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How to Secretly Rest Your Nervous System · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had this constant, palpable sense of unsafety in my body.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was like bubbling away under the surface of my skin all the time, and it directed my mind and it directed my energy.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I struggled to make decisions.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I lost all my motivation.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I didn't know who I was or where I was going.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was super emotional all of the time.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know how to explain it to my husband, who felt completely helpless in the whole situation, and so I just lashed out.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time I remember thinking, well, this has to be to do with grief.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: This has to be because I've lost dad and there's some PTSD there.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was what I put it down to.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst I believe that to be true, it was when I realised also that dysregulation is a massive symptom of perimenopause that I put two and two together.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So in this episode, I'm going to share with you five simple tips or resources to help you regulate your nervous system when nobody else has to know what you're doing.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready, let's dive right in.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So like I say, I just put it put the feelings that I was having down to grief and PTSD.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't label them because I didn't know anything about nervous system dysregulation.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I hold my hands up fully.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: When perimenopause started to become spoken about a lot, which was in my from my memory, around about COVID, maybe just a bit pre-COVID time.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I remember saying to all my friends, what a croc.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's another label.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why we don't women just get on with it?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very natural process.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need HRT, like we've been doing it for millions of years.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, seriously, that was my viewpoint on it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It really honestly wasn't until I was in this well of despair and darkness, having all of these feelings and feeling like I was a shadow of my former self, with no light at the end of the tunnel showing me that I was going to be able to find my way back.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: That I kind of just started to lean into if this wasn't just grief and PTSD, could there be something else?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I actually started to learn a little bit more about perimenopause and realize that whilst we know that it has a hormonal transition, so many of the so much of perimenopause is actually neurological in nature.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I heard somebody on Instagram, like actually a scientist, not somebody you know that doesn't know what they're talking about, but a natural scientist saying that perimenopause, our our brains change more in perimenopaules than they do when we go through puberty.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And yet I'd come from not believing in perimenopause at all to believing it to just be a sort of a hormonal transition to now thinking, holy crap, my entire brain is changing, which now I feel like I'm on the other side, is absolutely magnificent because I've got a generally don't give a SHIT attitude, which I love.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: However, when you're in it, it can feel awe-consuming.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so today I want to share with you five um practices that I used um alongside my sort of uh somatic practice because let me backtrack a little bit.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: As when I was in the the the okay in that completely, I signed up to do um uh a somatic course in um nervous system dysregulation or nervous system regulation and flew out to Barcelona and it was absolutely life-changing.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was so phenomenal to learn how our bodies hold on to these memories and these traumas and these experiences through our fascia, and it impacts our joints, and then you know, it limits us in our in our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual capacity.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a big shift for me.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not always easy or possible for us to get on the floor and do a somatic practice when we're feeling dysregulated.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: We also don't ever necessarily want everyone to know that we're having a bit of a moment and watch us kind of you know go around humming or jumping up and down and shaking ourselves out.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to offer you something that you could use in real time to create an instant response without other people needing to know that you were doing anything.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: The first one, which is really personal to me, is holding your own hand.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when my dad was dying, um, he was in a he was in in and out hospital a lot, but towards the end, he was in the hospital, and then we got him into a hospice.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I had so much trouble sleeping.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I can still see and feel myself really clearly laying in bed at night and literally holding my own hand really tightly.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening now and you can do this, give it a go.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: There is something very, very soothing about really holding your own hand.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like to um interlace my fingers, I like to actually like cup my hands together and create a little bit of pressure and really feel that sense of I've got you.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it felt like for me.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've got you.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And just maybe bringing those hands towards your heart if it's available to you, but if not, just holding your hands um in your lap is so incredibly powerful, and I found it such a sense of safety and calm in those nights when I would lay in bed wondering, will this be the night that we get the phone call?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my first one, and it really helped me through some hard times, and I hope that it can help you too.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: The second one that would actually all obviously I would often combine with the hand holding, hold oh my goodness, my teeth, hand holding is the four-eight breathing.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Simply breathing in for four and breathing out for eight, or basically breathing out double the length of time that you breathe in, right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So using the same uh volume of breath, so one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: This really helps you to access the rest and digest part of your nervous system, really helps to bring you down, to calm you down.