How To Calm Your Nervous System and Reconnect with Your Natural Rhythms

Introduction to Nervous System Regulation 0:00

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral where we reconnect modern life to an ancient wisdom through health, healing, and human connection. So do you ever feel overstimulated, disconnected, or out of sync? In this episode, I'm joined by Deborah Joy for a powerful conversation about nervous system regulation, spiritual alignment and the importance of honoring natural rhythms. We explore how media and modern noise disrupt our sense of safety and how small intentional shifts can help us reconnect, calm the body and move through the world with more presence and peace.

If your nervous system is craving a reset, this one's for you. So Deb, you actually had a personal experience with kind of modern life, your lifestyle taking over, and then your biological system saying, nope, this isn't working. So can you share that story and just your experience with people? Sure, sure. It definitely led to the work I do now. I was always very driven to make a difference in the world. and I wanted to have a big impact. And I knew it came a lot from love. Love for the planet, love for animals.

Love for places, love for people, but they were probably third on my list. It was really animals and habitat that came first. So I did a lot of work with different businesses trying to make the world a better place. Started a nonprofit with some friends to try to help business move towards a more socially and environmentally responsible way of operating. What I was conscious of was my love for things, my loved to make a difference and my energy. I had this real passion and energy, I'm working with an AIDS organization, and I just wanted to help everywhere.

What it was less aware of at the time was how much of that was driven by trauma. trauma from my childhood, feeling not enough that I actually had to earn my place to exist in the world. So I didn't know that at the time, but what happened was I kept working and working, working.

Deborah Joyu2019s Burnout and Healing Journey 2:06

The very short version is I got really ill. I Got so ill that, I was told I might never work again. You know, I had investments and I, had enough to support myself for a while, but I was only my thirties. I wasn't really prepared to retire, nor did I want to. But I kept trying every kind of modality to get well and nothing was working. So I finally gave up everything I knew and loved, gave out my work, moved away from my friends and my favorite city in the world. And I moved to a tiny village in Mexico.

And there was nothing for me to do really, meditate, do yoga. I lived in a house in the jungle and I learned to live at the pace of nature. And I can't say, oh, and then I was healed and everything was well. You know, I had to go through a long process of healing from mold toxicity and, you know it's been a journey, but that living at that pace nature changed me. And when I was there, I met a man, fell in love, moved to LA to be with him. I'm still married to him 22 years later, but I remember being in LA thinking, oh, i want to move back to Mexico.

i wanna be back there. And I realized, Oh no,i want that version of me to exist here. Oh, that's interesting. So how did you go about bringing out that vision of you in L.A.? There were different things. One was the pace that I was living at. So I walked everywhere. We had one car, but I walk everywhere, and it was consciously feeling the ground beneath my feet. I switched to barefoot shoes. Remember the five finger shoes? So it's 2005 or something, can't remember. It looked like a frog, you know?

But feeling, the grass, even as I say it now, I can kind of feel that feeling goes up my legs. goes into my pelvis. You know, I remember walking with those shoes and thinking, �I feel walking in my pelvic, and I feel it in the jaw.� So I became present to who I was and where I am through my whole body by operating at a different pace. What I noticed in Mexico was eating fruit that was actually fresh, you know, it had ripened on the vine. So you could have a bite and just go, oh, a fruit called a guanabana was so fresh and sweet and I'd never had it.

See, just, Oh, wow, what is this taste? So having the first bite of food that way, close your eyes, put it in my mouth and taste it like, oh my God, a peach in August. Presence can be so pleasurable. It doesn't have to be sitting and being mindful. So that version of me in Mexico was very present to the pleasures of life. Now that's an interesting distinction as presence and mindfulness being two different things. Because I think a lot of people think of them as the same thing. I would love to better understand What is mindfulness to you?

Well, it is presence to me. I just think when I hear about mindfulness where clients talk to be mindful, I have to more mindful. They're often thinking of a routine. they're thinking I've to start meditating, have a practice of mindfulness. And I'll say mindfulness can be the way you do everything. To me, mindfulness, It's funny that the word is mind because I think it's a feeling. I'm feeling myself in this moment in, this velvet chair. I am feeling my self look at you and the expression on your face.

