37. Nervous System Resilience with Leah Davidson

Ever felt like your internal alarm system was stuck on high alert? Leah Davidson, a life coach with a deep understanding of stress and nervous system resilience, joins me to unravel why the self-coaching model, and why it doesn't help when you're not regulated.

We explore the body's natural stress responses and how to recognize when you've strayed from your "zone of resilience."

Leah shares her insights on the indicators of chronic stress and the societal pressures that perpetuate a constant state of alertness.

In this episode, she shares practical tools and techniques for resetting your nervous system, and the key to mitigating the impact of chronic stress on your body and mind.

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What You'll Learn From this Episode:

• Regulated nervous system as a foundation for cognitive processes like self-coaching.

• Practical tools for nervous system awareness for better stress management.

• Chronic stress indicators and societal pressures that contribute to a constant state of high alert.

• A three-step process for anchoring in safety and techniques for integrating calming practices.

• The role of mindset and belief systems in supporting self-help practices.

Featured on the Episode:

• The Growth Summit
• Leah Davidson Life Coaching
• Leah's free video series - the 30 second solution to burnout
• The Life Coach School

Leah Davidson's Bio:

Leah Davidson is a Certified Life Coach, Professional Resilience Coach and Consultant. She is also a registered Speech Language Pathologist and has spent over two decades working in the area of Traumatic Brain Injury.

She is also certified in Pain Reprocessing Therapy, EFT, and Breathwork. As the host of the Building Resilience Podcast and the creator of the Advanced Training for Nervous System Resilience, Leah focuses on helping people learn to befriend their nervous system, manage their mindset and cultivate resilience.

She is passionate about teaching others how to resolve and prevent burnout, stress, and compassion fatigue. Leah lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with her husband Rob and they have a blended family with 5 children. She loves to learn, grow, hike, read, travel and spend time with friends and family.

If you want to find out more about how coaching with me will help you get in touch with your dreams and start living them, here are some resources for you.

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Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

📍 Hi. I am Deidrea, wife and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob and certified life and business coach. If you're a high-achieving goal-oriented woman and you know were meant for more, then you are a Success Minded Woman and you're in the right place. I'm here to help you make the money and the impact you've been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that imposter syndrome and harness the power of your mind. If you're ready to create a life and business you love, then let's go. I'm so glad you're here.

All right, well, I am so excited to have our very special guest today, Leah Davidson. And she and I met... Well, first of all, I already knew about Leah because she spoke at Mastermind for the Life Coach School, and she talked about feelings and how to feel your feelings. And even though we've been trained as life coaches to do that and to teach it, I learned from you a more broader perspective of that. So I was already knowing you and loving your work and had a curiosity about that. And then we were in a group coaching program together, Outside the Story with Coach and Kim, and I was like, "She's here." I was so excited to see you.

But the thing that really... When I knew that I wanted to have you on the podcast was the first day of that group. At the end, we were asked to share some of our lessons learned or takeaways. And the thing I shared was a quote from you, but I didn't know it was from you. And so coach had said something like, "The model..." Which is the self-coaching model that we all talked about, which is your thoughts, create your feelings, which create your actions, which ultimately creates your results and your life. He said, and I learned that he was quoting you, "The model only works when you're regulated." And I was like, "What?" And for me, it explains so much because I was feeling bad about myself that this coaching modality that had helped so many people, in some ways I felt like something was missing.

And so for me, that explained it. And then I knew I wanted to talk with you and bring you on the podcast. So I'll let you introduce yourself and more, and then I'd like to start with that about why the self-coaching model doesn't help when you regulate?

Leah:

That's diving right into the deep end, so that's wonderful. Yeah. So I'm Leah Davidson, and I am a life coach, obviously, like both of us are, and my focus is on stress and resilience, particularly nervous system resilience. I am also a speech language pathologist, and that is where my background with the brain came from. I work with people who've experienced traumatic brain injuries. So there's been the past 25 years, a strong focus on what the brain does, what happens when the brain has injury, neuroplasticity, executive function skills, nervous system regulation, all those things. And so I have merged my worlds, my speech pathology world and my coaching world to really dive into this idea of nervous system resilience. I became a coach with Life Coach School several years ago. I'd been following the work for a while, but finally got certified. But like you and like many of your clients, sometimes the model worked great and sometimes it didn't.

And when it didn't, there was often this question of, "Well, why not? Well, maybe it's the wrong thought, or maybe I'm not explaining it properly, or maybe they're just not going to be able to work with the model." And as I was pulling from my experience and my background, I was realizing, "Where does the nervous system fit with this model?" We talk about feelings, and I really try to separate out feelings from the nervous system, and we can talk about that in a few minutes, but where does the nervous system fit in? And as I was putting it all together, I was like, "Okay, the model, it's a wonderful cognitive tool," but when somebody is dysregulated, when somebody enters into a stress response, you lose access to your thinking. Not by choice, but physiologically, this is one of the consequences of going into a stress response is you lose access to your thinking.

