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Show Notes

In this episode, I introduce a new summer series format: Somatic Snacks — shorter, more focused episodes exploring practical nervous system tools for real life.

Recording from a spring walk in Anchorage, I reflect on the seasonal shift into busier, brighter, more activated rhythms — and the nervous system challenges that can come with high-capacity seasons. From there, we explore how to stay tethered to ourselves while moving through periods that require sustained activation.

Together, we practice noticing the sensations of “busy season” in the body and experiment with bringing awareness to something grounding or pleasurable at the same time. We also explore the importance of micro-pauses and tiny moments of down-regulation throughout the day — especially during transitions, after completing tasks, or when approaching overwhelm.

This episode is an invitation to work with activation instead of against it, and to build nervous system practices that support sustainability during full and meaningful seasons.

Timestamps
00:00 — Spring in Alaska + migratory birds
01:00 — Summer travel + seasonal nervous system shifts
03:00 — Introducing “Somatic Snacks”
05:00 — Invitation for future topics + listener questions
06:20 — Busy seasons + sustained activation
08:00 — The “accordion” metaphor for nervous system work
09:00 — Noticing the sensations of activation
11:00 — Being with activation without changing it
11:30 — Pendulation: activation + resource together
12:40 — “Playing harmony” vs. going back and forth
15:00 — Can the body be activated and okay?
16:00 — Presence, stress, and metabolizing activation
18:00 — Activation as fuel instead of overwhelm
18:40 — The importance of micro-breaks
19:30 — Feeling completion + satisfaction
20:00 — Transition moments + threshold awareness
21:30 — Examples of micro-pauses and resets
22:30 — Building new neural pathways through repetition
23:00 — Presence, pleasure, and nervous system shifts
24:00 — Closing reflections + practice invitation

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

Photos and links from this episode:
www.mindandmountain.co/podcast

Transcript:

Sarah 0:14
Hi co regulation conversations. I hope you heard that bird

Sarah 0:22
came out for a walk here in Anchorage, and the migratory birds are coming through here in the spring, and I saw a couple of my very first buds on the leaves on the trees.

Sarah 0:44
Today. Pretty exciting.

Sarah 0:51
It's definitely spring, and summer is around the corner, and I'm guessing for many of you, summer it's has arrived northern hemisphere at least. I am on my way to the summer to the southern hemisphere this week for the somatic experiencing training that I support there. So that's exciting. And this trip, for me, kind of marks the beginning of a summer mode with a bunch of travel and trips coming up, and Alaska summer is very short and quick and kind of intense in its there's just a lot of light. There's already so much light, it's pretty much daylight at 1030 or so, and then the sun starts to go down here on the southern part of the state, and there are places further north where it's the sun isn't setting at all already. Feels like we were just in winter and the snow here, I mean, it's just melting so kind of a wild time of year to have so much light. And, yeah, a you know it we don't have that long in the year when we are free of snow and warm and able to do summer things like hike and bike and go boating and plant gardens and things like that, so there's always just a lot that wants to happen in the Quick summer months, so I can feel the like uptick of energy in my own system, and the like different operating style that This time of year calls for little bit of a different nervous system setting. And so because things are speeding up for me, I am going to be trying to make these episodes a little bit more efficient, and have a goal of trying to get them in around the 20 minute mark for the summer, seeing what it's like to try to get a point across, or do some co regulation Share some time, and then, like, keep it moving both, yeah, I hope that both for me makes it easier to make happen on I still have a weekly goal for these episodes, and because of some travel, that means I will maybe at times, be recording some in advance, in preparation, like especially for the big three week summer trip that it have coming up in the Arctic. So yeah, I'm gonna try. I think it's gonna be like a summer somatic snack series. That's pretty good, huh? Somatic snacks, if you have ideas of topics that you would love covered in the series, let me know. I'm thinking about

Speaker 1 4:59
you.

Sarah 5:00
A short, potent, somatic drop ins that can tend to different situations that we find ourselves in, particularly in the season or these times that we find ourselves in. Yeah, what are the energetics, or the states that you either find yourself stuck in or cycling inside of and are looking for a shift from? Or what are the study the states that you would be would be looking to land more of in your body and your nervous system in this upcoming season. Yeah, let me know if you have ideas there. Send an Instagram message, or there's a link in the show notes for questions and suggestions we'd love to hear. Okay, so let's do a little somatic snack here together about feeling tethered, tethering our nervous systems inside of busier seasons. So whether that's spring, the energy of the end of the school year, or, who knows, you know, many times of life end of the year we end up in busy seasons. So to map this out, in a nervous system world, a busy season is one that requires our activation level to be sustained at a slightly higher place than maybe baseline. If we had plenty of time in the world and we'd be able to down regulate all the time, inside of busy seasons, we have to make a lot happen. So we have to stay stay in the zone, stay active, stay mobilized. So whereas in a lot of this podcast and this work, we are often like thinking about how to settle our nervous systems and deactivate. Well, in this type of season, one of the stretches is the sustained place of more activation. So there's two techniques that I would consider for this, just, you know, generally, of course, there's way more than that. But where I would start us each of these concepts is like, I'm starting to think of them as like an accordion, and there's so much depth that I could explore inside of each of them. And because I'm doing the somatic snack approach for a little while, I just want to see about if I just take a couple things out of each of these, of the accordion, introduce those and, yeah, we'll keep it moving and play with them in that way. But know that there is more in these areas. Should you want to go deeper at some point, or if you feel like there's really something here for you, then maybe that's an opportunity to explore a deeper dive in that zone. You know, maybe not everyone needs the same deep dive areas. Okay, so busy season one, strategy or technique or thing to play with would be to see if, for one, if you can feel the somatics like the nervous system, state of slightly busier than usual, little bit of activation in the body. And there's probably a way that that feels sense like sensation wise, there's probably a little bit of like, a little bit of tension in a few places, like an alertness in your face and eyes, and maybe a mental rhythm that's happening in the mind, maybe a speediness, checking lots of things and, yeah, managing a bunch so a lot of mental activity, and maybe some tension in the skull or the neck. Neck or the brain stem or the stomach, you know, related to that? Okay, so see if there's a way you can sort of sense, if there's any clues sensation wise. And of course, not everyone is going to be able to notice body sensations, and it's okay. If you can't, you might notice something different, like maybe emotions or thought patterns or images or like memories. I Okay, so the first place here would be to see what it's like, just to like, notice the notice what it's like in the body to be running at that pace, be sustaining that activation, and just check for a moment if it's like, okay to notice that all that is there for a little bit like, if there's nothing to change about it, if we can Just notice the sensations of the experience. And then the next step, next piece to explore would be, can you notice that and feel something else at the same time, like something, especially something that is pleasant or grounding. Maybe, if you're on a walk, it's something that's beautiful or something that catches your eye. I I'm just pulling in awareness of something resourcing. And then, yeah, it's up to you whether it works best to move the attention between the intensity and the resource and back and forth a couple times. Or another way to do this would be to see about like noticing them both at the same time, which would be more like playing harmony or singing harmony like two notes at the same time, rather than going back and forth between the two notes. So either of those are really nice options for tending to the somatics of the activation and bringing some resource in. Okay, so I'm just going to walk here with you All. You have some space to tend To that i

Speaker 1 13:40
you

Sarah 14:22
i And yeah, if you need more time, if you want to take some more time with this, maybe pause me for a little bit So you can expand into the time you want here. And when you're ready to land that experience or complete it for now, then we can just bring the attention. And away, let it rest and come back together, and we'll just, I'll explain a little bit about what I'm thinking about with that way of playing with this time. It's like, can we we're kind of asking the question if the body can be in an activated state and be okay at the same time. And that answer doesn't have to be yes. Like, sometimes what we come into is the realization that we need a break, so that's where I'm going next with this somatic snack. But before we go there, we'll just take a moment to kind of understand what that experience might have helped with. So you can keep an eye out for any differences. You might notice. This is the practice of being with CHARGE, being being in intensity, and tethering the body to something that's supportive or resourcing, so that while you're in activation, you're also able to be as present as possible with the experience that the body's having. This is really good for the nervous system, because it helps us. I just got passed by. I run in with a really cute dog. Yeah, it okay. So it brings us into the possibility of, like, noticing if this state is an okay thing, and when we're able to, like, consciously recognize that, then we're not like, storing any of the energy that's coming along with us in the moment. We're able to be with it and metabolize it, and we're not adding extra layers of stress to it because we're afraid of it or we're gritting our teeth through it. Instead, we're just here in like presence and acceptance of the experience. We can be embodied even in these moments of stress and higher activation. And in fact, when we are able to hold that activation well, it can become its own fuel when we aren't, like in push against it, or the in grit, or like all those. I mean, not that we need all those as well. Maybe there's even something that feels kind of good about the state of, like, it's go mode, you know, we're, like, getting a bunch of stuff done, getting lots of, hopefully, feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction and Okay, so that is gonna tie me into the next piece of this satisfaction. So the high intensity times, or the busier seasons, one thing that we need to get really skilled at in these seasons is micro Rest. Rest is maybe even too strong a word, micro pauses, micro moments and a way to like, let's see a way to like stack this habit on something that's already happening, would be to make sure that we're catching the moments when we finish something, any step of something, anytime we make a complete a thing, honestly, like an errand, an email, A project like we want to feel the completion, the satisfaction that comes with that. And we're looking for the little down regulation pauses that can happen in between things. I. I especially these, especially kind of naturally open up when we're in little moments of transition. And they also might show themselves or come around when it feels like you are getting a little close to the threshold of high activation, where it's like getting to be a little bit too much, you know, when we're getting close to overwhelm, then we do need to make a break happen, even if it is a busy season. So I just gave you three indicators of times to like, invite a pause in or take one of these micro moments. Or make sure you notice the micro moment when it's there, and that is when you complete something and you get to feel the satisfaction of having finished something, even if the little something during a transition time between projects or tasks, and when you're getting close to a threshold or a feeling of overwhelm, or the system is like at capacity or close to that, Great times to look for a moment to take a pause. And what I'm talking about here with a micro moment, is that a downshift for even a moment of the pace that you're walking at can make a real difference in your nervous system, a pause where you sit, feel the back of your body against the seat back of your chair, feel your feet on the ground and close your eyes for a moment, or Look at a candle or look out the window those moments, maybe it's standing up and doing some Jumping jacks or some stretches for your wrists and neck and spine. I mean, can come in many forms, but if we can be that okay, the nervous system can go deep and have a real reset pretty quickly. If you are present with it. The more presence you bring, the deeper it can go. And I mean, of course, this is a practice thing too. There's absolutely neural pathways that we're leaning on when we step into these micro breaks. But maybe that's practice for the summer. You know, if you start now, we could build some serious newer pathways for these micro breaks through out this summer season. Okay, so bringing presence into the body, feeling something that's like, supportive, that's pleasant, that's comforting, that's delightful. Spending like a few very present moments with that experience can help a break land in the body, creating a different nervous system state and creating some serious shifts. Okay, so you can, we can squeeze those in all the time, no matter how busy we are. All right, y'all, I'm already past 20 minutes, so I'm wrapping up our first somatic snack. Thanks for being here. Those two skills were being with the activation and something pleasant at the same time, or back and forth. We'll call that one pendulation, and then the micro. Breaks, many deactivation moments. Okay, play with those. Let me know how it goes with you. Thanks for being here. Take good care. I'll see you next time

Speaker 1 24:35
you.