Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 171 | Nervous System Regulation: Simple Practices to Reduce Money Stress
Transcript
- 0:00Erin Gray: I wanted to share a couple of resources that I have given to clients to help them get into their body and calm their nervous system when they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed or fearful.
- 0:10Erin Gray: A lot of times, obviously, this comes around money, but it can be used for any area of your life.
- 0:15Erin Gray: You know, so many of us have operated of years in survival, you know, that fight, flight, freeze, and now they have added to the list fawn response, which is like people pleasing.
- 0:25Erin Gray: And so getting to the point where we normalize feeling calm is actually what we're after.
- 0:29Erin Gray: So let's dive in.
- 0:30Erin Gray: Okay, so let me start by saying I am not a doctor.
- 0:33Erin Gray: Most of what I teach you is coming from my experience with myself and my clients.
- 0:39Erin Gray: It's includes my own research, my own tools, my own teachers and mentors that I have hired and worked with to help me and ultimately my own embodiment.
- 0:49Erin Gray: Like I've taken all of these resources that are already existing and I have used them on myself and my clients and really embodied it, not just talking about it at a knowledge standpoint.
- 1:01Erin Gray: So you have to take what I teach you, go off on your own, play with it and see what works for you.
- 1:07Erin Gray: Not everything that I am going to suggest today and in the past and moving forward on any podcast is going to resonate with you.
- 1:15Erin Gray: And that's okay.
- 1:16Erin Gray: But you have to take it.
- 1:17Erin Gray: Like one of my biggest things I want each of you to embody is that you've got to take it through your filter, through your own intuition and see what is best for you and what best supports you.
- 1:28Erin Gray: So I want to start first with just explaining a little bit about the vagus nerve.
- 1:33Erin Gray: There's plenty of information on the internet and YouTube that you can go and watch, but a lot of these, or all of I should say, all of these recommendations that I'm going to give you, some of these exercises, it all comes back to the vagus nerve.
- 1:45Erin Gray: So the vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, and it is responsible for regulating bodily functions such as digestion, heart rate, stress response, to name a few.
- 1:56Erin Gray: So the vagus nerve extends from the brainstem down the neck all the way into the abdomen.
- 2:03Erin Gray: And then it branches out to various different organs.
- 2:06Erin Gray: And research, there's some research that says that it carries approximately 75% of the parasympathetic nervous system, which that goes back to the rest and digest, the calm, right?
- 2:17Erin Gray: So there are several functions of the vagus nerve.
- 2:20Erin Gray: And I'm not going to name them all here, but some of them will include like heart rate regulation, right?
- 2:27Erin Gray: The vagus nerve helps lower the heart rate and the blood pressure, counteracting the effects of that sympathetic, which is the stress response, right?
- 2:34Erin Gray: That's that fight or flight or freeze response.
- 2:38Erin Gray: It also helps with mood and stress response.
- 2:41Erin Gray: So it influences mood, it helps emotional regulation, it helps the body to return to a calm state after stress.
- 2:48Erin Gray: And I want to say here too, that stress isn't a bad thing.
- 2:52Erin Gray: There's, gosh, I'm forgetting.
- 2:53Erin Gray: I think there's eustress and then like stress.
- 2:55Erin Gray: Like eustress is just a total fine stress, like right when you're trying to like go play a basketball game or you know, you're needing something to do quick stress, right?
- 3:04Erin Gray: Like that's okay.
- 3:05Erin Gray: It's the prolonged stress that a lot of us are under and maybe not even aware of that that is not helpful to the body.
- 3:13Erin Gray: So immune function is another one that the vagus nerve is involved in, is the immune response helping to modulate inflammation and immune activity.
- 3:21Erin Gray: So many of these exercises, or I should say all of these exercises that I'm going to give you to practice and play with today are going to affect the vagus nerve, which in turn will affect the parasympathetic nervous system, which ultimately is that rest and digest, that calming.
- 3:38Erin Gray: So I always like to start the first one is our breath.
- 3:41Erin Gray: We always have it.
- 3:42Erin Gray: We can always tune into it.
- 3:44Erin Gray: It is right there.
- 3:45Erin Gray: It's nothing else that we need to go get up and go do.
- 3:47Erin Gray: We always can notice and focus on our breath.
