Sarah 0:01
Fryberger, hello, we're back together. I'm here on a gray fall day in Anchorage out walking on some muddy trails close to my house, and we've just been having this, like classic gray fall wet weather here. And honestly, for me, it's been pretty nice. I've been enjoying it. It's always a busy time of year inside of mind and mountain, as we just started ski babes this week. And so welcoming in a new cohort of people and all of the work to get the word out ahead of time is a big lift. And so I think I've been feeling into the way that when things are busy with my work life, it feels pretty nice to have the like nature kind of slowing down around me. Gets dark early, so we go to bed early and get some more sleep, and then I'm having these slow, nourishing mornings with just a few lights on. It's still dark until, like, maybe nine already. It's pretty, quite a bit of darkness already. Yeah, and feeling the way that that can be like a pretty supportive experience when we're ready to when our nervous system learns that it's like an okay thing to slow down a little bit, that's been something, as I've mentioned on a few of these episodes, that's been something that I've been in the practice of a lot myself over the last while, while I've been deep in The somatic world and helping my nervous system move out of these overly activated patterns. And I'm really enjoying what it's like right now to be able to move into a slower rhythm and feel feel the nourishment in that feels really nice. Yeah. So we welcomed in a cohort of ski babes this week, and I've been teaching some live classes with them, bringing in more and more and more nervous system work to the live classes. And I'm really I'm playing around with the experience of really trying to be as present as possible in my own body while I'm teaching, so that rather than like having all of my energy out in the orienting to the class and I'm also tracking myself and really taking care of what my system needs as a teacher, and I'm pretty excited about it, it feels like it's adding a layer of experience for me as the instructor that is helping it feel just like a like a better experience for me, like I don't have to check out of my own self and bypass my own needs while I'm teaching I can also, like, take care of myself and match, meet my body where it's at. And so that's been fun. We just got done with a workout a little bit ago. If you listen to last week's behind the scenes on ski babes episodes, you know a little bit more about how that came together, the nervous system work and the workouts. I'm like folding them in together a little bit more these days and enjoying it, and also just recognizing how we live in a pretty small house here in Anchorage. And my husband, Luke, also works from home. He has a he works in the backyard, in our shed, and that he transformed into an office, so we had enough space for both of us to work from home, but we still only have one bathroom, and the place where I teach is in our living room, so when I want to do a live workout, he has to clear out and be in his office and can't even access the bathroom. Well, while we're giving the house over to this workout space. So it's a group effort. Thanks Luke for supporting me in these ways. And yeah, it's it's working out so far. I think we'll keep doing those throughout the. Throughout the fall, at least. It's part of it's part of what feels like this hot for winter idea that I brought up in the previous episode, and is the theme that we're leaning into for ski babes this year. And what I'm feeling right now as my body settles into the slower rhythm and is able to receive from that, rather than feel, feel like oppressed by it, maybe is how it has felt in the past, like it's coming for me and I can't get away, or dread, you know, there is, there is this dread that's around too sometimes when we move into this season, and that's, you know, there's some real parts about that. It's, it is a winter does require quite a bit from us, whether it's the extra time to scrape the windshields and put on all the layers before you're going outside, or the extra alertness and skill and everything that it takes to drive on slippery roads or Walk on slippery surfaces. So they're, you know, you know, it takes some effort to navigate winter and in this phase where we're in apprehension of it, the the feeling of dread can be around, and, yeah, I'm putting I'm also noticing, like, how that's there, and then also how there is this way of navigating winter being in relationship with it, that maybe, like, it really has something for us as well, even, you know, just like a workout does, that might require effort from us, but it has something that we benefit from on the other side. Okay, so there was my intro. That's where I'm at, where I'm coming to you from. And now I want to talk about the topic for today, which is the orcas model for navigating our nervous systems, and how this came about and why I'm really excited about it, and want to bring it forward for you right now, we've been kind of like skirting around the edges throughout this since this podcast came into being, I have a I've introduced a couple of the practices for you already inside of our somatic practice episodes, and I will keep going with that series as You know as the flow happens. But today I want to, like, show you the behind the scenes of the of this model. And specifically, you know, the big picture here is that, for one, I've been hearing from a lot of friends and people in the community and myself, you know, there's just a lot that's going on in the world right now. We're watching a lot of horrors happen on the news and systems collapse and things that we thought were stable not be as stable as we thought on the political level, many levels, and so people are stressed. You know, for like, good reason, I feel like, yeah, one of my friends recently said that if you're not at least a little bit stressed right now, you're probably not paying attention. So there's a lot to be tracking. In the world that is like, for sure, landing in our bodies and and makes sense that it would be. And then, you know, we just have, like, all of our regular life difficulties going on that, you know also are demanding attention and are taking and requiring our capacity. And then there's winter coming, which is also a draw on the system. So between all of that, I hear
