Listening to the Body: Tai Yi, Somatic Awareness, and the Patterns We Repeat
Some conversations feel easy. They do not feel rushed. They do not feel like a performance. They feel like presence.
That is exactly what it felt like sitting down with Nicholas Diack, a holistic therapist and the founder of Nimidia Holistic Counseling and Wellness. Nick and I work in similar worlds. I run Champagne Chiropractic, and he supports people through holistic therapy and Tai Yi practice.
This episode became a conversation about something I see every day in my office.
We adapt.
We compensate.
We normalize what does not feel good, until it becomes our baseline.
A “cheat code” in healing work
Nick shared something I love, and it immediately clicked with my experience in chiropractic.
He said that even on a bad day, he loves going to work. Not because it is easy work, but because being with people in honest process helps him feel more balanced. Over time, working with others becomes a kind of “cheat code,” because you learn the patterns of being human. When life inevitably brings your own challenges back around, you have a deeper reference point for how to move through them.
I feel the same in chiropractic care.
Before I became a chiropractor, I had plenty of injuries, ankles, knees, hips, elbows. Those experiences help me connect with people because I can remember what it feels like. Not only the sensation, but the frustration, the impatience, and the desire for it to just go away. It makes it easier to meet someone where they are and to help them build awareness as their body changes.
The ways we compensate without realizing it
We joked that cars are a perfect metaphor, and honestly, they are.
Nick shared a story about his car’s brake system. Before he got it fixed, he found himself adjusting how he drove, how he pressed the brakes, how he avoided the squeak. Over time, he adapted so well that the dysfunction started to feel normal.
That is what people do with their bodies.
We find workarounds. We shift our posture. We move differently. We brace. We hold tension. We tighten the jaw. We breathe shallow. We keep going.
And eventually, we forget there was ever another way to feel.
Patterns in the body: the “one thing” underneath the symptoms
In my office, one of the biggest shifts I made when I opened my own practice was making space to look deeper.
Instead of only focusing on the one joint that hurts, I look at how the whole body is functioning together. Many joints crisscross and connect in predictable patterns. A common example I see is the relationship between the left shoulder and the right hip, and vice versa.
Sometimes someone comes in with shoulder discomfort, but when we watch them walk, you can see a slight lean. Then we learn more about their history, and eventually they remember an old injury. The body has been compensating for years. The symptom might be new, but the pattern is not.
When you identify the pattern, you can often find the “one thing” that has been driving the dysfunction the whole time.
The “anniversary of pain” and the cycles we carry
One of the most fascinating parts of our conversation was how cycles show up, emotionally and physically.
Nick shared that sometimes a client will feel unusually angry, heavy, or off for a day or two, without any obvious explanation. One of the first places he looks is timing. He asks whether this could be an anniversary of pain, a season where something difficult happened before.
He shared a story about working with a tight, tense area in someone’s body, sensing anger or depression connected to that spot, and realizing it lined up with the time of year her dad passed away. The body held the memory even when the mind was not actively thinking about it.
I see a similar thing in chiropractic care.
Someone might say, “Every spring my back hurts,” and they cannot connect the dots at first. Then a few visits later, they realize that spring is when work ramps up, or family stress increases, or travel returns, or their schedule changes, and their body responds the same way every year.
The most powerful part is when the person owns the realization. That is when patterns change.
What somatic therapy looks like in real life
Nick explained somatic work in a way that is simple and practical.
When someone is very analytical, he helps them get out of their head and into their body. He might ask:
What do you feel in your body right now?
Where is the most tension?
What happens if you place your hand there and breathe into it?
What emotions or memories come up as you stay with it?
Sometimes he has people imagine sending love to that tense area, letting the body know it is safe to communicate.
This matters because many people ignore an issue for a long time. Eventually it shows up physically, jaw tension, neck tension, tightness, pain. The body becomes the messenger.
And as Nick said, the body does not lie.
Healing is not forcing, it is listening
A theme that kept returning was this.
People tend to swing to extremes.
They ignore what they feel until the body forces it into the foreground, or they try to force healing with rigid control.
Nick shared a simple image I love. If you want a plant to grow, you give it good soil, water, and sunlight. You do not sit there demanding it grow faster. You create the conditions, then you let it blossom.
That is a powerful model for healing.
In chiropractic, people often ask, “What stretch should I do to make this adjustment work?” Sometimes I give specific recommendations, but most of the time I focus on principles. The spine is meant to flex, side bend, and rotate. People can find endless exercise options online, but the goal is not one perfect stretch. The goal is self-awareness, so they can discover what their body needs and recognize patterns when they show up.
When people become aware, they start catching themselves. They notice when they tense their shoulders in traffic. They notice how their body responds to meetings they do not want to be in. They begin to shift without being told what to do.
That is real progress.
Presence is a form of care
Another part of the conversation I loved was how much both of our work relies on presence.
Nick talked about how powerful it is when someone feels witnessed, not judged, not rushed. I shared a story about a patient who kept presenting with the same physical pattern visit after visit, which was unusual. When I asked if something was going on, he shared he was in a custody battle. Once he felt seen, his patterns began to change.
Sometimes the care is not only the technique.
Sometimes the care is the human connection that creates safety.
In a world that can feel lonely and overly mental, presence is medicine.
Breath, posture, and the bridge between conscious and unconscious
We also talked about breath as one of the simplest, most powerful access points.
Breathing is always happening, but learning to breathe more deeply can change physiology and perception. I often cue people to place one hand on the stomach and one on the chest, then aim for the stomach to rise first. That diaphragmatic breath can shift the nervous system and create more access to awareness.
Nick added a powerful perspective. The more intense someone’s negative belief systems are, the more shallow their breath tends to be, especially during sleep. Shallow breathing can become a lockout mechanism, reducing feeling and presence. Deep breathing, on the other hand, supports regulation and access to the body.
Posture matters too. Your posture can influence your emotional state, and your emotional state can influence your posture. The way you hold yourself can either reinforce stress or create space for a different experience.
Why being “not for everyone” is a strength
Toward the end, we talked about something that is important in any healing practice.
You do not have to be for everyone.
Nick shared that his best clients are open to both the practical and the spiritual, people who are willing to explore the energetic and intuitive side of healing alongside grounded therapeutic work.
I feel similarly. Most people come into my office because they are in pain. That makes sense. But once they are out of pain, the real work becomes awareness, function, and long-term change. I love working with people who are curious, open-minded, and willing to explore beyond symptoms.
Final thought
This conversation reminded me of something simple.
Healing often begins when you stop trying to force answers and start listening.
Your body is communicating all the time. The goal is to become fluent in the language.
If you want to watch the full episode, it is live on YouTube now.
