TW: domestic violence, financial abuse
Have you ever felt like your body is holding onto stress and trauma in ways you can’t quite explain? Well in today’s episode, we’re discovering the transformative power of somatic healing with Liz Tenuto — also known as The Workout Witch. Liz specializes in helping people heal the physical effects of trauma and long-term stress through accessible somatic exercises. We’ll explore how simple, gentle movements can release tension, process emotions, and bring balance back to your nervous system — even during the most stressful times.
This episode couldn’t come at a better time, especially with the collective anxiety many of us are feeling right now. If you’ve ever wondered how to truly let go of pent-up stress or are seeking practical tools to navigate emotional turmoil, this episode is for you. We’re talking about healing from the inside out, reclaiming your body’s natural state of ease, and living a more balanced life.
Key takeaways:
- Unlocking the Power of Somatic Healing:
In our conversation, Liz introduces us to the concept of somatic healing, explaining how gentle exercises can release stored stress and trauma from the body. She shares her personal journey of suffering from chronic pain and insomnia due to unprocessed trauma, and how somatic exercises provided immediate and lasting relief. Liz emphasizes that these exercises are simple and accessible, often involving movements like rocking or tapping that can be done from the comfort of your bed. By engaging in these practices, you can bring your nervous system back into balance and alleviate physical manifestations of stress. - Understanding the Body-Mind Connection:
We delve deep into how unprocessed emotions and trauma can manifest physically, leading to chronic pain, muscle tension, and other health issues. Liz explains that different emotions tend to be stored in specific areas of the body—for instance, hips often hold feelings of betrayal, while shoulders carry burdens and responsibilities. By recognizing these physical manifestations, you can better understand your emotional state and begin the healing process. Liz’s insights highlight the importance of addressing both the emotional and physical aspects of trauma for complete healing. - Simple, Practical Exercises for Stress Relief:
Liz shares practical somatic exercises that you can easily incorporate into your daily routine. One such exercise involves crossing your arms over your chest and tapping your shoulders alternately—a technique known as butterfly taps that helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation. She also guides us through a cathartic pillow-slam exercise to safely release anger and frustration. These exercises are not only effective but also discreet, allowing you to practice them anytime you feel overwhelmed, even in public settings without drawing attention.
- The Importance of Safe Emotional Expression:
We discuss how society often discourages women from expressing anger, leading to suppressed emotions that can negatively impact physical health. Liz emphasizes the need for culturally appropriate ways to release these feelings. By providing safe, contained methods like the pillow-slam exercise or twisting a washcloth, somatic practices offer a healthy outlet for emotions that might otherwise remain bottled up. This empowers women to reclaim their right to feel and express a full range of emotions without fear or shame.
- Overcoming Personal and Financial Challenges:
Liz courageously opens up about her own experience escaping a financially abusive relationship during the pandemic. She details how she discovered her partner had been draining her finances and the steps she took to rebuild her life. Through somatic healing and by leveraging her expertise, Liz launched successful online courses that have since become an eight-figure business. Her story is a powerful testament to resilience and the transformative impact of healing both the body and mind.
- Enhancing Your Future Through Body Awareness:
By reconnecting with your body through somatic exercises, you can enhance your self-worth, emotional well-being, and even financial independence. Liz encourages listeners to recognize that the body is not meant to feel constant stress and pain. She advocates for practical tools to manage and release stress, emphasizing that everyone deserves to feel at ease in their own body. This empowerment extends beyond personal health, influencing all aspects of life, including relationships and career.
Notable quotes
“You don’t have to be stress-free, but you can release it out of your body and your body will feel so much better, and you definitely deserve to feel at ease in your body.”
“I think there’s something to be said with somatics and financial securities, you’re reestablishing that safety within yourself and having that safe feeling and that safe relationship with yourself, whether it’s with money or with how you treat your body and how you treat yourself is just, it’s life changing.”
“If people are having a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep or they’re waking up at 3:00 in the morning with racing thoughts, that’s another way that money trauma often manifests physically.”
Episode-at-a-glance
≫ 00:00 Understanding Trauma: Big T vs Little t
≫ 01:45 Meet Liz Tenuto: The Workout Witch
≫ 04:12 Liz’s Journey Through Trauma and Healing
≫ 07:08 The Science and Practice of Somatic Healing
≫ 21:59 Common Areas of Trauma in the Body
≫ 26:44 Liz’s Personal Experience with Financial Abuse
≫ 29:16 Escaping Financial Abuse During the Pandemic
≫ 30:51 Rebuilding Finances and Emotional Recovery
≫ 34:50 Finding Strength and Success Through Social Media
≫ 36:50 Somatic Exercises for Financial Stress Relief
≫ 40:18 Releasing Anger and Stress with Physical Exercises
≫ 45:05 Support for Women in Abusive Relationships
Liz’s links:
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, there are resources available to you: National Domestic Violence Hotline
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Squarespace
Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase.
Masterclass
Get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD.
Rocket Money
Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/FFPOD.
Third Love
It’s time to get your Bra-blems Solved™. Use code PODCAST15 for $15 off your order at ThirdLove.com.
Netsuite
Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/FFPOD.
Quince
Get cozy in Quince’s high-quality wardrobe essentials. Go to Quince.com/FFPOD for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
Mint MobileCut your wireless bill to $15 a month at Mintmobile.com/ffpod.
RESOURCES:
Feeling Overwhelmed? Start here!