And feeling what that does for me, even though we're virtual to make eye contact with you, someone I know. Right. Can feel that in my face, what it does. Hmm. You know, that's a word that is getting thrown around a lot. share it a lot when I'm on podcasts. When I talk about, if I were to create a food pyramid, I say the top of my pyramid would be foods that have flavors that are found in nature, so not natural flavors, not artificial flavors not added flavors but foods have flavor that is found nature.

The middle of the pyramid will be food that's nutrient rich. And then the bottom of pyramid is then mindfully eat the above. But I realized that a lot of people struggle with mindfulness and that it's easy to talk about it, but much harder to do it.

Presence, Mindfulness, and Feeling Safe 6:54

So do you have any tips on how someone might start being more mindful or how mindfulness can start showing up in someone's life? I think it often shows up in people's lives because of some kind of event like I had where you're actually forced to face how you are not being mindful. How you aren't being present in your own life. And so I will get to your answer of what to do, but so much of our life is pulling us out of the present moment. And that's actually creating a dysregulated nervous system.

So just coming back to this for a minute, so people understand not just what to do, but why. So, when we think about our ancestors, we talked about their nervous systems and how it's the same nervous system we have. We exist today because those people who are on our ancestral line were incredibly resilient. They lived in very hard times, but they were resilient, and what that means is their calm and peaceful to on alert and ready back to peaceful very easily. That's what resilient means. It also means not only could they act towards a danger appropriately, they could respond to pleasure appropriately.

And so a regulated nervous system, we talk about, you know, hear all the time like, regulate your nervous, system nervous. System has to be regulated. Your nervous systems knows how to regulate and regulated just means it goes, Oh, I should be activated. I shall be calm. Well, something exciting is happening. nothing is needed of me, it's time to sleep. It's just that flow up and down like waves in an ocean, that's a regulated nervous system. And it is important to know that as mammals, we co-regulate.

So the state of my being right now is having an effect on you. The state in your being is have an affect on me. So a moment ago when there was a technical difficulty, you very calmly said, hey, I think there's a problem. Can we do this? You weren't like, oh my God, we gotta fix this, which would have made me go, okay, let's do that. I was able to stay very calm and connected to you because you were super calm connected. So that's an example of co-regulation. That topic comes up a lot actually with parenting, particularly more modern day parenting where they talk about if your child gets hurt, don't go to extreme craziness around it, but try to model, it's all going to be okay and use gentler language and expression.

Now, here's the interesting thing with that. You can only do that if that's in you. Because I could use really calm language with you, but you and I are both made of energy. Everything is energy, right? Everyone listening this podcast, you are energy and no matter how someone's voice sounds or what the words they're saying, You are feeling their energy You're feeling, their nervous system and you're going to respond to it. So you could have someone say all the right things and your body goes, I don't trust them.

I dunno why you picking up on energy so As a parent, if you're overwhelmed, so we're kind of getting back now to being present, If you are overwhelmed and you trying to be a good parent but you got a deadline to meet and your money's in the stock market, it's going up and down and have no control over it and just had a car accident and phone is pinging like crazy, you already at overwhelmed. Your nervous system is responding to each one of those things the way your ancestors would have responded to a lion in the bushes, right?

Oh my God, I gotta deal with that, now your kid falls and you're like, okay, be calm to them, become honey, you are okay. You're fine. It's all right. But really your nervous wants to go, this is too much. Oh, so many people listening or watching this can identify right now. I know I can. So what do we do with it then? Well, we don't have to regulate our nervous systems. Our nervous system know what to do beautifully. What are nervous symptoms looking for is, are you safe? Or am I safe, it's always looking that.

So the more you can consciously feel it in this moment, you are safe. The more will interrupt that sympathetic drive You know, just a little interruption. So you think of the way our nervous systems behave is based on our childhood, it's based our ancestors, its patterning that's been developed, right? We're not aware of it. But you'd think it is like a superhighway in our brain and body of how we respond to things. 95% of is unconscious. You don't have to be consciously aware. But if you can, throughout the day, notice that you're safe, you'll interrupt that superhighway.

