E198: The MOST Effective Simple Fixes for Burnout, Anxiety, and Overwhelm in Motherhood with Michelle Grosser

Ever notice how your PMS goes from bad to unbearable when stressed? Or how your period seems to punish you extra hard after a crazy month?

Your overwhelmed nervous system is stealing progesterone to make cortisol, fueling estrogen dominance, irregular cycles, and brutal PMS - all while keeping you exhausted.

In this game-changing chat with burnout recovery coach (and former attorney) Michelle Grosser, you'll discover:

• The burnout-hormone connection: How a dysregulated nervous system sabotages pain-free periods, fertility, and blood sugar balance 
• 3 non-negotiable daily habits to increase progesterone naturally, decrease PMS mood swings, and reboot energy—without adding to your to-do list (movement ≠ workouts!)
• A 90-second "physiological sigh" that lowers cortisol faster than meditation (Michelle teaches us how to do it live!)
• How to get your body out of fight-or-flight so you can finally experience pain-free periods, stable energy, and fewer "why am I crying over this commercial?!" moments

Press play to break the burnout cycle and finally find relief - your hormones will thank you.

NEED HELP FIXING YOUR HORMONES? CHECK OUT MY RESOURCES:
Hormone Imbalance Quiz - Find out which of the top 3 hormone imbalances affects you most!
Join Nourish Your Hormones Coaching for guidance

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:
Nervous System Reset Guide
Website
IG: @itsmichellegrosser

Rate the podcast 5 stars and DM me RATING on IG @leishadrews for $20 off the Restored mini-course on blood sugar balance, a key factor in hormone health!

Use code HHPODCAST for $50 off Nourish Your Hormones

LET’S CONNECT!
IG: @leishadrews
My story+more hormone resources here

Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more women looking for answers.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

[00:00:00] Leisha: If you are constantly feeling exhausted, anxious, and overwhelmed in your life and motherhood, and you feel like you've forgotten who you are or who you want to be. Today we're talking about the most effective, simple fixes that you can implement right away to help with burnout, anxiety, and overwhelm, and motherhood.

With lawyer and burnout coach Michelle Grosser.

[00:00:00] Leisha: Hey friend. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's guest. Is going to really be applicable to you as a busy mom. So I'm really excited for this one. Our guest is Michelle Grosser and she is a burnout recovery coach, she is also the host of the Calm Mom Podcast where she helps women. Overcome burnout, anxiety, reregulate, their nervous system and mindset.  

this is going to be so needed in our world today, and I'm so excited to have you, Michelle. Well, You just introduced yourself and tell us a little bit about you outside of who you are as a coach, but a little bit of , how you got to the place you are, and why you care about burnout.

[00:00:39] Michelle: Thanks so much for having me. First I guess I'm a wife and mom. I have two girls, so they're six and almost eight. We are homeschooling them this year. For those of you who homeschool, you know, , what that is especially in the first year, it's been so fun, but also a journey.

And for the better part of the last 15 or so years I was a litigator, a trial attorney in Miami. I had my own practice there and it was growing and it was so awesome and fun. And we had the whole staff and I had a team and I had an office downtown. Then I had my first baby, and then I had my second baby, and then I just hit like the deepest depths of a burnout that just shut me down.

I think I had been exploring, not exploring, but I think I had been experiencing mental and emotional symptoms of burnout for probably decades, maybe. And it wasn't really until that point that the physical symptoms really started to manifest. And I was losing my hair and I stopped sleeping and I was just like, my gut health was a mess and I was just miserable.

And I think like any. Good attorney. I started investigating and getting like really curious about what was going on. And I hired my own life coach and I hired, I worked with a functional medicine practitioner. And long story short, the through line through all of my symptoms was the dysregulated state of my nervous system caused by really the way in which I was living life that just wasn't sustainable.

And a complete disconnect from my body. So I had to learn how to reconnect with my body and change so many ways of being right. That got me burned out in the first place. And lo and behold, I started to feel better. My symptoms started to dissipate and my joy came back and I just got really, I was like, this is amazing.

