I just can’t stop talking about the nervous system!
Season 4- Episode 38
In this episode, Lauren discusses three highly effective techniques to quickly regulate your nervous system. She re-introduces the Window of Tolerance framework and shares three actionable tips to help your nervous system return to regulation. First, humming or singing vibrates the back of your throat, stimulating the vagus nerve, a key player in calming your system. Second, crossing your body with movements that pass the midline engages the thinking part of your brain, encouraging your emotional brain to settle. Lastly, chewing something chewy or crunchy activates sensory nerves in your jaw, further stimulating the vagus nerve.
Try-at-home tip: Cold water stimulation to shock your body into the present!
References:
Five Ives Website
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
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Transcript
“We are back for another episode. Like, Fun Facts. Went to a business conference this weekend, like, Mastermind event to just learn more about, like, what's going on in the world of business for, like, four
days and 11 hours at a time. It wasn’t quite that long, but it felt like that. And went to a really good podcasting panel, and they're like, start recording yourself, recording the podcast and upload them to YouTube. And I was like, oh, strange. Like, record a video of myself recording a podcast episode and upload that to YouTube so it can reach more people, so that more people can access this knowledge and get help. I'm like, sounds great, but also feels weird.”
“So I'm with you today. As I look at myself on this video and it feels so funny. I don't. I love riffing and recording on this podcast. I love sharing this knowledge. I love serving people. Watching myself on camera, talk to the camera and record myself on zoom feels not only vain, but just funny. So if y'all want to see what I look like when I record these podcast episodes and my fleece and my glasses, hop onto YouTube soon in the near future, and we'll have these videos up for you all to watch.
“Okay, let's get to it, because what I want to talk about today is, like, my favorite topic of everything to talk about. And I just think it's the, like, the biggest thing that can help people heal from anxiety, ptsd, childhood trauma. Like, there's just. I. I don't believe that there is a better resource in this.This is over talk therapy. This is over medication. This is over mindset work. Like, I just believe this is the answer. But the unfortunate part of it is it's not a quick fix. Working on this takes time to rewire things.”
“So what are we talking about? Talking about the nervous system. I'm going to give you three somewhat lesser known but highly effective ways to drop your nervous system into a state of regulation right away. So let's. Let's.”
“Like, I've done so many episodes on this, on the window of tolerance, on nervous system regulation. But let me. For anyone who hasn't heard this, or for those who haven't heard it a lot, and for those who have heard it, it's always good to hear. Again, I feel like you always pick up little nuggets from things that you think you already know, but I just want to walk you through this, this window of tolerance.”
“So this. This visual of the window of tolerance is like three boxes stacked on top of Each other, all of the same size. And the box in the middle is your window of tolerance.
We call it the WoT. And that essentially is how much can your mind and body tolerate before it leaves the window of tolerance and it becomes dysregulated. And you know quite well what dysregulation might feel like.It's different for everyone.Cuz you might be a person who kind of goes up or goes down. You might be a person who's like more tense and more tight, or you might be a person that's more dissociative. And different levels of stress can put you in different zones.”
“So how much can you tolerate before you leave your window of tolerance and move into a state of dysregulation? When you go up, when you are like an upregulated person, that is something I really resonate with.That goes into the sympathetic side of the nervous system.We call that the SNS. And in this side of the nervous system you're more prone to anxiety, you're more tense, you're moretight, you might be more like possibly argumentative, but you're just more like expressive of your emotions. Like you, you definitely don't like. I internalize for sure. But this, I think of this like it's so easy in kids because kids just don't, aren't like they have more, they're just more, they're more open. So when I think about kids that are more in the sympathetic side, they tend to be the kids that are acting out a bit more and like louder about how they're feeling. And they're not like necessarily saying I am feeling like they're just showing you with their body language. And it's quite obvious that they're in that upper zone. So tense, tight, more prone to anxiety, ruminating thoughts, overthinking.That's where it gets a little gray and hairy is you think of like ruminating thoughts and overthinking as a more internalized behavior because it is.But those are more sympathetic side of nervous system, but could be confused as the opposite.”
“So let's talk about the opposite. If you're not a person who's more prone to anxiety and, and ruminating thoughts and like tension and tightness in the body defensiveness. You might be a person who falls down into that bottom box and that bottom box is the parasympathetic nervous system. The interesting thing about this whole window of tolerance is that this system biologicallywas designed to save us. It did save us.”
