Sarah 0:09
Hello and welcome back to co regulation conversations. Glad to be here with you again today. Happy news here is that it warmed up to I think it's like 15 or 20 above here in Anchorage, which is so much warmer than it has been in a while. And as a result, the happy situation I find myself in is out for a walk in the woods in the area that's close to my neighborhood, and it's feeling so warm and comfortable, and you might hear the snow is less crunchy, it's like less noisy when it's not as cold. And I don't think my face is going to go numb, which will be really helpful for continuing to talk to you. So funny that that was some of what I was running into in when I was recording some of these earlier episodes when it was so cold out. Anyways, you can look forward to a fully functioning face and a mouth that should successfully be able to talk to you without going numb today. Good times. It's the little things, huh? It's funny how we can get used to things that sound like pretty wild in retrospect. But yeah, so I'm out for a walk, and I wanted to talk to you today about the intersection of somatics and workouts, and this is kind of a like a time stamp inside of what feels like a multi Stage iterative process that I've been inside of now for a few years, of figuring out what it means to share nervous system work, share the somatic skill sets in different ways. And particularly, you know, I'm like, it's so obvious to me that it works really well inside of, like, one on one, traditional therapy setting. And also I've, like since the beginning, been really compelled to find different ways to share the foundational aspects of this body of work with people outside of therapy, like in, yeah, I don't know, you know, in classes or maybe in workouts, you know, like different ways to make these, what feel to me, like foundational skills for managing the human body and taking care of our mental health and kind of operating our nervous system. Well, just make that be something that is more broadly known and and practiced. Because, yeah, I mean, it's foundational skills for one, and then for two, it's we're living inside of some really intense times right now. I mean, here January 2026, we've started the year with some really intense ice Raine in Minnesota, there's threats to Greenland. There's stuff going on in Venezuela. There's tragedy in Iran. I mean, like there's really a lot of hardship around the globe, and a lot of it's hitting really close to home for those of us in the States. And I mean, I personally don't know how I would be navigating all of this without this somatic skill set, so I Yeah, yeah, it feels like pretty important to be able to share it broadly and yeah, so I've been inside a process, I mean, of my own making a experimentation on different ways to share these skills. I mean, here we are doing one of them, you know, a podcast as a way to try to share some of this strategy and practice in like a non traditional way outside of therapy again. And the other one piece of this that is feeling like it's working really well right now is the way that I'm weaving somatics into interval training workouts right now inside of ski babes, and I've been thinking of them as like somatically centered do. Ski babes workouts. So the format's the same as traditional ski babes, mindful interval training, but the emphasis is a little bit different, and the way I'm teaching feels really different. So I want to talk just like kind of give you some background into what's happening there, what's working well and then, and why I see that important, this example of doing this inside of ski babes is, let's see, this is my, my version of it. I think that what we're talking about here, though, is has some generalizability to other types of workouts and also to like it's basically what I see this as, is a practice space for dealing with the experience of intensity inside your nervous system, inside your body, and helping the nervous system know what to do with that, know how to be with the experience of intensity in a way that helps it actually like move through the body, rather than be something that the body is like below the level of consciousness, but like the body is intimidated by or scared by and feels like it needs to manage in you know, there's a myriad of ways that bodies manage activation, so that's what I want to share. And yeah, I expect that this body of work is at a stage that is one step in it's it's like it's come a long ways. It's and it feels like this feels like it's working pretty well. And my sort of intuitive sense here is that this is something that wants to continue to evolve and grow. So it'll be interesting to check back in on this in a year or two and see see where we're at. I wonder about whether these workouts want to stay stay living inside of ski babes and summer strong, or if they want to be their own thing, like if it wants to turn into a workout, like a somatic workout program, that's like even more specifically centered on the nervous