The Body Remembers: Healing Caregiver Stress Through Emotional Resolution® with Cedric Bertelli - Episode 118
Caregiver stress can feel like a relentless storm. 🌪️ The constant worry, the physical exhaustion, the emotional triggers that seem to appear out of nowhere—it's a heavy burden to carry. Many caregivers feel trapped in a cycle of overwhelm, and the grim statistic that 63% of caregivers become seriously ill or die before the person they're caring for highlights the urgent need for effective support.
But what if you could dissolve that stress without digging into the past or reliving trauma? What if your body already has the innate ability to heal these emotional patterns?
In this eye-opening episode of the Caregiver Relief podcast, host Diane Carbo welcomes Cedric Bertelli, founder of the Emotional Health Institute. Cedric introduces an innovative, science-based approach called Emotional Resolution® (EmRes®), a method that helps individuals resolve emotional pain quickly and permanently.
Listen to the full episode to discover how you can tap into your body's natural resilience.
✨ What You'll Discover in This Episode
- The Science of Emotion: Learn how our brains constantly predict our emotional responses based on past experiences, and how debilitating emotional patterns are simply "outdated predictions."
- The 90-Second Rule: An emotional pattern is driven by physical sensations that last no more than 90 seconds. Learning to observe these sensations without controlling them is the key to resolution.
- "Parasite Emotions": Cedric introduces the concept of "parasite emotions"—like guilt, shame, or resentment—that attach themselves to healthy grief and prevent true healing.
- A Practical Tool for Stressful Moments: Get a step-by-step guide on how to apply EmRes® in the heat of the moment to stop stress in its tracks.
- Affordable & Accessible Healing: Emotional healing doesn't have to be a long, expensive process. EmRes® is designed to be timely, affordable, and sustainable for exhausted caregivers.
🎧 Episode Outline
Here’s a look at what we cover in the conversation:
- Cedric's Journey: Discover what drew Cedric to this work, inspired by his own struggles with anxiety and his grandfather's incredible resilience as a WWII veteran.
- What is Emotional Resolution®?: Cedric breaks down the neuroscience behind EmRes®, explaining how our subconscious mind creates emotional patterns from moments of trauma and dissociation.
- Taming Caregiver Overwhelm: Learn how to break down the "cake" of overwhelm into smaller, manageable emotional pieces that you can resolve one by one.
- A Step-by-Step Guide to Practice EmRes®: Cedric provides a simple, actionable technique you can use by yourself when an emotion surfaces.
- Grief vs. "Parasite Emotions": A powerful discussion on distinguishing healthy grief (missing a loved one) from the unhealthy emotions that can prevent you from moving forward.
- How to Get Started (Even When You're Exhausted): Cedric offers simple, practical first steps for exploring EmRes®, including free and low-cost resources.
✅ How to Practice EmRes® in the Moment
Feeling overwhelmed right now? Try this simple process Cedric outlined in the episode:
- Acknowledge the Emotion: As soon as you feel an emotion rising, notice it without judgment.
- Close Your Eyes: This is a crucial step. If you can close your eyes and feel safe, your body is ready to process the emotion.
- Find Two Sensations: Pay attention to at least two physical sensations in your body at the same time (e.g., a knot in your stomach and tightness in your chest). Focusing on two prevents your mind from trying to control the process.
- Observe Without Control: Simply feel the sensations as they change, burn, or intensify. Do not try to breathe deeply, stretch, or tell yourself a story—just feel.
- Let it Complete: The sensations will evolve and then disappear in 2 to 90 seconds, leaving you feeling calm. Your brain will have just updated its old, unhelpful prediction.
💙 Final Thoughts
As a caregiver, you are the most important part of the care equation. Taking a moment to address your own emotional stress isn't selfish—it's essential. This conversation with Cedric Bertelli offers a revolutionary yet simple path toward healing.
To learn more about Cedric's work or to find a practitioner, visit the Emotional Health Institute or emres.com.
Remember to be gentle with yourself. You are worth it. ❤️
Podcast Episode Transcript
Diane: Welcome to the Caregiver Relief podcast. I'm your host, Diane Carbo, a registered nurse.