- 3:50Erin Gray: One of the things that I had to start doing is putting a timer on my phone and recognizing every hour what was my breath like?
- 3:56Erin Gray: Was I even breathing, like actually deep into the belly, or was I just like, you know, like kind of that like shallow breathing?
- 4:04Erin Gray: So check in with yourself, check in with how you are feeling, how you are breathing.
- 4:09Erin Gray: Is it light and shallow?
- 4:10Erin Gray: Is your breath light and shallow?
- 4:12Erin Gray: Or is it down to your belly?
- 4:15Erin Gray: And one of the things that you can do is inhale, let's just say for a count of four, and exhale for a count of eight.
- 4:22Erin Gray: Now, the inhale and the exhale amount of seconds, that's not as important as making the exhale longer than the inhale, because when we breathe deeply and slowly, right, when we exhale, we engage the diaphragm and that activation or that activates the vagus nerve.
- 4:43Erin Gray: So if you were to put your hand kind of like where your belly button is, and you were to inhale and then you were to exhale, your belly should be pushing out, right?
- 4:54Erin Gray: You shouldn't be breathing from the upper part of your lungs.
- 4:57Erin Gray: It should really be the belly is or the diaphragm is going down and pushing the belly out.
- 5:04Erin Gray: Another option that you have is rubbing your eyes closed.
- 5:08Erin Gray: They're closed eyes, I should say.
- 5:10Erin Gray: So close your eyes and rub them softly.
- 5:13Erin Gray: And like I mentioned, all of these things, these tips that I'm giving you, or these exercises, they're going to activate the vagus nerve.
- 5:20Erin Gray: So you can use multiple different ones that you want to to just really, and I think it's a beautiful thing because you're able to slow down and tap into the body and really give yourself a couple of seconds to see also how you're feeling.
- 5:33Erin Gray: So if you close your eyes and you just rub them softly, that also activates the vagus nerve.
- 5:42Erin Gray: Another one is if you are looking straight ahead, keep your head straight.
- 5:45Erin Gray: Don't move your head, but move your eyes.
- 5:48Erin Gray: So move them to the left and then move them to the right.
- 5:53Erin Gray: And then, you know, you can hold it for like five seconds looking to the left and then look to the right for five seconds.
- 5:59Erin Gray: And like do that multiple times.
- 6:01Erin Gray: That's also going to activate the vagus nerve.
- 6:04Erin Gray: The other one is you can put your, like take your index finger and put it.
- 6:10Erin Gray: If you take your earlobe, if you're wearing earrings and you go behind the earlobe, put pressure with your finger on each side right behind your earlobe.
- 6:20Erin Gray: And you can just sit there and just put pressure, and that will also just see how you feel in your body after you put pressure.
- 6:28Erin Gray: Not one of my favorites is taking an ice pack and putting it on your neck for five minutes.
- 6:33Erin Gray: I'm sure it's probably very helpful, but I haven't done that.
- 6:36Erin Gray: I don't necessarily like that cold and hot whole thing.
- 6:40Erin Gray: So that's just not something that I want to do.
- 6:41Erin Gray: I use a lot of the other ones to calm.
- 6:44Erin Gray: You can also massage your carotid artery.
- 6:47Erin Gray: One of the things that my child does unconsciously is she hums.
- 6:52Erin Gray: And that is another way, like humming or singing is another way to access the vagus nerve and it's calming and soothing the nervous system.
- 7:01Erin Gray: So humming and singing, and you can just hum or you can sing.
- 7:04Erin Gray: You know, it doesn't have to be belting out, you know, a song.
- 7:07Erin Gray: It can just like my husband and my daughter do this a lot.
- 7:09Erin Gray: They just hum a lot.
- 7:11Erin Gray: Laughing is another one.
- 7:12Erin Gray: And then there is something called orienting, which is five, four, three, two, one.
- 7:17Erin Gray: I have talked about this in previous episodes.
- 7:19Erin Gray: So the five stands for notate or call out five things that you can see, right?
- 7:25Erin Gray: So I see a window, I see my clock on my desk, I see the computer, I see my drink, I see my tissue box, right?
- 7:36Erin Gray: Noticing what you see.
- 7:37Erin Gray: Four is the touch.
- 7:39Erin Gray: So four things that you can physically feel.