system, and using movement as a way to tend to the nervous system. Or, you know, I don't know exactly, it might be a step toward a destination that I can't yet see. So, yeah, I am always interested in bringing you along on the journey, and I have the intention that there's like things to experiment with for yourself as you hear what I'm noticing and observing in this process. Yeah, so let's see what happens. Okay, so here's the deal. Whenever I talk to anybody about nervous system stuff, the central thing that they want is the ability to deactivate to feel less like strung out and amped up and like, stressed out all the time. So if we I mean, of course, right, that makes total sense. I'm guessing you can probably relate to that, since that's really common. And what I have learned over, you know, years of practice with this myself and with clients, is that there are some situations, some conditions, where you come in, you like, meet the moment, and you realize you want to deactivate. And when you add some of the tools that we play with here, maybe you orient, notice where you are in space and time. Let your system locate itself in the place where you are right now, using the senses, maybe you're doing some of that right now, as I also am. And resource finding things that are pleasant and nice to notice and be with
Sarah 9:35
and CO regulate, helping your body recognize that it's not alone, even if that's just like through noticing my voice or feeling your feet in relationship with the Earth, or maybe you have a pet nearby, or like anything that or a tree, anything that helps. To give that sense of accompaniment. So sometimes we need a moment and when we add safety in, like those are three strategies for helping the body notice, safety orienting, resourcing and CO regulating the three, first three parts of orcas. So sometimes, when we do that, we notice, often there's a little bit of settling, like a little bit of a downshift. Sometimes it is the body's like, Oh, thank God, I'm that's what I needed. You're right, like we are safe right now, the stressful thing is, over perfect. I'm good, and it can come down and settle and return to a nice kind of baseline place. Really nice when that can happen. And I would say, don't have any stats here, I would say it's more common, and probably much more common, to meet a moment in which you recognize that you need to, like, intervene. Do you want to like, support yourself somehow? And you maybe like, add some safety in orienting, resourcing, co regulating, and it might have some impact. There might be a little bit of settling, but it's not like working all the way like it's not settling all the way down. That is, for me, that's essentially the most common scenario, because very often. There is in these situations, there is charge in the body related to the stressor that has been around that you've been exposed to stressors very often. And that charge that's in the body that's related to that stress response, that fight fight, flight response that maybe wanted to happen but couldn't, because we live in a modern world where those body responses, like running away from situation or like throwing a punch or whatever Like those aren't the way we solve problems. So you know, through intelligence, we choose not to do that, but that energy of mobilization that the sympathetic nervous system branch feeds us with is still there. So when we try to, like, add safety in, we might actually come into a little bit more presence with the charge that's in the body, and you actually might feel a little bit more uncomfortable, like maybe it's moving a little bit out of a more numb place and a little bit more into relationship with the body, it might come down a little bit, but then it's like, oh, there's a lot there. Oh, gosh. I mean, how many times have you felt that I didn't like raising my hand here? There's a lot there, and that charge often needs a way to move before it can settle. So that inside of orcas is the phase of the A and the s, the activation and settling. Sometimes we maybe don't need to go to the A. Sometimes maybe it's orcas orienting, resourcing, co regulating, and then we settle. But very often we got to get into that a zone and tend to the activation. So what my what I'm like positing here is that in your desire to deactivate, we might want to start with adding safety. That's like, that's maybe my starting point for any scenario. It's like, How can I add more safety here? What does my body need to feel more safe in this situation? So starting point for everything, noticing and then trying to layer on some safety through orienting, resourcing and CO regulating. And then we notice, like, what's the impact there? Did it, did the system settle, or did it just settle a little bit? Or maybe come out of numbness? And inside of that is noticing that there's more that needs to happen before it can settle all the way, which this is like a really big place here, to not judge yourself, to not read either of those scenarios as better or