It's like putting a little tiny detour to safety, and you will start changing your neural pathways over time. So what are some ways that can kind of remind or make yourself feel safe? Okay, one thing I teach my clients, I call it FAB. So I'm gonna, I'll take you through it now and anyone listening, as long as you're, you know, don't have to be doing something else, so you can do it along with me. So right now, James, and I want you to just feel your feet. No matter where they are, or do you want them on the ground?

If they're on their ground, that's great. They don' have be. Wherever they, just feeling them. And sometimes some people have trouble feeling their feet, So just wiggle your toes for a second. I know stop. and just notice sensations in your feed. So you're not thinking about it. You're feeling you might feel warm or tingly or numb or heavy. If they're on the floor, you may feel, oh, they are touching the floors. And now I want you to feel your ass. Your ass is in a chair. I just want to just feel the ass and as you do, I wanted to notice the support of the chair holding you.

and I don't know if you even notice like your breathing deepened a bit when you felt that chair Now I just want you to notice your next couple of exhales as you breathe. And with those exhals, just allow yourself to settle into that support that's right there. So I call that fab. F is for feet. Just feel your feet, A is ass. I knew there had to be something for the ass because you don't normally say ass necessarily. Why did you say an ass right now? But it's fat. Yeah, and B is for breath, right?

And so you're not doing a breathing routine. You're just noticing your next couple of exhales. And I started doing that with clients about 15 or so years ago, because when I would try to teach people to just be present,

Co-Regulation, Parenting, and Habits 14:00

most people had a breath technique they used. When I get into what that gives them, some people say, well, sometimes it works, but sometimes I really anxious. I don't think I'm doing it right. Take a big breath and I feel any calmer. Well, when you're trying to override your breathing, there can be a bit of a performance aspect to it. Also, you take a big breath, your heart rate naturally speeds up. So if you are already anxious and you paying attention to an inhale and notice your hearts beating faster.

Oh my God, I really am anxious. I better breathe deeper. Let's take it a bigger breath. My heart's beating fast. But when first start by feeling I'm safe right now, I'm supported. You already became present. Like until I mentioned it, you might not even have noticed that you're sitting in a chair. you couldn't feel it. But when I got you to think about your ass, You could feel, it as soon as you brought your attention down and you became president that way, your breathing naturally slowed down in deepened.

I could see it happen. Then I asked you, to pay attention to your exhale, because when you exhale your heart rate naturally slows down. Yeah, if you were feeling anxious, then you had a moment of like, oh, I noticed my heart slower than I thought. Part of me, though, was immediately like well, this is all well and good. But in the moment, just using a child, your child let's say, like your, child gets injured or falls or something, you're not necessarily going to like, you know, take the time to do this before you react to your child.

But then I realized, wait a second, fab. So feet, ass, breath, You can do that instantaneous. Like it really can be, cause I'm even imagining, let's say you go to kneel down to meet your children where they are. Let's just assume they're on the ground somewhere. Cause they've fell in, even in that process of going from upright to, to bending down, Yeah, I never thought of that. That's really good. You know, saying, you can't use this in an emergency is actually accurate. Cause it'd be like saying James, am going to teach you to swim.

I'm going throw you off a boat. Like I should have learned how to swing first. So you got to do it before. Yeah. yeah. so I always tell my clients the quality of your habits determines the quantity of life. And they'll say, well, no, it's quality of my relationships. Yes. It's the quality your habits within those relationships that determines the equality of those relationship, which determines quality for life. So our habits are always guiding us either towards the life we want and who we wanna be or away from it.

And what's tricky is habits or habits because they're automatic. And your brain uses a lot of energy and it likes to be efficient, so it will turn anything into a habit to make it more efficient. You know, when something's a habbit, we don't think about what foot we step with first or how we put our pants on. It's just a habits or where we start brushing our teeth. Your brain has made all of that automatic. So you can consciously change your habits. If you make fab a habit and you do it every time you take a sip of water, before you check your phone, everytime you sit down, if you're constantly doing it, you could do dozens of times a day, that's dozens times you've interrupted that pattern of stress in your nervous system and your brain.

and you've interrupted just a moment of presence, a movement of peace, because most of the time we are completely safe. No matter what's happening in the stock market, no matter, what is happening with a deadline or in politics, in this moment, most us are complete safe, but we're not aware of it physically. Well, and it kind of takes us back to media news, made to feel in many ways or were directed towards feeling and thinking that we're not safe because most of at least legacy media is mostly about traumatic events really.