- 7:42Erin Gray: So, you know, I feel the chair underneath me, I feel my legs on the floor, I feel my sweater on my skin, you know, my hand is on the mouse.
- 7:55Erin Gray: Just notating and saying those things out loud and also like feeling them, right?
- 8:00Erin Gray: Seeing them.
- 8:01Erin Gray: The third one, the number three is hearing.
- 8:05Erin Gray: So listen carefully and identify three sounds around you.
- 8:08Erin Gray: So maybe you hear the like the clock ticking or the birds outside, or like I hear my voice as I'm talking.
- 8:16Erin Gray: The two stands for smell.
- 8:17Erin Gray: So bring awareness to the two cents that you are smelling and can detect.
- 8:22Erin Gray: So maybe if you have your cup of coffee, you can smell your coffee, or you have a candle burning, or you know, lift up and look at like if you've got your journal or pieces of paper on your desk.
- 8:31Erin Gray: Like, can you smell that?
- 8:32Erin Gray: Can you smell your skin?
- 8:34Erin Gray: Like, just notice things that you can smell.
- 8:36Erin Gray: And number one is taste.
- 8:37Erin Gray: So, what is one thing that you can taste right now?
- 8:40Erin Gray: If you have a, you know, a mint or just the physical sensations in your mouth, what are you noticing?
- 8:48Erin Gray: I am going to also put a link for an article that I read just in preparation to kind of explain more of the science-y part of the vagus nerve.
- 8:58Erin Gray: If that is something that interests you, I'll put a link in the show notes for an article with more of that information.
- 9:04Erin Gray: You know, like I mentioned, you have YouTube, you have so many great resources.
- 9:08Erin Gray: But the thing that I want you to pay attention to, and the most important thing that I want you to gather from this and take away from this, how often are you actually activating your vagus nerve?
- 9:17Erin Gray: How often are you noticing and focusing on your breath and breathing and slowly and more deeply?
- 9:22Erin Gray: How often are you checking in with your body and just noticing what are your shoulders doing?
- 9:27Erin Gray: What is your breath doing?
- 9:28Erin Gray: How are you holding yourself?
- 9:30Erin Gray: What are you feeling in your body?
- 9:32Erin Gray: You know, I had a client the other day.
- 9:34Erin Gray: She was like, okay, Erin, I understand what you're telling me, but actually, how do I do this?
- 9:40Erin Gray: And we went like step by step.
- 9:42Erin Gray: I think so many of us have gotten away from being connected to the body, you know.
- 9:48Erin Gray: So when you sit down with your money, are you just going through the motions or are you actually sitting down and being present?
- 9:55Erin Gray: Are you trying to just close the laptop or just get the task done as quickly as possible?
- 9:59Erin Gray: Or are you noticing the sensations in your body?
- 10:02Erin Gray: That is what I would prefer that you do is take more time and notice the sensations in your body.
- 10:07Erin Gray: You know, how often are you supporting yourself and doing these things and sitting down and taking the time versus just like rushing through?
- 10:14Erin Gray: And I know that this is awareness.
- 10:17Erin Gray: This is also steps in the process, right?
- 10:19Erin Gray: Like my process or my journey was I was just like noticing how quickly I was trying to get through with it and then making the conscious decision and effort of like, okay, I'm just gonna sit down and I'm gonna notice how I feel in your body.
- 10:32Erin Gray: So you get the point that I'm trying to drive home here is just how are you supporting yourself?
- 10:38Erin Gray: How are you staying in that more parasympathetic rest and digest more and out of that fight or flight?
- 10:45Erin Gray: You know?
- 10:46Erin Gray: And when you notice when you're in fight or flight, are you aware of it and are you using the tools to actually support you?
- 10:52Erin Gray: Or are you saying, this is inconvenient for me right now?
- 10:55Erin Gray: I need to keep going, or I don't have time for this, or whatever other self abandonment, you know, statements that we do.
- 11:02Erin Gray: What are you noticing?
- 11:03Erin Gray: What are you doing in those moments of when you are feeling stressed?
- 11:06Erin Gray: Are you actually taking the time to slow down and care for yourself?
- 11:10Erin Gray: Okay, that's all I have for you today.
- 11:12Erin Gray: I will see you in the next episode.