By Rachel Hupp Cline · June 9, 2026

Episode 34 · Radiantly Rooted with Rachel

Have you ever woken up in a life that looks right on paper and realized you can’t find yourself in it? You did everything you were supposed to do, checked every box, held it all together, and somewhere along the way the woman in the mirror stopped feeling like you. If that lands a little too close, you’re going to feel seen in this conversation.

In Episode 34, I sit down with Natasha Ramlall, an embodied integration coach who works with high-functioning women moving through what she calls an identity rupture. That’s the disorienting space between who you were and who you’re becoming. We talk about the messy middle, why pushing harder only digs you in deeper, the difference between self-confidence and self-trust, and the somatic work that reaches what talk therapy can’t.

Whether you’re in the middle of burnout, quietly questioning a life you built, or sensing a shift you can’t quite name, this one is for you. You can watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify, or keep reading below.

Listen on Spotify

Editor’s note: This is an edited transcript of our conversation. Each turn is labeled with the speaker’s name, Rachel in teal and Natasha in brown.

In This Episode

• What Is Identity Rupture?
• The Messy Middle and Why We Resist It
• What Are You Willing to Let Go Of?
• Why Talk Therapy Isn’t Enough: Somatic and Embodiment Work
• Grounded Expansion and Soul Trust
• The Masculine and Feminine Rebalancing
• Self-Confidence Is Not Self-Trust
• A Free Practice: The Safety Pulse
• Natasha’s Closing Wisdom
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Identity Rupture?

Rachel: Natasha works with high-functioning women experiencing the challenges of a painful life transition. As an embodied integration coach, she facilitates the somatic mapping required to heal and evolve through an identity rupture, navigating the space between who you were and who you are becoming. I was so excited for this episode, because I myself have been navigating that space between who I am and who I’m becoming, and so many of our listeners are too. I’d love to hear more about your work. What does this identity rupture actually feel like in the body, and how do women know that’s what they’re in?

Natasha: I use the term identity rupture very deliberately. We often think about midlife through the trope of the midlife crisis, and there’s validity to that term, but identity rupture is meant to speak to the magnitude of what it actually feels like. I had many identity ruptures when I was younger too, in my twenties, and although they were still disorienting and valid experiences, when you compare it to somebody in their later years, they’ve built so much more in their lives. Their relationships, their careers, their relationship with their body, all of it. And if something gets taken away, or they wake up and realize the choices they’ve been making just don’t feel aligned anymore, the disorientation is a hundred times stronger.

Natasha: The unfortunate part is that we often see these painful things as something to push through and force our way through. Most of the women I work with are very high functioning, very hyper-capable. They’re used to getting things done. So it can feel terrifying to come to a place where you don’t recognize that person in the mirror anymore, because she just doesn’t have that drive in her. When that happens, we look at ourselves and see it as a character flaw or a weakness, and we push harder to force our way out of the discomfort.

Natasha: But if we slow down and recognize that in an identity rupture there’s going to be an ending of something, then before we can move into the beginning of something new, there’s this necessary messy middle where we’re disoriented and lost. As humans, we define our identity by our relationships to other people, to our work, to our bodies, to our health. That’s how we understand ourselves in the world. So when one of those gets shifted or lost or taken away, we have to look inside and find something truer and deeper to use as a new anchor. The important piece is recognizing that it’s normal, that we’re not broken for having this disorienting middle phase, and that we can do really important inner work so we enter the new beginning as an evolved version of ourselves, rather than rushing into the next experience that just echoes what we left.

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We’re not broken for having this disorienting, messy middle phase. We can do a lot of really important inner work, so that when we enter into that new beginning, we’re entering as an evolved version of ourselves.