Diane: Today we're exploring an innovative. Science-based approach to healing caregiver stress with my guest, Cedric Bertelli, founder of the Emotional Health Institute and Co-Developer of Emotional Resolution, which is trademark, and it's also known as MREs, capital EM re RES.
Cedric has spent over 15 years studying the neurophysiology of emotion and the body's innate capacity to heal. His work helps caregivers, healthcare workers, educators, and high performers worldwide dissolve emotional pain without having to relive trauma or dig into the past. So
If you ever wondered why stress and emotional triggers keep coming back, no matter how much you try to manage them, this conversation will open your eyes to a wonderful new way forward. Cedric, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. I really appreciate what you do and I'm very excited to get started here.
Cedric: Diane, thank you for having me.
Diane: Yeah. before we dive in, can you share a little bit about what drew you to this work and why helping people resolve emotional pain became your passion?
Cedric: I think it's, it's a twofold, thing. I think, first of all, I was dealing, up until my, late twenties with a lot of anxieties and, depression, self, self-directed anger.
So I always was looking for ways to better myself and, feel better. And so I went through psychotherapy. I, did a lot of things, by the books, so to speak. And what I noticed is that I learned to control how I feel. I learned to hide how it feels, but inside the turmoil stay the same.[00:03:00]
And actually, I also notice on the more I try to hide it, the more energy it takes me to,to be my daily life. Yes. So that was the first thing, a personal quest. Also noticing I was,late twenties, I was a director of restaurants for the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, so I had a very large team and I could see how emotions are leading the workplace.
You don't manage people in a way, you manage them and their emotions.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: And if you find a way to. Help people thrive. If you find a way to give them task, match with coworkers that bring joy into them, of course, they will be happy to come to work and they will give the very best. And so emotions always fascinated me,and how much they play a role in our life dynamics toward ourself and to our others.
So the first part, that's the first leg of my, decision in going into this field. The second one was, a really, deep admiration for my grandfather. his name is Ricardo Bertelli. And, he was a World War ii, veteran. He was, fighting in the mki, that's what we call it in French, which is people hiding in the forest, listening for messages on radio.
Yes. And then doing special operations. And, I grew up very close to him and, I, I was able to see how him and other men of his generations, I dunno so much about women because I wasn't so much around them, but him and other men of his generation, their capacity for resilience. So of course it was PTSD and C-P-T-S-D for this man as well.
no doubt, but I was always fascinated how him specifically was a bit like a Buddhist monk. he was very,very quiet. he was never trained to be somebody else that he wasn't. He was a simple man. but he was who he was. He passed away a couple years ago. He was 101 years old. God bless him.
Yeah. And in my mind it is like how him and a lot of men that I could see of his age in his surrounding were able to tap into this natural resilience. Because they didn't go to psychotherapy, they didn't go to vet Hospital, they didn't go to Tony Robbins workshop or any of this, right?
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: and as I continue my, my, my own path, I came to, to, I say maybe, find that what helped them to be that resilience was several things.
First of all, after, world War ii, they worked in nature. So my grandfather went and worked in the woods and he worked in the wood with all the men that had a similar history. They never talked about the war, but they were sharing a similar history untalked about, but being together in the wood with a purpose.
The purpose of, feeding their family the purpose of creating a better future for their kids and grandkids. And I think this trilogy, so to speak, being in nature. With a community that understand deeply without even, I think to name it what you went through and a strong drive on making life better for you, but for your family was really what kick in this,incredible potential for resilience in them.
And that made me understand that we have, we all have this potential within us and it doesn't take anything external, so to speak. So my obsession in a way, at the beginning of. Getting into this field, into my career in this field was how can we kick in this natural potential for resilience in every single human beings?
Diane: that's, I'm real excited about hearing about this. I'm going to share a little bit of information with you on the typical family caregiver. They,the statistics for the family caregiver are very grim. 63% of them become seriously ill or die before the person they're caring for.
That's astonishing to me, and it's going to be worse as we, as our healthcare delivery system is pushing more of the burden of providing care once provided by healthcare professionals onto the family caregiver, and many of them don't have the financial wellbeing to go to therapy and work for it. And of course, when they're provided care.
All the old dynamics of family, I'm the bossy older sister, there's the middle child that's the invisible child, and they all take on those roles again. So it can be very ugly. So I'm really excited to learn about this new concept. Can you explain exactly what is emotional resolution and how does it work?