Right? And social media, even more, right? It's not even necessarily trauma, but it's, it is not just stealing our time. It is stealing dopamine, stealing motivation. So if we go back to our ancestors and the way they lived as hunter-gatherers, a really important part of keeping them going was dopamine, right? So dopamine is, we think of it as the pleasure model, which it is you know, makes us enjoy things, but it also was responsible for our attention, our sleep, or hormone balance and our motivation.

So if you think if your out hunting or gathering, even the anticipation of getting food raises your dopamine a bit. And your Dopamine enables you to keep paying attention. Is that something I hear? Am I tracking an animal? What am I doing? I've got the motivation to Keep going even when it's hard, right? And then if I find berries or I actually, you know, capture dinner, I capture an animal and I have dinner. Dopamine is part of that reward system. And the hard work has had the dopamine build stably.

You know, i have this exciting event and eventually it comes down. But it's a very sustainable process. What happens? We're designed that same way so we can do hard work. We can go to the gym and we come work out and it feels good and see our muscles are building, we're getting more toned, keeps us motivated to keep going. Or writing a book, whatever it is. Dopamine is a big part of that. What happens with social media or any kind of media we're consuming in a big way is it robs of our dopamine by spiking it.

So if you look at social, media it's very colorful, it is very fast. You'll even see some videos say like, wait till you see how this ends or wait until you what happens here like the anticipation. What am I going to see? Right? So your dopamine goes from here to and then you see it, it was usually fairly disappointing. And then the next thing might happen that would be very enjoyable on its own, but because your dopamine has spiked, you don't get as much pleasure from it. So you wanna see the thing, because maybe the things will do it and it's okay, But it is not as good and we keep going for it Now, we all have a baseline of dopamine.

And our body likes to keep everything within a certain range of health for us. It's called homeostasis, right? So it's like when you go outside and you're really cold, your body starts to shiver and get goosebumps. And just the raising of the goosebumps and the shivering warms you up a little bit. And the other thing that happens is your blood leaves your extremities and goes to protect all of your important organs, right? Your body wants to keep you safe.

Media, Dopamine, and Social Disconnection 21:00

Well, it's the same with dopamine. Everyone has a baseline and our baselines are all different. But when I get a really big spike, It has to go down below the baseline back to find normal. So what people will often find is if they're on social media too much, is afterwards they feel kind of flat, kind a draggy, their motivation is down. They become a lot more passive. People even find they are more anxious or depressed. And nobody wants to feel that way. We will do a LOT to avoid feeling uncomfortable.

So we'll pick up our phone and do it again. because we want that dopamine. We might get the spike and then we get a crash afterwards. So it takes us out of presence, but more than that, it's actually really dysregulating our nervous system and our dopamine balance. Yeah, It's a hard truth, right? That these systems that are in place presently are really affecting not only our potentially re-imprinting traumas from years past, depending on your history, they're potentially also negatively affecting our immune system.

So there's so much dysregulation that comes with them. And I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts then, how does someone get out of that rat race, but also still be a part of modern society, like not feel completely disconnected or different from everyone else. I qualify this with the idea that back in the day when there was water cooler meetings, when people were meeting in person, them talking about the current show, whether it was Seinfeld or whatever it, was a part of socialization. That was connection point for people.

And so I would argue that was an important piece of them feeling as part their community. So I think the fear that many people have with disconnecting from any kind of media is that they won't be a part of that community anymore. And if they don't have that committee, then what community do they have? Right, right. That's really important. Even thinking about what is community, the way we're designed is to live with a small group of people who we actually rely on for our survival. right, that they know us well, we know that maybe 15 to 50 people, you know, what a tribe would be like.

Our mirror neurons that we all have means that when I see an expression in your face, I have that feeling within me, right? When I watch you do something, it can imagine what it takes to do it so I can learn that way. So we're meant to co-create, to collaborate, as part of our survival. See you're right. We need to feel that sense of belonging. It's an absolute human need. and feeling like if we get off social media, we'll be out of the loop is terrifying. Yeah, I don't want to underestimate that for people because I think it's a real thing.