Our HYSA Partner Recommendation (terms apply)
Behind the Scenes and Extended Clips on Youtube
Leave Financial Feminist a Voicemail
Financial Feminist on Instagram
Take our FREE Money Personality Quiz
Meet Liz
Liz Tenuto, also known as the Workout Witch, is the world’s leading expert in somatic exercise. By addressing trauma, stress, and nervous system dysregulation, she is changing the narrative around unexplained health conditions. With over 15 years of experience teaching somatic exercises, Liz is the #1 source for healing the physical effects of unresolved trauma and long-term stress. She has amassed the world’s largest audience devoted to somatics, of over 4 million people. As the CEO and Founder of The Workout Witch, it is her life’s mission to popularize somatic exercises, while bringing ease of access to everyone.
She grew up in a home often filled with rage that was thinly veiled as “cultural,” and it wasn’t until many years later that Liz recognized that she is in fact a survivor of narcissistic abuse and domestic violence. As a result, Liz began experiencing chronic pain and insomnia as early as age 14 and spent more than 10 years pursuing numerous therapies with no results. It wasn’t until she was introduced to somatics that she finally found relief. Liz’s unique combination of movement and relaxation increases bodily awareness and has been utilized in treating mental health conditions, sleep issues, physical pain and gut issues. Her signature methodology combines her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, background in Feldenkrais, Pilates and Reiki with her 15 years of in-person teaching experience.
Since launching her viral “Release Your Stress & Trauma” course in 2021, she has guided over 150,000 clients from around the world towards physical relief. Liz’s somatic exercise helps clients regulate their nervous system, getting them out of the continued fight, flight and freeze states which can occur after prolonged exposure to long term stress, abuse, trauma or sexual assault. Some of the conditions that somatics address include anxiety, depression, PTSD and C-PTSD, thyroid conditions, hormonal imbalances, chronic pain, migraines, insomnia, and autoimmune conditions such as Graves’ disease, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus and Hashimoto’s. Liz has been featured in USA Today, NY Weekly, LA Weekly and Harpers Bizarre, honored by MSN as one of the 10 Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2024 and named one of the Top 10 Entrepreneurs & Leaders to Follow by LA Weekly. Liz is now free from chronic pain and insomnia, and enjoys walking her dog, swimming, archery and Queer Line Dancing in Los Angeles.
Transcript:
Liz Tenuto:
Trauma, whether it’s big T trauma or little T trauma, causes you to disconnect from parts of yourself and suppress parts of yourself to keep yourself safe, right? So, if for example, you were bullied a lot, maybe you wore glasses, right, and you got bullied a lot as a kid for wearing glasses, you might not feel as comfortable expressing yourself out loud, being your full self at school. And even though that’s not considered big T trauma, it’s still this suppressing of who you are authentically, and that still has the same physiological effects as big T trauma does, especially when it happens over a prolonged period of time.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, here’s the deal. I’m not going to say the E word, I say it in the episode, but I’m not going to say it here. Welcome Financial Feminists. Today is a calming, soothing episode with some trigger warnings, the trigger warnings, sexual abuse, financial abuse, but it ends so happily, it ends so fucking happily. And the reason we’re releasing this episode on a super random day that has nothing to do with anything going on in the world right now is that I imagine you need to get some rage out and you need to be soothed.
So, we’re talking about somatic exercises today and how we can release tension and trauma and fear and shame and rage from our bodies in a healthy way. And I’m really excited for today’s guest who is also a fan and follower of Her First $100K and who has said many times to me privately and also in this episode, which is so sweet that our work has changed and impacted her life, which is very kind. So, let’s talk about today’s guest, Liz Tenuto, aka The Workout Witch specializes in healing the physical effects of trauma and stress and is on a mission to make somatic healing popular and accessible. As a narcissistic abuse survivor, Liz learned what rage was at an unusually young age. She experienced chronic pain and unexplained health conditions in her early 20s after trying everything, yoga, massage, chiropractors, doctors, acupuncture, meditation, Liz tried somatic exercise.
After her first four lessons, her chronic pain and years-long battle with insomnia were almost entirely gone. With a degree in psychology from UCSB, somatic certifications and Feldenkrais and Pilates with a specialization in injuries and pathologies and 15 years of teaching experience, she has been changing the conversation around how trauma and anxiety affect the body for 15 years. Liz has helped over 120,000 women heal from trauma and long-term stress with her viral online courses. Liz has now more than 3 million followers in social media with over 15 million views on her TikTok videos. She has thousands of testimonials from students who have had huge transformations with their courses, many of which are published on our website and Instagram highlights.
We talk about how you can use very, very simple, easy exercises that you can even do from bed or just sitting to help you process emotions and trauma and stored up energy in your body. We talk a bit about Liz’s personal story and how she went from having a history of childhood abuse and an emotionally and financially abusive relationship and partnership into a thriving seven-figure business owner. So, fucking cool. We also talk about how to deal with stressful situations, definitely not like what we’re experiencing right now. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it.
But first a word from our sponsors. Liz, how are you? It’s so nice to meet you finally.
Liz Tenuto:
It’s so nice to meet you too.
Tori Dunlap:
I am so excited to have you on the show. I have been following your work for a very long time, and we’ve been like internet friendships passing in the nights. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to sit down with you, so I’m just very excited about that.
I want to start with how you got into this work. You were dealing with narcissistic abuse as a child. Can you share about that experience and how it led you to where you are now?
