123: Tired, Wired, and No Time to Relax? Here's What Actually Helps

Tired but can't switch off? 

Wired but exhausted? 

Feel like you don't have time to relax and when you do, it leaves you foggy instead of restored?

You're not alone. And the answer might not be what you think.

In this episode of Rooted in Presence, we explore why relaxation isn't always the goal and why coherence might be the missing piece for busy midlife women.

Host Carly Killen breaks down the neuroscience behind three different states: relaxation, coherence, and alignment. You'll discover why they're not the same thing, and why coherence, a state where your heart, brain, and nervous system sync up, might be what you've been looking for all along.

You'll learn:

• The difference between relaxation (slowing down) and coherence (syncing up)
• What's happening in your brain and heart during each state
• Why deep relaxation can sometimes tip into collapse or brain fog
• How coherence breathing creates calm AND clarity (not just one or the other)
• The science of heart-brain communication and brainwave patterns
• Why 5-6 breaths per minute is your body's natural resonant frequency
• How to feel regulated without feeling sleepy
• Practical ways to create coherence in daily life (yes, even in the supermarket)
• Why Carly's Unwind breathwork sessions focus on coherence

This episode includes the neuroscience, real-life examples, and a guided coherence breathing practice you can try right now.

Perfect for anyone navigating midlife, dealing with brain fog, or exhausted from the "tired AND wired" paradox. If you've ever wondered why meditation makes you drowsy or why you can't seem to truly rest, this conversation will shift how you think about nervous system regulation.

Topics: coherence breathing, heart rate variability, nervous system regulation, brainwave states, relaxation vs coherence, midlife burnout, brain fog solutions, breathwork for busy women, heart-brain coherence, tired and wired

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit; your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

🌟 Stay connected and inspired with daily wellness tips on Instagram @thestrongbonescoach.
🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:46