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Four, eight breathing, really beautiful, really simple.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: No one needs to know you're doing it, and you'll start to access that parasympathetic nervous system and bring yourself back to a sense of calm.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: The third one is just about bringing yourself back into your body.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So these are all somatic practices, just that mind-body connection.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the body scan is exactly what it says: just taking a moment to connect into your body and systematically focus your attention on different parts.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it easy, go from your head down to your toes, or from your toes up to your head, and just help raise awareness around what bodily sensations you've got, where you're holding tension that you can relax into, where you can breathe into those areas of tension, and just go through different parts of the body without judgment, just releasing tension, bringing in relaxation, adding warmth, and just staying centered.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even just that bringing the awareness somewhere else is naturally going to give you that sort of that sense of calm.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally, yes, you're gonna do this with your eyes closed, and you can do it without.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's just about oh god, I'm just I'm holding my tension in my chest and my shoulders are up by my ears, and I can't breathe deeply.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just drop the shoulders, take a breath further into your belly, release the tension around your thighs or your knees or your toes.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the body scans are really, really helpful technique.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is to have an anchor object.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I have several of these on my desk in my office.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you know you're in a season where you're suffering or experiencing nervous system dysregulation a lot, put one in your bag.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Even better, put one in your pocket so you could literally just put your hands in your pocket and feel this anchor object.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: An anchor object is basically what it says on the tin.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a physical item that you use to ground yourself in the present moment.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, you're managing that stress and anxiety.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this tangible point of focus that helps you to stabilize your thoughts and emotions when you're feeling that level of distress.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It could be anything from a piece of jewellery that means something to you to an inanimate object like a stone.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's the intention that you give it that makes it super powerful.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever your mind starts to wander or you feel overwhelmed, you can just bring yourself back to this anchor.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally, like I say, in your pockets, it's easily accessible.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can even just have something like on your desk.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can't reach out to it and touch it, the touch is great, and it's not the only way to do it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if you get find yourself getting overwhelmed in a particular environment or circumstance, so let's just say at work and you have something on your desk, so I've got crystals and I've got stag heads and I've got Aladdin's uh lamp.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Have one of those be the moment you look at it and you set up your own trigger.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I look at it, I look at it, and I feel grounded.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I look at it and I breathe.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I look at it and I and I just bait, I notice it, I notice it's gold, I notice it, it's got jewels in it, I notice.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So even in the awareness, you're in can you see how you're removing the focus from the way that you're feeling and making it outward to create this sense of relaxation?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the anchor object ideally is something that you can actually tangibly feel, and if that's not possible, or you want to kind of like double up on it, you can have something that you can see visually and make that a visual anchor that creates this emotional uh shift with intention.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: The last one is um something that uh I came across when I did my recent retraining, and there was a woman on the stage getting coached, and the trainer said, Okay, and relax your vagina.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole room just like creased up.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, No, relax the vagina, and we're all sitting in there in the room, and we're all like, relax my vagina.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It really works when you just relax.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a little bit of a question.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a question?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've got something to propose to you for those of you who've been married for a long time, um, or have been in a long-term relationship.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want to offer you how you might have experienced this now or in the past.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But before I go into that, there's something else that you need to know is that the the vagina and the jaw are intrinsically um connected.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: When I do somatic practice with my clients, I will often take them through the somatic practice through the four diaphragm to the body.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we start with the mouth, we move down to the actual diaphragm, the breathing diaphragm, then we go to the pelvic floor diaphragm, and then we go to the diaphragm on the tripod of the foot, the archway of your foot.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a direct relation to the your between your vagina and your jaw.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when you say relax your vagina, it will have a knock-on effect if you think of it going up the ladder.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Equally so, you can go it the other way around.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can relax your jaw first, and then notice how that impacts downwards into your pelvic bowl, into your vaginal area, and just relax there.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: No one's going to see you do it unless you have a smile on your face, which I hope is true for you.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, one of the things as I was coaching a client on this this morning, and we was it was very interesting because the conversation had kind of like diverted here, and we had I had no idea at the time why, but I'm coaching this woman through really being able to um access and utilize her voice powerfully.