Gina Vance Turned 25 Years of Healing Work Into Life Is Hard and Then You Fly
“So we all do need to do hard things, and yet doing those hard things when we connect to meaning, that this hard thing I'm doing is gonna lead me to something good and beautiful, that's often the missing piece.”
Gina Vance, author of Life Is Hard and Then You Fly
Gina Vance is the creator of SMGI, Somatic Mindful Guided Imagery. For 25 years she has guided clients out of anxiety, stuck patterns, and pain, working from offices in Modesto, Walnut Creek, and Sausalito and training certified SMGI guides. Her book, Life Is Hard and Then You Fly, puts that work on the page so readers can practice it on their own.
The journey to the book started with pain
Clip · Gina Vance on where the book began · 44s
Before SMGI, Gina was a lighting engineer. On one of her last projects, crews climbed 50 feet into the trees after dark to aim the lights, while Gina rolled herself around the site on a chair with wheels because she could not stand up straight.
“And the pain really got me started on a path of exploration about how to get out of the pain, because all of the conventional things that I tried didn't work.”
— Gina Vance
Getting out took her five years. She says that slow road is exactly what taught her the method.
“And I only learned this because I was a hard nut to crack and hardly anything worked for me.”
— Gina Vance
Nine responses, not four
Clip · Gina Vance on testing the nine responses · 16s
Most people know fight or flight, maybe freeze or fawn. Gina’s book names nine instinctive survival responses, and she tried the model with clients long before it went into a book.
“Their eyes would light up, and sometimes they would cry with relief.”
— Gina Vance
Her central point is that none of the nine are flaws. Each one is the body trying to keep you safe. The trouble starts when the button gets stuck on.
“That's kind of my whole shtick. Because the whole world, you know, tells us that we're dysfunctional somehow and we need to be better.”
— Gina Vance
A book she was told to write
Clip · Gina Vance on the push to write · 25s
The push to write came from an unexpected place. A friend who sometimes picks up psychic impressions passed along a message from Gina’s grandmother: write your life story. Gina sat on it for years.
“But it took me a long time, 'cause I'm bored of my story. It's like, it doesn't have any more juice for me.”
— Gina Vance
She also wanted to wait until her mother, the main adversary in her story, had passed away, and to tell it in a way that left room for compassion. When she finally wrote, she went to a cabin in the woods. That is where the title arrived, replacing her working title, Wild Ride into Healing, and turning the old line around.
Built around what makes it different
Clip · Gina Vance on what makes the book different · 16s
Gina knew how crowded the shelf was. So she organized the whole book around the nine survival responses.
“Truthfully, it was my spiritual inspiration that encouraged me to organize the book around the nine survival responses, because that is something unique about the book, 'cause there's a zillion books about healing, and healing trauma, and somatic work, and so on.”
— Gina Vance
The book reads as part memoir, part client cases, and part workbook. The material came from two and a half decades in the room with clients.
“[The book] was really kinda modeled after that 25 years of just repeating to clients the same things over and over and over.”
— Gina Vance
No matter how powerless we feel
Clip · Gina Vance on finding your power · 23s
One case from the book stays with her: a client named Tilly, who in an inner journey rescued a five-year-old part of herself. Gina’s takeaway is meant for every reader.
“We are, no matter how powerless we feel, we are powerful, and it's important for us to say, ‘I don't want this. Help. Get rid of it.’”
— Gina Vance
You’re more free
Clip · Gina Vance on what changes · 44s
The changes often show up where nobody was looking. One client who came for weight loss mentioned at a check-in around her eighth session that the ticker tape of mean, hateful, angry words she had woken up to every morning for 20 years was gone, and had not come back. They had never worked on it directly.
“Things happen and you're not even trying to do them. You are just different. You're more free.”
— Gina Vance
Life Is Hard and Then You Fly is available wherever books are sold. Gina works with clients through ginavance.com, and her certified guides are listed at somaticmindfulguidedimagery.com.
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