There is NO trick to unlocking resilience. No one skill or tool or practice will guarantee that you will never be overwhelmed by stress or trauma. We can’t trick our body’s survival system. And I don’t think we want to even though people try all the time.
There are 3 things that make something feel stressful or traumatic to your nervous system. And you can apply these to situations, relationships, memories, thoughts or injuries, pretty much any experience you’ve had long or short term, present, past or future. Isolation, uncertainty and lack of control. It could be any one of those things or any combination of them.
The good news is that knowing those three components of stress and trauma, we can customize our own behavior to build the kind of unshakeable resilience that so many people are looking for. But it’s not a trick.
As a part of my mission to bring a legacy of resilience through movement, each month you can join me for a hike on the bike trail followed by a free trauma informed vinyasa class back at the studio on Main Street. Go to savagegracecoaching.com to see the calendar and join my newsletter, Yoga Life on Main Street, to stay up to date on all the latest studio news, events and gossip. And now… on to this week’s episode.
It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business and so much more.
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
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There’s no trick to resilience
I talk to a lot of seriously stressed out people. Folks who live or have lived in long term stress environments. Sometimes that comes from military service for the service member or their family, sometimes it’s from a work environment, or a family environment or financial situation, sometimes it’s a physical health situation, injury, or chronic pain or disease, it might be from unresolved past trauma, neglect or abuse. No matter what the source, chronic stress can show up in a lot of different ways. Muscle tension, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, inability to make a decision, difficulty focusing, shut down, lack of motivation and fatigue, emotional dysregulation, chronic illnesses and autoimmune disorders, high blood pressure, and there’s so many more.
How it shows up, people are looking for basically one thing, resilience. That ill defined magic key that lets you overcome any stress or trauma that we encounter.They want to be as mentally and emotionally strong as they are physically strong. And because we live in modern culture we want a magic bullet. We want the trick to shut off that pesky, annoying, sometimes debilitating stress response so we can get on with our day.
Today I have good news and bad news.
Bad news first. There is NO trick to unlocking resilience. No one skill or tool or practice will guarantee that you will never be overwhelmed by stress or trauma. We can’t trick our body’s survival system. And I don’t think we want to even though people try all the time.
There are 3 things that make something feel stressful or traumatic to your nervous system. And you can apply these to situations, relationships, memories, thoughts or injuries, pretty much any experience you’ve had long or short term, present, past or future. Isolation, uncertainty and lack of control. It could be any one of those things or any combination of them.
The good news is that knowing those three components of stress and trauma, we can customize our own behavior to build the kind of unshakeable resilience that so many people are looking for. But it’s not a trick. It’s an understanding that starts with awareness and leads to repairing the mind-body relationship and safe self regulation of the nervous system.
Good resilience practices are simple and repetitive. They can be integrated throughout the day or whenever you notice an inappropriate reaction in the moment. They are that way on purpose because your nervous system has spent your whole life learning to protect you. It’s got lots of habits that have worked in the past. And as we know it’s really hard to change habits that we know about. It’s even harder to change the ones that run under our conscious awareness. It’s kind of like getting rid of malware that was secretly installed on your hard drive and makes your security system run constantly and drain your batteries.
Step into Certainty
Building resilience always starts with awareness. You can’t change anything for the better if you don’t know what it is, what’s wrong with it or how to affect it. And that speaks directly to our understanding of our own nervous system response. There’s nothing scarier than when our body does something that’s outside of our control and we can’t figure out why with a quick search on dr. google. Then that small twinge in your tummy and increased heart rate suddenly becomes a racing heart and numbness in your hands and feet into a full blown panic attack. So you felt what you felt and in the blink of an eye your system overwhelmed you.
Awareness and mindfulness practices help by letting you notice sensations in your body and around you without attaching any judgment or meaning to them. This gives you time to respond and replaces uncertainty with curiosity.
Over time, you start to rebuild trust in your body’s reactions rather than living in an adversarial relationship in your own skin.
Some things that work really well here are simple guided body scans. There are a lot of free resources for these but I thought we could do one together now. You can do this anywhere but if you’re driving we want to stay engaged with that activity.
Start in a comfortable position. Could be seated, reclined or lying down. Your choice if you want your eyes open or closed.
