Episode 67: 9 Free Ways to Support Your Nervous System (solo episode)

The health of our nervous systems is, I believe, the most overlooked aspect of modern-day healthcare. And yet, it is the one aspect that radically and quickly shifts our overall health — mental, physical, and emotional — as soon as we implement some practices to care for our nervous systems.

I am passionate about nervous system education and care.

Nervous system work is trauma healing.

Nervous system work is trauma prevention.

Nervous system work is activism.

Nervous system work is self-care.

Nervous system work makes us better parents, partners, and friends.

Nervous System 101 Workshop

I’m teaching my foundational workshop, Nervous System 101, on 2/1/2022.

Tickets are $55, but if you need financial assistance, please send an email to hey@lindseylockett.com or DM me on Instagram (@iamlindseylockett).

In Nervous System 101, you will learn

• what your Autonomic Nervous System is and how it works
• Polyvagal Theory distilled down in a way that even a 5th grader can understand
• how the Autonomic Nervous System is heavily involved in the development of many chronic and mysterious health conditions and “mental illnesses”
• how the different branches of your nervous system behave when under threat (ie. the difference between “fight” and “freeze” from a physiological point of view)
• what trauma really is and how it affects your brain
• why healing is a mostly subtractive process
• the 4 Pillars of Holistic Trauma Healing

Seats are limited to the first 100 people, so reserve your spot TODAY!

About Me

Lindsey Lockett (me!) is the host of the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast. After leaving behind the dogmas of fundamentalist religion and toxic wellness culture, Lindsey experienced her own dark night of the soul. During the healing journey that followed, she realized that trauma affects us as WHOLE people and therefore, we need to heal as WHOLE people.

Although Lindsey has benefitted tremendously from therapy and psychiatry, these modalities never totally resonated with her because she found that they forced her to fragment herself rather than heal holistically.

She set out to find an affordable and accessible approach that integrates the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral parts of our being… and discovered the magic of the nervous system!

Links

• Buy a Nervous System 101 ticket. REPLAY IS SENT TO EVERYONE WHO PURCHASES A TICKET WHETHER YOU ATTEND LIVE OR NOT.
• FREE Training to Hack your Nervous System with Cold Plunges
• Follow the Good News Movement on Instagram

Show Notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this episode, I’m sharing 9 free ways to support your nervous system — no cost whatsoever action steps you can start doing as soon as you turn off this episode!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the holistic trauma healing podcast. It is just me today. Just Lindsay. This is going to be a solo episode, and I think it’s going to be a really fun episode because, um, you know, usually I’m having conversations with my guests or I’m sharing my own story or they’re sharing their story or we’re talking about somebody’s book or something, but today I’m just going to give you.

Advice. Um, I’m going to be sharing some freeways to support nervous system health. This is going to be nine free ways, no cost whatsoever ways to support the health of your nervous system. And if you guys haven’t figured out by now, I am extremely passionate about the nervous system. Um, and my own personal journey learning about my nervous system really was the key that unlocked the, uh, health that I had been trying to achieve for almost a decade.

And during that decade, I was trying to achieve health through restrictive diets. I was entrenched in what I now call toxic wellness culture, which is this belief that you need. Supplements and really restrictive diets to be well, or to heal your gut or to have mental health. Um, I was part of that for over 10 years.

And I, I don’t even know how many practitioners I hopped to, but a couple of natural paths, a nutritionist, a couple of chiropractors, an acupuncturist, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. Um, there were a lot, there were a lot in there and. You know, I don’t want to say that it was all a big waste of time and money, but a lot of it kind of was, I mean, I definitely learned a lot about how to nourish my body.

Um, I pursued and achieved a health coaching certification during that time. So, you know, I like, I definitely know the nuts and bolts of being healthy, I guess, but I never learned a damn thing. About my nervous system and wouldn’t, you know, it, my nervous system was at the root of all of it. So I could have stayed on that hamster wheel of wellness for another decade.

I could have restricted even more food from my diet as if cutting out gluten and dairy and sugar. And at one point eggs too, wasn’t enough. I could have kept restricting. I could have spent many more thousands of dollars trying to find a magic pill or a miracle supplement. I could have gone to 10 more practitioners.

I could have tried more psychiatric or pharmaceutical medications. I mean, I could’ve kept going, right. I’m not going to say that. Like I exhausted everything in that paradigm, but I lived in that paradigm long enough. To realize that if that was what I had needed to be, well, I would have been, well, nobody, nobody did health and wellness as good as me, nobody.

So I did the things, I cut the foods. I took the fucking supplements. I did the cleanses. I did the coffee and I’m as, and the juice fasts and the bone broth fast. And I did all the things and I was still left with an extremely crazy anxiety. Insomnia, which to me, I understand now why they use sleep deprivation as a torture device, because it is absolute torture.

When I say insomnia, I don’t just mean like a few tossing and turning nights. I mean, months and months. With almost no sleep. We’re talking like two, maybe three hours max, every night for months, it was awful. Um, and it turns out the insomnia, the anxiety, the panic attacks, even some of the other stuff that I, uh, w was like chronic and mysterious that I had been experiencing and trying to chase with health and wellness, where things like, uh, PMs and what I thought were hormone imbalances.

Just, uh, you know, always chasing gut health, like always thinking that there was something wrong with my gut. Just, uh, It was crazy y’all it was wild. It was so wild. And when, you know, the root of all of it was never a nutrient deficiency. It was never a food sensitivity. It was never a lack of supplements or probiotics.

It wasn’t even bad gut health. The root of all of it was my nervous system. And once I turned that stone over, um, I went down that rabbit hole and I haven’t resurfaced yet. And it has been. The best thing for me, honestly, like learning about the health of my nervous system and how my nervous system works and how to understand it finally restored my hope and healing.

I mean, after all those years of failed protocols and diet changes, which by the way, I internalized as my own personal failure. Does that ring true for anyone? Have you been on the hamster wheel of wellness and every time it doesn’t work, you internalize that as your own failure. I surely did that. I finally had some hope that life could get better instead of the hopeless desperation that I felt every time I tried a new doctor, a new protocol, a new health gadget, or even a new medication, understanding my nervous system really restored my hope in healing, not only for myself, but then just watching it with other people who are working on their nervous systems too.

And watching them heal after years of being on the hamster wheel of wellness. Um, understanding my nervous system, freed me from the prison of labels. And I should probably do a whole episode on this, in the future about how there was a minute when I had some diagnoses, some official diagnoses, and for a minute, I really clung to those diagnoses and they became a point of validation.

They became, uh, sort of this thing, this card that I could play to get out of doing things that I didn’t want to do or that I could use as an excuse for why I shouldn’t be expected to, you know, socialize. Run errands or take my kids wherever they needed to go or work. Um, there was a minute whenever I did that.

And I think that’s pretty common when people get diagnoses for something it’s like, there’s finally a name for what they’ve been experiencing, which is a very real thing. And it makes you feel really validated, but then you can often cross over into wearing that later. As sort of a badge of honor or as an identity.

And when I finally understood my nervous system, I felt like I was freed from that prison of labels or from the egoic attachment to identity. Um, I also felt like I was freed from my diagnoses, which are generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, chronic insomnia, and a glorified. Um, I finally felt like I could be free from triggers because understanding my nervous system gave me practical, tangible ways that I could work with my body to work through triggers instead of living my life from a place of avoidance all the time.

And I finally felt like I was free from symptom managing. Um, because at that point in my journey, I think I had given up subconsciously on the healing that I thought was going to happen with all those restrictive diets and supplement protocols and liver detoxes and all of that. And by that point, I was just trying to manage symptoms, whether that was with herbal tinctures or homeopathy or medication or supplements or whatever, I was just spending, you know, a ton of money on symptom manners.

And understanding my nervous system freed me from that. And I also felt freed from the feeling that I was crazy or broken or incomplete or sick. And I realized I was none of those things. It was just my nervous system was screaming at me for help. And the way it was talking to me was through these chronic and mysterious symptoms.

Understanding my nervous system also really helped me reclaim my sovereignty. And what I mean by this is I think sovereignty or sovereign is a word that’s thrown around a lot now. And I feel like it’s losing some of its value and some of its weight. But what sovereignty really meant for me was that I no longer had to look outside of myself for healing or for answers.

Nobody could regulate my nervous system. Not even psych medications, like it gave me an artificial feeling of regulation, which I capitalized on. I talk about this in episode five of the podcast about how I use psych meds as a tool in my trauma healing toolbox. So I’m not anti-medication by any means, but medication doesn’t heal, man.

Medication is a symptom management. And of course, you have to look outside of yourself to get the medication because you can’t just go to store and buy it for yourself. So it requires you going to a doctor and then you’re at the mercy of the doctor. And depending on whether or not they’re a good doctor and they listened to their patients, or if they’re an egoic Dirk, and they think they know everything, it’s kind of the luck of the draw.

Um, but I was able to reclaim my sovereignty because I didn’t have to look outside of myself for answers anymore what I needed to be. Well, I mean, sure. I needed to look outside of myself for the actual education and information about my nervous system. But once I had the education and the information, applying it to my own nervous system was a solo.

Um, and I learned that taking care of my nervous system meant that I would be setting boundaries and making lifestyle changes that supported the health of my nervous system. So it wasn’t just about learning in the moment regulation. It was also about intentionally choosing to cultivate a lifestyle that would be supportive of my nervous system and being able to make those decisions from a grounded place of sovereignty rather than.

Uh, hopeless, desperate place. One of the most important things understanding my nervous system did for me was it helped me to reconnect to my body. Um, I can finally be in my body and be comfortable there even when my body is doing weird things, or even when my body is feeling pain or something, I can still be comfortable because I’m no longer afraid of the sensations that I once believed were signs that there was something wrong with.

So I had pretty significant health anxiety. So basically like anytime my body had a sensation or made a noise or, um, something felt weird or whatever, I took that as confirmation that there was really something wrong with my actual health and my body didn’t feel safe because of that, because we can’t stop our bodies from making noises.

Feeling sensations and twinges and, you know, sometimes inexplicable pain or whatever, like we can’t stop it. And so I felt like my body was really unsafe because I wanted to avoid all of that. But now my body is a safe place for me because I actually understand my nervous system and I can work with my nervous system to create safety in myself.

I can’t even tell you how much nervous system understanding simplified my life. Um, For that decade that I was on the hamster wheel of wellness. I really felt like my issues were like this hazy, complicated nebulous cloud. Um, it was like really hard to put my finger on anything in particular. And after I learned about my nervous system, that cloudy haziness became clearer for me.

And I finally understood that, although the path to healing might not have been quick or easy, it was so much more simple because. I could actually do something about it without needing to outsource my power to another diet or another practitioner or another healing protocol. Um, And along with connecting to my body again, like I learned that my nervous system is the master communicator of my body.

It is my body’s internal voice. I believe that my highest self, which is my soul, which is the five D version of me. That’s the part of me that reincarnates into different physical forms on this planet or other planets. Um, my highest self, my soul. Communicates to my physical body, through my nervous system.

And that’s what intuition is and my opinion, and being able to listen to this master communicator of my body and my body’s internal voice meant that I had a way to talk back to my body and to send messages of safety to my body. So yeah, nervous system understanding has been. Invaluable to me, I mean, really invaluable.

And if you don’t understand your nervous system, or if, what I’m talking about, like it’s not really making a lot of sense to you cause you’re like, what the fuck are you talking about? I’m teaching my flag. Foundational workshop, nervous system 1 0 1 on Tuesday, February 1st at 6:00 PM on zoom, you can get a ticket for 55 dollars@lindseylocket.com forward slash N S Y S 1 0 1 and SIS 1 0 1 kind of like a college class.

I will have that linked in the description box below and in the show notes@lindsaylocket.com. But I want you to experience the same reconnection to yourself, the same sovereignty, the same, grounded-ness the same hope and the same way forward that I have personally experienced. And that I have now had the honor of helping my clients experience as well.

And. It really is simpler than you think, but it does require work and it requires showing up for yourself every day and making intentional choices to support the life that you want to create, which is a life where you are freed from disconnection, from your body. You’re freed from labels and diagnoses and being in a box of egoic identity when it comes to whatever it is that you perceive is wrong with you.

You’re freed from outsourcing your power and your. Your sovereignty to supplements or doctors or whatever else you have that connection to your body. Again, you’re able to listen to your intuition much better, and practically you will see a reduction in some of those symptoms or even complete healing.

And some of those chronic and mysterious symptoms simply by working with your nervousness. And it may take some trial and error before you figure out what really works for you, or what’s actually fun for you because it should be fun. Nervous system work should not feel like a chore or a drag. It should feel fun.

It should be something that we look forward to. And if whatever nervous system practice you have going right now, isn’t something you’re looking forward to. I’m working on a program for that, how to create your own nervous system hygiene practice. That is something you actually enjoy. So stay tuned for that.

I’ll be talking about it more as I figure out what that’s gonna look like. Um, but this work, the, the hard part of it. Consistency. And it’s showing up for yourself every day, regardless of how you feel that day, regardless of what your mental state is that day, regardless of how your ego and your inner critic is like whispering to you that this isn’t working, or it’s not real, or it’s not based in science or whatever else.