“So what happens is like eons ago when you're being chased by a saber tooth tiger, which this isn't the best example because you might not survive that one anyhow, if you're being chased by a saber tooth tiger or any tiger. I don't know why I said saber tooth tiger. We're talking about eons ago. I guess your body's like, ah, I'm in danger. Run, don't die. So your nervous system takes you out of your window of tolerance, sends you into the sympathetic side of the nervous system and it's like fight or flight likely forme, I, I would take, I would flee, I would not try and fight a tiger. But some may. Either way you're, you're trying to escape the danger and if your body reacts quickly enough, you do and then you stay alive. So like the system is, is good, it's helpful. If you are in such a state of danger, your body might say don't fight or flight, maybe freeze or fawn. And in this case that's probably not the best situation or step to take.But it just depends on how your body reacts. But sometimes fawning or freezing is the best response. And sometimes we can get so overwhelmed that we might be a person that typically goes up into the top of the nervous system and we are more of a fight flight person. But we get so overwhelmed that we fall down to the bottom and we freeze and we are in a state of shock.”
“So you can go into either or you might be more prone to one side or the other, but the system is a good system. It helped us to survive and get to where we are now. So don't think it's a bad thingwhen you leave your window of tolerance. It's a good thing.”
“The not so good thing is when you keep leaving it all the time and you stay out of it. The window intolerance is the healthy space. That's where you want to be. You want to recognize you've left the window of tolerance and then get back in. Use tactics, tools, strategies to get back inside the window of tolerance. And I think that's where we fail is we get like lodged in the upper SNS or the lower PNS and we don't have the tools to get back in the window of tolerance. Or we keep leaving the window of tolerance so frequently and going into that upper or lower state that we get stuck there. It becomes like a stable state because it's like a musculature system. Like it's not. But it, it's similar in that when you leave the window of tolerance and you Go up or you go down every time you leave. And then the longer you stay in either the up or the down, that up or down part strengthens. It's almost like you're taking that part to the gym and you're growing it. And it’s like visually, if you imagine, like, I'm an SNS person, if I imagine, okay, I'm going up into the sns, I'm going up, I'm going up, I'm going up daily, all the time, frequently going up. Like, little things that shouldn't be triggering me or activating me are activating me. So I'm, I’m. Every time I go there, it's like, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. It's like a little hit of workout. And so that upper tier for me, the sns, it grows. Like, it actually gets bigger, it expands, it gets wider. And when it does, it shrinks my window of tolerance, meaning when I actually do get back into my window of tolerance, what I've just done now is I've increased the likelihood of leaving my window of tolerance faster because it has shrunk. Essentially, it can tolerate less before it sends me up into that upper tier, which is why my upper tier becomes more of a stabilized. I end up staying there longer for longer periods of time, and it's easier to get back in there. And we do not want that.”
“We need this system. We just don't want to alter it that much.”
“The good news is if your state of life or work or family system or existence or childhood, whatever it is, grew one or both of those sides and there. And your window of tolerance is shrunken down and very small. It was exposure to these stressful, activating periods and events that caused that. And just like a muscle, you can strengthen and grow out the window of tolerance. You can make the window of tolerance, exercise those pieces, get back into it, use things to stay in it, and it grows and grows and grows and grows and grows, and it shrinks your SNS or your PNS or both.”
“Okay, hopefully that was a clear enough explanation.”
“Uh, so what I wanna talk about now is, okay, what are some things that you could do when you go up or you go down that get you back into your window of tolerance?”
“Pretty simple for the most part.Typically, what works best and what's easiest is just opposites. So if you are a person who goes up, like me, I'm more tense, I'm more tight, I'm more defensive. I'm more like crazy moving fast, can't slow down, can't rest and digest. So what would be good for me, what is good for me both reactively and preventatively is to do things that slow me down. Like for example, stretching based practices, bar pilates, even yoga. Like I do not love those forms of body movement because they're going so slow and I'm like, oh, I'm just like, I want to go fast. The reality is my body needs me to go slow. And those types of movement based practices are really good for my nervous system.”
“Doesn't mean I can't do the things I like. Strength training and boxing. Just means right now maybe a little less of the fast paced, hit based things and a little bit more of the slow moving things.”