Hello, and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm your host, Carly, your midlife, menopause, and breath. Work guide, and today I want to share with you an episode that has been pottering around in my mind for a while, and it really came into focus through something people have started sharing with me about my breathwork sessions. I often hear as feedback that they feel really relaxed. We're not heavy. They say things like, I'm calm, but also I feel really clear. I don't feel spaced out or sleepy. I actually feel more here. And I remember thinking, oh, that's, that's interesting because I've heard those words before. Relaxed, calm, settles. But this felt a bit different. And for a long time I didn't quite have the language for why I assumed relaxation was the goal. And isn't that what we're all aiming for? The thing is here, my goal, when I am leading clients in breath work, whether that's one-to-one or group work, is not to leave them feeling spaced out. I always make sure they feel ready to return to the world. We all have lives to get back to, and especially the types of women I work with. I have busy lives to get back to. So the more I listened and the more I felt into my own body, the more I actually realized relaxation, alignments, coherence, they're not the same thing. And once you feel the difference, it really changes how you approach things like breath, work, rest, productivity, and honestly how you live your whole life. So today I want to explore what these states actually are, why we so often mix them up, the neuroscience behind what's actually happening in your brain and your body, and why coherence might be the missing piece many of us have been looking for, especially in midlife. So if that's piqued your interest, stay with me and Let's get started. So let's look at why relaxation isn't necessarily the whole story. Relaxation is important. It's absolutely necessary, and for many people it is long overdue. Relaxation is your nervous system moving into a parasympathetic state from the sympathetic state. For those of you that want to know the contrast, but it slows the heart rate, it's a time you can release muscle tension and reducing that level of arousal. And for people who are chronically overstimulated, overworked, overwhelmed, and underinvested, that can feel profound. And from a brainwave perspective. You're deeply relaxed, especially in that drowsy drifting state. Your brain moves into what we call alpha and Theta waves, alpha waves. These are around eight to 13 hertz, and they're kind of all about these electrical waves that happen in our brains. For those of you that would like to know that background, so at this eight 13 hertz level, it's associated more with calm alertness, daydreaming that floating, meditative space. It's restful, but yeah, you're still here. You're still quite aware. And then we have Theta waves, four to seven hertz, so much slower and they go even deeper. This is where you might drift into vivid imagery if you are a visual kind of person. You might experience light sleep or that deeply restorative space where your body repairs itself, and there's nothing wrong with that sometimes, or quite often. Deep rest is exactly what's needed. But here's the thing I didn't really fully appreciate at first. Relaxation can sometimes tip over into collapse, that heavy, foggy, drowsy feeling. The, I don't quite want to reenter life right now. State. Again, there's nothing wrong with that when it's what you need and when you have the ability to perhaps curl up onto the duvet and call it a day for the rest of the evening, but it's not always supportive. If you want to come back into your day with clarity, presence, and capacity. And perhaps if you relate to this, it could be the reason why you don't feel like you have time to relax. Maybe not because you don't have time, but because of how you feel afterwards. Perhaps you feel you can't afford to relax if you're going to lose the rest of your day of productivity. This is something that stopped me wanting to relax for many, many years. As much as that might be a sign that you need to relax more, I totally understand. You've got stuff to do, people to care for responsibilities that you can't just drop, and this is where people's feedback really start to make sense to me. They weren't just relaxed, they were regulated and available, which led me to look at coherence more closely. So let's talk about coherence.'cause this is where things can get really interesting from a neuroscience perspective. Something that I find really interesting, but most of us have been taught that the heart is constantly responding to orders taken from the brain. The brain tells the heart what to do and the obeys, but what's less commonly known is the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. So I'll say that again. Your brain is sending more information up to your brain than your brain is sending down to your heart. And these heart signals, they have a significant effect on your brain function. They influence your emotional processing attention, perception, memory, and your problem solving. So coherence isn't just about feeling calm. It's about your systems, your heart, your brain, your nervous system, all working together in a synchronized way. So what does heart, brain coherence actually look like? So yes, your heart does pump blood around your body, but it does a lot more than that. And when you're in a state of coherence, there's several things going on here. You have your heart rhythm becomes more smooth and ordered. So instead of erratic, jagged pattern, um, and what we might see on something like A ECG where they measure the heart waves, your heart rate variability takes on a lovely wave-like rhythm. You also find that your breathing naturally slows down and stabilizes. And it can in time with practice, depending on how you are, it can actually settle into that five to six breaths per minute rate. And given that we often normally breathe between 12 to 18 breaths per minute, this is a significant reduction, but it's actually a body's natural resonant frequency. And then we also have communication between your hearts and your brain, and that improves when we drop into adherence, the heart sends clearer, more organized signals to the brain and the brain responds in kind, which means your brain wave patterns shift. This is what I really like to highlight today. So in coherence, your brain doesn't drop into that heavy Theta state of deep relaxation. Instead, you see increased. Alpha wave activity that calms alert state, combined with what researchers call increased brainwave coherence. And brainwave coherence means different parts of your brain are synchronizing with each other, communicating more efficiently, working as a team rather than operating in isolation. And this is actually measurable. There's plenty of research that is up and coming, but especially from places like the HeartMath Institute, and it's shown that when people generate coherence, heart rhythms, often by focusing on positive emotions like appreciation and gratitude, their brainwave patterns become more ordered and Synchronized. And this results in that calm and alert feeling, feeling grounded and