Why You're Always Wired, Tired, and Can't Switch Off | Dr. Arielle Schwartz

31:04You know, you get in from work and your head is spinning, or a day with your family, or whatever situation you find yourself in, but you just cannot sleep. But all you want to do is sleep. And then sometimes you might wake up at 3am, 4am, 5am. And you know, that kind of pain where you really want to relax, but you can't, is something I think so many people struggle with today. And also that can feel very isolating because normally, you know, in the middle of the night, you're kind of on your own. So again, that amplifies the feeling, I guess, of the unsafetyness that I'm hearing is so connected, obviously, to feeling kind of more regulated in the nervous system.

31:43It's like safety, it's that safety bubble that is really how we get to feeling regulated. Bringing up something really important about all of this, which is that at some point, not only are we responding to the cues that we're getting from the external world or from other people, but the nervous system actually starts responding to the cues that we're getting from what's inside. So now, rather than experiencing, let's say, something I saw on TV, in the news, or something that I experienced in a relationship conflict, not only am I experiencing reactions to that, but actually I'm having reactions from the inside out.

32:28And so as soon as I feel that change in heart rate, or as soon as I feel that little twinge in my lower back, now the nervous system is receiving those experiences as threats themselves. And it becomes a kind of vicious cycle of a feedback loop on the inside, where we're stuck in a kind of trauma response to the way that the body remembers stressful or threatening experiences. Yeah. And I think for so many, that can feel so confusing because we haven't got, one of my favorite terms, the emotional granularity, which kind of means the form of expression of feelings to understand. Except when we're not taught emotions at school.

33:10I mean we're taught algebra but we're not taught how we feel in ourselves and how to express ourselves with feelings so I think when a lot of people get to that state that you talk about they feel even more lost and more unsafe because they don't have the terminology and the vocabulary to say this is how I feel and I think that's such an important part of of getting to feel that safety in yourself again so one thing I and I will go on to the tools because I know people are going to really want to know about like okay well I've heard all this now and they're probably thinking I might agree with this and yeah that's me we will get on to because there is there is hope at the end of this tunnel but one thing I found really interesting which a friend of mine had messaged me was she was saying about ADHD and I found this really interesting that you know a lot of people with ADHD describe the feeling of feeling chronically dysregulated now I have ADHD so I can say from my self experience that is definitely something that I can feel which is why I become quite connected to understanding more about this um and it's like I would say that it feels like my nervous system is always under threat unless I feel that I've got things in place that feels a lot of safety so like nature or like things like somatic work which if people don't know that means it's body work and then there's this interesting theory that there could be that people saying that ADHD might be a nervous system regulation thing and not solely in the mind.

34:44There's so many people listening to this that have probably connected to someone they know who has ADHD or they might have ADHD themselves. So could polyvagal work with ADHD maybe even instead of medication which many people are given as the first option for ADHD? It's so true. So you're really bringing to mind for me an experience as a parent for a moment. And I'm going to just speak from that lens. So I am thinking of my son who's now 20, but I'm going back in time to raising him at three and four and six and 12. And the experiences of raising this young boy who was so smart. I mean, the other thing that I just is so worth talking about with ADHD is that what we're really looking at also is extraordinary creativity, extraordinary capacity to both have an expanded mind and also a highly focused mind at times.

35:46So, so many gifts that accompany this, but the way that I like to think about it is that because the mind has the capacity for so much expansion, it doesn't have quite as many filters. And so an individual with ADHD is often picking up on literally hundreds of more details about what's occurring in a given space, or even think about like the brilliance and the pacing and the speed at which you can process so much data, whether it's a computer game, or I can literally give my son any task of setting up a computer or a phone or a technology in my house, and he's on it. He doesn't have to look at the instruction manual.

36:30He knows how things work. And it's phenomenal, but it also comes with a cost because when your brain is processing that many data points that quickly, it starts to, the way I think about it is create these kind of traffic jams in the circuits of the brain. We have all of these neural networks with thousands of synapses and billions of connections. I mean, it's extraordinary when you look at the neurons of the brain. And when you look at how much firing of those neurons is happening with someone with ADHD, it starts to basically create this mental cognitive overload. And this is where the body and why you said somatics has been really helpful.

