Or Listen On:

Show Notes

In this episode, I’m up on a ridgeline in the Chugach reflecting on two big things I’ve learned about my nervous system this summer — after several years of intentionally slowing down, healing, and changing the way I approach challenge. 

First, I explore the difference between moving from capacity vs. override. I’ve been having some of my biggest and strongest days in the mountains, but what feels most different isn’t necessarily what my body can do — it’s that I’m able to do hard things without relying so heavily on pushing through, overriding my body’s signals, or disconnecting from what I’m feeling.  

Then, I talk about the other side of the cycle: a surprising stretch of deep fatigue that showed up in the middle of an otherwise high-energy summer. We explore what can happen when we trust those slower, more inward phases instead of rushing to get out of them — and the unexpected insight that emerged for me on the other side.

This episode is an invitation to get curious about your own cycles of capacity, challenge, and rest — and to consider that the slower seasons might be doing important work, too.

Timestamps

00:00 — Nervous system observations from a big summer
03:00 — Moving out of a slower season
05:00 — Athleticism without overriding the body
07:00 — Capacity vs. override
10:00 — Push/pull, freeze + the cost of pushing through
13:00 — What moving from capacity feels like
15:00 — More capacity, less fear + internal conflict
18:00 — Finding the gold in harder seasons
20:00 — An unexpected 10-day stretch of fatigue
23:00 — Trusting the body's cycles instead of linear progress
26:00 — Moving with low energy instead of fighting it
28:00 — The insight that arrived after the wave
30:00 — Slower seasons as part of nervous system processing
33:00 — Learning to trust wintering + hibernation phases
35:00 — Supporting a process vs. trying to rush it
37:00 — A preview: navigating fear with more capacity
39:00 — Closing reflections

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

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

Transcript

Sarah 0:11
High co-regulation conversations. Good to be here with you, and have you with me here. In a way, I'm up on top of a ridge line here in the Chugach on a kind of overcast but sunnier than I expected kind of day. Starting to feel a little bit like fall around here, South Central Alaska, and I was thinking I wanted to talk with you today about some nervous system observations that I've had over the summer. I'm always really interested in what is going on inside my body and nervous system, and you know I'm attempting to turn my observations into learnings and things that we can-I don't know-that necessarily generalize because our, you know, all of our bodies and nervous systems are so individual, and we have our own habits and patterns and processes and everything. So, not that my experiences necessarily. going to be the same as yours, or same as the people that you're with, but I do hope that in hearing some of the things that I'm observing about my system and the way it's adapting these days, and the phases that I'm going through-all that stuff ends up, yeah, being useful in some way. You know, maybe just as ideas of what to maybe keep an eye out for in yourself, or maybe it feeds your curiosity about what might be possible to notice, or maybe it resonates in some way with things that you observe in yourself or in the people that you care for or are in community with. Yeah, because it's been a it's been a big summer for me. I've been having a really good year, and you know, after a few years of being in like a slower season and moving, like kind of needing to be in a big downshift for various reasons that I've talked about here before, and you know a lot of that had to do with nervous system healing and wanting to like help my system operate in a different way than it had previously, like kind of realizing the impacts of operating in high activation and override and push through as a strategy, like all of those. Yeah, start to feel untenable. I mean, if you've been here, you know this, but like the short story is that that all start to feel pretty untenable and and almost like inaccessible after a point for me, and then that kind of kicked off alongside my like fertility journey and everything kind of kicked off this exploration into the world of somatics, and and inside of that feels like my nervous system has really changed the way it's operating these days, and I have been having a great summer as a result of that. Feel like I am coming into a new level of athleticism that I haven't had access to for a long time, and in some ways never have because of how previously, in order to do hard things with my body. I was doing a lot of like overriding the signals that were coming from the body and pushing through them and kind of disassociating as a as a way of. Continuing to do physically challenging things and not feel the way that they were impacting my body. Like the disassociation strategy is a is a very effective one for not feeling. It's part of why it's there, and great strategy for short-term use, and especially in a crisis when we need to like not feel so we can get through something. But as a primary strategy, it like has its has its weaknesses because of the like the it's designed to be a short-term strategy and has you know quite a few residual impacts if it's overused physiologically. So, anyways, all that to say, one of my big learnings this summer has been what a difference it feels I'm able to feel these days between what I would call the feeling of capacity, the difference between capacity and override. Oh my gosh, it feels so different now to be doing challenging things, physically challenging things, pushing my athleticism. I've been getting some long days in the mountains in, and some longer days than ever before, which is pretty fun. It feels like a culmination of like my nervous system's in a really different place, and also my like skills in the mountains have grown over the years.

