted to introduce her to you. Kim is such a gift. We first met in 2014, and at the time of our interview, I didn’t have her bio in place yet. So now I’ve got it, and I can share this with you so that you can really understand the experience and perspective that she’s bringing to the table. So let me pull up her bio right now.

Kim Fuller, LMFT, is a grief and loss coach. She is a compassionate guide on the journey of grief and healing. In a world that often rushes past our pain, Kim stands as a beacon of understanding for those who have lost a loved one. Having walked this difficult path herself, she intimately understands the struggle, the heartache, and the questions that can consume us.

in those difficult times, right? But beyond the pain, Kim believes in the transformative power of hope. She knows that grief doesn’t have to be the end of your story. It can be the beginning of a new, meaningful chapter. With her own lived experience as a guiding light, Kim empowers women to find healing strength and peace in the aftermath of loss. Her journey from grief to a fuller, purpose-driven life.

Isn’t her last name like perfect for the work that she does like Kim Fuller, Fuller life concepts. I love it. Her journey from grief to a fuller purpose driven life is an inspiration to all who have experienced loss and seek a path to rediscovery. You can connect with Kim on Instagram at Fuller Lifestyle where she shares wisdom insights and daily reminders that life can be beautiful again.

Follow her journey and discover the hope that awaits. You can also schedule a consultation with her to start your own path toward healing and a fuller life. Join Kim Fuller Life Coach on her mission to bring light to the shadows of grief and guide you towards a life filled with hope and spiritual growth. So excited to welcome Kim Fuller, my dear friend.

best accountability business buddy, and just a wonderful woman and wise soul that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for nearly 10 years now. Enjoy.

INTERVIEW BODY

{Kim and I had a fair amount of technical issues during our recording; so the recording and transcript is in three parts.}

PART ONE

Charisse Sisou (00:05.555)

Kim, I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you so much for joining me and diving into some yummy topics together.

Kim Fuller (00:16.522)

What a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I can’t wait.

Charisse Sisou (00:19.866)

Absolutely, absolutely. So, oh my gosh, where do we even start? You bring so much experience to the table as a life coach, as a as a therapist. But I know one of the reasons why I so wanted your valuable input on this show was around, around the body and trauma and like its relationship with

tools for healing. I’m just gonna, you know what? And before we even dive into that, like probably it would be helpful to define what we mean by trauma. Like how do you define trauma?

Kim Fuller (01:02.338)

So I have been working with trauma for 25 plus years. And I started off in nonprofit mental health. And that was particularly working with people who had emotionally traumatic experiences, right? Whether that was from their community or their household. And working with that in mental health helped me to even more broaden the concept that I now use in coaching, right? So trauma is…

Charisse Sisou (01:20.485)

Mm.

Charisse Sisou (01:29.14)

Mm.

Kim Fuller (01:31.486)

actually the way your body reacts and responds to some external event. Right? And that’s whether it is a perceived event or whether that’s an actual event, your body can still have the same traumatic reaction or response. And that could be to an environmental, a physical or an emotional perception of trauma. So our body naturally is trying to always keep us feeling safe, calm and happy.

Charisse Sisou (01:46.368)

Oh my god.

Kim Fuller (01:57.866)

And if there’s anything that’s going to impact that safe, calm, and happy, it has a reaction. And so when we call it trauma is when our experience of the world has changed. When we no longer feel safe, when we no longer look at the world in the same way, and when our perception of our experience has changed, that’s when it becomes traumatic. I know a lot of people think, oh, it only has to be

Charisse Sisou (01:59.272)

Right.

Charisse Sisou (02:04.66)

Wow.

Charisse Sisou (02:22.57)

Wow.

Kim Fuller (02:25.334)

you know, that I was in a war zone or that I had a particular, you know, violent thing happen, but that violence could even be emotional. And so we hope to, with all of my clients, broaden the definition so they can see how their experience was traumatic and we can start from there.

Charisse Sisou (02:46.942)

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I, I love this so much because what I love about, first of all, I love that the definition is, is rooted, is grounded in the body and is actually about our response and not the, not the event itself, because it could, it like, to your point, it doesn’t even have to be an outside event, right? Like sometimes we’ll have a reaction. That’s.

Kim Fuller (02:59.819)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (03:14.394)

Like just speaking for myself. I know sometimes I’ll have a reaction that’s like in like a response to something I’m feeling on the inside that’s been maybe activated by something or maybe even activated by a memory That’s been at you know what I mean. It’s like so your definition is so really respectful of all of our different and various Experiences because this is something I had to talk about a lot as well as like there’s no

Kim Fuller (03:27.831)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (03:44.446)

Um, you know, of like one person to another person.