It's a very real thing. And even one of my clients said she did social media detox with her boys. Then one her boy went to hang with the friends and they were all talking about a meme going around. He didn't know about it and he felt stupid. So it is very, real. I think one the things is getting more face-to-face time separate from social-media. We do have to make a move away from our addiction to it. And what they're finding in schools now that have banned it is the kids are way better focused, they are much happier, and they connecting in other ways.

They are actually more social with each other, connecting out of class times, so it's really changing the way they connect. So even letting go of the belief that we have to connect about or around what's happening on social media is a first step. I think we don't just give ourselves, you know, a social-media detox can be effective, but we need to develop other habits. We don' just break habits, we have to replace habits with other habit because there's always something that's triggering a habit.

So when I said, you know, habits are sort of what will get you either to the life you want or the live you don't want. Think of a habit as a car. So it's another acronym, C-A-R. There's always a cue. Something is cueing you to do that habit. The habit itself is the action. and R stands for reward. You're gonna do that habit again only if you feel a reward for it. So that first spike of dopamine gave you a award. The action is, you know, watching social media. you're going to want to do it again because you got that feeling.

If you want to move away from social media in some way and with your kids, you need to get other habits. It's not just telling them, don't do this. What are you going to give them? It gives the sense of connection that they actually need, that sense, of belonging. If they can get more face-to-face time with kids that's great. Or like we're looking for connection in social but you would appreciate this as a chef. I think of that kind of connection is the equivalent of junk food, what junk is to food.

In connection we wanna be seen, we want to be known, We want our mirror neurons to reflect back, right? We get all that and we co-regulate so our nervous system settles. We don't get that from looking at a phone. Now we might see something there that we can use to talk about that creates that real life connection. But can we find other things to connect around? You're making me think about the Uh, the love languages, you know, that, uh, book of all about the, is it the five love language? Yeah. Yeah, I think I should probably mention them here.

And if you, no, um, correct me if I miss miss anything, but, ah, one is, gifts people that you give you like getting gifts. One is words of praise. one Is acts of service one as touch. and do you remember the what is that? Quality time. Quality of time, thank you. And you're making me think of that though, because I know with our oldest daughter, when we focus on removing the phone, what we did was we focused on, well, What are her level languages? And one is quality time and one as gifts. So we focusing on quality times.

What we do was, we pulled out a deck of cards and we left them on the dinner table so that way, after dinner or any time we're sitting there, we immediately say, hey, you want to play a game? And then it's quality time. It's nothing else is happening. We're just together. And of course, conversations come out of that or it walking the dog together, Hey, do you wanna go for a walk with me? You know, and it really juxtaposing like you can be alone or you could be connecting. I know that she wants to connect, but sometimes she gets in the habit of isolating.

Yeah, it's just habit, right? It's easy. There's a little bit of effort to playing cards. You know, like we've overcome that effort. Like I gotta think, I got to do something. I don't have to sit on my phone and just do this, but you're right. She's wanting that connection. And if you guys weren't offering that, which is so lovely, it'd be really easy to go to her phone. Right, right, and we can do things like lock our phone in a box, so we do, we have a lock box for everyone's tech, um, Which is kind of what people do with food, you know?

It's kind all or nothing, Right? But I Don't know if that's instilling, That new habit or that new muscle of really thinking about what is it that we need as individuals, but what it is that the other people in our household, what do they need? I feel like the extreme, the black or white situation is really not addressing the gray area of human connection. Well, I like the idea of locking the phone and offering an alternative, right? So you think of the foam. Think of it as like, as a chef, it's a tool.

It's really sharp knife, so it is super effective. You don't want to do without it completely because it has a use, but you don' want your kids going to bed with a super sharp.

Community, Connection, and Replacing Phone Habits 29:30

Knife, you know, let them walking around with them all the time. But used in the right way, It is a very effective tool, Yeah, absolutely. Now I don't know if you know this, but when we were both in LA, I abstained from media for an entire year. I know we knew each other then, but I don't know how much you remember that. And it was a really fascinating experiment. So I didn't let myself read any newspapers, magazines, any online news. I did not do any social media. This was over 10 years ago, so there was lot less then of course too.

