The Goop Lab is chock full of some major ‘WTF’ moments, but it also features instances of self-reflection. One such moment comes in the fifth episode of the series and features Julianne Hough, 31, recalling the trauma of her childhood in front of the Goop cameras. During the episode, which dropped on Netflix on Jan. 24, Julianne joins a group of Goop staffers experiencing a session of energy therapy. The practice is lead by John Amaral, a Body Worker and Chiropractor who has studied the energy fields around the human body and its connection to physical therapy. Prior to the session, John explained that “A lot of people’s emotional energy gets bound up [in their body],” adding, “Our emotional system is a fluid network through the whole body.”
Bearing this in mind, Julianne shared during an interview for the episode, “There was this one moment last year when John was actually working around my foot, and I got angry.” But it wasn’t due to an injury or tightness the former Dancing With The Stars professional was experiencing, but an engrained traumatic memory from her childhood. “I just had this deep sadness. And it was actually a memory that I had, and it was connected to a trauma that happened to me when I was ten that I hadn’t even thought of for 20 years,” she went on. Then, Julianne bravely revisited those emotions and candidly discussed her childhood.
“At ten years old, my parents went through a pretty aggressive divorce, and I lived with my dance coaches,” Julianne shared of her time living in London. “It was not the best living situation, and so I had this, like, really just pissed-off anger literally attached in my foot.” Through the therapy sessions Julianne continued to attend, she was able to confront and transition those emotions as she moved forward with her life. “This method [energy experience] works incredibly well for me because it helps me experience and go back to things and be able to shift them.”
Although the unconventional treatment looks more like an exorcism than a therapeutic session, it has, per Julianne’s word, offered her some peace of mind. But this isn’t the first time Julianne has opened up about her childhood trauma. The dancer and singer first shared her experiences of living in London with her dance coaches when she spoke with Cosmopolitan in 2013. In her profile, Julianne revealed that she suffered through physical, mental, and emotional abuse from her guardians. She was even told, when she wanted to return to the states, that she would amount to nothing. Clearly, though, Julianne has taken time to heal and confront her past to lead an incredibly successful career.
But her testimonial is just one part of The Goop Lab‘s fascinating structure. Apart from “The Energy Experience,” The Goop Lab also attempts to cover areas of wellness and self-care that varies from how to lower one’s biological age, to women’s sexual pleasure, and even cold therapy! Goop, as Gwyneth’s lifestyle brand, finds some of the strangest — and most expensive — means of curating a healthy lifestyle. While the brand has come under fire for some of its outlandish products, The Goop Lab tries to posit itself as an informational series dealing with real person commendations and quasi-expert advice. The Goop Lab is available to stream on Netflix on Jan. 24!