Kim Fuller (03:50.61)

And what I want our clients to understand is that one of the things I try to help them is to trust their intuition and to listen to what their body responds to whatever the environment is. So my sister and I had the same experience, right? We’re driving down the highway, it’s a rainy day, a truck goes by us and we have the backwash of a truck, our car spins out and we end up in the center divider. Thank goodness it was just grass and dirt.

and gravel, right? We didn’t hit anything. And she was driving. And her response was start the car up, keep going. My response was, can I have a minute? Like I’m shaking and trembling. I’m having the natural response to a trauma, right? I’m trying to shake off that adrenaline. She didn’t even have that. Why did we have the same experience but two different reactions? Mine was traumatic because I had no sense of control. Hers wasn’t as

Charisse Sisou (04:32.038)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (04:45.608)

Mmm.

Kim Fuller (04:48.406)

she had agency, she had control of the car, she knew how it was feeling, she probably anticipated it before it even happened. And so we can both walk away from that having completely different experiences and she’s gonna say, oh, that was no big deal, and I’m gonna say, man, I felt something. And so even if we have the same experience, it depends on how we, our bodies and our minds respond to it.

Charisse Sisou (04:55.122)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (05:14.386)

Yeah, yeah. I love that. It’s like, it can be anything from how in control or out of control we feel in that moment, how much agency we have in that moment. She was probably, she probably already felt, what a great example. Like she probably already felt the car, like I knew what was gonna happen. And meanwhile, you’re just, you know, you’re just in the passenger seat. Like, right?

Kim Fuller (05:28.618)

Yes. Yep.

Yes.

Kim Fuller (05:37.314)

I’m just reading, I’m just relaxing, I’m like whoa! Like the world like spun and what just happened? And that is the experience most of us have when it becomes traumatic for us and gets implanted into our bodies. What just happened? I’m disengaged with reality, with being in the present moment, I am so out of whack.

Charisse Sisou (05:43.666)

like what just happened, yeah.

Charisse Sisou (05:56.52)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (06:01.386)

Mm.

Charisse Sisou (06:06.066)

Ooh, so tell me more about, and you touched on this in your example, like you started to shake, you started to tremble. Tell me more about like that, the body’s experience of trauma and how you can, yeah, it’s like how you can kind of tell like, oh, okay, my body’s experiencing this as trauma right now.

Kim Fuller (06:27.086)

Wow, yeah. So that is a very, I need to kind of break that up into two different ways. So one way is acute, right? It’s happened right then and a moment like what I was experiencing. And of course, I don’t know that my body was reacting until we stopped. So what our natural body reaction is, is to figure fight or flight. And when we have a natural fight or flight experience, different systems in our body have to be

Charisse Sisou (06:35.656)

Yeah, go for it.

Kim Fuller (06:57.562)

activated, right? We have to get tunnel vision so that we can see an exit. Our heart rate changes so they can pump more blood to our extremities. Our muscles twitch a certain way so it can be ready to, you know, activate. Our digestive system stops working because we don’t need blood down there. We need it in our extremities, right? And so all of these systems go like that in a split second. And what causes that is all the chemicals that are happening in our brain that shoot out, right? We have the…

the epinephrine, we have the dopamine, we have the adrenaline, we have all these chemicals and those that the body produces so that we can fight or flight, get ourselves to safety, right? We’re trying to be safe, calm, and then utmost happy. And so when that happens, after the trauma, you still have the chemicals need to have a release. And so what I know experiences in my body is I get like a…

Charisse Sisou (07:32.626)

that the body produces, yeah.

Kim Fuller (07:53.954)

kind of like a prickly feeling on my skin, right? And then if I really pay attention, I notice my breathing has changed. We always say, oh my God, my heart. So all of those physical reactions after an event can be traumatic. Sometimes we find them delightful and other times we find them upsetting.

Charisse Sisou (07:58.305)

Mm-hmm.

Charisse Sisou (08:13.746)

Right. Exactly. Like I’m doing this on purpose by getting on a rollercoaster versus, you know, yeah. Yeah. Oh, and like, as you’re describing it, I feel it in my body. Like, oh yeah, I’ve felt that, you know, I’ve even felt that kind of delay. Like I was just remembering, um, you know, like, just because you gave the example of being, you know, driving and being like of, um,

Kim Fuller (08:28.822)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (08:40.896)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (08:43.302)

you know, the car stopping suddenly in front of me. And I like go to stop, or like, it’s one of those like near misses kind of a thing where in the moment I’m just, I’m focused. I do what I need to do to like avoid the accident. But then I feel in my body exactly what you were describing. Like I’ll feel like a, like a flush and a prickle and like, I’ll kind of like feel all of those, um, the hormones, all those, are they hormones? Like adrenaline? Yeah. Um,

Kim Fuller (09:04.278)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (09:08.994)

Yeah, yes.

Charisse Sisou (09:11.71)

like running through my body and sort of like this like after shock or after wave of the experience that um well yeah.