37:20It was the same thing for him, that when we got him grounded in his body, his mind got clear. Yeah. And that was extraordinary. And grounding tasks for him were rhythmic tasks. Rhythmic tasks of, you know, balancing tasks, being able to move in quickly in agility exercises, being able to ride a bicycle and have that bilateral movement of riding a bike or running. and that those kinds of activities, we would notice, we've got a different kid on our hands. He can sit down after doing those activities and focus on homework. Brilliant, right? And so we ended up not going the medication route in part because he got raised by a nervous system expert and a somatic psychologist.

38:19Incredibly lucky man.

38:25of this rhythmic movement and exercise and vagus nerve regulation tools. And I'll share one other tool that we used with him in lieu of medication that I really deeply value. And it was the role of regulating music. So there are protocols out there that Steve Porges, who developed polyvagal theory helped to create one of which is called the safe and sound protocol. And it's music that goes into and stimulates the vagus nerve. And as we listen to it, it's basically giving the vagus nerve the cues of safety. And it helps bring in the filters when the brain gets overloaded. It's like, I actually get to choose what to pay attention to now, rather than feeling like the unfiltered brain.

39:20And we can talk about sensory processing because it's so deeply intertwined with this. And there's tons of research about this and I can get geeky on it. Yeah, I'd love that. Yeah. But basically, when we don't have those filters, our sensory processing systems, again, there's a traffic jam, they're overloaded. And so grounding and rhythmic practices help to put filters back in place and it lets us focus the mind. Yeah, I think it is so underspoken about somatic work. I mean, when I, I've always been a fidget, but I think the thing that ADHD can feel for many people is this, and I think that's why I connected so much to dysregulation.

40:03It's this like overwhelm when you feel it in your body, but you also feel it in your mind that's going a thousand miles per hour. You're not quite sure how to shut it off. You know, and a lot of people think about reading and I'm like, no, I need to not digest any more information. And I think that's the thing is when I started doing more yoga. So I was somebody who was high intensity, lots of running, always on the go. And actually what I had to do was the opposite of what my brain wanted to do all the time was to kind of slow it down and actually kind of work on that seesaw. So the things like yoga, and I know that it's not for everyone, but even just like a massage or getting a foam roller and or a tennis ball and using that on my body.

40:48Lots of different things, you know, I've had different devices that kind of kind of work with your vagus nerve and then realised I didn't need it because I could just breathe and hum and that activates my vagus nerve. But lots of like sensory body work is, you know, and you don't have to pay lots of money, you can just do it at home, but it can totally transform how you feel. It's kind of of like a flip in your mind. But it's interesting because when I tried the medication, it just never worked for me. I don't think I slept for about four days. And that to me was just a, and for some, it's amazing.

41:23Some people I know who are on it and it's changed their life, but it's not for everyone. But that's sadly normally the only kind of option many are given as opposed to understanding the nervous system. And that is such a big part of neurodivergency, and especially ADHD is like your nervous system regulation. So true. There's so much in everything you just shared, and I'm appreciating your shares as well. One thing that I want to kind of pluck out, if I may, from what you just spoke about is yoga. Now, you know, know that I've been a yoga teacher for 30 years. And why I went in that direction for me was in relationship to growing up with a history of, I'll call it complex PTSD because that's the terminology.

42:10And it's basically kind of the accumulation of repeated chronic states of not feeling safe as a child and how that also shaped my nervous system. But part of that story is that I came into the world very sensitive, kind of a highly empathic, highly sensitive child. And I had experiences of being raised in one of my households, like my parents were divorced when I was very, very young, so that was his own trauma. And then I had the experience in one of my households where I felt chronically unsafe. And chronically misunderstood for the degree to which I was actually processing the world around me.

42:56So as a highly empathic child, I took everything in, every facial expression, every shift of glance, every nuance of the voice tone shift, every postural change. You were talking about that walking study. I read the emotions in everyone's bodies, right? And because I didn't know how to process all of that, what seven-year-old really does. And at my mother's house, she helped. She helped give words. She helped me locate my emotions. My mom's a psychologist. And so there, I had the safety to unwind and to regulate myself. And I felt safe enough to move in ways that helped me process. I also was introduced to yoga at my mother's house when I was seven.

43:47So all of that was very regulating. And unfortunately, at my father's house, I didn't have those tools and I didn't feel safe to essentially draw upon them when I was there. One short example of that is that as a child, I would rock myself to sleep. Now, I know now, as a researcher on the role of vestibular stimulation for a young child with trauma, how important that was. And that was my self-soothing at my mom's house to rock until I felt comfortable enough, relaxed enough to go to sleep. But at my father's house, I was told not to rock. And so I wasn't able to utilize some of the tools that were deeply resourcing and regulating for my nervous system.

44:35And so I would get this kind of buildup of distress and discord in my body that then shaped my emotions and shaped how I felt in the world and all of that. Right. Fast forward. I'm in college. I'm 19, 20 years old. And at that point, I have chronic anxiety, depressive thinking. I'm struggling socially. I have a lot of shame that I feel inside of myself. And a friend of mine kind of drags me to a yoga class. I hadn't practiced yoga from when I was maybe 10 or 12 until I was 19 or 20. And she brings me to this yoga class. and by the end of the class after conscious breathing and rhythmic movement and slowing down and and meditation i felt sane i felt connected i felt grounded i said i want more of that i started going once a week by the end of that year i was practicing every day by the time i was 22 i went and did my yoga teacher training because i knew that it was my medicine hey guys i am very bad at asking for this but I wanted to stop for just one minute and ask a huge favour.

45:57If you want to hear more diverse conversations from female voices such as myself, I would love if you could hit subscribe. We work so hard on this show to bring you some of the best guests in the world and having a female voice sometimes gives a different perspective and I really want to elevate more of that on this channel. So please hit subscribe if that's important to you as it is to me. It's interesting because I connect to that so much, but I also know people in my life where they are dysregulated and I say, you know, try some somatic work, maybe try yoga. And their response is, I hate yoga.

46:29I'm not doing it. And I'm, one, always trying to think, is it because it feels so uncomfortable because you're so dysregulated or should you just generally hate it? Also, if you are very stiff and un-mobile, you can also find it quite painful. So, I mean, I love that, but for people that can't connect to that, what are other tools that people could connect to and say, okay, well, what are the other things that I could do to kind of help my nervous system feel regulated? I love that you brought in a few of these tools earlier. I also have purchased several of the vagus nerve stimulation devices because, you know, why not?

47:04I'm in the field. I want to know what's out there and they work. And, you know, you mentioned humming, right? And it's so fun too, because when we look at the way that many children naturally self-regulate, they rock, they hum. I was definitely a hummer growing up too. I still am as an adult for that matter. And they kind of stimulate areas of the vagus nerve, like they'll play with their ears, for example. Well, what do we know about the ears? The ears have 100 % vagal fibers in certain parts of the ears, the cartilage that sits in front of the ear, which we call the tragus or the area that surrounds the ear canal, right?

47:49There's areas of the face that are very high in vagus nerve circuits or fibers. And so we can stimulate the vagus nerve through self-applied touch. And that's the one that I actually want to share as a tool here, because it's, you know, I often kind of jokingly say, let's go get your vagus nerve stimulation devices. They're free. They're right here, right? So we bring these with us wherever we go. And one of the most kind of potent areas where the vagus nerve travels close to the surface of your skin, sitting really just about a quarter of an inch below the surface of your skin, is in the sides of your neck.

48:34And when we have a lot of chronic muscular tension in the muscles of like the SEM, which is this kind of ropey muscle that connects between the ear and the jaw and the top of the collarbone or the scalene muscles of the neck, we're basically starting to kind of impinge upon the blood flow to the vagus nerve and to the brainstem. And so a little bit of massage goes a long way. Yeah. Is that C3 to C5 in the vertebrae at the neck? So the vertebrae, well, that's lower. The vertebrae where the vagus nerve travels actually right in the center of is the axis and the atlas, which are C1 and C2. Now it doesn't hurt to to basically open up C3 through C7.

49:26The whole spine is deeply integrated to our autonomic nervous system. And there's a few ways that we get to this. One is that if we're going to get to C1 and C2, we work at the occiput. We work at that small area at the base of the skull, right where if you trace the sides of your skull, right where there's that kind of small divot or soft spot at the base of the skull. And you can use your fingertips just to create a little bit of circular motion right there at the base of your skull and begin to open up the blood flow, the connection. It is often an area that's kind of tender, especially if you're one that carries a lot of tension in your shoulders, in your neck.

50:15And then, yeah, me too. I hope everyone else is going me too. Yes, I think so. I think so. And then you're absolutely right that as we get into the sides of the neck, now we're going to work more down into those lower cervical vertebrae. And the way that I like to work the SEM is if you tilt your head to the side and a little bit, a little bit kind of like your chin off at an angle, you're going to get this ropey muscle that kind of sticks out. You can probably see it here, right? And then you just take your thumb and your first finger and it's never meant to be painful. It's just a little kind of grab, pinch, and drag down.

50:59And you can make your way down the muscle and have one little segment at a time and I like to do it several times through start at the top and just kind of grab and pull and you grab and pull and if you can't see us we're on YouTube and Spotify if you want to watch this video because we are both me and Ariel are both massaging our necks right now and it feels so good and I feel so calm I actually do this in every interview. Yeah, right. It's actually easy to do it if you look in the mirror because you can see it pop. I can imagine it's quite hard to see it. But because I'm doing it on a screen where I can see myself, I can actually see it quite clearly if people are finding this hard to navigate solely on audio.

51:47Yeah, it's so beautiful. and so even just a few moments 30 seconds on each side and then a pause to notice how do you feel now i gave myself a good self-massage yeah but calm yeah i do i feel i feel calm yeah and then it's amazing it only took 30 seconds yeah and it only takes 30 seconds exactly you know and of course you can do it for longer but i think what stands out for me is that we can stack these. Like one of my other very favorites is to take your fingers like peace signs, like little Vs, first and second finger, and then in front of and behind your ear, massaging the hinge of your jaw.

52:35Now, this is good for anyone who grinds. Exactly. You knew what I was going to say. Yeah, that's me. me too right if we clench our jaws we're going to get an accumulation of stress and emotion now it's not uncommon when we massage these areas that we start to feel more i have been teaching this literally to thousands and thousands of students over the years and and very often someone will say i just feel like i want to cry oh that brought up such a tenderness right or I don't know why, but, you know, it's bringing up a particular memory. So why is that, right? When we clamp down around our emotions and, you know, it's a great strategy to not feel, right, to clench your jaw, to not feel afraid, to not feel anger, to not feel vulnerable and sad.

53:34So when we begin to open this up, all right, even just kind of softening your bottom teeth from your top teeth, softening your tongue, we're opening up the channel, the mind-body communication highway that allows our brains to sense what the body's already carrying on our behalf. How important is it to cry for the release of our nervous system? Yeah. I love the research that shows that there's different kinds of tears, you know, and I think that there's healing tears. And I think that those healing tears, when we look even at like the chemical composition of healing tears, that there is found within them, like the neurotransmitters and the hormones that, that let us know that when we are feeling our emotions, feeling that vulnerable, tender, authentic truth of who you are, that it begins to create a kind of congruence and it opens up more flow for serotonin, for oxytocin, for the chemicals that actually need to flow through us in order for us to feel better in life or to truly grieve what we've lost.

55:06It's so deeply important for us as humans to allow our emotions, energy in motion, allow our emotions to go all the way through. Yeah, because I think a lot of people can feel a negative response to crying. You know, say if they're arguing with someone, they maybe don't want to show their pain or they suppress it or something's happened and they don't, you know, crying in public feels nerve wracking and weak. So there's lots of associations, like associations connected to tears. But I always think that actually after I cry, and I say this from someone who's like, you know, always felt that pressure to not show the weakness, that actually, the more I've learned into it, the more easy I find it to regulate.

55:53Yeah. So going back to the tenderness of this, right? Like when we feel what's true, our nervous systems respond. And that is the thing, right? There's this bi-directional piece. One is like I open up the jaw or the sides of the neck or the base of my skull and I feel this tenderness come forward. I'm now more in sync. I allow the emotional wave to move through me and my nervous system says, yes, please, more. Because there is actually enough safety to feel and the feeling cultivates more connection. When we feel connected to ourselves, that actually is registered by the brain as a cue of safety.

56:46right so it becomes this beautiful we talked earlier about the kind of the vicious cycle where we can get kind of entrapped by those those threat responses but now what we're speaking about is the upward spiral of healing it's so interesting because i guess a question at the beginning could have been you know is safety the answer to a regulated nervous system And yes, but I want to use a bit of a caveat around this because what do we know about the world that we live in? Is it 100 % safe? Heck no, right? Are there plenty of cues that let us know that it's not 100 % safe out there? Yes. So what we cultivate are what I will kind of hold as the safe enough micro environments, the safe enough spaces where I know that now is a time that I can come out of that threat response.