I did all of this yes, I hired a coach, but the actual practices themselves, it wasn't stuff I had to go out and buy. It wasn't like these long, two hour meditation routines because nobody has time for that. But it was stuff that I could turn around and teach other women who are experiencing what I was experiencing.

And that's what I do now. I shut my law firm about three months ago and my family actually left Miami where we were living. We've moved to Texas. now I'm teaching women who are in the spot. I was eight years ago, how to regulate their nervous system and heal from a lot of these symptoms.

[00:03:06] Leisha: Such a cool story. I love that. And shutting down your law firm only three months ago, that's just can imagine like a cascade of huge life events and it looks like just from the way you're talking about it, and I can see her face that it feels peaceful. Or it feels maybe at least like it will be peaceful once you settle.

 I love that. I would love to hear from you, just obviously as an ambitious woman, like how else would you get through law school and even have the desire to go. I'm curious when you feel like you stopped listening to your body or if you ever knew how to in the first place.

[00:03:44] Michelle: , I don't think I ever knew how to. It certainly wasn't something that was consciously taught growing up. I don't think that was really in the vocabulary of at least my family of origin. I think since a really young age, I had experienced a lot of physical symptoms that I now know were just manifestations of anxiety.

But I always had gut issues, stomach pain, IBS, all those sorts of things. I in middle school, remember that I started to develop, eczema around my face mostly. And again, as I learned to regulate my nervous system, it completely cleared up. But I always associated those things with a cause other than, , something that might be happening in my day-to-day life.

It was just like, I need an ointment for this, or I need, to stop in elimination diet, or I need what have you, not relating it to stress or my emotions or my pace of life, or any of these other things. then I think the other thing is, especially for us high achievers who do all the things we're so good at doing, right?

It's give me all the checklists and give me all of the plans and the planners and I will do all of the things, but heaven forbid you ask me to slow down for five minutes and just feel what's going on in my body, right? That wasn't even a concept. I hadn't really heard of or understood or certainly not practiced.

It was really an unlearning of being so in my head and a new learning of how to be in my body. And then ultimately learning to listen to the communication of my body because our bodies are always communicating with us. I had just ignored or been completely oblivious to or suppressed, right?

It's like I have a headache, I'll go take an aspirin. I have a gut problem, I'll, take, I dunno, Pepto-Bismol or something like that. And those are just band-aids and honestly, we're just silencing the messenger instead of listening to the message. That was a whole unlearning, I think, and then a new learning for me.  

[00:05:40] Leisha: Let's talk about the nervous system, because that's where your work. Starts or stays. Tell me, just for those of you who are listening, I think most of us are pretty familiar with oh, we have an idea of what the nervous system is. But will you just give us the briefest little overview of that and then we can start talking about, how to know if yours is dysregulated.

[00:06:01] Michelle: Our nervous system is like our body's command center, right? It's running. Under the surface, mostly everything that we are thinking and saying, and the actions that we take, it's controlling our fears. It's controlling whether we're able to take healthy risks. It's controlling the ways in which we're, playing big or playing small.

How we communicate all of these different things. And the large majority, almost all of the research is showing up to 98%. Of the things that we think, say and do are unconscious, they're just being run under the surface by our nervous system and we're not really even aware that we do these things or think these things or , say these things whether internally or outwardly why we say them.

Because they're run by our nervous system ultimately, and our nervous system has one job. that is always to keep us safe. That's the number one job of our nervous system. So since in conception, really our nervous system has been gathering data, it's always looking out what's not safe and how do we avoid that?

And on the flip side, what makes us feel really safe and loved, and how do we get more of that? And then it's driving our thoughts and our behaviors and the things that we say in order to avoid anything that might be a threat. Or to get more of the things that feel really good and safe and loving. So that's what's going on under the surface.