So then it was really, "Okay, that's why the model is not going to work because we don't have our thinking skills online." If you can get to a place of regulation, which we can talk about that in a bit, then you re-invite your thinking skills. I call it your CEO. Your CEO can come back in and do things like the model. So I love the model. I am a huge advocate for people using the model. I think mindset work is so important, but there is a story that happens before the cognitive story, which is what the model takes care of, and that is the story of the nervous system.

And the nervous system to me is so foundational. It's like coming in and I want to build a home, and I'm sitting here talking about what this main floor is going to look like, what appliances, what I'm going to paint, some of the decorating, and I don't have a foundation. The nervous system is the foundation. It's the framework, it's the roof, and then the cognitive is everything inside it. So you need both, but you have to have that foundation.

Deidrea:

I love that because oftentimes we think that our thoughts are the foundation, that we can create things in our mind and our vision and what we're thinking, and then we create it in our life. But the foundation is not our thoughts. It's this nervous system.

Leah:

It's all the unconscious things. And that's why we can talk about... When people say, "Well, most of our thoughts are unconscious." Well, a lot of it is driven by the nervous system, by the state that our nervous system is in. Every state that our nervous system has will have a flavor of thoughts, feelings and actions. And so it becomes the lens through which you see everything. So that's why I share and I teach. I have an advanced training in nervous system resilience. I talk about you have to understand what lens you have on because that is going to flavor and taint everything that you do. You need to have that nervous system lens. And when you see the world through the nervous system lens, you actually see things differently. And that is where you become trauma informed, because trauma is essentially nervous system dysregulation. So there's such a buzz about becoming trauma informed, which is wonderful because I think we need to, but if you become nervous system informed, that encompasses it all because you are learning about what is biologically driving everything that you do before you have that cognitive story.

Deidrea:

So what is the nervous system?

Leah:

So the nervous system is basically the way the brain and the body communicate with each other. And it's comprised, it's housed in that survival brain that we talk about in that lower brain. And it goes through, it has different branches that go through, and it's really quite a large system. It has two main branches. There's a branch of sympathetic activation, which has more to do with the spinal cord. And then there is parasympathetic activation, which is something called the vagus nerve, which you've probably heard of. It's also very popular nerve these days. And the vagus nerve is a nerve that it's a cranial nerve, starts in the brainstem area and it courses throughout your body. It has a branch that comes up through the face and the throat and the heart area, and then there's a branch that continues down and goes down to all the other organs.

The interesting part about the vagus nerve is it is bi-directional. So it goes both ways, and it is made up of a bunch of fibers and 20% of the fibers go from the brain to the body. 80% go from the body to the brain. So you think of it, I say to people, it's like you've got five super highways. One of them is going down, four of them are coming up, and yet we spend most of our time doing top-down things, doing things from our cognition to how do I change my thoughts to change the rest of the experience, when really, if we go from the body up, we are going to have much more success, and we want to do both. We want both because that's how they communicate with each other. So that's essentially the nervous system is just our main way of communicating and a big way that we do that is through the vagus nerve.

Deidrea:

And there's something around, I think most people know, the stress response is that fight, flight or freeze. So that's when that vagus nerve or whatever that is, it gets triggered, it gets-

Leah:

Kind of. So what happens is we're constantly scanning for safety and danger. This is our survival brain. When we look for survival, the only purpose, so our nervous system, which is part of that survival, is scanning for safety danger, and it scans all the things that are going on outside of us. So it's looking in the environment, it's scanning what's going on inside of us, and it's scanning what's going on between us. So right now, you and I, we're scanning. I feel pretty safe in my environment, but because I'm talking with you, I can feel there's a little bit more activation in my body. So that's sending a message to my says, "Okay, what's going on here? Are you safe?" And I'm looking at you. I don't know you very well. The little chatter like, "Is she going to think that what I say sounds logical? Am I going to make a mistake?"

Deidrea:

And guess what I'm thinking? I'm feeling the same thing.

Leah:

That's right. That's right. So we both are, and our nervous systems will feed off of each other, and that becomes a very important piece of understanding why we need to work with the nervous system because we're constantly co-regulating with each other. So based on all that information, my nervous system is going to make a decision whether I'm safe or in danger. If I am safe, then everything's good. I talk about putting ourselves into different body states or different zones. If you're safe, you go into a safe state, you go into a safe zone. I call it zone of resilience. This is a zone where I can think, I can be curious with you. I can use reasoning. I can be kind and compassionate. I'm resilient. I am able to function. I can use the model in this place when I'm feeling safe.

Now, if I sense some danger, which I probably am going to, whenever you're being evaluated, doing something new, talking to a stranger, my nervous system gets a little bit activated because it's sensing the danger. And so we go into what's called a sympathetic state and the sympathetic state, we have all these physiological changes. My heart starts beating, maybe my hands get a little sweaty, I get a little flushed. Maybe I'll talk a little quicker. And it's much harder for me to access my thinking skills because I don't need thinking skills if I'm in danger, I need survival skills.

