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46: Feeling Overloaded? Everyday Practices to Calm Your Nervous System · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:26
  Polly Mertens: hey superstars, welcome Polly here here and sam pruitt, what's up?
• 0:31
  Polly Mertens: Beautiful humans you guys.
• 0:33
  Polly Mertens: So again, here we are about to talk about something that samantha and I are just deep steeped in and are thinking that our, our listeners as well, or, you know, we can all learn from this.
• 0:45
  Polly Mertens: So we're calling this one recalibrating the nervous system, right.
• 0:50
  Polly Mertens: And you know, I just want to talk a little bit macroly, macro, macroly I don't know if that's the word, but you know what I mean.
• 0:56
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, on the macro.
• 0:57
  Polly Mertens: On the macro, you know we've got a coming up on the holidays.
• 1:02
  Polly Mertens: We're recording this in November, early November actually, so much so that we haven't even had the election, so this will come out after the election.
• 1:09
  Polly Mertens: But there's just a lot in people's global consciousness.
• 1:13
  Polly Mertens: I feel the vibration is just very high, very high.
• 1:16
  Polly Mertens: But for you and I you were out on your yet another training for Ironman they just don't stop.
• 1:24
  Polly Mertens: They just don't stop, they just don't stop.
• 1:27
  Samantha Pruitt: So you texted me earlier and you're like, okay, all the monkey you know I call it monkey mind all that monkey mind going on.
• 1:33
  Polly Mertens: I call it evil twin.
• 1:35
  Polly Mertens: Evil twin, right.
• 1:36
  Polly Mertens: And so part of what we wanted to share with you guys today about recalibrating because I've got, you know, I literally spoke with my naturopath on Friday and you know he literally spoke with my naturopath on Friday and you know he's like, oh, you're taking this, this, this, whatever.
• 1:49
  Polly Mertens: And I'm like, dude, stress is at a 10, you know, like the stress has been at a 10.
• 1:56
  Polly Mertens: And he's like virtually writing me a prescription for more groundedness.
• 1:58
  Polly Mertens: He's like, girl, like you need to get, you know you can do all these things, but like get grounded.
• 2:01
  Polly Mertens: I do a lot of yin exercise, yin yang, so meaning high intensity or strength building.
• 2:08
  Polly Mertens: It's like pushing the body, and he's like put some yang in there.
• 2:11
  Polly Mertens: So we talked about that.
• 2:14
  Polly Mertens: So tell me about your bike ride this morning and your monkey mind was going off and around self-coaching right, around self-coaching, right.
• 2:24
  Polly Mertens: That's really what the message, part of what we want to get across today is like the importance of not only recalibrating but taking it upon ourselves right To do it.
• 2:30
  Polly Mertens: Exactly Taking ownership and self-coaching and learning these skills.
• 2:34
  Polly Mertens: So you can, you know, reign this stuff in Well, coming off of an illness.
• 2:41
  Polly Mertens: And you know, I've got, literally, you know, two weeks from this morning, as I got on my bike, I will be towing the line at Ironman, arizona, right, and not feeling great Like there's a lot of stuff going on in the world, but that said, I didn't want to get on the bike and the body.
• 3:01
  Polly Mertens: The body and the mind were like no, this is not what you should be doing, I'm not into it.
• 3:06
  Polly Mertens: Resistance, resistance.
• 3:07
  Polly Mertens: And so I get on the bike anyway, because it is a requirement today.
• 3:11
  Polly Mertens: And then I knew I had to swim afterwards also.
• 3:14
  Polly Mertens: But my brain and body were totally in resistance mode and my evil twin, the monkey mind, was just chatter, chatter, chatter.
• 3:22
  Polly Mertens: Oh, this doesn't feel good.
• 3:25
  Polly Mertens: You know, the bike's not fitting you like it was.
• 3:27
  Polly Mertens: I mean, I just had a tune up and I put new tires on.
• 3:30
  Polly Mertens: So I was like the bike doesn't fit anymore, everything hurts.
• 3:33
  Polly Mertens: I don't know how to ride the bike anymore.
• 3:36
  Polly Mertens: It was just this whole insanity of chit chat.
• 3:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Just this barrage.
• 3:44
  Polly Mertens: Literally on this.
• 3:45
  Polly Mertens: My evil twin was like you're not even a triathlete anymore.
• 3:48
  Polly Mertens: What the hell happened to you?
• 3:49
  Polly Mertens: The wheels really fell off the bus in three weeks and it was totally nuts and I had to just pause.
• 4:00
  Polly Mertens: I mean I kept my legs rotating around but literally shifted down super light gear just cruising and be like okay, settle down.
• 4:09
  Polly Mertens: It is time to recalibrate this nervous system that is completely ramped up beyond recognition, and to have an honest conversation with yourself and talk for real about what is reality, not all these stories, not all these emotional, you know, pings and pangs of things that are that are not real.
• 4:30
  Polly Mertens: I've been a traveling.
• 4:31
  Polly Mertens: I mean I started when I was 30, 55.
• 4:35
  Polly Mertens: I think I know how to swim, bike and run, but I was like I can't do it or the bike not fitting.
• 4:43
  Polly Mertens: I mean this is ludicrous, or that I am out of shape because I've had a big business trip for two weeks which was physical, very physically active, and then I got a flu bug that I'm all of a sudden deconditioned after all of this.
• 4:57
  Polly Mertens: I mean thousands of miles and hundreds of hours.
• 5:01
  Polly Mertens: It's just the insanity of that not being true.
• 5:04
  Polly Mertens: It's hilarious, yeah.
• 5:07
  Polly Mertens: And so I started to get myself sorted out, and then I also started to do what I really needed to do, which was get real in the moment of where I was.
• 5:17
  Polly Mertens: So bring myself back into.
• 5:18
  Polly Mertens: Okay, right now you're currently on your bike.
• 5:21
  Polly Mertens: You haven't ridden your bike in three weeks.
• 5:23
  Polly Mertens: This is amazing.
• 5:25
  Polly Mertens: Look how beautiful it is out here.
• 5:28
  Polly Mertens: It's fall in the desert now.
• 5:29
  Polly Mertens: When I left it was a hundred degrees, now it's 75.
• 5:31
  Polly Mertens: It's gorgeous, like being aware of the sun on my body and the beauty of the nature around me and all of it, all of it, you know, getting really true and grounded in what is real and what is now allowed me to bring my heart rate down, calm myself down and then, of course, go on with the next two and a half hours of spinning my legs in circles.
• 5:57
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so that was my morning.
• 5:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's, yeah, so it's that self-coaching.
• 6:01
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what's really important that I think you and I we've talked a lot in other episodes about emotional fitness, right, and we talked about how our emotional system you know, I look at us as you know energy bodies with multiple bodies physical body, emotional, spiritual, physical we got this emotional body that can get all out of whack, based on stories and people and interactions and the environment or thought, old thoughts, memories, whatever, right?
• 6:25
  Samantha Pruitt: So we get this dysregulation in the emotional body and what you're getting is like this physical body and we tie it in with the nervous system and we'll go into a little bit.
• 6:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe now we'll just talk about the regulation of the state that we want to be in.
• 6:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And many of you've heard of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system, right, and, and so the sympathetic nervous system is our fight and flight.
• 6:46
  Samantha Pruitt: You know it's our fight, flight, freeze it's, you know, response to something threatening, if you will.
• 6:50
  Samantha Pruitt: These days, email can be threatening.
• 6:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Social media posts can be threatening.
• 6:55
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 6:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 6:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Text can be threatening, right?
• 6:57
  Samantha Pruitt: We're not fighting lions and tigers and bears anymore, we're fighting, you know, insults or people in the grocery store are being cut off or taxes, but your nervous system or your brain doesn't know the difference.
• 7:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, 100%, 100%.
• 7:11
  Polly Mertens: Isn't that mind boggling?
• 7:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, it's just shows how fast we're evolving and our mind just hasn't caught up.
• 7:19
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, you've got this 2 million year old mammalian brain in the back of our head base of our neck.
• 7:27
  Samantha Pruitt: That's still there.
• 7:28
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like it's, you know, but it's designed to keep the species going.
• 7:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So God bless it.
• 7:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, it's got a purpose.
• 7:30
  Samantha Pruitt: We just need to, as you said, self-coach, self-soothe, self-regulate notice what's going on and what we want to live in is not the sympathetic, we want to live in the parasympathetic, which is where rest and digest, which is where I would say, vitality, longevity, ease, well-being is our natural state, right, and it's those moments when we get out of it.
• 7:50
  Samantha Pruitt: And so one of the things you and I wanted to talk about and bring up to people is the thing that we've been studying.
• 7:56
  Samantha Pruitt: I think we're on the I don't know how long it's been studied but the vagus nerve.
• 8:00
  Samantha Pruitt: You and I are coming more and more into messages around it and learning about it, and so we just want to throw in here vagus, v-a-g-u-s vagus nerve.
• 8:09
  Samantha Pruitt: If you want to go look it up, it is a nerve.
• 8:13
  Samantha Pruitt: It literally, I think, as I recall it goes like down the front of your chest into your digestion.
• 8:17
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's this major from your brain, yeah, from your brain, and it's like sending signals, mostly to your gut, your heart gut.
• 8:31
  Samantha Pruitt: You know it's this whole controlling, that, it's the trigger that says, okay, everything is well in the body, in the world, in the environment, we can stay in the parasympathetic and when something knocks us out of whack it goes oh, got to get into the sympathetic right and it sends signals to the digestion, to the heart rate, to the muscles, all these things to, you know, move blood to the right places to so that we can run to fight.
• 8:53
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, adrenaline gets pumped whatever it is.
• 8:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But as human beings in a very sophisticated world these days we're, a lot of us are living in that, you know, parasympathetic, I'm sorry, sympathetic state, that heightened state of awareness, often depending on the work or the family or the situation right.
• 9:12
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and that serves a purpose at some small times in our lives.
• 9:17
  Polly Mertens: Maybe there's moments you actually are fighting for your life, or maybe there are moments you want to reach a very high athletic or physical performance.
• 9:26
  Polly Mertens: Like it's there for very specific reasons, not to every day be our way of being in the world.
• 9:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, now you, you can go into it every day.
• 9:38
  Samantha Pruitt: It's what we're wanting to point out.
• 9:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Is so what I think you did so beautifully on your bike and something that I just this past weekend, have been looking at.
• 9:47
  Samantha Pruitt: As you know, I get this sort of virtual prescription from my naturopath, like more yang, more groundedness, more, you know, chill, right, yeah, get out of that.
• 9:58
  Samantha Pruitt: You know constant adrenal, you know, and so what he's talking about is you know, my adrenals are being taxed because of all the stress that I perceive in my work and whatnot, and so it's about you know how do you get grounded.
• 10:11
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what are some of the techniques.
• 10:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Do you do it ongoing?
• 10:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Do you do it once in a while?
• 10:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Do you do it on the weekend?
• 10:16
  Samantha Pruitt: You know whatever.
• 10:16
  Samantha Pruitt: And so we wanted to just open up this conversation to explore some things that you and I do for ourselves, and explore some things that you and I do for ourselves, and you know we love feedback.
