7. (S1E7) You Have a Ghost in Your Neck with Melanie Weller

Lori Saitz: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to fine is a four-letter word today. Our, my guest is a Melanie Weller and I'm super excited to have you here today. Melanie, can't get can't. Um, can't wait to get into what we're going to talk about because in our pre-show interview, you just had so much fantastic information] to share

Melanie Weller: [00:00:23.] Oh, thank you, Lori. I'm so excited to be here and thank you for sharing your platform.

Lori Saitz: [00:00:29] Yeah, my pleasure. Okay. So let's start with, take me back to when you were growing up, what did you learn? What beliefs were instilled in you and what did you learn?

Melanie Weller: [00:00:42] I grew up in a family with a strong Christian foundation.

My mom has a master's degree in home economics. And so there were between that and the strength of the religious beliefs. There were very clear, right. And wrongs about what you should do, how you should act, how you needed to present yourself. To the world. And there were, you know, I will say I internalized at least some of that as a struggle with being good enough for things because the standard was this Norman Rockwell, Martha Stewart kind of thing.

That was just unattainable.

Lori Saitz: [00:01:35] Yeah, I can, I can relate to that a little bit. And then how did that translate to how you live your life as a young adult and into,

Melanie Weller: [00:01:45] well, I think I, I, uh, I will say while I was growing up at tr one of the big things, I was a very good student and really felt like all of my self-worth was wrapped up in my grades.

Um, and so as I went through college and grad school and became a physical therapist that, you know, I will say I wasn't as attached to the grades through there, but certainly the accomplishment or accomplishments that would go with that. And, you know, I collected lots of credentials, like lots of letters after my name over the years, I think, because I felt like I needed that to validate who I was and what, and what I had to offer people.

Lori Saitz: [00:02:32] Yeah, that your worth was tied up in how much you could accomplish.

Melanie Weller: [00:02:35] Absolutely. Yeah, which is an exhausting place to be.

Lori Saitz: [00:02:40] And so then how did that play out? Down the road?

Melanie Weller: [00:02:42] So my husband was in the Navy. I got married when I was 21. And so, uh, and we're still married. It's been 20 years, 29 years. So there's another accomplishment.

Yes, right? Yeah, I know. Right. Long-term marriages aren't for the, uh, the, the weak of stomach for sharing messy. You know what I mean? The mess life is messy and, but, you know, so I grew up in this environment where, um, you know, there were lots of expectations and my own feelings were not. Considered with, uh, much validity to start with, you know, the conversation I had with my mother a million times.

And it still goes on today, though. I've called it. We've talked about it. So it's a little, it doesn't land quite as hard for either of us as it used to, but is I say, I feel fill in the blank. And she says, no, that's not true. Wow. And so then I was a Navy wife and I was an awesome Navy wife because I could just shut down those feelings in a heartbeat, you know, and my husband could be gone for six months and I was just fine. Just fine. Everything's fine here.

And so when he retired from the Navy was really when the lid started to come off of things for me, because I didn't have the expectations of my parents. I didn't have the expectations of the military and his. Command, you know, I, I had, uh, I was working for myself. I literally had no one else to keep a lid on me.

And what, the way it initially manifested is my body started to break down. I was having lots of foot pain. That limited my ability to run. I had high blood pressure that made no sense it was the, I was even getting swelling in my ankles. I was like, I think I'm taking care of myself. Where's this coming from?

Yeah. And my marriage really started. To struggle. And I had a professional lawsuit brought against me, and so things really started to crumble from all sides. And in hindsight, I will tell you it was a huge initiation. And one of my challenges in my physical therapy practice and having all of these credentials is that I also have a lot of soft skills, a lot of intuitive skills, things that might follow more in the shamonic.

Mediumship end of things, and trying to figure out how to reconcile those, or at least show up fully with them was my, oh, you know, Part of my struggle because in my practice, I always marketed myself with all the credentials, but my patients would tell you, they really liked the soft skills and they liked the fact I had the discernment to say, don't mess around with this.

