Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women

(#82) The Strength in Stillness: Nervous System Regulation Through Stillness, Rest, and Self-Compassion

• Rae The Somatic Coach • Episode 82

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What if true strength isn’t about pushing harder—but learning how to soften, rest, and listen to your body?

In this soul-soothing episode of Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women, Rae explores how softness and stillness are not weaknesses, but powerful somatic tools for nervous system regulation, emotional resilience, and inner trust. If you're tired of the hustle, overachieving, or people-pleasing your way through life, this is your invitation to reclaim presence and strength on your own terms.

You’ll hear about:

🌱 What “somatic strength” actually feels like in the body

🌱 The nervous system’s capacity for both activation and gentleness

🌱 How to identify where rest feels most accessible (and why that matters)

🌱 Real examples of shifting from burnout to embodiment

🌱 Somatic tools for nervous system regulation: sighing, humming, swaying, breathwork

🌱 A permission slip to rest (plus a poem to anchor the reminder)

🌱 Why women are often taught to survive through tension—and how we can begin to unravel that

This episode is a reminder that healing doesn’t always mean doing more. Sometimes, it looks like placing a hand over your heart, breathing deeply, and simply being with yourself.

🧘‍♀️ Mentioned: Upcoming events — check the events calendar here.

Poem by Nicola on Instagram

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Rae, I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator, and if you aren't new here, I'm so glad that you're tuning in for today's episode. So one front desk item before we dive in. There are a few different events that I'll be hosting over the upcoming months. So there are two in June and one in September and another one in October. So if you want to check out any of the events, I'll leave a link in the show notes and you can kind of dive into each one and see if one speaks to you and if it does, I hope to see you at an event upcoming soon. So for today's topic, we're going to be talking about the nervous system and how we can find a sense of strength and presence and power, like an inner power, when we allow ourselves the permission to pause, the permission to relax and find this kind of softness and gentleness in being with ourselves and allowing the body to really find that place of stillness. So before we dive in, I want to invite us to take a moment to pause and if you are driving, of course do not close your eyes, but if you aren't, feel free to. You know, take a moment here to close your eyes. I'm going to just take three deep breaths. So I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, taking one more deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth and taking one more deep breath, just like that, at your pace and as we move into today's episode. That's kind of just a little taste of what it feels like when we allow ourselves the permission, the time to pause and be still.

Speaker 1:

And oftentimes in our culture we are defined by how much strength or force we can put into our day-to-day lives, and that can look like doing more. That can look like staying very busy, powering through, never allowing ourselves to rest. It can look like a lot of force and just a lot of like forward momentum instead of really feeling present, really feeling grounded and really feeling the safety really to feel still. But what if this conditioning that we've received around force and strength and power, what if that strength was accessible but was more quiet? What if you could still be strong and powerful but also have this deep, quiet power? And society and conditioning may have raised us to believe that the harder we push and the more that we force and making things happen through controlling things is a way to be strong and be powerful, and I shared a little bit about this on previous episodes, but I know for myself.

Speaker 1:

Previously I received a lot of love and praise through performance as an athlete, and there was a lot of. When you're an athlete, it's like how hard can you push to succeed? And it was a lot of ignoring the body and ignoring, um, yeah, your needs really, because your goal was really forced or I mean, was really focused around a lot of force and pushing. But there is another option. There is another option when it comes to the relationships that we have with ourselves and our bodies and a way of being somatically resilient. So being resilient in the body, that is really allowing yourself, yeah, the presence, to be still and to rest, and it can show up as how we meet ourselves with compassion, understanding emotion, having boundaries, communicating our needs.

Speaker 1:

All of these things can take awareness, stillness and gentleness. There isn't much force when it comes to being self-compassionate. It's a very like tender, gentle energy and it means that our nervous systems can really have the capacity to access and process an activation, something that's arising, and also be gentle and soft and experience the whole range of the human emotion and sensation and feeling. So what does feeling? Stillness, presence, gentleness. What does it feel like in the body?

Speaker 1:

And it can feel and look like a lot of different things. It can look like checking in with your heart, checking in with how your heart feels today, how your heart is showing up today, maybe opening your heart. It can look like grounding your feet into the earth, so really feeling the bottom of the soles of your feet on the earth, on the ground, and you can send your energy even down into the earth if that feels good. It can look like taking a few gentle breaths, so, just like we did in the beginning of this episode, it looked like taking a few deep breaths, allowing yourself to pause. It can look like relaxing your jaw, so a lot of our tension can be held in the jaw. It's one of my favorite cues in a meditation or a breath work. It's like oh yeah, I forgot that I was clenching my mouth. I should release that.

Speaker 1:

It can look like cultivating safety in the nervous system, in the body, to be fully with yourself, fully with your experience, without the need to change or prove anything. So what does your nervous system need to feel like it can relax, to feel like it can be at ease, to feel like it can exhale and where in your body does rest feel most accessible? And where in your body does rest feel most accessible, so does it feel like you can really relax when you're in the chest, like in the shoulders, in the belly, and sometimes if you move towards where things are tense and send it some awareness and some breath, it can become more relaxed. And maybe that is one of your more relaxed places somatically in the body. So kind of checking in, checking in with the body and how it feels. And oftentimes many women have been taught to survive really through people pleasing, through masking or through pushing and overachieving, and it can be really challenging to shift from these patterns. They could be patterns that we've had for a very long time and maybe we're just coming into awareness with them now, and so shifting from these patterns can look like again really getting in touch with the body, regulating your nervous system. It can also look like saying no more often, so really setting boundaries with love in a compassionate way. It can look like letting yourself emotionally release through crying. So emotional release crying in society is definitely seen as like a form of weakness or if something is wrong, but crying and emotional release is actually a form of nervous system regulation, trying to self-regulate the body, and it can look like rest, so resting when you need to.

Speaker 1:

And there is a poem that I want to read you from this woman who you may have heard of. She's her name is Nicola Jane Hobbs and she's writing a book called the Relaxed Woman. I don't think it came out yet, but she is popular on Instagram and she writes a lot about rest and what it's like to be a relaxed woman. So she has a lot of different kind of like poetry pieces that you can pick from if you do go to her page, but I just picked one. It was hard to choose, but I picked one.

Speaker 1:

So this is called how to Rest when there is no Time to Rest. So if you're feeling like overwhelmed, your schedule is is packed. This poem is for you how to rest when there is no time to rest. Slowly moisturize your face, slowly peel an orange, look at the clouds, look at the moon, look at the flowers. Going through the cracks in your pavement, feel the ground beneath your feet, smell something. Stretch your arms overhead. Smile softly, let your gaze widen, wash up the dishes to your favorite songs, savor the first sip of coffee, turn your face towards the sun, speak one sentence of self-compassion. Let your belly expand as you inhale. Exhale as if you've been blowing through a straw. Change into cozy clothing, lie on the floor for one minute and let the earth hold you, hum gently, touch something alive a leaf, a tree, a dandelion, a loved one, your pulse, your breath, your heart.

Speaker 1:

And I love this little poem by Nicole. And can you allow yourself to rest? Can you allow yourself the permission to pause to find some stillness? In the poem that she writes, she yeah, she talks about these like micro moments. So oftentimes, when it comes to feeling burnt out or pushing past our limits, we can be so far past what our nervous system capacity is. It's like complete overwhelm. And I love that she talks about these tiny, tiny moments. It's like it's the small things that can bring us that sense of stillness, that sense of rest and rejuvenation. Us that sense of stillness, that sense of rest and rejuvenation, and I can also share.

Speaker 1:

For me, in terms of allowing myself the ability to relax, this has been like a lifelong lesson and I'm very used to having my schedule jam-packed with things, and it's something that I still work on finding, like that balance between what my yeah, what my capacity is and how much stimulation I want and how much I have and and things like that. So I found that this lesson in particular has been so impactful in terms of understanding even anxiety and emotions and what's coming up, because when you allow yourself the stillness and the rest, you're really allowing yourself to pause and be in your body and from that place there's so much more information there for us to receive, from this place of relaxation. So when it comes to, yeah, tending to your nervous system and listening to your body, you really just want to move at your pace. You want to check in with you, know each part of your experience the mind, the body, the heart, the soul, how everything might be feeling and showing up, and see what it's communicating to you. But really asking, asking yourself, what does my nervous system need, what does my body need? And if I were to invite a little bit of softness into my day, into my moment, what would it look like for me? And how could I make some time for true rest, true relaxation, true restoring the, the body for myself today or this week, and that is what we have for today's episode. So I hope that you enjoyed today's episode all about rest and stillness and presence, and if any of this spoke to you, all of the events that are upcoming would be, you know, a great extension of what we talked about today. So definitely check out the show notes, check out some of those events. I hope to see you at an upcoming event and, yeah, I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, an incredible rest of your week, and I will talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being here and tuning in to somatic healing for wellness focused women podcast, if you were moved or inspired by today's episode. Thank you for being here and tuning in to Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women podcast, if you were moved or inspired by today's episode. Please take a moment to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It truly helps the podcast grow and helps more people find me on their healing journey. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for the monthly newsletter, links to more resources, opportunities to work with me and ways that we can stay connected. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram to follow me at raythesomaticcoach. Send me a DM. I'd love to connect with you and I answer each note that comes in. I am so happy you're here and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the podcast.