And then as far as when we talk about our nervous system and how it's affecting our day-to-day in a practical way, there are different circuits of our nervous system. There's a circuit of our nervous system that's activated when our nervous system does sense, any sort of threat, and it sends us into a fight or flight response, 

so that's when we're feeling. Maybe really anxious or edgy or irritable or angry or activated on high alert. A lot of us spend a lot of time in that state. And then there's what people would refer to as a regulated state. So that's when we're in a state where we actually feel very grounded and calm, if you will.

And we can be, compassionate toward others and see other perspectives. And we have our highest levels of communication. We wanna spend most of our time in that state. And then there's another circuit when we're so overwhelmed by stress that our best bet at that point, our nervous system is like tapping out, shutting down, and that's when we start to experience burnout or disconnection or dissociation, those types of things.

 A lot of the work I do is big picture and we can talk about some of that. How do we help regulate our nervous system so it's more flexible and it can go between those states in a healthy way, right? Sometimes I want some of that activating energy if I have to. I dunno. Clean my house in the morning 'cause someone's coming over.

 I kind of want that energy, but I don't wanna get stuck there. I also wanna be able to shift my nervous system back to its baseline stress level. So having also in the moment tools, body-based tools to help us shift the state of our nervous system depending on where we are at any given moment.

[00:09:01] Leisha: . I think that makes it feel clear, we all have experienced those high levels of stress, but are our nervous systems and our patterning, is it flexible enough that we can switch out of that? Or are we stuck? I think stuck is such a. Just such a term that I can definitely resonate with.

And I know for a lot of my clients and the women that I work with, that's something that we feel , and sometimes we don't even know that we're stuck there because we're so used to how that feels. And this like underlying level of stress in the body just feels normal because we've been in it so long.

So

I would love to just be able to talk about those body-based practices and why that's so important. Because I think it really aligns with what. I teach so much of the time that we've got to be more empowered and more aware of what's going on in our bodies for us to be able to heal. And I think the nervous system is a just an incredible example of that.

[00:09:56] Michelle: So when it comes to. Why we have to have body-based tools. I think there's two really important things that we have to understand. And then once we get this, it's like such an aha moment and it really, at least for me, it was really encouraging to pursue these body-based tools. So the first thing is that as we study the nervous system we're learning that 80% of the nerves in our body are sending messages originating in our body and sending messages up to our brain.

 Messaging is going both ways, top down and bottom up, and it's sending messages of safety or lack thereof, 80% of that messaging originates in the body and is sending messages about whether we feel safe or not up to our brain. That means that only 20% of the messaging actually starts at the top in our brain and is sending messages to our body.

So that's why, there's so much work out there around like your mindset and affirmations and, goals and the intellectual side of it and the understanding and all of that is helpful and it's important. And at the end of the day, it's only 20% of the communication that's going on in your body.

So if. I don't know. Let's say you have to give a public talk, public speech, and your heart is racing right, and your palms are sweaty, and it's hard for you to get your words out because your throat feels so dry, no matter how much you drink. And you just tell yourself calm down. You're safe. We've got this, you've practiced this, you've done this before.

Your mindset is great. It's healthy. It's good. And your heart's still racing and it's not until you like actually get going that your body is able to calm down. It's because 20% of the messaging going down is telling you, you're okay. You're safe and your body's still freaking out. And it's like a four to one tug of war that we inevitably lose if we don't get our body on board.

 I think that's the first thing to understand. The second thing that's really important to understand is that if we're gonna communicate to our body that it's okay to calm down and relax and feel safe, and it doesn't have to be on high alert, worrying and anxious, and everything's urgent all the time, we have to communicate with our body in the way that our body understands.

Our body does not speak a verbal language, so we can't just tell ourselves with words and thoughts, just calm down, stop being so anxious. It's not a big deal. I don't know why you're obsessing about this, it was just a comment like, get over it. And our body doesn't understand that. We have to communicate with our body in the way that it understands and communicates, and that's through movement, breath, sound, gentle and appropriate Touch.

Temperature time in nature regulating with others, right in our social nervous system and co-regulating, those are the ways that our body cues safety. So we actually have to have, yeah, we can do mindset work and all this stuff, and it's important. Yes. And we also have to have ways to show our body that it's safe instead of tell it that it's safe.

If we wanna see any progress.

Yeah, I would love for you to go into, actually first, before you go into what each of those really looks like and some of the things that will actually regulate your nervous system. I would love for you to talk about the coping mechanisms that you see used. Are not helping. 

With the women that I tend to work with, and it's probably. Very similar to your audience, one of the most common coping mechanisms that I see, and I think this is put on us by culture, and then it's actually reinforced because it's praised and it's appreciated is being busy all the time, 

[00:13:31] Michelle: we're stuck in these patterns from the minute our eyes open in the morning until we crawl back into bed at the end of the night, our schedule is jam packed. We're going from thing to thing. If it's not in the physical, it's like our mind is already in the next task when we're not even there yet.

And we're doing the school during the day and then bringing the kids wherever they need to go in the afternoon for afterschool stuff. And then it's dinner, and then it's homework, and then it's baths and pajamas and bedtime and. Everything else that we're carrying in our mental load.

And a lot of times that is a byproduct of a dysregulated nervous system. That one is familiar with that pace of life and familiarity means safety to our nervous system, even though that thing is not serving us particularly well. We're exhausted all the other side effects to that. But it's also a great coping mechanism because busyness is a great distractor. And as long as we are busy we don't have to feel any emotions. We don't have to have difficult conversations. We don't have to, make changes that feel scary. Even though all of those things would serve us really well in the big picture, we can just stay on the hamster wheel and stay busy and ultimately avoid what it is that actually needs to be addressed Head on.

So a lot of times when we find ourselves in that busyness pattern, it's one, the awareness to start interrupting it. And then I think second to really get curious about what we might be avoiding by staying so busy all the time. Because slowing down for many of us feels really uncomfortable, so learning and exploring what's going on there.

So that's one. I think another one, especially with high achievers who do all the things is getting stuck in a lot of rigidity. So really rigid schedules, this has to happen first thing in the morning and then this happens, and then this happens before the kids start school or else, it feels like the whole world is just gonna fall to pieces.

Like it's all just a house of cards built on my rigid routine. Or it might be a rigidity in, even things like perfectionism or people pleasing can come from this rigidity of how things have to be in order for them to be whatever label we place on them. Good. Healthy, productive what have you.

 I think that's another one is just looking at areas where we're really uncomfortable with flexibility or adapting or pivoting in the moment. That's a mechanism of our nervous system to try to keep us safe. 'cause everything can be predictable, but not how life works. If only and then I think a couple others that I see is one, we are just.

Overstimulated and over informed. I think especially as moms in this day and age and women doing all the things like never before have we been hit with so much information about all the things, our own health, parenting what we're feeding our people at ourselves. Screen time you name it, it doesn't end.

And then just the stimulation of noise. And lights and sounds and a lot of us, if we have, I mean think about it. Even if you have a commute, either drop off or work or what have you, it's like we've gotta have the radio playing or podcast or a song or the audio book, and we're not allowing our brain, the stillness that it needs to actually do its best work.

It needs moments where it's not actually taking in new information or being stimulated. And that's the moments in which our brain actually repairs and reorganizes information and prioritizes it. So we have easy access to it in the future. And when we're constantly being stimulated and constantly taking in new information, that feels unsafe to our nervous system too, it's overwhelming, 

so then our nervous system, again jumps into that fight or flight response and we're like, man, I wonder why after listening to. Political podcast on the way to work. I just feel so like when I get to work and then all day long, I'm anxious and edgy and it's like, yeah, we're not designed to live in that way.  