Sarah 9:37
a lot of people looking for ways to to support themselves, both how to navigate their own nervous system and through these challenging times, and also how to support those around them. Because, yeah, I know many of you are parents or you have. Have loved ones who you're part of taking care of. You have communities that you care about. You know, we're all interrelated. So are the way our nervous systems are impacting the way that other people feel as well. So that's how co regulation works, and CO dysregulation. So, yeah, I'm hearing quite a few. Yeah, it's just a time when we have a lot of need for these skills. And oh yeah, I did also. I started my live group somatic class here in Anchorage this week, and was talking to the participants of that class too, about how timely, how necessary these skills are in these moments, this moment that we're living through right now. I mean, in a lot of ways, they've always been necessary, but I think we're all feeling the urgency of needing some new strategies, because we're navigating new levels of stress and challenge. So so as I have been developing my approach to teaching somatics outside of one on one therapy, which I know it is incredibly powerful in the one on one space and and also, I'm only one person. I can only do so many one on one sessions, so, you know. And there's a lot of great practitioners. So it's certainly not all on me, but I also have this sense that there's a way for somatics to be learned and taught in a different format, like we're playing with here on the podcast, and I'm playing within my in These groups as I'm developing this body of work. So I spend quite a bit of time in the ideation and the creation of like, what, what? How can this work? How can we take people who have, you know, haven't been through a whole practitioner training or haven't been able to invest in like recurring one on one sessions and allow them to access at least the foundational level of these somatic skills, because they're they're essentially the skills for how to operate the human Body, the nervous system of our human body. It's like the basics of how to like operate our nervous system. And you know, when we're operating without the user's manual or without these skills, then the nervous system takes us down its survival patterns, which, of course, it's doing for good reason and in its intelligence. And often, those responses are a little bit out of date, either they're from our history, our past experiences that it's applying to the future, intergenerationally. In many cases, or it's operating in the way that a nervous system would have needed to operate when we were living in living outdoors in tribes, and our concerns were about surviving wild animals and the dangers of being out in nature, which are really different from the stressors that we navigate now. So that's like, you know, the example of your body responding to an email the way it might respond to a bear, and it just like, doesn't know the difference between these types of stressors. So yeah, so much of this somatic work is like updating, helping our our nervous system along the evolution that it needs to recognize what kind of stressors we're navigating now, actually, and what we need to respond to them is pretty different than what we needed in earlier generations, and kind of What our nervous system evolved for so, you know, like, update that for modern life. Yeah. So, so in my work of ideating on how to teach this stuff, the core concepts that I'm circling around and the ideas of how to bring them together, I'm like, spending some time sitting with that and the this acronym, the orcas model, just kind of like it, like dropped in. I. It's one way to feel, to say it. It just feels like it kind of like I'm like, ideating, thinking in kind of a creative headspace. And this idea just like, boom, showed up, like all the way formed. And what it is is an acronym I love orcas for one the animal and I had a retired sled dog from the Denali Park kennel. I worked at the Denali Park kennel as a mushing volunteer one winter in my 20s with those with those sled dogs, and it was an amazing experience. I have a bunch of stories from that, including one where I was mushing with we were on a trip into the park, and I had this team of dogs, and one of the one of the dogs was Orca. They there at the park, they named the litters after different themes, and there was a whale themed litter. So orca was part of that, and he and one of the other dogs got into a little like tiff together, and the heat this dog and orca got bit on his snout, and he was bleeding. And I was a little bit away from my other from the other teams, and I was really new to mushing. I didn't really know what to do, and so I didn't want orca to like, have to be right alongside the dog that had just bit him. And so what I did is I unhooked him and let thought that he would like the idea. My idea was that he was going to run alongside us, but he did not do that. We were, we were on a multi day trip between different cabins out in the park, and we had camped at one cabin the night before we were on our way to the next one. And so I unhook Orca, and I let him, like, run beside him, which us, which he