• 10:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you want to share, you know and comment, or let us know what you found that works, but what?
• 10:30
  Samantha Pruitt: What are some of the things that you've done for yourself?
• 10:33
  Polly Mertens: or you know, like you, just the self-talk sounded like self-talk today was part of it and I think a bit like yeah, I use the word all the time, you know recalibration because I think of, based on what I do for work, but also physically as an athlete um, I, I tend to cycle in and out of it with intention.
• 10:55
  Polly Mertens: There are definitely periods of time where I need to be in that super high space which is exhausting, but for small periods of time it's appropriate.
• 11:06
  Polly Mertens: But then when that is over, when a event is produced and the race is over for example, recently just producing one of the world championships for ironman when that is over and the last finisher finishes and everybody's home safe and sound, it's time to bring it back down.
• 11:26
  Polly Mertens: So I think, okay, it's time for me to recalibrate my vibration, my energy, my thought process.
• 11:32
  Polly Mertens: I need to bring my heart rate down.
• 11:34
  Polly Mertens: I need to do these tools that we're going to talk about in order to self-regulate or recalibrate myself back into reality into that state you're referring to, or even with the people that I work with, because people co-regulate each other.
• 11:52
  Polly Mertens: Oh yeah, be around real zingers, full of anxiety, full of stress, full of anger, full of whatever they're at, and they will absolutely bring you into their state, vibrationally and otherwise, verbally, physically, and all that and you will match their vibration, even though you want nothing to do with it.
• 12:12
  Polly Mertens: And whatever's going on there has nothing to do with you or you and I routinely recalibrate each other and bring each other into this relaxed state we're referring to.
• 12:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, totally, you know one thing I noticed, you know, having jobs in Silicon Valley over the years and then going and taking, you know I'll go to Mexico for a weekend or a week or whatever and I can remember times where it was like it was like day two or three into the quote vacation.
• 12:41
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, oh, I finally feel like I'm on big.
• 12:44
  Samantha Pruitt: You know just that.
• 12:45
  Samantha Pruitt: That, that slowing things down, you know your shoulders come off your ears, they go down to where they normally sit, right, your heart rate kind of soothes you just feel ease, you feel at ease in your body, right.
• 12:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And what we're trying to point out is, you know that downshifting into that state and I'm not saying like, okay, you can be at work and just be in vacation mode, it's not exactly the same but noticing if you are keeping yourself in an elevated state, is it necessary or is it just perception?
• 13:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, like you could have done that whole ride, just pissed off and frustrated and angst about being on the bike, and you know you could have let that chatter continue, but instead you're like hold up, hold on right.
• 13:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like let me slow this down.
• 13:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Take a wider perspective.
• 13:35
  Samantha Pruitt: One of the things you and I have talked about recently is like finding the goal right.
• 13:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And so you've got this beautiful environment, you're out on your bike, it's a beautiful day, you've got three hours to yourself, it's like going for a nice little ride here.
• 13:47
  Polly Mertens: Oh, it's a mini vacation.
• 13:49
  Polly Mertens: What am I talking about?
• 13:51
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it totally is.
• 13:52
  Polly Mertens: It totally is a mini vacation.
• 13:53
  Polly Mertens: Isn't it funny?
• 13:54
  Polly Mertens: Haven't you had those vacations where it's not even a vacation?
• 13:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh God.
• 13:58
  Polly Mertens: Because you jam packed it with things and then the travel was horrible on the front and the back and then you were with people who were cray cray, so you know, and then you get done with a vacation.
• 14:07
  Polly Mertens: You're like I'm exhausted, that's vacation for my vacation.
• 14:12
  Polly Mertens: Do not do one of those.
• 14:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So like one of the.
• 14:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So after hearing that from my naturopath on Friday, I was like, all right, how can I do some Yang things this weekend?
• 14:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And so I just like really just opened up the you know like what would be yang and, uh, what that felt like you know.
• 14:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So you know I do a lot of hiking, beautiful mountains and hard charging up the hill and stuff.
• 14:34
  Samantha Pruitt: And I went okay, if I don't want to get sweaty and my heart rate up, like that's not the purpose of this so I just went for this beautiful woods walk, you know, the Bob Jones trail in San Luis Obispo area.
• 14:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So I just went on this beautiful nature walk and I was just looking at the trees and smiling at the people, like for nothing Like, and it and it was like after being on for so many days, like it was a little bit like wild horses in my body were like well, we could just jog lightly, jog you know, it just was, you know, kind of your monkey mind telling you no, no, no, no, no.
• 15:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Mine was kind of like why aren't we going faster and how long is this going to go on?
• 15:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Shouldn't we go to?
• 15:09
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, get stuff to do?
• 15:11
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, hold up.
• 15:12
  Samantha Pruitt: We're just taking a walk in the woods and noticing I mean I would stop and I would look at a tree and just how it was on the side of the hill and just taking it and the birds were flying like half a mile up.
• 15:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, oh, my god, just taking it all in right.
• 15:27
  Samantha Pruitt: And then after that I brought my bathing suit and I went on little hot springs there in avalach just went oh, look at you, I know.
• 15:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And I just was like I'm just gonna sit in this little hot springs little sofa getting all the little minerals and just watching this, watching the, watching the birds fly.
• 15:43
  Samantha Pruitt: That was all I was doing you know, exactly, exactly.
• 15:48
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it is something that everybody wrestles with because there are the demands of life.
• 15:55
  Polly Mertens: But, there also are self-imposed demands, right.
