Mind Your Body, Free Your Life

Hi friends—

This week on the Good / True / & Beautiful podcast, I sat down with Nicole Sachs—therapist, teacher, and author of Mind Your Body. Earlier this year, a friend in Austin recommended I study her work. I did. It helped. And it hasn’t stopped helping.

If you’ve ever carried a headache through a hard day, lost your appetite after a heartbreak, or lived with pain that lingers long after the injury heals, Nicole’s work lands like fresh air. Her lane is straight science—neuroscience and mind-body medicine—not woo. She learned under the late Dr. John Sarno, then built a clear, grounded framework for taking our power back from chronic symptoms and the fear loop that keeps them humming.

Here’s the heart of it: the symptom is the fire alarm, not the fire. Dousing the alarm (more treatments, more specialists) won’t quiet a kitchen blaze. Nicole shows us how to get to the source—with a daily practice she calls JournalSpeak: 20 minutes of radical, private honesty, followed by 10 minutes of centering. A ladle dipped into the emotional reservoir—grief, rage, shame, terror, despair—so the nervous system can move from fight-or-flight into rest-and-repair. When the fire fades, the alarm stops ringing.

In our conversation we cover:

• The brain’s elegant (and exhausting) habit of solving unsolvable stress by producing very real physical symptoms.

• Why “psychosomatic” doesn’t mean “it’s in your head”—and why that misconception keeps people stuck.

• JournalSpeak: how to do it, why you should rip it up, and what changes when you do.

• Integration over avoidance: trading constriction for freedom, fear for agency.

I share a moment from my own notes that cracked something open for me: “Whoever I think you are will determine whoever I think I need to be.” That line had been running my show since childhood. Naming it changed the music of my days.

If you’re looking for lighter and brighter—more room to breathe in your body and your life—this episode is for you.

🎧 Listen to my conversation with Nicole Sachs → [Listen Now]
📘 Explore Nicole’s work & book, Mind Your Body → [Learn More]

Here’s to the kind of weekend where your body exhales—and the alarm finally goes quiet.

With gratitude,
Ashton

P.S. If this lands for you, forward it to one person who needs the reminder that their pain is real—and so is their power.