13. Learning To Trust Your Body Through Deep Self-Connection with Hannah Kopen

In this episode Hannah shares her life-changing journey of self-discovery from an unhealthy relationship during the pandemic to becoming deeply in love with her body and her life.

We dig into the power of self-trust and how, despite struggle, healing is possible when we become self-aware, acknowledge our worth and choose to walk our own chosen path.

This episode will leave you inspired to take a big leap of faith and trust your own body’s unique knowing - evening prompting you to completely transform your life (like it did Hannah)!

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About Hannah
Hannah Kopen is an empowerment and somatic embodiment coach who helps women build and sustain positive, thriving relationships. Her approach blends neuroscience, psychology, somatic attachment therapy, feminine and masculine energetics, and a dash of spirituality. She is trauma informed and works with women healing from toxic or abusive relationships and women who are pivoting in their career and desiring to move upwards in their life or love life.

• Follow her on Instagram at @hannahkopen.co
• Website

About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

• @andi.matthies on Instagram
• Be a guest on the podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi M: Hey, beautiful human. I'm so excited this week. I sit down with the lovely Hannah Koppen. Hannah is a coach and founder of The Beautiful Badass, and she helps women build and sustain positive and thriving relationships. In this episode, Hannah shares with us her life changing journey of self discovery going from a really unhealthy relationship that she was in during the pandemic to becoming so deeply in love with herself and her body that it changed her life.

We dig into themes like the power of self trust and how, despite the struggle, healing is possible when we become really self aware and acknowledge our worth. Please note, Hannah does touch on some topics like substance abuse, relationship and domestic violence issues, and some things around self image and eating disorders.

So I just want you to feel into this before listening. but if you do tune in and you do love it, please do leave this episode of review so that we can make sure anyone who needs to hear it can find it. Let's dive in.

Andi: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Body Diaries. I'm really excited. Today, I am with Hannah Koppen, who is a empowerment and somatic embodiment coach. And today we're going to be diving into learning to trust our bodies and how to deepen our connection with our whole selves, which I know has been a big part of my journey to start really trusting in my whole self.

So Hannah, welcome. I'm so excited to chat with you today.

Hannah: Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Oh, you're so welcome. I have been following you online for a little while now so it's really great to be able to chat with you in person and talk about trust, trust in the body. I love this topic because there is so much in my past and my story about really loving the physical body and trying to tackle that really in my early 20s. Um, in my late teens as well, that was a whole journey of, of learning to love my physical body, learning to accept it and, and just be in my body and acknowledge that it is my home.

And then after that, there came a next chapter of growth that I had to overcome, which was learning to trust my body's messages and information that it was giving me and my own inner knowing, honestly, my own deep inner sense of. of truth. And that was a whole nother level deeper into the dive of understanding the mind body connection.

And I have had, and this in my past, and it manifested in me Honestly, being a people pleaser and kind of falling into relationships that were not good for me, falling into, um, men that would mistreat me or emotionally abuse me because I desperately just wanted to be loved. I wanted to be chosen. And even though my body was definitely saying no in some of these past circumstances, I overruled that by my, my need to be long and my need to be chosen and my need to my honest, like inner child just wanted to not be left alone, to not be alone.

So that fear of being alone led me to some really intense circumstances of me not trusting my body's truth and not trusting what my body was trying to tell me. 

Um, it was during everyone's favorite time, the pandemic, um, it was right in the beginning of the pandemic. I fell deeply in love or in infatuation with this man who chose me across the pool.

We were in, we were in Chicago and we were at an outdoor party outside of The rooftop of Soho House and we were just, um, he was with some friends I was some with, was with some friends, and he came right over and was very persuasive and just flirty and just asked me out right then and there. And even though I.

I knew he, um, he was a bit older than me. He was about 11 years older than me. I was just like, yeah, I'm, I'm an open person. I'm an open book. I'll, I'll go out with you and your friends tonight. Why not? I'll have dinner. And we started off with this like really kind of light relationship. We didn't, neither one of us really thought that we would fall for each other as hard as we did.

