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Angela: A content warning for our listeners: general discussions of sexual violence, including impacts of trauma and healing modalities will be discussed. If you need support or resources, please visit survivors.org

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of the survivors.org podcast, helping survivors to thrive after trauma. I'm your host, Angela Rose, the founder of PAVE. And this episode is brought to you by Color Street Nails and Color Street is a creative beauty brand with limitless possibilities. So thank you to Color Street for your continued support.

And I am so excited to have our guest today, Halli Faulkner. She is the founder and the executive director of Porchlight Wellness. And as a survivor, she's learned how to use the tools of movement, breath, and mantra to help her heal. So we are so excited for her to share her wisdom with us today. Welcome, Halli.

Halli Faulkner: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be with you.

Angela: Awesome. So tell me a little bit about kind of the work that you do. Tell us about Porchlight Wellness.

Halli Faulkner: Yeah, thanks for asking. So in 2019, myself and a group of survivors I had been working with got together to found Porchlight Wellness to kind of formalize what we've been already doing together as a community, which is hosting healing yoga and meditation workshops for sexual assault survivors.

I'm a survivor myself. And as you just said, yoga and meditation had played a really critical and foundational part of my own process of healing from trauma and PTSD. And so we created Porchlight Wellness just to kind of share some of the tools for healing that we all have picked up as survivors along the way. So we're a small nonprofit organization. We offer healing yoga workshops for survivors and also teacher trainings for anyone interested in learning trauma-informed tools for supporting survivors.

Angela: Beautiful. I might be taking you up on that and take one of your classes. I love that.

Halli Faulkner: You're always welcome.

Angela: Thank you. And I was really interested to learn about the mantra work that you said helped you heal. Can we dig a little bit deeper? Can you share what that looks like?

Halli Faulkner: Yeah. Actually, thanks for asking. So, as a survivor, I've personally had to do a lot of work or chosen to do a lot of work, like with my own voice and my own throat. For many years, I actually had this dream that I was like running and trying to get away and I tried to scream and nothing would come out, right? And I think it's just is a manifestation of what I experienced as a little kid. And so, in my own path of healing, I've had to learn how to like speak my truth and tell my truth and be wise about how I speak and who I speak to and even speaking from the heart. So for me personally, mantra has been a critical part of my own practice and it's something that I share a lot as a teacher.

I just taught a workshop last night, actually on manifesting or co-creating our destiny. And we did like a mantra at the end to help us connect with our destiny. And so, a really easy kind of intro to mantra, I think, is like a gentle hum. So if you want to join me, we could just do it real quick. First like taking a deep breath in and then just like, on the exhale, a gentle hum. So we could inhale together and then hum it out. And even something as simple as that can, you know, start to vibrate and clear and activate this kind of voice center.

Angela: That's beautiful. And as we know, a trauma does stay in the body. So I think what you're doing, finding ways to release it, can be so incredibly helpful. And you're speaking my language with the law of attraction and co-creating and manifesting your reality. I think that's so powerful for survivors, because so many of us, we feel the shame and the issues of worthiness. And so oftentimes it can be difficult for us to really manifest wealth or, you know, find ways to manifest what it is that we're looking for. So how have you used different mantras to help you overcome? Did you have any self-limiting beliefs or any issues of worthiness, if you don't mind me asking?

Halli Faulkner: Lord, have mercy. Where do you wanna start? So it's interesting. Actually, deservedness is something we talk a lot about in our workshops and actually the sense of deservedness rests like in our hips, in our second chakra area, which can often be really affected by sexual trauma. And so we talk a lot about, you know, as survivors, the fact that we deserve the lives that we want, right? And yes, you know, working on my own beliefs around prosperity and worthiness have certainly been a part of my own healing process. And also, as a white person that's experienced a lot of trauma, I also am deeply aware of the access I've had to healing services that a lot of survivors, particularly survivors of color have not had access to. So, you know, a big kind of center of our work at Porchlight Wellness is making sure that our services are not only accessible to survivors of color, but also like welcoming and safe, hopefully, for survivors of color. So I think it's like a both end for me, like, yes, I want to create my own belief in deserving my own prosperity and I also want to create equal access to these tools for healing.

Angela: Beautiful and that's so important. Thank you for your work. And I love reading about your story that you learned about yoga in high school. I thought that was very cool, that that kind of, you know, changed the trajectory of your life and learning about that. So tell me about that experience, being in high school, and I wish more high schools did teach, you know, yoga and meditation and things like that, I think they're starting too. But tell me about that experience for you.

