Body Connections: Using Energy While Cleansing For Support

Rachael Dardano

Thank you, Greg. I’m so glad to be here.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I love this topic, body connections, using energy while cleansing for support and this component, you’ve had quite a journey. And I wanna know because you are one of the top practitioners in bioenergetics that I have come across. And what got you interested in bioenergetic wellness?

Rachael Dardano

Well, it didn’t happen cuz I was seeking it out. It happened because I had a pain, an issue with my health and through some holistic measures that I took to help alleviate that on the surface, weight problem, couldn’t remember things, had a hard time sleeping, overly stressed, and let’s talk about digestion. Nobody wants to talk about that. I found that there were these subtle, other emotional connections with my health issues. And so through holistic practices, I found my way to bioenergetics and it was a game changer for me. Like completely shifted my whole entire life in a way that I feel more authentic, freer, full of energy and I wanted to share that. I wanted to share what I had learned with others.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Now, so in that journey, so were you just not finding kind of the biochemical, physiological realm? I’m assuming you were just not getting results there?

Rachael Dardano

Right, so back in this over 15 years ago, Greg, that I was in the medical industry and I taught physicians about clinical diagnostic tests, working for the big ones like Quest and Labcore and discovered, a lot of my friends were doctors and I had all of these little issues and I wouldn’t say little, they were disturbing my life and I thought I had to live with them. So things like allergies, I didn’t dare go outside without any antihistamine. I popped them every morning. It was part of my routine. And that had been coming on since childhood. I had eczema all down the front of my body where I would itch and I would, when I first got into holistic, before I got into holistic, I was the director of Blood Source, which is a blood bank. And I remember having my staff and I was doing this meeting and all I could think about was how could I nonchalantly point to something so that I could itch without it being obvious, right. I couldn’t stay focused on things. 

And these were things that I thought I had to live with. And I’m like, I’m 33 years old. Is this really as good as it gets? Cause I was falling apart, even though everything on the outside looked okay. There was these underlying issues that I was keeping secret. And so as I started going through some holistic cleanses, other things, emotional things started coming up and I didn’t quite know what to do with them or who to talk to about them. And that’s when I found Nest Health and bioenergetics. That’s when I started looking at floating and exploring my internal world of the experiences through my life and how I’d made meaning out of things and started to acknowledge parts of me that I was suppressing. That could have been contributing to that. And so bioenergetics really helped me to see parts of me and give me the strength to address, change, accept, and live more authentically and enjoy. Which, isn’t that what we all?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

That’s really beautiful. So you took basically your own health journey and asked it questions to arrive at that because a lot of people faced with those similar symptoms and situations would be on multiple medications and side effects to their medications and really miserable. So the unique process of you turning it into this and really discovering kind of a whole new pattern to life.

Rachael Dardano

Well right, and I think knowing what was going on in the medical community or the laboratory industry at least is that it only gave you a window and then they suppressed with some medications. I’m not saying there aren’t some needs for that. There’s definitely some needs, but for myself, I was looking for what’s causing all of this. Why do I feel this way? What is it that my body’s not able to handle? And so when I started doing cleanses and when I started having dreams or epiphanies or things started coming up for me, as I was doing those cleanses, I was able to utilize bioenergetic, utilize floating and meditation and learning more about myself, what actually gave me joy. And it became very curious. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And it’s funny when you open up to what’s next, what’s next shows up.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Interesting, yeah. So on that front in the bioenergetics realm, because again, this is a whole summit on bioenergetics and what I’m discovering is that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For you, when you say bioenergetics, what’s that mean?

Rachael Dardano

So for me it’s all about vibration and frequencies. It’s all about feelings and emotions first and how we can go from a space of reaction to a space of response. So it’s actually a level of how do I control my urges, my addictions, my things that are harming me, but I’m seeking comfort and I’m not maybe even aware of it? And how do I make more conscious decisions about how I eat, how I sleep, who I spend time with, how I choose to spend my money or not? So these are applicable everyday life things that we need to choose or get to choose. But how do I do that out of again, consciousness versus being unconscious and just doing patterns. So for me, bioenergetics is an access to ourselves at that subconscious level and allowing ourselves to recognize a pattern and decide and choose, oh, there it is again. There’s that pattern I can choose to go along with the pattern, I can choose to actually live what I really desire.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Love it. So in that vein, on that support, we’re living in this ever increasing toxic world and we’ve got depression, anxiety on the rise. How do you support people in their wellbeing on that journey, on their programs and on their self-discovery? Because it’s a huge component. The way that you describe the bioenergetics is really profound. And so I want to follow in on that vein there.