57:46because I'm with you and we're connecting and I like the sound of your voice and I like the way you smile and we're nodding at each other. And so like all of that becomes this mutuality of this experience of connection. And it generates this kind of bubble that helps buffer us from all of the other stuff. And we all need those buffers. Not that it prevents the future stressors, not that it prevents the awful, horrible things that are happening in our world that are still happening, but that we have a place to go and press the pause button. And for me, that's a yoga class, or that was going to therapy, or that's creating these safe environments in teaching yoga and in providing therapy and so forth.

58:40But we can find that in nature. We can find that in so many spaces where we go, this is a safe enough space. This is where I can downregulate and come back to myself. And it's huge. We need that. We do need that. And I think throughout my 20s, I searched for that. But what I actually found for me really helps. And I Sandra, how you'll see this is, and I don't like the word self-esteem because I think it's a really bad metric for understanding self because self-esteem is connected to like how you pitch yourself against others. So if someone's got a better podcast than me, then my self-esteem lowers and if my podcast is better than someone else's, my self-esteem's higher.

59:18But how we feel about ourselves generally and our self-worth is maybe a better metric. I think that implies a huge amount of safety because I think there's always going to be things that are constantly moving on the external side of things like your relationship will go through hard times and you might break up when you all of these different situations you know similar with your parents and your family you know there's times when they're there and there's times when they're not um similar with friends you might have a good friend group and they might move away similar with work you might become redundant with lots of different situations that can kind of move but actually like knowing your sense of self, I think is so important to creating this movement towards safety of your nervous system, if you know that you can get back to that within yourself.

1:00:06But do you think many people are lost with that kind of internal safety in themselves? Yes, I think so. And I think that there's a phrase that I'll kind of offer around this, which is that generally when we have had at least some experience of what we call a good co-regulating relationship. It's another polyvagal term. And it basically means that I had enough experience relationally with another person whose nervous system was a source of safety for mine, that they basically offered those cues of the eye contact and the warm face and the voice tone and so forth, that that becomes wired into me.

1:00:50And so maybe we got those cues in our earliest caregiver relationships or with our parents or with that good friend or in therapy. But at some point, once we become adults, we want to be able to provide that for ourselves. Not that we are solely independent and self-reliant. There are still times in which we want to be able to lean into another and borrow someone else's nervous system. We all need that. But when we're on our own and when that friend moves away or when we don't have access to that external source, it's good to know that we can become our own co-regulator. And one of the most beautiful ways, and this loops back to something we said earlier, is compassion.

1:01:36One of my favorite researchers on compassion is Paul Gilbert. He's there in the UK. He's been on the show. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, I watched that episode. It's beautiful. And the ability to talk to yourself in such a loving way, to learn to speak to yourself. And there's correlations between compassion practices and higher vagal tone. So our vagus nerve literally responds to compassion practice. And one of the most potent of those practices is to learn to speak lovingly to your own inner child. right we think about that we all in some way or another have those younger parts of us that maybe felt rejected or abandoned or her wounded in some way or another and that when we start to feel rejected unloved less than comparing ourselves to the other podcaster whatever it might be right that we can scoop that one up and say i've got you i'm going to be the loving adult that that you've always needed.

1:02:46I think it's more essential than ever in the world that we live in. I mean, the comparison and the relatability to what is going on. I mean, even if you're not in media or entertainment or anything that's got anything to do with being in the public eye, just having Instagram or X or LinkedIn or any social platform, which the majority of our listeners will have, it makes you compare. Sometimes even podcasts make you compare. you're like, wow, I'm not doing all these things. And they're telling me I should be doing all these things for a happy, healthy life. And I feel so far from that, that you kind of spiral into this, like not good enough.

1:03:24And it's, yeah, Paul Gilbert's been on and so has Dr. Kirsten Neff. And my book that I'm releasing at the moment is on self-compassion, because that's my biggest anchor to getting me back to a strong self-worth. When all your other external metrics are moving, you've got something to kind of anchor you in and I and I kind of look at self-compassion as you kind of becoming your own parent you're going in to look after yourself you know and I think that's something that many of us can forget you know that's why I say cooking yourself a really nice meal is an act of self-respect because you do it for a child so why wouldn't you do it for yourself but we don't look at ourselves in that in that respect you know sometimes we don't think we're deserving of the time why would I go and spend half an hour doing something nice for myself and I can easily order something and it's fine.