But what was so fascinating was the people's responses. There were a couple people when they heard I was doing that, they saw it as selfish. They were like, how could you? You don't know what's going on in the world. Politically, you need to know, what is going. And there's a lot of people that think like that right now. So I know that this mindset has not changed. And then the other thing that was surprising was how much I did know what was going on without watching any media. And that's because other people filtered it for me because it would come up in conversations.

So I learned things just because people were doing it themselves and they started just sharing what they believed or thought of. Yeah. And then you could, if you were interested, I know you we're banning it completely, but if were you interested if wanted to live that way, you can go research for yourself in the way that's comfortable for you what you want to find out. Because also there's so much misinformation going around right now on social media. If you hear something, what paths do you know to go to research what the truth might be?

Yeah, so very fascinating. Well, I'm really enjoying this conversation. And I know, in many ways, you started out the conversation talking about your natural rhythms. I am curious, when you got sick, something that comes up a lot on this show is the four pillars of health. We have our sleep, we have what we eat, how we move our body, and then we how do we deal with stress. If you were to kind of like number what you had to focus on first to help, you know, get out of that desperation of sickness, because I know it kind has waves, right?

Obviously when it happened, it was at its extreme. You had do something kind extreme to get of it, Right? You completely left your life, You went and isolated. So would you say that you focused first on changing the environment that's causing so much stress? Would you say if we were focusing on the pillars that that was the first, like if you were to number in terms of importance, in term of supporting people with their natural rhythms, with finding kind of like a nervous system homeostasis, where should they start is kind where I'm going?

Oh, okay. That's a great question. And I don't think I had that much of conscious choice. My body, Sleep was my number one. I was bedridden for quite a long time and I, you know, had chronic fatigue and was sleeping a lot. I had denied myself sleep for decades. I was always on the go. So, you know, body seeking homeostasis, girlfriend, we're going to bring you back and you're gonna sleep four years. You know? So sleep was my number one. Can't say I know what everyone's number is, but I knew that unless you are well rested, unless your slept, nothing else is going perform well.

I'll talk to clients sometimes who are so ready to leave their spouse. They have had it, they are done, it's over. I talk them the next time they go, oh no, I slept well and it was fine. Okay, clearly it wasn't them or the marriage, you know? I'm ready kill my kids and we'll, we will talk about their kids for an hour. And the day I check in they're like, Oh no I got a good sleep. The kids are fine, did the kids change? You know, like sleep is the, for me, sleep's the foundation for everything. I wasn't eating all, you know, Doritos when I was working really hard, but I Wasn't sleeping.

You know you would have looked at my diet go. It's pretty good, You Know I Was moving a lot But I, wasn' sleeping so I don't know if that's it for everybody but for me and a Lot of my experience with clients is sleep and even if not sleep rest Like we think of resilience as being ready. I'm ready for the next thing, I am strong. And I think resilience is a combination of rested and ready, because you're not rested. You actually can't be fully ready if you go to the gym over and over again and you are tired, you will not see gains.

But if your rested, and go the to gym, your gonna see the gains you wanna see. So I rest is critical. And I think a lot of people think that going to their tech is restful. I just need to chill and just grab my phone. Well, you're not doing anything, but your nervous system is having a response to all of it. And you are just sitting there. So all energy is getting kind of built up, built, up and your kids interrupt. You're like, what? You know, that nervous system, energy, it wants to move. That is such a good point.

Cause I know that my brother and I both, well, I think he still historically does this. I do it a little less so, but we were definitely trained to do that with TV or movies or something like where I need to decompress. So I'm going to go watch TV. And now it's of course watching some show on your phone. But back then it was like, I'm going to go do TV. And my parents, we want, you know, they modeled it back in the day. So I, see what you mean though, because on a certain level, think my brain is telling me, oh yeah, this is like rest, but nervous system wise, it's not.

Cause if you're watching, let's say a movie that has a lot of violence or is aggressive in any way, your nervous doesn't know have the, You know your brain doesn' know that it' not real, right? Right, right. Can you talk a little bit about that, just how our brains connect with what it sees versus, and how that plays out in our bodies? Right, well, when I talked about, you know, as tribes, we had mirror neurons that would, I can watch someone do something and I almost feel it in my body. Like it's pre-learning, right?