You need to go back to your doctor. You need to ask about this, you know, that it was that balance.

Lori Saitz: [00:05:48] Yeah. And that's probably why that was your differentiating factor.

Melanie Weller: [00:05:55] Absolutely. That's what I was good at what you did exactly, but I didn't see it. It felt like a multiple personality disorder. Really for a long time, you know, and trying to figure out how to show up and how, you know, like how honest to be with patients.

Because for years I, you know, I would do what I do and they would be like, oh, I'm so much better. What do you, you know, what did you do? And I'd be like, oh, I just took the tension out of your knee. Like, that's all I, you know, that I wouldn't necessarily explain what, you know, that I thought they were holding anger there, that there was, you know, that there was this other emotional, spiritual piece to it.

That, yeah. That I was also clearing and as I committed to being more honest with my clients and showing up fully, and it was honestly really easier for me to show up more fully at work than it was in my family. I think it's can be really challenging sometimes to be vulnerable with the people that you're closest to.

Lori Saitz: [00:06:51] Oh yes. I completely agree. It's easier when you're with strangers. Because they have no expectations of you, you don't, they're not looking for you to be one way or the other. They don't know who you are. So it's easier.

Melanie Weller: [00:07:04] absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So as out there, and as I stepped into showing up more fully for myself and my patients then miracles just showed up left and right.

And my reputation locally is that I'm the body whisperer, you know, I'm known for creating that kind of magic. With people. But like I had somebody come to me who had an acute onset of hallucinations and he couldn't find anyone else that would help him. And, you know, and that's not my wheelhouse. I, you know, I don't, as a physical therapist in outpatient, I'm an outpatient sports orthopedic, physical therapist, like, yeah, yeah.

You know, that's not my, uh, you know, that was not my normal. Yeah,

Lori Saitz: [00:07:52] I don't do exorcisms.

Melanie Weller: [00:07:54] Right. Well, and the, I might tell you that I do, but now I might say that at times, but the, I am, I branded myself as a stress management expert. And so I did, you know, I did my stress management thing with this person and I made sure that he was referred to people that would listen to him.

You know, that I got them in with doctor that I knew that would. Hear what was going on, but at the end of our session, I, you know, and I did all of my technical used all of my technical skills. And I showed up with all of my intuitive skills too. And at the end of that session, 90% of his hallucinations were gone.

Wow. And he texted me later that night and said, Melanie, you saved my life and not in the cute kind of way. Cause I was literally planning to kill myself tonight if what you did didn't work. Wow. And, you know, I will fully honor that the universe was conspiring, you know, on his behalf, big time. But like that, I mean, it still leaves me without complete sentences just to describe what it was like to be part of something like that.

Yeah. To be with someone. And as I. Let it, uh, you know, as I was more honest with clients, like the first. The story that I, uh, the sequence I usually tell around this is how the, uh, the first person I saw after I really committed to doing this, you know, and I really only was super open with people that I established clients that I knew that I knew wouldn't run out of my office, but I told her, I said, She's having neck pain.

And I said, I think you have a, I think you have a ghost in your neck. And she said that I can tell you exactly when that happened and had a whole story to go with it. And she had not said anything to anybody because she thought it was crazy. Right. And the next person I saw, I said, there's a book you need to get rid of.

And she said, I know exactly what book you're talking about and had a whole story to go with that. Wow. Yeah. And. So I learned not to argue with my intuition, you know, and that my intuition is always right. It's just maybe not always specific enough. You know, I think that that's where we get, uh, you know, rather than questioning our intuition.