The Messy Middle and Why We Resist It

Rachel: You touched on so many important nuggets there. I’ve been there too, in that place of disconnect where I had been a very high-performing, very capable person, and I pushed and pushed too far, to the point where I landed in burnout. I was in that uncomfortable middle place where I didn’t recognize myself. So I’ve taken these last few months to really slow down and listen to my body and my nervous system. It’s the messy middle, the part that’s uncomfortable. But by sitting with discomfort, by sitting through that unease, we can eventually find more ease. We can acknowledge where we’ve been, what hasn’t served us, what we need to leave behind, and ask how we evolve into this new version of ourselves and what we want to carry forward.

Natasha: Absolutely. In that messy middle, so many important things happen because of the struggle, because of the willingness to be with the discomfort. We start recognizing all of the patterns and survival mechanisms we took on that were never ours. They were gifted to us through our journey. We get really clear about that.

What Are You Willing to Let Go Of?

Natasha: When we’re trying to step into a new way of being, an important coaching question usually comes up. We think about what we’re willing to do in order to achieve that new vision or reality. But in the messy middle, what we really need to be asking is, what are we willing to let go of? That’s a much more difficult question to reckon with, because it could be relationships we’ve assumed are meant to be forever in the same formation, which are actually holding us back from blossoming into the fullest expression of who we’re meant to be. And I say relationships very generally. It could be relationships with other people, but it could also be our relationship with our career, our work, the different ways we identify. When we start getting honest and poking away, we can see all the ways we’ve been performing our life instead of actually living it from a place of purpose and fulfillment and joy.

Rachel: I’m so glad you made that distinction, that our relationships are not just with people. We also have a relationship with each of the roles we embody in our day-to-day lives, and those can be just as hard to untangle as our personal relationships.

Why Talk Therapy Isn’t Enough: Somatic and Embodiment Work

Rachel: You do embodiment work with your clients to help women get unstuck in ways that talk therapy and mindset work don’t necessarily address. Do you want to go into that a little?

Natasha: What I’ve come to realize through my own lived experience, and through working with people for 25 years, is that it’s not an either/or. It’s about bringing all the different parts together for the fullest experience of healing. The cognitive piece has its place, especially for high-functioning women. We need to tell our stories, we need to be witnessed, we need to understand how we ended up where we are. But there reaches a point where talk therapy isn’t enough, and we go into the somatics, exploring the emotional energy we’re holding in our bodies. That work is incredibly powerful.

Natasha: Then we bring in the protective patterns, the role the ego plays to keep us safe, and that polyvagal nervous system response of threat, danger, and safety. So many things are happening below our conscious awareness, and once we bring awareness to them, we can make different choices and empower ourselves to do things differently. The fourth piece, and definitely not the least important, is some kind of spiritual anchor. I mean that in the most general terms, because there are as many ways to tap into a spiritual anchor as there are humans on the planet. What I mean is a trust in something greater than this limited human experience that is also holding us through it.

Bringing the Whole Human Into the Room

Natasha: In our coaching work, we’re bringing the whole human into the exploration. It’s very client led, so we go with what feels alive, what feels active in the client. From there we can make really powerful shifts in our understanding of where we are in the transition, in the identity rupture, and what we might need to cultivate within ourselves to get through that messy middle and eventually move into the beautiful new beginning.

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It’s not an either/or. It’s about bringing all of the different parts together to get the fullest experience of healing.

Grounded Expansion and Soul Trust

Rachel: I just want to highlight something you mentioned. Soul trust. I love that phrase. I don’t think I’ve heard it before, but it makes so much sense. And I love how these practices are as unique as we are. Even if the framework is the same, it always meets us where we are. Whatever that spiritual anchor is for us, it can be different for every single person, and that’s so grounding, especially as we navigate what can be really unanchored times.

Natasha: The orientation I bring to all the women I work with, and to my children and friends and loved ones, is this idea of grounded expansion. It’s holding the balance between the human experience and something more. When we’re in the messy middle, that’s where we want to be developing or reconnecting with our sense of self-trust, but holding that in balance with an expansive understanding that there’s something greater than us also involved. That’s where soul trust comes in. Too much of one or the other doesn’t serve us. Sometimes we get so deep in our human experience that we lose sight of why these challenges can become opportunities. And then there’s the opposite, where people bypass their human experience and try to escape the discomfort of being human by getting overly involved in a spiritual lens. We’re here to ride both of those together. That’s what leads to the best outcomes, because we’re balanced, grounded, and also expanding.