Rachael Dardano

Sure, so what I do is I start where the person is. So it depends, for some people it’s more emotional, they’re much more empathic or feel other people’s emotions or in a state of anxiety or stress or depression, and that needs to be addressed or helped to support so that there’s stability. Other people are having more physical health issues, aches and pains, inflammation, an actual chronic disease state, I would say. That need more support for the drainage pathways of the physical vessel, our temple, our bodies, to help support clearing that out. So bioenergetics supports no matter where you’re at and it’s usually one or the other. A person needs enough energy to do detox work and cleansing. And when they get their energy level up and their drainage pathways open, then they can do more detox work on the physical body. And so I’m always looking from those two containers of is the energy and flow there and are they ready for detox and cleansing? And then I’m looking through a container, it’s a three-legged stool. For me, it’s emotions and state of being, it’s whether or not their body actually has physical toxins and or environmental toxins. And then are they absorbing their nutrients? And I’m looking through that, okay, where do we start? What’s the priority? And so that’s where the bioenergetics helps. It supports all of it.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I love it. Yeah, it gives that foundational extra external in the field support that then allows in the manifestation and the matter. The component of the body connections, then I want to bring it back to our title here, on that bioenergetics support in the cleanse, you talk a lot about emotions and dreams and memories as a big piece of the work that you’re working with folks. So will you speak into that?

Rachael Dardano

Right, it sounds a little wohoo, but it’s really about being human. And we dream. We are meant to have our brains serve us in a way to help us solve problems and be creative. And I think as a whole humans have gotten into this fear and fear and so our brains are running that show out of fear. So when people are going through cleanses, we have to start with where we have to start, which is usually the colon. And it’s, there’s so many nerve endings. Our autonomic nervous system is in our colon and wrapped around our digestive system. We suppress emotions. We hold onto emotions, we hold onto anger. And so I’m looking at how to, when we are opening that up and helping drainage to go and operate efficiently or rebalancing the digestive track, emotions and things come up and it sometimes will surprise people if we don’t have those conversations. If I’m doing a liver cleanse, for example, liver and Chinese medicine and in bioenergetics systems, we’re looking at rage, we’re looking at upset, we’re looking at anger. 

How do we healthfully express those? Again, coming from not a container of reaction, but a container of response. We all have these emotions. So it’s one, giving permission that these are things that might happen when you’re going through a cleanse. When you’re going through a certain aspect of a rebuild of cleaning your house. And sometimes, and I use this example, Greg, everybody’s done spring cleaning with their home. And so sometimes we’ll go to that closet and we’ll start clearing out things from the closet. And the house gets a little messier, especially when we get the Tupperware out, we’ll match all the lids up and it gets messier before it gets cleaner, but then it feels so good once it’s all straightened away and cleaned and you get rid of all the trash. Your body’s the same way, it picks up, it stores it away. It tucks it away. 

Same with toxins, emotions, memories, they’ll come out so we can deal with them and then sweep them away or keep the ones that you need, become friends with them. And I always talk about when we’re going through cleanses and we’re going through these potential emotional state, I wanna talk about them and help people to become aware. Cause so many people, they’ll start a cleanse because their friend did it or they’ll start bioenergetics cuz somebody in their family has tried it and they like what they got. Without the expectation of like, yeah, it’s work. It’s deep work. It can be fun if you come from curiosity and awareness.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

It is, it can be fun. These emotions though, we somehow along the line, there are agreeable and non-agreeable or good versus bad. Where did that come from? I mean, because there are some that are more unpleasant, more potent to experience. So how do you navigate that? Because you’re doing some deep cleansing work with folks, so you’re seeing it all come up.