Cedric: Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to. emotional resolution is is based on how the brain constrict emotion. We, and from this understanding how the brain can deconstruct debilitating emotional patterns. So few things. can I go into details with you? Oh, absolutely. So you guys understand?
Diane: Absolutely, yes.
Cedric: Few things we need to understand about the brain when it comes to emotions. A big part of my job is to demystify emotion, right? To make them much more pragmatic. Because when it comes to emotion, we're all the same in a way. We all have different stories, different personalities, but the way that the brain constrict emotion is the same in you, in me, in everybody.
So a few things to keep in mind when it comes to emotion. Number one, it is that our brain constantly predict, our brain constantly predict based on past experiences. And it's about anything. For example, if with food, right? Uhhuh, before, if you had, let's say, one bite of granny, miss Apple in your life,
Diane: Two weeks, five weeks, 10 years. From that first experience before, if you have an a green space apple in your hand, before you bite this apple, your brain is gonna predict what experience you're about to have. Yes. So constantly predicting that's what keep us ahead of the game. So that's the first thing we want to remember.
Cedric: The brain constantly predict based on past experience. Now we have to know that up until when, from when we were born until the day we die, the brain constantly update predictions to is called learning. So we update prediction. This is how we learn. So I'll give you an example. let's say there is a new ice cream shop opening down the street.
And I go down to get an ice cream. And there's like batches, right? There's a batch of pink ice cream. White ice cream, brown ice cream. And there is no name because it just opened so there's no label.
Diane: Okay?
Cedric: And I'm gonna, I love berry ice cream. So I see the pink batch. I'm gonna say, oh, I like some of this pink, ice cream.
And I say, oh yeah, just gimme a scoop. And I go out, I put the tiny spoon in my mouth, and as soon as I taste the ice cream, I realize it smokes San Ice cream. And so it tastes awful, right? But it's not the trauma or anything, but it just taste awful. Now, how much little spoon of ice cream do you think I need to remember forever that in this store the Pink Bash is smoked Samon ice cream.
One taste much, one taste one second. And I know forever Uhhuh that in the store, the pink batch is maximized. So my, my, prediction has been updated. In one second. I'm saying that now it's important because we think it takes forever to resolve emotional difficulties. No.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: It takes a matter of second to update prediction because you'll see that debilitating emotional patterns are nothing else but outdated prediction from the brain.
Diane: Okay,
Cedric: so here I wanna make a point is like this experience when I tested the smokers san ice cream informed me about this store, but inform in informed my entire life. Because now I know that if I go in the store and there's no label before deciding to buy it, I will ask because I will learn from this experience.
Yes. So this one update updated my life in a greater way forever. I will learn from this. this is when prediction update properly and that happens all our life.
Diane: Yes. Okay.
Cedric: Let's put this aside. Something else that we need to, to realize is what you and I we are aware of right now. Is about 2000 bits of information process at the speed of 150 miles per hour.
Consciously. That's what you are aware and I'm aware of. At the same time, our subconscious as a potential to gather 400 billion bits of information process at the speed of 150,000 miles per hour. so it's absolutely huge. Your prefrontal cortex, my prefrontal cortex is used as a filter. Yeah.
So we are not bombarded by all this information. So we have this conversation, for example. Yeah. Or we kept, we have a job, et cetera. We live in society now. What we understand is that at the origin of any debilitating pattern, anything right? anger, it doesn't matter at the origin, is always an instant of trauma.
in order for us to have an emotion that keeps on coming back as the origin is an incentive of trauma, what is a trauma? But trauma is an instant that hold too much stress, physical or emotional for us to take on when we live it. So if you're two months old or two years old, something might feel too stressful for you to take on.
When today as an adult, it's nothing. So a trauma, it is really, depending on who we are, when we experience it, what is our surrounding at the time that we experience it, but all it is an instant that hold too stress for us to take on when we experience it. That's it. Now, what create the pattern is not the trauma.
What create the pattern is instant plural, instant of dissociation happening during the trauma. Ah, so for example, let's say that I was a beaten child and my dad was beating me up. If I take a beat from my dad for let's say two minute, chances are I'm not going to dissociate only once. I'm gonna go in and out.
If I'm a neglected child and I'm neglected and no one can, no one care for me. They care for my siblings, but not for me. Yes. This amount of stress I keep on going back every single day. I will disassociate several times a day. in and out. When it's too much for me. When I need the love.
When I need the attention. That's also a trauma in my book. Neglect is a trauma 'cause that's a white trauma. Yeah. and it's not the trauma, it is a instant of dissociation. Why? Because when we disassociate, it's a normal process that happens. So we don't suffer too much.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: During this moment it's normal.
However, during this dissociation process, the prefrontal cortex shut down. So you don't suffer too much during this instant. And when the prefrontal context shut down, your subconscious takes over. And now your subconscious is like this huge whirlpool, open up, opening up and gathering all the information happening around you.
Very, sensorial what what you smell, the temperature in the room, the situation as a whole. So your subconscious is taking all this information of what's happening during the system of dissociation. As well. Are the physical sensations happening in your body during this incident of dissociation?
Diane: Yes,
Cedric: but not in a linear or logical way. It gather all this information in a chaotic way, just like a whirlpool, like a tornado gathering, all this information, and then when the dissociation, stop, you're back to conscious, right? But here is a key. So we live those trauma, those incentive dissociation in our life, a lot of them, from the moment we conceived until we pass away, a lot of them, what is happening is we live those trauma and later on when we live our life, two months, six months, 10 years after, when the brain recognizes one or several elements that were present in one of our past trauma.
When the brain find itself in a situation, we recognize one or several element present. In a past trauma, the brain is going to instantly predict what physical sensations you're about to feel based on what was felt during the specific trauma. Now, most of the time, what you're experiencing today have nothing to see of what you experienced during the trauma.
Absolutely no. relationship. Yeah. So you might, you might make up a story, right? I feeling this way because we make up story constantly. That's human beings. But the fact in the matter is it's completely subconscious. There's a stimulus, maybe it's a smell, maybe it's a situational, I don't know.
There's a stimulus, and from the stimulus, the brain, if you assimilate the stimulus to a past, is going to predict instantly what physical sensation you about to feel. Now, how do we know that we feel an emotion? We go ahead.
Diane: How do we feel? Because we feel it in I will tell you, I can relate to what you're saying, Cedric, because my dad yelled at us.
I'm an adult child of an alcoholic, and my dad was brutal to, especially my brothers. I was the only baby that lived for many miscarriages in birth. So I was a wanted child. We all were wanted, but my dad, he just brutalized us verbally and with my brothers physically when we did something wrong or, he, we didn't meet his expectations.
To this day, and I'm 72 years old, if. A husband or a brother or a son starts getting angry with me. I instantly wanna retreat.
Cedric: Okay, oh, wait for me here, uhhuh. This feeling that you want to retreat, you feel it in your body, right?
Diane: Yeah. This is a
Cedric: physical sensation. It's called interoception.
Diane: So
Cedric: when you feel that it's those physical sensation, it is called interoception.
This, in this interception says interoception is an interceptive prediction. That means that your body is expecting for you to feel those sensations right now.
Diane: yes.
Cedric: Now this is what we discovered in a way, I dunno if we discovered, but this is what we put into evidence, into light. It is that, when you're able to let those sensations play out in your body.
Diane: Without
Cedric: any type of control from yourself, that mean no breath, not taking yourself out of the emotion. when you're able to feel those physical sensations as they change in your body without any type of control in a safe environment, uhhuh, at the end of the sensations moving in your body, your brain is expecting for you to be hit by some kind of danger.
Yes. At the end of this interoceptive prediction that will last between two and 90 seconds. Never more
Diane: uhhuh.
Cedric: At the end of this interoceptive prediction where you do not control it, your brain realize that today in your life yourself, and sound from that very instant, whatever stimulus was creating this emotion in your life today, Uhhuh will have no impact on you ever again.
You just updated your prediction. It is not magical. It is not mystical. It is neurobiological. The problem is we never do it because as you said, you feel those tension when somebody is getting upset and what you do, you control either way, you go hide, or you numb yourself or you try to please the other one.
Not only you, but we all do that, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. We all do that. But we never take the time to feel those physical sensation that are just a ghost from the past. In a way, yeah, we feel the sensation and they're real, but it's only a prediction. It is what your brain is expecting to feel at the end of the prediction.