worse, because it's completely normal and appropriate to have charge in your body if you've been engaging with things that are hard or stressful, and you've maybe been engaging with them on an intellectual level, or problem solving, or, you know, All that mind work, and now the body has charge. It's not just going to go right into safety and down regulation. So all this to say, often in order to settle we need to activate a bit first. And what I've seen inside of being with like the work of activating, is that many of us really don't know how to do it very well. We haven't learned to be with the intensity or the charge of an activated state, and it's by definition, it's intense. There's potentially like discomfort that comes with the experience of having the charge of an activation cycle running in your body. So
Sarah 16:43
and for a cycle to settle, to truly complete and settle, we need a level of safety and presence inside of the activation phase of the cycle as well. So you know, if we don't what what ends up happening, or what I see or like have known in myself, is that when things get intense, we have all these management strategies for that. Gosh, there's some lab planes. Hold on. I'm not sure how much you're hearing of this, like background plane noise, so hopefully, hopefully not too much. I mean, I keep rolling and we'll see if we need to clean up the audio after but yeah, so management strategies for activation. So often when things get intense, sometimes we shut down, which would be a freeze response, or disassociate dissociation, is of has some qualities of freeze inside it. It also has a bit of a flight response, because it's like you're exiting the body, or like going somewhere else, um, distraction. Or avoidance are also flight response. It's like I'm never doing that again, or like distracting yourself with something else, so you don't have to be present to the intensity that's happening with the body. And or there's the option of suppressing, which is a fight response. We're like, actively shutting something down. Or sometimes it we it gets like, extra intense, and now we're maybe mad about it, either internally, like internally directed fight response is anger at self, frustration itself. Why am I like this? Or why is this so hard for me? It seems easy for everybody else, like, what's wrong with me? Or an externally directed fight response, which is like, what's wrong with you, what's wrong with this teacher, what's wrong with like the environment, something like versions of fight responses that might come out as a management strategy for the internal intensity that the body does not know how to be present with. So there is this whole can almost think of it as like a branch inside of nervous system, work of coming into relationship and presence with the experience of activation, and the second, the other branch is the coming into relationship and the physiological ability to deactivate. And we need both. And in fact, this branch of building capacity and the ability to be present with the activation side of things might actually be what leads to the ability to deactivate and settle maybe, in some ways, this gets like. Philosophical and existential, but the way this feels like in my body often is that the body won't allow for settling to happen until, well, for one it's mobilized the charge that's there so that the actual like electric, electricity or energy that's swirling inside of the system has been mobilized in a way that it can let go and move, move on. So that's one part of it, but it also, to me, feels like there's something happening with the way that the body needs to know that mobilization and that sympathetic branch of the nervous system can activate to keep us safe. That's like our defensive mechanisms. And when the body knows that, that that is possible, that I can, I can mobilize to keep myself safe, then it might be more willing to actually do that settling, because if I need to, it knows I can, like, turn this back on and get safe. We can get out of here. We can protect and that helps me be safe enough to be able to settle. Okay, so all of this is a pitch or an explanation for why it's feeling so important and useful right now to be in using workouts as a practice space for these two different branches of nervous system work, and like a lot of nervous system work, focuses on the side of the scale that is deactivation, which is makes sense, because it's like we're so hungry for that inside of our culture That, like, runs so fast and encourages so much activity and mobilization and striving keeps us activated all the time with news, horrifying news, headlines, one after the other, we want to deactivate, and we Just we can't do the one without the other. So it's been really fun to be in these explorations with workouts as a practice space for the activation side of things, because I've also found that inside of that, there are opportunities for practicing deactivation, both inside of the heart of the workout and then in The after.