Liz Tenuto:
Absolutely. I grew up with a parent who is narcissistic. As I was growing up, I didn’t know that, I didn’t have any vocabulary for that or any understanding that what I experienced was abnormal. I experienced a lot of rage and a lot of anger in the house, and it was written off that it was cultural. That’s just how men from this culture are.
I was also sexually assaulted as a child by someone in my family, and I started having a lot of pain in my body, like chronic pain and insomnia at a really, really young age. My therapist has classified my extended family as next level violence, but a lot of this I didn’t understand until doing some healing work and understanding that what I experienced was really abnormal.
Tori Dunlap:
Even what you’re just describing… First of all, I’m really sorry that happened to you. What you’re describing is I think what it makes your work so interesting and that I think is only just starting to be understood at the mainstream level, which is that the body keeps the score. Our trauma and our pain is not just emotional, but trauma can show up physically. So, you mentioned insomnia, you mentioned pain in your body. Tell me more about that.
Where did it live? How did it manifest?
Liz Tenuto:
The pain in my body really started in my shoulders and in my neck, and I can even see in photos of me as a kid, my shoulders are visibly tense and can tell that I’m clenching my jaw. So, it started off with a bunch of muscular tension in my upper body that progressed into my lower body where my hips were really tight. I was having back pain as a young child. Then when you have all that muscle tension that’s habituated in your body, you start to have gut issues, it starts to affect your HPA axis. I was getting random stomach aches all the time, and then from going through so much trauma and just having to suppress my emotions so much as a child, then you’re not sleeping anymore because you’re really scared and you’re really anxious and you’re in this hypervigilant state.
And I was a dancer as a kid, so a lot of my chronic pain got written off as like, “Well, you’re a ballet dancer. This is normal for you to be in pain.” But there was something so deep in me, even as a child that knew that what I was experiencing wasn’t normal, and that is what really prompted me to keep searching for answers.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and one of the answers you found and what your focus is really on is somatic healing now. So, can we define what that is and how your journey brought you to somatic healing as a potential solution?
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. Somatic exercises are really great for people who have experienced long-term stress or have lived through trauma. Soma is the Greek word for body and somatic exercises are literally like these really tiny gentle exercises that you can do in bed or on the floor that release pent-up stress and pent-up trauma out of your body and bring your nervous system back into balance. And I initially found out about them in my early 20s. My dance teacher noticed that I was dissociated pretty much all of the time when I wasn’t dancing and was like, “You should come to my somatic class.” And I was so skeptical because I was also intellectual in my head and had been to so many doctors.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, it’s not logical.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah, I was like, “I don’t know what rolling around on the floor in my pajamas is going to do.” But I was also desperate. I had tried so many things like acupuncture, yoga, meditation. I had tried so many things that didn’t have a long-term sustainable result. So, I was desperate and I went to her somatic class.
And after the first lesson, I cried in the bathroom because my physical tension was so much better. It was noticeably better after one lesson and after four lessons, I was sleeping through the night again for my first time in decades.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I think that that’s a common thing, and I encountered that too in my mid-20s. As I was going through a grief period, I was the intellectual person who understood at a certain level that my body and my mind were connected. Of course, it’s one body, my brain is in my body. I got that. But I started doing energy coaching with someone, and there was so many interesting things that I discovered that just where your body keeps pain, and that for me, every time I would cry, I would try to analyze why.
And now I’ve just gotten to the point where I realized sometimes my body just needs to release energy. And the way I describe it to people that helps me and that helped me get to the point where realizing this is all connected is you know how you stub your toe and you start crying before you’ve even registered pain, before you’ve realized, “Ow, that hurts,” right? You just stub your toe and your body has a reaction. It has an emotional reaction. And that is the example that I give to myself that helps me clarify a lot of this, which is like sometimes you just have stored up energy in your body and it manifests.
Sometimes you’re crying and you don’t need a reason why. Sometimes you just need an emotional release. Sometimes, yeah, you stub your toe and before your body even goes, “Ow, that was painful.” You’re already in tears. And so, it’s so interesting to me that that seemed like such a quick solution.
Now, obviously you keep it up over a long period of time and do these exercises, but were you surprised at how quickly this was able to help? And yeah, you’re saying rocking around on the floor in your pajamas, but talk to me about what this work actually is and what the science is behind it.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah, I was truly shocked. I was like, “Okay, cool. I feel fine now, but how am I going to feel in four days or five days?” Because sometimes yoga would make me feel good for a night, but then the next two days later, I was back to having a clenched jaw all day and just being in pain all the time. So, what was so different for me about somatic exercises was that it really… the effects were immediate and then they lasted long-term.
Even when I’m not doing the exercises regularly, my body’s different now, and the way I relate to my body is different after doing somatic exercises. So, scientifically, what happens is that anytime you perceive stress or a threat, it goes into the limbic system in your brain. Your amygdala is the fear center in your brain, and then that signals down to your adrenal glands to pump out some cortisol in your body and in small amounts and in a threat, this cortisol is good, right? This cortisol is just part of our evolutionary response to stress or to threat. It’s a literal steroid that gets spiked to help you fight or flee in the situation.
What’s happened is that this evolutionary survival response has been around for 4 million years, and now we’re not getting attacked by bears anymore. We’re having an altercation with a boss or someone cut you off on the freeway. And so, we’re having these really big reactions in our body to our modern-day stressors. But what’s happening for people is that they’re just having these constant cortisol spikes all the time, and then they’re never… Like what you were saying, they’re never releasing this pent-up energy out of their body. They’re never recovering from the stress.