So if it senses that danger, it will go into that sympathetic state, which is that fight, flight or freeze. Freeze is actually a combination. It gets a little bit... But essentially that's what it is. Now, if I sense extreme danger, then my nervous system will bypass the fight, flight or freeze and go right into a shutdown mode, where I drop down and I just completely shut off.

And it's a disconnection mode. Both being activated into that sympathetic state, I call it team hyper because we get hyper aroused. Or if we've been in that team hyper state and it's not working, our nervous system will say, "Okay, we're running out of energy here. We have to conserve. We'll drop down into team hypo, or we'll enter team hypo, which is a hypo aroused state. We'll enter that state if we're in extreme danger." So we will be constantly up and down in these states. Our goal is not to be perfectly regulated in that zone of resilience all the time because life happens, we need to have our survival response. Our goal is to be able to come in and out of these zones in a healthy way, just flexibly. I need to be able to respond. I should have a little bit of activation when I'm doing something's new.

It gets a little bit more complex because we have what's called mixed zones. So there's hyper aroused, but still in safety, but essentially, a nervous system that is healthy will come in and out, will be activated, sometimes return to baseline, it maybe will sometimes underperform. It will come back up. We want to be able to respond appropriately to whatever stimulus is coming in. If there is a bit of danger, I need to act, but I also need to know how to calm myself down so my CEO can step back in and evaluate, "Okay, is there really danger here or are you just making this up?"

Deidrea:

Yeah, and I do a lot of that in my coaching. We talk about that CEO mindset and about your executive brain and then your primitive brain. But I think the piece that is so helpful is to really just understand more that that is part of our human functioning, that there's nothing wrong with you. And the thing that's been really helping me and why I love learning from you and the exports is knowing what things are called, giving them names for me helps like, "Oh, that's my stress response. Oh, that's my body going into fight or flight." Just recognizing what's happening, kind of take some of the... I guess taking it personal or for me, "There's something wrong with me, I'm not doing it right. This shouldn't be this way." It's like, "No, it should be this way. This is just my brain." So what can some people do to recognize when they're in one of those stress responses?

Leah:

And that is probably the most important thing, is that awareness. I find that as people learn, often what they learn is that they've been living more in a stress response than they ever realized before. So it really is trying to start to get in tune with what is going on with your body. Your body is going to be telling you when you're in a stress response. I've had many people will say to me, "Well, I don't feel stressed." And then we'll go through, "Do you have any tension? Do you have any pain? Are you struggling with any chronic pain or chronic illness? Do you have anxiety? Do you have depression? Are you chronically keeping yourself busy? Do you have sleep challenges? Do you often feel like you're ruminating over thoughts?"

Deidrea:

Yes, yes to all of these.

Leah:

So those are all things that indicate you are in a stress response, you are active in a lot of those things that I mentioned, you're in team hyper, which is where you are functioning more in a fight or flight. There is a lot of energy. Sometimes we think that, "But I'm just busy and I'm just productive." But then I go back to, "Do you ever have pain? Do you ever have tension? Do you ever get headaches? Do you ever have digestive challenges? Do you ever have sleep challenges? Do you have challenges in your relationships? Do you find you have anger outbursts? Do you ever struggle with anxiety?" If you're saying yes to all these things, chances are you are in and you're functioning in a more activated state on a regular basis. The challenge of having all these things continuously chronically is our system was not designed to stay there. It requires a lot of resources to stay up there.

Remember, as I said, a healthy system goes in and turns out. So it's okay if you're going to have anxiety or for periods of time you're going to have these things. But we want to be resetting that system over and over and over, hundreds of times a day. We want to be coming down and resetting. So that's the first state is to take a look at what's going on in your body and your brain. In my work with people, we go through several pages of questions. What is it like when you're doing this? What are your thoughts? What are your actions? What's your posture? What's your tone of voice? What foods do you crave? All those things are going to change depending on what state you're in. So building that awareness is really important.

And if you do realize like, "Oh my gosh, she's just listing all those things," that's the hyper things. The hypo things may be things like, "I'm feeling exhausted all the time. I'm feeling very burnt out. I'm bored. I feel very lonely. I have a hard time getting up and doing things. I'm functioning on automatic pilot. Maybe I feel like what was me? Everything's gone wrong in my life." It's that victim mentality, that is all found more in that team hypo.

So people, sad, depressed, and there's overwhelm in both, but it's more of a shutdown. But when you notice that, "Okay, that means I'm also dysregulated." So once you build, I call them building your landscapes, what is it like being you? Once you establish those pictures, it's not to judge or shame or blame. It provides that, "Oh, that's why I'm struggling with these things. I am functioning in a state that my body is basically like, 'We can't keep this up.'"

Deidrea:

Yeah, that's what happened to me when I started learning about this, and I would love to work with you. So I'm going to get all the information for that because I'm always interested in expanding my coaching skills, and this is really an area that I'm learning. And now that I'm learning more about it, I see what has happened to me that I was in a chronic stress cycle. I even remember looking back, I was always saying, "I'm so stressed out. I'm so stressed out. I'm so stressed out," but also thinking that, "That's my fault. There's something wrong with me. I should be better." And so I kept myself stressed out.