Just like the apple, you predict how it's gonna taste and then you eat it, but you already know how it's gonna taste. Like it's a prediction.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: Just like the ice cream. So what emotional resolution is, it's a long answer, I apologize, but emotional resolution is a method that allowed to retrigger very specifically on emotion based on how you feel today.
We never talk about a trauma, we don't wanna know about the trauma. That's not our job. What is the problem today? Today when people get upset at me, I, I retrieve, I hide. Okay. That's what's going on today. That's what interests me. Uhhuh. Now we gonna re we gonna get your brain to. Recreate this emotion very specifically, and once the physical sensations are in your body, our job, you and me, is gonna be for you to feel those physical sensations without impacting them whatsoever.
Those physical sensations are gonna last between two and 90 seconds, and at the end, you're gonna feel calm. You will never feel this emotion again.
Diane: How does the body even know how to release that emotional pain?
Cedric: He doesn't release it. Replayed completely to the end. And so it's a memory. It's a memory.
Diane: Okay. Okay. It's
Cedric: just like a, just like we have two kind of memory, right? We have the cognitive memory, which is, yeah. For example, if I ask you, what did you eat last night?
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: You're gonna have to go in your mind retriever data, and it takes energy to do that. last night, oh, chickpeas and, okay, it took you an effort and then you have the sensorial memory.
Which is a memory that is imposed upon you. You feel like your brother is getting upset and poof, you feel those sound sessions in your body. You didn't go and get it. It was imposed upon you.
Diane: Yes,
Cedric: it is just a memory.
Diane: Yes,
Cedric: A sensorial, a physical, a cru say an interceptive memory. And when the memory plays out until the end and your brain realize that at the end of the memory you are actually safe and sound because no one is gonna hurt you.
That's it. Your memory will be, your sensory or memory will be updated.
Diane: So for caregivers, they feel overwhelmed daily. How can EMREs be applied in a moment of stress?
Cedric: This is a beautiful question. first of all, I want to actation for caregiver. Caregiver. it is a nonstop work. There's no breath, right?
I realize that I lived it. It's nonstop and it's like a hungry ghost. It never stops. And when it actually stops because the person sleeps it, there's always worries, anxieties, and then maybe there is resentment and maybe very shame, but it's never stopping or rarely does it.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: Tell me if I'm wrong, but that's how I see it play out.
So it's important for caregiver to take it one step at a time. It's important to look out how my current situation. Caring for the person I'm caring for is impacting my life personally. What are the emotions that make me overwhelmed? What is it? Is it fear of, losing that person? Is it, fear that I'm wasting my life wasting?
Why, quote unquote yes. is it all the anger that I feel from, my siblings and the misunderstanding they think that I don't do a proper job what I do my very best, and they're not even healthy? So the overwhelm is a cake. Yeah. Now you cannot eat the cake. You got to cut it in pieces. You have to look at the situation.
What are the emotions that makes me feel overwhelmed? And then we're gonna resolve it one emotion after an emotion. Okay? After emotion. Because if not, it's too much and you're not gonna get anything. You've got accept what emotions are impacting you, and then you're ready to resolve them.
Diane: So
Cedric: a lot of them you can do on your by yourself actually.
So for some that are more. Emotions are on three levels. Conscious. That's the one that you're aware of. The anger, the anxiety, unconscious. That's the one you don't want to look at. The shame, the guilt,the resentment that you don't like feeling, but that is running in the background, unconscious, and then very subconscious.
Oops. Can you hear me? yeah. Yeah. And then very subconscious. Subconscious or emotions that do not have a name. They're just tensions. Tension in your bodies. Yeah. And these subconscious fears, the subconscious and the unconscious, it's easier to address with a practitioner because it is important to let go of control and it's difficult sometimes to let go of control when you are on your own.
Now, for the big emotion, the conscious emotion you can do on your own, and I'm gonna tell you how to do it.
Diane: Okay.
Cedric: You the what? The important is to do res when you start feeling the emotion. You don't want to let the emotion linger because an emotion doesn't linger. It's just an accumulation of things.
Remember, an emotion only lasts 90 seconds maximum in your brain.
Diane: Okay?