[00:17:24] Leisha: Okay. So this is definitely off script, but I'm curious just your kind of personal thoughts on the rise of A DHD diagnosis in women. A lot of the things you just said are things that I think contribute. But I would just be curious your thoughts on the tie between nervous system dysregulation, A DHD diagnosis,

[00:17:46] Michelle: caveat, I'm not a doctor and I do not know a lot about A DHD. What I do know is that the women that I've worked with who either have an anxiety diagnosis or an A DHD diagnosis find incredible results when they actually learn how to regulate their nervous system. Is A-D-H-D-A real thing?

Yes. I have no evidence to show to you that it's not. I can also show you at the same time that if you learn how to regulate your nervous system. And just slow down, generally, do less, slow down. You will find that the symptoms of A DHD that are causing you the most trouble, the most struggle, what have you, are also going to start to dissipate along with probably a lot of the physical symptoms that you're experiencing, the hormonal problems that you're experiencing, and the mental and emotional side.

I'm with you a hundred percent, there's a link.

[00:18:40] Leisha: everything you were saying. I just, I feel like there is such a link, so I was just curious your thoughts on that. let's talk about, okay, those are the coping mechanisms that are not working. Keeping ourselves busy, keeping ourselves distracted, keeping ourselves overwhelmed. And I know that so much of this comes from, I.

Our childhood probably we were watching our parents do the same thing, or we learned those patterns because of hurts and traumas and X, Y, Z that we experienced that it feels the safest and it feels like we're the most in control if we can just keep ourselves busy. I've definitely recognized this pattern in myself, and this is something that.

I'm assuming, unless I just haven't figured it out yet, that it is a consistent journey of, catching yourself in those patterns and asking yourself why and learning to create that space. I'm curious what going back to those body-based regulation practices. Let's talk about some of those and what is most helpful in being able to even just, 20% of the time, shift yourself outta that fight or flight or 30% of the time, like I think that so many of us are stuck there, a really high percentage of our day.

[00:19:44] Michelle: I agree. If it's okay with you, let's talk about this in I have three kind of foundational lifestyle things that overall promote resilience in our nervous system. And then we can talk about those moments where we do feel really dysregulated. Some like body-based tools that can shift the state of your nervous system in 90 seconds, two minutes, they're like really quick things.

Is that cool?

[00:20:07] Leisha: Perfect.

[00:20:07] Michelle: Okay. Awesome. I like to start with these foundational things because if I start with just tools for when you're feeling dysregulated, I don't want those to become like a crutch or a bandaid, ? It's like, oh, I feel anxious, so I have to , hurry up and do this thing to make my anxiety go away.

But we're never asking ourselves like, Hey, why are we feeling so anxious to begin with? It's not just a matter of making it go away. So let's start with these are three things that I teach that I think everyone can put into practice every day would be the ideal. But if you could do at least one of these every day and work up to that I think it's great.

And what I love about these is this is all lifestyle stuff, so this isn't more things to add, to your to-do list. This isn't something you have to , reimagine your whole day around. We all have real life that will keep lifeing and coming at us. This is just like Hey, how can I rethink how I'm doing things?

So the first thing and I think when it comes to a nervous system perspective, it's a little different than what you might hear if your aim is something else. But is movement. We've gotta move our body every single day. There's no way around it. Movement is the most efficient regulator of our nervous system, and the reason for that is because.

If you think about it, we're in fight or flight, right? I'm feeling there's so much to do, there's not enough time, there's not enough help. I'm never gonna get it all done, right? I just wanna run or fight someone. I'm feeling either super edgy and irritable and I'm snapping at everybody, or I just wanna run and say the heck with everything and not do any of it.

When we're in that state of our nervous system, fight or flight, every cell in our body is wired for movement , to run, to flee. Or to fight, so when we are in fight or flight and then we just sit at our desk all day or scroll social media or watch Netflix or at work or how, what have you, without moving, that alarm is not completing its cycle, right?

It's telling us to move. We're not moving. So it actually gets. Louder. Louder. The anxiety starts to worsen. The overwhelm starts to worsen, ? And we're like, man, what's going on? I'm just trying to sit here and breathe and it's not helping. It's because your body is wanting to fight or run and it wants you to move.