I think sometimes we just don't ask enough questions. Cause a lot of what I do and what I'm really fast with is asking people's bodies questions and getting them to respond. And so, and that's part of how I direct my. Sessions in addition to my clinical, you know, decision-making tools and. You know, and when you think something is, uh, you know, like fast forward a couple of years beyond that, and I had a client who came to me for a right hip area thing and she was, and I knew her body wanted to release something, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

And we had been chit chatting. And so I quieted down and got her to release it. And, uh, or like what I heard, you know, when I was here, when I was asking her body, um, or I couldn't figure out exactly what it was. And so I just listened and what I heard was bacon. And so then I'm arguing with my intuition that she needs to release her bacon.

And it was like, yeah. So then I was, I was far enough along. I was like, okay, but I'm not telling her that because that's

Lori Saitz: [00:11:08] something about bacon. I don't know, think

Melanie Weller: [00:11:10] about bacon and. I knew that when she was younger, she had a history of depression. What I didn't know is when she was really depressed, she would eat a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich or a bacon and egg salad sandwich.

So for her bacon and depression were very tightly wrapped together. And what I thought was right, incredibly stupid was super meaningful to her. Right?

Lori Saitz: [00:11:32] Yeah. I'm seeing a pattern here that you are getting these messages thinking they're ridiculous, but when you actually spit it out and say something to the client, they're like, oh, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Melanie Weller: [00:11:41] Right. And I describe it as like every time I step off the edge of the cliff, the ground shows up every time I step into who I am, like people don't go running away. Right.

Lori Saitz: [00:11:52] You know, this is such an important point that you're making. I just want to underscore it because every time you show up as who you are. Good things happen.

Melanie Weller: [00:12:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. And the, the professional lawsuit really, you know, it, it brought up every self worth issue I had ever. Had and in working on myself and working through that. And w you know, it also forced me to reimagine what I might do if I had my license suspended or lost my license, or would it like, cause you don't know how those things are going to end, no matter how absurd the S you know, the case is.

Yeah. And, you know, but I really just focused on myself and on. Resolving my own obstacles and the lawsuit got dropped. It was just, it was very magical, you know, even though there was some concrete, solid things behind that, too, but it was, you know, the such those cases can always be crazy. So it was really, but I really felt like that was a, a reflection of me working on how I manifested that in the first place.

Lori Saitz: [00:12:51] Yes. So when you were preparing or that this lawsuit was going on, were you using tools like visualization or journaling or meditation? Like what were you were using any of that?

Melanie Weller: [00:13:02] Yes. I was probably doing more journaling than anything, but yeah, I'll tell you, I did a lot of, uh, extra money, mind, body medicine, term professional training during that time too.

And one of the, one of the trainings I did was with the center for mind, body medicine, and they teach their model by making you live it. So when you go for the six day training, it's kind of like having five days of group therapy. And I call them evidence-based shamanism. They're very, uh, you know, they teach you a spectrum of mind-body skills that have good evidence.

Behind them and they've got their own group model and those techniques were really powerful for me. It was some drawing, doing drawing exercises, doing dialogue with a symptom. Like I would write conversations between me and my heart and, and doing meditation. But definitely I would say more in, uh, in terms of moving meditation.

And imagery for sure. And the beautiful thing thing about the whole process is, you know, I really learned how to, like, I really got to fall in love with myself in doing that. And it took a really disruptive experience. You know, my husband flew for in the Navy. And so like every time he left for work, I always said goodbye like he might not come home, even though he was statistically much more likely to die in a car crash on the way to work, then use that to

Lori Saitz: [00:14:31] process every single day to think.

Melanie Weller: [00:14:33] Right? Yeah. So like I left, I lived like, he was like, every time I saw him might be the last. So then when I was on vacation with a girlfriend, I met someone who just completely rocked my world and made me question every decision I had ever made and brought up all of these emotions, like really.

Like the genie came out of the bottle and was not going to fit back in. You know, it would have been really easy in the moment to say that I fell in love with him, however, you know, and I was very aware of this early on. It was really so much about falling in love with myself and really seeing myself. In a much more magical way.

