Have some more questions?
FAQS
Read below where I address some of the most frequently asked questions about SmartBody SmartMind™ (SBSM)
To date thousands of people from over 80 countries have ‘walked’ the virtual hallways of SBSM, and they are making remarkable progress in how they live, heal, parent, work, connect, love, and so much more.
This program includes:
- 4 x 60 Minute LIVE calls with Irene Lyon
Irene teaches a mix of short theoretical lessons, weaving in neurosensory exercises as deliberate integration in practice. All you have to do is show up (or watch the recording). - 4 x Neurosensory Practice Audios
Capacity-building exercises you can integrate into your life - 2 x 60 Minute LIVE Q&A Calls
Submit your questions to be addressed on these calls with Irene and Seth Lyon
This SBSM Foundations program includes four Neurosensory Practice audio recordings guided by Irene that you can follow in the comfort of your home on your own time. Each one includes a check-in at the middle so you can begin to learn what it means (and feels like) to work within your true physiological capacity and not overdo it. They’re a fantastic resource for ongoing practice as you integrate these skills into your life.
The practices include the following basics:
- Basic Orienting
- Sensing the Ground
- Following your Biological Impulse
- Potent Posture
- Containment
From the outside, these practices can look surprisingly ordinary, even underwhelming. You might be sitting in a chair, lying on the floor, or standing at your kitchen counter, slowly turning your head and letting your eyes take in the room, noticing the weight of your body pressing into whatever surface is holding you, following a small impulse to shift position, or simply paying attention to any arising tensions, sensations, or your breath.
How any of this feels will depend entirely on the state of your unique nervous system. You might feel relaxed, or bored, or notice a sensation or tension arise. You might feel suddenly sleepy, emotional, or have a memory surface. Part of the learning is discovering the state of your own nervous system, experientially, in a slow and titrated way. The goal at the beginning isn’t dramatic shifts. It’s to start listening, and to keep listening, until your nervous system begins to trust that you’re paying attention.
What you’re doing in all of these practices is learning to sense your own physiological experience from the inside out. The point is never to ‘perform a technique correctly’. It’s to develop what Irene calls fluency in the language of somatic experience, and to begin responding to yourself the way a caring, attuned parent would respond to a young child.
These practices are also designed to carry over into daily life. Orienting before you start your car. Feeling the ground under you in a checkout line. Noticing your breath before you eat. The lessons teach you the skill; your life becomes the practice ground.
Yes! And No! Let us explain 🙂
Irene has had a LOT of great teachers and mentors over the course of more than 20 years of study. For her full bio and credentials, CLICK HERE.
All of this learning informs this program, so there is education and practice in here that stems from many sources; most notably the work of Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Kathy Kain (Somatic Practice), and Moshe Feldenkrais (The Feldenkrais Method).
These three main methodologies form the base of the work presented in SmartBody SmartMind™ and they complement each other. Together they present a holistic approach to healing trauma and restoring regulation.
Irene’s gift is putting all these very complex elements together in a way that is easy to understand, sequenced in the right way, and in an online format that is easy to use. So, while the content of SBSM – the video lectures, articles, training calls, and Neurosensory Audio lessons that you will receive – are informed by all Irene has learned, they are Irene’s unique creation.
It’s not possible to give a definitive answer to this often asked question because everyone is unique! For some people, through dedicated application of the education in the SmartBody SmartMind curriculum (meaning ALL the curiculum, not just Foundations), it can be enough.
Other people will need additional support such as individual sessions with a skilled somatic practitioner, and/or the application of other modalities that can complement this work, such as osteopathy, craniosacral therapy, massage, nutritional or naturopathic support, or other methods. If you are uncertain on what level of support you may need we recommend you consult with appropriate healthcare providers.
It’s important to knaw that this program provides deep education and practical tools that can benefit you tremendously. And, while it complements one-on-one therapy beautifully, it is not a substitute for one-on-one therapy. And, not everyone needs one-on-one therapy.
One thing that is VERY important to understand is this: no matter who you are, what you’ve been through, or at what level of dysregulation your system is operating, we believe this education and practice is foundational. With this foundational work on board, everything else can be more effective. The somatic nervous system approach is the core foundation of well-being.
Another thing to know is that this work is not about ‘getting fixed’ in the way that we often think of healing in Western culture. Yes, symptoms can resolve and health can improve, yet this work is meant to be a lifestyle shift that fundamentally changes how you relate to yourself, others, and the world around you all day, every day. It’s about learning how to live differently, and that can bring healing. And like any big change in how we live, it takes time and dedicated practice to really be effective.