Um, So, if you want to learn that how your nervous system works, how it’s affected by trauma and impaired by trauma, what’s going on in your brain and what to do about it. Join me for nervous system 1 0 1 workshop on Tuesday, February 1st at 6:00 PM. Central on zoom. The ticket is $55. If $55 is too much for you, I don’t ever want.

Costs to be a reason why you can’t get this valuable life-changing information. So send me an email or send me a DM and just let me know that you need financial assistance. You don’t even need to explain your situation, and I will give you a link to get $20 off the cost of the ticket. So your ticket cost becomes $35 instead of 55.

And I hope that that helps, um, If you can’t attend the live workshop on zoom on February 1st at 6:00 PM central, you are going to get the replay. So everyone who buys a ticket, whether you show up live or not, you still get the replay and you’ll have lifetime access to that replay. So you can revisit it anytime you want to.

And I just invite you if this is feeling like a yes for you, I’m just inviting you to nervous system 1 0 1 to really learn some groundbreaking information that. Almost guaranteed. You’re not going to learn on your therapist’s couch or at your psychiatrist’s office and probably not at your natural path or your chiropractor either.

So with all of that said, I want to get into even more goodness of this episode. And I’m going to share with you nine free ways that you can support your nervous system health. Um, So these are things that anybody can do. You don’t need any kind of special training. You don’t need any, you don’t even need a workshop.

Like you can do these things starting right now. You could turn this podcast off and you have nine action steps that you can take. So hopefully this is really valuable to you. All right. So number one, number one, freeway, to support the health of your nurses. Turn off your damn phone notifications. Just turn them off.

You can go into the settings of your phone and you can turn off notifications for Instagram, Facebook, your email, your text messages, any app that rings or dings or vibrates. Whenever something happens. Go in there and turn those suckers off, even go a step further. And I don’t know how this works for Android people, but for iPhone people, when you have a notification, even if you have the sound or the vibrate turned off, sometimes you still get the red, uh, circle with the number, um, you know, in the app to let you know how many notifications you have.

You can turn that off. I have that turned off on my text messages, my email. So if I’m looking at my phone right now, which I am, um, I have three unread emails, but just looking at the email app on my phone, it doesn’t show that red circle with the number of. So I’ve even got that turned off. So it’s like less visual clutter on my phone.

It’s no visual notifications and no audio notifications, every ding, ring and vibration of your phone activates your nervous system. Believe it or not. It does. If it, if you don’t believe me pay attention and the next time you get that vibrate in your pocket or vibrates on your desk or whatever, or you hear it in your car and you get a ding or whatever, pay attention to what happens in your.

Maybe this doesn’t happen for everyone, but for me, when I had notifications on my phone, literally every time my phone dinged or vibrated, I almost had like a little, um, just like a little twinge of an adrenaline surge. You know, just like that little, like a split second of nervousness or urgency. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was every time my phone dinged or vibrate it.

So just turn those suckers off, just turn them off. Um, if your nervous system is already in a dysregulated state, you definitely need to turn your notifications on your phone off. I promise you, there is nothing that is more important that can’t wait. Everything can wait. Those email notifications can wait.

The Instagram notifications can wait. Um, it can all, wait, what’s more important is that you’re not having one of those little mini adrenaline searches every fricking time. Your phone makes a sound, which if you have your notifications turned on, it’s probably likely that your phone is making a lot of sound.

So, and bonus, no notifications means you’re freeing up time and energy to, you’re gonna look at your phone, like. Um, it’s going to be great. So freeway number one, that you can take care of your nervous system health. Turn off the phone notifications. Number two, stop doom scrolling. Do you guys know what doomed scrolling?

I had to actually look this up on Google, um, because I know that people do it and I’ve seen people talk about it on Instagram, but I was like, what the hell does doing scrolling mean? So doom scrolling is the act of spending excessive amounts of time devoted to the absorption of negative, sad or hopeless news.

This is should be. Ringing a bell for everyone who’s listening right now because I promise everyone at some point in the last two years has doomed scrolled because of COVID because of racism stuff, because of storming the Capitol shit because of wildfires because of whatever. Doom scrolling. So you’re on your phone and your body language is sort of like, you’re like crouched around your phone and your shoulders are kind of slumped over and your neck is like slouched down and you’re just, you know, with your thumb, just going and going.

And you’re looking at news articles or you’re looking up statistics or you’re looking up whatever. Um, and it’s all based on the fear of sad or hopeless or, um, negative news. But it’s all driven by fear. It’s like, you’re wanting to know what’s going to happen next. What’s happening now. How does it affect me?

