Heal with Grace

Grace Secker
  • 5.0 (36)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Heal With Grace is a podcast that invites listeners into the world of holistic healing. Hosted by Grace Secker, a trained holistic psychotherapist, yoga therapist, and nervous system coach, each episode delves into the interconnected realms of mental, physical, and spiritual health. The podcast offers a unique blend of personal stories, professional insights, and practical tools for healing.

  1. 19h ago

    134. Nervous System 101: How to Know If It's Behind Your Chronic Pain or Illness

    There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from understanding everything and still not changing. You've read the books. You've listened to the podcasts. You can explain neuroplastic symptoms. You might even be fully bought in. And you're still sitting in your body going — so why isn't this working? That's what this episode is about. Here's the thing most people in this space haven't heard yet: insight and regulation are two completely different skills. They happen in different parts of your brain. You can have a life-changing realization about why your body does what it does, and your nervous system can sit there completely unmoved by it. Because it doesn't speak the language of insight. It speaks the language of experience. If a symptom has been in your body for more than six months — the pain, the fatigue, the gut stuff, the dizziness — your nervous system is involved. That's true no matter what your labs say. No matter what specialists have or haven't found. No matter how many times someone has told you they're not sure what's wrong. Your nervous system and chronic pain or illness are connected in ways the old medical model just never had room for. Grace shares from her own journey in this one — including a stretch where she went deep into the physical route, got caught in protocol after protocol, and realized she wasn't working with what actually mattered: the emotional state, the belief patterns, the stuff her body had been holding. The shift that changed everything for her wasn't more understanding. It was structure. A repeatable, sequenced framework for actually practicing regulation — not just knowing about it. This episode is for you if you're somewhere between knowing and doing. If you've absorbed all the education and your body still hasn't caught up. If you're wondering whether the nervous system piece is really what's going on for you. The map doesn't move you. The road does. How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  2. Jul 14

    133. How Childhood Trauma Shapes Who We Become and What Clinicians Want to Know

    If you've ever heard that childhood trauma and chronic illness are connected — and immediately thought "but was mine actually bad enough to count?" — this episode is for you. Dr. Monica Fitzgerald is a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma researcher, and director of the Center for Resilience and Well-being at the University of Colorado Boulder. And she breaks something open in this conversation that I think a lot of people need to hear: the big T and little T framework? It's outdated. What we now know is that the small, ongoing, repeated things — the criticism, the dismissal, the not-quite-feeling-safe — can wire your nervous system just as powerfully as a single event. Sometimes more. She walks me through the three E's of trauma: the Event, the Experience, and the Effects. That second E is the one that changes everything. Two siblings can grow up in the same house and have completely different nervous system responses. Because trauma isn't just what happened — it's the meaning your system made of it, in the body of the person you were at that age, with the resources you had. We also talk about the backpack most people are carrying. Full of moments that made them question themselves, doubt their own experience, feel like they needed to be more or better to deserve love or safety. That backpack doesn't stay in the past. It shows up in chronic pain, in not trusting your body, in handing your healing over to every provider and hoping they fix it. And it starts to get lighter when you stop going at it alone. Monica's closing thought is something I'll be sitting with: we're not built to do this alone. None of us. And if a therapist you've seen has seemed overwhelmed by your story — that wasn't a sign your story was too much. It was a sign that wasn't the right fit. RESOURCES MENTIONED: - Dr. Monica Fitzgerald: Resilient Families Therapy - Center for Resilience and Well-being, CU Boulder How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  3. Jul 7

    132. How to Actually Start Regulating Your Nervous System

    You've probably done a lot. The podcasts, the books, the breathwork, the therapy. You might be able to explain how your nervous system works better than most people can. And you're still not where you want to be. That gap — between knowing and actually healing — is exactly what this episode is about. Understanding and healing are two completely different skills. Understanding lives in the mind. Healing lives in the body. Your nervous system doesn't respond to insight. It responds to experience. You can have the clearest, most accurate awareness of what's keeping you stuck — and your body can still be sitting there completely unmoved by it. Grace calls this the map versus the road. Insight is the map. Regulation is the road. And a map, no matter how accurate, no matter how detailed, never moved anyone a single inch. She also goes into something a lot of people skip: you don't have to trace every trauma back to its origin or have everything figured out before you start. The work doesn't require perfect understanding first. It requires actually doing it. And there is a structure to it — it's not vague. It's sequenced, repeatable, something you can actually follow. If you've been circling the information for a while and wondering when things are going to actually shift -> this one's for you. Resources mentioned:  Free mind-body masterclass training Practitioner training waitlist How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  4. Jun 30

    131. How Andrea Reclaimed Health Anxiety and Bladder Symptoms

    If you've been told your interstitial cystitis is something you just learn to manage — this episode is for you. Andrea spent two years cycling through doctors, prescriptions, the IC diet, and specialists. Her symptoms started as IC, then added vulvodynia, then joint pain. Different labels, same pattern: her nervous system running on constant high alert. What finally shifted things wasn't a new protocol. It was the moment she fully, 100% believed her mind was driving her symptoms. Not a little bit. Not "maybe." All the way. She talks about what that actually looked like in practice — stopping the elimination diets (which were making her more hypervigilant, not better), cancelling a specialist appointment, quitting the IC Facebook groups, never going back to medical Reddit. Not from giving up. From finally understanding what was causing her symptoms. There's a moment in this conversation where Andrea describes going from counting the minutes between bathroom trips — giving herself gold stars for every three hours — to just... not. Not tracking it. Not thinking about it. That quiet shift in mental focus was the first real sign something was changing. She also talks about the tools that helped. Heart coherence meditations. Channeling the feeling of vacation. The Eras Tour. Music. Not because they're magic, but because they showed her nervous system what safety actually feels like — and it turns out, you can practice that. One of the things she said that stuck with me: "This was never just about the symptoms. I needed to change the way I approach life." That's what this episode is really about. Resources mentioned: Andrea's Instagram: @instinctualmothering and @socialboob  How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  5. Jun 23

    130. How to build Self Trust in Healing with Dr. Rita Gupta

    You've been to the specialists. You've done the tests. And you still feel like nobody really knows what's wrong — or how to fix it. That's not you failing. That's a gap in medicine that mind-body medicine chronic pain practitioners are finally starting to close. Dr. Rita Gupta spent almost 20 years as a primary care physician watching her patients get sicker despite everything she offered. The referrals, the labs, the medications. She had access to every record, sat with them through every specialist visit. And she was watching people not get better. That wore on her. Then she ruptured a disc in her neck and was told surgery was her only option. She didn't take it. She turned inward -> toward integrated medicine, mind-body work, pain reprocessing therapy, mindfulness. And she eventually left conventional medicine entirely to practice the kind of care she couldn't offer inside the system. In this episode, we get into something that doesn't get talked about enough: self-trust as medicine. Not as a mindset hack or a feel-good concept. As an actual biological process that shifts your nervous system, lowers your threat response, and creates real relief. Here's what changes when you stop trying to force your body into submission and learn to be with what's there instead: your threshold expands. The loop breaks. Your values become a compass instead of a source of grief. Dr. Rita says it plainly - every time you can sit with a sensation without collapsing, you're building something. Not ignoring it. Not giving up. Building. Resources mentioned in this episode: - Alan Gordon / Pain Reprocessing Therapy - Ellen Alden's Long COVID community  - Dr. Rita Gupta's website How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  6. Jun 16

    129. How the masks you carry impact your health

    Most of us never decided to start performing. It just happened, early, quietly, because we needed to belong. And your body has been carrying the weight of every single mask. This is a solo episode, and it's one Grace has been sitting with for a while. Not about somatic tools or specific nervous system signals — about the deeper question underneath all of it. What does real healing actually require? Here's what doesn't get said enough in the mind-body space about people pleasing and chronic symptoms: your body isn't malfunctioning. It's been watching you override yourself for years, and at some point, it stopped whispering and started screaming. That's not a breakdown. That's your nervous system saying she has to come back. What you think of as your personality? A lot of the time, it's just the most successful coping strategy you found before you were old enough to choose differently. The path forward isn't a massive overhaul. You don't have to quit your job tonight or cut everyone off. It's a thousand tiny moments where you choose truth over performance. Every single one of those is a message to your nervous system -> she's back, it's safe to be her. How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  7. Jun 9

