Guest:
Elisha Tichelle Halpin is a somatic facilitator and researcher. Along with breathwork, meditation, and movement, Elisha uses her Neuro-Wise Energy and Somatics work to guide participants in transformational and healing processes to alleviate the stress response and repattern their nervous systems. She began teaching at Penn State in 2004 and is currently a teaching professor for the School of Theatre, where she teaches a general education course on mindfulness and somatics. Her love of mindfulness and somatics began in her late teens and guided her career as a dancer and choreographer. Her dedication is to helping people remember their innate brilliance and find ease in becoming fully expressed.
Episode Transcript:
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: What comes to mind when you hear spiritual wellness? Crystals? Chanting? A Himalayan retreat? For a lot of us, it feels vague or even intimidating. But spiritual wellness doesn't have to be abstract or out of reach. In fact, it might be closer than you think. I'm Lindsey Whissel Fenton with 12 Degrees on WPSU and I'm talking with Elisha Tichelle, a somatic therapist, ritualist, embodiment, educator, and assistant teaching professor at Penn State, about how creative expression, nervous system regulation, and establishing intentional rituals can help us connect more deeply to ourselves and our surroundings. Together, we explore some simple ways to bring meaning, rhythm, and a sense of sacredness into everyday life. I struggled with where to categorize this interview because there's so much overlap in your work between the different degrees. How would you explain the close link between all of these different areas of our wellness?
ELISHA TICHELLE: You know, I really see it is like different doors into the same room, but ultimately, it's all towards well-being. It just kind of depends on the way you do it, the way you organize that, what you're most interested in and even if the way in is more concrete. That doesn't make it any less sacred. It just may not be what that person calls it. That doesn't mean I don't see it as sacred. What I'm interested in is how do we come into our relationship with our core self, so that we can express and create and give to the world parts of ourselves?
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: One thing I think of when I think of spiritual wellness is the idea of ritual. Can you talk about the role ritual plays in your work and in how you come to this embodied, connected spiritual wellness?
ELISHA TICHELLE: Ritual is a way of creating connection, bringing together an integration of all of our parts. And I think our spiritual rituals are about bringing into embodiment the unseen, the unknown, and to have a way of expressing that energy or that feeling state with action. But really, there are no rules. It wants to look like you. It wants to feel like you, and it wants to support you.
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: What is one strategy that people could start doing today, tonight that could help nurture their spiritual wellness?
ELISHA TICHELLE: Yeah. So, I think the best rituals really mirror nature. They mirror the day in the night and these ways of kind of opening and closing. You know, if we think about ourselves as an energy being, as we go through the day, we keep opening these tabs just like we do on our computers. We have all these tabs open, open, open, open. And then we come to close the day and then we're like, oh, I'm supposed to let it go. And just having a ritual of closing your day could allow you to close out all those little tabs so that your body and your spirit can fully rest and then begin again the next day. So, I think following the sun cycle can be helpful. Being up with the sunrise or getting sunlight, the first 15 minutes that you're up is so good for the system. Let your body get charged up by the sun. Do a little bit of breath work with the sun. That can be really, really helpful. And then most of us sunset’s not when we're kind of stopping our day, but maybe just some acknowledgment that, like there is some shift in the energy of the day completing and maybe I can move a little slower, even if I'm still going to be working for another six, seven hours. But maybe there's a way of even acknowledging it's a little different. For me, often if I'm going to work, I'll like put fuzzy socks on or something or maybe change the lighting up and let it be a little bit more dim, or light some candles, or just kind of offering some kind of change to my body, that okay with some things to do, but also, it is time to think about the day as completing.
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: That was Elisha Tichelle, a somatic therapist, spiritualist, embodiment educator, and assistant teaching professor at Penn State. This interview is part of 12 Degrees, a program and podcast from WPSU in collaboration with the Penn State Nese College of Nursing. Learn more at wellness-dot-psu-dot-edu. I'm Lindsey Whissel Fenton, WPSU.
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This is a clip from a longer conversation. To listen to the full episode, visit:
