Enhance Sleep, Digestion For An Effective Trauma Healing Journey

Working out and exercising is a stress on the body and they need to be able to clear out all that stress, all the toxins that accumulate with stress in order to get to their next workout and be able to perform at their best level so they can keep pushing the limits and stretching themselves and growing. If the recovery is not dialed in over time those toxins and that stress accumulates and their performance starts to decrease and decrease because their body just cannot keep up with all the stress that it continues to hold. Their recovery is key, it’s clearing out all that stress, all those toxins that their body is only and all available for their performance. 

Now, recovery only happens in one state of the nervous system, this is called parasympathetic state. You may have heard it as social engagement, rest and digest, ventral vagal, these are all referring to the parasympathetic state. Now there are three states of the nervous system. And that is not something that is taught in medical school or in functional medicine yet. In this conversation, you will hear references being made to trauma and stress that can be confusing without you knowing that there are three states of the nervous system and that the trauma response is different than the stress or the sympathetic response. If you are not clear on these then let me show you a quick graphic where we can see the three states of the nervous system. We can see parasympathetic here. What we are talking about in this interview to bring our system into this parasympathetic window. And then we have a sympathetic state up here which is the stress. And the trauma response is down here. They are not the same. Any reference to trauma, we are actually talking about this state. This is where the body lives when it is actively in a trauma response even though it can come up and be in a stress response. Let me show you one other quick graphic which shows the actual stress and trauma response and that is where our system goes from parasympathetic into stress, we get overwhelmed, we go into that trauma response, and then, yes, our system can go back and forth between stress and trauma but those are two different states. I want you to be clear on this. And I have a free guide on my website in case that would be helpful. And you can come to my website here at traumahealingaccelerated.com. Here is the home page. And I have these resources for you. And you would get this essential sequence guide, it will walk you through these three steps or the three stages of the nervous system so that you can be clear on stress and trauma. 

And with that, what we want to look at is how can we shift our state into parasympathetic. Because that will be the equivalent to our recovery in between our stress and our ability to clear out toxins, our ability to clear out stress that we can be best prepared and be our best selves for jumping back into our Olympic games of life that we have every day. What I want you to get out of this interview is that we are not helpless, we can shift our own system. And here in this interview, you are going to learn one tool that we can bring in to do just that and it is done through the help of the vagus nerve and oxytocin to shift our system back into or closer to parasympathetic. 

Now, the tool that we are talking about today will help you poop better, sleep better and feel better because it will help you shift into that parasympathetic. Now, my good friend, Dr. Marisol Teijeiro is going to be sharing with us this tool. She is an award-winning author and founder of Queen of the Thrones. She is a naturopathy physician. And she has been working with castor oil packs since this saved her own health. She actually went over to Germany and studied this and now she brings this to the world. And not only just the castor oil pack but a unique way in which the delivery of it will not increase our toxin load, all what we go over in this interview. Now she helps people all over the world stress less, take power over their lives, poop better, sleep better, and feel better. Now, at the end of this interview, I ask her to give you specific instructions on what to do before you start using the castor oil pack. This will be important to you so do not miss the end where she will go over an important thing to do before you start using it so that you are not increasing your toxic load as you are trying to use a tool that will decrease your toxic load. With that, let us jump into this interview and learn how we can poop better, sleep better, and feel better for our trauma-healing journey.

People need tools for stress and trauma and the castor oil packs have a surprising science behind them where how they can actually be tools to help shift that trauma state into one of parasympathetic. Let us start there and just explain what is some of the science. Because I think that there is still a lot of ideas around it being woo-woo for using castor oil packs.

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Yeah, a hundred percent. What is really interesting is whenever you tell anyone to actually even do castor oil or anything having to do with castor immediately people think, I am going to be going to the bathroom and going to poo, and that is the end of it, but the reality is that I mean, that is not the only thing that castor oil does like be sure when you drink it and that is the history of it. But the castrol oil pack as a modality on its own is super interesting because it functions differently than anything else, any other tool in natural health industry because it does so many different things all at once. And I think that is where the power of the castor oil pack is. And when we look at the castor oil pack, just to let the viewers understand what it actually is and what it does, is that it is a cotton cloth, it is like an old school compress that you apply castor oil to it, and always you want to make sure that your castor oil is in the glass bottle, you apply it to the cotton compress much like this, but a tablespoon to two tablespoons on it, and then you apply it on the area underneath on and slightly underneath of your ribcage right by where your liver is on the right side. 