How can I go search for proof? That what I believe is true. So like doom scrolling for confirmation bias, like all of it is real. And this puts your nervous system in a fight flight or freeze state. I promise you it does. So just don’t do it. Just don’t do it. You don’t have to do. Um, if you, if you’re going and looking for negative, sad or hopeless news, you don’t have to look very far to find it.

If you’re going to look up anything, let it be happy stuff. Um, I follow. An account on Instagram. I’ll link it in the show notes. If you don’t follow it already, it’s called the good news movement. That’s the only news outlet I follow. And it’s all about the good news. You’re going to find sweet stories about like dogs and old people and parents and love and romance and friends and nature.

It’s all good news. And that’s the only news that I look at, um, which leads me to my next. Tip for how to, how to take care of your nervous system for free. Don’t watch the news. It’s not irresponsible. If you don’t know what’s going on all the time, it’s not like staying informed, using major air quotes.

There does not have to look like having your TV on the news station all the time, or listening to talk radio on your car or checking the news news apps. That’s too much news. You guys that’s way too much. Nobody needs that much news and the news. I don’t need to spend a lot of time on this, but it’s purposefully disregulating it.

The news nowadays is meant to elicit some sort of reaction in your nervous system. The news is meant to make you feel like there is a sense of doom. Look, there is a sense of urgency, like, oh my God. Falling apart and going to shit. And we’re in the apocalypse and the COVID rates are terrible and starvation is terrible and pipelines are terrible and the rainforest is burning and that’s what the news is meant to do.

Nothing about it is ever going to be good because good news doesn’t sell. Right? It’s only the bad news that sells. It’s the bad news that elicits a reaction in your body. That’s what sells. So you don’t have to watch the news. If there’s something you need to know, You will know it you’ll hear it from somebody.

You’ll the way that I find out news nowadays, as I just like accidentally stumble across it on Instagram. Like, uh, last January, whenever the, the, um, crazy people stormed the capital in the beginning of January, um, Yeah, I don’t even, I’m sure it has an official name by now, but I don’t know what it’s called.

I found out about that on Instagram. I mean, if there’s really something you need to know about, it’s going to show up on Instagram, on your feed, or it’s going to show up, someone’s going to send you a text about it or something. You don’t have to watch the news. You don’t have to consume negative shit all the time.

It is going to dysregulate your nervous. And it’s purposefully dysregulating because it’s purposely driven by fear, scarcity and urgency. It is easier to control a population who lives in fear. I don’t know if you’re noticing, but the last two years, a lot of people are more and more easily controlled and they’re more and more willing to just do what they’re told and shut up because they think it’s going to bring their lives back to normal.

And it’s not. So turn it off. Your nervous system will thank you. And you will probably sleep. So do your nervous system a favor. It’s a one free thing you can do. It’ll free up some time. It’ll forget some energy. It’s going to free up some of your emotional capacity. Just do yourself a favor and turn off the fucking news.

Um, along the lines of doom scrolling, I mentioned earlier, my next freeway to support the health of your nervous system is this is a word I made up. Stop doom, Google. Doom Googling is an obsessive and compulsive behavior where you’re constantly searching for the causes of your health symptoms. I did this all the time when I was in the midst of my health anxiety, every noise, my body made every twinge, every poke of pain, every weird thing, just my period.

Being late by a day, I was immediately on Google man, like thumbs on fire, searching. Find whatever was wrong with me, I was going to diagnose myself and all it did was lead me to catastrophizing and creating all of these worst case scenarios about my health, which then activated my nervous system and put me in an even worse place.

If you have something truly wrong with you, go to the doctor, don’t try to diagnose yourself on. If you don’t have something actually wrong with you and your body is just doing weird things, then work with your nervous system. You know, I’m not saying that you might not have physical symptoms, but physical symptoms don’t always equal life-threatening problem.

Right. Physical symptoms don’t always mean you have a tumor or something else horribly wrong with you or an autoimmune disease. Like sometimes our bodies just hurt and we have no reason why I’ve been dealing with this now for almost three years with my right. So as muscle, I went and had an MRI back in October of 20, 21.

And guess what? The MRI showed nothing, nothing. So I have this pain in my body, but it does not indicate that there is anything. Broken wrong growing whatever inside my body. So your body can have a symptom or a pain with no discernible cough. But if you’re doom Googling all the time, then you’re going down all of these rabbit holes to find the cause.