Rachael Dardano

Absolutely. And it’s, again, curiosity, I teach from a space of curiosity, acceptance and awareness of response versus reaction and then teaching tools of proper reaction. If you react, clean it up, notice that that’s a pattern and then how do we respond? If I’m feeling angry, how would I express anger? It’s different for different people. But we’ll talk about yelling at the water, using water, giving it to the Earth. We’ll talk about drumming or finding some creative outlet. That’s usually with a pattern, usually something that you love to do as a child, for some people it’s yelling or screaming or writing, other people, for me when I was going through anger or really that, I love the sound of a rock hitting a wooden fence. So I would throw rocks on a wooden fence and I was just rock. And then there was this pattern on the fence of all my marks and I’m like, that’s beautiful. I just created something and I felt so much better. 

And I don’t know if I would’ve felt that way, had I not had that, the scans and the awareness to I’m gonna go do this, but it’s intentional and I’m just gonna let it all out. But it’s healthy so that I don’t discharge on the people that I love. ‘Cause that rage, upset it builds up, builds up. We suppress for so long, then all of a sudden, blah, we’ve all done it, we’ve done it probably to our kids and to our spouse. And we don’t wanna talk about it, but we know it’s there. And that’s the kind of things that I work with. It’s like when that comes up or if that’s a pattern, for me, it wasn’t so much rage, it was sadness. I would just go and cry and crying feels good sometimes. So I think it’s, Greg, it goes down to a giving people permission to have the feelings, all of the feelings, but to do it in a healthy way and to find which way that is for them so that they feel freer.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, I like that concept of there’s a lot of safety in the boundaries with working with somebody through this, right? Because I think oftentimes what I hear from folks is around, oh, I don’t wanna start crying or tap into that sadness or grief because, well, what if it doesn’t stop? There’s this abyss of emotion because I haven’t dealt with it my whole life and never given myself permission to go there. What are some of the tools and habits that, you know, you shared the component for you, the rock on the fence, and for me, I played hockey growing up. My mom used to laugh at me, I’d go out back and just bang a hockey puck against a wall over and over again. I was practicing my shot, but clearly working something out, right? So this component of, I think it’s good to know what those things are, but if you’ve never been taught or have been given permission or it’s like some of these things, like around grief, sadness, anger, they’re uncomfortable because they’re very potent and there’s not really societal or community wide ways of dealing with it.

Rachael Dardano

Absolutely. We tend to put bandaids, even when we self-medicate with other things, alcohol, smoking, doing bad behaviors, overworking. These are all things that, you know, our go-to. We put our self-worth, our self value in how much money we make. So we work, work, work. So some of the things, your question is some of the things that I do are relatively unconventional. So I do sweat lodges. I go and make sure that I’m chanting and singing. That helps me. I have learned that gong bangs. So I’ve learned so gong, using the sound bowls and the tuning forks. So for me, it’s very experiential. I need to feel it and I need to move with it, would allow my body to really get limber and the flow of things. And for me, I’m very curious about indigenous cultures and what they were doing. So for me, community really matters, learning, facilitating Thomask, which are sweat lodges now and learning Navajo and different traditions of how to honor the sacredness of life and of what it means to be human and part of the ecosystem of this world and this universe. And it helps me to ground and feel connected. For others. It’s music for others. It might be something different. So I don’t project my experiences. I make offerings of let’s get curious, how many different ways is there to meditate? So let’s figure out which one works for you. How many different ways is there for expression of music, let’s figure out which ones for you.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I think that component that really resonates is that sacredness of life, bringing that thought back, that consciousness of it’s pretty fricking amazing. The bodies, our world, our universe. And bringing that curiosity, and walking with that honor of it’s a miracle to be alive. That concept is just really reverberating for me in our talk here. What other kind of tools or rituals do you use with clients around supporting that or really fostering that seed of that?