Kim Fuller (09:21.414)

And you know what our society tells us to do is just pat ourselves down and keep walking, right? Shake it off and keep going. And sometimes that works, but we also need to make sure that we actually expressed all of the chemicals out of our bodies, otherwise it stays in there. Our bodies stay in mode of fight or flight, and then all of those systems that were designed to just come and go, right?

Charisse Sisou (09:31.091)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (09:51.282)

all of the ways in which our body responded or reacted is designed to come and go. It’s not designed to stay in the body long-term. So what happens when it stays in the body long-term, it starts to wear out those systems in our bodies, right? That tunnel vision becomes probably migraine. All the muscle might become fibromyalgia symptoms. The indigestion might become irritable bowel syndrome. The heart.

Charisse Sisou (09:58.664)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (10:06.225)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (10:13.77)

Wow.

Kim Fuller (10:17.95)

might become a weakened heart, start having heart attacks. I mean, like you can just see how prolonged experience of that traumatic experience physically can impact and damage our bodies overall.

Charisse Sisou (10:32.398)

Yeah, I think, and I think you were starting to touch on this earlier of like, you know, in defining trauma and talking about the body’s reaction, right? Where if it is something momentary like, you know, like the example that we’re both giving of like the car accident or the near car accident where everything was okay, and it’s kind of over like that. And you can kind of like shake it off because that’s actually something one of the…

Kim Fuller (10:50.446)

Car accident. Yeah.

Kim Fuller (10:55.021)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (11:00.535)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (11:02.374)

you know, one of the pieces of advice that I’ve, or tools that I give when I’m speaking to people is like teaching them how to shimmy, teaching them how to vibrate and shake because, you know, that can help us move things through. And I really love that you touched on, you know, that can help a lot and it’s not, but it’s, it’s not like a blanket solution obviously for everything. And I think this is like, this is that

Kim Fuller (11:10.903)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (11:16.214)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (11:29.882)

other thing because immediately I start thinking about having experienced them myself, like those kinds of traumas that are kind of they repeat or they’re ongoing. They’re more situational. You know, and yeah, and so tell like, tell us more about that. Like, how do you know that you might be walking around? I think we kind of get a sense but like, what are some indicators like

Kim Fuller (11:41.645)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (11:51.826)

Okay.

Charisse Sisou (11:59.422)

You’re probably holding some residual trauma in the body. Like who isn’t, right? But like, what are some of the signs, right?

Kim Fuller (12:01.838)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (12:05.038)

We are accustomed to aches and pains and discomfort. We are socialized to pop a pill or drink something to relieve those aches or pains. My intention is for people to notice, become aware of those aches and pains, whether they’re physical or emotional, right? Because those are telling you something. If you have a headache and then you have a fever and then you have a runny nose, you know kind of where that headache might come from.

Charisse Sisou (12:10.26)

Mmm.

Charisse Sisou (12:16.458)

That’s right.

Charisse Sisou (12:27.954)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (12:34.282)

If you kind of have this chronic ongoing headache for the last couple of days and there’s no additional symptoms that imply you have like an illness or a sickness, you should be curious about what’s that about. If you have like changes in parts of your body, like all of a sudden you’re like, because one day I was sitting in my living room by myself and all of a sudden I got, I started feeling weird and that’s the best way I can describe it. And then when I started paying attention to my systems, my heart rate went up.

Charisse Sisou (12:44.648)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (13:00.176)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (13:04.162)

I had a little bit of like moisture, like I was starting to perspire a little bit and my breathing changed. Out of nowhere, I’m just sitting in my living room. I’m not, so how many of us have had that experience and we just chalk it up to nothing? I was so anxious about it that I called my nurse friend. I was like, hey, and I told her all my symptoms and she went through the whole like check and I probably was just having a panic attack. There were some things that were happening in my.

Charisse Sisou (13:04.19)

Mmm.

Charisse Sisou (13:09.546)

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Charisse Sisou (13:21.602)

Right, right, right.

Kim Fuller (13:33.802)

business and in my life that were just overwhelming emotional and I probably just was having a panic attack. There’s no other symptoms, there’s no other description as to why that happened. But what’s important to know is that was different from any other experience I was having at the moment and I think when there is aches, pains, difference, uncomfortable, discomfort, disease, something is going wrong. Because remember

Charisse Sisou (13:46.459)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (14:00.102)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (14:03.65)

The whole point of our existence is to be safe, calm, and happy.