Sarah 22:58
Okay, so one way to explain the way this has been feeling for me, as I have shifted the focus of these workouts that I'm teaching now to center the somatics. What we're doing is bringing in moments of orienting, resourcing and CO regulating throughout the workout, both at the beginning, but then in between, intervals, interval series, and then also in the moment when you're inside of doing something hard, practicing finding ways to tether your nervous system, your body, to safety inside of intense moments and then absolutely on the backside, like at the after we're through the hardest parts. For sure, we're doing a lot of work on the backside of the wave toward the end of the workout, to really emphasize that down regulation backside of the wave. But what I'm what I want to say here is that the coolest thing for me is that these mindful interval training workouts, which I've been teaching for more than 10 years now, where mind and mountain is in its 10th year of running online, and I was teaching in person for three or four years before that. And what I'm noticing here in this phase of centering somatics inside of these workouts, is that they have gone from feeling like hard, hard and on all the way. Yes, that's like, they're, they're like, physically challenging, mentally challenging. They're, they like, there's options for adjusting intensity along the way, but there's challenge built in to the way these intervals go. But what I'm noticing now with this practice of working to help my body recognize that it is safe while we're doing this hard work, that there's a physical challenge happening, but there is not a physical threat around it's like there's uncoupling happening between the experience of working really hard physically and being in physical danger, which you know that actually tracks pretty well, that the body would not really make sense of that unless you were working to help it and understand that, like Usually, if we weren't a culture that was like doing workouts as a way to train, and usually, if you are working that hard, it would be because there was some reason to do that, some kind of like threat that's making you have to work that hard To get away from something, to get to something. So the practice of pulling safety in to a workout series has been feeling like it's starting to uncouple those those experiences and starting to be easier and easier for my body to recognize that I might be working really hard, but I'm not in danger right now, and that has made it feel like there's a physical challenge, but it's not stressful. The body's working hard, the muscles are working hard. But if I am safe, I find like, orienting, noticing safety cues while I'm working that hard, then these two things can be separate, and inside of that separation, it starts to feel like I can be with, like, bring that level of presence that I'm talking about needing in order to, like, move through an activation cycle, I can bring that level of presence to the experience that my body's having because it's it's having, like, some sensations when it's working that hard inside of, like a max interval. It's like we're out of breath, we're sweaty. The muscles are burning, the joints are feeling it. There's like a lot of sensation there. And if I'm doing all of that and also tracking, like, using my eyes to notice that I'm in a place where there's no threats when I'm like, coming back into my back body. So I'm not just, like, in this, like, kind of moved forward and kind of in this, like, this kind of automatic flight response that can happen when we're moving fast. We can kind of get into the front part of the body and a little bit disembodied in the posterior chain, like we need to go somewhere urgently. So anyways, coming back into the back body, like feeling our feet, all these things help it feel safer, and then it's easier to be in the sensations be present to what the body's experiencing. And that allows for the potential for that activation to be felt in a way that's like, manageable for the body and allows it to move through and complete. So I'm really like, hopefully you can hear the enthusiasm here and the excitement, because I know I can feel how powerful this is for me personally. And I've heard from some people who have been coming to these workouts, I've been teaching them live, and then they're also recorded. So we are building up a library of these somatic centered workouts. And like, somebody said that it was like they were, they were like, where's when's the hard part of the workout coming, which is so funny, because, of course, they've been like, the workouts are hard, but I get what they're saying. It like, doesn't feel as hard if your body, if your mind isn't also stressed, if your nervous system isn't also like. Again, like subconsciously, but it's in there, like thinking that we're in some sort of, like life threat kind of moment, so we take that away, and all of a sudden the hard just doesn't feel as hard. And then someone else told me that they had been practicing nervous system skills in a variety of different ways, and that having the super tangible experience of playing with them inside of these like very obvious activation cycles of a workout with has been a really effective practice ground for the skills, which I also feel so so yeah, like great reviews. I've been really enjoying the