And it’s only creating more dysregulation in your nervous system. So go get checked out. If you need to get checked out by an actual doctor, get a second opinion. If you don’t like what the doctor says the first time and beyond that work with your nervous system, so that you are able to widen your window of tolerance to be with the sensations of your body, without it freaking you out and causing you to have a panic attack and lose.

So stop doom Googling. That was the fourth way. So we’re almost halfway through the fifth way that you can take care of your nervous system for free go outside. Mind-blowing right. Mind blowing. I should write a book. Um, I have actually seen. This is really sad, but I’ve actually seen people who, because they don’t live close to nature.

So maybe they live in like a high-rise apartment in a big city. They’re like, I don’t have access to nature. I can’t go outside. First of all, I believe everyone should have access to nature. And if you don’t, I’m really sorry. And also what can you do? What can you do to bring nature to yourself? You could put a bird feeder on your balcony of your apartment.

If you have one and set and watch the birds, you could get a bunch of containers for your balcony and plant some herbs, some flowers, whatever brings you joy, and you can have your own little bit of nature. Right? Um, there are things that you can do. It may not be ideal. It may not be perfect. It may not look like my life looks because I have intentionally chosen to live in nature and I live in the woods and I can go out my front door, my back door anywhere, and I can, I have access to the woods right then.

I recognize this is privileged. It was also an intentional choice. If you don’t have that, don’t let that be the reason or the excuse that you use for why you can’t go in nature. You can go sit outside. Your car in a parking lot and let the sun shine on you. That is still access to the outdoors. Um, notice when you’re outside, notice what’s going on around you.

Don’t take your freaking phone with you. If you’re going to be outside, be. Outside, don’t be on your phone outside. Notice the sights. And the sounds notice the birds, the flowers, the leaves, the clouds notice the fricking squirrel that gets in your garbage notice. The neighbor’s cat that climbs over your fence.

Notice all the things, because that is being in nature. And that’s being present with what is, which is going to help your nervous system presence helps heal your nervous system. All right, sixth free way. You can support your nervous system. Take a cold shower. Um, I’ve talked a lot about cold plunges on this podcast.

I am still a fan of cold plunges. However, I also recognize that. In the Northern hemisphere, you know, probably half the people who live in the Northern hemisphere because they live in the Southern part of the Northern hemisphere. Don’t have access to cold water. Um, I even remember living in east Texas and in the summertime on a hot day, you could turn the shower all the way down to cold and the water coming out was still kind of lukewarm it wasn’t cold.

Because the pipes, you know, the plumbing of the whole city was warmer because it was hot outside. So. Um, obviously I would prefer cold plunges and I do that in lake superior. And if you want to learn how to hack your nervous system with cold plunges, one of my favorite nervous system tools ever go to Lindsay lockett.com forward slash cold plunge.

And I have a free training, uh, with videos on how to hack your nervous system with cold plunge in the absence of a cold plunge, though, take a culture. Or go get a couple bags of ice and fill your bathtub up with water and add the ice to your bathtub. You can figure out creative ways to make cold water happen for you.

But cold water is wonderful for your nervous system. It helps to increase your tolerance to stress. Um, it helps you to be really, really present. It’s just amazing. So that’s my. Free tip number six on how to take care of your nervous system. All right, I’m going to get a drink here,

freeway to take care of your nervous system. Number seven shake. I know mind blowing, right? I could be a New York times bestselling author with this nothing. Discharges angry, frustrated, anxious, fearful energy, like shaking. Let’s take a lesson from animals in nature. When you see animals after a chase or a stressful situation, what do they do?

They shake your dog. Like my dogs, every time they get out of the bath, they run all over the house and they’re shaking everywhere. Why are they doing this? They’re discharging the anxious energy of their bath because they don’t like it. So shake. I have a highlight on my Instagram. Um, that’s completely devoted to shaking.

If you want to learn more about shaking, you could look at trauma release exercises or T R E I’ll put a link for that below. Um, you can put on music. You can shake your hips, your arms, your legs, your head, like shake everything. And two minutes of shaking to a really good song. You’re going to feel tingling all over.

You’re going to feel like you have a little bit of a buzz and you’re going to feel like a new person. It’s a freeway. You can take care of your nervous system. You can do it anywhere. In fact, I’ll tell you a story. My daughter and I flew back from Mexico on January 12th. And I won’t tell you the details of the situation.