Begin by noticing your breath. No need to change anything about it. There’s no right or wrong way to breath. Simply observe today and practice not attaching judgment or meaning to anything we find. Simply be here and now in this body and moment.
Then direct your awareness to each area of the body as I say it. Noticing what you notice there, feel what you feel and explore with a little curiosity.
Feel you toes, the soles of your feet, ankles, calves, shins, knees, back of the thighs, front of the thighs, hips, low back lower belly, back of the ribcage, front of the chest, upper chest, fingers, palms of the hands, wrists, forearms, elbows, upper arms shoulders, neck, back of the head, jaw, mouth, cheeks, eyelids, forehead, crown of the head.
Visualize your body as it is in this moment, extending gratitude, grace, love and respect to every part of yourself. When you’re ready, breathe yourself back into your day.
Take back control
Without strong, safe self regulation skills we can be easily influenced by other people, past experiences and current events. Yes the stress response lives in the autonomic nervous system but there are many ways that we influence it, knowingly and unknowingly. Purposely building resilience puts you back in the driver's seat.
The resilience skills that you adopt need to be something you can do on a regular basis that give your nervous system more evidence of safety. SO much evidence that safety replaces all the evidence of danger that’s been accumulated throughout your life.
That can be a lot. And each of us are different so here’s where we need to put on our lab coats and really experiment with different tools. One thing isn’t going to work for everyone. Knowing that from the start is important. But whatever tool or tools that you use you want them to be very accessible to you. 1 hour of yoga once a week most likely won’t cut it. It doesn’t work like that because we are carrying a lifetime of stress baggage around with us and at the same time being bombarded with clear and present stress in the moment too. So we need to adopt things we can do regularly and in the moment several times a day. That’s why you hear breathing techniques recommended so often and mindfulness/meditation practices, as well as different types of body work.
By replacing protective reactions with responses of presence and intention you start to take back control, influence and self efficacy in your own stress and trauma recovery. Every time you notice your reaction in a moment and choose a different response you begin the work to replace and repair that mind-body relationship and create more evidence of safety.
We mentioned breathing techniques as a good in the moment resilience skill to master. One of the reasons is that breath is the fastest way to affect the autonomic nervous system. So today I wanted to teach you a breathing technique that you already know but that you may have forgotten you know. And that’s the physiologic sigh. If you practice yoga it’s very similar to breath of joy but without the body movements.
We do this breath pattern naturally when we fall asleep and as children (or adults) when we’re trying to calm ourselves after a temper tantrum. The physiologic sigh will interrupt the sympathetic nervous system response and activate the parasympathetic helping us calm down.
Here’s how you do it…
Two quick inhales through the nose + one long exhale through the mouth. Let’s try it together.
Maybe you can imagine yourself doing this as a child after being very upset. But you don’t have to be crying to use it. It’s been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rate. You can use it any time you’re feeling especially activated.
This is an easy one to add to your stress defense arsenal.
Come out of isolation
Connection is the most important piece of recovery from trauma and stress injury and yet it’s the first thing we lose when suffering from traumatic or chronic stress. The tendency in an overwhelmed nervous system response is to go on “lock down” so to speak. It is 100% a protective response. This might look like physically separating yourself from others or it may be feeling alone on the inside even when you’re surrounded by others.
It’s human nature to seek connection with others. We evolved to work and live together. If you or someone you know is feeling alone right now, reach out and connect in some way. A quick text or a phone call to a friend. You are not alone. The pandemic made so many people think that we were safer staying separated. We know now that that wasn’t true. We need each other for more than just gossip and reels.
Meet up somewhere for coffee, start a weekly walk or lunch date. It will do your heart and your nervous system good.
Thanks for joining me today on The Work IN I’m so grateful for each and every one of you! I’d like to invite you to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin for a special gift to a free guided meditation Desk Yoga in the show notes for this week's episode.
While you’re there you’ll find my free guide to HOLDING SPACE. Holding space is just a fancy way to say co-regulation which is something we do all the time with other people without even realizing it. This is a pivotal part of my Kinetic Grace Integration trauma sensitive framework for instructors and it’s totally FREE. Just go over to Savagegracecoaching.com and click the banner at the top of the page or the pop up and it’s all yours! Feel free to browse around through any of the other free resources available there and when you’re ready, let’s connect. You can find me on social Facebook, Insta and Linkedin or reach out and schedule a free consult to explore how we can work together.