Charisse Sisou (14:07.858)

Right, right. That’s the goal of our nervous system. That’s the goal of our body. But I love what you’re saying. In fact, if I haven’t recorded this episode yet, I’m doing one on this concept of pain. And sometimes it feels like, like you said, it’s that the narrative or kind of like our go-to thing is like, oh, pain, get rid of it.

you know, like take a pain reliever, take a something versus what is the message that my body is trying to send me right now? Like that weird feeling that you had, like, you know, you’re sitting there, you’re like this, this feels odd. This feels really, really strange. And it was like, your body was literally communicating with you, like, like warning, you know, and, um, you know, I’ve experienced the same. And it’s so interesting because, um, I too have like

Kim Fuller (14:57.459)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (15:05.394)

I have just trained myself or just that is my habit. That is my practice that when I feel a sensation, even a sensation that maybe I’ve like gotten used to, like I’ll question it. I’ll say like, that’s, you know, oh, that’s interesting that I feel, I’m feeling this sensation in my foot or I’m feeling this discomfort when I walk or in my back or what have you and just really getting to the root of.

Kim Fuller (15:21.046)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (15:33.99)

where is this coming from? And so many times it’s happened where the healing was not a physical one at all, but like an emotional breakthrough or a spiritual breakthrough. And then it was like, oh, and then a pain or a sensation that I’ve been feeling like goes away. Can you speak to that at all?

Kim Fuller (15:35.595)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (15:58.38)

Yep.

Charisse Sisou (16:05.874)

Like, can you speak to that? Well, can you speak to that connection? Yeah.

Kim Fuller (16:16.244)

Exactly.

I hope you didn’t ask me a question because I missed it.

Charisse Sisou (16:23.366)

Oh, you know what? I know it’s a little broken up on my end too, don’t worry, that’s okay, we’ll edit this part out. So we had just talking about that where sometimes that discomfort or that disease in the body can actually be something that’s emotional. And I know I’ve had that experience of, having an emotional breakthrough, maybe I did.

Kim Fuller (16:39.992)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (16:50.962)

journaling exercise maybe it was like in seeing a therapist or like just moving through being witnessed in something and healing it and then suddenly that Pain in my foot or that pain in my back leg goes away, which is amazing to me So yeah, so I was just wondering if you could Speak to that or if you’ve had experience with that in your own practice or in your own life

Kim Fuller (17:05.58)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (17:17.898)

Yes, because my whole experience personally as well as professionally is to help people become aware of what’s happening, right? And then identify where in the body, because that’s the information telling them something. And then once they learn that part, whereas I have them also measure how big or how small, because I think we also need to be clear about patterns.

Charisse Sisou (17:32.148)

Mm-hmm.

Charisse Sisou (17:42.032)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (17:44.394)

And so I encourage my clients to keep records of all of these symptoms over a course of a week, a month, however long they need to. Because in the end, we go into the mindset and we’re like, what is happening in your belief system? What are you perceiving? What are you experiencing? What are you afraid of? Like what’s happening that could be helping you to understand what’s happening in your body? Because of course it’s what we’re thinking.

Charisse Sisou (17:54.666)

Mm-hmm.

Charisse Sisou (18:11.282)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (18:12.562)

and experiencing if it’s not a physical or external trauma. It’s all in our heads. And that doesn’t mean that it can’t be healed, it just means we have to identify that’s where it’s coming from. And once we go through that process, then we’re able to start to go, okay, what do you want to feel? What do you want to experience? And how can we modify what you’re thinking about or what you’re believing or what you’re perceiving in the world as dangerous? I like to give examples to my clients around

Charisse Sisou (18:22.943)

Mm.

Charisse Sisou (18:37.01)

Yeah. Yes.

Kim Fuller (18:41.302)

you know, those emotional activators, right? If there was a hurt in the past, let’s just say you had a friend in kindergarten who stole your pencil, and when you told the teacher, the teacher didn’t respond, right? So you had no sense of protection, no advocate when you become an adult and something happens, where at work you’re in the boardroom and you’re trying to give, you know, your…

Charisse Sisou (18:57.415)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (19:08.794)

idea and somebody else takes the idea and runs with it, you may have the same I don’t feel safe as you did when you were five. And you need to heal both parts of you. You need to heal the five-year-old, right, as well as the person in the present body. But in order to kind of begin to connect those dots, you have to become aware. And I think it starts with, oh, something happened in my body. Where is this coming from? And then question everything.

Charisse Sisou (19:15.77)

Yeah. Right.

Charisse Sisou (19:29.149)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (19:35.686)

Right, it’s almost like the breadcrumbs, the clues that we’re getting from our body, like, ooh, pay attention. Like even, you know, thinking of you sitting on the couch, like, that was your body going like, ooh, pay attention. Like things are getting kind of overwhelming right now, you know? Yeah. Wow.

Kim Fuller (19:39.789)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (19:48.203)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (19:53.383)

Yes. Pay attention.