experience of sharing with people and hearing that their people are getting good stuff from them. And yeah, I think that we're kind of all in this practice space of that this allows for of learning how to uncouple the experience of activation and fear. And again, that's on a body level we wouldn't like, very few of us would like, cognitively say that, like, when I'm like, activated, I feel afraid. But the body often has some degree of that, like, oh, this just must mean that something bad is happening. So so there's this, this practice that we're that we're in, and we get this the space to do it when we're bringing in, in an intense moment of a workout. But then we get to uncouple these things. We're in a controlled environment. We know that, like, the room is actually safe, the situation is safe. I can always hit pause, I can always take a break. And so we get to, like, do some of that uncoupling work, and I'm like, I'm really thrilled about the way that I see the outcome of this work, generalizing to other environments where we run into intensity, because the the mechanism here we're talking about a physiological process in the body of sensations of intensity being over, coupled with danger and and then having a management strategy that comes in next, whether it's like that, collapse, disassociate, avoid, distract or amplify, suppress, Spike, both internally or externally. You know, like all these Fight, Flight freeze tendencies, those
Sarah 32:49
are going to happen in that really fast sequence, probably below the level of conscious awareness. When there's the sensation of intensity and the over coupling of that with danger, then there's a management strategy, and then we're we're just like into our patterns, and this is not a cognitive process, so it might help to have insight into what might be happening with that process. Okay, I'm like, inside, when things get intense, I go scroll because I have need to, like, avoid the intensity. It's like a way to numb the intensity of the activation. Or when I feel stressed out. I go work out and then disassociate, you know, like a lot of us have been going on to the mountains too, as a way to, like, get out of our, get out of our experience, and just be less present with it all. And that's just that that mechanism is there, and the body knows it works, and it's probably not going to be very likely to UN do it if it doesn't know like how to shift its relationship with the experience of intensity with the somatics of activation, the sensations of activation. So what I see here happening is that as this becomes more of a practice, and you get the experience of being with the sensations of activation in a way that starts to help your body understand that they don't necessarily mean that you're at risk or under threat. We're talking about those sensations being the similar we're replicating them, but inside of a workout. That intensity is similar to the intensity that you experience inside of hard efforts in the mountains, when it is pretty critical that you be able to make good decisions make smart choices. Be able to communicate well, be able to, like, keep your full brain on board and not just go back into that like lizard blade brain response that happens when the body perceives a threat and it shuts down that Angular cingulate. Remember that like bridge that goes between the back brain and the prefrontal cortex, where we're able to strategize and remember and plan and think more broadly from and that we lose access to that if the body's perceiving that there might be a threat here. So this practice of like practicing being present with activation and uncoupling the experience of intensity and threat has, yeah, helps, potentially, with outdoor time, the ability to be present with there's a biker, the sensations while you're out doing an activity is going to help your body make better choices in real time and have access to the brain if you need that. And then, similar in all these other experiences that are stressful inside our like normal lives, whether it's work projects, engaging with the news, supporting family members who are having a hard time, engaging with politics or change, Making work, all of this is similarly activating, and these, this physiology that we're that we're working on, the physiology of being able to be activated and be present, as those are physiological processes. Can we just can we inside of an activation cycle, like, know what that sensate, the sensation of it is, and know that it's okay. And also know when we've had enough of it, because that ability to like sense when, like, Okay, I've had enough of this, I gotta back off, take a break. That's what helps the experience of activation and the sensation of it be something that matches what your nervous system capacity is in the in the moment, which is, of course, a moving target. So we do have to have a lot of presence and attunement to self to know where that where that line is and and have a sense for, like, when I need to back off. I mean, it happens in the workouts, right? Like, some days you're feeling super strong and you can just go and do everything to the max, and other days are not that. And so we have to, like, we've maybe learned over time to listen to where the muscles are, where the where our body is at physically, and adjust our what we expect of ourselves, or how hard We push to that.