Rachael Dardano

So coaching I think is really important depending on where they’re at. We also use a lot of technology and tools and steam saunas and things to help with that detoxification process of opening up the five different channels of elimination. I’m a huge fan of breath work and MDMR to bring forward and discover patterns, again all vibration, those are all vibrational tools and the nest and pharmaceuticals. We use PEMF pulsed electromagnetic frequencies, again, to help the body to bring those forward and to release. And then it could be just as simple as experimenting with hot and cold. So again, it just depends on that person and what they’re going through. Yeah, I love hot-cold treatments and love meditation and kundalini yoga, but there’s other types. I definitely incorporate writing and manifesting your ideal dream. 

And what do you want? It’s easier for us to say what we don’t want and neural pathways in the brain, they need to be rewired. And that takes effort, that takes establishing new pattern. Especially if your brain’s looking for danger, it’s just trained for that, looking for sadness or looking for confirmation that you’re not worthy. It’s gonna find it. A lot of times we’ll just start out with ending your day with gratitude, like name three things that day you are grateful for and feel it into your heart and express it and see how that opens up and just tuning into the subtleties. Even if it’s just for a minute or two, but making that a habit.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Awesome. What’s the single most important aspect of longevity when you’re working with clients and for you?

Rachael Dardano

Kindness and love obviously, are top top of my list. And self-expression. I think it’s really important to be part of a community and to let other people in and to talk about what’s going on in our life and then to actively seek out support so that we feel connected and our vulnerability is our strength. And so generally what I would say is whatever we’re hiding is where our edge is and that’s where the discussions need to happen. And in a safe container with people that you can trust.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

So let’s talk about that, cuz this is the work of the day. So that component of what we’re hiding, so that those are the things that we’re thinking, we’re having that internal dialogue in our brain, but we’re not sharing it with anyone in our life. That’s the piece, that is taking up a lot of bandwidth, a lot of energy and we’re afraid to share because of a lot of different things, right? So how do you set that up for somebody because that component of past traumas and the vulnerability is very hard for folks, especially we’ve got a really kind of dichotomous world happening in multiple fronts. So it’s finding that community. So one, it’s getting real with yourself. Two it’s how do you create that space? And then three, how do you grow it? Because what I think a lot of us have had, maybe not the best experiences in communities, whether it’s where our family, our nuclear family, our origination, where we grew up, maybe certain things. So I want you to talk into that.

Rachael Dardano

Yeah, I really believe there’s one-on-one work for most people to do first. And we jump into communities and there’s some that are more introverted. Some that are more extroverted, they wanna be out there, they wanna be talking, but it’s actually more about their listening. And so one-on-one work, coaching, doing a cleansing program, a pretty extensive one. I’m not talking usually about the 30 day or the one week fast. I’m talking about going and being unplugged for a little bit or doing a longer cleanse to address some of those health issues and see what comes up and work one-on-one. So that you can bring those up in a safer container of a start. You gotta put on your training wheels before you go run a race, you gotta learn to ride the bike first. So in a safe container with one-on-one, with a trusted someone who knows how to hold that space for you. And so that you can learn to hold it for yourself. 

Now I can go into community in a more powerful way, where I’m also holding container for other people. And you can handle that a little bit better. With that self-awareness both are really very important. Indigenous cultures taught this to their children. They taught them survival skill. They taught them how to cope with emotions and sit in circle and then talk about it. A lot of us, we don’t talk, we’re not taught that. Even now, we’re so tuned out we get on our phones, we unplug on TV, we distract ourselves, there’s so much distraction. That we’re uncomfortable with the quiet. And so that’s where again, I work with that space of how do we learn to love ourselves and be comfortable with just us and just quiet.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, Rachael, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. Wondering if there’s any last parting words of a way to put people into action. I like to end the interviews on the bioenergetics summit with a root in, how do we get started on that path?

Rachael Dardano

Yeah, I mean, I really found profound information with the nest scan, just doing a nest scan, cuz it will help guide you with what you’re ready for now and start that dialogue of conversation and just start to understand the different systems in your body and how they’re interrelated and then go from there. Depending on if you need a drainage and energy or if you need detox work. And I would say overall, if you’re just doing that, just get curious and open to what you don’t see, cuz it’s probably more important than the things you do.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Well, thank you so much for coming on to the bioenergetics summit.

Rachael Dardano

Absolutely, thanks for having me.