While it is not our intention to place limitations on anyone’s personal choice to take part in the educational content and experiential nature of the SBSM program, please be advised that this program may not be appropriate for individuals experiencing any of the following: diagnosed severe and longstanding psychiatric disorder, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, substance abuse, or addiction.
We have had people from all walks of life find success within SBSM, and if you are uncertain on whether this program is appropriate for you, we recommend you consult with appropriate healthcare providers before beginning.
The live calls run once a week for four weeks, with two Q&A calls woven in — so the core program asks for roughly 90 minutes of your time per week. The neurosensory practice audios vary in length and are designed to be integrated into your daily life rather than added on top of it. Essentially, you want to practice them until you have them internalized, and the amount of time it takes people to do that will vary, but you could roughly estimate 30-60 minutes weekly for practice until you have them integrated into your way of living.
All calls are recorded, and you’ll have lifetime access to the recordings and practice audios. This is a lifestyle-based program, kept intentionally short and doable — because that’s how real change happens.
The nervous system, though incredibly powerful in governing our bodily functions and impacting our health and well being, is essentially invisible. It’s IN us in the form of electrical impulses and neurochemical and muscular actions those impulses direct. However, you can’t point to it on a chart and say ‘See, here’s your trauma, here, and also here.’ So, it can be difficult to understand how important it really is until you get into the education and practice, and experience it for yourself.
Many past participants have been skeptical and not sure it would work, or that it might help a little but not really be a game-changer, as one of our alumni, Amy, talks about in this video at the 1:32 mark.
Bottom line is this – if you feel in your gut that this is something you need, even if your mind is resistant, consider taking the plunge and checking it out!
No. There is no certification associated with the program. The program does not certify you to practice this work with others.
However, if you are already a practitioner who works with clients, and if you move beyond Foundations into the deeper levels of the SBSM curriculum, what you will come out with is a huge set of knowledge and tools that can change how you see and work with your clients. Alumni who are practitioners have almost universally said that they aren’t even necessarily trying to change how they do their work, it just happens.
This is because when we deepen our ability to connect with our self, we automatically deepen our ability to connect with others. Increased self knowledge and a greatly refined ability to sense both your internal world and the world around you can impact how you work and live, in profound and beneficial ways for both you and your clients.
There are two kinds of calls:
- Training (lecture-style) Calls
- Curated Q&A Calls
There are 4 Training Calls and 2 curated Q&A Calls throughout the 4 weeks.
The exact dates and time of all the calls will be listed on the SBSM member’s portal, including a calendar that you can sync with your own online calendar, and a time zone converter for those in other time zones. All calls (recorded or pre-recorded) are available for replay afterwards, so there is no need to be there live, as you can watch it at a later time that suits you.
While this work can certainly help with, and even resolve these types of severe health issues, it’s very important to also recognize that there can be multiple, more complicated causes for such problems which may not be related directly to trauma and the expected resultant nervous system dysfunction.
If symptoms, issues and conditions arose due to things such as: exposure to toxicity in the air, water, or soil either from chemicals, mold, poor sanitation, or other, various forms of radiation, pharmaceutical interventions, hormonal imbalance issues, or if there were and are severe deficiencies in nutrients or other things the body needs, other interventions may also be necessary in addition to this work..
Some of these interventions could include things like: dietary change to support better nutrition and/or hydration; various detox protocols such as chelation therapy, oxygen therapy, or with a product like Pure Body or Pure Body Extra, which Irene and Seth have both used to detox from heavy metals in the body, and which they recommend.
Other helpful interventions they’ve been using include exposure to natural light outside first thing upon waking (no glasses or contacts), which supports circadian rhythms and mitochondrial health, and grounding with bare feet on the Earth frequently, which discharges electrical buildup in the system and facilitates a beneficial electron exchange.
Getting fresh air and moderate to intense exercise regularly can be very helpful, as is hydrotherapy – going from hot to cold, for flushing the lymphatic system and promoting good circulation. Here are some links to interviews Irene has done with various teachers in these fields, as well as some other resources she recommends:
Healing from toxins & detoxing with zeolite (interview with Eddie Stone)
Understanding sunlight for health and healing with Carrie Bennett
Harnessing the sun for health and healing with Sarah Kleiner
Healthy guts, hormones, sleep & a lot more with Kitty Martone
A deep dive into hormonal health (for the ladies) with Kitty Martone
If you will not have access to the internet for the entire length of the program, or a big majority of it, then yes, you should probably wait until you do.