So, scientifically experiencing a little bit of stress, having that cortisol spike and then recovering from stress, that’s fine. The issue is that most people aren’t ever finalizing their biological stress cycle. So, they perceive the stress, they have the chemical reaction in their body, but then they just don’t do anything. They’re not moving. They’re not doing any releasing or any breath work to recover from that stress.
And when that happens for years and for decades because you have a stressful job, because you live in Manhattan, because you are in a toxic relationship, whatever, you have a horrible boss, whatever it is, that stress accumulates in the body and it starts to shrink certain parts of your brain like your prefrontal cortex. It starts to make your amygdala, your fear center larger. It starts to cause all this muscle tension. It starts to keep your psoas muscle contracted. It affects the nervous system.
So, somatic exercises essentially bring your body back into homeostasis where all of the systems are functioning optimally again. And it does this through these really tiny movements, but also it teaches people… So, that releases a lot of muscular tension and a lot of habitual patterns of holding stress in your body, but it also goes deeper than the muscles, and it gets into your nervous system. So, as you’re doing the exercises, the teacher’s going to cue you in certain ways that bring your focus onto your internal space, and that’s going to help you build new neural pathways out of the stress cycle and into the physiological cycle of a much more balanced, peaceful body.
Tori Dunlap:
We’ll do one of these exercises I think at the end, especially as this episode is coming out before the election, but it’s just so people have… I’m a visual person. Give me an example. I know because I’ve been following you for a while, I have a lot of who are familiar with this work. It’s sometimes rocking back and forth.
It’s like lying on your side and moving back and forth. Give us maybe an example or two so we can understand what this looks like.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. So, the first exercises that I give to people are rocking exercises and rocking is so, so soothing on your body because when you’re rocking side to side, right to left, it uses bilateral stimulation, which naturally regulates your nervous system. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the state of peace and ease. The even rhythm in the rocking is also really, really soothing for you. There’s a reason why people rock babies when they’re crying. It’s incredibly soothing for our bodies.
That’s the first place that I have people start is with the rocking exercises because it allows them to just release some tension and it’s a little meditative in a way because you start to get into the even rhythm, the right left, right, left, right, left. You do that for about a minute and all of a sudden you’re not in your busy brain anymore. Your body’s just taken over and you can have this experience with that.
Tori Dunlap:
For those who are not watching and just listening. I’ve started swaying back and forth and looking myself back and forth.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah, it’s so interesting because a lot of my students will tell me like, “Oh my God, I did these movements to self-soothe as a kid, and then I stopped.” And it’s so interesting because our bodies are really intuitive. They do know, but in culture, we can’t just start shaking. When you experience stress in the middle of the street, if you just started shaking afterwards, it may be looked down upon, but why not? I would love to see a world where we all just did some somatic shaking after stress in public.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and that’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about is even if you live alone, even if you’re alone in a room and you’re stressed, I think there is just this misconception that, “I can’t do this because it’s crazy.”
Liz Tenuto:
Totally. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
“People think I’m crazy or it’s embarrassing.” And I actually literally just posted yesterday an Instagram story that was a little vulnerable, but sometimes yesterday did not want to make myself breakfast. My inner child was just like, “I don’t want to do this. I had gotten back from a walk, and I know adult me knows you need to eat, right? Because you have a big day, you need to eat.
But I didn’t want to do it for myself. I want somebody else to do it, but there was no one else to do it for me.” So, I literally will sometimes say out loud like, “Hey, Tori, I know you don’t want to do this, but you got to do it. We’re going to fuel our body. We’re going to do this.”
And so, I actually recorded myself like talking to myself and we got thousands of people tell us that it was really cool to see and validating, and that was something they were going to start trying and experiencing in their life. I’m like, “I feel like this is the same thing where even if we’re alone in our rooms or alone in our houses, it feels embarrassing.” So, how do we overcome that so we can rock back and forth and we can talk to ourselves and we can actually give ourselves what we need as opposed to feeling, I don’t know, stupid or embarrassed for doing it?
Liz Tenuto:
Totally, totally a 1000%. I love that you did that and that you recorded yourself talking to people or talking to yourself and how much it resonated with other people. Yeah, it’s like there’s this shame of doing movement sometimes in general for people. A lot of people are just afraid of moving or moving their bodies or they have a fear of dancing or looking weird. I think the best way to start to do that is to do it privately by yourself.
Everyone has this space that they go to to cry, whether it’s your shower or in your car. This is my safe cry space. And so, my proposal for people is to do somatics in your safe, private space, whether that’s in your shower, in your car, in your room, by yourself, but start by yourself because you are rocking and it is vulnerable and you can experience crying or shaking when you’re doing some of the movements. And so, I do think being in a private space is better to start with. But it’s interesting now when I go out, I don’t like to be in crowds very much because of trauma.
But if I’m in a crowd, I have all of these little movements that I’ll do that are a little bit more culturally appropriate that no one would really know that I’m doing something to regulate my nervous system in that moment. But I do it in public and no one says anything.
Tori Dunlap:
The other thing I want to talk about, and I think this is where the shame comes in as well, we’re using the words trauma. We’ve talked about trauma on the show many times, but when we say trauma, it does not have to be capital T, trauma of sexual assault or of abuse or of these really big, what we would classically consider trauma. It can be little T trauma as well. And I am someone who has been privileged and lucky enough to not experience any of the big T trauma, but I got plenty of little T trauma too. So, maybe talk to me about how trauma in this way is not… We’re not just talking about the huge things, the big T.