 What does that look like? That can look like, lifting weights. That can look like going for a 10 minute walk around the block, over your lunch break instead of sitting at your desk. That could look like Pilates. That could look like some days, I just roll off my bed and all I can do is sit on the floor and stretch for 10 minutes, and that's better than nothing.

But can you get into a practice where it's not necessarily a workout or exercise per se, if you have a practice like that that's awesome and that's gonna be so helpful in regulating your nervous system. But if this is something you've tried and it hasn't stuck or you struggle with, can you just move your body for 10 to 15 minutes every day?

And that will have a huge impact. The second thing is stillness, having a practice or moments of stillness built into your day. So if you already have what feels like a very full day and you're like, I've tried meditation, or it doesn't work. I think a great practice here as far as stillness goes is instead of adding.

Something to your day to day. What can you actually subtract or remove? If you usually have a podcast or an audiobook playing in the background while you clean the house or fold laundry can you just do that in silence today? In the car line, pick up or on your commute?

Can you do that in silence instead of, scrolling through social media while you have lunch? Can you just eat your lunch without listening to anything or consuming any information? Little pockets that you can build in without bringing any new information into your brain is so healing for your nervous system.

So that's the second kind of big picture thing. And then the third big picture thing is building in more moments of play every day. So again, I like to do these 10 minutes each. Can you play for 10 minutes today? Play is so healthy. For your nervous system because if you think about it, if you were truly under threats, 

if you were being chased by a lion tiger bear, if you weren't safe, you certainly wouldn't be playing and creating and doing the things that bring you joy. You would be running or fighting. How do we play today in this day and age? Honestly, it's just anything that. You're doing because you enjoy it, not for your kids or your partner or your house or your work, but maybe just like maybe you think back and in, I don't know, middle school or when you were like nine or 14 or 18, whatever you loved.

Playing an instrument or baking or sewing or drawing or painting or shooting hoops or what have you, skateboarding, what are those things that you're like, man, I haven't done that since I had kids. I haven't done that in 20 years. I don't even know if I could do that anymore.

Wow. What an opportunity to rediscover the things that light you up and bring you joy and the more you can incorporate those things, we think we don't have time, or we're like, well that's for the kids, or that's superfluous, or that there's no ROI on that. Try out prove me wrong because everyone that I work with that incorporates more of this type of play in their day to day, huge difference.

More so than I see even with like stillness. Because. One, it brings so much safety to you, like to your body. And then there's all the trickle down things that are wonderful, It just brings more joy. Your social engagement system is up you're having more fun in your home. All these different things.

So those are the big three foundational ones. If you can incorporate more of them, movement, stillness, and play, and then we can jump into some of the, like in the moment things, 

[00:25:41] Leisha: I think that those are also good because even when you are a high achiever, and even when you do have a busy schedule, again, like those are things to continuously evaluate and those are reasonable, right? Super reasonable. And how much would our kids love it if we were playing, whether we're playing with them or not.

 They're gonna come and join us typically in what we're doing, ? If we're enjoying something. And that's something that I. Have mourned a little bit in myself as I've lost my I don't wanna say lost, but just as I've become an adult and had a lot more responsibility, it's like sometimes you forget to be fun and that's a huge value for me.

I'm an Enneagram seven and fun is a huge value. And yet so much of the time, it's like, when have I done something fun . That's an awareness that I have, and yet I love that you said that because it does make so much sense of why that makes such a big impact in our lives and why it's so important to prioritize.

And I think it can feel selfish as a mom if you're doing something just for fun for yourself, and yet look at the trickle down effect of how it affects everyone around you. as we wrap up, I would love to hear a few of those, short 92nd, two minute. Ways to support your nervous system in that moment where you're really feeling it in your body.

[00:26:57] Michelle: Let's start with movement, because I think usually, I think for the most part, most of us experience that sympathetic nervous system, that fight or flight response. When we say we're feeling quote unquote dysregulated, we're feeling really like activated or anxious or worried about something, or there's all this urgency and overwhelm.