Sarah 38:40
And I'm talking about here, like, the next level, I think, for all of us with this kind of self attunement, nervous system care work is in the, like, really subtle, listening to what the nervous system actual capacity is, and when we're able to be with those sensations of intensity, and when we need to back off and Let it be a little bit easier for now. So
Sarah 39:36
okay, so I've talked about how this is a physiological process that we're talking about, and that having cognitive understanding about it might help, but it's not going to actually make the experience be different in the body. Those are the somatic skills, cognitive skills and somatic skills and the skill of being with activation. Question is one that might take some practice, since all of these different approaches to skipping away from intensity are very well ingrained and there for a reason. And so, yeah, I guess I wanted to say I thought about how to share this, but I want to talk a little bit about the way that activation energy often works in kind of mysterious ways. Because, for one, there's often over couplings with the experience of activation. So I've been talking a lot about the over coupling between activation and activation means threat, but one of the very common ones that I also see is an over coupling between activation and collapse, so that this often plays out in which The experience the person is like, every time I get mad, I start to cry. I mean, that's super common. Lots of people say that, and that's that we can understand, is an over coupling between a sympathetic fight response, the charge of fight and a dorsal vagal collapse response that, like, comes in really fast, so fast sometimes that they don't even feel like they're separate. Things like, I'm mad and I'm crying. That's just like, what happens in my body? Well, that is a really tight over coupling, and it happens too inside of workouts, not uncommonly, where sometimes people, like every time they they activate inside of a workout, then they'll find themselves crying, very similar, like, maybe even the same kind of mechanism there, activation, collapse.
Speaker 1 41:58
So you know these are, these are tangles
Sarah 42:03
that bot that are like body based, again, like the cognitive awareness is probably not going to be enough for them to shift because of the way the physiology has gotten those two things associated. So if this is something that you're relating to and you want to give some attention toward. I would start with this piece about bringing in safety. So we're always going to try to layer in some safety orienting resource and CO regulating. It might even work best with other people present other encouraging folks. Because what we are trying to do with this type of uncoupling work is help the system feel safe enough to be in the charge be with the activation of the fight response for for any little amount of time that it can before that second response of a collapse comes in and there this is this type of system is probably going to need some some co regulation, and some like enthusiasm for the fight response, because often that Over coupling is built out of social conditioning, or maybe overt conditioning around not being allowed to be in that fight response, not being allowed to be mad, being too much, having that shut down, or having a lot of anger inside of their maybe Growing up years and deciding to go in the opposite direction, and just anytime I'm mad, it's like not a safe place to be, so we're going to collapse and shut it down. So any type of little enthusiasm, any type of access to that fight response, even for a little moment, trying to, like, stretch the space between those two responses. The other thing that can often happen in like, with activation in general, is that the body, like, again, the body's like dealing with these experience, like physiological experiences in the tangible, in like, sensational realm, less in the like, this is sensation related to this experience. This flight response is related to politics. And this other one is really related to my work. It body doesn't really work like that. The body's like this is a sensation that I'm figuring out what I need to do about it doesn't mean I'm in danger. Doesn't mean I'm safe. Can I do something physically or, you know, so So because of that, when we move into at an activated state inside of something like a workout, sometimes that body experience is. It like kicks up. This the like wakes up, the similar energy that maybe had been in the body from a different situation, but wasn't able to move at the time, so got a little bit that energy might have been a little more suppressed or less mobilized, now that you're mobilizing your sympathetic energy in this other workout scenario, it's like those, those energies catch each other, and you might find that it allows some something from a different scenario to also get moving. Really helpful, right? Because, like often, those, the access to those kinds of charges, like we couldn't do the pushing or the movement that our body wanted to do in the boardroom or, like on the Zoom call. So we didn't, weren't, like, able to mobilize that. But maybe we can mobilize it when we're inside of a workout space that might help it get rolling. So again, it if this is something you're relating to and want to tend to as you're playing with this work of activation, we're going to see about layering on safety, right? Like, again, it's like, that's my first step. Kind of every time it's like, how can we help the body feel a little bit more safe? We can orient, we can resource, we can co regulate, and with that, we might have created enough of a container for the experience that the body's having to be able to move like it's a wave that activation wave. So if the body of water is the container, we add safety, and the body of water grows from like a swimming pool to a lake, and then all of a sudden, there, there's enough room for this, for a wave to come through without it spilling over,