Leah:

That's right. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Deidrea:

It made it worse.

Leah:

We just don't necessarily have the tools.

Deidrea:

Yes.

Leah:

Some of us recognize, I think we recognize the more obvious signs of stress. I think it's things like for years people would talk about if somebody had a heart attack, most of us can make that, "Oh, they got a lot of stress in their life," and we would tie that to stress. But somebody having some other type of lower back pain or IBS or insomnia or anxiety, we don't necessarily tie that to, "Maybe there's something going on in my life. Maybe there's some unresolved trauma, unresolved emotions," this just constant present day stressors that are happening that are keeping me in this state of dysregulation. Maybe there are personality factors, which there are, perfectionists, people pleasing, all these things put our body in a chronic state of stress as we try to keep up to these high standards or as we try to please somebody, as we try to do these things, we keep ourselves activated.

Most of us don't know. When I work with my clients, most people, the first reaction is, "Oh my gosh, you just described me and I had no idea." That's how a lot of us... Our society these days too, it's a breeding ground for this type of dysregulation. We're constant in touch with the news. There's a collective trauma. We have constant updates. We're being buzzed and dinged and all these things which constantly keeps us on high alert, and we cannot sustain being on high alert all the time. We just can't. Our bodies can't do it.

Deidrea:

And that's why it's so important to learn about these tools and to start to implement them. And what I love about all of this, because I've always been so hard on myself up until now, thinking that, "I shouldn't be experiencing this and there is something wrong with me and I need to do better," which is basically doubling down on the stress.

Leah:

Right. And that's what we think we need to do. "I need to try harder. I need to work harder. I need to do better." And what you find is it's usually the opposite. Now, for some people, they do need to, but I always joke, I say... I have five kids. We have a blended family, and I have kids that I find on the spectrum, and as we parent different kids, I will have one child where I'll be like, "Come on, Betty, you got to put some more effort in. You got to be studying more. You've got to be doing more." And then I'll have another child that'll be like, "Sweetie, you've studied too much. You just need to drop it. Why don't you go out and do something active and just take a break for a while?" So we have this spectrum. We're kind of like that too.

Some people need to be more up-regulated, and some people need to be more down-regulated. It's not a weakness. It's not a moral failing. It's not a flaw. Our nervous systems are something that were created. It started in utero. So we very much are going to be linked to our mother's nervous system. And then when we are younger, our caregivers, there's going to be a million things that are going to impact our nervous system. All the way throughout our life, we have these imprints. We've learned how to adapt for our survival. It was actually quite brilliant of us that we came along.

And like I always say, "Oh, little Leah learned that in order to get this praise or to adapt or to live within the environment that I was living in, I did this." And it worked for me until it didn't, until I started to see, "Oh, this is not functioning in my relationship or this is not sustainable." And so there's no failing. It's not my weakness. I was actually quite brilliant to come up with these adaptations.

Deidrea:

It's just how you naturally coat with your environment.

Leah:

And I was taught to do that, and it was reinforced. Maybe I was modeling a parent or maybe something happened in school or I had a caregiver, or I just figured it out, one day I did something. I got a lot of reinforcement, I got a lot of praise. I was like, "Oh, okay, I'm going to keep doing that. That makes sense." And then as we get older and go along, you realize like, "Wow. Oh, it's really hard to stay perfect my entire life." Maybe it worked for a bit, and then it starts to create more challenges. And usually people will hit... Either it'll be a breakdown in relationship or they will just physically break down. That's why chronic pain and illness is so tied to it. It's the body's way of saying, "Okay, if you're not going to listen, I'm going to force you to listen," because pain and chronic illness is something that will stop you dead in your tracks. And it's, "Okay. Good. Now you're listening."

Deidrea:

I know when I was younger, I would sometimes... And I know this is part of depression, but also I think some of that stress and burnout is I would think, "Well, if I could just go to a hospital," and I wasn't thinking about a mental hospital, I was just thinking about a regular hospital. I could just go to a hospital for a few days and just rest.

Leah:

Yes, yes.

Deidrea:

Now I know there's better ways to do that, but I think that's what was happening. I was having a stress response and I was going into that shutdown. So it was almost like my body was telling me, "Yes, you need to rest."

Leah:

And it's interesting because if we were to dive a little bit deeper, I've had that same thing. What it is somewhere in my mind I need permission to rest. And if I was in a hospital, that's like the ultimate permission, "Guys, I can't leave here. They're telling me I have to stay." Versus you could just say-

Deidrea:

Give yourself permission.

Leah:

Yeah, give myself permission. "I'm going to curl up in my own bed and stay home." But for some of us, we won't even do that. We're like, "I would need a doctor to tell me that I had to stay." And so it's interesting you start to see that's how-

Deidrea:

The patterns.

Leah:

That's what your pattern is and there's nothing to shame or blame. That's just the pattern that was created. Now that you're aware of the pattern, it's interesting to say, "Oh, okay, maybe I can start with giving myself five minutes of rest or work on that permission for myself." Like, "You know what? Leah, it's okay if I want to take a half day off, it's okay if I want to do these things." We start really, really small with... Especially when we're trying to befriend our nervous system is what we really call it. It's like you're trying to get to know what your nervous system is and how it responds. And we have to go in small doses, just like meeting a friend. If you meet somebody for the first time, we don't know each other that well. And I started to get into the details about, "Tell me about this, this, this, and how much do you make? And what were your childhood traumas?" I'm not going to say that, right? I'm going to first be just getting to know you. That's what we have to do with our nervous system.

Deidrea:

Just notice that. I think that the power of awareness, it cannot be... I don't think I can say enough about the power of awareness. And so much comes back to that because from awareness, then you can branch from there, "Okay, what can I do? What is happening? There's nothing wrong with me. This is how I'm experiencing this," whatever that is. And the more that you can expand your awareness, the more I think the richness of your life can be, the ups and the downs. I think. That's something that I'm personally learning and sharing with my clients is that, and I think when as you grow emotionally and mature and I think get this resilience skill, the more that you can look back with compassion on your past.

Leah:

100%.

Deidrea:

That you just didn't know.

Leah:

Yeah, I just did. So I have this advanced training and one of the coaches did a testimonial and it's on my Instagram and I just loved it. She said that learning about the... She now sees people's nervous system. Instead of seeing what she thought they were, what their actions or their behaviors or if they were annoying or doing something, she said, "I see their nervous system. It's like I see their soul." And I was like, "That's exactly what it is." We can see through the eyes of compassion, not just for other people, but for ourselves. There's no judgment. And all of a sudden the world becomes a little bit softer.

Now, that's not to say that you see, I can see through the eyes of compassion for somebody, and it doesn't mean I'm going to allow them to mistreat me, but what it does mean is it's about their behavior. It's about their nervous system, it's about their adaptations. It's not a question of their worth. I may still set healthy boundaries. I may still say, "I understand that about you, but these are the boundaries," because I also understand my own nervous system and I have my own compassion. And because I understand that, I know for myself, I need to set these healthy boundaries. So it really becomes a beautiful way that I can offer compassion to people around me and still set healthy boundaries when you see through the lens of the nervous system.

Deidrea:

Yeah. Oh, I love that. So with that awareness and understanding some of that, so the resilience, tell me how you define resilience?

Leah:

Right. So resilience to me is the ability to be flexible, to stand strong when you need to stand strong, to completely back down when you need to back down, to go up and down, to bend, to not break, to really be swayed and pulled around, but still be anchored. I think we often think of resilience as just completely being strong and not letting any weakness in. I see resilience is the whole piece. And actually, we talk about nervous system regulation. How do we regulate our nervous system to get it back to baseline, to get it back home? My training is called the Advanced Training in Nervous System Resilience, because it is all about that flexibility.

It's about being able to, sometimes you're a hot mess and other times you're a pillar of strength, and other times you're just going in-between and you don't even know where you are. Resilience is your ability to just keep going, to tolerate the stressors and to have a vision for a beautiful life. It's twofold. It's not just dealing with the adversities, it's dealing with the adversities and having the vision that there's hope and beauty in your future.

Deidrea:

I love that. Well, I'm all about visioning. I talk about that. I do a vision workshop where we are all about visioning that life that you would love. And one of the things that happens, right? You have this beautiful vision of what you would love, what you would love more of, what you would less of. But the next piece is how do you develop the skills to create it? And I think this is one of the tools and skills that we need and that most people just don't naturally have unless you've studied this or like you said, you've had people model this for you. It's just this basic human skill that we've all just not learned.

Leah:

We haven't learned. When you ask people, everybody knows what the nervous system, or at least they know they have a nervous system and they may know, "Well, the nervous system-"

Deidrea:

Honestly, I didn't know I had a nervous system.

Leah:

Well, we've heard it.

Deidrea:

I didn't know what that was.

Leah:

I was going to say we've heard it talk about it. Years ago, you might hear people say, "Oh, they had a nervous breakdown."

Deidrea:

Yes.

Leah:

And people might be like-

Deidrea:

But I thought that was all a defect-

Leah:

Exactly.

Deidrea:

Is what I always thought. There is something wrong with him. Not that that's something that we all have.

Leah:

Exactly. And I don't like that term, but I'm saying that's the term they used to use. But yeah, we understand, "Well, obviously my body has something, that it's doing something with the nervous system," but really understanding, well, it is everything. It's the driving force behind everything you do. It's how our mind and our body connect. And I think previously we've often thought of them as separate. We have our mind and we have our body. And now there's a lot more about mind body connection simply because that is the nervous system, but the nervous system is the foundation for everything. It really is your driving force.

I use the expression that your nervous system walks in the room before you do. You are following your nervous system. Your nervous system, it's with you in bed, it's having dinner with you. It is sitting beside you, and it's always like a couple beats ahead because it's functioning on the unconscious level.