Like what do you tell someone who is like, “I don’t feel like my experience warrants seeking help. It’s not like bad enough?”
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. I think acknowledging that the little T trauma is valid is really important because if you were bullied at school or if you experienced financial insecurity or any of that, even though it’s not like getting sexually assaulted or going to war, it does impact you a lot and it does prohibit you from functioning as if it didn’t happen. So, essentially trauma, whether it’s big T trauma or little T trauma, causes you to disconnect from parts of yourself and suppress parts of yourself to keep yourself safe. So, if for example, you were bullied a lot as a kid, maybe you wore glasses and you got bullied a lot as a kid for wearing glasses, you might not feel as comfortable expressing yourself out loud, being your full self at school.
So, you’re suppressing yourself, you’re suppressing your emotions, and even though that’s not considered big T trauma, it’s still this suppressing of who you are authentically, and it’s still emotionally, you’re not able to express yourself, and that still has the same physiological effects as big T trauma does, especially when it happens over a prolonged period of time.
Tori Dunlap:
One of the things that we’ve been talking about a bit, but I want to delve into more is where do people commonly experience trauma in their body? If someone’s listening, for me, I have recently started seeing a dietician because it’s all the stress and this trauma of running a business over the past few years has showed up in my gut and my digestive health. You were mentioning neck and shoulders.
For a listener, how can they scan their body? How can they start figuring out where are they keeping their stress? Where are they storing all of that, and how can they identify that better?
Liz Tenuto:
So, there’s different emotions that tends to get stored in different places of the body. And there’s an academic study that went through this that’s emotional mapping of the body. So, different emotions show up as physiological sensations in different parts of your body. So, the hips are generally associated with some form of betrayal. So, it’s like a toxic relationship or a childhood abuse or unresolved trauma generally in the hips.
So, you’ll feel tense hips, your hips will be clicking or popping or cracking even sometimes sitting down or standing up without using your hands feels difficult. If you have lower back pain that’s generally connected to feelings of not feeling worthy and not feeling supported. Also, can be financial issues or workaholism for lower back pain. Stomach is generally connected to fear, feeling afraid, being scared. Shoulders is burdens and responsibilities.
You feel like you have a lot of responsibilities with not enough social support. Neck tension is generally oppression, so you’ve some form of oppression in your life, whether that’s systemic oppression like racism or misogyny, or you grew up in a household where you weren’t able to express your emotions or your emotions were completely neglected. And then jaw is generally someone has crossed your boundaries and you’re angry about it, but you feel like you can’t speak up. So, those are the general areas and associations that were found in this study.
Tori Dunlap:
Liz, my favorite pastime of this podcast is getting read for filth, and I muted myself. But while she was talking about certain areas of the body, I was taking a sip of water and I ended up mildly choking because I was like, “Oh, that’s me.” Interesting. Okay. I’m going to file that away for later.
Okay. Do you see commonly, I think that a lot of women have tight hips, myself included. Is there one that or two that keep coming up for women all the time?
Liz Tenuto:
Oh yeah. Women all the time, hips and all the time, throat, neck, jaw. And they’re actually physiologically quite connected through your fascia, which is your connective tissue. So, if you have tension in one area, it generally translates to tension in the other area too. Biologically speaking, your hips and your jaw are the first responders to any threat.
When you experience a threat, your psoas muscle clenches, it’s this huge muscle that connects your upper body to your pelvis, to your lower body, and then your jaw clenches as well as part of the fight flight response.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, the first time I ever learned about the psoas was about a year and a half ago, and I had a massage therapist who was like, “Your psoas is the tightest I’ve ever seen.” And I was like, “Great. Great. Thank you for that information.” I think it’s very common for women.
And while you were mentioning all of those things you said, I think jaw, right, is a crossing of boundaries. Remind me what hips was. That’s very common for women. We don’t set and keep our boundaries. What was hips? Remind me.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. So, with so many women that I worked with too, it’s like they’ll be like, “Oh, I don’t have trauma, but I did have my serious boyfriend cheat on me and my hips have felt tight ever since.” And I’m like, “Okay-“
Tori Dunlap:
That’s trauma, babe.
Liz Tenuto:
That’s the thing. It’s like that betrayal, that betrayal of trust is it can cause you to be tense in your hips because that’s where you’re supposed to be physically intimate. And if you’ve had that rupture, it’s natural for your body to create this bracing and holding pattern to try to protect you from experiencing that again.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. One of the things you have been kind enough to share with me, and we can cut this if you’re not comfortable or speak to your comfort level about it, is that you realized you were in a toxic, abusive relationship during the pandemic and that some of that abuse was also financial abuse. Was this a different experience physically from what you had been through before? And how did you find your way out and through that experience?
Liz Tenuto:
Physically, I experienced much more severe symptoms of stress and of a trauma response in my body. So, before the pandemic started, we were married and I was living in Manhattan and I was having panic attacks every day, and I was fainting every day, and it was like I was really scared. I knew something was wrong. I went to urgent care. I went to the doctor and they were like, “Maybe you’re dehydrated, you’re working too much.”
Because I was the breadwinner and was financially supporting us. So, it’s hard when doctors tell you those things because you’re like, “Okay, well I’m dehydrated and I’m working too much and something must be wrong with me.” And one of my hopes is that doctors become more trauma informed so that they can even just start asking the question like, “Hey, are you in a dangerous situation? Are you in a bad relationship?” Just start asking some of those leading questions.
But then, when the pandemic hit, I lost my job. I was teaching Pilates at the time. I had moved back to California at the early 2020 and in California all of the gyms closed, so I couldn’t teach Pilates anymore, and my body went into a full-on freeze where I couldn’t get out of bed at all. I didn’t have enough energy to make or even order food. I was so shut down.
And I knew that at that point I knew that I was being financially abused. I knew that he was abusive, but it was the early pandemic where you couldn’t, it was like stay in place, shelter in place. You weren’t even allowed to go to your parents’ house or a friend’s house or anything. So, that was a really difficult position for me to be in. And I was experiencing a lot of physical symptoms.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m so sorry that happened to you. I know that unfortunately that was a huge issue during the pandemic was folks not being able to leave, especially women not being able to leave abusive situations because they weren’t allowed to. There was no other alternative. So, what were those steps for you both somatically but also financially and emotionally that helped you move through that experience and end up where you’re at now?
Liz Tenuto:
Financially, when COVID hit was when I really did a deep dive into our finances and had… Because prior to that I was working six days a week to support us and working, teaching Pilates six days a week is labor. It’s not easy.
Tori Dunlap:
Very physically demanding.
Liz Tenuto:
Very physically demanding. And so, I dove into our finances. The first time I had time, which was at the beginning of shelter in place and had realized that he had been regularly transferring tens of thousands of dollars out of our joint account into these other accounts that he had. He was married before me, I’m pretty sure he had a lien on his income from his first marriage. And since he and I have gotten divorced, his first wife reached out to me and was like, “Play by play.
He did the exact same thing to me with the financial abuse, isolation, this is what he does.” And he was married literally days after our divorce finalized. So, he’s a “musician,” but he’s a professional grifter. That’s his full-time job. The financial abuse, actually, that was really scary for me because I was a Pilates as instructor, so I didn’t have a ton of money, but I did have 30k in savings that I had been saving since I was like 18. I like had enough to be able to get through the pandemic and with unemployment and not be struggling.
But he had transferred all of that money out. Anything that I had inherited from my grandparents was gone. Everything was just gone. And realizing that caused this deep sorrow in me because… I had never given him access to my Merrill Lynch account that I had been working on since I was 18. He hacked into my computer and got into the accounts that way and then changed the passwords, and he did all this elaborate tech abuse.
He installed a remote access device on my computer. So, I was learning about all of this. I didn’t even know that this was a thing or that this was possible, but I was learning about all this. And so, I knew we had no money, we had no savings whatsoever. And I got a pretty decent size unemployment check, but he blew it within days, even though I told him not to.
So, I just started creating this emergency. I walked to a bank because he was tracking my car too. So, I left my phone home, I walked to a bank, I opened a checking account with $5 in cash that I had gotten back from groceries. And then I would just, anytime I got groceries, I’d just like stashed $5 in, $5 in, and I had this plan to have a certain amount before I would exit the relationship. And then, the physical abuse got escalated and got a lot worse, and I was really scared.
And so, then, I just exited much earlier and left much earlier. And luckily have a brother who helped me out. And I stayed with my aunt and uncle for a week until I found a new apartment. And my brother helped me pay for the apartment, which I wouldn’t have been able to do by myself. But in terms of rebuilding my finances, you were super helpful for me because prior to learning about you, I had followed Suze Orman who was like, “Pay off all your debt first and then create your emergency fund.”
And he had also maxed out my credit cards, but I didn’t feel good paying off all my debt first when I didn’t have any funds. I started following you and I shifted over to saving my emergency fund first and then paying off all the credit cards after that, which I did. And having that pivot in my strategy made me feel so much more secure because I was feeling… And I think there’s something to be said with somatics and financial securities, you’re reestablishing that safety within yourself and having that safe feeling and that safe relationship with yourself, whether it’s with money or with how you treat your body and how you treat yourself is just, it’s life changing. So, thank you so much.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, Liz, I want to hug you. You also did that though. I have more questions about somatics and we’ll get to that in a second, but I also, because we’ve talked a little bit, tell people I have to round out your personal story. You are thriving now. Can we talk about that?
Give people a life update because you’re running a business, you’re thriving. Yeah. Good riddance to that motherfucker, and you’re doing great.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. So, when I was in this freeze response and not able to get out of bed, my goal was to do one somatic exercise per day. And then, I thought of myself as successful. And I was like, “I’m going to film it and I’m going to post it on TikTok where I have zero followers and no one will ever see this.” But it was my way of keeping myself accountable. And I was like, you could tell something was wrong.
I had bags under my eyes. I just looked like I was struggling because I really was. And I started posting on TikTok and within two months I had 10,000 followers and so many other people were feeling the same way and going through the same things. And so, people were like, “Hey, do you coach? Do you teach?”
And I was like, “I’ll make these online courses with the sequences that I do for stress and trauma release and for nervous system.” And I’ve taught for 15 years with Pilates, and I’ve taught somatics for all of my Pilates clients. So, I was like, “I’ll do what I do with them in the studio and I’ll just make it into a course.” So, I did that. I launched the courses on 2222, and we’re now an eight-figure business.
It’s just blown up. It’s gone mega viral. We have a really high success rate with our courses. I’m just super, super, super happy with how everything went. And it came from such an authentic place of me struggling and sharing that struggle in a real way with people.
Tori Dunlap:
As so many successful businesses do. Liz, congratsfuckingulations. That’s so amazing. I’m just so happy for you.
Liz Tenuto:
Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
And you should be so proud of yourself because, hell, yes, I’m just really excited. I can’t keep talking over my mind.
Liz Tenuto:
Okay. Me too. I only like never would’ve thought.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s so incredible. I’m just so happy for you. Okay. We talk on the show about money trauma. How might this manifest when someone is feeling anxious or stressed about money?
Where does this manifest in your body? What might start happening?
Liz Tenuto:
Money trauma, like lower back is lower back pain that’s lasted for longer than three months is super connected to worth and money, feeling like you’re worrying about finances all the time. Also, sleep issues too. If people are having a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep or they’re waking up at 3:00 in the morning with racing thoughts, that’s another way that money trauma often manifests physically. And then, behaviorally, you talk about a lot of this, how it’s not spending on things that bring you joy. You are so worried because maybe you have gone through moments of having less, then you start hoarding money and you’re not enjoying it at all.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And I think that it’s very easy to have any stress manifest, but specifically financial stress. We know it’s the number one stressor for Americans is financial stress. And then that’s themes, again, such a cerebral issue of numbers and money, but that can show up, that scarcity, that fear around money, that shame around money can manifest physically too. So, are there ways to use somatic healing?
And I am assuming the answer is yes. When engaging with finances, is there something to help settle you even before you sit down to look at your budget or log into your student loans?
Liz Tenuto:
Absolutely. Yeah. We can do one together.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah. I would love that. Okay.
Liz Tenuto:
You can do this one sitting down. We’ll do it together. These are called butterflies taps. You are going to cross your wrists and place your hands on your shoulders.
Tori Dunlap:
I kind of look like a mummy for our audio listeners, that’s where I’m at.
Liz Tenuto:
Yes, we’re in the mummy position. And then you’re going to tap your right hand, left hand, right, left, right, left. We’ll go a little faster and you can do medium pressure so you can feel it, but you’re not hitting yourself. And then, as you do this, you’re just going to keep tapping in this even rhythm. You’re going to just notice if your belly’s clenched right now, if the sphincter is clenched and if the jaw is clenched, and we’ll do about five more taps on each side, and when you’re ready, we’ll just bring that to a pause.
So, that is a somatic exercise. It’s really simple. You can do that in the carpool line. You can do that before you open your AMEX bill, whatever you want to do, however you want to do it. It uses bilateral stimulation, which is the right left, which activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is this the rest and digest.
So, it just brings your nervous system out of fight, flight, out of sympathetic activation, and turns up the rest and digest part of your nervous system, which is called the parasympathetic nervous system.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m not just saying this because we’re online, I feel calmer. I actually legitimately feel calmer.
Liz Tenuto:
I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m just like, “Huh, that was nice and it was very soothing. It was very nice.” Okay. In the theme of exercises, there’s a reason you all that were releasing this during election week. Okay.
I’m feeling anxiety. I think everybody listening probably feels some anxiety about the election and even maybe some past feelings from previous elections coming up for us. Is there another centering exercise to help us connect to our nervous systems over the next couple of days? I imagine the tapping would be helpful. Is there anything else that you would suggest?
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah, so this one’s great if you feel irritated, annoyed, frustrated, super anxious, and so I feel like it’s perfect for election week. So, you’re going to grab a pillow and you’re going to stand with your feet in a sumo wrestler position with a soft bend in your knees, and then you lift the pillow over your head and then you slam the pillow onto the floor. You keep your back long so you don’t hurt your back at all. But then, you grab the pillow, lift it back up, soft bend in your knees, belly button in towards your spine so you don’t hurt your back, and then just slam, you just throw the pillow onto the floor. And you can repeat that 5 to 10 times and you’ll start, maybe you feel frustrated or annoyed or angry, but then by the end, you’re laughing.
You’ve gotten essentially what any anger release exercise does. Yes, she’s going to go do it. What any anger release exercise does is it gives you a safe container. Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Again, audio only listeners, I’ve grabbed a pillow.
Liz Tenuto:
Yes, she’s going to do it. I’ll talk you through.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, here we go. Hold on. I got to make sure I have enough chords so I don’t rip my mic out.
Liz Tenuto:
Okay, perfect.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, hold on. Okay, so sumo stance. Yeah?
Liz Tenuto:
Sumo stance. Soft bend in your knees.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, pillow.
Liz Tenuto:
Lift the pillow up over your head as high as you can. And you’re just going to throw it down with force. Throw it down. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Why is this so immediately cathartic?
Liz Tenuto:
You can throw it down as hard as you want. You can even let it go.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, this feels so good.
Liz Tenuto:
Right?
Tori Dunlap:
We’ve been talking about with our team how we need a rage room. I need a TV and I need a baseball bat.
Liz Tenuto:
Nice.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, when we get off, I’m doing about 15 minutes of this. Okay, well that was helpful.
Liz Tenuto:
Yes. I love it. Nice job. The reason why those are so effective is because we don’t really have a culturally appropriate way of releasing anger, especially as women.
Tori Dunlap:
Especially as women.
Liz Tenuto:
We don’t. And so, those exercises give you this really clear container physically for releasing anger, but because they’re contained with the pillow, there’s another one with twisting a washcloth. You’re not going to hurt your body while you’re doing it. You’re not going to hurt anyone else emotionally, and you still get to express that anger or that frustration so you’re not suppressing it either.
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t know if this one is somatic, but it’s something I learned in theater school, which is just to shove the energy into the floor. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Liz Tenuto:
Mm-hmm. I think I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
I loved it but like… Because it looks ridiculous, but it’s the ugh. It’s just like shoving energy into the floor. That’s one that we did all the time during my time in my theater major in college.