Cedric: So as soon as you realize that you're feeling an emotion, first of all, do not judge it, right? Don't judge yourself because you feel guilt. Don't judge yourself because you feel angry. Don't judge. No. You realize that you feel an emotion.
You say, okay, I feel it doesn't matter what it is.
Diane: The next
Cedric: step, as soon as you realize you have it, you're gonna close your eyes. It's important to close your eyes.
Because closing your eyes is gonna show you if your brain feels safe.
Diane: Ah,
Cedric: I don't know if you know that, but the first sign of fear in any mammals, do you know what it is?
Diane: The first sign of fear
Cedric: Yes.
Diane: In the flight and fight syndrome go, comes up. The increase in your cortisol, increase in your heart rate, increase in your breathing, is that what you're talking about?
Cedric: Yes, absolutely. But from outside, the first sign of fear in a dog, in a horse, in a cow Is that they stop blinking.
oh, okay. Same thing for humans. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So if you close, you feel the emotion and you try to close your eyes, but all you wanna do is looking, no, it's not gonna work. You mean that your body doesn't feel safe? Okay. It's important that you feel the emotion and you be able to close your eyes and feeling okay with it.
Diane: Okay. Wow. The
Cedric: next step is once you're able to close your eyes and be okay, as the emotion is telling you, the next step is you're gonna have to pay attention to two physical sensations in your body.
Not one, because if you only pay attention to once, sorry, one sensation, you're gonna try to control it.
If you pay attention to only one sensation, your mind still has space to think. Yeah. And if you think, then you don't feel, so it's important you feel two sensations at once. Physical sensation, I'm thinking, talking about the chairs being tight. Yeah. the throat being tight as well, or a ball in the throat.
Yeah. nausea. I'm thinking about pragmatic physical sensations.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: So you feel an emotion. You close your eyes and you feel comfortable with it. You pay attention to two sensations at once. And then you keep your attention on the body, on the sensations, and you do nothing. You keep on feeling as the sensations change in your body.
Sun sessions are gonna, is gonna, are gonna start to change, to evolve. Maybe it's gonna tend even more, maybe it's gonna start burning. Maybe you're gonna feel like you're gonna be able to breathe anymore. Those sensations are gonna be a little uncomfortable, but they're not new. Yeah. You've been feeding them for years.
That's important is to keep 'em feeling them without tr they trying to ease them. That means don't take a breath, don't stretch. Don't tell yourself that it's gonna be okay. Yeah. Don't try to find an excuse. All this is a matter of control. And if you control the pattern is gonna keep on going. You've gotta feel and not interacting with the Sun Sessions, the sun session gonna change for between two seconds and 90 seconds.
All you do is fill them, and at the end of the evolution, poof, you're gonna feel calm.
Diane: Wow, y I, my mom died when I was young and around the holidays. just not every year I start getting a sadness, from Thanksgiving to Christmas. And it's not,it's because of the loss of my mom. And it's not that I feel depressed, I just feel something's missing in my life.
And I do, I and I unconsciously start or subconsciously start to feel,missing her and that type of thing. And then, Next week will be the 14th anniversary of my son's death. He, my oldest son, completed suicide. He had a terrible pain condition, and I've been working on that today because when I feel grief, I allow myself to feel it.
So I'm doing the right thing.
Cedric: Yes, a hundred percent. Okay. Now can I jump in for a second? Yes, please. My, my mom committed suicide a few years ago, as well. Yeah. and so there is a grief. Grief is something that has to be felt. Now, people, so for example, missing of your mom, that will never go away because we're human.
Yes. Missing of your son will never go away because now this is normal and healthy.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: What is not healthy is, for example, the feeling of sadness. You can miss your mom without feeling the weight and the sadness.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: There's a lot of emotion. I call them parasites, emotion that comes and gets stuck to grief, right?
The resentment, the guilt, the shame, the victimization could have done better, could have done, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. All those emotion, that's not grief, they actually prevent us from grieving
Diane: a parasite emotion. I love that term.
Cedric: So our goal when we lose someone,
Diane: uhhuh or
Cedric: when we cover someone, is to be able to look at the parasites emotion.
