Allison Pagano grew up in a house full of police officers. Every one of them a detective.
She became one too. Just not the kind anybody expected.
She's spent thirty years working out how people actually change, and her answer is not the one most of us were handed. We're taught that healing happens by thinking about it. Understanding where it came from, naming it, talking it through. And then you understand it perfectly, and you do the same thing again on Tuesday.
Allison's work starts somewhere else entirely. She calls it embodied dance, and underneath the name it's a method for finding what your body is holding about a thing, letting it move, and making a new choice from there.
We got into why nobody wants to feel, and what she says happens when you try to pick out just the good ones. We got into the part of your mind that's running underneath all of this, keeping you safe by keeping you familiar, even when familiar is exactly what you're trying to leave.
And James talked about growing up with masculinity pounded into him, and his sister handed Barbie dolls, and neither of them were given both.
There's a moment near the end where Allison says the thing that reframes the whole conversation. We're not going to put it here.
If you've been working on yourself for years and you're still meeting the same wall, this one's for you.
Allison's masterclass, The Six Keys of Leading as a Healing Dance Facilitator, and her shorter offering, Body as Authority, are both Here.
We're in the middle of this exact subject in The Reinvention Project right now. A free class runs every third Thursday, and the whole arc this month is about why knowing better doesn't make you do better. kerouacscruising.com/monthlyclass
And if something here landed and you want to talk it through, that’s what the Connection Call is for. Free, 1 hour. It’s where we work out together whether something more personal is the right fit. Book a time.
Sources for the science in this episode are in the links below.
Everything else we're doing is here. And if the show's worth something to you, Ko-fi keeps it running.