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That messy middle is really about relearning self-trust, and inviting in soul trust. Leaning into trusting that you’re not really in this alone.

Rachel: So many of the women I work with have spent so much time in their minds. They’re capable and high functioning and used to figuring it out. They’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, done all the self-help, and they’re still asking, why do I feel unmoored? Why do I feel un-anchored? It’s that disconnect. Getting them out of their head, back into the body, back into the heart, back into the spirit, and connecting all of those pieces that have been disconnected for so long.

The Masculine and Feminine Rebalancing

Natasha: What you’re reminding me of is that we’re at a time in the evolution of humanity where more and more women are recognizing that they’ve been out of balance. That up-in-the-head, active, pushing, linear, logical, more cerebral energy is completely overvalued, and that’s nobody’s fault, because we grow up in a culture that overvalues it. But women are recognizing that there’s this whole other energy of the more feminine and intuitive, of rest and being and trusting and allowing, that makes life so much more full. Individually we’re coming to this realization, and collectively I feel like there’s a shift in this direction too. The overvalued masculine way of doing things is crumbling, and we’re coming into a recognition of the balance of masculine and feminine that exists within all of us.

Rachel: I’ve been witnessing that as well, that evolution toward a more balanced input and output. In yoga we talk about the balance between effort and ease, between steadiness and comfort, and also between the masculine and the feminine. When we over-give and overdo and don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to be enough, that’s when we find ourselves off balance and disconnected. The further off track we get, the harder it is to figure out who we are and bring ourselves back to a place where we recognize ourselves in the life we’ve created.

Self-Confidence Is Not Self-Trust

Rachel: There are seasons in our lives where we might need to slow down and turn inward a little more. And something I’ve found is that a lot of women are really surprised to discover the disconnect between self-confidence, high capability, and self-trust, and how they’re not the same. You can be a super high-performing person with amazing self-confidence, the most capable woman in the world, and still lack that inner self-trust. Getting to the point where you realize that can be eye-opening, in the messy middle kind of way. Have you found that along your path?

Natasha: Absolutely. It’s very destabilizing. We move through the world as the confident, capable, powerful woman in the room. But if we’re doing it from the energy of externally validating what we’re doing, in relationship to expectations we’ve assumed from other voices and not the one inside, it’s not going to stand, because it doesn’t have a grounded and expansive foundation. Coming back to the messy middle is an opportunity to relearn self-trust, which is really about learning how to internally reference your life. Discerning the difference between, do I actually want this for myself, or have I just defined success by these metrics because that’s what I’ve always been told success means? What does success actually look like for me? Am I on the path toward my own definition? And if I’m not, what can I do to start shifting the trajectory in that direction?

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The self-trust piece is really about learning how to internally reference your life.

Rachel: That’s going to resonate with so many of the women listening, because so many of us have checked all the boxes, done everything right, and created a life we can’t find ourselves in. And we’re left asking, whose definition was this anyway?

Natasha: It’s such a tragedy. And an opportunity.

A Free Practice: The Safety Pulse

Rachel: Speaking of opportunities, you created a free resource to help women who are in this messy middle. It’s a free audio practice.

Natasha: One of the foundational practices we do in my coaching work is resourcing, which is a way of finding a feeling of safety within the direct experience of your body. It sounds simple, but for women who’ve been living up in their head, it can take practice. For women who feel unsafe in their body, it can be something they’ve never known how to do, so it requires deliberate, focused practice with the undigested traumatic energy they’re holding. Learning to find a safe anchor within your own body is a baseline in all of this work. No matter what’s happening externally, if you know you can come back to a moment of presence in your physical body where you can touch on “I’m safe in this moment,” that can be the difference between spiraling and ruminating versus pausing and choosing something more in the interest of your own care. Over time, these little micro-movements are how we shift things in a bigger way.