Deidrea:

So I saw an interview on Mel Robbins' podcast. She has all these great guests, and there was a body language expert, and she was saying what you're saying in a different way, but she said, "You can read somebody's body language because what they do is five seconds ahead of what they say." And that's what you're saying. That's your stress response.

Leah:

Right. Your nervous system.

Deidrea:

Before your executive function, your CEO mind is coming on board.

Leah:

Everything gets filtered through your nervous system. Sometimes it gets stuck there though, and it never makes it to your CEO. And then often it filters through the nervous system, judged whether it's safe. Okay, continue up to the CEO. I love to talk about our CEO. That's where the speech pathology side of me comes in because that's what I've specialized in. But I think we don't understand that the CEO is responsible for a ton of things, but it requires certain things to access it. We require certain patterns. Say for neuroplasticity, for deliberateness, there's a lot going on.

And so again, it's one of those things that we throw these terms around of what the CEO is, but how does that work? Did you know that when you are in a stress response, it's great that you have a CEO, but the CEO is sitting back saying, "Sorry, I wish I could help, but I can't until you do this?" And it's like I always picture my CEO on tippy toes leaning forward saying, "Please, please just regulate yourself and then they can come help you. But if you don't, I am on the sidelines."

Deidrea:

Yeah. So what are some ways that you would recommend that people can use to get their CEO back on board or to regulate their nervous system?

Leah:

So there's a couple ways of doing it. I like looking at it like when you are learning about your nervous system, you're joining a sports team. And the requirement of the sports team is you have daily practice, you have techniques that you're going to use in the moment during the game, and then there's going to be a debrief. So I look at, there's tools in different things. So for example, daily practice, you need to be doing things on a daily basis to help build up your capacity for things, to help build up that stress resilience. So things like movement and meditation. That's why these things are so important. They're not just important for weight and exercise and our thinking skills. They're important for our nervous system. They help us grow our zone of safety, increase our capacity.

And movement doesn't have to, I like saying movement as opposed to exercise because exercise can be really just a turn-off for so many people. "I'd have to go run a marathon or I have to go do..." No, you don't. You have to do something that will help alleviate that... Complete that stress cycle on a daily basis. So just walking, sometimes you're going to want to be having a lot more energy because maybe you have a lot more energy that you want to get out of your body. So you will be doing something running and jumping jacks or swimming and biking. But sometimes our nervous system wants slower movement. And that's why it's important to understand our landscapes because our bodies are going to tell us what we want.

Deidrea:

But what if we don't want to do that even though we know that it will help?

Leah:

Well, that's why even things like just walking, stretching, things like that. So that's one way. Another way is through our breath. Our breath is one of the best ways to access our nervous system to play around with our state. You can practice breathing and then you can use breathing in what I call game day. The most effective technique is something called the physiological sigh, which is where you do two quick breaths in and then a longer exhalation. And you can do that in cycles of five minutes, which five minutes doesn't seem like a long time until you're sitting there trying to do that exercise for that period of time. So build your way up during that practice time on a daily basis. It's part of a routine. And then you can also use it when you're in the thick of feeling, "I'm in a meeting, I'm with a family member, I'm feeling like I'm going to have a meltdown." You can use that technique there.

And then the third piece is really meditation. There's so many, but just for the sake of brevity. But yeah, meditation, just quieting. And if you struggle with meditation, doing something that you find meditative in nature, maybe that's listening to music, maybe that's drawing, maybe that's knitting. So these are all things you can do on a daily basis. Then when you were in the game, it's very hard to say like, "Okay, I'm feeling very, very anxious. I am going to need to get back to you in about half an hour after I go for a run." That's not going to work. So you need something in the moment. So breathing in the moment, that physiological sigh or just anything that focuses more on the exhalation.

And the one technique that I use all the time is what we call the ragdoll. And that's just where you basically just relax all the muscles in your body and go limp. Yeah. A body that is in a relaxed state cannot house stress, so it just cannot house stress. Now, the one caveat to it is you are never going to be able to relax if your brain and your nervous system feels it is in danger or knows it is in danger. So before you relax your body, you have to ask yourself a couple of questions. The first question you have to ask yourself is, "Am I safe in this environment where I am?" And we're really checking for that physical safety in this moment. Not, "Could something happen? Did something happen in the past?" But no, "Am I safe in this moment?" I'm talking to you sitting in my chair, I'm at home in Toronto, got the desk in front of me. I am safe. So that's the first. You want to ask and answer that question because it's letting the brain know, "Okay, she's safe."

Now, the next question goes to the body, "Do I feel safe?" And most of the time the body's going to be like, "No, I don't feel safe." And we know that when there's tension, there's energy, there's pain, there's fluttering. And that is your body's way of saying, "Okay, you may be safe, but the tension, my shoulders, my stomach, my hands clenched indicate that we are not safe." "Okay, that's okay. I noticed that."