did for a little while, until I, like, realized that he's not with us anymore. I was like, oh, no, where did he go? So I parked the team and realized that I couldn't see him anywhere, and was able to get in radio contact with the other mushers I was out with, and tell him that I had lost orca and that I that one of the other mushers, who was the one who had experience, knew what she was doing, thought that maybe probably the thing that he had done was to turn her back around and go back to the cabin we had spent the night at. We were, I don't remember a couple, at least an hour, maybe a maybe more away from that, from that cabin. But what we're going to do, we need to go find this dog. So I turned the team around and and headed back, and we mushed our way back to the cabin where we had spent the night. And I was so stressed, I thought I had lost this dog forever. We're way out in the wilderness. Who knows where he went and how, like, where he if he's freaked out after getting bit, you know, like, who knows. But eventually we made it back to this cabin, and there was orca sitting on the sitting at the door of the cabin, just like waiting to go inside. And I was so overjoyed he was there. He was waiting for me, and I, like we made, definitely had made the right decision to turn back around and find him. And what a relief. Oh my gosh. It was such a relief to find him there. So that's how orca and I bonded, and then I ended up being his dog walker for a few years, and and then after he retired from being a sled dog, I adopted him with the
Sarah 19:39
guy was dating at the time, and we moved with him to Skagway, and he lived out his years there. And so, okay, so that was a Gosh. He was a good dog. He loved retirement, and once he was able to retire from the sled dog LIFE OF THE. Living outside. And, I mean, they have a really good life, but he was really psyched to turn into an indoor dog and spend a lot of time inside on dog beds. Our friends used to call these retired sled dogs. We had two of them, orca and Willow, and they used to say that they were, they were like cats, because they would just spend their whole day curled up on their on their dog beds, and they didn't really know anything about human food. So they'd never really, they'd never beg. And then when it was time to go on a walk, they would be all about it, for sure. But then the rest of the time they'd pretty much just like coming in sleep, ah, I miss them. So Orca, I've got a lot of good associations with that word and the name and and now it's really cool, because it's turning into one of the foundations of my work and how I'm teaching somatics as an acronym, it functions as the five primary skills for supporting the nervous system as it moves through the activation waves that we're navigating as We move through life. And you know how I've said many times before, and I'll keep repeating it, that activation isn't a problem. It's not a bad thing. And what we are trying to do with this work is support the body enough to be able to move through waves in an embodied way, in a present way, so that we're able to track the body be present with the sensations and the experience of activation. Because when we have that kind of container in our system, then the waves are able to come and go, move through the feelings come and go and and we don't end up stuck in them. And then you're, you're like, Wow, I did that. And the system's like, Yeah, we did that. And then it starts to feel more capable and like it can maybe do that again. And the idea of activation and activation ways starts to feel less intimidating. And Siri, and then you feel like you have there's like less need to manage activation or prepare for it, or be anxious about the future of what might come, because the system starts to trust that it can just be with the activation that comes it doesn't need to be scared or control it ahead of time. So that's the whole that's the whole idea. That's what we're trying to do with this work. And orcas is my kind of foundation model for how to help us get at that. So the O stands for orienting, the R stands for resourcing. C is CO regulation, A is activation, and s is settling. So those five practices together help the orienting helps us become more present to what the moment and to our bodies in real time. The resourcing helps us connect with the counter vortex, the neutrality of the moment, and that helps our container feel more expanded. And that's similar to what co regulating does when we recognize that we're not alone. We have support, whether it's through humans or non humans. Like lots of types of CO regulation, as we've mentioned here, that helps expand the container so there's space to be present with the experience that the body's having. Then we come to activation, and with all of that prep work, with all of that container expansion and and presence that we bring to the activation curve, the experience of riding the wave becomes a lot more available, and as we ride the wave up, then we're also playing with the skill of settling and allowing the waves to come back down and move through the body and settle all the way through. And I imagine an actual wave as it comes up on the beach, on like a gentle sloping beach, you know, and it ends it with just that little ripple, like little foamy taper out and. Yeah, and those waves can come all the way down and end in that kind of gentle way. So that's orcas. I'm thrilled about it. It feels so good. It's simple. It gives you this structure for like, what do I need to do when something's intense, let's do orcas. It's like, pretty easy to remember. It's like, got that mnemonic quality to it. The thing that is also true, though, is that as like like we know about this work, it's one thing to grasp it cognitively, and it's a whole other thing