When it comes to movement, here are a couple of my favorite. Things to do. The first one is shaking, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Literally just standing up and shaking out your body. So holding your arms up, like in a goalpost and just shaking your hands out, shaking your legs out, pretending you're like, have a hula hoop and just doing circles with your hips and just letting your body move and shake and release.

And what you're doing in that is you're allowing a lot of that. So let's. Back up a second. When we are in that response, that fight or flight response, and we're feeling all of that energy, there's a physiological response in our body that releases cortisol and adrenaline and these hormones that we need to be able to mobilize.

 When we actually move, it helps our body to metabolize those hormones, and then discharge them, We metabolize them so they're not building up and causing all of this havoc in our body. So shaking like that. Put on your favorite song, ? It's two minutes Dancing with your Kids. It does the same thing .

Dancing like a crazy person , shaking your body out. Watch what happens in the state of your nervous system when you do that. When you're feeling really anxious or nervous or overwhelmed instead of sitting down and trying to intellectualize it and coming up with a game plan for the day. The shift will be marked.

You'll be surprised. So shaking. It's my favorite. Go-to. As far as movement goes, lifting weights is great when it comes to movement. Dancing is really great when it comes to movement. Other things you can do there is like even havening. So when you're feeling like that, you can cross your arms across your chest, like you're giving yourself a hug and just gently squeezing your arms from your shoulders down to your elbows.

Then back up again, even gently swaying back and forth. While you do that, or side to side, those types of movements can help interrupt all the looping that's going on in your mind and bring, again, your awareness out of your mind, into your body. And that helps your nervous system to feel safe and shift states.

So that's a movement. Breath. We all have heard, take a deep breath before we stop or lose it on our kids or when we're feeling frustrated or, all the things that we experience in the day to day. And our breath is a really powerful regulator. Not so much taking a deep breath, but the power of our breath.

A lot of it when it comes to shifting the state of our nervous system actually lies in our exhale. So can you focus on extending your exhale, not just taking a deep breath. Really extending your exhale for 10 breaths, five breaths, and just seeing what that does as far as bringing calmness to your body.

My favorite breath is called a physiological sigh. And I love it because when I'm feeling myself, especially with my kids, when I'm feeling myself getting like aggravated or frustrated, man, I just have to do this two or three times and I just. I feel like my shoulders drop and my voice changes, and I feel the regulation happening in my body and it's super quick, and this is how it goes.

I'll kinda explain it once and then we can do it once and then I'll go through a couple more. 

You breathe in through your nose until it feels like your lungs are full of air. And then at the top you do one more quick breath through your nose and then out through your mouth really long and slow, as long as you can extend it. And then we can do one together. So in through your nose, so it feels like your lungs are full, and another quick one, and then out through your mouth.

And man, just two or three of those and I can just feel a shift in the state of my body and then I can respond to my kids instead of reacting or my husband or my coworker, or traffic.

Or what have you. And then, for breath work, there's so many different breaths. You guys can just go on YouTube or Google them and try different things that work for you. But those are quick ones in the moment. And then temperature is really powerful. All these things work for us and our kids, If we're feeling like we're in fight or flight, really activated, go in your freezer, grab a bag of frozen vegetables. Hold it to the back of your neck, ? That activates your vagus nerve. It's a calming mechanism in your body. You can even hold it on your forehead or your cheeks.

That activates a different reflex, a diving reflex that actually activates our parasympathetic nervous system. That calms us down, slows our heart rate slows our breathing. So that's a really easy one that a lot of people that I work with love to use. I think the opposite is also true. So cold can be really regulating for us.

, we've all heard, like everyone obsessed with plunges, cold plunges and ice baths and all these things. But then like warmth is also very soothing. So that's why taking a hot shower, a hot bath can be really regulating for a nervous system also. So temperature in those ways. I think those are some of the. Most common ones that I like to use, but I also have a list of I don't even know how many are on it. Like 50 different resources that can help you down regulate in your body when you're feeling really activated and need to come down or up regulate when you're feeling really like low energy, disconnected to up, regulate to ion.

That I can share with you guys too and you can just trial and error, try different stuff out and see what seems to really work for your particular nervous system.  

[00:32:37] Leisha: That would be great. We can definitely share that info. And I really appreciate just the kind of like the bite-sized pieces of knowledge here. And I think the biggest takeaway that I would want you to have. As you're listening is actually stopping to slow down and ask yourself , is the pace I'm taking working for me without the automatic, I have no choice kind of victim mentality coming into it, because if that is true, there are still things you can do to regulate yourself within the pace that you have, but I think that questioning. Your motives essentially in the way that you've built your life and taking the ownership of what you have built versus what has been, forced upon you. I think that our culture is really big into making moms the victim, , I'm sure you have thoughts on that in how that disregulates our nervous systems as well, but I really think that just taking a moment.

To just question like, Hey, what does my body feel like? Do I feel constantly in a rush, constantly tired, constantly. My shoulders are tight, my belly hurts, I feel anxious. Or even I feel these things every day or mostly every day. Those are signs physically , that something isn't working 

and so being able to take that question was just curiosity of is what I'm doing in my life actually serving me and my family well, and just giving yourself some space with that, with the curiosity of if it's not what is in my control, in my power to be able to change. And something that I think can also be helpful is even some journaling of just writing down a list of what feels aligned and what doesn't feel aligned, just to get that creative juice flowing a little bit.

I. And open your mind to what is possible to change. And even if it feels like in a really hard season, there's not a lot you can change, there will be something. This is where these mini, quick things to regulate. Come in and I'm just sitting here at my desk recording this podcast with Michelle.  

My kids are safe, my husband's watching them. Everything is totally fine. And even just doing that breathing with her, I'm like, oh yeah, I do feel more calm , in this moment. Realizing that maybe even if you think you're fine, supporting your nervous system is going to support your long-term health.

And when we bring it back to hormones, especially if you haven't listened to many episodes of this podcast, you may not realize that her hormones are created. To respond to safety cues in our body. we have to be getting these signals of safety to regulate hormone balance. And so supporting your nervous system is a very important piece of regulating your hormones.

 When your body has the signals of safety consistently that come through nervous system regulation, but also through the other things I teach, like making sure your nourishment is on point and your blood sugar is balanced, and your detox pathways are supported. You're going to see that your body is getting those signals of safety, that it can prioritize reproduction.

And if you are a hot mess, express all the time and stressed out and eating perfect food, you're still not gonna be getting , those regulating symptoms or regulating signals. Michelle is like nodding over here so we're on the right track, but I just wanna bring it together for hormones in that way.

 Just thank you so much, Michelle, for this conversation because I think. It's just so easy to overlook, we're just so used to being stressed. We're so like, I can handle it. Maybe you know, someone else, maybe someone else needs to do this nervous system stuff, but I'll be fine, right?

And we're fine until we're not fine. And then especially when you're really on the track to burn out for a long time, it's really hard to get out of that hole that you've dug for yourself. I think this is so important. Will you just tell us where else to find you, Michelle? So we have your podcast, the call Mom.

You're gonna link that regulation worksheet. We'll link that for you. Where else do you like to hang out or where else can people find you?

[00:36:41] Michelle: , so my podcast is really the best place to connect with me. If you are curious about the other things that we do, you can just go to my website, michellegrosser.com. Just my name.  

[00:36:50] Leisha: Okay. Perfect. Do go over to Michelle's podcast because I specifically looked at some of her recent episodes and asked her to give us the Cliff notes version. So if this was really helpful for you, she can bring those topics out in more depth and she has hundreds of episodes, so go over there and check that out.

Thank you so much, Michelle, for being here.

[00:37:06] Michelle: Oh my goodness. It was so great. Thanks so much for having me.