Cause I still haven’t figured out what to do. But we had a little issue when we were coming back into the country at Homeland security and I did nothing wrong. My daughter did nothing wrong. They were being pricks at Homeland security. I mean, that’s literally what it was. Um, after this exchange with the department of Homeland security officer.

I was the closest I have been in years to a panic attack. I mean, I felt sick and hot. I felt so much anxiety in my body. It was a scary experience. It was a really scary experience. I’ve never had a bad experience with law enforcement until then. Um, and I could feel the panic coming on. And so we got through Homeland security, we got our back.

And I told my daughter, I got to stop right here and I got to shake and I literally dropped our bags in the middle of the airport with people walking around me everywhere and just started shaking. And I was shaking and shaking. And about 30 seconds into shaking, I felt some like hyperventilating crying, kind of coming up.

So I let it happen while I continued to shake. I cried. I continued to shake after two, two and a half minutes. Maybe I felt. Like it was done. And I took a deep breath and I wiped my eyes and I picked our bags up and we kept going. And during the middle of me doing this, cause it really was the middle of the airport with people just like walking around everywhere.

I didn’t give a shit. Somebody was like asking my daughter, is she okay? And my daughter just goes, yeah, this is just how she discharges anxious energy. She’s. This is how much we’ve normalized nervous system regulation in our house. Okay. That I can be shaking like a lunatic in the middle of an airport.

And when somebody asks, if I’m okay, my daughter’s just like, yeah, this is just what she does. Um, but I truly believe that being able to have that connection with my body and that tool at my disposal. Meant that I could take care of my nervous system in the moment in real time. And I didn’t have to store that event as trauma.

So it was too much too fast, too soon for my nervous system. That situation with the Homeland security officer, it was, it was absolutely terrifying, especially because I was so confused because I hadn’t done anything wrong. But I had the tool of shaking. I knew what to do to take care of my nervous system.

I followed my body. I let my body lead the way and I no longer feel traumatized by it. I’m not having any, I haven’t had any panic attacks about it, having any nightmares about it. I don’t even think about it every day. And it just happened like two weeks. Um, so that’s the power of shaking and anybody can do it anywhere at any time, even in the middle of an airport.

Uh, all right. The number eight way to take care of your nervous system for free is to sing or hum the vibration of your vocal chords through singing or humming stimulates your vagus nerve and this signals to your nervous system that it’s time to calm down and return to a recital state. So if you enjoy.

Letting off some stress by getting in your car and cranking up the radio, as loud as it’ll go and singing along. There’s a reason why you enjoy that for stress relief. And it’s because that vibration of your voice is stimulating your vagus nerve. And it’s telling your nervous system to calm down. So excuse me.

Um, you can sing or hum, this is another thing. I mean, you probably can’t do it everywhere I guess, but it is. And you can do it pretty much anywhere. Um, although I would recommend, you know, doing it loudly, the louder, you can sing her home. The more stimulation your vagus nerve is getting. So sing hum crank up Celine Dion or that’s what I do anyway.

Crank up Celine Dion and stimulate your vagus nerve freeway to regulate your nervous system. And finally, the night. Freeway to regulate your nervous system, say, no. I mean, really this could just be like set boundaries, but boundaries are a whole thing. A lot of people need a lot of education and a lot of help and a lot of nervous system regulation to set boundaries.

So this boundary saying no feels like the simplest one that I can give or recommend without further. Uh, you know, work without having you read a book about boundaries or codependency, and without having you like go through a coaching program or whatever you can say, no, you don’t have to say yes to everything saying no free up your time.

It’ll free up your energy. It will free up your money. Um, it opens up space say, no, no, I can’t make it. I can’t make it. You don’t have to say, sorry, don’t say no, sorry. I can’t make it just, no, I can’t make it. No, that doesn’t work for. The actually just doesn’t work for me. No, I don’t want to, I mean, really people are going to think you’re a jerk for saying that.

Or if you’re a woman, you’ll get called a bitch. But you know, when, when you’re like, oh, Hey, do you want to do this? Just somebody going, no, I don’t want to. And not offering any other explanation. That’s what I’m trying to get out here. No, I don’t want to know. I’m not up for that. No, thank you. No, it’s not a good time without explaining further overexplaining yourself as a trauma response.

If you can’t say no and leave it at that, and you feel guilty and like you have to justify your no, by explaining your no, that’s a trauma response. Be aware of it. Notice it when it happens, shift it, but you can take care of your nervous system by saying no saying no, no, I’m busy. No, I’m not up for that.