• 16:00
  Polly Mertens: So it's also like understanding your bandwidth and your capabilities, and your capacities for certain times, days, cycles, et cetera.
• 16:09
  Polly Mertens: You have a massive workload right now.
• 16:11
  Polly Mertens: I have a seasonally massive workload right now.
• 16:14
  Polly Mertens: You know, in a perfect world I would not be training for an Ironman on top of that right, but lots of things happened that made me move my race all the way to the fall, but anyway.
• 16:22
  Polly Mertens: So sometimes, like we set ourselves up for a bit of craziness, and you know, knowing that, because we're all intelligent enough to know what we've put on our plate yeah Right, knowing that, and like you and I say all the time, clear the decks, clean the plate, you know, removing stuff or just taking moments, like you did today, carving out this half day or whatever it was, to say, okay, we are going to be taking this down a few notches and I'm going to be absolutely balancing out my energy here or me doing the same thing.
• 16:57
  Polly Mertens: I get a lot of that in the pool I was talking to you about.
• 17:00
  Polly Mertens: I also went swimming today and of course, I'm swimming a lot too, training for this thing.
• 17:03
  Polly Mertens: But just being in the pool for me is very flow and rhythmic and calming.
• 17:09
  Polly Mertens: You know you're in water, you're weightless, you're breathing very ideally slow and controlled and methodical, you know, along with your strokes and things like that, and it's so calming and soothing to my nervous system.
• 17:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 17:24
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and it's like there's so many opportunities around us, activity wise, like you stated, and I have stated where you can do an activity so you don't have to just lay down on your bed and close your eyes and meditate Maybe that too, yeah, that's amazing.
• 17:39
  Polly Mertens: Or just breathing.
• 17:41
  Samantha Pruitt: And one of the things we note about.
• 17:43
  Samantha Pruitt: You know everybody's a little different, so you have a side of you that's very outgoing and wants to be with people and community and stuff like that, and so at times you're like, give me the people right, and then times you're like get away from me, people you know.
• 17:55
  Samantha Pruitt: And so, depending on what feels good for you being with people and finding connection, whether it's one on one or one on many, or just being in a pleasant environment, going to a yoga studio that's full of people that are just in savasana maybe that's the thing you know or you just need to be at home and petting your cat.
• 18:13
  Samantha Pruitt: You know you decide what self-regulating is for you.
• 18:17
  Samantha Pruitt: What we're talking about is, or what I want to shine a light on, is self-coaching and self-soothing and self-regulating for your nervous system, for your well-being, right.
• 18:27
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like bringing you back into you and you know.
• 18:29
  Samantha Pruitt: I want to talk for a minute about something that I learned about and I think you know about the HeartMath Institute, which is Joe Dispenza and Craig Brayden, and they have studied thousands of brains and they have this thing called HeartMath and it's the study of the coherence, right.
• 18:47
  Samantha Pruitt: So I often picture when I've watched their work and you can see Joe Dispenza and Greg Braden videos on YouTube all day long.
• 18:53
  Samantha Pruitt: They talk about the coherence between the brain and the heart and there's a brain in the heart, but the two organs, if you will, and I think of it like a, like a figure eight, and it's like you just send the energy back and forth and a figure eight from your head to your heart, your head to your heart, and it's bringing it back into balance.
• 19:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And what they do when they train people is we've talked about biofeedback is they show you, like on a biofeedback screen, the two frequencies I think it is with like the rhythmic um, the energy.
• 19:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So one is um and let's see it's magnetic and the other one's energy.
• 19:34
  Samantha Pruitt: I forget what it is anyway.
• 19:35
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's like ekg.
• 19:38
  Samantha Pruitt: If they're out of whack, the two blips of the line are in, just they're just frantically going up and down and different, but when you get them in coherence, they're like beating, like one heartbeat on an ekg.
• 19:49
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's like it's paying attention to the breath, the heartbeat, the thoughts, and bringing it all into balance, bring it all like like a perfect dance together, the two of them, and that's that takes some practice, that takes some training, but if you want to go down that road, it's a beautiful alignment for imagination, creativity, wellbeing, thoughtfulness, just being in the world as well.
• 20:16
  Polly Mertens: That reminds me a lot about heart rate training, which is one of my certifications for training people to do health, wellness and fitness activities.
• 20:26
  Polly Mertens: However, it's also a huge indicator of your overall health mental, emotional, physical health and most of the listeners will be familiar.
• 20:36
  Polly Mertens: They either wear a whoop or they've got an Apple watch or whatever they're training for something.
• 20:40
  Polly Mertens: They've got a heart rate monitor on Right.
• 20:41
  Polly Mertens: So I just am so intrigued how many people use that as a training device to go do a workout and log the miles and the pace and whatever, but they don't really pay attention to the heart rate data.
• 20:55
  Polly Mertens: It's kind of the most important part, right.
• 20:58
  Polly Mertens: Our body is literally operating because we have this heart, and the health of this heart is paramount to a hundred percent of the functionality of the body.
• 21:08
  Polly Mertens: And so if you walk around every day with your heart rate elevated because of stress five beats, 10 beats, 15 beats by the way, this is very common people having high heart rate, high blood pressure, right, whether it's because they're in disease state or they're just stressed out and cortisol is pumping through every possible vessel and cell in their body the body is under stress, the heart is under stress, right, and that, just over time, wears and tears on that really beautiful heart that's trying to do its job.
• 21:45
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like driving your car, you know, in a down-regulated gear and you're trying to go fast.
• 21:50
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like you're in second gear and you're trying to go 50.
• 21:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like it ain't designed for that, you know.
• 21:57
  Polly Mertens: Yes, how I knew I was still sick and not ready to start training yet after this little bout of the flu is I went out to do a very easy jog, walk, you know, just start to get some running in again.