    128. The Root Cause Behind Chronic Symptoms in High-Achieving Women with Ashley Novak, FNTP

    Ashley Novak is a Certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), Restorative Wellness Practitioner (RWP), and Holistic Lifestyle Coach with a BS in Biochemistry. As the founder of Seeded Sage Wholeness, she takes a root-cause approach to women's health — specializing in gut health, hormones, fertility, and acne. Ashley's work lives at the intersection of functional medicine, ancestral wisdom, and women's empowerment, helping her clients move from chasing symptoms to truly understanding their bodies. She co-hosts the Yoni University Podcast and is passionate about reclaiming women's health intuition and building a legacy of generational wellness. Follow her journey on Instagram @itsashleynovak. In Ep 128 we go deep on the bridge between functional medicine and nervous system work. Why you can have the diagnoses, all of them, AND still need to start with your nervous system. Why Ashley calls it the "scab that never heals." What created the wound first, before the parasite, before the H. pylori, before the mold? Almost always stress. We get into the "yes and" approach. Yes, the parasite is real. AND your body is freaking robust -> something weakened it before the parasite could take hold. We talk about why the women in Grace and Ashley's worlds are so often the highest functioning, the eldest daughters, the recovering perfectionists who do not realize they have been in fight or flight for 15 years. We also unpack what women's health research gaps mean for fasting, sleep, fueling, and the ADHD reframe. (Women were not included in medical research until 1993. That is recent. That changes everything we have been told about female bodies.) And we land on the free basics most people are still bypassing -> water, sleep, walking, sunlight, saying no. Not because the supplements are wrong. But because the body cannot use them until the basics are in place. If you have been to every functional practitioner, gotten every test, taken every supplement, and you are still stuck -> this episode is the missing piece. Connect with Ashley: - Ashley Novak, Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner - Instagram How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

  8. Jun 2

    127. What I'd Focus On If I Were Starting Over Healing Chronic Pain & Illness

    If you have been at this for months. Or years. Doctor after doctor. Protocol after protocol. Nothing fully landing. This is the episode I needed when I was you. In Ep 127, I am taking you back to the early stages of my own healing. The crying in waiting rooms. The maxed-out credit cards. The functional practitioner who handed me a brain rewiring pamphlet that I dismissed because I was not ready. There are six things I would do completely differently if I were starting over. These are not protocols. These are the patterns underneath all the protocols. Education first. Stop frantically searching. Build tolerance for discomfort. Chase trust instead of relief. Repair your relationship with your body before it feels better. Stop looking for the perfect approach. Each of these took me years to learn. Some of them took specific clients of mine in the Mind Body Healing Method to teach me. If I can save you even a fraction of that time, this episode did its job. If you find yourself constantly switching practitioners every 5 sessions, panic-searching at 2am, or treating your body like the enemy until it "earns" your love -> pin this one. Come back to it the next time you are about to swap programs. Your body is not broken. You are not broken. You are missing the patterns under the protocols. How to work with Grace: Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort WaitlistMind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system nowFree Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your SymptomsWork with us in private mind-body coaching Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to'sConnect with Grace Connect on InstagramCheck out my website

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5
out of 5
36 Ratings

About

Heal With Grace is a podcast that invites listeners into the world of holistic healing. Hosted by Grace Secker, a trained holistic psychotherapist, yoga therapist, and nervous system coach, each episode delves into the interconnected realms of mental, physical, and spiritual health. The podcast offers a unique blend of personal stories, professional insights, and practical tools for healing.

Information

  • Creator
    Grace Secker
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    133
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Heal with Grace
  • Show Website
    Heal with Grace

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