No, it’s not a good time right now. No, it doesn’t work. Just very simple. Say, no, you may even feel a little bit of nervous system activation whenever you say no. If so, that’s your body talking to you and saying, Hey, saying, no, it feels really scary and unfamiliar for me. Please, please work with me on this so that I can say no and not feel guilty or bad or.

Or whatever. So those are my nine freeways that you can take care of your nervous system. You don’t need any training. You don’t need to read a book. You don’t need to hire a coach or a therapist. You don’t need a course. You can do all of these things for free. Most of them you can do anytime, anywhere you don’t need any special events.

It’s easy, easy and free. What’s not easy about it is overcoming your egoic voice and the inner critic that chatters at you and says, this doesn’t work. This doesn’t work. Why are you doing this? You look so stupid. You look so stupid shaking in this airport, man. I bet these people think you are really crazy.

Cause you’re shaking in this airport. That was going through my head. You guys. But I heard it and I was like, no, I don’t have to listen to that voice because these people walking around me who think that whatever I’m doing looks weird or crazy or ridiculous, they don’t have to live in. They don’t have to live with the consequences of that scary thing.

That incident being held in my body. They don’t have to live with that. So it actually doesn’t matter how I look to someone else because nobody else has to live with the consequences of how this event is stored and processed in my body. Like I do. So I am going to drop my bags and I am going to shake in the middle of an airport with hundreds of people walking around me, gawking at me thinking that I’m some kind of crazy weirdo.

I don’t give a shit. When you start taking care of your nervous system and you begin to see and experience the shifts in your own mind and body as a result of taking care of your nervous system, that becomes more important to you than anyone’s opinion or perception of. ’cause you know, taking care of my nervous system, trumps everything, because if I’m not taking care of my nervous system, then that means I’m dysregulated.

I’m fawning. I’m still living in trauma responses. I’m still on the hamster wheel of wellness. I’m still doing all the things that weren’t serving me before. So it really does take a lot of sovereignty and a lot of, I don’t give a fuck to regulate your nervousness. And you are going to encounter people when you say no, you’re going to pass people.

It’s going to piss people off. It’s going to piss people off whenever you, whenever they’re like, oh my God, did you hear what’s happening in the news? And you’re like, no, actually I don’t watch the news. That happens to me all the time. Oh, did you hear about this? No, actually I didn’t because I don’t watch the news because anything I need to know, I trust that.

Um, you know, it’s going to piss people off. It’s going to piss people off. They’re going to feel threatened by it. They’re going to think you’re weird or ridiculous or crazy or whatever. And I say, let them, because they don’t have to live with the consequences of a dysregulated nervous system that you have to live with.

They’re probably living with their own dysregulated nervous system. So. Uh, once again, I just want to remind you about my upcoming workshop, nervous system 1 0 1. It is in less than two weeks now, Tuesday, February 1st at 6:00 PM on zoom. Tickets are $55 and you are going to learn so much about your nervous system.

Way beyond what I just talked about here. This is more of like the nuts and bolts of your nervous system, how it’s impaired by trauma, what to do about it. I’m going to be distilling down polyvagal theory in a way that is really easy to understand. Um, I’m also going to be sharing why your nervous system’s responses to situations over time have developed what you think is your personality.

And it’s actually not. Um, I’m going to be sharing my four pillars of holistic trauma healing. I’m going to be sharing some tangible practices that you can do to shift your nervous system state. I’m also going to be teaching you how to recognize what nervous system state you’re in, because the practice for shifting out of a freeze state is different than the practice for shifting out of a fight flight state.

So you need to know how to recognize those things and then know what tools you need to reach for, to shift your state. So maybe be teaching all of this and more. The teaching time is about two hours. And then for an unlimited amount of time at the end of nervous system, 1 0 1, I open it up for questions and answers and I will stay on as long as I need to stay on to answer people’s questions, because I don’t want you to walk away from this workshop without your nervous system questions answered.

Um, and then. Maybe, I don’t know if it’s going to happen by the time the workshop goes live or not. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I definitely want to lead some kind of a group program that is going to be a fun, um, like create your own nervous system hygiene practice. So that’ll be happening after the workshop at some point in February and I will.

Be here on the podcast and also on Instagram sharing more about that whenever it happens. So make sure you get your ticket for nervous system 1 0 1 Lindsay locket.com forward slash insists 1 0 1. That’s in S Y S 1 0 1. That’ll be linked to below. I will also link below my free training for how to hack your nervous system with cold plunges.

And I think that’s all I have for you today. So have a wonderful last week of January, February is almost here and I will talk to you next time.

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