Sarah 6:58
You know, so putting those two together has allowed me to take it on to like places that I wouldn't have thought I was able to do in the past. So that the thing I'm like, the language I'm wanting to put around that is the sense of moving into challenge, like doing doing hard things in the mountains, from a place where my body feels very capable, like there's space to do these, to take on these challenges, to do these long days, and it's like they're stretching, you know. That I can like feel that it's recruiting quite a bit from my, of course, my muscles and joints and everything. Put a little asterisk on that, as you know, the joints are for sure one of my things I've been really puzzling at inside of perimenopause, but the the physical sense of capacity in my body that comes with the strength and the cardio and the joint health and all of that, and then also feels like it's almost like the nervous system feels to me like it's a tier of capacity that's almost like a layer underneath all that stuff, where it's like I don't know. It's hard to put language on this because it's like such a felt sense thing, but the the feeling is that the body just has more ability or space in it to do these hard things, like kind of like my like if I'm a if my body if I'm like a cup, I I have I'm not although like before before maybe I was like nearly full of water, and so whenever I do something challenging, it would be it wouldn't take much to overflow the cup and or max out my capacity, max out my cup. And now there is like I think the cup's just a lot bigger, and maybe the same amount of water is in there, or maybe there's less, but there's so much more room to do harder things without overflowing and feeling like overwhelmed, or or you know that the the the sense of reaching your capacity is like it's often what we think about or feel as overwhelm, or feeling maxed out, and then what happens, you know, when we're in that place is that we either have to back down and do less, or. We have to rely on something else to like get our body to show up. So that's often when we rely on some override to to kind of push through and let the like get our bodies to do something that they're having to really like stretch to do. And that override, what that actually is in the physiology is a bit of freeze, a little bit of freeze response, in order to shut down the part of us that knows that we're like at our at capacity, and move into that realm of like we're going a little bit beyond capacity, which is of course like again not a bad thing. It's just more of like a short-term mechanism in the body, and it requires like quite a bit of effort and energy to sustain, And I know I was noticing, like, in myself when that was my primary mechanism for doing hard things, was reaching that capacity line and then having to push through it and override a bit. That when I would think about the idea of doing something challenging, like going out for a hike that had some unknowns inside of it, or would maybe be a little harder than we'd expect, or going out with somebody who's a little bit faster than me. So I was maybe going to have to be a little bit, a little bit pushed physically or you know socially, interpersonally. That I inside my own body, I'd have a lot of like push pull again about doing that because I like wanted to go, but then now in retrospect, I'm seeing this more clearly. This is not clear in the moment, but I feel that push pull. Like I want to go, but I don't. And now I understand that as my nervous system and psyche feeling how there was a desire to do this thing, but feeling also the impacts of that override process that my body knew so well and would kind of default to the freeze that could come in pretty pretty easily and then be really wearying for the like mind and body.

Sarah 12:44
So this is one of the things that I'm noticing as things repattern inside my nervous system is that now I can really feel myself moving from a different place, and this feeling of moving from a place of capacity, rather than that override place, which is not base is was not a cognitive thing. You know, it's like not. There are some strategies that you know. Those of you who have been in ski babes in summer strong, we've been like practicing some mindset strategies around helping us like stay in connected with capacity as much as possible, and notice that override when it comes on, and like that's all really nice groundwork for helping the body open up this possibility of moving from this capacity place rather than override. So, but it really, like, it really feels like a physiological shift more than a cognitive one, and as that as that like new pathway has opened up, it has felt so different to be moving. For one, like I can just feel even when I'm doing harder things, I'm not hitting that place of overwhelm nearly as often, not even close, and because of that, I'm not encountering things like fear, anxiety. Like those used to be very present for me with a lot of my outdoor activities, and they are much less these days. And again, I'm sure there's multiple reasons for that too, because also my skills have increased, and you know a lot of things. But it also does really feel like. There's a piece of this that is related to my cup having more space before, like the it gets close to overwhelm and the red flags start going off, and then also the experience of deciding to do something feels really different, and I can much more frequently access that place of like true desire to go do something without that internal battle of that I would often have before, and that really I'm really tracing that and connecting the dots there between this shift because it just doesn't feel like I'm having to kind of work through the freeze response and the override consequences in the same way, and so that's just like freed up all of this energy for and like the joy of being able to like connect with this way of moving through the world that I love so much, and yeah, it's like so cool to be able to access it more directly and without this internal conflict that has been so loud for me for so long. So capacity, instead of override, is one of the big things I am learning in a new way these days, and really enjoying it. Okay, and then the next one, next thing I wanted to talk to you about is this other learning that I've been having around the times when things don't feel as good, and I think the language I'm going to call put around that for this purpose of today, at least, is the it's like the gold in the in the harder times, the the like the treasure in the in the muck, I don't know. We need to play with this, but language-wise, but but I yeah the the learning here has been related to how it it actually hasn't been just like glory days all summer. Surprise, surprise. I don't know if that's a real thing for anybody ever, but there has been even really, really interestingly, even inside of a season where I feel like my athletic abilities are really coming together. My body's feeling really strong, and doing a lot of neat, big days outside. All the things. I have hit some real low energy points too, and one in particular happened after having had kind of like four big, really good days out in the mountains, and I came back home and was just Really wiped, and that you know expected that to be you know the way sometimes a low energy phase can happen after big efforts, but this one stuck around for like 10 days or so of feeling just very, very tired and depleted, and it was reminiscent to me of the way my body had been feeling inside of this Previous, I don't know how many years I'm putting on this last five-year slower season that I'm now thinking I've like mostly moved beyond, so it was a little bit like, whoa, what's happening here?

