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Show Notes

In this episode, I’m sharing a short somatic practice for those times when life feels especially hard — when you're really going through it and your nervous system could use a little extra care.

We start with one of my favorite reminders: treat yourself like a plant. When things feel overwhelming, coming back to the basics of nourishment, hydration, daylight, movement, and rest can be surprisingly powerful. These simple acts of care help remind our bodies that even when life feels intense, we still have access to support and some foundational safety.

From there, we explore the other side of the practice: letting ourselves be in the experience we're having, rather than fighting so hard to get out of it. We talk about trusting the cyclical nature of our nervous systems, making room for the uncomfortable parts of being human, and even finding little pockets of okayness inside the hard stuff.

This episode is an invitation to care for yourself gently when you're going through it — and to remember that you don't have to move through the hard things alone.

Timestamps

00:00 — A chilly fall day + somatic support for hard times
01:00 — Treat yourself like a plant
02:00 — Nourishment, hydration, daylight + rest
03:00 — Movement, humming + signaling safety to the body
04:00 — The power of caring and being cared for
05:00 — Letting yourself be in the experience
06:00 — Trusting the waves and cycles of the nervous system
06:30 — Finding moments of okayness inside the hard stuff
07:30 — Connection, support + letting the earth hold some of it
08:00 — Closing reflections + taking good care of yourself

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

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

Transcript

Sarah 0:01
Hello, co-regulation conversations. Welcome back. It's fall. It's chilly out here. Maybe not where you are, but we're feeling the winter come in, and I feel the way that my face feels when I'm talking outside in the winter, like a little bit, a little bit numb. So I wonder, I wonder if that's something that you will hear, or maybe I will get more used to as the season moves on. I have a somatic snack for you today. This one is a quickie with some somatic strategies for when you're going through it, which a lot of people are right now. I've noticed. I'm not sure if you relate. This one might be appropriate in real time. I wanted to come back to another time if you're having a great time right now and don't need this. Maybe you need it for your friends. Okay, so basic strategy for when you're going through it. One, the foundation is to come back to basics, and I like to think of this as treating yourself like a plant. So, take care of yourself, take care of your body the way you would take care of a plant. That means it needs water, it needs some sort of nourishment, some sunshine. Hopefully, it's really gray here right now, but some kind of sunshine, daylight, movement, and some rest. Good sleep. So you know it's easy. It can be okay. Definitely sounds simple, and is usually harder than you think to do the basics, especially when you're going through it. So that's my first tip, and that can actually be a lot. Let's not underestimate the power of hydration, getting some sunlight, getting outside, getting some rest, getting making sure you're feeding yourself and being taken care of. You know, at the heart of that, on a nervous system level, on a primal body's trying to survive level, those basic steps signal to the body that even though we are in it right now, things are intense. Maybe we're feeling a lot that we are at our most foundational level safe. At the most foundational level, we are safe. We are being fed. We have water to drink. We have a place to rest, and we have the ability to move our bodies in any way. By the way, could be vigorous exercise, get those endorphins going. Could be very gentle walk around the block. Some stretching could be imagining movement too, or even the you know some of you have done voos with me, but you know the even less strategy than voos is to hum or sing; those are all ways of getting our body moving too. Move your vocal cords, and all of that signals safety. Those are all connected with protection responses. So just reminding the body that we have access to these parts, these different resources, can be really powerful, and also the exchange in being cared for, caring and being cared for, taking care of something is very primal. There's something that feels good for most of us, when we're doing that, and then when we're doing that for ourselves or others are doing that for us, receiving care is also so nourishing when we're in it. And then my the second half of the strategy, so. The first half is taking care of yourself like you're a plant. The second half of it, in my lens at least, is to be in the experience of whatever it is you're in. Oh, here's the dog. Might come over. Might hear some barks. Yeah, it's the experience of. I mean, I don't think we get out of this human experience without some of these times. So, if we can let them be here when they're here, and trust that they usually have sort of a cyclical process to them. Something I've really noticed with being in this nervous system space is that everything, the nervous system waves, and the even the challenging processes that we go through seem to have a backside of the wave to them, or the next phase of a cycle. If we can be in it and trust that something else is coming, sometimes it's the fighting of the experience itself that seems to make it stick around a little bit more. So, yeah. Inside of that, like, what do you like to do when you are in a shitty place?

Sarah 6:32
When you're in that state, because that state itself doesn't have to be All unpleasant doesn't mean that actually there's often a way to even bring some something like find an okayness inside of the ick, or maybe it's less like finding okayness, but like enjoy the feeling of feeling like like you're in it. There's something maybe in there. Okay, I don't know how to explain that in a different way right now. It feels like it's lacking at this moment. So maybe you know what I'm talking about. Maybe a more complete, definite, like way to talk about this. This part of it might come through in a future episode. Let's let's hope for that. Okay. Good luck if you're in it. I hope you also have the sense of not being in it alone and having some kind of connection to either others that can hold and witness you, so you're not you're not holding it alone, and also maybe the earth and the planet. Maybe there's a way to give some of your experience over to be held together with the earth. That always feels like it's helpful for me, at least. Okay. Until next time, take really good care of yourself.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai