Your Money, Your Rules | Money Mindset, Money Management, Abundance Mindset, Budgeting, Spirituality

171 | Nervous System Regulation: Simple Practices to Reduce Money Stress

• Erin Gray | Wealth Coach, Former CFP and CFO

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In this episode, we explore how to calm the nervous system on purpose through simple vagus nerve activation practices.  You’ll learn practical tools like longer exhales, orienting, and humming that help normalize and support your nervous system

In This Episode, We Cover:

  • The difference between survival states and rest-and-digest
  • The role of the vagus nerve 
  • How longer exhales activate the parasympathetic nervous system
  • Gentle eye movements, pressure points, and soft eye rubbing
  • Humming, laughing, and singing to soothe the system
  • The 5-4-3-2-1 orienting practice for grounding and presence

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Understanding the Role of the Vagus Nerve: Parasympathetic vs. Sympathetic Activation


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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

I wanted to share a couple of resources that I have given to clients to help them get into their body and calm their nervous system when they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed or fearful. A lot of times, obviously, this comes around money, but it can be used for any area of your life. You know, so many of us have operated of years in survival, you know, that fight, flight, freeze, and now they have added to the list fawn response, which is like people pleasing. And so getting to the point where we normalize feeling calm is actually what we're after. So let's dive in. Okay, so let me start by saying I am not a doctor. Most of what I teach you is coming from my experience with myself and my clients. It's includes my own research, my own tools, my own teachers and mentors that I have hired and worked with to help me and ultimately my own embodiment. Like I've taken all of these resources that are already existing and I have used them on myself and my clients and really embodied it, not just talking about it at a knowledge standpoint. So you have to take what I teach you, go off on your own, play with it and see what works for you. Not everything that I am going to suggest today and in the past and moving forward on any podcast is going to resonate with you. And that's okay. But you have to take it. Like one of my biggest things I want each of you to embody is that you've got to take it through your filter, through your own intuition and see what is best for you and what best supports you. So I want to start first with just explaining a little bit about the vagus nerve. There's plenty of information on the internet and YouTube that you can go and watch, but a lot of these, or all of I should say, all of these recommendations that I'm going to give you, some of these exercises, it all comes back to the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, and it is responsible for regulating bodily functions such as digestion, heart rate, stress response, to name a few. So the vagus nerve extends from the brainstem down the neck all the way into the abdomen. And then it branches out to various different organs. And research, there's some research that says that it carries approximately 75% of the parasympathetic nervous system, which that goes back to the rest and digest, the calm, right? So there are several functions of the vagus nerve. And I'm not going to name them all here, but some of them will include like heart rate regulation, right? The vagus nerve helps lower the heart rate and the blood pressure, counteracting the effects of that sympathetic, which is the stress response, right? That's that fight or flight or freeze response. It also helps with mood and stress response. So it influences mood, it helps emotional regulation, it helps the body to return to a calm state after stress. And I want to say here too, that stress isn't a bad thing. There's, gosh, I'm forgetting. I think there's eustress and then like stress. Like eustress is just a total fine stress, like right when you're trying to like go play a basketball game or you know, you're needing something to do quick stress, right? Like that's okay. It's the prolonged stress that a lot of us are under and maybe not even aware of that that is not helpful to the body. So immune function is another one that the vagus nerve is involved in, is the immune response helping to modulate inflammation and immune activity. So many of these exercises, or I should say all of these exercises that I'm going to give you to practice and play with today are going to affect the vagus nerve, which in turn will affect the parasympathetic nervous system, which ultimately is that rest and digest, that calming. So I always like to start the first one is our breath. We always have it. We can always tune into it. It is right there. It's nothing else that we need to go get up and go do. We always can notice and focus on our breath. One of the things that I had to start doing is putting a timer on my phone and recognizing every hour what was my breath like? Was I even breathing, like actually deep into the belly, or was I just like, you know, like kind of that like shallow breathing? So check in with yourself, check in with how you are feeling, how you are breathing. Is it light and shallow? Is your breath light and shallow? Or is it down to your belly? And one of the things that you can do is inhale, let's just say for a count of four, and exhale for a count of eight. Now, the inhale and the exhale amount of seconds, that's not as important as making the exhale longer than the inhale, because when we breathe deeply and slowly, right, when we exhale, we engage the diaphragm and that activation or that activates the vagus nerve. So if you were to put your hand kind of like where your belly button is, and you were to inhale and then you were to exhale, your belly should be pushing out, right? You shouldn't be breathing from the upper part of your lungs. It should really be the belly is or the diaphragm is going down