In This Body

What does it mean to feel at home in your body when the world around you does not feel equally safe?
In this episode, Ailey sits down with Dr. Krystal Redman, a self-published author, and a speaker throughout sexual and reproductive justice, and health justice movement(s), as well as in the public health sector, to explore embodiment beyond the individual. Together, they consider bodily autonomy as something shaped not only by our relationship with ourselves, but by the conditions that determine who gets to feel safe and free within their own body.
Dr. Redman shares how their understanding of care has been shaped by both their work in public health and their own lived experience. They reflect on the premature birth of their son while they were leading maternal and child health initiatives designed to prevent the very outcome their family was experiencing. That experience revealed the distance that can exist between what systems understand about health and what people actually need.
The conversation turns toward community as an essential part of healing. Dr. Redman invites us to consider what becomes possible when care is something we create together rather than something we are expected to achieve alone.
Ailey and Dr. Redman ultimately explore a vision of embodiment that makes room for joy. Rather than treating freedom as an individual destination, they ask what it could mean to build the conditions that allow more of us to feel safe enough to fully inhabit our lives.
In this episode:
3:30 Content Note And Gentle Care
5:26 Bodily Autonomy Needs Community
10:08 Care Beyond Capitalism
16:03 How To Find And Build Community
27:14 Pleasure Beyond Sex And Shame
34:20 Weathering And Oppression In The Body
41:57 Joy At The Centre Of Liberation
44:36 Closing Reflections And How To Support
You can read the full transcript here.

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What happens when thinking becomes the place you go to avoid feeling?
In this episode, Ailey Jolie sits down with clinical life coach and former therapist Mollie Birney to explore embodiment as the practice of being present with ourselves rather than constantly trying to manage our experience. Together, they consider how overthinking and control can become ways of creating safety, even when they ultimately keep us disconnected from the body.
Drawing from her own recovery and clinical work, Mollie shares what it means to change our relationship with the inner voice that tells us how we should behave. Rather than waiting for that voice to disappear, she explores the possibility of loosening its authority and making room for what we actually feel.
The conversation also examines the difference between thinking about an emotion and allowing ourselves to experience it. Mollie offers a simple but powerful perspective: thoughts can give us somewhere to stay, while feelings can show us where to go.
Ailey and Mollie ultimately return to what it means to live with greater authenticity, finding the courage to trust your own voice without reshaping yourself to be more acceptable to others.
Please note that this episode includes discussion of eating disorder recovery. We encourage you to take care of yourself and listen in whatever way feels supportive.
In this episode:
4:14 Presence As The Core Of Embodiment
8:16 Patriarchy, Recovery, And The Inner Voice
13:34 Isolation, Grief, And Outgrowing Safety
21:53 Coaching Versus Therapy And Fit
26:52 Psychodynamic Training And Nervous Systems
32:02 Free Fall And Feeling Versus Thinking
38:58 Resonance, Voice, And Taking Up Space
47:49 Reflections, Clarifications, And Next Steps
You can read the full transcript here.
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What if the voices we instinctively trust have less to do with wisdom and more to do with what our bodies have been taught to recognize as authority?
In this solo episode, Ailey explores how cultural conditioning can quietly shape whose knowledge we trust and whose confidence makes us uncomfortable. Drawing from what she has been noticing while writing her book, she considers how these patterns can live beneath our conscious beliefs and influence the way we respond to women in positions of authority.
Ailey reflects on the difference between confidence and safety, questioning why women are so often expected to prove their expertise while navigating the discomfort that can come with fully claiming it. She also turns toward the women whose work has profoundly shaped modern approaches to trauma and embodiment, despite their names not always receiving the same recognition as the ideas they helped establish.
Rather than approaching these biases as something to judge or intellectualize, Ailey invites us to notice them in the body. What happens when a woman speaks with certainty? What shifts when the same message comes from a man?
This conversation is an invitation to become more discerning about whose wisdom we receive, while creating more freedom for women to take up space within their own work.
In this episode:
4:07 The Question Of Female Authority
16:44 Confidence Is Not The Issue
22:22 Naming The Female Elders We Miss
33:22 Neuroception And Somatic Misogyny
37:20 Family Conditioning And Inherited Safety
39:29 Ageism And Women As Threat
44:06 A Body Based Practice For Change
47:03 Ways To Go Deeper Together
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What happens when you learn to read everyone else before you learn to read yourself?
In this episode, Ailey sits down with registered clinical counsellor and yoga therapist, Heidi Stokes, to explore how the nervous system shapes our experience of safety. Together, they look at how easily we can become focused on reading the room while losing touch with what is happening inside our own bodies.
Heidi shares how patterns like people pleasing can develop as ways of staying connected and protected. The conversation explores what it takes to turn our attention inward again, especially when insight has not been enough to create meaningful change.
Ailey and Heidi also discuss why trauma healing requires patience and why feeling safe with another person can be an important part of learning to feel safe within ourselves. Rather than pushing the body toward change, they consider what becomes possible when healing moves at a pace the nervous system can actually hold.
If you have ever struggled to know what you feel or found yourself paying more attention to everyone else than to yourself, this conversation offers a gentler way back to your body.
In this episode:
3:25 What Being In Your Body Means
6:00 Women Trained To Leave The Body
11:27 Somatic Therapy Versus Talk Therapy
22:16 What Yoga Therapy Looks Like
27:24 Trauma Disclosure And Building Safety
35:37 The Harm Of Going Too Fast
40:57 Co-Regulation Before Self-Regulation
48:59 Self-Regulation As A Gentle Choice
57:16 When Talk Therapy Is Not Shifting
1:00:00 Closing Invitation To Rest And Validate
You can read the full transcript here.
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When does wellness become another way of trying to fix yourself?
In this episode, Ailey sits down with Amanda White, licensed professional counsellor and author of Not Drinking Tonight, to explore how the pursuit of wellness can quietly pull us further away from our bodies. Together, they question the promise that the right routine or enough self improvement will eventually create a version of ourselves who no longer struggles.
Amanda shares how her own recovery shaped the way she understands avoidance and our desire to escape uncomfortable experiences. The conversation considers what changes when we stop treating discomfort as evidence that something is wrong and begin developing the capacity to stay present with what we feel.
Ailey and Amanda also reflect on the difference between protecting ourselves and avoiding life. Rather than searching for the perfect boundary or healing practice, they explore a more flexible way of relating to ourselves that leaves room for uncertainty and the full range of being human.
If you have ever felt exhausted by the pressure to optimise yourself, this conversation offers another possibility: a life built around greater capacity rather than greater control.
In this epsiode:
4:30 Learning Safety In The Body
9:29 Wellness Culture And Optimisation Illusions
13:03 Therapy Speak Boundaries And Armour
26:13 Recovery Eating Disorders And Substance Use
35:05 12-Step What Helps What Limits
49:34 Practising Friction In Daily Life
1:00:45 Building Discomfort Tolerance That Lasts
1:05:17 Closing Reflections And Ways To Join

Learn more about Ailey Jolie:
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