Natasha: The guided audio is about 21 minutes. All you need to do is breathe and lie down in a comfortable position. It helps you start the practice of interoception, getting to know what it feels like inside your body and reacquainting yourself with what it feels like to feel safe, especially for those of us who are very disconnected from that.

Rachel: That’s so important and so valuable. For everyone listening, I’ll share that link below. It’s something we can all use these days to support our nervous systems and give ourselves a few moments of grounding and peace.

Get the Free Safety Pulse Audio

Natasha’s Closing Wisdom

Rachel: If you wanted to leave our listeners with one final piece of wisdom, something on your heart, is there anything you’d like to leave them with today?

Natasha: Right now the world is feeling a bit heavy. We look around and there’s a lot of chaos and trouble that just doesn’t make sense, and people are really struggling with that. All of those feelings are valid, and that’s the grounded part, feeling our feelings and being in the human experience. But also leaning into soul trust. I really do believe there’s something greater than us orchestrating things we can’t possibly understand right now, and I have a lot of hope that something new is being ushered in. We’re not always being directed to see the beautiful new things that are also being birthed at the same time as some of the harder things, but they’re still there. Life is never all this or all that. It’s always a mix. And it’s a choice whether we want to focus on and grow the more beautiful, expansive, loving things that also exist in the world. I’ve been leaning into that a lot myself lately to get through these times.

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Life is never all this or all that. It’s always a mix. And it is a choice if we want to focus on and grow the more beautiful and expansive things that are also existing in the world.

Rachel: That’s such a powerful reminder that we do have that choice, and that we can be mindful of where our energy, attention, and awareness are going, and maintain that sense of hope and balance. Thank you so much, Natasha, for being here with us today.

About Natasha Ramlall

Natasha Ramlall is an Embodied Integration Coach specializing in Identity Rupture, and the founder of Humanist Coaching. She works with high-functioning women experiencing the challenges of a painful life transition, facilitating the somatic mapping required to heal and evolve through an identity rupture, navigating the space between who you were and who you are becoming. You can learn more about her work at humanistcoaching.ca and download her free Safety Pulse audio at humanistcoaching.eo.page/safety-pulse.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an identity rupture?

An identity rupture is the disorienting experience of no longer recognizing yourself after a major life shift, often in midlife. It happens when something we’ve used to define ourselves, like a role, relationship, career, or sense of capability, shifts or falls away, leaving us in the space between who we were and who we’re becoming. It’s a normal part of growth, not a sign that something is wrong with you.

What is the “messy middle”?

The messy middle is the in-between phase of an identity rupture, after an old version of you has ended but before the new beginning has arrived. It can feel lost and uncomfortable, but it’s where the deepest inner work happens. Rather than rushing through it, the invitation is to slow down and ask what you’re ready to let go of.

What is the difference between self-confidence and self-trust?

Self-confidence is often built on external validation and your ability to perform and get things done. Self-trust is internal. It’s the capacity to reference your own life from the inside and discern what you actually want, rather than what you’ve been told to want. You can be highly confident and capable and still lack self-trust, and the messy middle is where you rebuild it.

How does somatic work help with a life transition?

Somatic and nervous-system work reach what talk therapy alone often can’t. They help you release the emotional energy stored in the body and create a felt sense of safety, so you can respond from grounded choice instead of spiraling. Paired with cognitive understanding and a spiritual anchor, this brings the whole person into the healing process.

How can I start feeling more grounded in my body?

A simple starting point is a practice called resourcing, finding a moment of safety within the direct experience of your body. Natasha created a free 21-minute guided audio, the Safety Pulse, to help you begin. If you want to go deeper with practices that take your yoga and mindfulness off the mat and into daily life, you can find free classes and tools at radiantlyrootedyoga.com/resources.