Sarah 47:08
and those, those things take time. So that's the other piece there is, like, I do recommend, if you're kind of doing this work and you're finding your body moving through things that are surprising, or, you know, sometimes we don't even know where they came from, which is fine, if we can just let go of the mental need to understand and be with what the body is experiencing. We don't necessarily need to understand what's going on cognitively to support the body in letting a wave move through and just this like slowing yourself down and taking some time to let that wave, like it would if it were in the ocean and it was moving into the beach, it would take some time. Like, like, imagine just like a gentle sloping Beach, like the wave is gonna, like, really be pretty slow as it moves all the way in to the sand and finishes all the way up that little last little trickle. You know, it's like, it really does take some time. Okay, so after that, I mean, the other piece of here that I am going to spend some time talking about is deactivation, because for many of us, that is the goal. I mean, in my view, the the actual goal is health, like healthy nervous system range, which means the ability to activate and access charge when we need it, and then settle and deactivate when the thing is over. So having range is more what I'm looking for. But I know, like many, what many of us notice and and feel we need the most is that like ability to rest and be in a deactivated state, which is more relaxing, and then we're able to rest and digest and be less stressed for a little while. So that is that is also an outcome here of these somatic workouts, and I see that in a couple different places. One is that the way we are practicing accessing these tools inside of the breaks between intervals. So it's like not in the after, like after we've done the max interval and everything's over, we're definitely doing the backside of the way of deactivating, but we're also in practice of accessing some down regulation in these little micro breaks inside of the big scheme of the workout. So it's. Not over yet, but can you still access some settling in a brief moment, even when you know there's more stress to come and you just got done with one. But can you have a little bit of settling in this space between? It's actually a very important nervous system skill to be able to access the sense of safe enough inside of a moment that is has some potential stress coming next. You know, it's like, very rare that we get these like, super blissful all day, or like, hour long moments of easy deactivation. Very more real life is the need to be able to, like, feel okay and get a little micro break and access a safe enough feeling, even inside of a day where there's lots of different stressors going on and there is some real like the nervous system has the ability to do this actually quite well. Our body is like designed to navigate small, smaller size stress cycles. But many of us aren't very practiced in this. So we instead of actually successfully deactivating in those breaks, and I mean, for me, it is almost like there's almost like a bit of like a time warp that can happen inside of a mini break, if you're tending to the nervous system there. So the break itself in time might be fairly short, but if the nervous system can access the sense of safety and potential down regulation there in that in a short amount of time, there might be the potential for a significant nervous system shift that might help the experience of the nervous system has of that break actually feel significantly bigger because of how much change it's able to access. It's like, instead of having a long break, you're going deep, like, deep into a different nervous system state. So there's a like, a very important practice there in accessing a safe enough micro break in order to create a nervous system shift, and we're in practice of that in all of these workouts. It's pretty cool to see how different it can feel to just take a few moments to tend to yourself in between doing some of those, like, hard physical challenges. Yeah. So, okay. So really important. I love that skill, and I love that we're able to practice it inside of these breaks between intervals. And then, of course, the like big deactivation opportunity is at the end of the workout, after the max interval. So the max interval is like the hardest part, and then we're stepping down and supporting the body as it rides down the deactivation wave, which starts inside a ski Baze Lisa starts with a balance challenge, which I put there after learning about how balance practice in itself, has the potential to help move you out of a stress response just inherent in the physiology and the way we use our bodies to balance. For one if we're in a life or death situation, we're probably not going to be just like on one leg. So on some level, the body understands that and can make sense of like, okay, I'm balancing here, so I must not be under threat. And then the other part of it is that those little micro muscles that we're working when we're balancing have the again, like have some resonance inside of the nervous system with the ability of like, helping, again, recognize that we're not in a life or death moment here. So for a few different reasons that balance challenges, it is like, also functionally important to be able to balance. So it's there for the functional reason, but it's also. There as a