for the body to have access to The impacts of these practices and feel available to remember them. It's actually like a, like a physiological shift has to happen to, like, learn these from the from the bottom up. So that's why, like, I feel like we just have to be in the practice of it. Talk about them, remember them, and keep practicing together, because it's one thing to know, but it's another thing for the body to know. So, so yeah, the big picture here so we've got orcas, and I'm bringing it forward right now, one because, yes, it's like a really important moment for us to all have access to these skills and strategies and being able to practice them, and Also inside of mind and in Mountain, we are moving into getting ready for our my winter healing circle, which is my five month deeper dive, nervous system container that's a mix of group and one on ones. So this is the space to do one on one somatic work. If you're interested in that, it's a small group experience. We have a group of 12. We might do two groups this winter that is still under consideration, but the winter healing circle is one of my favorite it's really, yeah, it's a beautiful experience, one of my favorite offerings, for sure, because of the way that we can deep dive into the somatic work and spend time together, expanding the skill set, getting to know, learning to speak the language of your nervous system, and getting A bunch of practice, both in one on one and group contexts, and doing it through the winter, which is such a nice time to be in contemplation and reflection and getting to know yourself, having that like internal orientation. So we start winter healing circle in November. We are ramping up for that now. If we have a list, an interest list, for that program that we're trying to fill with people who might be interested, because it's a limited number program, we're going about this in this staggered way of, like, getting people on an interest list. If you're for, like, getting the early slots, especially if we have two different groups going, we'll want to know, like, which day you want to do. Think if we do two groups, we'll have a Tuesday group and a Thursday group that meet every other week and and we're we'll be using the orcas model throughout the winter healing circle. This is a new emphasis point that I'm bringing in this year, because I really want us to be in regular practice of these skills together. And each of these stops, each of the O, R, C, A and S, the orienting, the resourcing, the CO regulating, activation and settling. There are multiple different access points to each of those, so through the winter healing circle practice groups, we're going to be playing with different ways to access
Sarah 29:40
each of those skills together, so I want to introduce it here, so you can start to feel into your resonance about it. And then I'm going to be teaching a class on this next week, if you're listening in real time this next this class is happening next week. Let me pull up the dates. Okay, so it's the 23rd of October. That's a Thursday. That's a week from now, if you're listening to this, the day it comes out, and I'm going to do a whole live class and practice session on orcas. So we're going to take some space, and do both the cognitive learning side of it and the embodied bottom up learning and practice. And I'm psyched, yeah, I'm really glad we'll have some space to spend on this together in real time. Or if you can't make it in real time to the call, of course, it'll be recorded and we'll send that out. So the idea here is that if you're interested in winter healing circle and this orcas framework call, you can get that for free by joining the winter healing circle interest list. Or if you don't want to be on that list, you could just show up for this call. It's going to be $25 for those that aren't on the winter healing circle interest list. So I yeah, I hope you come. I'm excited. I think it'll be a really nice space to take what we've been playing with here in Little asynchronous ways over the podcast, and bring it in to a deeper dive space where I can help you learn how to do these practices and feel the impacts on your body. So we'll start doing some of that bottom up work together, and then I want to share how you can use these practices with other people too. So the idea will be, as with all nervous system work, we practice, we learn that through our own bodies. So the first bit of this is the bottom up practice of your nervous system, learning how to come into regulation or come into settling through these different practices. And then I'll also be sharing like how you can take these practices out into the world, whether you're you know, if you're in a caretaking profession, you might actually like use them at your in your workplace. If you're a parent, I would imagine you'd be using these with your children all the time, because you're a primary co regulator with them. So use them for yourself. Take it and use it on yourself. As you know, we can impact the world greatly by learning how to take care of our own nervous systems, and that is enough in a lot of ways. And many of us are looking for ways to actually, like directly support other people's nervous systems in without wrecking our own without so it's like that balance between figuring out how to take care of others without sacrificing over sacrificing yourself. That's like some of the question here, and I'll be speaking to that in the class as well, because that's that's a big piece of navigating this work. Since our nervous systems are so interactive when we're co regulating or looking to help support others, how can we be in CO regulation without being in caretaking, like over caring over giving. Got a lot to say on that so important, it's really been a practice for me too.