• 22:12
  Polly Mertens: And I couldn't get out of second year Like I literally was, like I got nothing, there's nothing here, I need to just walk and go home.
• 22:23
  Polly Mertens: I don't need to be like I'm going to force this, we're going to do no.
• 22:27
  Polly Mertens: It's completely counter to my body's health and also to my mental health.
• 22:33
  Samantha Pruitt: For sure, you know.
• 22:34
  Samantha Pruitt: And the other thing we wanted to talk about, um, I think that's important in you know, if we start to lean towards okay.
• 22:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you want to take on self-coaching, self-soothing, self-regulating, right, whether you're aware of it in the moment, or you're aware of it in a macro level, or you know you come off of a week of stress, or two weeks at Ironman, you know it's like, okay.
• 22:56
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, I saw that coming and I knew and had to plan like I always do, especially if I come back from a travel and I have this with travel too like okay, three or four days, dial it the hell down and focus on yeah sleep, nutrition, all these recovery elements, yeah speaking of travel, I learned long time ago that I never flew back the night before or the day before I went to work.
• 23:22
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, if I had a job that I was doing, it was like, no, it's always two days.
• 23:25
  Samantha Pruitt: So that you have that decompress.
• 23:27
  Samantha Pruitt: What do we used to call it?
• 23:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, there's like a deep um, re reemerge something, I forget what, but it's like, ah, gotta get out of that mode and into this new mode and you give yourself a little transition period, a buffer, right.
• 23:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So some of the things environmentally I wanted to talk about um, like you, and you've talked to me about this, how you do it is, um, you know, sound, changing the music you're listening to or the whatever's going in your ears.
• 23:55
  Samantha Pruitt: It could be a podcast, it could be some singing music, like you had a favorite CD.
• 24:02
  Polly Mertens: I did.
• 24:02
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, it's hilarious.
• 24:03
  Polly Mertens: When I started on my I guess you know health and spiritual journey now 25 years ago or whatever the heck it was, and I was really coming out of a lot of physical and mental illness and I had found I'd taken a weekend workshop and, you know, was working on my physical health and getting connected with my spiritual self and stuff like that, and the gal who was leading it was, you know, yogi and a musician and all these things.
• 24:28
  Polly Mertens: So she had this wonderful music she would expose us to live at the event.
• 24:33
  Polly Mertens: It was phenomenal and so I bought her CD and then I became completely hooked on this CD for years following Because with that became this vibration that brought with it a feeling that was so calming and so beautiful, and so I was telling you.
• 24:54
  Polly Mertens: I drove around, I had one of my car, I had one next to my bedside.
• 24:58
  Polly Mertens: This is when CD players were a thing.
• 24:59
  Polly Mertens: You know one of my living room, so I'd have these CDs all around and when I'd get stressed or anxious I would put it on and I'd bring myself back down, I would ground or recalibrate myself utilizing those words, that music, and a lot of people do this now with meditation.
• 25:15
  Polly Mertens: Of course, I got totally hooked on that and you know I still have that.
• 25:23
  Polly Mertens: I don't play it now because there's no CD player, but I was just thinking about it, you know, the other day, when I was talking to somebody else about this kind of thing and I need to find it and bring it back out.
• 25:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Sound is incredibly powerful.
• 25:32
  Samantha Pruitt: It's so well frequency, you know because it's frequency and you know you were talking about.
• 25:40
  Samantha Pruitt: You can be in a room with somebody.
• 25:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Their frequency can impact your frequency if you let it most of the time Good or bad?
• 25:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, and then the same with sound.
• 25:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So the music you put on, and so you know if you're listening to the news before bed, you know whatever.
• 25:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Like just who in the hell is still doing that?
• 25:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Excuse me, I know, I know, please, just want to like bang my head.
• 26:00
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like please, don't, please.
• 26:03
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I mean yeah.
• 26:04
  Polly Mertens: No to that.
• 26:05
  Polly Mertens: All right Sound, yep.
• 26:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And then eyes, visual, you know.
• 26:10
  Samantha Pruitt: So one of the things that I look at is I learned this Oprah had.
• 26:20
  Samantha Pruitt: I saw her being interviewed and she talked about how her I think it was her bedroom or her home.
• 26:22
  Samantha Pruitt: She said when I walk in, my home is an oasis.
• 26:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it is like my queendom.
• 26:26
  Samantha Pruitt: When I come home, it soothes me, you know.
• 26:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And so, whether you're whatever, however, your home is not only like how nicely you have it decorated, but is it clean, is it organized, is it free of clutter, is it well kept um?
• 26:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And your bedroom, same thing, even more so, like your bedroom, is where you go to slumber, right, does it soothe you, does it relax you, does it take you a notch, does it downshift you when you walk into it, does it feel good?
• 26:54
  Polly Mertens: right, your environment that you're exposing yourself to and submerging yourself in every day, your home environment, your car, your work environment.
• 27:04
  Polly Mertens: These are critical places of entryway.
• 27:08
  Polly Mertens: They're gateways basically into this opportunity for recalibration of the nervous system.
• 27:15
  Polly Mertens: Like I don't like messy places, as you know, not into messy, unorganized places.
• 27:23
  Polly Mertens: They give me anxiety, for whatever reason.
• 27:27
  Polly Mertens: That's how it impacts me, and so I like a clean house, a clean car, a clean office, all of that kind of stuff.
• 27:34
  Samantha Pruitt: So when.
• 27:34
  Polly Mertens: I go into other people's spaces that are not that way.