“So some of these things I'm going to describe, some of them are, I'd say more of them are probably for people that go up into the SNS because tend to go up there maybe a little bit more first until we get into an overwhelmed state or shock state and then we land in the PNS.”
“But the reason opposites typically work best is because when you're in that sympathetic side and you do the opposite, it activates the parasympathetic side. Well, that sounds bad because we're like, well, we don't want to be in the parasympathetic side. Well, you think about if, if it's that like boxes stacked and you're in that upper tier, what brings you down into the window tolerance is by activating that parasympathetic side. Because the parasympathetic side is like the slow moving rest, digest side. So it's not a bad thing. We want to activate that to balance us out. That's why opposites tend to work.”
“You could potentially, you know, do something like sprinter run or box until you're like absolutely exhausted. And then that kind of brings you back into the window of tolerance. But that's not always helpful because one that may take a long time or it may take a lot of energy better to, to do something that's a little bit more opposing versus just until exhaustion. But sometimes till exhaustion isn't, isn't so bad. I have done trail runs where I've run for so long and I'm like, my body is just absolutely exhausted.
I'm gonna sit down and now I can't move fast. But not my, you know, I don't have time to always go run for 90 minutes.”
“All right, so what are the three things? What are the three things that can bring you out of your sympathetic nervous system. They're opposing actions that bring you into your window of tolerance. And these will work differently for everyone. So some you like. Yep. Some you like. I'm not doing that.I'm not comfortable with that. I don't like that didn't work for me. So you gotta kind of figure out what works for you.”
“But here's the first one. It is just doing some type of like, hum or sing. Even like some type of like, belly laughter. Like deep, true laughter. Could be this.Ultimately what the purpose of this is is like what you're doing is you are humming a tune or maybe like an om. Chat, chat, chant, chant. Any, like, repetitive. Like if you sing a song, if you hum, just like a vibrating hum. But here's why it helps.Vibrations in the back of your throat or neck, they stimulate the vagus nerve. And essentially this nerve is like what connects the nervous system. And it's what kind of runs through those boxes and tells the sympathetic side of the nervous system to activate the parasympathetic side of the nervous system and drops you into that window of tolerance. So we want to stimulate the vagus nerve because this tells the body, like, whoa, breaks. Calm down. Hold on. That's a good thing.”
“Okay, so humming, singing, maybe laughing, just something that's like, in the back of your throat where there's like a vibration.”
“The other thing that could be quick and easy to access is something that involves, like, crossing your body, like, thinking like what people are visualizing. When I say that what you are doing here is you are doing movements that cross the midline of your body. So think about, like, if you take you. Your. Maybe your right hand to your left knee. Like, you just take your right hand, then you touch your left knee, and then you could do vice versa, Take your left hand, touch your right knee. Or it could be toes or it could be even like opposites, like right hand to left elbow, left hand to right elbow. And just like these.”
“Look at myself in the camera. This is why I can't record myself recording podcasts.”
“Anyhow, if. If you, like, divide your hat, your body in half, that's the midline, and you take one side of thebody and touch the other side of the. That's this, like, it's like crossing brain hemispheres and it's. It's essentially activating the. The thinking part of your brain. And the thinking part of your brain is then telling the. The nervous system parts that the parts that are related to the nervous system, the, like the limbic area, the emotional parts of the brain. It's telling that whole system like, whoa, calm down, hold your horses. And it's activating the parasympathetic, parasympathetic side of the nervous system. So these crossbody movements with the way the brain is interacting with itself, it's sending signals through the brain and telling the thinking brain, like, come back online. Emotional brain, take a seat for a minute. So super easy. I mean you could just bend and touch your toes with an opposite hand and an opposite foot. You can, I mean there are, you can search things. I mean, if you, if you are like, I don't even know, like I, I, that I don't know what to do, you could literally search in Google or you could search in chat GPT for those of you that are AI users, like, ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, cross body, they might call it bilateral movements, which, well, bilateral and crossbody are different. But you, you could do bilateral or cross body. You could do both. Um, trying to think if you could do both together, but ultimately you could just, you could just search these things to learn. Like, what are some, what are like 5cr body movements that I could do when I'm feeling overstimulated or preventatively do to keep myself from, from being overstimulated.”
