Embracing Adventure and Resilience with See Her Outside
I recently joined Angie Marie on the See Her Outside podcast for a heartfelt and wide-ranging conversation about adventure, nervous system resilience, and how our bodies carry us through both the wilderness and everyday life.
We talked about my journey from moss-castle childhood play in Alaska to grueling wilderness classics, and how those eras of adventure shaped the way I approach challenge today. I opened up about the lessons I learned through my fertility journey, and how that experience shattered my old belief that effort always equals outcome. And I shared the story of my life-or-death moment with anaphylaxis in the backcountry, and how nervous system skills, community, and the land itself helped me through it with a sense of growth rather than trauma.
Angie and I also dug into how suffering, novelty, and joy show up in different seasons of adventure, what post-traumatic growth can look like, and everyday practices for regulating our nervous systems—whether you’re crossing a river in Alaska or scrolling headlines at home.
Topics Covered Include:
- (3:02) Growing up in Alaska and the shifting seasons of adventure
- (7:49) Suffering, novelty, and joy—why our relationship with challenge changes over time
- (12:06) Lessons from my fertility journey and confronting toxic wellness culture
- (19:15) A backcountry anaphylaxis emergency and how I found support in friends and the land
- (28:08) Nervous system tools for grounding after near misses and accidents
- (37:30) Everyday practices for resilience—orienting, resourcing, and sun before screens
- (42:08) How I weave fitness and nervous system education together in Mind & Mountain
This was such a rich conversation—full of honesty, laughter, and hard-earned lessons from both trail and life. If you’ve ever wondered how the skills we build outdoors can help us meet challenges off the trail, I think you’ll love this one.
🎧 Listen on:
📖 Prefer to read? The full transcript is below.
Sarah 0:00I was leaning. I leaned really, really hard on all of the I'd been pretty deep into the world of somatic experiencing nervous system work for a few years at that point, and I was leaning. I was like, using every tool in the box.
Angie 0:17
That's Sarah histand. Sarah is an Alaskan adventurer, somatic nervous system, educator and mental health, informed fitness trainer. She blends those passions into a body of work through her business mind and mountain. I'm Angie, and this is see her outside, brought to you by the Karen project and the summit Scholarship Foundation. We share stories of women, girls and gender diverse adventurers to promote belonging and visibility in nature. We hope that this story inspires you to advocate for a more inclusive outdoors. Alert, alert adventure opportunity in March 2026 we at the Karen project and the summit Scholarship Foundation are hosting a grand canyon rim two river two rim adventure. We're putting together a small team for this challenging but absolutely stunning bucket list hike that will make an impact far beyond that day, each team member is going to help fundraise for our nonprofit, the Alliance for gender equity and outdoor adventure, or the GIA alliance to create wilderness scholarships for girls and women. We already have a couple teammates who surpassed their fundraising goal in just one week of signing up. The Grand Canyon's North Rim was hit hard by wildfires in summer 2025 we want to support that local area. So anything that you fundraise above the GIA Alliance fundraising goal can go toward a nonprofit of your choice, including wildfire relief funds in the Grand Canyon. It's rare to have a guided opportunity for this specific adventure, and I know it will be extra special, since all of us will be there to explore that edge of feeling the support and beauty of nature while also being challenged physically, like it's hiking to the bottom and back up the Grand Canyon, and it's for a great cause. So go to the show notes if you want to join our March Grand Canyon Adventure with me and the coolest guide ever Sunny stroher, the GIA Alliance Executive Director, we'd love to see you there
Angie 2:29
in this episode of see her outside with Sarah his stand, we dig into the mind body connection, everything from navigating the wilds of Alaska to fertility challenges and from Sarah's anaphylactic shock experience to post traumatic growth, a few lines on Sarah's website stuck out to me. She wrote how nature can provide a sense of support and safety, but it can also serve up challenges and discomfort. Both can be true at the same time, I asked Sarah whether she was always aware of that duality,
Sarah 3:02
I didn't necessarily always know that I grew up. I did grow up here in Alaska doing a lot of outdoorsy stuff, but my parents are from the Midwest and had like we grew up canoeing and camping and doing kind of easier outdoors stuff, like enjoying playing outside, building little castles out of moss and sticks and things like that, as a kid, but it wasn't until my 20s, when I started working for the Park Service and was around a community of People who were doing more challenging things outside mountaineering and backcountry trips off trail, and some some more ambitious outdoor challenges that I started to realize how we could, like, really push ourselves outside of comfort zones and the the cool things that came out of that, and also the like, really intense challenge, both physically and emotionally. So I think that's been a learning process. And I was really, really into the challenge for a long time in my 20s and 30s, like really got a lot out of pushing myself and learning my limits and learning how to build skills to exceed them and do harder things and and then have kind of settled into an easier rhythm now that I'm in my 40s, where I'm more about like being in the pleasure and the enjoyment of the physical challenge and also the being outside. Totally.
Angie 4:35
Speaking of challenges, I know that one of your I think, when you were in your 20s, you took part in the Alaska Mountain Wilderness classic. I gave it a quick Google and I was like, whoa, this sounds epic. Can you tell us about that?
Sarah 4:48
Yeah, the classic is, it's kind of like a down low thing, because it's not officially a race of any sort, but there is a winter version and a summer version. You start in one place. And you end in one place, and then the rest is up to you. You just can't use any motor. It's like all human powered and self supported. So it's usually a few 100 miles between these two start and end points and no trails. So the winter one, you're skiing and walking and maybe ice skating, or just like, finding your way through the mountains. Some people take, like, mountaineering routes, and some people take lower, longer cross country routes, and the summer ones often hiking and, you know, carrying all your stuff, but often pack crafting as well. And yeah, those were some of the early experiences in my late 20s, early 30s that really required, like, a ton of skill and ability, like, willingness to suffer and push really hard and huge learning moments. My very first one I did with my brother. We had both gone through these really bad breakups and were had, like, lost our adventure partners, not lost them, but had breakups with them, and so we we found each other and decided to do the ski classic the winter one. But we're, like, completely in over our heads, and didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into, and had a lot of hardships along the way, but we did make it to the end. We didn't know that we could. We had all these bailout options along the way that we were gonna, like, have to fly out of this random cabin if we couldn't make it to the finish. And then when we did make it seven days later to the end of this thing, it was, like, the hardest thing I'd ever done, and wasn't ever sure I could, like, would ever want to do anything like that again? But then, you know, after a few days of good food and, like, healing up my blisters, then I started to think, like, oh my gosh, if we just did a couple things a little bit differently, I bet we would do a lot better. And so we spent the last the year in between, just like, training and switching out our gear and learning some some different like we switched from scaled cross country skis to wax waxable, and learned how to skate ski a little bit better, and cut down our gear, instead of bringing a ton of extra stuff we like, realized what stuff we could, we could get by with leaving behind. So the next year, we went back and on the same course, things just like, went super duper well, and we finished in five days at the front of the pack, and we're just like, oh my gosh, where we felt so we felt so empowered by it. And like, these kind of glass ceilings that I had for myself thinking that like I wasn't one of the people that could do this were like blown out of the water, and it really changed my idea of what I was capable of. So really super empowering experience,
Angie 7:49
yeah, and super unique too. It would be hard to imagine going from building moss fairy houses in the woods to surviving in the Alaskan wilderness for seven days. And you mentioned the word suffering. That is a word I talk about a lot with our volunteers here at the Karen project, because a lot of us will make that joke of like, I just love suffering. For some reason, there's something wrong with me and I just love suffering. What do you think about that word, and why is it that so many of us are drawn to those like severe discomfort timeframes?
Sarah 8:21
I wonder I I really don't think about that pretty often myself, because for me, it it hasn't been something that stuck around, like there was that era in my late 20s and early 30s where I was, like, getting a lot out of doing super hard things, pushing my limits and kind of proving to myself what I was capable of through doing really uncomfortable lots of suffering, moments like, kind of plumbing the depths of your soul and body, and like doing these, yeah, these things that really Just ask a lot out of you and I think that was a really important era for me, of like, learning that I'm capable, and if I need to, I can push really hard and get through some really uncomfortable moments. And then there's like, there's been a shift for me. And I'm curious if this is true for you, or other people who you've had these conversations with, where it feels like, these days, I don't need the suffering so much to feel that sense of like, accomplishment or satisfaction, or like we did it. I'm I'm doing trips these days that are where I'm able to, like, stay within my in nervous system terms, it's like in your window of of capacity, window of tolerance, where I'm, like, maybe, you know, I'm working hard, but it's like, something I'm capable of doing. And. Feel less. I feel like I let go into that suffering zone less and less, and when I do go there, I now am using all these nervous system skills to help support my self, so I feel less scared and less vulnerable and more like, Okay, I might be working really hard and pushing really hard, but it's like something I feel like I'm capable of doing. I'm not pushing myself beyond in the ways that I used to before. I, like, knew how to support myself along the way. So it feels less like suffering and more like just like hard work.
Angie 10:34
Yeah, I think you're in your early 40s, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm in my I'm 32 and I have noticed that I've been less excited about risky environments or the suffering in the mind sense, like I still do ultra marathons, and I love really pushing my body and suffering in that way. But there's been a mental shift over the past decade, for sure, for me, and I've been mulling on it. And I think what I'm really attracted to mentally, when it comes to adventure these days, is novelty. So it's less about the thrill of the risk and more about the thrill of trying something new or doing something goofy. So I'm getting what I used to feel excited about, like going down whitewater rapids. I'm now getting more excited about like, oh, let's go dress up in costume and have a picnic like a charcuterie board at the top of a mountain, and that's giving me the same fulfillment, but in a very different
Sarah 11:26
way. I love that. It's so fun. Yeah, yeah.
Angie 11:30
Sarah and I chatted about what it's like to pass through different eras of adventure and how each one helps us grow. She had a childhood adventure era of playing outdoors just for fun, a young adult era of searching for challenge in order to find a sense of belonging, and then later, an era of really pushing herself physically and emotionally, which ended up healing some childhood wounds. Eventually her life stories led her to an era of exploring nervous system regulation and how to teach it to others. Sarah is continually learning and applying those practices in her own life.
Sarah 12:06
The most recent shift where I've pivoted most of my focus into nervous system work that has that's been like a slow change over the last few years my husband, I went through quite a few years of struggling with a fertility journey and realizing that you know, getting your fitness in line and your mindset right like that doesn't actually solve everything. I had to really grapple with the realities of that not, not everything can be fixed just by taking really good care of yourself on physical and emotional levels. So that was some of what kind of kicked me over into looking deeper into into the nervous system.
Angie 12:45
Did you find through experiencing fertility challenges? Was there anything from that big adventure era of your life that helped you process and get through those times?
Sarah 12:57
Well, I know the experience of having waited out the weather and just slogged through long days because what else you're going to do, you have to get to the end. Somehow those experiences of having like an endurance challenge ahead of us on a physical level, absolutely informed the way we approached this long fertility journey that was multi years rather than multi day or multi week. So, you know, there's a everything changes, is one of the mantras that I often employ when I'm in a hard time outside and just can feel like sometimes when you're moving just like, incredibly slow, or the train's really crappy and it's going to take a long time to get to where you need to go. I use that mantra where it's just like, just remember everything changes. Like this weather is going to change at some point, or, like, the walking is going to get easier at some point, if we you just got to keep plugging along. For sure, things like that, I definitely used inside of a fertility journey too, remembering that we're in a moment in time. But it things are, things are going to change. It didn't actually change for us on the fertility level, like we still, we don't have kids, and we've decided to just that that isn't in our life path for this lifetime. But we did give it a really good effort. We tried lots of things, and we've also, you know, sometimes trips and outdoor adventures have alternate endings too, where you maybe we've had to, like, adjust a trip and like, end in a different place than we planned. And there's maybe a way that that's what we did with our fertility process too.
Angie 14:37
Yeah, what a metaphor as a total side tangent. I trained to be before I before I started my own business. I was training to be a fertility doula, and so I'm like, trying. I'm holding back right now, being like, don't turn this into a fertility podcast. But I'm like, very I think that's like, so vulnerable and kind of you to share, because you know you have that alternate ending. The. So often, like, you see the people who have struggled for years to get pregnant, and then it's like they have that happy ending of, like, look, we got our baby and stuff and like, so for you to share that that's not what happened for you, I think is really brave, and it's a story that is probably very common, but not a lot of people are talking about it.
Sarah 15:13
Unfortunately, there's this idea inside of, like, toxic wellness culture, that everything has a solution, and that if you do everything right, that there's like, you're gonna get what you want always, but that's just, that's actually that was something I really had to contend with, because I think I had a lot of I think of it as, like, athletic privilege, actually, previously, where it's like, I used to be able to just, like, train my body to, like, take on whatever challenge I wanted it to. And if I did the right training and put the right effort in that I would get the outcome that was, like, at least somewhere close to where I wanted it. And the fertility process was kind of the first time I was like, Oh, dang, I can't actually, like, make this happen in the same way. And it shattered that, that sense of like, that athletic privilege that I had previously been leaning a lot of my identity on and a lot of my self worth on, and really tough, some really tough grappling there. But in the end, it feels like some it really helped me learn some really more, more true realities about what's, what's, what's up with these human bodies, and like, sometimes we can do everything right, and sometimes things still go wrong, and there's nothing to there's no blame in that.
Angie 16:31
It's like another side of that sentiment that you shared, of everything changes, also you can't really predict anything. And what is that like living this adventurous life where you've been able to blend your passion into your work and spend all this time outdoors. How do you how do you basically stay positive when you're like, Well, none of this is for granted, and I don't actually know where all of this is going, and my hormones are changing, and now I'm in my 40s. Like, what? How do you deal?
Sarah 17:00
How do you deal? Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's really something, isn't it to be in these bodies that are always changing. And, I mean, everything changes in the environment, but also inside of our physical ability and what we can expect of our bodies if we're lucky enough to age, you know, that's like, there's absolutely change involved with that. And I think one of the things that that leads me to is just really trying to appreciate those moments of health and of making it to a mountain pass in a beautiful spot, and, like, really recognizing what a gift it is to be able to do those kinds of things while I can, and that that's not an it's not something that's always going to maybe be available. So that's where I'm landing with it these days, where I'm like, I just got back, actually, from three and a half weeks in the Arctic a couple weeks ago, and so I'm sort of fresh from that mountain time and and really in that place of just like, what a freaking gift it is to be able to move in these ways through these beautiful places and come back feeling so resourced and so touched by the experience, and just to Know that it's, it's a gift, and not always necessarily going to be something I can always do. That's something I'm in the process of, of learning too, is that there's no one right way to do it, and it does not have to be like, like. You can get a lot of these little hits of nature in in small, micro doses, and have it land really similarly inside of the nervous system, lots of Yeah, the way, we kind of can value the big mountain things as like better than the small walks around the neighborhood park. Like, I don't know, maybe it's all it feels like it can all be the same.
Angie 18:58
I wanted to get a specific example of what nervous system regulation might look like when the stakes are high. Sarah had a close call a couple years ago during a trip in Alaska when she experienced a sudden and severe anaphylactic reaction. Here's how it unfolded.
Sarah 19:15
I was on a backcountry trip in Denali with a couple friends, and we had flown in. So we had helicoptered into this place where we were starting, and we were working our way back to the road system. So it was going to be like maybe four days hiking, I think, and then a couple days of a pack craft. So we had fairly heavy packs. We were in this super beautiful place. Everything's amazing. We're making our way down this ridge and crossing through some brush to get to another area of tundra. And as I bushwhack through these alders, I must have, like, slid across a ground nest of wasps, because all of a sudden I'm like. Surrounded by bees and getting stung a bunch. And I had had a little baby, like years before, I had had a little bit of a weird reaction to a bee sting. Nothing that, like needed to go to the hospital or anything. But I kind of had this hunch that, like, maybe they say, with bee stings that like it can kind of come out of nowhere. And if you've had one weird reaction, it can be a lot worse the next time. So I had had this idea maybe I was, maybe I was allergic, I don't know, felt fairly casual about about it, because it hadn't been scary the first time. But I had redone my woofer, my wilderness first responder certification that spring, and the teacher in that class was like, you cannot not take this seriously. You have to treat this as if, like it's potentially life threatening, like, carry two EpiPens everywhere you go, carry prednisone, carry your steroids, like you have to treat it like it could be a big deal. And so for the first summer ever, I was carrying this full kit, which is so wild to me, because in this situation, we were able to walk a little bit further and get out of the brush and onto a river bar. But you know, it was just a couple minutes of walking between when I got stung and when I sat down my pack, and this anaphylaxis reaction started to kick up. It came on super fast, because once it started and I had sat down my pack, I had an EpiPen in my fanny pack on Close, close to me and handed it off to a friend, and then pretty soon after that, started to get a full anaphylaxis reaction and lose consciousness. And I don't know that I would have been able to give that epi 10 to myself at that it like it happened that quickly. I was super glad that I had really competent friends with me who were able to give me the epi dose and help me, like that brought me back to consciousness, and I was like, back to feeling like I was there. But this is the first time this is this had happened, and just randomly in this, like river bar that we ended up, where we ended up dropping our packs, and I sat down on the ground, and there was this rock there that was just perfectly shaped to hold my back. I was leaning up against this amazing rock, and that rock ended up feeling like this anchor for me while I went and I ended up going in and out of consciousness twice. The anaphylaxis reaction surged again a couple minutes after that first epi dose. And so I needed a second dose of EPI, which is something that this amazing teacher from my woofer had like reinforced, and said one dose is not enough to carry. You have to have two in a back country situation, who knows, because you can't get to the ER in a couple minutes. And then I really did need it. So between having the resources of my amazing friends, who were able to handle that super well, they had great medical training too, and were what holding my hand and helping me, like, breathing with me, like, and then this, these resources of feeling the rock at my back, and I was like, feeling like that, like I actually was feeling like the Earth was holding me there while I was on the verge of consciousness and wondering, like, it's the first time I've had an experience where I needed I could tell I was, like, not going to make it. If this medicine didn't work, it's real vulnerable. A lot of people need medicine regularly, and it was my first experience of really needing it at that level and quite vulnerable and humbling. Felt scary, and also felt like because I had, I was, like, really aware of the support that I had from the earth and this rock and my friends, it felt like I was had this peacefulness at the same time, even though it was like going through one of the most intense experiences of my life.
Angie 24:11
Yeah, it sounds like you at least were mentally prepared for well and physically. I mean, just the fact that you had the medication with you, it wasn't something I ever thought to carry because I've actually never been stung by a normal bee that I could be allergic to. So I don't know whether or not I'm allergic. I know my aunt found out in her 50s or 60s, after not being stung her whole life, that she had a mild anaphylactic reaction. So I think it's possible that I could, and actually a couple months ago, when I was recertifying my woofer, they mentioned that you can just ask your doctor for a prescription for epinephrine, and you'll probably get one. It depends on how much you're going to pay through insurance, right? But I actually just asked my doctor last month to write me a prescription so that I can carry around at least a pen in the back country and can. Case I end up having a surprise reaction, or if somebody I'm with has a surprise reaction, because really, like, your chances of survival are not good if you are that far away from advanced medical care. So wow, that that actually worked out for you, and that you were able to have have what you needed when you needed it.
Sarah 25:18
Yeah, seriously, there's like, so many things that went right in that situation. I can't believe that. I mean, it had been years of being kind of half hearted with carrying that stuff some of the time, but not always, or just carrying one EpiPen and not the whole like, they come in a two pack, and I would like leave one in my car and bring one hiking, you know, so I'd have it. But like, you actually need both of them around if, like, you're gonna have an Not, not always, but some of the more intense reactions, the one I'd had in that trip. So like, speaking again, on the from this, like, nervous system lens, there's a way that we can get caught, like, noticing all the things going wrong, which there were, like, plenty of things going wrong too at that same time. And one of the nervous system skills is to be able to like, also like, while you're tracking everything that's going wrong and you're there ready to respond to it, you're also learning to track the things that are going right and the resources that are there, the things that are going to help you get through this situation. So you're not just like, fully absorbed in the in the trauma, in the in it, and you're also tracking the stuff that's okay, and that my brain had been practicing that a lot, so I knew to be like, Oh my gosh. I'm so glad we have these skilled people around. I'm so glad I have what I need. And kind of being able to hold both there's like a real situation going on here and there's a lot of good stuff going on at the same time, I could see that same situation scaring me enough that I would like never wanted to go out into the backcountry again. But instead, it like transformed into, we call it like post traumatic growth, where it's like something we went through, something really intense and came out feeling really like capable and robust afterward, and not like I'm going to seek out more things like it, but, but also, if like things go wrong, I have even more like sense of my ability to handle them, and that feels like a really fortifying thing to be carrying moving forward.
Angie 27:15
Yeah, that's a fantastic tip. I'm wondering if you could share some more examples of how when, especially when women face an accident or a near miss, and it, of course, freaks them out, maybe they get through it. Maybe they grow a little bit from it, but still, the next time that they're out in a similar environment or situation, if your nervous system starts getting activated again, what are some other tools we can use? So for example, after I was in a flash flood and I had a pretty arduous, long rescue, it freaked me out, and I noticed the next time I had to do a creek crossing on a backpacking trip, months later, I was pretty freaked out. It wasn't a really hard creek crossing, but my mind and body were both reacting as if it were a consequential creek crossing. What are some things I could have done to bring myself back into a more grounded space and gotten across safely?
Sarah 28:08
Hmm, yeah. Great question. So relatable, too. I mean, this happens. This happens to all of us when we have, like, a close call, and the body remembers what happened and what could have happened and and then, like, wants to avoid situations like that in the future, is kind of like mapping out different ways to keep us safe. So some of what I always wanted us to be doing when we're having these conversations is just like recognizing this inherent wisdom in the body. It's like efforting to try to keep you alive. It's like, there's a way we can be really frustrated with it. And like, Why Am I overreacting? But like, it can. It helps soften the whole experience. If we're just like, okay, body like, good job. I see what you're doing here. I see you, like, really working hard for me. And like, let's figure out how to help support you. Help support the body in in this moment, so that it can differentiate between what happened in the past and what's happening right now. And we can only do that through, like, if we're mad at the body, that's like, probably not going to go very well. So if we can remember that it's like, it's, it's like coming through with some wisdom here that's going to help soften the experience initially. And then a lot of a lot of this work ends up being in um, slowing things down enough so that we can help the like the animal, the physical body, recognize that the moment that it's in is a safe moment, versus the moment that it thinks it might be having, which it might be like, still kind of stuck, living out something from the from the past, if you're like in those moments that are really intense, like there's there. Some ways, if we can tend to our own, tend to the body in the moment, that will help those moments not get carried forward into into the future. So there's some ways of like tending to things in the moment. Like, like what I talked about about, like feeling the feeling the rock at my back, like feeling any kind of resources that are around in the moment, and then from that place of feeling supported, and like, you've got some the earth there, or you've got friends with you, like, that helps the body feel less alone. And then it might need to, like, discharge, like my body was doing a lot of shaking in those like, there's the adrenaline of the moment, and then there's also epinephrine. Is adrenaline too. So it's like, there's, like, a lot a lot of shaking happening. And we want to let the let the body do move through that wave of of release, of discharge of the adrenaline, or whatever else it's it's experiencing in real time, and then, and then, as that if that wave is able to move through the body and and tapered, taper off and kind of pass on its own, then it's less likely that that intensity will carry forward to the next moment. So there's like that, that skill of tending to that energy inside of a really scary moment. And then there's what you're asking about. Like, now I'm now, I'm in the future, and I'm in a moment that's like, not as intense, but the body thinks it's really intense. What am I going to do? Then those moments are moments to slow the situation down enough that you can really orient to the present moment and help the body, like, look at the like, really look at what you're seeing, and see the size of the river, and see that it's exactly the right size that you can cross. You know, like really trying to, like Orient. And then again, resource the body by recognizing that like, so we'd be looking for orienting is the process of, like, using your senses to notice the present moment in real, in accuracy. And then resourcing is, is a strategy for helping, again, the you recognize what you have around that's going to help you get through it, and that your body's not alone. So I use things like, I mean, a feeling my feet on the earth is one of the things I use, even in river crossings, where it's like this, my feet are making contact with solid ground right now, or letting your eyes land on the other bank, where it's like, this is where we're going. Solid ground over here, maybe you also have resources in the team that you're with, with your the people that you're doing the river crossing, or whatever else you might be like, Oh, these people with like, look really slowly and like enough, the brain can see this really quickly, but the body moves slower, so you gotta, like, slow it down enough and be like, look at this person. This person is really good at this. And let you, let that land enough in your body so that you start to feel like, okay, I've got a good team around me. Those would be some of my initial things to recommend for helping your animal body like arrive in the present moment with the situation that you're navigating, and notice how it's different from the other one.
Angie 33:28
Those are really helpful. One thing that helped me, it wasn't a wilderness setting, but because we talked about fertility earlier, I actually had my IUD fail in my early 20s, and I ended up with an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured. My tube went in for this emergency surgery. Was completely shocked and traumatized by all of it, and I ended up having some pretty bad health anxiety related directly to that. It was like every time I felt a pain in my pelvis, I would immediately flash back to Oh my gosh. It must be happening again. I must be dying, and it was probably just scar tissue, like stretching of my tissues. One thing that helped me, that I picked up, I think, from a therapist, was giving myself almost a bear hug, but then tapping, alternating tapping my hands on my shoulders. And I don't know the neuroscience behind why that would calm me down, but maybe it's something about what you're saying about just giving myself that slowness and just taking myself out of the mind spiral for a minute and physically slowing down enough where I have to be standing in one place to tap myself on the shoulder.
Sarah 34:32
I love that one that's they call that the butterfly tapping, because it's easier, like crossing your arms and tapping one shoulder than the other. And one of the ways it works is because of bilateral stimulation, stimulating alternate hemispheres of your brain, which is one of the things that helps us get out of like the stuck place where that I had mentioned earlier, we call it the trauma vortex, where you're just focused on. The threat and what could go wrong that has this like sticky quality to it. You sometimes can get like sucked into the experience of like, threat, threat, threat, and when we're trying to also remember resource the counter vortex is really important, like noticing the things that could go right, and even just that experience of tapping both sides of your shoulders can help the brain remember that it has two hemispheres, and it doesn't just need to be like hyper fixated on the problem here, that there's, there's another side to the story.
Angie 35:36
Very cool. So I love that nice. I'm curious through your business mind and mountain. Do you talk with a lot of women who have these near misses or these accidents in the outdoors that don't realize how much they affected the nervous system?
Sarah 35:55
Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting. You know, some people come in because they have had something scary happen, and for sure, they're feeling impacted by it. You know, that's, that's what brings most people in who are looking for, like, somehow, some support. Because if you're if you aren't noticing it, then it, then there's not a motivator to, like bring your to come into therapy, or like to come in for nervous system work, but often inside of working with people as we're like, uncovering the layers of the different things that they've experienced. Often there are a series of subtle things that have happened through maybe in their outdoor time or throughout their life, in other ways that have impacted their nervous systems, that that made things it's often things are more cumulative than you realize, and it's like a series of smaller things that impacted your nervous system in ways that maybe you didn't didn't notice until you had one big One that like now everything feels different, and it feels like it's just because of that one thing, but often there's like a chain of events that happen before it.
Angie 37:09
What about an everyday life? So most of the people who are part of our community here and who listen to this show are women in their 20s and 30s and 40s, generally, who love spending time outdoors. They adventure. They have their outdoor sports. What are some things we can all be doing on a daily basis to support our nervous systems?