Like kids see you walking, they learn how to walk. It's the mirror neurones that will say, oh, like, think I could do that. I kind of almost it feel in in body, or if I see, smile, Like you smile at a baby and the baby smiles back. That's mirror neuron's responding, but when we watch a show, Our nervous system doesn't know it's not real, so we see someone being attacked, being killed, and being really sad. We kind of go through a part of that ourselves. So we've gone through this whole emotional roller coaster that we probably never should experience and we go, okay, I'm going to go to bed now.

You've just put yourself through hell, you know? And I'm not opposed to TV or movies or social media. It probably sounds like I am. I really not. There can be great joy from it. Um, there can learning from, it there, can we just entertainment? It can really fun. But again, think of it like a really sharp knife in your kitchen, right? You don't want to overuse it, You know, want your kids to have it all the time. it's, really useful. And it also potentially really dangerous. It makes me think, because I have been through periods in my life where I actually, I don't remember how long I did this.

I didn't think it was that long, but I do remember there was a period where had to go to sleep listening to the TV in the background or something. Like I needed something and like I said, don' know how I long did that. But I remember it really helped me at the time. And it's making me thing that a lot of people might be doing a habit right now that they think they need and that maybe there is some mindfulness that can come with what we're talking about around that habit, meaning that, maybe, there's a need in the moment, but if it becomes,

Sleep, Rest, and Nervous System Recovery 38:00

what is the duration of when this, how do you know when, okay, I've clearly gone past that kind of point of no return and now this is becoming a crutch? It's becoming that taxing my nervous system. It is doing more harm than good. Is there any kind of like tool that we can use to assess that? I think it's hard to know in the moment, honestly. Like, I'm the same. If I am on my phone, it is hard know that in a moment I was full. unless you've backed off it enough and you're paying attention enough to your body.

So I used to drink a lot more than I do. I would drink like beyond probably what my body wanted. But I barely drink at all now. but when I drink, I drank slowly and I really enjoy it. so I had a margarita with friends the other night and at the halfway point or something I thought, i'm done. i don't need to finish it, but it was going slow and paying Now, often when we go to something like watching TV, social media, listening to, something what we're actually doing is avoiding feeling some feelings we don't want to feel.

And we may not even be aware of what those feelings are. So it could even, be I'm really tired. But I don't want to feel tired. I do not want go to sleep. That was my old, I did not wanna go sleep, sleep is a waste of time. So you might watch a show. You are really tired, but you are watching the show because you do no want just feel the sleepiness and it is keeping you awake. Or you may not feel lonely. And so you go on social media and you feel this junk food version of connection. So sometimes it's letting yourself be with the uncomfortable feelings, but not so much so that you go into a spiral.

And that's a really fine dance. So I actually have created a guided meditation called Deep Rest Reset. If people want to go to my website, I can send it out to anyone who connects to me. But you could even start with like little meditations instead of social media. or instead of a TV show. And what the meditation I do, it takes you through feeling your body in very safe ways. I even say stop at any time, because if you have a lot of trauma, and Peter Levine, who I studied with, says everybody has trauma and society is pretty dysregulating and can be traumatizing, sometimes it doesn't feel safe to feel your Like sometimes actually taking a big breath and feeling what's in there is so uncomfortable.

You'd rather be looking at social media or watching a show because you don't have to feel what is going on. But when we don't let ourselves feel negative feelings, we cut ourselves off from feeling really positive feelings too, of tenderness and touch and ecstatic feelings. So we wanna ease into befriending our body and befriending our emotions. It can be a bit uncomfortable, but going into it really gently. This is all so good. And I'm finding my brain going to place of, Can we quantify it? Because I just know that if we go back to the beginning of what we started talking about is that we're talking in many ways about mindfulness, right?

That these are practices of being more mindful of your state. But people really, there are so many people that don't know how to do it. They don' do, they can't do. It's not in their lexicon, it's in not their experiences. I'm right now in real time trying to process like how to help those people. And so part of me is like, oh, can we quantify it? Like, okay, if you find yourself when you're in those intense feelings of whatever might be coming up, something's hot for you and you'll find yourselves going to some crush or social media, let's say by the third time, you have to then do something different, but then as I said that in my mind, I am like well, wait a second, that could potentially add even more stress and then make people like continue to default to their norm.