Sarah 33:57
Okay, so I feel pretty complete on the introduction of the model and the purpose. And I hope you can sort of sense the way that those practices support the nervous system, wave pattern, orienting, resourcing and CO regulating, helping at the beginning of the wave, helping create the space for the wave, and then activation and settling, helping us move up and then back down.
Sarah 34:37
And I think, you know, I will keep this podcast a little bit on the shorter side, but we have time to do a little brief foray through these practices, just a micro tap into each of them. If you want to join me. Let's do that for this last bit of. Of our time together. Okay, so let's begin by letting the attention move away from if you're looking at any screens, away from what's right in front of you and see what it's like to let your eyes rove around and notice the space that you're in. You might also notice sounds. I know I've got a magpie that I'm hearing. Maybe you're can also hear it through the audio, a little bit of water sounds while I walk past a creek. So seeing what sense feels the most alive to you right now you
Sarah 36:05
I'll bring you a little closer to the water so you can hear you.
Sarah 36:29
Yeah, just taking time to notice sights and sounds, and then while you're tracking that, let's bring a little bit of attention to the body, and we'll notice what kind of impact your sensory exploration had on your system, especially looking for any parasympathetic deactivation clues. Is there a deeper breath that comes in? Did you start to notice your body a little bit more? Did anything soften? Do your vision get a little more expanded? Or sometimes digestive system wakes up a little bit and we might get some tummy rumbles or some extra saliva. So we're always kind of looking for those clues that we're moving out of deactivation, out of activation, into a more parasympathetic state, and it's okay if you don't notice them. This is always just a little bit of a curiosity experiment. And then the next phase of this is resourcing, which is really looking for the things that are pleasant about the moment that you're having right now. I'm Raine, as I walk, I am accessing that through feeling my feet on the ground. When I'm seated, I often use the resource of my chair and the way that my body is supported by the physical chair that's there. That's like letting letting some support come into my system. Muscles don't have to work as hard when they have support there.
Sarah 38:42
So really, anything that's neutral to Pleasant will work here. Maybe you found something or a couple things. Maybe you're touching something that has a texture that you like, or looking at something beautiful. And let's just again while you're in relationship with this pleasant experience, notice what's happening in the body. I was just getting quite a bit more saliva, so noticing the impact, maybe feeling things slow down a little bit again. Notice if anything in the body softens. You don't have to make it soften, but if it does, let's notice that.
Sarah 39:53
And then let's move to co regulation, and we've got some. Options here. One of my favorite co regulation strategies is touch. So I might bring a hand to an area of the body that's feeling a little bit tense right now and just give it some company accompaniment. Again, we don't need to change anything about what the body's experiencing, but we might just give it some touch and presence.
Sarah 40:38
I'm walking through the trees, and they're again, another favorite co regulator. So maybe you feel if you happen to be outside right now, maybe you can feel into the way that the earth is here with you. It's actually always here, even if you're indoors. And the forest and trees might get the sense that they're here around you at your back, and then you could also feel into the way that my voice is here. And in a way, through the magic of space and time and technology, in a way we're kind of here together, listening with the other community members here, with this podcast, with me and my voice, feeling the way that we're connected through these kind of invisible spider web threads.
Sarah 41:53
And if there's any little sense of like, less alone, more accompanied, if anything changes in your system as you come into contact with that idea that felt sense. Let's take a note of that.