And we, and we did. And that was three months before the pandemic hit, and he actually had, a situation where he was going to leave the country for work, and that was before the pandemic, and so I kind of had in my mind that we were just going breakup after that. So our idea of this relationship was, was not what it became.

And making a long story short, we ended up living together and then we ended up kind of getting, stuck together because the job across the border It all fell through and he didn't leave the country. And so he stayed with me in Chicago in my apartment. And then I was sort of pushed into this this realm of only seeing him.

Primarily, I saw a few, maybe a few friends, but, you know, the pandemic was pretty isolating, and I was really grateful to be with somebody, but there was definitely a lot of, a lot of conflict, and a lot of red flags that I chose to turn away from, I chose to not listen to, I chose to keep fighting for this relationship, even though something in my, in my heart knew that it wasn't good for me, it wasn't really good for him either, I have a journal prompt here, um, and this is us after living together for about a year, 

So, back in January 13th, we were arguing a lot. There were lots of nights that were spent in tears, um, there were lots of evenings that were spent, you know, kind of noticing that he would come home with more alcohol in his breath,

 and completely deny it to me. So itthere was a lot of me guessing and then being lied to. So I was guessing that he was drunk, but then he would promise that he wasn't.

And so I was kind of getting manipulated in that moment where I, I knew something, I saw something with my own eyes. But then the story that was being told to me was that it wasn't true and that I was making it up 

And often I trusted my partner over myself and my own, my own body, I believe was showing up in a way, like, she was telling me something very strongly. I would come home and I would journal. I have, like, multiple journals just filled with pages and pages of what I was going through, just to see the words on the paper, to remind myself that this is the truth, and what he's telling me is, is not the truth.

Andi: You're describing gaslighting, like at the worst level. And that is such a incredibly detrimental thing when it comes to not only our relationships with ourselves, but our relationships with our bodies, because we're just, we're being forced to question the entire reality based on the account of someone that we admire, that we love, that we trust and so everything else in our bodies just becomes completely obsolete in our minds because it's like, well, how could this not be the reality because this person that I'm trusting is telling me so. So That's an incredibly, terrible experience to have to go through.

Hannah: Yeah. It was, terrible and very confusing to me as well, because this was at the very beginning of my coaching journey of being an empowerment coach, of helping women to love their bodies, to see their truth. And I was faced with this. completely opposite, um, circumstance in my own, my own relationship.

And I was mad at myself for not being more empowered in this moment to be like, this is not okay to set a healthier, stronger boundary and stick to it. So there was a lot going on emotionally for me. I was like, trying to be, you know, be this, this symbol of, of health and happiness towards my clients.

However, in my real personal life, there were many nights spent on the floor in tears, to be honest. And so it wasn't adding up. And as you can imagine, it reflected in, my business success, because there was a lot of underneath self doubt because I wasn't really doing what I was set out to do.

So I, um, yeah, I'd love to just read a couple of,pages or a sentence or two of this journal prompt to kind of set the tone, if that's okay. And then I'm going to switch and show you a couple of the things that helped me really get out of this relationship and helped me see myself clearer and with more honesty.

Andi: Oh yes, please.

Hannah: In January, Another unhappy evening. I tried to set the intention to do something fun together before he left for work.

And now we're both just scrolling on our phones. Earlier, he watched Ray Donovan while I read The Untethered Soul. I feel like I'm the only spiritual one in this relationship. I feel like we haven't had sex in over two weeks. He hates how much I'm on my phone, and he seems so unhappy in his work and in his job.

I'm trying to get some traction on all of these social media platforms. I'm trying to build this business from the ground up, and it is exhausting. But I can't not use my phone. I, I feel that we are moving further and further away from each other, emotionally and physically. And yet, I do nothing. Why can I not leave?

Why am I stuck? Why am I doing this to myself and to him? He even calls me names. He thinks that I'm selfish and he's called me spoiled and hypocrite and this behavior needs to stop. He asks me to change my behavior but yet he doesn't change his. 

 April 8th. This relationship is not good for me anymore. I am worse off emotionally and mentally than before I even met him.

He is verbally abusive. He calls me dumb and stupid and tells me that no one likes me. That I'm too much. That I rely on my phone and social media for external validation. And that I call my mom too often. They, they've never gotten along and they never will. He makes me feel like it's either him or a relationship with my mother.

And for some reason, I pick him. I haven't spoken to my mother in a very long time, and when we do, we usually fight because him. I want to have a loving and successful and supportive relationship, not one where I have to worry about his drinking and abuse and cry across from the dinner table. I don't know what it's going to take, but it needs to start now.

And then I wrote a quote that actually really helped me. I started writing it over and over again, and it's really simple, but it helped me make the choice to do something different. And it's just what you are not changing, you are choosing. when I read that quote, I like my heart stopped because it made me feel like It's my choice to be in this.

It's my choice to be treated this way, to accept that kind of treatment, to allow this to happen and to stay in it for so long. it's not fair to only point the finger outward and to externally be like blaming the other person always, because that takes your own power away again. So that was, that quote really helped me be like, Yeah, that is my choice.

I get to change it. And if I want out, I'm the one that's going to have to do it. 

 So after, July we finally ended things. I started seeing a little bit more success in my business. I started feeling a little bit more empowered in my own self, even though we had just gone through a lot of trauma, honestly. Um, I felt like a door had just opened and though I had a lot of healing to do and a lot of processing, I, I genuinely felt strong in my decision to, to move forward and to go a different direction and take that choice.

(ADD REACTION AND QUESTION)

I had been in Chicago for almost 12 years. I went to school outside of Chicago at Northwestern, and then I moved right into the city right after graduation, and I lived there for over, um, nine years after graduation. I was kind of comfortable there, I was super comfortable there, and I was set, but every time I would visit California, I have family out here, I have aunts and uncles and cousins, I would just feel like something so amazing in my body. Like, I needed to be by mountains, I needed to be by an ocean, I needed to have access to more nature, and to a lot of different, um, activities and, and there's so much that California really has that the Midwest doesn't. I grew up in Michigan, so I've always been a Midwest girl, but I knew something deep down was in me about my need and my desire to go to California. And honestly, I can truly thank my ex for giving me that pathway of what's possible because he just immediately packed up his things and left. And I'm like kind of a nester. I love my community of friends. I love my people. I love my like having my home and I never would have done that. I don't think if I didn't see how possible it really was. And so shortly after he left, um, in my lease was up and I decided to sell everything that I owned and packed up and moved across the country.

I took my dog and I packed up everything that I owned in my little Mazda. And I just, drove. I didn't, I didn't have anything else. It was an amazing, amazing freeing experience to like get rid of basically all of your belongings except for some clothes. I took two weeks from Chicago I was in Taos, New Mexico, I was in Santa Fe, um, I went to the Grand Canyon, and I also hiked and went to Sedona, Arizona, and then Joshua Tree.

 and it's the best decision that I ever made.

 again, I wouldn't have done that if I didn't just trust myself and just say, well, why not now? 

Like, what, what do you have to lose? 

 but mostly I just kept saying, well, if I hate it, I can always come back. I can always come back to Midwest. Like there's no, there's nothing stopping me. Life is short. I am still young. I get to do this if I want to. And those were a lot of the like self talk practices that I was doing to calm my nervous system down, honestly, and to, um, reassure myself that it's going to be okay, and I'm doing this for me, and because I want to, I'm not going for a man, I'm not going for anyone else, I'm not even going for a job, like, I'm just doing this because of true and honest desire.

Andi: What an incredible journey, Hannah. Like, thank you so much for sharing. 

 I love how you talked about these spots along your journey in nature. 

 It sounds like it was actually are really key part of that trip. 

Hannah: It was a huge part. It was, it was always planned to be, um, a 10 day trip. So I wasn't just gonna zip through the United States and just get from point A to point B in three days. I really wanted to take my time getting there. I wanted to explore so much that I haven't seen before. I've never been to those places that I mentioned before and it was truly magnificent.