The emotion that are not congruent with the reality of things. Okay, so the missing I, I did a lot of work on my mom passing the missing. Never go away, but there's no weight you miss because you used to love this person. You used to love. You love your mom, you still do, but there's no physical outlet for it.
Diane: Exactly.
Cedric: So when you feel the weight this year, when you start feeling the weight, don't take it for granted. Okay? Okay. Just start feeling the weight. Stop. Close your eyes. Say, where is this weight? What make me say that I'm feeling sad physically? What make me say, and you might feel, I dunno, weight on the chest, a pee in the stomach, and you're gonna put your attention just on the physicality.
Just on the flesh.
Diane: Okay.
Cedric: Just on the flesh, just the physical body. often people say, oh, but I feel my emotion, but they stay on the surface. They let themselves being overwhelmed by the emotion. This is not feeling an emotion. It's being, it is being overwhelmed by the emotion. You've got to, it's a bit like, this emotion and we say we feel is like a wave and we serve the wave.
No, you gotta go in the current, you gotta go deep in the flesh, right In the current, where the wave is formed. It's in your body, it's in your sensations. Feel the sensations as they evolve until you feel calmer and then open your eyes. And notice how you feel from that day on.
Diane: Wow. That's impressive though.
You feel the, to allow yourself to just totally feel it. In your flesh. In the flesh, yes. Yeah. Feel the emotions. 'cause I know what I have is I have, I, I have a sickness in my stomach, a knot in my stomach, during those times. And, I'm gonna try that, I'm gonna work on that.
Cedric: And for, I don't know, 40 years.
You probably try to, Distract yourself. or lean into bed, but no. Blah blah. Inside, like in the flesh, where do I feel it in my body? There Keep your attention engaged and intense to your flesh, and you feel as things are changing in the body, like it's just sens session stuck. And what, after a while, talk, it's gonna be.
Diane: You have, I've read your stuff and you always say emotional healing should be timely, affordable, and sustainable. And Lord have mercy. I'm in a total agreement because we have a lot of pain out here, a lot of caregivers not doing well, and they're not handling their situation. as well as it's not that they're not able to, it's the lack of support, the judgment, the pressure put on them.
that's why I'm real excited about your program because the principal, these principles are so important, especially for caregivers. I have a question. How can parents or family caregivers use this approach to help children or their loved ones navigate their own big emotions?
Cedric: Yep. So for parents, we have a program called RES for Educators and parents. Which we, first of all,we teach the person to really do this. what I explained to do it on themselves. By themselves. Yes. And make sure that they know how to do it, because they need to take care of themselves first.
Yeah. You cannot take care of a child or family member if you are not feeling good yourself. If you're feeling tense and you try. To care for somebody. Yes, it becomes control. Yes. Here we taught, I, I'm in California and we taught over 200 teachers to do this work with kids, but we noticed that we stopped that for a while after a while because we noticed on the only time the teacher was applying to the children on the, was when the child behavior was disturbing the teacher.
Oh, and that's nothing to do for the, with the, for the educator. They are very busy. There's 25 children in the classroom.
Diane: Yes.
Cedric: Hyper busy. it's not about them, but it's the fact that they're so busy that they only try to apply erest when it's too late. Gotcha. When they see the tantrum when the kid is screaming, but it's too late because when the kid is screaming is already an accumulation of emotions.
for the child. So my, my thing is you've gotta take care of yourself first. So you've gotta resolve as many emotional as you can, and then we'll teach you some methodology, very simple on how you can do that with elders as well. With dementia, it would be the same, the same, process that with little kids actually.
So we can teach you, and it's very quick. It's two time for two time, on one-on-one, two time, two hours, uhhuh plus follow-ups. And we can do that as group as well, which is a bit longer because as it's a group, people are gonna practice with themselves. Yeah. But it's done within a day and follow up to make sure the matter is integrated.
So we, the same way that I explain what RES does and why it works, we take all our courses and we make them like we take them to the bone, so to speak. Uhhuh, there's no fluff. Yeah. there's just pragmatic neuroscientific,information and how to apply it. There's a lot of,practices. Yeah.
And then there's always follow up. There's so much we can teach you. You gotta try it. Yeah. Once you try it with your elders, with your children, with your community, then come back, tell us your experience, and we are going to make sure that you're comfortable with it. Answer your question, go back in life, and then come back again.