Now, what this does is people will often say, I poop better, which is what everyone always thinks about when it comes to castor oil, I sleep better and I feel better. And I think the most important aspects are actually not necessarily the pooping better but the sleeping better and the feeling better because I think for me, also having been a trauma survivor and thriver, what I realized was that I never slept and I never felt well. What I was feeling was the race of life like I was constantly on a nonstop race, a never-ending and unable to ever stop like it was a go and go, and I was never shifting into the relaxed state, but when you actually do a castor oil pack what ends up happening is placing it on the liver, stimulates the receptors on the skin, the skin being the largest organ to feed back into the nervous system down the vagal ventral nerve stimulating and responding and shifting the body into the relaxed state. And when we can actually do that on command which is part of the castor oil pack, because it is very similar to a hug, if you think about it, what does the hug do, what does social connection do, what is Temple Grandin did this way back when with autistic patients, and in cows, and in farms where she created a hug machine because cows would get stressed out and when they had a hug machine that was hugging them they would no longer be in a sympathetic state, they would be in the parasympathetic state. 

Hug machines have been used in autistic patients. Well, castor oil packs are very similar, it is like a hug that shifts the body into the relaxed state, stimulates vagal ventral nerve, boosts your oxytocin and when you move your oxytocin, well, then you downregulate your cortisol and your stress state. And for so many trauma survivors this puts them into a place where healing is becomes a possibility rather than someone trying to heal through the stress and in the stressed state. Because nothing good comes out of the stress state just more stress which is the bottom line. If you can shift the body to the relaxed state you can then get to a place where healing is now possible.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And I love that you bring up oxytocin. Because that is something that we bring up quite a bit in the biology of trauma and how that oxytocin and cortisol kind of play for who gets control of our brain. And we can look at the cortisol when out, usually it does, usually in chronic stress that cortisol is going to win over and it is going to take over and you find your mind racing and you find yourself on the go. And how awesome that we have these tools to be able to bring in that oxytocin and that can just be yeah, a whisper at first but we can build it and strengthen it to say, and now is a time for rest, now is a time for safe relaxation, I can relax and be safe relaxing.

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

I think that is a great point that you bring up. Because when I was training in Germany back in 2000, the main focus there was on promoting the parasympathetic tone. Because the thing is if you are in a sympathetic state and all trauma survivors are like you are never healing, you may be taking supplements, you may be doing this, you may be doing that, your supplements are barely absorbing maybe 10% is absorbing, the food you are eating is probably not digesting very well so you are not really getting the nourishment that you need, the workout you may be doing, yes, you are burning off the excess cortisol but are you really regenerating or if you are having the ability of your body to improve its natural balance in tone? Not really, you are just literally on a merry-go-round or on the vicious cycle of the trauma response with regard to stress. 

And promotion of the parasympathetic tone is everything in healing because you do not cleanse, you do not clean, you can not process, and you can not move through things without being in a relaxed state, that is the bottom line. The body actually shuts down most of its cleansing detoxification, liver detox, colon cleansing, lymphatic drainage functions, and even digestion when you are in a stressed state, you can not move out of what you are in. And if you think about it like that that is scary unless we do something to shift it and to consistently practice it which is the most important thing. It is like an Olympian athlete, you could take a supplement one time or you can do the exercise one time, is it going to do anything? No, nothing. Absolutely nothing. But an Olympian does what? They practice and practice and practice and practice. Someone with a trauma response is out of practice in a relaxed state. Of course, trauma, how can you be in practice? 

The key and the onus on the trauma survivor in order to get better and feel better is to start practicing practices like the castor oil pack and then more often put them into the parasympathetic state. And with that, the ability to flow from sympathetic over into parasympathetic is enhanced and that is life. Because you will never not have sympathetic and you actually want sympathetic stress state because that motivates you, that pushes you forward, that helps life be better. But if you are constantly stuck in it then it is damaging to the system. We want back and forth, back and forth like a ping pong table, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And when you bring up the Olympians what reminds me of their success, their secret is not just in the practice, their secret is in their recovery. How well can they recover? How fast can they recover that they can get back out and practice again and it not be accumulating stress because they were not able to fully recover? And for a body who has been in chronic stress or in the trauma response, that ability to rest and come into a parasympathetic is the equivalent of the recovery phase. And that is what we are missing. And that is why we get to a point where the body crashes at some point because all we have had is the work, we have just been in the stress, we have not been able to get into that parasympathetic to have our recovery phase to then be able to get back out and do something big and stretch ourselves. That parasympathetic shift is so important. And I love how you say that we can create that for ourselves, that we can actually be intentional and not just wait for it to happen but we have these tools that allow us to do that.