• 27:36
  Polly Mertens: It's uncomfortable for me, you know it's uncomfortable for me.
• 27:41
  Polly Mertens: And I do think how does this person feel right now when they're in their own space?
• 27:46
  Polly Mertens: How does this big pile of dishes or mess on the table, kitchen table that's taken over, or their clothes all over their bedroom floor?
• 27:55
  Polly Mertens: How is that not disrupting their peace of mind, their inner peace?
• 28:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, I get it and it goes to for the clutter.
• 28:04
  Samantha Pruitt: So I studied Feng Shui about 10, 15 years ago and the placement of things, the organization, the colors in your room, the you know, the just.
• 28:15
  Samantha Pruitt: I guess we don't want to hit, you know, belabor this, but just know on the micro level and we'll get to some like in the minute ways to help self-regulate, like you were doing self-talk on your bike and stuff like that.
• 28:27
  Samantha Pruitt: That had nothing to do with what was going on in your house and your drawers, right, but having a home or a car or a purse or whatever, those things that you see day in, day out that are well-kept, well-maintained, and, if not, maybe some of the investment of time to help your nervous system is you cleaning house, cleaning drawers.
• 28:47
  Samantha Pruitt: You know we've talked about this in other episodes.
• 28:49
  Polly Mertens: I use that.
• 28:50
  Polly Mertens: It's one of my recalibration tools, especially if I've been traveling a lot.
• 28:53
  Polly Mertens: And then I come home I clean my house.
• 28:56
  Polly Mertens: I haven't been in my house, by the way maybe my husband has, or maybe there was company over whatever but I clean the house because it's part of my therapeutic way of resetting and recalibrating.
• 29:10
  Polly Mertens: I'm back home, I'm grounded in my space and I'm nurturing myself through that process, part of the self-care.
• 29:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and we talked a little bit about you know your environment, so maybe it's connection and community that you need, you know.
• 29:24
  Samantha Pruitt: So maybe the recalibration is you've spent so much time focused on giving or whatever, and maybe you need to step back and give to yourself.
• 29:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Or maybe you've been so overloaded with demands at work and you need to be with friends and people that love you, or go out to dinner with people or whatever.
• 29:41
  Samantha Pruitt: It is so finding connection and community.
• 29:44
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I'd say the last one is you know movement, so does a form of movement help you feel more at ease?
• 29:54
  Samantha Pruitt: More yang than yin, you know to.
• 29:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe it's yoga for some people, maybe it's a walk in nature, maybe it's a bath, maybe it's stretching, maybe it's laying the frick down.
• 30:14
  Polly Mertens: My drug of choice is coffee and I have a morning latte at the local coffee shop and I'm I do people watch a lot, you know.
• 30:18
  Polly Mertens: I go at different times depending on what's going on and I love to kind of see what the humans are doing there.
• 30:21
  Polly Mertens: Sometimes I'm very engaged in connecting with the humans and the barista or whatever, and other times I'm not, but I like to just kind of observe and I do notice this is what a lot of humans use is that coffee shop experience for that recalibration.
• 30:38
  Polly Mertens: Maybe they sit down and they take some time to enjoy some nourishment.
• 30:43
  Polly Mertens: But also it's being in that community.
• 30:46
  Polly Mertens: That's very comfortable.
• 30:48
  Polly Mertens: They don't even have to talk to anyone.
• 30:50
  Polly Mertens: They can be sitting in the corner, you know, drinking their latte or whatever.
• 30:53
  Polly Mertens: But they're in a really beautiful place with beautiful people doing a beautiful thing for themselves and that feels good.
• 31:01
  Samantha Pruitt: That feels good.
• 31:02
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, I mean, I live and breathe by that, and so when I can't move, it does create some challenge for me and I'm wondering about you how, especially now you just got this recent prescription to settle down how are you feeling about not having as much movement?
• 31:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, so I have gotten back into three times a week at my favorite local gym is Gymnazo, so let's just call it a strength exercise for an hour a day.
• 31:33
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's feeling good, but I do notice the.
• 31:37
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it was no surprise to me.
• 31:38
  Samantha Pruitt: When, talking to my naturopath, he was like, yeah, you need some yang to your yin and I was like, yeah, I could have said that to myself.
• 31:45
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I've been thinking that very thing and as I was speaking to him, what I told him about is, when I was doing a lot of my trainings with Spartans and other races, how one of my favorite downshifting movements was getting in a hot yoga room.
• 32:01
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I like Bikram.
• 32:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I know not everybody likes Bikram, but it was something that I found.
• 32:06
  Samantha Pruitt: I like the structure of it.
• 32:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I like not thinking, I like just, you know, do this, do this, do this and then guess what Savasana like every minute or like every, whatever it's like Savasana.
• 32:13
  Samantha Pruitt: I was just you know, do this, do this, do this, and then guess what Savasana like every minute or like every, whatever it's like Savasana.
• 32:17
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, oh, I can do this Laying in a hot room and on my back and then get up and do a pose and then lay down.
• 32:22
  Samantha Pruitt: You know I was like, oh yeah, and I haven't done that.
• 32:25
  Polly Mertens: You know, and so I was going to get in there this week.
• 32:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, nice, nice, I got to find one.
• 32:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So the one that I used to go to years ago is closed, so got to find one.
• 32:35
  Samantha Pruitt: But then I thought this morning I was like, oh, I could do a little yoga in my room, but it's not quite the same, you know, like it just didn't call to me this morning.
• 32:44
  Samantha Pruitt: But so, yeah, so, whatever movement looks like for you, so maybe it's a walk, maybe it's this little savasana, maybe it's some yoga, maybe it's stretch pool time, whatever you know.
• 32:58
  Polly Mertens: And I would say a big reason that that's so impactful is because of the stagnation of energy and the nervous system is trapping this energy.
• 33:08
  Polly Mertens: This angst, this anxiety, this sadness, this anger, whatever these emotions are and things you're experiencing are sitting in the body, in the physical body.
• 33:18
  Polly Mertens: They're not just some weird concept, they're, like you know, in the body and they're triggering this nervous system response we keep speaking about.
• 33:25
  Polly Mertens: So a way to release them and diffuse them and move past and through them that was a little bit of the self-coaching I had going on this morning too.
• 33:35
  Polly Mertens: I was like I think a big chunk of this anxiety I'm feeling is because I haven't been doing my normal movement swim, bike run, moving through space, moving my body and really allowing this continuous process to move through my thoughts, my emotions and my expression and so there was a lot of trapped up energy in there you know, and even though I didn't want to get on the bike, and then I was, you know, for the first half hour you know how short can I make this ride?
• 34:06
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, but then once I was like 90 minutes in, I was like, oh, I can just keep going this is quite lovely.
• 34:14
  Samantha Pruitt: The dopamine comes in you know Exactly.
• 34:17
  Polly Mertens: The chemicals had shifted, the release had occurred.
• 34:20
  Polly Mertens: Now, it's not always, doesn't always take 90 minutes, but there was a lot of shit piled up in there.
• 34:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm going to just bang this out, knock this out, for sure it's so good.
• 34:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, so you know, I think we've given some, you know.
• 34:36
  Samantha Pruitt: So there's the environment.
• 34:36
  Samantha Pruitt: So maybe it's something that you just think about on the your little micro, macro level.
• 34:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Your house, your car, how are your spaces, things like that, your inbox, your m?
• 34:45
  Polly Mertens: oh girl yeah, I got, uh, I got.
• 34:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Don't be mentioning inbox I got I got a little anxiety around that.
• 34:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, you know, what's happened is I had I think there was like a big breach or whatever, and I think my email was in one of the breaches like a year ago or something.
• 35:02
  Samantha Pruitt: The amount of spam that I now get far surpasses the amount of emails I get, and so just all that junk trying to filter through that, it's like don't like my inbox anymore.
• 35:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Anyway, the things that I wanted to share on a moment by moment level, right.
• 35:20
  Samantha Pruitt: So, besides self coaching in the moment and talking you know, wrestling with that monkey mind two things that I've learned that I wanted to pass along.
• 35:28
  Samantha Pruitt: One is I have a theory proven to me.
• 35:32
  Samantha Pruitt: You guys try it on for yourself, but I've proved it to myself, and this comes back to, you know, my days of eating disorder living and eating disorder coaching.
• 35:41
  Samantha Pruitt: You can imagine the triggering right and the let's call it emotional dysregulation that my clients and I had experienced, when an addictive behavior is feels like it's taking over your body, and so one of the things that I used to coach was no emotion can survive 10 long, slow, deep breaths and I have a feeling whatever's dysregulating our nervous system.
• 36:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I think this could work there as well.
• 36:10
  Samantha Pruitt: So, you know, maybe it's just sitting in your car and looking out the window and you know, after a long day, or excusing yourself from a meeting and just going in the bathroom and taking 10 long, you know, and that's like a five count in, eight count out type thing.
• 36:26
  Samantha Pruitt: The other one is sleep, and I don't know if anyone's proven this, but I swear it works.
• 36:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Is the sigh A good sigh, two sighs even better.
• 36:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And I mean so like when I, tony Robbins, has a video and he says, I think he says, breathe out with a moan and enjoy it.
• 36:47
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's like, ah, you know, like, like really, because you can't be in sympathetic mode being chased, being chased by lions, and be sighing like they did the brains like, oh no, we're sighing, we must be okay, we must be okay, right, and so just that, giving your whole body, or energy body, a signal it's okay, everything's okay right now, I'm okay, we're okay, whatever just happened, it's going to be okay.
• 37:20
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it's just kind of that moment with yourself.
• 37:23
  Polly Mertens: Slowing down your breath.
• 37:25
  Polly Mertens: And ultimately that means heart rate, you know, and I think that vagus nerve.
• 37:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and a lot of this.
• 37:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So, whether you are working at the local level meaning your car, your house, your bedroom, your, you know your well-being in that realm or in the moment by moment, you know things that trigger us or we get, you know, we get peaks and then, you know, bring ourselves back down with some breath work or some sighing or stepping out of the room or changing the sound of music, anything you know, whatever it is, but taking that opportunity to put yourself in the driver's seat of how you feel inside nervous system wise, emotional system wise, and making it matter to you Right.
• 38:08
  Polly Mertens: It's interesting.
• 38:08
  Polly Mertens: I said this to you I think it was offline, I don't imagine I said it during a podcast but that what I know to be most true for myself going into this race and you're going to be there, and so I was giving you a heads up that this is really important to me because I know you'll help me honor and respect, that is, I don't want any hype, don't want any high intensity, I don't want any raw crazy.
• 38:35
  Polly Mertens: You know all this stuff that a lot of times we do before like a big physical activity or a race or you know how we pump ourselves up to speeches and whatever the hell.
• 38:42
  Polly Mertens: We all do crazy stuff, right?
• 38:44
  Polly Mertens: I want the total opposite, like I want to go in just completely grounded and centered and present in what is going to be and just be in it.
• 38:57
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I find that I wholeheartedly agree.
• 39:00
  Samantha Pruitt: I can remember times where I've been, you know, in that like rate it's not packet pickup, but at the start of a race there's the half hour before like gun goes off or whatever type of moment, and people are doing either a couple of hours before, if you happen to be in the area, or just that last half hour.