“Here is the last. Chewing something either chewy or crunchy, like chewing gum could work. I don't do a lot of gum chewing, so I'm like, is there like a clean, healthy gum that's not like that got some coloration? Like, I think I grew up on the zebra gum. I don't even know what it's called, the striped zebra gum. And like I, I like salivate thinking about it because it tasted so good. Flavor runs out in like all of 3 seconds, but tastes good. But I don't even know what kind of chemicals and dyes and artificial flavors are in that gum. I would never chew that today.”
“So be mindful of, if I'm chewing gum, like, I'm doing all this work to get my nervous system regulated and reset, is the gum chewing actually going to just cause more inflammation? Because the, the ingredients in the gum are inflammatory to my body. So just be mindful of that. Same with crunchy, chewy foods. You could eat like chips, crackers, but if, if you're eating like processed foods or foods that turn into sugars, you're just bringing more inflammation in the body.So when I think about chewing crunchy, chewy foods, Ithink more of like carrots, apples, something like that. That's a little bit more of nature natural. So just being mindful of that because we don't want to add more inflammation to our body.”
“And why does this work? Because the stimulating the sensory nerves in your jaw and your mouth, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. So there's a progressive muscle relaxation.And we'll link an episode here on that for you. And what that is that I talk about pretending to chew a. Like to not even chew, to bite a carrot or I like tell kids to grab a pretend carrot, put it in their mouth, bite their jaw and clench their jaw really hard because activating these like, sensory nerves in their jaw and it's telling their body, like, calm down, chill out. So even if you don't actually chew or crunch something, like biting your jaw and holding it for like a good five to 10 seconds, almost like there's a carrot like in your mouth and you're just crunching it and holding it, that can give some of the same effects as well.”
“All right, to wrap up our. Try to wrap up our show, I am going to give you a try it at home tip. Cold water stimulation.”
“So this could definitely be like a cold plunge, but you would need access to a large-ish body of water to plunge your body into. And depending on male, female and hormonal systems, it's not always super helpful for females. And it depends on time of the month and things like that. But on smaller doses, you could access this. You could definitely like flash yourself with a cold shower for like 15 to 30 seconds. But for me, like, I. I do not like the cold. I do not like cold water. I do really just don't like cold showers. I don't like how it, like, is warm and it gets cold. If I'm going to cold plunge, I'm going to jump right into that, stay in it and get out. But what you could do is like throw some cold water on your face, even just stick your hands in cold water. Or like a bowl of water with some ice in it. Or you could grab like an ice pack or something from the freezer, even the fridge if it's too cold when it's icy and just like put it on the, on your neck for like 15 seconds. I know it sounds awful, but it just brings your body like right back in. It, like shocks your body in a healthy way right back into the present because it stimulates that vagus nerve and it helps shift your body into that out ofthe, like, heightened state and into a more relaxed state. And that helps regulate the nervous system. Just again, be mindful with this practice because you're soaking your whole body in a large tub of cold freezing water. It may or may not be helpful depending on a lot of factors. But smaller dose practices like ice packs or bowls, bowls of cold ice water with your hands in them, that's a little bit less intrusive.”
“All right, that's it for today's episode of Returning to Us podcast. Don't forget our Try home tip or any of these tips which were cold water stimulation, chewing or eating something crunchy, humming or singing and cross body movements. And I kind of threw in bilateral movements there as well.”
“Okay. If you are looking for more support in the area of stress management, trauma healing, understanding the brain and you want to bring that into the work you are doing, like your career, your office, your organization, your business, Jessica, Dr. Jessica Doring and I would love to be a part of that learning and healing journey. So we created five Ives. And five Ives offers a range of supports, training, group coaching programs, business training programs, even if you're an education potential, university credit. But we would love to talk more about what this could look like for you and your, your workplace and your workplace environment or your business. So feel free to jump onto five eyes.com F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S5ives.com and send us a message or book a call with us. And you can also shoot us an email. It's either Jessica or Laura. Lauren either. Or@5ives.com literally lauren@f I v e I v e s.com.”
“Don't forget to lock in what you learned today by applying it right away, planning for it, trying it, using it reactively, using it preventatively. But information isn't helpful unless we actually apply what we have learned. So share it with someone else. Get going on it. Heal your nervous system. Until next episode. I'm Lauren Spiegelmeyer and thanks for joining me.”