Season 1, Episode 12: What the Body Remembers | Chronic Illness, Trauma & Movement as Medicine

Your body remembers everything—every trauma, every initiation, every unprocessed emotion. It stores these in your tissues, your nervous system, your cells. And it's been trying to tell you something.

In this episode, Casey explores the science of somatics and what happens when we actually listen to what the body knows:

• How implicit memory stores trauma in tissues, muscles, fascia, and the nervous system
• Psychoneuroimmunology: the connection between chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation, and immune system breakdown
• Intergenerational trauma carried through DNA and epigenetics
• Casey's journey with chronic illness from childhood: migraines at age 8, fibromyalgia at 13, hypothyroidism, PCOS, endometriosis
• Pain Reprocessing Therapy and neuroplastic pain—how the brain can unlearn chronic pain
• Why the body sometimes holds weight as protection, not failure
• Holistic healing: plant medicine, energy work, nervous system regulation, rest as medicine
• Movement as prayer: ecstatic dance, walking in nature, play in community
• What Casey's hands taught her after the fall: resilience, receiving, and the wisdom of scars

This isn't a "I healed myself through positive thinking" story. This is an "I learned to listen to my body and give it what it actually needs" story.

Includes a somatic practice for having a conversation with your body.

Mini astrology report: New Moon in Capricorn (Sunday) asks what structures—including how you inhabit your body—need to be rebuilt. Venus moves into Aquarius (Saturday), inviting unconventional approaches to embodiment and beauty.

Join the coven: https://www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations
Free Resources: https://www.the-goddess-coven.com

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider. In a mental health emergency in the US, call 988.

Support the show

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link]

#11 Creative Practice as Priestess Work

Creativity isn't just self-expression. It's soul work. It's alchemy. It's how we make the invisible visible.

In this episode, I explore creativity as a spiritual channel—how art-making processes grief and trauma, how different parts of yourself can create through you, and why creative energy is sexual life force (Shakti). I share my lifelong relationship with art, my intergenerational creative lineage, and what happened when I let my teenage part paint whatever she wanted (spoiler: she became friends with my Lilith energy).

This episode debuts new intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne—a lifelong musician now stepping more fully into his creative calling. Let us know what you think in the episode poll!

Mike Dunne's music: [Spotify link]

What we cover:

• The astrology transit of the week: Venus conjunct Mars in Capricorn (creative desire meets action)
• My creative journey across mediums: visual art, poetry, dance, color as language
• Creativity as alchemy: externalizing grief, trauma, and complex emotions into form
• Creativity as channel: inviting parts of yourself and goddess energies to create through you
• Shakti and Medusa: creativity as sexual life force and reclaiming power
• The artist wound: dismantling capitalism's belief that art is only valuable if it makes money
• The vulnerability of being seen: fear, judgment, and the "too much" lie
• Fall and winter as creative seasons: the underworld priestess creating in darkness

Plus: A closing creative practice to let something move through you right now.

If you're an artist, a healer, someone who creates from your depths—this episode is for you. Your creativity is sacred. Your fullness is not too much. Your art matters whether anyone buys it or not.

Casey's poetry books: [Author Page Link]

Support the show

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link]

#10 The Fall—An Initiation of Old

Seven months ago, I fell 75 feet while rappelling. My equipment failed. I held onto the rope with both hands and sustained third-degree burns requiring 22 skin grafts. My partner caught my falling weight from the bottom—something that has a 1-2% survival rate for both people. We both walked away alive.

This is the story of a modern initiation. The complete death of the maiden and the painful birth of the mother.

Content warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of a traumatic accident, medical procedures, and physical injury. Please care for yourself while listening.

What we cover:

• The two weeks before the fall: claiming priestess, meeting Kali, knowing something was coming
• What happened during the 75-foot fall and why I chose to hold on
• The physics-defying miracle of how we both survived
• Isis's reassembly magic through 22 skin grafts and faster-than-expected healing
• Lilith learning vulnerability: being fed, cared for, held by community
• Kali's death gift: destroying the maiden who thought she was invincible
• The psychology of identity death, earned secure attachment, and post-traumatic growth
• Where I am now, seven months later, still integrating

This episode is raw, vulnerable, and real. If you're in your own initiation—in the death, in the shattering—you will survive this. You will reassemble. You don't have to do it alone.

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

Support the show

Free resources: www.the-goddess-coven.com
Support the podcast: www.patreon.com/TheGoddessCoven_PriestessInitiations

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment.

Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link]