Liz Tenuto:
I love that. There’s actually a lot of crossover with somatics and ancient forms of movement. And I started off as a dancer, so it was interesting as I was learning somatics, I was like, “Oh, this is really similar to West African dance.” And somatics does acknowledge that it does pull from more ancient forms of movement because we all used to dance around the campfire. We all used to sing, and these are really natural ways of releasing stress and releasing… And spiking your feel-good hormones too.
Tori Dunlap:
That was so cathartic everybody. Again, I’m not just saying that for the show. I’m literally going to like… And like my arms feel good too. It feels like a workout.
Liz Tenuto:
Yay. I thought about bringing a different exercise in that was more soothing, but I was like, “I’m going to bring in one that’s soothing and then one that’s cathartic.”
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, that’s rage. That’s all… I just got off. We literally just recorded an episode an hour ago talking about Project 2025, so I really could have used that after we finished recording that episode.
Liz Tenuto:
Now you have it in your back pocket.
Tori Dunlap:
No, it’s beautiful. It’s lovely. Okay. You’re working on a book and a fund to help women break free from narcissistic relationships. Can you share more about that?
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. The book that I’m working on is with HarperCollins, and it should be out in late 2025, early 2026. The book is essentially a bit about my story, about somatics, why do they work so well for stress and trauma healing. And then the third section of the book are a bunch of exercises, almost like an encyclopedia of exercises that you can use to release different emotions and to release stress out of your body. The cool thing about the book is… and the courses that I teach is it’s normally not just one exercise that you want to do. You want to have a sequence of a few exercises so that you have enough duration that your nervous system registers the change.
That’s how it starts to get more integrated long-term. Whereas doing one exercise will provide you relief, but when you do them in a specific sequence, it just starts to have a more long-term effect. And then the fund that I’m working on is a dream. It’s not quite a reality yet, but I have this dream of helping women with emergency grants when they’re leaving narcissistic relationships or toxic relationships, whether they have kids or not. There are a lot of funds out there for women who have kids.
And there’s a lot of funds out there for women who want to go back to school if they’re leaving domestic violence, if they’re leaving abuse. But the issue though is that there are a lot of women who are experiencing abuse or domestic violence who don’t want to go back to school or who don’t have kids. And they still need emergency money to help them transition because the lawyer fees and getting a restraining order of $800. There’s a lot of financial things that you have to do to get yourself safe after that situation. And I really want to help women navigate that because for me, it was really stressful and I wouldn’t have been able to do it if my brother hadn’t helped me.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, please let me know if I can support in any way financially or otherwise, because that sounds incredible. And it’s so, so neat that we’ve talked a lot, unfortunately about financial abuse on the show and in my work, because you’re exactly right, and I’m so sorry that you had to experience that, but it’s true. It’s very hard to get out of a toxic, abusive situation when you don’t have money, when you don’t have the financial stability, and especially if your partner has financially abused you too, has limited access to money, has stolen credit cards from you, has tanked your own credit. It’s very, very difficult to navigate your way out of it.
Liz Tenuto:
Yeah. And you’re scared of that person, right? You’re physically afraid of them, you’re emotionally afraid of them. And so, that’s how people get stuck is because they both practically and emotionally can’t get out.
Tori Dunlap:
If you could leave us with one key piece of info or advice about the connection between trauma, the body, and healing, what would it be?
Liz Tenuto:
That your body’s not supposed to feel like shit all the time. And I think we have this cultural story that after 30, our bodies are supposed to feel like shit. And that’s just what it is. And we just eat Advil all day and we feel like shit. But your body is not supposed to feel like shit like that until you’re 70.
So, it’s not supposed to feel like shit all the time. And you can, even if you’ve been through a lot of stress or a lot of trauma, or even if you’re currently in a stressful job right now, you can learn tools to release the stress out of your body so that you’re not holding onto so much stress and so much trauma and so many emotions in your body. So, you can learn the practical tools to manage stress.
You don’t have to be stress-free, but you can release it out of your body and your body will feel so much better, and you definitely deserve to feel at ease in your body. Because that’s where you live.
Tori Dunlap:
Liz, I’m so excited to go buy one of your courses because I need more pillow throwing in my life. So, thank you. Where can people find out more about you and your work, which is so incredible and so moving?
Liz Tenuto:
Our website is TheWorkoutWitch.com, and we have our courses on the website, the Release Stress and Stored Trauma 30 Day course is our super viral course that most people start with. And you can also find me on Instagram @theworkoutwitch with a little underscore at the end. And if you comment release on any of my posts on Instagram, we’ll DM you free one minute exercise that you can do to release some stress out of your body in bed.
Tori Dunlap:
I love that I don’t have to get out of bed to do it. That’s fantastic.
Liz Tenuto:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for sharing your story, and thank you for following us and listening to our advice. It means a lot. So, thank you.
Liz Tenuto:
I’m such a huge fan. Thank you so much for your work, and it has impacted my life in such a great way, and I just love the work that you’re doing too.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Liz, the Workout Witch for joining us. You can find her @theworkoutwitch_ on Instagram or theworkoutwitch.com. Her bestselling courses are at theworkoutwitch.com. Get out and vote.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant, research by Sarah Sciortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew.
Special thanks to our team at Her First $100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonnar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingram, and Meghan Walker, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound.
A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, please visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
