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Show Notes:

Episode 1: Welcome to Coregulation Conversations

In this very first episode, Coregulation Conversations begins with a walk in the mountains outside Anchorage, Alaska. Along the trail, themes of nervous system support, community care, and connection with nature unfold.

This episode explores:

• 🌿 How coregulation can help us navigate overwhelming times

• 🎧 The role podcasts can play in offering nervous system support

• 🫐 Everyday practices—like walking in nature—that help us ground and reconnect

• 💜 Rethinking fitness and movement as relational practices instead of domination over the body

• 🤝 Building resilience and care through connection, not independence

Coregulation Conversations is a space for exploring the intersections of nervous system regulation, somatics, movement, and nature. Each episode offers a chance to slow down, connect, and discover new ways to support ourselves and each other.

Transcript:

Sarah 0:02
Sarah, hello. Hello, and welcome to my brand new podcast, co regulation conversations. I am Sarah histand, and this is my first episode of this brand new project that I am very excited to bring to you, just to orient us, you might hear some background sounds as I am out on a walk on the side of a mountain here, outside of Anchorage Alaska, I just found some ripe blueberries and enjoying them. And there's a few little plants and brushes that you might hear me walk through. Walking and being outside in nature is one of my favorite co regulation tools, and I'll be talking a lot about that and my many other access points to co regulation throughout this podcast, And I'd offer you the invitation to join me, if walking supports you, or being outside, or if tasking, getting your chores done, any anything that feels like it's what Your body might want to do while you're listening. I love imagining this as a space where we can be connected in conversation, asynchronously through the magic of technology, and also be feeling into the way that that connection and the intention of taking care of ourselves while we listen can be supportive to both of us, to all of us in this new community that can form around this Space. I came to the idea of this podcast through listening to podcasts myself and realizing how they were supporting my own nervous system, how I was reaching for them when I was in the need of some co regulation support, and maybe didn't have access to a real life human in the moment, and how listening to podcasts was actually landing in my body as a version of that CO regulation support. And I thought I bet if we bring the specific skill set of CO regulation into the conversations themselves, then that will amplify the impact of that CO regulation potential. So I'm excited to explore that with you. These times that we're living in feel like times when we need these skills more than ever. Maybe we need the support to be able to walk through the challenges that we're facing in the broader world, in our environments, the political, political sphere, and in our own individual lives. And technology might be contributing to some of that challenge, amplifying the way that it lands in our bodies through media and smartphones and social media, and the way that we can, like pull up all versions, all types of horrific imagery anytime we want on our screens. It's like something that our bodies are really not, not evolved to metabolize, but I think that the through the same technology source

Sarah 4:51
we

Sarah 4:52
like when we're using technology Well, we actually have the tools to bring our nervous system, bring. Our biology along the evolutionary process, and help it catch up to what we're asking of it these days. And I imagine some something like this, this asynchronous podcast, talking about and supporting each other in our CO regulation journeys as one of the ways of helping our nervous systems catch up to what we're asking of them here in modern life, using technology for good, because these times are really not the time to be leaning back into the cultural conditioning of independence and doing it on our own and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, we're starting To see how the systems around us are collapsing, and maybe they never were as solid or as like there for us, as we might have been brought up to believe. And so we're having to, like, watch the crumbling, watch the collapse and figure out other ways to get that support, that community care, because the answer is definitely not like coming back into just trying to do go it alone, or having to create other networks of support, and through our own bodies and our attachment systems, learn how to feel supported in maybe non traditional ways.

Sarah 6:58
So just to bring us back into the moment and into the our bodies. I'd invite you to feel into your feet right now, and my feet. I'm walking out on the earth, on the land, and you might be able to feel either you're also feeling that in real time, or if you're not, you can just imagine that it's happening

Sarah 7:31
and either pull on a memory or just an image of what it might be like to be out walking feeling the feet making contact with the earth. Even if you're in a building, there's earth underneath you. If you feel down through the foundation,

Sarah 8:01
and we can start to feel how, you know, just the concept drop in, the idea that the earth is here all the time, underneath us, giving a solid place to put your feet,

Sarah 8:27
and then checking in with some gentle attention on the body to see if there's any impact that you might notice of This visual, this felt sense experience of feeling feet and feeling the earth. I noticed I took a deeper breath, just kind of inherently that happened. Maybe you notice your body slowing down a little bit, or maybe your thoughts slow down, any little bit of deactivation or little bit of gentle pleasure that you might notice. Let's just bring a little attention to that. Make sure you catch it while it's happening.

Sarah 9:27
So much of the art of CO regulation is catching little moments of connection or pleasure deactivation when they happen. They can be kind of easy to brush by, because our attention will generally gravitate toward the any kind of discomfort or stress, and I'll be guiding you and guiding myself along the way to redirect that attention and try to build the muscle of catching those moments of. Of settling and support when they come, because that is part of the magic of CO regulation. Okay, I just took a little break there because I found a bunch of blueberries and also the my first watermelon berries of the year, which are some of my favorites. So I am fortified on berries and back to also speak to because I am guessing that many of you have come to find this podcast through mind and mountain world, and maybe you've participated in the fitness side of things in my business over the years. Amazing. Thank you for being here, and I want to connect the dots up for those of you who like know me as someone who's been teaching fitness oriented work over the last 10 years that my business has been operating online, because I really do see a through line here between the way we've been playing with mental health, informed nervous system, informed workouts and movement practices in partnership with our bodies, instead of in like a dominant relationship with them that so many so So much of like toxic fitness culture teaches. So, you know, we've, if you've been a part of those programs, you've been alongside me in working to, like, build this different type of approach to fitness and relationships with our bodies. That's more of a relational one than a dominant one, and actually think of that as its own form of CO regulation, because rather than like disassociating from our body's relationships and using the power of our will and our our amazing mind to make our bodies do what they want we want them to do, which you know may or may not, work for a certain amount of time, and then at some point, there's usually some cracks that start to Show in that model. Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for many of us, when we start looking for a different a different approach, I actually think that there is something super interesting about learning to listen to your body and work our fitness goals, our movement goals, from a place of trust, of honoring and of taking care of the body, rather than like making it do what we want it to do. Because we may or may not be able to actually achieve that. For me, I could was successful at achieving that for quite a few years, and start to think that that was something that was possible, and then that fell apart when I moved into fertility journey. And I'll tell that whole story here, at some point, one of these early episodes tell you about the journey that brought me along into reshaping my relationship with movement and unlearning what I've come to call that athletic privilege, idea of being able to kind of get what I wanted out of my body, not all of us have that ability, and if we do, it's likely a temporary one that might start to fall apart at some point and might need to learn a different way. So I have started to think about this, this new orientation toward movement and toward our bodies as a relational one, where we're learning to listen and be in partnership with and like really figure out a different way to move through challenge, the physical challenge of building strength or building fitness, or sometimes the challenge is rest and receiving support. You know, there's lots of different ways that our nervous systems can be. Uh. Stretched, and sometimes it's actually through softening, but all of that, when we do it in a in a relational way, there is a aspect of CO regulating, of of being, the different parts inside of ourselves start to open up to the possibility of being heard and appreciated and validated. The different impulses in our body have space to move and get their needs met. And when that starts to happen across the system. I'm using some internal family systems language here. I'm also using some Somatic Experiencing nervous system language. So you know, if these are new terms for you, I'll, I'll do some work to define them and deepen into these concepts as we move forward in this space. But the way I see this working is that those there's like relationships inside ourselves that we can end up experiencing co regulation and support and healing with, and then that in itself, moves forward our ability to do hard things, if that's what we want to do, also do soft things and feel less guilty about it, and just like, further expand our ability to be a full human that has access to all different range of emotions, range of activities, movement and non movement, range of relationships. So that's some of what I'm looking forward to exploring with you. I'm actively in a process myself of learning to regain fitness from a really different place, from a place that's like, really deeply honoring of my nervous system. So I'll bring you along on that journey as it evolves. And yeah, I look forward to exploring all of this with you. So welcome to co regulation conversations. It will be really exciting to see where this all goes. It's definitely an emergent process, emergent concept, with lots of different directions we can go. You can expect a variety of different episode styles. Here some solo episodes with myself, maybe while I'm out on walks, or sometimes probably I'll be indoors as well. I have some mentors I want to bring in and introduce you to the people I've been learning from. And I'm excited about this modality, because I feel like we're going to have space inside of a podcast that I don't have in the other platforms that I'm on, like Instagram or email, to really have some open and deeper conversations about all these concepts, which is really great because they have a lot of different nuance and complexity and fun places we can go with them. So I am looking forward to it. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Please be in touch. If anything here resonates with you, I would love to hear back and like receive some of the impact, receive some of the feedback from you along the way, as part of like, my own co regulation inside of it. So feel free to reach out. The easiest place is probably my Instagram. So social media is, yeah, probably my Instagram. Sarah M, his stand is where you can find me there. And it's really great to be in CO regulation conversations with you until next time take good care you.