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Yeah. Let us be real, Dr. Aimie it is not going to happen on its own like a lifetime. When I started delving into the trauma response and castor oil packs and oxytocin and what it is doing to the system, what I realized in Naturopathic School I just kept on getting sicker and sicker and sicker no matter what health thing I was doing, more supplements, more treatments, more IVs, more cognitive therapy, I kept on adding more and more and my bills were increasing. Was I feeling better? No, I was feeling worse. And it was simply just that, it was just that my body was not receiving anything, nothing. And then when I would have a trauma that would occur because life has trauma to it. And there are traumas that happen every single moment of the day like right now I am dealing with a water tank that is traumatic, it keeps on overflowing and where I am living it has a lot of problems with molds, this is really traumatic and I am trying to figure it out. But now, as opposed to before, when I was full-on into that trauma response I just could not bounce back I would be like, I could not breathe, I was stuck in it, I get anxious, my whole body would congest and tighten up, I would not go to the bathroom, I would feel horrible, now though a traumatic thing will happen and I would be like, it is okay, it is all good, go do my castor oil pack that night, reset myself, deal with it when the next morning. 

And the cool thing is a magnesium supplement, a GABA supplement, a melatonin supplement as amazing as these all are, valerian, passiflora, herbalism, or homeopathic all of these wonderful relaxing formulas are excellent. But the amount of dosages and your ability to absorb them when you are in a stressed state. I mean, you are going to have to be taking loads of these supplements in order to actually have the shift into the parasympathetic state if it will even do that. And that is what I love about the castor oil packs and working with the skin because it is the same, for the listeners and viewers, is that if you go to a massage, how do you feel after that? You feel relaxed. Well, that is the feeling of a castor oil pack. Because it is working the skin, and the skin being the largest organ equivalent to the gut, really helps us to be able to shift into that relaxed state. And for me, in my clinical practice, every single patient got the castor oil pack before even starting with me because I knew two things, they are walking in with stress and they are walking in with toxicity. I may as well start right away so I can get them some movement forward. Because stress and toxicity at the end of the day are the same thing.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

They are the same thing. I mean, stress is stress to the body no matter if this is emotional stress or toxins stress, stress is stress. And that fills up our cup so that then one more stress and it becomes the trauma response. Now, as I am listening to you and I am thinking about people who are in chronic stress like this, this is not just a short-term stress, this is not just midterm exams, this is ongoing, this is a lifetime of stress and this is their body feeling the weight, the burden of it all. I am imagining that it would be best for them to wear the castor oil pack all night long rather than just to put it on for an hour, is that what you see?

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Exactly. I mean, I give you my example, I guess you could say like the volcano erupted in my life when I was in Naturopathic College and it was an accumulation of different things, Epstein-Barr virus, stress from school, a trauma that I would never dealt with as a child, all these different things, obviously Naturopathic College is pretty intense, and then not living the life that I actually wanted to live. Really it felt like the volcano exploded. And I had no capacity to actually hold anything in my life whatsoever. At that beginning phase, I could also was convalescent, I could not get out of bed. That is how stressed I was, I was literally like I just can not do anything.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Hey, Marisol, let me just jump in and say, around here we call that the trauma response, we do not call that stress anymore.

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Exactly.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

We can not get out of bed, that is the trauma response. If you are still running and going and pushing yourself that stress, honey, that is trauma.

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Yeah. My body was feeling it from being in the Naturopathic College that was full of mold, my building had black mold, emotionally, I was not 100%. My mother was going through cancer, I had so many things happen to me as a child that were just like, I was carrying so much luggage of trauma over time, an abusive relationship where I was beaten, I was raped, I was caged. I had a lot of stuff that I hadn’t resolved at all. And of course, here now I am in more stress and I literally get to the point where last year I can’t get out of bed, almost afraid that I would not be able to finish school but I worked for my whole life and I was like, this sucks. And what I did was I actually did the castor oil pack every hour and then I would pause for an hour and I wear it for an hour and I would pause for the hour. Because all I was thinking about was that German doctor telling me about improving my parasympathetic tone like an Olympian athlete that I literally needed to keep on shifting my body into a relaxed state little by little giving it input, giving it, stimulus, in Germany, they call it zeitgeber which is a trigger that creates a response, and that is what they wanted me to do, so I am going to try, I am going to every hour, take a break for an hour, wear it for an hour, and do that all through the day. I would do that all through the day and then wear that throughout the night. And that was not a severe trauma response. 