and pushing the belly out. Another option that you have is rubbing your eyes closed. They're closed eyes, I should say. So close your eyes and rub them softly. And like I mentioned, all of these things, these tips that I'm giving you, or these exercises, they're going to activate the vagus nerve. So you can use multiple different ones that you want to to just really, and I think it's a beautiful thing because you're able to slow down and tap into the body and really give yourself a couple of seconds to see also how you're feeling. So if you close your eyes and you just rub them softly, that also activates the vagus nerve. Another one is if you are looking straight ahead, keep your head straight. Don't move your head, but move your eyes. So move them to the left and then move them to the right. And then, you know, you can hold it for like five seconds looking to the left and then look to the right for five seconds. And like do that multiple times. That's also going to activate the vagus nerve. The other one is you can put your, like take your index finger and put it. If you take your earlobe, if you're wearing earrings and you go behind the earlobe, put pressure with your finger on each side right behind your earlobe. And you can just sit there and just put pressure, and that will also just see how you feel in your body after you put pressure. Not one of my favorites is taking an ice pack and putting it on your neck for five minutes. I'm sure it's probably very helpful, but I haven't done that. I don't necessarily like that cold and hot whole thing. So that's just not something that I want to do. I use a lot of the other ones to calm. You can also massage your carotid artery. One of the things that my child does unconsciously is she hums. And that is another way, like humming or singing is another way to access the vagus nerve and it's calming and soothing the nervous system. So humming and singing, and you can just hum or you can sing. You know, it doesn't have to be belting out, you know, a song. It can just like my husband and my daughter do this a lot. They just hum a lot. Laughing is another one. And then there is something called orienting, which is five, four, three, two, one. I have talked about this in previous episodes. So the five stands for notate or call out five things that you can see, right? So I see a window, I see my clock on my desk, I see the computer, I see my drink, I see my tissue box, right? Noticing what you see. Four is the touch. So four things that you can physically feel. So, you know, I feel the chair underneath me, I feel my legs on the floor, I feel my sweater on my skin, you know, my hand is on the mouse. Just notating and saying those things out loud and also like feeling them, right? Seeing them. The third one, the number three is hearing. So listen carefully and identify three sounds around you. So maybe you hear the like the clock ticking or the birds outside, or like I hear my voice as I'm talking. The two stands for smell. So bring awareness to the two cents that you are smelling and can detect. So maybe if you have your cup of coffee, you can smell your coffee, or you have a candle burning, or you know, lift up and look at like if you've got your journal or pieces of paper on your desk. Like, can you smell that? Can you smell your skin? Like, just notice things that you can smell. And number one is taste. So, what is one thing that you can taste right now? If you have a, you know, a mint or just the physical sensations in your mouth, what are you noticing? I am going to also put a link for an article that I read just in preparation to kind of explain more of the science-y part of the vagus nerve. If that is something that interests you, I'll put a link in the show notes for an article with more of that information. You know, like I mentioned, you have YouTube, you have so many great resources. But the thing that I want you to pay attention to, and the most important thing that I want you to gather from this and take away from this, how often are you actually activating your vagus nerve? How often are you noticing and focusing on your breath and breathing and slowly and more deeply? How often are you checking in with your body and just noticing what are your shoulders doing? What is your breath doing? How are you holding yourself? What are you feeling in your body? You know, I had a client the other day. She was like, okay, Erin, I understand what you're telling me, but actually, how do I do this? And we went like step by step. I think so many of us have gotten away from being connected to the body, you know. So when you sit down with your money, are you just going through the motions or are you actually sitting down and being present? Are you trying to just close the laptop or just get the task done as quickly as possible? Or are you noticing the sensations in your body? That is what I would prefer that you do is take more time and notice the sensations in your body. You know, how often are you supporting yourself and doing these things and sitting down and taking the time versus just like rushing through? And I know that this is awareness. This is also steps in the process, right? Like my process or my journey was I was just like noticing how quickly I was trying to get through with it and then making the conscious decision and effort of like, okay, I'm just gonna sit down and I'm gonna notice how I feel in your body. So you get the point that I'm trying to drive home here is just how are you supporting yourself? How are you staying in that more parasympathetic rest and digest more and out of that fight or flight? You know? And when you notice when you're in fight or flight, are you aware of it and are you using the tools to actually support you? Or are you saying, this is inconvenient for me right now? I need to keep going, or I don't have time for this, or whatever other self abandonment, you know, statements that we do. What are you noticing? What are you doing in those moments of when you are feeling stressed? Are you actually taking the time to slow down and care for yourself? Okay, that's all I have for you today. I will see you in the next episode.