Sarah 19:41
My back into this slow season. I what like, and the you know having come out of like having been in this really this like uplifting time of. Life and of the season, it was kind of like whoa, like where did this come from? I thought we were crushing it, and I thought that I was just going to be able to get like stronger and stronger throughout the whole summer. Instead, I got hit with this this 10 day very tired window. I mean, who knows the details of that? You know, there might have been a hormonal thing going on, and yeah, potentially many factors. You know, maybe I didn't have my nutrition totally dialed for the those big days I was having, or yeah, not it's kind of impossible to know all of the details of like the why there, but the thing that I have been learning Through experience, in this like season of deep nervous system study and observation of myself and others, is that it's been I've learned it over and over again that when there is a season like that, a phase where things are slow or tired, or I have to like really step back a bunch from my kind of ideas of what I wanted to do or goals. When I'm able to actually do that and listen to it and try to not like rush it. Yeah, this is okay. This is what it feels like for me, at least. That shooting, it's getting a little windy, so I hope this audio is still gonna work. Let me just do a check. Okay, I think I'm just gonna keep it rolling and hope that that wind isn't too isn't too annoying. Let me know though, those of you that are listening, like let us know if this is manageable as far as a listening experience, or if I need to be more cautious around like the. when it's not windy like this. Okay, yeah, but getting back onto my train of thought, if I can here, let's see. Yeah, so a slower season, a slower. You know, I had this big slow season for a while, and then I feel like I'm moving out of it, crushing it athletically, back on my game, and then I got hit with this very similar, very tired period of time, and the it has because now I've like ridden through that type of a feeling with these nervous system skills and the trust that I've started to like build around those phases of things. You know, it goes. This goes into the work I've been doing as far as like training with my cycle for years. Maybe some of you have been in that that class with me. All of these different ways that we've been practicing being inside of our bodies, inside of the cycles that they go through, and like helping unlearn the kind of linear. Capitalist like growth linear trajectory thing that so often we're taught about bodies. It's like we're either getting stronger or we're like going downhill forever, And yeah, like so much of what I've been teaching and practicing myself for a long time now has been seeing if we can trust those slower seasons to be part of the cycle and not necessarily a problem. Okay, so what I. Observed this time around was a longer than like not just a normal dip that happens inside of menstrual cycle, few days of lower energy and then like the energy comes back around. This was a longer and kind of more, I don't know, more fatigued kind of period of time. I was like bone tired. I don't know what was going on. Maybe this is going to be what one of the like interesting parts of perimenopause, but but the important thing here is that I was like when I was in it, I was like, "What is going on?