Nature has always, for me. been a healing, a source of healing, a source of inner peace, feeling connected and feeling like we are all one. We are all a part of this huge living, breathing organism that is life. And I have been a nature girl my whole life. I've Backpacked in Alaska for two months straight.

I've sea kayaked all of Alaska. I've like gone all over the United States, um, kind of climbing and backpacking. And I've been lucky enough to do a lot of that before I was 18. And so in my young age, I've always known the power that nature holds and the importance that it holds for me specifically. 

So movement has been super healing for my journey. And that's when I started my somatic embodiment training actually was right when I landed in Studio City and I went to, I went back to school for, for somatic experiencing and somatic attachment therapy.

 I'd love to dive more into semantics and how that shifted your body and your trust.

Andi: Yeah. Somatics has always been a part of my life, but I didn't have, like, the words to describe what it was. I come from a theater background. I was a theater major. I've been an actress for 15 years. in Chicago primarily. I haven't focused on it so much out here in LA and of course we're in the midst of a writer's strike so there's not a lot of work for anyone out here but um, when I was really young I started dance classes at like age five and I continued my dance experience and until college like I was taking classes in college I was taking hip hop and um, theater, musical theater classes, jazz, contemporary, really you name it.

Hannah: I took ballet for a host of seven years back in high school and middle school. And it was something that, um, always gave me a, a deep connection to my body, to expression that I wanted to convey through movement. You know, I love dance so much because I feel like you can say so much with just your body without the use.

of words. And it's truly impactful and powerful. If you've ever gone to a dance rehearsal or a recital or performance, um, the, some of the most beautiful and emotional performances that I've ever seen have been without words. And they've been with using their bodies as a sense of expression. And so I took my dance experience.

And matched that with this kind of like, newfound, new age, therapy practice of somatic embodiment and understanding, like, you can actually heal trauma in the body that's stuck by going through some of these movements and by doing some, um, really deep breath work and experiencing what it is your body needs to experience and really get it all out.

 one of my favorite exercises to help women who have been in a stuck relationship or feeling like they're not trusting themselves or feeling like they're, trapped in some way. Is this rage exercise? Because there's so much that we repress as people, um, especially as women, but as people in general.

And humans, being human in this society, right now, means that you have to repress things in order to get things done, in order to focus, in order to be productive, in order to, you know, be a, a good citizen. 

It's a lot of us trying to figure out how to do it inwardly. And so this new way of being this kind of new way of expressing was so cool to me. I was just like, what is this? I have to learn more because I feel like I've been doing that myself 

 Um, but I didn't know that there was a therapy practice like this. And so once I found it, I just like dove right in and started learning all that I could.

Andi: I love that. but it does make me want to ask you the question of being someone who was a dancer and so deeply connected to your body from such a young age, what 

separated you from that somatic embodiment to make that perhaps you weren't listening or trusting yourself anymore. 

Hannah: Um, that is a great question, and I would say life happened. Trauma happened. Um, me going in a self shame spiral and a body shame spiral for about 10 years happened. And that completely disconnected me from my body. 

I have a past of disordered eating patterns. I have a past of like binge and emotional eating of yo yo dieting and of being extremely restrictive or eating everything in sight. Those were like my two levels. I did not have an in between. I did not listen to my body. I did not even know if I was hungry or full for like probably a period of 10 years because of how I was treating my body and really mistreating my body.

 And so me physically feeling disconnected to my body, led me into this period of like, researching and learning nutrition and intuitive eating and healthier practices of learning to trust and learning to love myself and so though I don't, I wasn't active in my disordered eating patterns when I was with this previous person, I was still learning how to trust myself.

I was still learning how to feel connected to this vessel. And, and that goes deeper than just you know, hunger and fullness cues. It goes deeper. it's also this deep, deep, deep level of worthiness that was the root of this. 

Andi: It's incredible the, the depths of like longing that we can hear in your words around knowing that this isn't right, understanding the context of what's going on, but feeling so stuck to be able to leave.

I was really interested in what was going on in your body during this time. Like, During this relationship, during the lockdown, like what was showing up from a physical perspective? How was your body reacting and was some of those things that perhaps you were ignoring at time?