Now, the third piece, I'm going to get into my body where that tension is and I'm going to relax it. When you combine those three things, you're able to completely regulate your body. So regulation includes relaxation and safety. Relaxation is just relaxation.

Deidrea:

So does massage help with the relaxation? Is that one of the reasons why massage is helpful?

Leah:

Massage is very helpful for relaxation. It may not necessarily carry over long-term, and you want to combine it with safety because massage can feel good, but if your body still feels like it's in danger, then the massage probably in that moment will feel good but it has a hard time carrying over. So all the things that we can do to relax our body, we want to combine it with those questions. "Am I safe? Do I feel safe?" So it's like three steps... I call it the three steps for self-regulation. Am I safe? Do I feel safe? Relax your body. You do that hundreds of times a day.

Anytime throughout the day you start feeling energy come up, you bring it back down with those three steps, and you're constantly going to be doing it over and over and over, which is why you want to be practicing it because you want your body to naturally start gravitating towards, "It feels so much better when I'm relaxed. So while I'm doing dishes, while I'm watching TV, while I'm at a red light, I'm safe. My body, relax my body and continue on with my day."

Deidrea:

And that also gets you back into the present moment because a lot of times the stress is coming from worrying about the past or the future. Right? So that also can cause stress.

Leah:

And when you're in that relaxed body, you're in that present, your CEO comes back on board, and now your CEO's like, "Okay, let's evaluate what's really happening here. This is not happening, this is happening. This is why this is happening." So it really invites that CEO, because that CEO wants to come in and take care of business, and you can't do that when you're constantly activated.

Deidrea:

Yeah, I love this. I love really, for me, anytime there's an explanation for how I've been feeling or how I've been doing life or responding to life like, "Oh, this is why you weren't able to do this or this is why it was so hard for you." But being able to say, "Okay, but now I have these new tools, I have this new awareness and I can do things differently." And I think for all of us, that's what all of this is about. All of us are on this personal growth success journey and whatever that looks like for us, this is another tool, another skill that we can use. And once you learn it, you have it.

Leah:

And there's skills to build your foundation. Because I know sometimes we think like, "Oh, nerve..." I've heard people talk about nervous system technique or we use their nervous system. I'm like, well, no. It really is foundational. These are tools to help build your foundation, and then everything else can be built on top of that. But it is one of the most important things to have that foundation for ourselves and to introduce as many tools as we can to work on that foundation.

Deidrea:

So as we use the tools that build the foundation.

Leah:

A stronger and stronger foundation.

Deidrea:

A stronger, and I think that's one of the things too. There's just certain people that seem to just handle things better, that are calm, that sometimes people gravitate towards them. It's probably because they have that strong foundation. And you mentioned regulating and co-regulating. That's probably why people want to be around other people like that. It's because they're co-regulating with them, helping them calm their emotions, which I think as a parent, that's so important to be able to learn this so that you can co-regulate. I have three teenagers.

Leah:

They're our biggest examples of... Our biggest practice of co-regulating is with our children. Initially, our children are learning 100% from us how to co-regulate. And that's why many of us don't do well with co-regulation is we didn't have examples of co-regulation. When you talk about people have different foundations, nervous systems are like fingerprints. They're just extremely unique. And throughout our life, we were developing our nervous system. Some people had a lot of trauma when they were younger and adverse childhood experiences. They have high ACE scores and some people, maybe they had very loving and nurturing environments, but something happened. Maybe a parent was ill, they experienced a death, something tragic. Other times it just has to do with birth order or something happened in school early on and all these things. They interfere with the laying down of the foundation.

The good news is that you can continue to build your foundation. It's not like a, "Well, too bad you missed out when you were younger." It is unfortunate that we didn't have, for many of us, we didn't have the strong resources to help build that foundation, but that's not a sentence. That's just, "Okay, I didn't realize that I didn't have that. Now I have the opportunity. What can I do now to continue to build that foundation?" And you can do it. You really truly can do it regardless of what your foundation was when you were young.

Deidrea:

Well, and I hope that people listening to this podcast, if this is new to you or you heard it but you didn't really understand it, you can start now with what you've learned on this right now with Leah, you're strengthening your foundation and then some of the skills that you've offered to us. Can you say that three step one again?

Leah:

Step one is, "Am I safe?" Checking the environment. Really what you're doing is you're making sure that from the brain knows that there's nothing. Because if you aren't safe, well, there's a reason why you're activated. So am I safe? Then you go into your body, "Okay, but do I feel safe? I know logically I'm safe, but do I feel safe? No, that tension, that pain, that fluttering, that heartbeat, that sweating, I'm not safe. All right, what do I need to do? Well, I need to just relax my body. So am I safe? Do I feel safe? Relax my body."

Deidrea:

And some of the ways of relaxing your body, can you remind us what some of those are?

