Leslie Miller: Grounding Techniques, and Getting Back in Your Body

Leslie Miller keeps meeting people who have become experts on their own situation. They could write the book. They understand the pattern, the diagnosis, the strategy, and they still cannot sleep. Her question is what comes after understanding.

Leslie Miller has practiced as a therapist since 1998, working extensively with trauma, domestic violence and court-involved clients, and drawing on her own experience of trauma and of vicarious trauma. Before therapy she taught exercise and dance and briefly ran a studio, and she has now brought that back into her practice as mindful movement and embodiment coaching, including trauma-informed yoga and classical Pilates, intuitive movement and eating, and building a daily mindfulness practice. She works virtually and in person around Boston, and she has appeared on the show before.

She opens by drawing a line under what trauma-informed means. It is not therapy and it is not treatment for trauma. It means the person leading the room has studied trauma and knows that a darkened studio, a supine position or an unasked-for physical adjustment can each land badly, and that fitness generally runs one-size-fits-all. Then she and Lisa get into recognition: physical pain with an emotional component, a jaw and shoulders that never come down, chronic fatigue and small infections that will not clear, and the difficulty of noticing fight-or-flight once it has been your baseline for years.

The rest is practice and pattern. The ACE research linking childhood adversity to later health outcomes, and Leslie's insistence that this is information rather than a sentence. Vicarious trauma among helping professionals, and among parents absorbing what their own children are carrying. Why a sustainable daily practice does more than a fitness kick, what classical Pilates gives a nervous system through predictability and spinal contact, and what yoga gives through self-compassion. Why the thought "I should have known better" is often the trauma talking. And a grounding exercise she leads in real time, short enough to run while you are waiting for your case to be called.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What trauma-informed actually means in a movement class, and what it does not mean
• How to notice you are still in fight-or-flight after years of it being normal
• The physical signals that carry an emotional component, from the jaw down
• What the ACE research says about long-term stress and later health
• Why the people who end up in these relationships are so often natural helpers
• Why a small daily practice outlasts a burst of fitness
• What classical Pilates and yoga each offer a nervous system, and how they differ
• A grounding exercise short enough to use in a courthouse hallway

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What "trauma-informed" actually means in a yoga or Pilates class
3:30 Leslie's path from exercise into therapy and back again
6:00 Getting stuck: knowing the problem and still feeling terrible
8:00 How to tell you're still carrying it, from the body up
10:30 The ACE research, chronic illness, and what years of stress cost
12:30 Why self-care goes last, and a grounding tool for the courthouse
14:30 Vicarious trauma, empaths, and holding other people's weight
22:30 Why a daily practice beats a fitness kick
24:30 What Pilates and yoga each do for a nervous system
29:00 "I should have known better," and why logic can't reach it
33:30 A live grounding exercise, and where to find Leslie

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Leslie Miller at Pilates & Mind: https://www.pilatesandmind.com/

🎧 More with Leslie Miller on this podcast
Ep 73: Why Family Court Retraumatizes You
Ep 133: Healing Trauma After Narcissistic Abuse

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.