Charisse Sisou (19:58.702)

I would love to, how do we segue into this? Because, well, I know for me, sometimes I’ll be processing stuff, moving stuff through that maybe doesn’t even feel like it’s mine. Like it’s like it’s something that I’ve inherited. So I

Kim Fuller (20:24.683)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (20:24.754)

Like a good example of when I was in the Philippines and I arrived and suddenly I was feeling so ugly. Like I felt like unattractive. And it was so wild. My sister who’s just a little bit younger than me, like people were coming up to us on the street and asking me if I was her mom. Like it was so weird. And I was like, what is going on? And you know, of course I like many.

people have had issues with, you know, self-image, body image, like over the years. But it was so… it was like, unlike something I’d felt before, or that I hadn’t felt in a very long time, let’s put it that way, because I did. When I was little, like, I would have feelings like that. I would feel really like, ugh. And here I was in this adult feeling it. And as I spent more time with my family, and I was learning about how, like…

one side of the family versus the other side of the family. One was like, you know, my sister and my mom, the way that my mom would talk about my sister is like her sister as the pretty one, which reminded me of like, oh, my gosh, when I was young, that’s how I thought of my sister. And I was like, huh, interesting. And then it was like it even went back into, you know, the tall, light skin side of my family was considered so handsome.

And the petite brown skin, like more indigenous looking Filipinos were like, not described as beautiful. So, and I felt in that as I was like moving through that, I was like, Oh my gosh, it literally felt like I was processing ancestral stuff in my body through my own experience. Um, and does that like, was I making that up or

Kim Fuller (22:01.675)

Right?

Kim Fuller (22:20.663)

haha

Charisse Sisou (22:23.334)

Like, can you speak to that at all? Like that sort of, yeah, like ancestral trauma and how that might be informing what’s happening in the body or even how we respond to different situations.

Kim Fuller (22:32.408)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (22:38.806)

Definitely think so. Years ago I had a podcast. No, years ago I had a radio show and I called it Change is Personal. And one of the, and we’re always talking about how the way we make changes in our life. It’s very personal and individualized. And I interviewed a man who is a chiropractor and he studied psychogenetics, right? He studied the connection of our emotions, our psychology.

Charisse Sisou (22:45.521)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (22:54.087)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (23:03.102)

Mmm.

Kim Fuller (23:07.866)

and our history, right, our ancestry, and put them together in psychogenetics, to the point where he could look at you, right, he’s a chiropractor, and the way you carried yourself, he could tell you who you were in terms of maybe, and what kind of illnesses you may have, and what of your ancestors. And so he could see, he saw me walk in, and after, of course, what’s funny, I’ll tell you the funny part first, and then I’ll tell you what he said.

The funny part is now that I know that, I try to straighten up whenever I’m around him. It doesn’t matter. Because what he could tell right away, before I even spoke, which he does naturally, is the way I carried myself. I have a little slight tilt. And it’s not obvious to the naked eye or people who don’t study chiropractic, chiropractor, whatever, that I…

Charisse Sisou (23:57.862)

Yeah, that stuff

Kim Fuller (24:01.198)

am a ambitious person, but that I’m also, I mask a lot of my feelings. He knew that right away, right? Because of the way I carry my shoulders. He said lots of times women are more likely to carry their shoulders inward, right? Especially because, especially if we are trying to protect ourselves. So historically, black women have not had the space, the time, the…

opportunity to just express their feelings and their emotions openly. So we became more closed off, right? Because who cares who had time for it, you know, do whatever you needed to do to survive. So survival was more important than really looking at our emotional needs. And so we tend women, especially black women tend to have more heart issues because they’re, um, tend to hold their bodies inward a little more like this. I don’t know if you can see my, I’m trying to exaggerate it so you can really see it.

Charisse Sisou (24:56.37)

Yeah, no, I know exactly, yeah.

Kim Fuller (24:57.034)

And he talked about, right? He talked about that constricts the blood flow and the oxygen that happens at the heart and the lungs need to be more effective and efficient. And he said, your grandmother and great grandmother could even have passed that down, even great, great grandmother, passed down that you don’t matter, and not so much that they didn’t think you matter, but that your needs don’t matter in the world, that you even without having any of those.

experiences currently may walk around or may have that intuitively, right, that is passed on genetically. And so I find his information, I found it to be very exposing, but at the same time informative, right, because it’s all about once we become more aware, we say, oh, I’m noticing that I hold my shoulders in like this. What am I trying to keep concealed?

Charisse Sisou (25:32.692)

Wow.

Kim Fuller (25:50.698)

What feelings am I trying not to feel? What am I trying to hide? So that we can become like this and be more open and vulnerable and exposed because it’s no longer, is it dangerous?

Charisse Sisou (25:54.855)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (26:01.554)

Yeah, I think that makes so much sense to me. Like when you said that, I immediately thought about that sort of like embattled, you know, like protective, you know, I’ve got to protect, I can’t be wearing my heart on my sleeve. I can’t put it all out there. And I think that is like a common experience across different ancestries, right? Like in my…

Kim Fuller (26:10.494)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (26:17.366)

No, no, right?

Kim Fuller (26:29.279)

Right.