So I wonder if it's more just about you know you're ready when this message resonates with you and you are ready to just try something different and it is that simple. How would you kind of support someone with recognizing and taking that first step towards change? Okay. When I look at change, I always think we have to know why we want it. It's not just the what to do, but why do we it? So I think the first step is actually figuring out why would you want to change it, like maybe social media isn't bothering you.

Maybe you think it's good enough. That sounds like too much work. So if something in this chat sparked an interest, what do you in your life to be different and why? So I'm just going to make something up, but I might say, I am always feeling kind of off after social media. I don't want to feel that way anymore. And I want feel excited about life. Okay, that's my thing. So when I know any time you have a goal, it's because you want a feel different than the way you feel now. Right? Whether that goal is, I want to go get lunch because I'm hungry or I wanted 10 times my business because they want financial freedom.

There is a feeling. It's not just financial. Freedom. If I think I have financial, freedom, feel safe, secure, generous, there's feelings that go with it. So take a moment to figure out why you'd want.

Practical Reset Tools and Closing Remarks 44:00

To put any work into your life being different. How do you want feel this different from how you feel now? So if you often feel anxious, I would say fab lots throughout the day. Feel your feet, feel your ass in the chair, fill your exhale, which is your breathing, right? That's going to interrupt the stress patterns. When we talk about mindfulness. I want to have more pleasure in my life, but I don't even know what to do. Great. Just like close your eyes and smell your food. And when you take the first bite, just let it linger in your mouth and taste the flavors.

One bite. One bite of every meal. You don't have to do it the whole time, but that's gonna give you a moment of pleasure. It's going to slow you down. Slowing down does bring more pleasure, right? If you find, okay, I'm going into my phone because I feel stressed or I don' like the way I fell. Well, what if you just took a moments before you get on your phone? Maybe you even fab before getting on you phone and then you notice how you feel. Do you still need it? Okay, do it, if you still want it you do, and then after maybe you fab again.

So you're giving yourself a bookend of regulating your nervous system on either end of it. And maybe over time when you fad before you pick up your phone, you go, no, I don't need it I'm actually hungry instead, or I am lonely and I wanna call somebody. That was fantastic, that is so lovely and so helpful Deb. Are you seeing clients or like, are you booked out? I'm seeing client, yeah. So, I mean, do you have openings? Like if someone's listening to this and they're like I love her voice, so I'd love what she's about.

I want to work with her as a coach. Are taking in new clients? Uh, it will be shortly. It don't have any openings right now, but by October I will. Okay. Well, because I'm confident that someone's going to resonate with this, cause I know I have. Where can people find you? We'll definitely put in the show notes, but let's let people know via audio. How can they find and are you on socials? Like we're talking about social. But gosh, this is just part of like being on a podcast, right? Is letting the guests share what their social are.

Right. My website is debrajoy.me. And if people go to it, you can sign up. And I send out a newsletter with like tips like this, ideas, but also if you want to email me through there, I'm happy to send you some guided meditations for eating, also the deep rest reset. I'll happily email those to people. Um, not really on socials. It kind of have been and don't go, it's just, old embarrassing stuff. So mostly it is my website and my newsletter that I sent out. Perfect. Well, Deb, I thought of you for this topic and I'm so glad I did.

It's so good to talk with you and just get, you know, this time to chit chat because it's been a while. And, um, You know I will disclose you've been working with Margaret for a long time now. I know you guys were friends, but you also, she works with, and, uh, know she gets so much out of it. and and i witnessed it, i experienced it I've gotten so out our connection and friendship over the years. So, I just cherish you and I appreciate all that you did to help transform and nourish yourself so that could be here to provide all this gold.

So thank you. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. And you're such generous, kind host. It's been lovely. Well, thank you. Thank you, everyone. Look at lots of thanks going on. But thank all for participating in today's podcast. It really does mean so much to get comments, to just see all the people that are listening and watching the podcast, that is our communication of like, hey, you like what we're doing. So thank for that and encourage more. But most of all, I hope that you got something from this podcast today that can carry into your life to make it a little bit better.

And most all of please stay curious because we need curious people in this life.