Sarah 25:51
and really had to like move through all of the phases of like not noticing all that and trying to remember to trust it and then feeling angsty about it and like noticing myself trying to like push it all along and of course you know trying some things to see if like a little bit of movement here and there to like let the body do some like test some things out and see if like it gets going again if maybe it like finds its energy again you know. Like, I wasn't. I don't really advocate for like not doing anything during those phases. It's more for like trying to like move in relationship with the body and like go on some walks. I went to the gym. I did some little little hikes with full permission to turn around, which I which I did turn around. And the thing that I want to say about this, which it continues to surprise me every time it happens, that when this phase started to shift, and I start to feel my like energy coming back around, and like now I'm back, I do feel like I'm back and maybe stronger than Before, but the other thing that happened is that I had a huge aha moment with my somatic process, and like had this big breakthrough about a way that my body has been holding on to some charge and the like a body memory and like essentially like an injury pattern from an incident that happened for me-it was in high school, around when one of the times where I injured my knee and tore led to my ACL tears, and you know I've been like exploring this stuff for years, and it is incredible to me that it happened after this, like kind of at the tail end. If the if this process was a was like a wave pattern, it was like as this wave was coming to a close, and making space for the next cycle. I think I've said this before on this podcast that it seems like the insight comes after the wave, in the space between waves, in like the trough before another one starts back up, and in this experience, it really it's like continues to be kind of mind blowing to me to have lived this out again in such a tangible way. But I'm like very excited to have this information come again, like from the bottom-up body to like up into cognitive awareness of something that my body's been holding onto since high school, and now to be able to work with that inside of. My somatic therapy process with my provide my therapist, and I think it's going to really be like pretty important inside of that work. And I am crediting that low energy inter. oriented, kind of like winter mode, hibernation mode. That low energy time, with being a part of what my body, my physiology needed in order to like go in and like retrieve some gold, some new information, and then kind of close that cycle up and bring that information up and out into conscious awareness. I mean, for me and the like nervous system nerd and the somatic process that somatic work that I've been in, like this is a really big aha moment, and it's pretty cool to see. Again, I like every time these kind of processes happen. I find myself able to trust the those like low energy or those wintering phases, and trust that there's like something important happening inside of them. Sometimes it does end up being something that's pretty obvious and concrete, like this thing that just happened with me. Ozzy, I think that's a red-tailed hawk. Maybe their call will come through. They're cruising right above me right now. Maybe they're not gonna call anymore while they're there. Yeah, well, that's you know that's that's the second thing I wanted to bring forward today was just how reinforcing that has been for this thing I've been speaking to and trying to embody and also share in different ways over the years about how these slower seasons, slower phases have their beauty in them, and they often hard times when we don't know what's happening. They don't necessarily feel that good.

Sarah 33:10
Definitely disorienting, and can be like really challenging in a way to Ride out, and and I think it's really worth the practice of figuring out how to come into relationship with them, and yeah, maybe maybe even like get out of the. It's another inner conflict, often for many of us. Of like, if this is happening in my body, but I don't like it, so I'm gonna try to like, like rush it or move it along or get something different to happen, and it seems like when that inner conflict is playing out, that we're not actually able to plumb the depth of this process as easily. And sometimes it seems like it even sticks around longer because of the like pushback or the like resistance that we're providing, so I do you know this is something that I continue to be in practice with too, obviously, but does feel really different to me when I'm able to just shift back into a trust with my body and its its process, and like a curiosity about what this might be about, and definitely gets easier with like riding through some cycles and then. Feeling the the like aha the insights that that might arrive, so I wonder you know I hope my hope is I guess that sharing this with you might also provide the the like sense that this might be some of what in case you're in one of these like seasons right now, or next time you go through one, next time I go through one, that it might be easier to remember that there might actually be a purpose to it. There might be something that your body's working through. It's even a way like it actually feels to me like there is a way that freeze shows up in those cycles, where it like pulls you in to this kind of internal hibernation place, which is one of the like functional uses of freeze, and then as that clears, then there really might be some new information. So, may we all be become more and more skilled at sensing that when it's here, trusting it, learning how to support that inside of ourselves, and you know, sorting out what the difference between supporting it and like rushing it along or trying to get it to change might be, and then celebrating and delighting in whatever we might find on the Other side, yeah. Okay, well, let's see. Those are my two big, big ones. I I think I'm gonna save this for a separate episode, separate conversation, but there is a piece here that is also been a learning from the summer about how my nervous system in this stage of the game is navigating fear after having kind of set, like realized that for like that time when I was really trying to help my nervous system reset itself, that putting myself in situations where fear came up was like not very helpful for that process. So I kind of backed out of things that were scary or stressful outside, and now that I'm back in to this other state, I did have ended up in one one primary situation on our summer trip where there was some fear that I was navigating, kind of the first time in a while in a handful of years, and it was super interesting to be able to observe myself going through that, and also like going through it with the skill set I have now, and the like both the somatic strategy and also the physiology of the way my body's working these days, in with all of this practice. So, you know, in that for me, it like kind of ties into the the first piece of this conversation about working the difference between capacity and override, and navigating fear with more capacity, so that's going to be maybe like a subtopic of that learning. I will bring that into another conversation here in the future, and we're also working on a email series about that.

Sarah 38:56
So that'll come out at some point later in the year. So keep an eye out for that if you're interested in that conversation. And okay, I'm gonna get back to this ridge hike. Got an uphill section, so I'm gonna save you from my panting breath and say goodbye for now. And I look forward to jumping back in for another conversation next week. Okay, take really good care of yourself and each other, and I will talk to you next

Unknown Speaker 39:30
time.