Charisse Sisou (26:31.202)

on my mother line in the Philippines, like we, I know part of how that all got baked into my bloodline was when we were colonized. And that was like hundreds of years ago when the Spaniards came in. And suddenly, suddenly like that to look more European, that’s where beauty was, that’s where value was, you know? And…

Kim Fuller (26:56.832)

Right.

Charisse Sisou (27:00.278)

And you couldn’t, I mean, you couldn’t, you couldn’t speak freely because your life was in danger. And in fact, one of the first things that they did was they just came in and just murdered people who were like pillars of the community, people who were in power, people who, the leaders. And so it’s, so I could see how.

you know, generations and multiple colonizers later, right? How this was like passed down and passed down and passed down and it just kept, it was something that I was seeing so clearly there. The last time I had been there was as a child and to go back as an adult and to see these patterns and to start to recognize like, oh, that’s, wait a minute. Like my mom and her sister have the same pattern that I and my sister do. And then as…

Kim Fuller (27:52.888)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (27:55.182)

you know, as I learned more and more about generations back, I was like, and it didn’t start with her. Like it goes further, further back. And so I actually had this, what’s really interesting is while I was there, like I had that realization and I did just, you know, my own practices, I sent up a prayer, I like, kind of spoke to my ancestors like energetically, I felt like I was running.

Kim Fuller (28:00.682)

No. Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (28:22.394)

healing energy up the bloodline, like just sending this message back through the generations. Like, you are loved, I am loved, I’m lovable, you’re beautiful. And it seemed like, it seems almost symbolic, right? But what was interesting was there was a physical shift.

that I felt in my body after doing that. Like I went into meditation, I went into prayer, I was like speaking with the ancestors and the energy, it looked like the color green running through the bloodline, don’t know what that means, but there you have it. And when I came out of that, it was like, I felt like myself again, right? There were no more unwanted comments from people on the street.

Kim Fuller (28:50.125)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (29:11.403)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (29:16.214)

I felt like something had really shifted, not only for me, but also even in those generations. I feel like when we do heal this trauma, even in our current, in our individual, like in our, like in the now, it heals forwards, of course, like for generations to come, but I feel like it also heals [backwards]. Yeah.

Kim Fuller (29:22.2)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (29:32.087)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (29:40.162)

Yes, it does. And I believe that it is possible to heal the ancestors that we won’t meet until dot dot dot, as well as creating the environment for us to not necessarily pass that down. And part of the way in which we do it currently is through talking about it, right? To being open about it, to exploring, questioning, being curious, and then.

Charisse Sisou (29:52.359)

All right.

Charisse Sisou (30:03.568)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (30:08.706)

figuring out ways to move it through our body. I think there’s lots of different interventions or methods that work. There’s studies that show that the pen to paper is a very great way to kind of express ourselves, because it’s activating different parts of our experience. And so I encourage people to journal. I know the new thing is to use technology, which I don’t disagree with.

Charisse Sisou (30:11.248)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (30:30.002)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (30:37.43)

But I think the old fashioned pen to paper is a really good way to begin to explore and express, even if it’s just scribbling, even if it’s just coloring, it doesn’t necessarily always have to be a specific journal prompt in writing. Right, other ways is to kind of like get into our body and move, which I know you’re an expert at, and that could be a lot of different ways, right? That could be stretching, that could be running, that could be pounding, that could just be.

Charisse Sisou (30:51.366)

Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Kim Fuller (31:05.534)

like listening to music and dancing. I mean, there’s all ways to kind of express, right? And there’s so many benefits to physical movement. And I don’t want to forget to also talk about, you know, the talk part. And that means, yes, I think we should talk about it, but I think we should also be intentional and go and speak to people who have experience with helping people move through trauma, right?

Charisse Sisou (31:32.79)

Wow. Yeah.

Kim Fuller (31:33.478)

it’s important to have all of the elements, right? The elements of I’m no longer gonna hold these secrets and not be vulnerable, I’m gonna be open and engaging with my.

Charisse Sisou (31:55.506)

Your sound just dropped out there, I don’t know.

Charisse Sisou (32:21.61)

Can you hear me?

Wait, can you hear me? Oh, maybe you can’t. Oh, my microphone is falling. Hello, can you hear me? You went very quiet and very still.

Charisse Sisou (32:40.488)

Thanks.

Charisse Sisou (32:52.755)

Hello?

Charisse Sisou (33:01.51)

Your sound went out totally. Can you say something? Can I see if maybe it’s back on, if you’re back online?

Charisse Sisou (33:13.706)

I’m gonna try texting you.

Charisse Sisou (33:30.192)

Yeah, I know. I can’t hear you either. No? Okay.

How do we do this? So you can’t hear me, because I can’t hear you. That’s weird. Let’s try. Oh, here we go, chat.

Charisse Sisou (33:52.634)

I’m back. You still can’t hear me. Okay. The sound looks like it’s red. Okay. Hold on.

Charisse Sisou (34:28.002)

to start over. Oh, can you hear me now? No, you can’t.

Charisse Sisou (34:38.526)

Let’s try… wait, here we go. Okay. Let’s, I’ll see you on the other side.

PART TWO

Charisse Sisou (00:01.193)

So yeah, we left off right around, we were talking about, oh shoot. Yeah, okay, you were saying the trifecta. Yeah, like the process and like different ways of connecting, you were talking about moving and also talking and just all of the stuff, yeah.

Kim Fuller (00:08.758)

The process, yes.

Kim Fuller (00:16.746)

Yes. Yeah. Because I was saying that it’s important that we do the talking, right? We don’t have to keep everything so private and I can’t be vulnerable. I have on my shield. It’s okay to open up and be vulnerable to friends or family or people who love and care about us. And the next step is to write it out, act it out, use our body to express it. Right? And then the last way that I was talking about was that we also deserve to talk to somebody.

who can help us cognitively make our way through any traumas or experiences that we’ve had, right? So I think all of us deserve all three levels.

Charisse Sisou (00:57.873)

I love it.

Charisse Sisou (01:01.729)

Yeah, I think that was, you know, it’s interesting what you’re saying about it’s important to talk and it’s important to talk with someone who can actually help us move stuff through, right? And I think you raise something really valuable there. And I guess one of the questions that I asked that you might be like perfectly suited to answer is like, how do you know when?

Kim Fuller (01:16.717)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (01:29.969)

like, okay, this is something that I can work through with my coach versus maybe I should get some therapy. You know what I mean? Like, how do you make that distinction? Although ideally your coach knows to also how to make that distinction and knows when to work.

Kim Fuller (01:43.274)

That’s so funny because that’s exactly what I was going to say. I was going to say I would not want to leave it on to the person to figure it out themselves. I’d want them to go and seek whatever was their first idea. Maybe I go to a therapist because that’s all I know or maybe I go to a coach because that’s all I know and allow the coach and or therapist or even if it’s a body worker or a massage person.

Charisse Sisou (01:54.047)

Beautiful.

Kim Fuller (02:08.562)

Any kind of therapist should be able to say, oh, you know what, this is outside of my expertise. And I think you deserve to either have a body worker or have a therapist or have a coach help you work through it. My experience of the difference, being both a coach and a therapist, is that a therapist is more looking at a lot of the emotional components of what’s happened, looking into your past, hoping you identify where some of this is coming from.

Charisse Sisou (02:21.811)

Yeah.

Kim Fuller (02:36.874)

connecting the dots of ancestor or your own traumatic history, your own ideas and perceptions and thoughts and then helping you to make sense of it. And for some of us that’s enough. For others, most of us, the coaching part comes into play and that’s where you already know what’s happening but you know it’s impacting the results that you want in your life. You know that or you look at and you say gosh I’m tired of…

Charisse Sisou (02:56.978)

Yeah.

Right.

Kim Fuller (03:05.994)

and I don’t know how to get to this result. And so then a coach can help you get to that result, right? Because the coach is looking at what are the obstacles that are happening and what are the interventions that I can help you with so that you can change the way you think and you experience life so that you can get to that result. I have a current coach who says, if your results are direct product of the way you think about how you are in the world.

Charisse Sisou (03:24.654)

Mm.

Charisse Sisou (03:35.797)

Hmm

Kim Fuller (03:36.866)

So your results are a product of your thoughts. So if we can use something really simple like weight loss, because most of us women are always looking at our bodies, and you say, oh my gosh, I’m overweight, and that’s because there’s something happening in your thoughts that allows you to choose to do things that are not going to give you the results you want.

Charisse Sisou (03:54.811)

Oh.

Kim Fuller (03:59.37)

doesn’t mean you have bad thoughts, it just means something in your belief system allows you to take that extra cookie knowing that it’s not gonna give you the results. A coach will help you to kind of unravel what those thoughts are so you can make different actions, you can have different results.

Charisse Sisou (04:03.977)

Yeah.

Charisse Sisou (04:08.382)

Right?

Charisse Sisou (04:15.637)

Sure, sure. Well, and I find too that it’s kind of like this whole enmeshment of stuff. Like, you know, for me, as I’ve worked with coaches in the past, as I’ve coached with folks, it’s been, you know, helping people identify those patterns, right? And sometimes those patterns can be very physical, right? Just a physical habit or what have you. And we’re not even aware that there is a belief or a story.

Kim Fuller (04:37.655)

Yes.