Leah:

The breathing and the ragdoll, those are the two, and you can combine them. There's two, there's tons of other techniques we can play around with different things. Whatever you find. Those are usually very, very quick ways that you can do inconspicuously. I can be sitting at the table with my family feeling really activated and just... I don't have to go into a big dramatic ragdoll, but just drop my shoulders, let my hands hang down, let my feet rest very casually on the floor, slump a little bit. I can do that without causing great attention, and I can take a nice breath in and then a nice, quiet, longer exhalation. I can do all those things without drawing attention to myself.

Deidrea:

Well, and I love the idea of the breath because of course, we have that available to us.

Leah:

The breath is, that's why often people talk about the breath being such an anchor because it is with us no matter where we go. It is a tool you always have, you always can access. Nobody can take it away from you. It's free to use and you can play around with it. There's tons of different techniques out there. You can find one that work for you. And like I said, you want to be practicing so that when you are in that crisis moment, you've been practicing all along. So your body has a familiarity of it. "Oh, I know how to breathe." As opposed to sometimes I know people will say, "Well, I was having this big anxiety attack and I tried to breathe and it didn't work." Well, often you have to be building up that foundation so it becomes automatic so that when you are in a crisis situation, you know where to draw it from. And we're not in the middle of crisis saying, "How do I do it again?" Look it up online. You want to have-

Deidrea:

So with every time you practice this and you notice it and you have this awareness, you're building that foundation and you're building your resilience.

Leah:

And you're building your pathways, that's right. Yeah. Building the capacity, building that resilience.

Deidrea:

I love this. I know that my podcast listeners are going to have learned something. I know I have, and this is definitely one of the things. You might know it intellectually or you've heard about it or you have an idea about it, but it's the actual practice of noticing this, of doing a process that can get you feeling safe so that you can get your CEO brain back on board.

Leah:

Yeah, it's a flow. And that's why I say mindset is also important because you have to have the belief that this is going to work, that this is worth investing in, that this is going to help me. And that's why they go so beautifully together because if you don't believe, then you're probably not going to practice. You're probably not going to try those things. I usually say to people, don't worry if you don't have full belief at the beginning Like, 'Oh, I don't think this is going to work." Just try it out. See what happens.

Deidrea:

One of the things that I do a lot in my coaching, and I didn't realize how this was connected to the nervous system, but I train or I teach my clients to notice if they're feeling contraction or expansion, which I realize now from talking with you, oh, that's kind of checking in with your nervous system because I teach them to don't make decisions from when you're feeling contraction. You want to get yourself into feeling through... I teach them mostly through their thoughts, but now I'm going to teach them more.

Leah:

That's right. So contraction and expansion. Do I feel safe? Are you contracted or are you expanded? And what feels like safety to you? I know your listeners can't hear it, but the ball, this is it.

Deidrea:

The ball.

Leah:

This is your nervous system, right? The breathing ball, the expansion ball, that's your nervous system. Contracting or expanding.

Deidrea:

And you have that with you all the time.

Leah:

All the time.

Deidrea:

All the time. Oh, I love that. Well, thank you so much, Leah. Well, first of all, I'd love to connect with you more personally, connect with you and get to know you a little bit more because you have definitely been someone that I've been watching from a distance, so I'm loving to connect with you more. And thank you for sharing these tools with all of us because I know it's so helpful. And this is coming out at the beginning of 2024.

Leah:

Perfect.

Deidrea:

So what a great way to start off your year, building your foundation for resilience.

Leah:

That's right. That's right.

Deidrea:

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Is there a favorite quote that you have that you'd like to share with us?

Leah:

I don't know who said this quote, but it's something that I have written reminding me. "I don't know how, but I know it's possible." And that to me is just... Even learning about the nervous system. I don't know how I'm going to learn it. I don't know how I'm going to use it. I'm not going to help, but I know what is possible and I try to apply that in almost everything that I do. Actually, it was my son several years ago for my birthday. He had created it artistically, put it out for me, and it's hanging in my office because I think it's just sometimes we're always trying to figure out how, how, how. Just drop the how sometimes. Just know that it's possible.

Deidrea:

Oh, that's beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Leah, for being on the podcast, and I look forward to getting to know you more.

Leah:

Thank you.

Deidrea:

All right, thank you. Bye.

Leah:

Bye.

I have a special invitation for you. Join me at the Growth Summit on January 26th 2024. This is an all-day event where you will connect with other women. We will spend a full day nurturing and loving on you while giving you tools to create wild success in 2024. I am excited and honored to be a featured speaker and I would love to see you there. This isn't just a regular old business conference. We are after the heart of women and we want to reach you on a soul level and have you walk out feeling uplifted, encouraged, equipped to joyfully face your new year. And we will help you fully embrace your value so you can dream big, have flourishing relationships, and leave an abundant life of impact. When you leave the Growth Summit, your heart will feel like it has been wrapped up in a big warm hug.

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And if you would love more hands-on support and actionable plan to implement what you've learned, then connect with us on the second day, which is an in-person, intimate group of women where we will really go deep on what we've learned in the Growth Summit. I would love to see you there. Thanks for joining me this week on The Success Minded Woman Podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast and you want to know more, then head on over to thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to next week. Bye.