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I mentioned to her about the root chakra, where we decide that I am, which we develop from a very, very, very early age, and that the shadow aspect of the root chakra is repression.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, when it is clear we are certain in who I am, and can you see how it could be true that when we know who we are, we can articulate it and verbalise it outwardly easily and with confidence and with certainty.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: That therefore would imply that we're using our mouth effectively.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go the other way around.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I work with a lot of women, and this is true for so many of us.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's the it's it's the it's the norm rather than the exception that at some point in our life we have experienced repression.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your parents, like mine, came up in an era where children were seen and not heard, and so you heard that story.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your parents were like mine, and there was lots of limitation around money.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I came from a working class family, I was brought up in a council estate.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we were that when my sister and I went to the grammar school, we were like from the poorer end of town, if you like.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very natural that we learn how to repress parts of ourselves that are deemed insufficient or inadequate, or that we've got to hide them away.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of a natural part of growing up, and maybe as well as that, the next natural part of growing up is to release that so you can step into the fullness of who you truly are and express that fully into the world.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it got me to thinking with this particular lady.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I shared with her about repression being the shadow aspect of the root chakra, and how if we can work on the repression, we can allow that sort of um that sense of certainty and the I am travel up through her chakras, out through, up through her heart and out through her mouth.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: I then offered her an example of what I've seen in my own life with my first husband and in other people that I've coached up until now.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, is it fair to say that when you've been in a relationship for a long time, communication isn't always a top priority and it can get a little bit challenging.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're sharing children, when you've had children with somebody, and a woman can often find herself balancing all the plates, spinning all the plates, you know, maybe she's working, she's running the house, she's looking after the kids, she's taking full responsibility for so many things, and resentment can build up.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, one of the things that women will do is they will turn off the sexual aspect of the marriage or the relationship because they don't feel seen, heard, respected, understood, because they're struggling to make that physical connection because they don't have the emotional connection, because there's a part of them that thinks, well, if I don't get what I want, then you're not getting what you want.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It can become quite resentful, right?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: This was certainly my experience in my first marriage.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm being totally transparent, and I have seen this play out so many times with clients.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So then they shut off their womanly parts, if you like.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like the, you know, the door's shut and they start to move through the world, close down in that root chakra area.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, what you can see happening almost in unison, it's not necessarily that one causes the other, maybe it's happening in duality, is that they stop saying what they want.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: They stop trying to voice their opinion because it's not heard, and they've just had the same argument so many times, like, what's the point?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: They stop saying really who they are, and then we put ourselves, we put ourselves, then we experience this season where like Mother Nature throws us into this neurological and hormonal turmoil where we literally become a different person.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And how the hell can we speak now?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't even know who we are.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Our husband thinks we've gone completely cray-cray, and then do we just not speak because we just don't know what to say and we don't want to be laughed at or ridiculed or rejected.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see what I'm saying?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Can you see how we can create this limitation in our life through this closing, literal closing up of our of our like um sexual organs, our you know, our vaginal area, and then how that can um have this relationship with us not speaking our truth, not speaking up, and we just get on with stuff, and life just becomes something that we get through rather than something that we create and enjoy.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's just a different way to look at it, and it just came through today, like literally a couple of hours ago when I was working with my client, I thought I have to share this in a podcast because I've seen it so many times, and would it wouldn't it be lovely if the first thing that we did is we actually started to relax our vaginas, which allows us to relax our jaws, and maybe that's the first step in communicating more effectively, and not just repairing relationships, but actually creating brand new relationships based on the person that you are now.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's certainly my experience right now.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Anywho, I kind of went off on a little bit of a divergent pathway there, and that's all good because if you listen to enough of these by now, you know it happens when I get in a little bit of a flow, and I trust that you got what you needed.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So just remember these five simple practices that no one needs to see you doing that are going to help you regulate your nervous system in the moment.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is hold your own hand, literally and metaphorically.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is 4-8 breathing, number three is the body scan, number four is the anchor object, and number five is relax your vagina.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a really important one for women.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you love this and you found it helpful, please do share it on your social media.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Drop me a tag.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would love, love, love for you to subscribe and leave me a um a review that would be super helpful for me getting this podcast out to more people.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I will speak to you again in the next episode of the Seeking Simplicity podcast.