MOMENT | Calm your nervous system in seconds with this technique - with Dr Sarah Woodhouse

0:03Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's Motherkind moment. Thank you for being here. Thank you for pressing that little play button. I really do appreciate you. This is your place on a Monday for calm, connection, and maybe even a shift in perspective before the crazy week ahead. This week's moment is with the amazing Dr. Sarah Woodhouse, who is a trauma expert and research psychologist. Here it is. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? It does seem to be the solution to everything in modern life is just to breathe. So I can understand that people must be like what another self-help book telling me to breathe but it really is I'm sure you've heard of polyvagal breathing you know it's thank goodness it's becoming really well understood now so there's a certain technique we can use with breathing that I do it all the time and I'm not kidding I do it all the time especially when I'm at a tall elevated the fact I can feel too much adrenaline if I feel a little bit anxious whatever it is I just immediately come back to this style of breathing, which is a deep breath into your belly.

1:10So it's belly breathing essentially. So in for the count of four, slow count, and then exhale for the count of eight. I get that it is just breathing. I've basically just told everyone to breathe and they have heard of that before. But the clever thing about this breathing is that because you're exhaling for longer, it sort of vibrates the diaphragm in a way that triggers this nerve here, which is the gateway to the parasympathetic nervous system. So this will release the necessary sort of hormones to stop the adrenaline. And it's like any tool in recovery, trauma, healing, whatever, the more you use it, the better it works, which is why I do it all the time.

1:53I use it day in, day out, because then when I need it in the moment, when I'm really triggered, it works and it works quickly. So it's a great one. In for four, out for eight, as slow as you possibly can. Setting off this nerve is all about vibration. So even just humming can be really good. And voo, which I loved if you had the voo breath, that's a good one. You take a deep inhale into your belly. And then as you exhale, you just voo for as long as you possibly can. And these are great tools to use with your kids. I heard my son a couple of days ago vooing in his room and it makes me giddy with joy because all of our children will experience traumatic reactions.

2:38They will. It is part of life. They will have their fight, flight, freeze response will go off multiple times. And what we know now in the research is that it happens a lot in childhood because if you think of that definition I said, you know, trauma happens when you see the threat that feels too big for us to handle, right? If you imagine childhood, an awful lot feels threatening, right? And often the threat can appear too big for us to handle. So we need to A, be able to recognise what fight, flight, freeze looks like in our kids and also practise tools for ourselves and give them the tools to help them re-regulate after it's gone off.

3:21Parenting is really, really hard. There are many moments where I just think, oh my God, what am I doing here? I have no idea. This is the worst longitudinal study ever run. I'm just guessing. It's just guesswork on a daily basis. So you have to really lean into the wins, don't you? Because it's not like a job. A friend of mine said to me, I just wish there was someone that would give me a gold star or give me an appraisal. You're completely running blind and you have to lean into the moments that are a win. I'm walking past my son's room, hearing him do polyvagal breathing so he could calm down after an argument with his sister was a massive win so I'm holding that