Sarah 42:17
Great Yeah, and again, no problem if there's nothing, or if this different areas, different ones of these skills will land differently for different people. So we don't have to get too concerned if we're having an easier time with one than the other. It might change based on the day, too. Yeah. Okay, so then we move to activation, and this is one that you may or may not want to continue on to. If you're feeling like really resourced and supported and feeling really good right now, you might feel like you're good, you just reinforce the backside of the wave for yourself. But if you're feeling like there is some activation in your system and there's anything on your mind that like has some charge with it, you might just bring that something like, probably, let's we don't need to do anything like super intense right now. We can work with something that's like a three or four out of 10, but we can just feel, when you just bring up the idea of one of those challenging things, there might be some charge that shows up in the body that would be an appropriate response if there's like, some energy. Sometimes we call that anxiety or stress in nervous system work. We call that activation, and it's the charge that's in there. You might actually see, if you can feel where that charge is. Maybe it's for me. It's often in my shoulders, or I'm noticing in the furrowing of my brow, or intention in the jaw, maybe in the belly. And what we're going to do with activation today, notice how it shows up in the body. And then I would I'm curious if you have anything around that you could squeeze. That might be your jacket or a pillow or a squishy ball. We want something that you can like really give some oomph to. So if you've got something, you could pause if you need to gather it, but when you're ready, I would encourage you to let your hands squeeze. And if you're hot, like a jacket, there's or a towel or something like that, maybe feels good to twist too. To see what feels good, and follow the energy and see if you can kind of give that activation permission to move through your arms, through your hands, and into whatever it is that you're squeezing and when you feel like you're ready, you can release that. Sometimes, the first one, it's like the bodies the mind is still kind of like, what are we doing? And doubtful. So if that didn't really that felt sort of weird or not quite embodied, yet, feel free. You can take another moment here. Find your find that energy, find the activation. See if you can actually feel your muscles squeezing and twisting and letting that energy move. And we're kind of watching it. We're like tracking it while it moves, and as it goes into into the pillow, into the other basically, it's moving out of your body. You're giving it a pathway. And stay with that squeeze as long as you need to when there's an impulse to release. Let's do that nice and slow. Let the muscles soften and release. And then here we are in the settling so backside of the wave, and we're just going to hang out and notice the sensations of muscle softening, of activation decreasing. It might not decrease. You might not have gotten to all of the activation, which is probably accurate. It's like we never actually really need to deal with everything. But with this work, we're trying to just take a titrated piece of the activation and be present with it as it as it moves through its waves. So right here, we're just kind of following the thread of the deactivation and noticing the body as the wave comes back down. And again, that visual of a of an actual wave on a beach, like a low sloped beach that can just taper, taper, taper, taper all the way to the very bottom, which might feel just a little different, maybe noticing what comes up, what your body feels like as it works. As it works isn't the right word, as it lands this wave. Sometimes we feel a little bit different after our waves move through like sometimes the vision opens up a little bit, or we feel maybe a little bit taller. You might find yourself ready to orient and look around again. That's like the back side of the wave. We end up in this space between waves, which is where the orcas process begins again, and we end up with orienting and resourcing. So maybe you find yourself noticing your space again, hearing that plane that just flew overhead, small plane sounds. And checking out the environment. So, you know, sometimes that happens naturally. Sometimes we have to do it manually, if we really get kind of hooked into a wave. So, yeah, if you're feeling like this, your wave like kind of hard having a hard time settling. Then I might invite you to intentionally come back out into orienting. Look at your space. Maybe touch some things, move your body a little bit. Look around. Find a couple things that are nice about the space that you're in. And we'll try to like land the wave by coming back into those early practices. Okay, so there's an orcas wave, and. And I hope you felt a little bit of what that might be like, yeah, like, like I have been saying, and will continue to say, these practices take time to learn on a somatic level, because we're actually restructuring the tissues to be able to move smoothly through them. So a little taste of it here. And I hope if you are resonating with this, I'd love to invite you to the live class that's happening next week on the orcas model, and then potentially into the winter healing circle for some deeper work on this. If that's something that's feeling like it might be up your alley. Okay, thanks for coming along for this episode. I feel nice after moving through that wave myself. I hope you are feeling some of some of the some of the relief, some of the shift that can be possible through working on these practices together. Okay, feel free to let me know in the comments on these platforms, if you had an experience there that you want to share, I'd love to hear about it. And until next time, take really good care of yourself and each other. We'll be back here next week. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