Until you master it and you feel comfortable with it.
Diane: Now, for caregivers who are al already exhausted, what's the best way to start exploring EMREs without feeling like it's one more thing to do?
Cedric: Yep. so I, I would say three things. Number one, if the caregiver know that there is an emotion that is very heavy on them and that really toxify their life.
'cause your practitioner let yourself being helped. This is not. so I have nothing against talk therapy, don't get me wrong. But this is not talk therapy. We aim to resolve an emotion in one session. Yes. It's it's very pragmatic. So if there's too, it's too much. Let allow yourself to do one session with a practitioner, a certified practitioner.
Number two, sit in a class, it's an hour, and learn how to do the process. On yourself by yourself, one hour of your time. And most of the time we are nonprofits, so we do that. We give the classes for free. Or it's a couple of bucks or eight bucks. I think, most people charge certified practitioner give all the time to teach this work on themselves by themselves.
And actually that's it too. I think it's, it is good enough because you're practitioner. that's,
Diane: to me, that's priceless because the majority of caregivers don't wanna take time for themselves. They don't wanna spend money on anything that they don't have to. as far as their mental health or physical health and wellbeing too.
So what I like is this is affordable. It's, sustainable and it's timely because they absolutely need this help. And it's something they can do in the moment, in the heat of the moment that can help them.
Cedric: That's right. And we can even teach them to do it from a memory. That means during the day they deal with emotions and they don't have the time to do it in the moment because they have to be in action.
They have to be at service, so to speak. Later on if they have a window of like breath and they're willing to go and look. Sometimes it's difficult because you went through so much during the day that you don't wanna sit even for five minutes and think about something that hurt you. Yes.
But, if you're willing to do it, so to speak, of the energy to do it, we can teach you how to retrigger your brain Exactly how we do it with a practitioner. So you can resolve something afterward as well.
Diane: I love it. Just to decrease their stress, their anxiety will give them a chance to have better health mentally, physically, and emotionally.
I don't know how anybody can argue about that. Oh, Cedric,I'm just loving this approach. can you tell me, looking ahead, what role do you see MRAS playing in a broader landscape of healthcare and caregiver support?
Cedric: Right now we are doing a study with UCLA. We need more clinical study, right?
At this point, we're trying to gather more clinical study, more clinical data so that people start knowing about us so that people like you or your audience know about us and say, oh, wow, we exist. Let's spend one hour and let's see what it does to us. So the idea is to become, I don't the word, so to speak, but more popular, right? Yes. So we can reach more. Yes. So people can go to, come to the nonprofit, take our classes, and realize that you don't have to carry the weight of, I don't know, trauma, pain, guilt, shame on your shoulder. You're not meant for that. That kills you, right? There's this body from Matic or this book from Matic, or when the body says no.
Which shows exactly what you said at the beginning of this conversation, which is the caregiver very often passed away before the person they're caring for.
Diane: Yes. And it
Cedric: and it's because you give yourself, you give your life.
Diane: yes. It's
Cedric: not sustainable.
Diane: and it isn't sustainable. And I literally lose two to three caregivers a year to, serious illness or death, which always makes me feel sad because, I tell my caregivers that, you have to take care of yourself.
'cause if you don't, you are not gonna be there. And everything you put in place is all gonna fall apart and it's real. How my, listeners how to find you.
Cedric: So the easiest way is through our website and they can go to E-M-R-E-S mres.com. Okay. or if it's easier to remember, emotional health institute.org.
It's going to the same place.
Diane: Okay. And
Cedric: there you will have a list of our classes. if you, if I also want to say we have some wonderful volunteers. Among our practitioners. So if,some of the caregiver do not have money for a session, we will always find some volunteers to do sessions with, with people when they need.
Yeah. contact us. Oh, bless them. We'll be there. That's a lovely thing. We have a wonderful community. We have a wonderful community. It is across ages. We have practitioners in the seventies, some in our twenties. Uhhuh. It's it's a wonderful community. I'm blessed.
Diane: Oh, I, we're blessed to have you here to share your information with us today 'cause it's desperately needed, to my family caregivers out there, you are the most important part of the caregiving equation.
Without you, it all falls apart, so please. Learn to be gentle with yourself. Practice self-care every day because you are worth it.
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