• 39:20
  Samantha Pruitt: People are doing all sorts of different things.
• 39:21
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, some people are sprinting, some people are going to the bathroom.
• 39:24
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, whatever like you like that day, you know, depending on how it's like, I find that, especially endurance events, the longer it is the more mellow I am before it.
• 39:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like, yeah, I don't need to be jumping on.
• 39:42
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I can't remember when we were going for my iron man and you and I went out to pack a pickup the day before.
• 39:47
  Samantha Pruitt: We're like biking and like running and swimming.
• 39:50
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like y'all just need to slow the hell down.
• 39:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Like the race is tomorrow, but that's that's.
• 39:58
  Samantha Pruitt: That's our MO, right, and everybody does a little bit differently.
• 40:01
  Samantha Pruitt: But mine is like, if I'm going to like not blast off during the race, but if I'm going to like go and put in some sustained effort, it's going to be low effort, slow the hell down, going into it it's going to be low effort, slow the hell down going into it, that's mine.
• 40:17
  Polly Mertens: Oh, I've been to literally I've lost hundreds of start lines um in myself participating and or working, or even volunteering, and you know you'll get those announcers that in spartan would like this insist on pumping up the crowd.
• 40:31
  Polly Mertens: Everybody's's got to like raw and chant and do all these things and I'm like, oh, back off, because that's not what everybody needs.
• 40:40
  Polly Mertens: Sure, some people will do that and love that experience, but for many it's very anxiety inducing and you'll see people they have their earbuds on and they're just head down staying focused.
• 40:52
  Polly Mertens: but very high caliber athletes You'll never see any of that kind of stuff.
• 40:55
  Polly Mertens: They're absolutely regulating their nervous system to a team in the zone and they're experts at it and it's just beautiful to watch and see them, kind of just.
• 41:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, we're just rolling up to the Olympics because there's enough, you know, there's enough going on in the.
• 41:12
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, thank you for recommending the Simone Biles.
• 41:15
  Samantha Pruitt: I had watched a couple of them and I watched the rest of it, so I got through her going to the Olympics, you know, and it's like I mean, can you imagine going to the Olympics after 20 something years of working on your life and and just I mean it's, it's amazing to think like how do you not be stressed out, how do you not be totally, you know, like losing your shit?
• 41:39
  Polly Mertens: Like it's a pro, she is an expert on regulating her nervous system and her thoughts and everything else, and she's worked tirelessly to be that human in the world and you know, is a great role model for that.
• 41:53
  Polly Mertens: And it's fun to see that, but we can all take that into our everyday lives, absolutely right if you've had a bad day at work, don't you know?
• 42:05
  Polly Mertens: rush to your car, drive a hundred miles an hour home in traffic, and then, you know, slam the car door, run into the house and start screaming at your kids and husband.
• 42:13
  Polly Mertens: I mean hello.
• 42:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Regulate a little.
• 42:19
  Samantha Pruitt: I used to call it transition time, right, so you know, use the car time, whatever, or when you get home, hey, I need a little transition time, whatever.
• 42:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It is like downshift, slow it the hell down, like let go of what was before and get into the now.
• 42:35
  Polly Mertens: Drive around the block three times if you have to.
• 42:36
  Polly Mertens: Whatever it's in the driveway, who cares?
• 42:38
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, well then someone's gonna come bang on that window.
• 42:41
  Polly Mertens: But whatever you need to be doing, you know, figure out what works for you.
• 42:46
  Polly Mertens: It's so individual, but it's such a critical piece of our overall health and wellness.
• 42:52
  Polly Mertens: Not just performance, but really how we feel and operate in the world.
• 42:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Definitely, and I think you know what we want to put a pin on and just like help you guys focus on.
• 43:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like the, the one thing is finding moments of self-coaching, self-soothing, self-regulating either, whether that looks like cleaning up your house, if that's what makes you feel better, going out into community and getting connection, or just taking a chill pill like chillax for the day or hours or whatever, or taking some deep breaths or the sighing technique, whatever it is, utilizing those as techniques to self-regulate and get this nervous system into a place where you're able to respond instead of just react to life you want to be super radical.
• 43:38
  Polly Mertens: Oh, tell people that's what you're doing.
• 43:41
  Polly Mertens: Tell your spouse or your children, tell your co-workers or your boss, whatever.
• 43:47
  Polly Mertens: Hey, I am going to regulate my nervous system now.
• 43:51
  Samantha Pruitt: I'll be back.
• 43:54
  Polly Mertens: What are they going to say?
• 43:55
  Polly Mertens: First of all, they'll be like what the, and then immediately they'll be curious and they'll say how the hell do you do that?
• 44:00
  Polly Mertens: Can you teach me how to do that?
• 44:01
  Polly Mertens: Right, right.
• 44:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, and let us know, give us some feedback, let us know how this works for you, and I would love ideas.
• 44:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm sure people have hundreds of them that we haven't even covered, but I just wanted to shine a light in this episode on the importance and the value, and if you don't know what the vagus nerve is, please like you and I are learning more and more about it.
• 44:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I think its importance is only we've only scratched the surface of it, so keep diving into that All right, ladies, All right ladies.
• 44:29
  Samantha Pruitt: What do you want to remind?
• 44:30
  Polly Mertens: our beautiful humans of how.
• 44:31
  Samantha Pruitt: What do you want to remind her?
• 44:33
  Samantha Pruitt: How your life feels is more important than how it looks.
• 44:42
  Polly Mertens: Yes
• 44:42
  Polly Mertens: , and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.