Charisse Sisou (04:44.733)

that’s kind of driving that. And I know in my own work, something that would come up often is like something happens and that it gets sort of like lodged or stored in the body because we have a story about it, a powerful belief around it. Like going back to what we were talking about, that kind of like the shielding, it was a very valid belief. It was not safe, right? At one time to speak our truth or…

There’s an author that I love to read Joan Grant. She writes about past lives and stuff, and she calls them her far memory books. She was writing back in the 40s. So it just kind of blew people away what she was doing. But one of the things that she talks about is those lifetimes that ended brutally were ones where in that lifetime, it was more valuable to her to

to speak freely or to speak the truth than it was like her own survival, right? But for those times where our survival was more important, which is very often, right? Then we would say the thing, do the thing to like protect. But, you know, identifying those patterns, seeing those patterns, bringing them forward. And then that’s when we can kind of start to identify and shift maybe that, that lever thought behind it. Yeah.

Kim Fuller (06:08.269)

Right?

Charisse Sisou (06:12.653)

Yeah, it’s like, yeah, so I see it as kind of like this whole, it’s like everything talking to everything else. Like there’s no, there’s no, not necessarily one thing that’s driving it. Like it could be something that’s ancestral that you’ve inherited, that’s come through the genes, but that we’re, you know, dealing with through journaling or talk therapy. Like it all kind of, it all kind of works together. It’s really cool. I

You know, like, where do I want to take this? Well, I know that in your coaching, one of the areas that you really specialize in is grief, helping people move like basically after a loss, like working with widows and creating that new life moving forward, creating like how

How does everything that we’ve been talking about, like how does that play out there? Like that is one of the, you know, that’s a perfect example of something traumatic that we experience as humans is the loss of someone dear to us. So how do you, oh no, you have a face.

Kim Fuller (07:24.763)

kempflerlifecoach.com. It’s been my pleasure being part of this process, just in case you need that. kempflerlifecoach.com.

Kim Fuller (07:39.006)

Instagram at Fuller Lifestyle.

Charisse Sisou (07:46.329)

Oh yeah, that’s I would love to know how.

Charisse Sisou (07:53.165)

Oh no. Okay.

Charisse Sisou (07:59.749)

All right. Did you list? Are you not hearing me anymore? Did you lose me? We lost each other.

PART THREE

Charisse Sisou (00:01.094)

Goodness. Wow. So I love that we’re talking about trauma and we keep losing sound and video and signal.

Kim Fuller (00:11.402)

I know, what’s that? What message are we getting, huh?

Charisse Sisou (00:13.114)

Right. Exactly. Stop. Stop right now. So let’s, let’s land this spaceship. Thank you. I mean, um, thank you for everything. Thank you for your insights on, um, on the body. Is there any, um, any last thoughts? And then I’d love to hear, you know, please tell us how people can find you and connect with you and all that stuff. But, um,

Kim Fuller (00:22.464)

Okay.

Charisse Sisou (00:41.154)

any last pearl of wisdom that you would offer around the body and moving through trauma, moving through loss. I was trying to move the conversation into talking about widows and

Kim Fuller (00:57.966)

Oh yes, loss. I would say that trust your body to tell you what’s happening and to become more and more aware of what you’re starting to feel emotionally and physically. Reach out and get support. Start with people local near you and check in. Hey, do you have that feeling? Do I have that feeling?

you know, have you had that experience? Because of course, we’re always looking for normalizing it. And then if you’re finding that your experience isn’t within the normal, or even if you’re just curious about wanting a different experience, reach out and get the help you need.

Charisse Sisou (01:38.786)

Yeah, right. Absolutely. Beautiful, beautiful. I love that. And please tell us, what’s the best way to connect with you? How can people connect with you if they wanna learn more about working with you?

Kim Fuller (01:48.823)

Ha!

Kim Fuller (01:58.11)

I think the easiest way to connect with me is on Instagram. It’s at Fuller Lifestyle. If you wanna learn more about connecting with me, one of your options is to send me a direct message and also on the Instagram, there’s a link tree where you can set up a consultation with me.

Charisse Sisou (02:17.958)

Beautiful. Fantastic, fantastic. Well, thank you for bringing your wisdom here today. I love, we always have great, great conversations about the way how all of these things play in the body. And I just really honored to get your perspective, your wise perspective on all of this.

Kim Fuller (02:23.031)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (02:28.179)

Oh my gosh, yes. I love it.

Kim Fuller (02:34.05)

Yes.

Kim Fuller (02:39.502)

Thank you. And it’s been a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Charisse

Charisse Sisou (02:42.714)

Thank you, thank you. Bye Kim, talk to you soon.

Kim Fuller (02:46.042)

Bye! Okay.

OUTRO

Thanks for joining me on Wise Body, Ancient Soul. I hope it reminds you how magical and powerful you truly are. Kindly subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so more juicy light bringers like you can hear these transmissions. And if you’re looking to connect more deeply with your body and soul’s wisdom, visit CharisseSisou.com to learn how else we can play together. Here’s to your joy and wild success! From my heart to yours, I love you. Take what you need and pass it on.