Halli Faulkner: Yeah. So I don't know about you, but like I hated PE. I actually really liked playing sports, but we had to like change our clothes, which is so awkward in high school. And they're like sweaty and weird. I shared a locker with my friends and we like shared PE clothes. It was like this whole disgusting thing. But there was this one day, I think we were supposed to play like some sport outside, but it was raining. So in high school, we got to stay in the gym and like someone taught us, you know, just like a few breathing exercises. And I wouldn't say it was like love at first sight or anything like that, but it like sparked something in me, I think. I was like, "Oh, like, this is an interesting little thing." And I had no idea at the time that I was actually living with significant trauma and PTSD, like in a little compartment in the back of my mind. So I think maybe there was something to that, like my first experience of checking in with my breath and even just like tuning into something about my nervous system and like where my body was at. And I think it maybe planted a seed that has grown into, you know, a deep yoga practice and obviously teaching as well.

Angela: That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I think one thing that survivors might not know but need to know is that trauma really does impact our brain, our nervous system and it's not our fault that these things happen. And what I love is using breathwork and yoga has really helped me just get back in touch with my body. Obviously, for a lot of survivors, you know, sometimes our body's not our friend or that's how we feel, you know, that's the perception. And so how do you think that yoga helps survivors sort of stay present and get back in touch with their bodies?

Halli Faulkner: Yeah. I mean, I think you said it beautifully, like, for me, a coping mechanism that my body used for many years was dissociation, right? So like this feeling of being completely outside of my body, separate from myself, even like being able to watch my life from the outside, hover above my body, kind of. I can like feel my breath getting tight, because the memory is so visceral. And so I think that's one of the many, many gifts that yoga movement in particular provides for survivors, you know, of sexual trauma and trauma in general is that it can bring me back to a place where it's okay to experience being in my own body. And one of the things that we share in our yoga workshops, that little sort of teacher training, is that we have to make space for survivors to reconnect with our bodies at our own pace. Because just like you said, sometimes even being present in our bodies can be too overwhelming. It can be too uncomfortable, too painful, too much for the nervous system. So whenever I'm teaching, I'm like, "If this feels comfortable for you, if it feels okay to notice how your belly's feeling or if it feels okay at your own pace, notice how your shoulders are feeling, so that there's space for us to like move at our own pace and reconnecting with our bodies."

Angela: I love that. That's so beautiful. And I have heard from some survivors that meditation sometimes if people have had a lot of posttraumatic stress, that it can be almost a trigger. And so I was just curious if you have any advice on either how to overcome that or if that's something that you've seen at all in your practice, as sometimes meditation can be triggering.

Halli Faulkner: Yeah, it's a really good question. So the thing about meditation is that it when we pause and like put the phone down and like turn the TV off and put the food down, like whatever the distractions are, we're forced or we can choose to actually get in touch with what's going on with ourselves. And believe me, I know that sometimes that can be a really jarring experience. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to swear on this podcast, but for me it's like, "Oh shit. What is going on here?" So I totally get that. And I think if anyone's listening who wants to try meditation, but it feels like hard or overwhelming, I think short periods of time are helpful. So just set a timer for like a minute and a half or maybe like three minutes and just sit and maybe notice your breath. I also think there's all different ways to meditate. Like some people meditate by walking. Some people meditate by surfing. Some people meditate by singing. And so sometimes I think we have these like weird kind of commercialized boxes, like you have to sit on top of a mountain and say "om" for 20 hours straight. But really connecting with ourselves, like in a mindful way, can take so many different forms.

Angela: I love that. Yeah. Just walking through nature sometimes is a great meditation. And, you know, one thing that I think is really interesting is that for people to have a lens of curiosity. I think sometimes like when you said we do pause and we listen to some of these thoughts that are in our brains, oftentimes it's very negative. And so just releasing those without judgment and saying, you know, that's okay. And I think with meditation, people are like, "Well, I can't not think." And it's just bringing that attention back to the breath. It doesn't have to mean that you don't think at all, because that's not going to happen. Our minds are so busy. But just focusing on the breath can be so incredibly helpful. So one thing I wanted to chat with you about as well is healthy relationships after trauma. I know that you are married to a wonderful woman named Rachel, and I would love to chat with you about just, you know, finding love and being loved after trauma.

Halli Faulkner: Whew. You're asking the questions. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious about your interest in it, right? Because, I mean, of all the people who've asked me about my work, I think very few people have asked me about that piece and I really appreciate it. So I'm curious to hear about that, but I think when I was teaching a workshop in Rochester, New York for survivors about four years ago, I was pregnant-- not four, three years ago-- a student came up to me during the break, a survivor, and she said, "My boyfriend's having a really hard time with my trauma and everything I'm going through. And he doesn't know how to help me or be there for me. Do you have any advice for him?" And I was like, "I don't know. I don't have advice for him." Like, "I don't know. I'm here for you. I'm not here for him. And I asked my wife about it afterwards. I was like, "Well, what advice would you have, you know, for someone who's in a loving relationship or in a partnership with a survivor? And my wife in her way of being simple and brilliant at the same time, she said, "Be patient." And honestly, it makes me emotional every time I tell that story, because I think that love really is patient. And I think for any survivors who are listening, like if someone really loves you for who you are and where you are, they will be infinitely patient with your own healing process.

Angela: That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I think just for me personally, it took me a long time to realize that I was worthy of healthy love. You know, I didn't even know what a healthy relationship looked like yet, but I was traveling around the country, preaching about healthy versus unhealthy relationships, but I wasn't in one. And so about seven or eight years ago, I did a lot of research and I put on a Post-It note what it is that I was looking for, but that I had it right now. I think that's one of the beautiful things about using affirmation. So I said, "I am in a healthy, loving partnership with great communication and dance parties in the kitchen." And I put it all over my house and then I realized, "Oh, I was dating my best friend before I knew it." And now, we're married with two awesome kids. And so, you know, I think so much of it is the more that you can retrain your brain to take all this negative stuff that's been put on us and replace that with whatever it is that you want, like you have it right now, that has been so helpful for me. Have you used affirmations like that in the past?

Halli Faulkner: Thank you for sharing that. I think that's beautiful. And I too had basically like a whole decade of unspeakable relationships before I finally got a place where I think, like you said, I felt like I really deserve someone who was like present and loving.

Angela: Yes.

Halli Faulkner: Yes. I use affirmations for many years. I actually haven't done it lately, but sometimes in our workshops we share them and talk through them, yeah.

Angela: I love that. And so I would love to just hear from you, what advice do you have for other survivors that might not have tried any of these types of healing modalities? Maybe they haven't tried breath work or mantra work or any yoga. So what advice do you have? What would be a good entry point do you think for some of the survivors that are listening?

Halli Faulkner: That's a really good question. My advice would be to check out our offerings at Porchlight Wellness, honestly, because all of our classes are taught by survivors for survivors. We have online workshops and then we also pretty soon are gonna start have on-demand videos that you can watch in your own time. Beyond that, I would just say to look for any offerings that are trauma-informed, you could even like go on YouTube, it's free. And just like Google trauma-informed or, you know, put in the search trauma-informed yoga or trauma-informed meditation, because the key difference I think to share about trauma-informed practices is that everything is optional, right? So when I teach, every single time I teach, I start off by saying, "I'm a survivor. This is a practice where you choose what's right for your body in every single moment. Everything I teach is an invitation and the choice is yours about what feels best for you."

And it's actually a radical shift from what's kind of a more "traditional yoga" or meditation class, where it's like the teacher at the front of the room says, "Now, you do this with your body. Now, you do this with your body. Now, you do this. Now you do this with your breath," and even just that setup can be triggering or, you know, overactivating for the nervous system. And so I would say like, if you are interested in dabbling in yoga and meditation modalities for healing, look for spaces that invite you to make the best choices for yourself.

Angela: That's so beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Halli, for being such a beautiful light in the world and for all the work that you do. You are so amazing. We are so grateful for your time today. And how can they find out more about you? What's your website?

Halli Faulkner: Oh, thanks. Our website is porchlightwellness.org and you can find me on the internet, Halli Faulkner, always happy to connect. And thank you so much for having me and for the work you do.

Angela: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Halli. And thank you all for tuning in and listening to another episode of our survivors.org podcast, helping survivors to thrive after trauma. Again, this episode is sponsored by our friends at Color Street, a creative beauty brand with limitless possibilities. Before we join together again next time, remember to please love yourself, respect and support each other and, together, we can change the world. Thank you so much.

For all survivors and their loved ones tuning in, please remember that you are not alone and it's not your fault. If you need support or resources, please visit us at survivors.org.