Hannah: feel like I was not eating very much. I was not really taking care of my body's natural desire to nourish itself. I definitely was moving a lot less because of the pandemic, but also because of just this, this kind of relationship put me in a slump and it physically made me feel like, like a lump.

And I, you know, as my journal, it described, you know, me literally on the floor in tears or literally across the dinner table in tears. I couldn't eat a lot of those times. It was so stressful. I was in a survival mode. My nervous system was shot. I was constantly thinking and rethinking about the reality of the situation.

I was second guessing myself and I wasn't thinking about food. Or health at all. 

 I felt like I was in survival mode, and I couldn't get out of it.

 What was the turning point? what was the, the point, whether it was physically, whether it was emotionally or the culmination of that, that your body finally, got through and was like enough, this is the tipping point. This is the change.

Um, I think it was not as much a physical thing as it was a mental recognition of what really was going on and like my final decision to end this relationship was, was the ultimate tipping point. I was like, okay, this, this is no longer okay. I am. Not in a healthy place. My mind, my body are completely disconnected.

My body is telling me to get out of this, but my mind is somehow like trying to stay strong and trying to go, it's going to get better. It's going to get better. You can heal him. You can change him. All of these things. And I finally released those through the help of different, um, journaling prompts.

 Um, but my, my body felt like it just, it just needed more. I just needed, it needed to be around nature.

I needed to get out of the city of Chicago, which is a beautiful city in its own right. I was just tired of it. I'd seen the same things. I'd done the same things. I'd gone to all the restaurants. I'd seen all the, like, music shows that I wanted. Like, I was just ready for more, for different, for a change of scenery.

 And I was like, Oh, California. 

Andi: I love that. when it comes now to the work that you do in empowerment and somatic embodiment, what does that look like and how do we work with you? And, what are some of the things that you support women with right now? 

Yeah. 

Hannah: Awesome question. Um, I am so excited to be launching a group program called Embodied Wholeness. And this is a program For the powerhouse woman that wants to really understand and harness her own masculine energy and feminine energy, I go really deep in understanding and articulating the polarity of these energies in everyday life, in our love life, and in business, in building a business, or in running a business, or in your career, and how that all kind of wraps up into embodied wholeness.

And this program is, it's short and sweet. It's six weeks. And it's really about embracing, um, the harmony that lives within you and fostering deep emotional connections with those around you through this newfound confidence, through this newfound, um, ability to transform your own inner world.

I am including somatic practices. I'm including nervous system regulation. I am including tons of self empowerment, journaling and visualization practices. 

We're going to go live once a week. You're going to get access to me throughout the week through a WhatsApp group or a Telegram group. You're also going to get connection and access to each other. So it's like a beautiful place to create community and to Celebrate each other and each other's wins and just like love on each other as you step into your newfound wholeness.

This is really for the woman that is kind of ready to completely rewrite her story, rewrite the rules that society puts on her because there's what society thinks that masculine and feminine is, and then there's, there's what it really is, and what I teach is, is the truth of it all, and sort of how to balance those two arts, and those two energetics, and then really creating that life that aligns with your desires, aligns with your truth.

Andi: That sounds incredible. If anyone is interested, I really encourage you to check out Hannah's Instagram at hannahcopen. co. And I will also add all of the links to the Embodied Wholeness program in the show notes as well. Hannah, this has been such a beautiful conversation.

Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your journey and sharing all of your knowledge around somatics and how to start stepping into that, 

Hannah: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. was such a delight. I really appreciate the conversation. It was wonderful be here.

This is such a powerful conversation with Hannah, and I drew so many parallels between her story and some of the big dramatic changes and pack up and shifting across the country that she shared with us in this episode, so much from my own life. If you feel drawn to connect with Hannah, I do encourage you to reach out to her on Instagram.

Andi M: She's at @hannahkopen.co. And as always, if you want to have a chat with me, do drop me a message on Instagram at @andi.matthies. I'm always here to chat about all things connecting with the body and opening and anchoring in our higher abilities so that we can really unleash that bravery and that creativity and that performance that we're here to deliver.

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.