1:04:16But then if you flip that to someone who loves coming over, would you say the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. So I find compassion such an interesting, such an interesting antidote to kind of the world that we live in right now. Yeah, so necessary. So if I think about one other thing that we haven't touched on, well, there's two, and I don't know if we can kind of like, they might work together in synchronicity but it's EMDR which people are starting to really become aware of right now which I think is really interesting and also breath work. So I want to make sure that we touch on these two things because they're such interesting concepts to work with the nervous system.

1:04:57So let's first start with actually breathing because you were talking about the neck, you were talking about opening this up into the back of the neck and the sides of the neck. I can't remember the words that you use, but that was my poor description. And you were saying that it can open up the blood flow to connect to the breath. I think a lot of people when they do breath work still breathe, you know, not properly and very kind of far up into the top of their chest as opposed to their diaphragm. So how important is breath work for working with our nervous system? So breath work is the fastest tool out there for regulating the nervous system.

1:05:37And I'll explain very quickly why. So when we look at the tone of the vagus nerve, it's measured by a rhythmic synchronicity of the inhale and exhale in coordination with your heart rate so that every inhalation brings in a little bit of the sympathetic nervous system as you get more heartbeats. Every exhalation starts to bring us more into parasympathetic and we get fewer heartbeats. When we breathe rhythmically, we get this coherency of that rhythm and of the heart rate respiratory relationship. It's something that is measured as heart rate variability or respiratory sinus arrhythmia. And ideally, if we can all breathe rhythmically for even just two to three minutes a day, we could start to retrain our kind of habitual breathing patterns.

1:06:36Because some of us are over breathers where we emphasize too much of the inhalation and we have more of that sympathetic activation. Some of us are shallow breathers where we're not getting enough of that sympathetic innervation. So breathing rhythmically in, you know, generally we call this resonance frequency breathing, and it's about breathing. Inhale for about a count of five, exhale for a count of five. And you mentioned the diaphragm, such a key part to this picture. Why? The diaphragm attaches itself to the lower rib cage. The vagus nerve travels through the diaphragm to get to all of the digestive organs.

1:07:19So when we have fascial, we're going to talk about fascia for a moment. It's a whole other topic. No, we have a whole episode on it and it's been one of our highest listened to episodes. I'll link it. So when we think about the fascia, the connective tissue of the body, the diaphragm is largely fascia. And so we get what we call kind of fascial adhesions where the fascia isn't moving as much as we'd like it to. So that happens with the diaphragm. So the diaphragm gets kind of sticky and it's not moving with the breath. So it's going to inhibit the expansion capacity for our lungs. So generally when we want to expand the diaphragm with that rhythmic breathing, we want to imagine that we're expanding our rib cage out to the side so that we inhale and we have this kind of breath, B-R-E-D-T-H, right?

1:08:16Like this ability to really expand and contract. And then the last part of this conscious breathing comes back to compassion. We put it all together so that we breathe rhythmically, we get diaphragmatic movement, and we focus on breathing in and out of the heart in a way that cultivates a genuine sense of warmth or appreciation. and that's this beautiful trifecta of optimal vagus nerve tone. Amazing, right? Something that we could do just a little bit every day and even as I'm talking about it, it's hard to breathe, you know, breathe rhythmically while I talk, but just for three breaths, we'll do it together, right?

1:08:56To inhale and exhale, let it all out.

1:09:06and again inhale fully let it really fill let the diaphragm expand exhale contract

1:09:19and one more inhale right through that heart bringing in just one moment of joy one thing and exhale

1:09:34And you exhale through your mouth or through your nose? I'm talking, so it's coming out through my mouth. But ideally, the research suggests nose-nose breathing is lovely. But honestly, you can do either. Just breathe. Because so many of us are inhibiting the breath. I think that the ability, if you're an over breather, switching to nose-nose breathing is going to help because you've got a smaller space to breathe through, if I want to put it simply, right? And if you're a shallow breather, let yourself breathe through your mouth, really get some more oxygen in there. Your brain is going to go, oh my gosh, this is the fuel I was missing.

1:10:18That's true. So I guess anyone who's maybe quite tight, like tight backs, tight necks, like that might inhibit their breathing. Okay. And then I think about EMDR. Now, this is something that I am a huge fan of and works in bilateral stimulation. So can you talk a little bit about how important EMDR is and what it is? Because people might go, what is that? But I think it's incredible. Yeah. So I've been trained in EMDR since 2001. It stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. I now teach trainings in this. I love it as well. And I teach trainings on somatic EMDR. So I really bring a somatic emphasis in how we do this.

1:10:59But the short answer to this is that eye movement desensitization and reprocessing helps us work with traumatic memories that are not fully processed by the brain. And reprocessing means that we basically turn towards something that feels scary, feels unthinkable, feels unmanageable. And we consciously turn towards it with right time, right space, right support, right? So it's not like thinking about your traumatic memory in the middle of the night. It's about thinking it with another person who's lending their nervous system. So there's co-regulation. And now I can turn towards that unthinkable event and I can think about it differently.

1:11:40I can challenge the beliefs that I've had about it. And I can also gain more distance from that event, which helps to desensitize the distress I feel when I think about it. One of my favorite metaphors when teaching EMDR is that imagine that you are in a movie theater and that you can choose how close or far away you are from that screen. You can even choose to be in the box behind the theater. You can choose to make that screen really small. You've got choice now about how to relate to that memory. You even have the controls to turn the movie off or to turn it back on. And so when an event happens, a trauma happens, it happens to us.

1:12:21We have no choice. We have no control. It overwhelms us. But now we rework this in a way that lets us think about it piece by piece, change our relationship to it, and in doing so, changes our expectations about the future and what's possible for us. And that's amazing. Because it works by you following either like a pen or a dot on the screen and your eyes shift from kind of left to right, left to right, whilst the therapist is talking you through and brings you into that traumatic event, right? But what's happening in the brain? Because this is what completely amazes me, that this can happen and then you just feel differently.

1:13:02You do feel differently. And there's a variety of different ways that EMDR gets applied. Some of it, as you're saying, through eye movements, some of it through self-tapping, some of it through listening to bilateral sound. So there's a variety of different theories out there about why EMDR works. Initially, they thought, well, maybe it's redoing REM sleep, right? I think about rapid eye movement sleep, and it's the way that the brain processes through daily events and kind of consolidates memories in the brain. That's theory number one. But the current working understanding of why EMDR works is that it does something that we call it taxes working memory.

1:13:41So we take a difficult event. We hold it in working memory, which is a part of the brain that is then very much in the frontal cortex. And it basically says working memory can only hold so much information at once. So you think about a small desktop, right? A tiny desk. and we put the traumatic memory on the desk. And then we do something that we call a dual task, dual task stimulation, where I have to do something else while also thinking about that memory. So now I'm saying I'm thinking about that awful car accident, but I'm also having to focus on moving my eyes back and forth or self tap or hear that sound or hold these pulsars.

1:14:23and what begins to happen is that I can my brain can't actually continue to focus on all of the distress linked to the memory while doing this other task so it gives the brain a bit of a challenge. I think that is so important for anyone listening who might be suffering with PTSD that's such a big thing to be able to give them tools that they can actually do because I know that's where EMDR is actually like a savior for so many. We've spoke through so many amazing techniques from EMDR, breath work, tapping, massaging the neck and opening the vagus nerve canal. I think, and I hope this episode will be shared with so many people on the nervous system regulation.

1:15:07And I thank you so much for coming on today. The thing that I leave is with one question and it is, Arielle, what does Live Well, Be Well mean to you? I knew this question was coming, of course. And, you know, what really stands out for me right now is having a sense of agency. And that's a funny word, but I'm going to unpack it for just a moment. Because when we are living our fullest life, we know that we're important. And we know that we have an impact. And that sense of agency basically says that not only do I have choice and ways to turn towards myself, how I talk to myself, how I carry myself in the world, how I attend to my nervous system that helps me feel better on a day to day basis.

1:15:55but it also gives me that sense that I am going to be a contributor to making this world a better place, whether that's for how I raise my children, how I show up for my spouse, how I show up in my workplace or for my friends or in other community spaces. And I believe that when we are carrying that sense of that positive impact that we can carry, it changes the world. I love that. Agency is such a powerful one to end on. And it's true. Agency of your nervous system. Aria, thank you so much. I'm going to link all of your website and everything below if you're going to check out more. And thank you for coming on and teaching us about the nervous system.

1:16:35I feel very rested after this episode. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. What a joy.

1:16:50Thank you.