But within a month and clinically as naturopath, I was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus, chronic fatigue, I had mold, I had co-infection, I had all these different things, just hormonal problems, PCOS, thyroid, you name it, IBS, I had it on my list. But the reality was when you have a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr virus typically people are never better since, never well since that is like the classical thing that every patient will come in, I had Epstein-Barr, I have never been better since, it is so classic. But within a month of doing that little protocol, I actually felt better than ever which I was like, this is cool. But then I realized that I am feeling very good, I probably do not need to do it as often then I started doing it just to go to bed at night and then I continued that for a few months and my life completely changed, my supplement regime went down in half, I got rid of most of my supplements I was taking, did not need to go to all the different therapists and treatments that I was doing, I maintained my life counseling and the different things I was working on deeper root cause problems like the way that I was talking to myself and how I valued myself and how I looked at myself within the world. And it shifted my life completely to the point where after three months, it was thought that I would be off for a year, after three months I am back in school and I am running into my patients and being like, do the castor oil pack please, it is going to change your life. Because now I have been ten years in the naturo health industry doing everything and trying everything and I have been told from the beginning to do castor oil packs and I just hesitated because I thought it was so woo-woo. I thought it was weird like oil on flannel and putting on the body. And when I ran back, I tried to get everyone to do it but they had the same problem as I did, they thought it was woo-woo and there was no easy way to do it. And that is where basically my company, Queen of the Throne started. Because I realized if I am to have my patients who I care about my people do it even myself be able to have access to a tool. Because if you are going through trauma there is a lot of stuff you are already dealing with that you do not want to be dealing with your things, you do not need an extra complication of getting this and getting that and figuring that out, it is just it is too much, you are in such a brain fog. 

And I needed something easy for people just to do and pick up and put on their body and do it and I ended up taking up this process that would be like an hour-long process down to like two minutes flat, done, put it on your body every night, and start feeling the benefits. And again, as you said, it depends really where you are starting out when you start these castor oil packs, if you are in a complete trauma response, immobile, unable to get out of bed, wear it every hour, take a break for an hour. But if you are in the recuperation phases then wear it overnight is ideal. And ideally, every night because we are training our bodies. Olympians do not train once a week, they train regularly, I mean, nightly is ideal but most people do it like five to six nights a week, they kind of three to five nights a week. But the more that you do it the more benefits you get. That is the bottom line.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Talk to us about the actual material that you use. Because you are very selective about not only the oil and it need to be in a glass bottle but also the material that you use.

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Yes. This material, as you can see. The very first castor oil pack company I created was right when I started school. And my pack was completely 100% organic cotton. The problem with that is it was messy, so everything would come out through the pack. This pack has an inner layer of organic cotton on the inside. And I will get to why that is so important in a moment. And then like an outside shell that basically protects from the oil going through. Now, this is plastic and this is the reason why we do not recommend people put this close to their skin and it is not close their skin because it is made with a barrier, you got the two separate barriers.

Now, here is a thing, we spoke earlier about the stressors. The body does not recognize whether the stressor is an emotional stressor, a trauma stressor, a chemical stressor, a toxin stressor, a phthalate stressor, whatever, or a plastic stressor, the body does not recognize it, it just looks at it all as stressors. Because this tool shifts your body into the relaxed state. When you move the body into the relaxed state you are also opening up and activating a big reason why people poop better, sleep better, and feel better is you activate liver detox, colon cleansing, and lymphatic drainage, those are all the processes that package assemble and take out of the body the things that we no longer need. And this also includes emotions because emotions do also need to be physically detoxed, chronic constipation in a trauma patient is basically their inability to let go of their story, we see this clearly. 