And I was grateful to not live on the same continent because I certainly would have run a wrecking ball through my life. Yeah. So, so was it

Lori Saitz: [00:15:25] seeing yourself now through his eyes to fall in love with yourself?

Melanie Weller: [00:15:29] You know, I would say it was a full explosion of my intuition, you know, that, that, that piece that I had always, like, I would tell you, I would probably always run my intuition through my logic, the circuits.

Lori Saitz: [00:15:48] Okay And now you were letting go of it.

Melanie Weller: [00:15:48] I was just letting go of all of it. And, and I think that, you know, that's like women are so intuitive and we don't, you know, we get talked out of it all the time. Right. You know, and, you know, and you know, and just realizing that that's such a big piece of who I, you know, of who I am and that piece that I needed to honor myself.

And when I show up at work like the magician or the high priestess, you know, or even in my, even if I go exercise in that mode, it's always better. Yeah. You know, and things work better, but like, it was so meaningful. Like the universe could have, if the universe had had somebody like my husband or somebody close to me die, I don't think it would have been as powerful of a message as it was by rocking my marriage.

Like that was the thing I thought was really on touchable, you know? And so the universe gives you these. Opportunities for initiations, really, to step into your bigger self and to see yourself in a bigger way. One of the things I did a lot during the throes of this crisis was work with a lot of psychics and mediums and intuitive coaches of different kinds and the value that I really got out of that was, I'll say two-fold. One. What happened was either they didn't really tell me anything. I didn't already know, but it was not, but I appreciated being validated that I wasn't crazy for how I thought and saw about myself. Right. So it was incredibly valuable in that respect. And it also helped me see myself in a bigger picture and see my like, what's really, what's possible for me that there's this.

You know, like I don't need to be, you know, physical therapy's best kept secret that I can be out there on stage and share what I. No. And I also studied astrology for myself to figure out what the heck had happened to me. And, and in doing that and the combination of doing that and just doing some reading to figure out, you know, I honestly, like I really just picked up this.

I P I read the book that really changed my life was, uh, Graham Hancock's fingerprints of the gods. And it's a book about to check it out now about anthropology and. Archeology and the, and he sorta calls out those areas for ignoring certain facts that go with the pyramids and different things. You know, that they're not seeing this bigger picture of what's happening.

And I learned through reading that mythology was a mode of talking about science. It was the way they communicated science. So for example, in the ancient myth of Isis and Osirus are the numbers of the Earth's processional cycle. And there's other major myths from other cultures that have the same numbers.

They were liberal with the decimal points, but there's a pattern. You know, this was how they communicated the cosmology, which we know that they understood. This is so fascinating. And clinical expertise is in the Vegas nerve. And I have a system where I treat it as a pinched nerve. And your vagus nerve is your big stress.

Pleasure and inflammation, mediating pathway at innovate, your vocal chords, your heart and your digestive system. It sends all sorts of sensory information to your brain. It's what makes you feel good when you meditate? Meditation is great for your vagus nerve. It's what gives you grace under pressure.

And it's integral to keeping inflammation down for everything from joint pain to cancer, so that your, you know, survival and recovery are extended with better vagus nerve function. And so the research around the vagus nerve is amazing and where the vagus nerve exits the base of the skull is 23 and a half degrees from the center of where the spinal cord exits and the earth right now is at about a 23 and a half degree tilt.

So when I was reading about the mythology, maybe my first thought was, oh, what's 23 and a half degrees from the midline. That's a very physical therapist way of. Thinking about things. And I know just from my biomechanical knowledge, that normal rotation between your first and second cervical vertebrae is 47 degrees to each side.

So it's twice that, and there's 47 degrees between the pole stars that our earth points towards. Over thousands of years and the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee sets at an average 47 degree angle and normal rotation at the foot is 23 degrees. And so, like, I, you know, I have lots of numbers in my head that went with these angles and I was like, oh, this makes, you know, this is why.

You know, I understand, you know, so it gave me this different level to understand my patients and all the, you know, and I've really specialized in people that haven't had success in other places. And I was like, oh, I know exactly why these things don't, you know, these areas are so problematic it's because it gets us out of alignment with the earth and the way that we are, the cosmos has mimicked inside of our bodies.

And there's research that shows that when solar in space weather disrupts the electromagnetic field of the earth, it's measurable in our Vegas nerves. And the extent to which it's disruptive depends on the strength of our interpersonal connections. And so there's lots of really, uh, mindblowing things.

You had to think of like how we literally are fractals. Of the cosmos and in astrology areas, roles, the head and the ventricles in your brain look just like the Ram's horns for Aries. I have, uh, an image from an anatomy book that has an MRI. It's an MRI of, uh, the ventricles. And it looks exactly like the astrological sign for Aries and the way.

And so then I was like, oh, where's the rest of it. And the way your hyoid bone sits on top of your larynx looks just like the symbol for Taurus and Taurus wills the throat and the aortic arch. By our hearts is the same shape as a symbol for Leo and Leo rules, the heart, and it works this way, the whole way through the body.

And so all of this trauma and initiation and hardship struggle at this time opened up this incredible door of putting things together. And I, I really felt like intuitively, even though sometimes it seems like I'm pulling things out of thin air. I really felt like it was. There there's a system here that yeah.

Lori Saitz: [00:22:06] You were because of your, your professional background and your, all of the things that you research because you were interested in it like puts you in this unique position to put all of these pieces together, that there are probably very few people in the world who, who have that insight. That you have all that?

Melanie Weller: [00:22:27] I think so. I haven't seen any, I haven't seen anyone else who's doing it. There is, I do have a book of how the Vedas are coded in to our anatomy and how the, and which is fascinating. And that's not my, the fetas are not part of my full fluency. Yeah. Even in the book, the author, doesn't talk about how to leverage it for healing and so this and for transformation.

And so I've been able to take what I do and use it not only to enhance and support what I do with patients that come to me for pain, but in working with people that want to up-level their businesses and want to show up more fully in their own lives. And really to my, what I absolutely love doing is helping people fine tune their genius.

Lori Saitz: [00:23:16] I want to go back to one thing quickly is that everything had to fall apart in your world, basically for you to find. To be able to put these pieces, all these pieces that you've been talking about, all of them together had to fall apart to come together.

Melanie Weller: [00:23:30] Absolutely a hundred percent. And I I'm writing my book right now and I am writing my story and the story of how I came to this work.

And. I contextualize it around the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. And the very short version is that Osiris’ brother was jealous and angry that Osiris was the king of Egypt. And so he tricked Osiris into laying down in a bejeweled coffin and had his soldiers send them in the coffin down the Nile river.

Osiris, his wife Isis found out about this, found his body, took him back to a cave and breathe new life into him. Then when Set found out about that he was furious. Osiris’ brother was Set. And so when Set found out about that, he tracked down Osiris and chopped his body into pieces. And scattered them down the Nile river. Isis again, went to heal him, found all of his pieces. She found everything except for his phallus. And for that, she made a new one and she brought him back to life long enough to conceive their divine child Horace. And then Osiris went on to be king of the underworld, which for the Egyptians was where all life came from and all treasures were found.

Lori Saitz: It was a good thing.

Melanie Weller: It was a good thing. Yes. And we use dismemberment. Yeah. At a force in our language all the time. We say, we're falling apart. We can't get it together. Our hearts are broken. Our lives are shattered. And you know, if I imagine myself in the story of Isis and Osiris, most people certainly thought that it was Osiris.

His destiny was to be the king of Egypt, but his true destiny was to be the king of the underworld. And he literally had to come apart to come back together in a new way. And I think that's a very universal story. And when in the psychiatry and psychology research overwhelmingly says that when you can find meaning in your trauma, then that's where the magic and the healing is.

Lori Saitz: [00:25:27] Yeah. But we so often don't want to go through the trauma. We wish that we didn't have it. We fight it every step of the way. We avoid it at every turn. When that's what you need to go through to get to the other side, to get an in when we're talking about from fine to fantastic. You need to go through that, that awful experience part, you know? Yeah

Melanie Weller: [00:25:50] yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, I think when you, and I understand that, you know, the it's, it's not all, you can't always do it in the beginning, but when you get to the point where you can see your trauma as an initiation over a victimization. That that's really where you can step fully into yourself and own all of who you are. Yeah. And there were deeper traumas along the way for my self that I haven't shared, but it's like, I recognize where, you know, so the vagus nerve, intervates your vocal cords. And my childhood is all about lost voice in that, you know, not being, you know, not having a voice, literally not being allowed to sing in choir, but feeling like I had to.

Be inquire. So I just sucked it up for years. And in the midst of studying astrology for myself, I learned that the karmic backstory of my astrology chart is lost voice.

Lori Saitz: Wow.

Melanie Weller: And here I am specializing in the nerve that innervates the vocal chords.

Lori Saitz: And it's not a coincidence,

Melanie Weller: so it's not, it's totally not a coincidence.

And that allowed me to not be so angry about the things that happened to me along the way, because I realized how I participated in creating that. You know, there was something bigger happening at play to get this message out.

Lori Saitz: [00:27:12] Right. Right. And yeah, of course we don't always see it in the moment.

You have shared such great information. I think a lot of people are going to really benefit from what you've talked about today. Thank you.

Melanie Weller: [00:27:22] Oh, thank you so much, Lori.

Lori Saitz: [00:27:26] Two things before we go. One, I asked all of my guests, what is your, in baseball there is what they call a walkup song. This is like, get gets you pumped up.

So I've also seen it referred to as your hype song. What is your song?

Melanie Weller: [00:27:42] Oh, purple rain by Prince.

Lori Saitz: [00:27:46] It's such a good one! Yes. Yeah. Okay.

And secondly, how can people get in touch with you?

Melanie Weller: [00:27:51] All of my information is that embody your star.com. And that's my, my social media handles on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are embody your star.

And my email information is there as well. So please reach out. I love to hear from people and, uh, I have new offerings. Going on where I'm teaching regularly to really in creating a, a media platform for bridging the gaps or the gaps that we have between understanding of different areas, creating a cohesive cosmology that helps us bridge all domains of our lives.

Lori Saitz: [00:28:35] Fascinating. Okay. And we will put links to all of that in the show notes. So. Fantastic. Thank you. Any, any last words

Melanie Weller: [00:28:44] or I'll say, yeah, I'll say one of my favorite things to share. Is that one of the places the vagus nerve gets compressed is on the backside of our hearts. And there's a proverb from a tribe in the Andes mountains that says your future is behind you, propelling you forward.

Um, and your past is in front of you waiting for you to make peace with it and clear your way. And I love this idea that our futures have our back and that it's not something that we have to go chasing out in front of us. And to really just lean into the support that the universe is giving you and let it whisper into your ear is really.

Uh, I think, uh, a skill in the lesson that we could all use, uh, a bigger dose of, and that's very, that's also very soothing to the S to your system too. Like I'll have people inhale into the backside of their hearts and. I in it, there's a free vagus nerve decompression course@embodyyourstar.com. If you'd be, if listeners want to check that out, to learn how more specifically to do it, but as you breathe into the backside of your heart, you can imagine that you're connecting with your future.

And that you're, you know, as we bring knowledge from above into wisdom below that we bring magic from behind us to show up as truth in front of us, and that you're bringing, bringing your magic into truth.

Lori Saitz: [00:30:08] Wow. I can feel that energy right now and I'm going to go do that

Melanie Weller: [00:30:13] exercise. Awesome. Yeah. All right.

Well,

Lori Saitz: [00:30:19] thank you for joining me for another episode of fine is a four letter word and we'll see you next time.