nervous system, scaffold, step down to a less activated place. Yeah, and then the rest, you know, we do some stretching, often, finishing with a dance move reward like that's there as a co regulation and shared rhythm or lack of rhythm. I guess if dancing is we're not always in an actual shared rhythm, but there's something in there about playfulness and CO regulation that might help again, cue the body that there's safety here, and it's like, safe enough to come out of the activation that we were just in before. Yeah, and then, you know, you'll hear me, because this is so common that, like, as soon as the as soon as we recognize that the hard part is over, very often we kind of start down that deactivation backside of the wave, get a little bit going. And then often the body is like, okay, cool, we're out of the immediate threat. Let all go with, like, my attention over to the next thing. So there's that experience of, like, a little bit of deactivation, and then, and then, boom, let's, like, start another wave. And that's maybe not another, like, workout, but often it's the mind going to the next task at hand, or the something else it's been worrying about, or like not the physiology of deactivating requires presence with the deactivation phase of of the cycle, which
Sarah 57:04
is again a like something that takes time and practice and presence with to be able to do. And what I see so often is that we start down a deactivating pathway and then something, something maybe new, or some, some other way of starts up. There's other there's other activating things we can be thinking about, even if the body deactivates when my mind is going to be somewhere else thinking about something. So this, then inside of these somatic centered workouts is the place to be in the practice of tracking and being present with the deactivation side of the wave, which means tracking the sensations of settling, noticing them as they happen, and being with the body as things get a little bit more comfortable, little bit quieter, A little bit slower, less and less is happening, and can we still be with the experience of it? It's all it like that. That side of things is has its own challenge because, because so often we're used to paying attention to things that are grabbing for us, and there's plenty out there that wants your attention. And so inside of this side of the work learning how to deactivate and be with your body as it slows down, we're working on being with these slower moments and still being in the sensations. Honestly, for me, the easiest way to do this is to be with pleasure, so looking for the things that feel good about the body as it slows or settles. So maybe we're stretching and we're like trying to really enjoy the experience of stretching and what feels good about it, really tangible way to do that inside of a movement space. And then I do find that it helps a lot to be with others who are inside of practicing the same thing, both to be reminded. And like help. Let me help you catch when your mind starts to go. And also, because it has a there's like a counter cultural aspect to this, because of the way our culture teaches, go, go, go, achieve, work, harder, push. Gosh, this is how we know we're good enough. We're like belonging is like we're always doing more. There's a counter cultural aspect to slowing down doing less and staying present with that, rather than letting the mind go off into problem solving something else, and that in itself, has a quality of risk inside of it, because we're kind of like breaking our cultural rules. So if we can do that in company of others who are practicing the same things, it can help soothe the part of the nervousness reading inside of like the social context that this is like not what I've been told is a safe thing to do. So co regulation for the win on that front as well. Okay, so I'm coming to a close here. Let me see if there's anything else.
Sarah 1:01:08
Yeah. I think the the thing I want to leave you with here are, well, just the overall idea that the activation side of the picture and the deactivation side are both really important. We can't really access one without the other. And if you think that you might you want to deactivate, you might actually need to learn how to be present with your activation in a in service of reaching that deactivation skill and just always again, remembering that these are somatic skills, not cognitive skills, so you might understand what's happening, but that's really different than the Body knowing how to get there. Yeah, and then inside of an iterative process, this stage of this work feels like it is working really well, and I can see the ways it's working, both for me personally and like it fits inside of the structure of the way I understand nervous systems and the subtleties of what I see inside of a workout space. So that's pretty cool to see those all come together. And I'm really excited to see where it goes. We'll see if you have something that you really would want from this exploration, please leave it in the comment or send it over in a DM. I'm really open to being in a co creation process with you, especially those that are here listening and up for letting me share my thoughts on this time stamp in the creative process, my sense is that it's going toward some really cool stuff. I don't know what it is yet, but in this stage, I'm feeling really excited and confident that this, this one outcome, this one way of combining these bodies of work is very cool, very effective and important. Okay, so have a very good rest of your day. Take good care of yourself, both in your activation and your deactivation, and I'll see you next time you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