When you are doing a castor oil pack you are really wanting to have material that is not going to be adding to the toxic load because any kind of toxic load whether emotional, physical, chemical, phthalate-based, plastic-based, is going to add to the stress and the trauma response and that is exactly what we are trying to avoid. With the Queen of the Thrones pack our material is organic cotton. I search for the best to make sure that it is free of chemicals or sprays that are done afterwards. Is it 100%? Probably not because nothing in our world is free of everything. I want to be completely transparent there. But it is definitely the best on the market that I have been able to find. What we want to be careful about is that there is many counterfeit and fake type products which are copying what Queen of the Thrones are doing and they are using materials that are toxic, they are using organic bamboo because it is eco-friendly and softer than cotton. But eco-friendly does not equivalate health friendly. Eco-friendly just means that it is grown in bamboo which rapidly regenerates. But to make bamboo into material you have to put caustic chemicals in VATS. And then because it is an eco-friendly material they do not wash it, they use very little water. Then if you go and do a castor oil pack, which castor oil is a carrier, it is the very best carrier oil. The reason why you do not want it in plastic and only in glass because if your castor oil is in plastic it will carry the plastic into your body, well, if your material is organic bamboo or a cotton that is mixed with a plastic-like rayon or nylon there is organic velour or cotton velour, you will hear cotton as if they’re never changed. But velour is a big one, cotton velour, those are names of materials that are actually mixed with plastic. And again, you are going to just be absorbing the plastic, absorbing the chemicals that were made in the manufacturing process. Our aim is to be as transparent in the whole process because I mean, I am using these on myself, I use this on myself, I use it on my family, I use them on my patients, I have used them on my doggy.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Do you use it on your pets?

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Yeah. I mean, I lost my beautiful pet, but I did use it on her when I had it. I use it on people that I care about. And there is no way that I would want to add to any toxic load. But when you buy anything you do also have to wash it right before the first use. And I think that is just common standard knowledge. I am surprised how much is in common standard knowledge but all materials would love to be washed before you ever first wear them if that is fabrics for your clothing, your castor oil pack, that is everything. And what I have done is I have just made the health-friendly pack that is easy to do, that is going to allow you to do the treatment without adding extra toxins to the soup because you just do not want more stress on your system, you can not tolerate what you have already.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

You are going to want them to wash the pack before they use it? Do they wash it after they have started to use it? Do they just throw it away and replace it? What is the maintenance with the packs then?

Marisol Teijeiro, ND

Excellent. You wash it before you use it then you start using the pack. Ideally, you really work at using very little oil because the old recommendations for castor oil packs would saturate the compress and that truly is no longer needed. All you really need is about a tablespoon and that is all each time. We recommend to add oil every single time and try to avoid washing it if at all possible just because it gets heavy, it gets messy. You can wash it if you want to but either way after a two-month period it is time to get rid of it. Because we are unsure and we are working on testing, is to see whether or not the castor oil or any toxins might be coming through the tissues, through the liver, up into the pack which is the reason why to add oil every time, I mean, everything is possible. And so much of our medicine is not very well researched and I am working now on researching that. That is also when you support Queen of the Thrones you help at improving natural health and medicine. We are looking to see what exactly is occurring there. Because we know the pack works. We know our biggest testimonial is a game changer and they always say I sleep better, I poop better, I feel better, literally better words and game changer. Those are the four comments that happen pretty much consistently on our website all the time on Amazon, everywhere, and Instagram, everywhere, or people recommending to their friends, try this, I love it, it is changed my life. Because it is literally moving them into a relaxed state, helping them to do what their body does naturally better which is cleanse, detox, and drain. And then if you are in the relaxed state, and you have that parasympathetic balance, well, your resilience is reignited. And resilience and trauma healing, it is everything. Yeah, for sure.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

An important principle of the biology of trauma is that there is a biology that keeps us stuck in a stress and trauma response toxins and a toxic load will do that. Castor oil, an opening, and opening into rest, and opening up into parasympathetic, and opening of the cleansing, and the lymphatic flow, the liver detox, helping the body have its recovery time is essential that is our secret to resilience. We live in a stressful world that is not going away and our job where we can come in and help the system is to optimize our recovery, our parasympathetic rest time. Remember, it is not just how hard we work, it is our recovery. Optimize that recovery, invest the time into thinking how you can best help your body feel safe to go into a rest and parasympathetic state even if it is just for a moment at a time, at the beginning, and especially around bedtime, so that with sleep you are getting that rest and parasympathetic cleanse. 

Thank you for joining me for this interview on the Biology of Trauma Summit 3.0, where we are exploring the trauma-disease connection. Do not forget you can resource yourself with these recordings and other tools with the purchase of one of the summit packages that feels right for you. Don’t stress. Do not build up that toxic load of stress about not being able to remember all of this information. Drop into parasympathetic by resourcing yourself to have all of this available to you at any time that you want to come back to it. I will see you on the next interview.