Sarah 37:30
I'm so glad you asked this question, because this is really one of the places where I see us needing nervous system support most these days, because the experience of living in our modern world and consuming the highly distressing news that's happening these days lands inside of the body as as a threat very often. So we're we're navigating chronic stress in a way that really our nervous systems aren't, aren't designed for the way our nervous systems are more like evolved inside of these, like hunter gatherer times, where we would navigate the threat of, like running into a bear or a mountain lion or something like that, and then, like, the body has to figure out what to Do with it, and then we're out of that situation, and it's over, and we won't see another one of those for a while. So we'd have, like, one big stressor come down out of it, get back together with our community, and move along. But these days, modern life, where we've got these we've got emails to open and news headlines, and we're that's that stress response system is getting activated repeatedly every day, multiple times a day, so we're really, I think a lot of the work of nervous system these days is needing to help our nervous systems evolve to match the times that we're in. We're like having to really work to catch our nervous systems up and so and so I use those same two orienting and resourcing all day long, basically when I'm in the front country and running my business or figuring out how to navigate the news cycles, whenever I'm noticing some tension build in my body. For me, it's often in my chest or a jaw, or maybe that little spot between my forehead, that little brow point, you know, whenever I feel that my body's reacting to whatever it's navigating as if it were a bear. I'll take a little moment and let my eyes move away from the computer screen, away from the phone and orient to the room that I'm in, and it takes a few moments. This gets faster as you practice it, but it you do have to move a little bit slower to get to the body. The brain, of course, is like, consciously. We're, like, aware that we're not under threat right now, but the body is often not so you gotta, like, slow it down. Read. Member, like, look around. Notice that, like, the space you're in right now is free of threat and probably even has some beautiful things in it that you might be able to notice, like, again, that like counter vortex, where we remind the body of what's going right, and then we're like, looking for things that are pleasant and resourcing and help us feel less alone, which might be like the back of your chair, your feet on the ground, or it might be the, you know, a friend, like a maybe a actual human, that somebody who you can remind your body that you've got good people in your corner, even if there's like, hard stuff going on. So I use those two on repeat, and I recommend that we all like work that into our lives, just taking breaks, slowing things down, reminding your body that it's safe again.
Angie 40:50
I can't necessarily explain the science or psychology behind this, but something I've started doing since the spring is I call it sun before screens. I have this little porch just out my front door. As soon as my alarm goes off, I usually make myself my coffee first, and then I'm not allowed to look at a screen or touch my phone until I have sat outside for a few minutes and just stare off into the hills, and it has made me feel so much more energized and happy in the morning. So that's that's my hack.
Sarah 41:19
So good. I love it sun before screen. Yes, nice.
Angie 41:24
So because of this conversation with Sarah, I kind of geeked out on research about nervous system regulation in nature. And of course, it's awesome. Actually, Sarah has a free download on her website all about CO regulation with nature. CO regulation is how one person's nervous system can feel calmed and healthy by interacting with another human's nervous system. But Sarah adds how it's also possible to co regulate using nature rather than another person. There's a co regulation nature walk, audio and some reflection questions from Sarah linked in the show notes, if you want to try these techniques out yourself, and if you're curious about how Sarah uses this in her work with outdoor app leads.
Sarah 42:08
So the two wings of my work these days, there's a fitness side and somatic nervous system side, and they overlap a lot the people who are come into my world for looking for the fitness stuff. It's mental health informed fitness training. So we work a lot with the nervous system inside of the workouts. They're like, cross training for outdoor rec stuff. And there's a summer program and a winter program. So some people come in looking for that. And then there are the people that are, like, really jazzed about this nervous system work and really resonating with these ideas of like, how to either work through something from the past that's been impacting them, or feeling like the chronicness of the activation in their lives is starting to wear them down. And so I have a few different programs that are focused on that. That's my current like passion project is figuring out different ways to share these nervous system skills, both in one on one, like therapy type work, and in broader group programs.
Angie 43:11
Sarah's story and work remind us you already carry tools inside yourself to be resilient even when things get overwhelming, the lessons that we learn in the wild, how to stay present, how to move through fear, how to come back to calm. Those don't stay on the trail, they come home with us. Mindful time outdoors builds trust in ourselves, which is a skill we can all practice and grow, if you'd like to work on those self trust muscles in community and in one of the most spectacular environments on Earth. Don't forget to check out our Grand Canyon team adventure. Spend the first full day of spring in the canyon finding that magical spot where challenge meets inner peace. If you want to support the mission of the Alliance for gender equity and outdoor adventure, I'll give you several options. One, you can apply to become a trailblazer through our program, the cairn project, trailblazers, design and adventure fundraiser that crowdfund scholarships for the summit Scholarship Foundation. Go to www dot Cairn project.org, to learn more. Two, you can spread the word about the summit Scholarship Foundation to help us advance gender equity on and off the mountain. Check it [email protected] and three, you can share the see her outside podcast with a friend. Every single share five star review or comment helps us share stories to get more girls and women outside. See her outside. Is hosted by me Angie Marie and edited by Alison castigway, with research by Danielle piecher, until next time go get outside you. You.