However, if it will only be a week or two then that shouldn’t be a problem. There are many circumstances that can arise that make it hard to get into the program anyway; internet or no internet, life happens! This is why everything in the program is recorded and downloadable.
This program is not intended to treat or cure any disease or illness, including any diagnosed mental illness.
That said, anyone can benefit from increased nervous system regulation. A person needs to be well enough, and organized enough in their thinking to watch and absorb the education, and do the practices. So, someone presenting with a very extreme symptom like paranoid schizophrenia will not be able to benefit from this program, whereas someone struggling with a condition like OCD, anxiety, or depression, most likely will.
As long as one is well enough that they can show up, put in the time, and comprehend what is happening, they will likely benefit.
YES it can! There are so many helpers, healers, and practitioners out there who got into their work because they were unwell, and then managed to get better and wanted to help others, but who still struggle with persistent symptoms, low energy, or a tendency to burn out. Often, this is because the things they found to help them weren’t getting to the root cause, but rather were more based in symptom management. So they continue to go up and down in their health and well-being.
If this is you, then THIS can be the piece you are missing. When you do this work and restore health and well-being from the ground up by regulating your nervous system, your whole world can change. Not only can your health improve, so can the health of your clients, because you may naturally start to bring your new skills, increased knowledge, and your own nervous system regulation into your practice.
We truly can only help others to the degree to which we, ourselves, are healed. So start with YOU. This program can help you do that!
It depends on their age. Older kids, like ages 14-18, probably could do this work if they wanted to, though not many teenagers are very interested in self-development! Younger kids, no, probably not.
What ALL kids can benefit from, though, is their parents doing the work! When we, as parents, start on this journey, and learn about our physiology – what’s going on inside us, and are able to understand why we behave, think, and feel the way we do – that can give us so much more insight into why our kids behave, think, and feel how they do. As we learn to work with our own body and mind in this nervous system-based way, we can learn how to help them.
And even more powerful and profound is the way that our own increased regulation can automatically increase our kids’ regulation. It just happens! As we become safer inside ourselves, they can feel safer around us. As our stress goes down, so can theirs. It’s really pretty miraculous how just one person doing this trauma healing work can positively affect their entire family system. For more on this, check out this video Irene made addressing this topic and Better Parenting via Nervous System Health Masterclass with Irene & Seth.
With Foundations, we are only exploring the most basic practices, which are not intended to ‘stir stuff up’, but rather to help you become more connected to the present moment and slowly build your capacity.
And, when we start turning our attention to our body, and more specifically, our nervous system, with the intention of healing our trauma, we may inevitably start feel things that have historically been overwhelming, but generally speaking the system will tend to not give us more than we can process, especially with the kind of slow, titrated approach we will take in Foundations.
Yes. This work works for ALL kinds of trauma.
With early/developmental trauma, one of the biggest things that gets challenged is our sense of safety in connection with others, the environment, and even ourselves. And often with this kind of trauma our authenticity is never supported, and so autonomy – the need to do it OUR way – can be very important.
Online learning like this is very well suited for this type of situation, because you get to engage with the material in your familiar home environment, at your own pace, when and how you want to. You can engage and be social with your fellow students in the private forum, or simply read what others have to say. This enables a safe, autonomous way to learn and heal which is very well suited for treating early/developmental trauma.
Irene wrote this article about online learning and healing that goes further into some of these points.
Since we are not doctors, psychiatrists, or medical professionals, we cannot advise you on whether or not to take medications. However, we can tell you what we have seen anecdotally with our clients.
Many of us on Team Lyon have worked with clients who were taking some form of psychoactive medication, with varying results. One thing that is common for most though, is that eventually they hit a ceiling with the somatic work, due to the suppressive effects of many of these medications. That being said, Foundations includes only the most basic practices, which would generally be the most complementary for someone who is on such a medication.
We are at a point in time wherein a lot of this new traumatology work (Peter Levine’s included) had not been rigorously tested via the scientific methods (see below for that changing!) and there is a good reason for this, one of which being that it is very hard to get accurate data in living systems (especially the nervous system).
This was one of the hard lessons Irene learned while doing her masters of research in biomedical science with humans. Her dissertation is linked on irenelyon.com (via this link to her credentials).
However, we do have some evidence! Here is a post that shares an offical study that was done on the efficacy of SmartBody SmartMind.