capable, settling without shutting down. So I'm feeling clear without that sense of urgency, but there is a key distinction that really did change everything for me. Relaxation is about slowing down, and coherence is more about syncing up. So yes, relaxation involves reducing activity. Your heart rate does drop, your breathing slows your brainwave shift into those lower alpha and theta frequencies. But the difference with coherence is optimization. That synchronization, the systems aren't necessarily slower, but they are more organized, a little bit like an orchestra. Relaxation might be the orchestra taking a complete break. Everyone's resting instruments are down, incoherence, everyone is playing in harmony. Still active, but synchronized and the music just flows. That might be what coherence feels like in your body. I'd love to hear your own experiences if you'd like to share them. I think there's also something that's really important to bring in here, and this is where I'd got confused too, to be honest, most of us, we don't live our day-to-day lives in coherence, and even if you live a fairly gentle life, and I'd say I do, coherence still requires slowing from the pace so used to in the day to day. Our baseline state in modern life, um, researchers have identified as high beta waves, and that's around 20 to 30 hertz. So in this busy alert, sometimes anxious brain state, it's often where we spend most of our waking hours. When you're stressed or anxious, your heart rhythm becomes a bit more erratic and sometimes disordered. And I'm not saying this to scare you, but just more to illustrate what can happen. But that erratic pattern, it actually reinforces stress in your brain. It can limit your ability to think clearly, remember things, even reason effectively. So when I spoke in our last episode about menopause, brain fog, that is absolutely a thing, but also the way we live our lives doesn't help. So that feeling of being in a tizz, not knowing whether you are coming or going. That's your heart and brain being out of coherence, not quite able to sync up. So when people first experience coherence, it can feel like relaxation simply because they've come outta that high beta stressed state. They've stopped overriding the body and the nervous system is finally caught up with. But it is a different quality than deep relaxation. It's not that floppy potentially disconnected, but it's a truly present state. And I realized this when I started experimenting with coherence breathing. Off the mat. I tried it in the supermarket with mixed success honestly, but it was revealing. It showed me where I rush unnecessarily, how quickly my attention gets pulled, and how I easily abandon my own rhythm. So coherence isn't about staying still, it's about staying with yourself. So now that we've covered coherence in a little bit of detail, how do you actually create coherence? So let me break this down a little bit more clearly, because I think understanding the why helps the practice make more sense. So there is plenty of science behind coherence breathing. Your heart rate naturally varies as you breathe. When you inhale, your heart rate speeds up just slightly, and when you exhale, it slows down. This is normal and healthy. It's called respiratory sinus arrhythmia. It's actually a sign of good cardiovascular health. Something we do need to really focus on, especially if we're transitioning through our perimenopause and menopause phases. But this is where it gets super interesting. Your heart and your lungs have a natural resonant frequency, a rhythm where they work together most efficiently. And for most adults, that frequency is around five to six breaths per minute. That works out roughly five seconds. Inhale, five seconds, exhale, but it might be a little bit quicker or a little bit slower for you. What's important here is that the inhale. The exhale time matches. So it might be four seconds in, four seconds out for you. It might be six seconds in, six seconds out, but whatever speed you choose, as long as it's not overly fast, different things can happen. Your heart rate becomes more coherent. That smooth wave-like pattern emerges more naturally. The brainwaves synchronize. You see increased alpha activity, improved coherence between different brain regions. Your autonomic nervous system can balance that sympathetic alerts state and your parasympathetic more restful state. Those branches start working together instead of fighting each other, and your body can finally enter a state of physiological resonance or harmony. Multiple systems. Heart, lungs, brain synchronizing to the same rhythm. But let me mention something that is really super key, because it's not another thing for you to worry about failing at. because what's really important here is that you don't have to force this rhythm. In fact, I found when people try too hard to hit an exact count, sometimes they content so it can actually cause more stress or anxiety because we're trying to do things perfectly. And I know this is something that many of the people I work with struggle with, but it kind of defeats the purpose. So instead what I focus on, especially in my sessions, like unwind at still space Hull in those breathwork evenings, um, I find a gentle, sustainable rhythm that your body can settle into. So even just starting with our simple breath awareness, noticing a natural breath and gradually inviting it slow and eventually finding where it is that you personally land. Again, it might be four seconds. Inhale, four seconds. Exhale, five or six seconds in and out. The key is that it's rhythmic and comfortable. Inhale matching. The exhale, as I said, not force and not effortful, but when you find that rhythm, your personal coherence breath, your body will respond. Your heart rhythm will smooth out. Brainwaves eventually will synchronize. And eventually there can be that sense of everything working together that emerges naturally. Now, can you enhance this with positive emotion or a sense of steadiness? Absolutely. And sometimes I do invite that into, especially in longer breath work sessions, but the breath itself, it's doing the work. We don't have to pretend that we feel differently to how we do. To me, I also find that a little bit counterproductive and definitely not the affirmations in front of a mirror, no matter how you feel kind of person. We still want to be true to ourselves, but when we enter into this rhythm, this is what creates coherence. That feeling can support how you feel, but it's really not required for you to feel any particular way, and this is why coherence breathing is so accessible in my opinion. You don't need to manufacture a feeling you don't have. You don't have to be in a good mood or feeling particularly grateful. You just need to breathe slowly, rhythmically, and let your body do what it's designed to do. And this is what I teach in the UN Unwind Breathwork sessions. My wine sessions are specifically designed around all of this. Just simple drop in evenings, just an hour on the first and third Tuesday of the month if you are in or near to the Hull area. And for the most part, we focus on coherence, breathing.'cause the idea is simple. You come in after work, maybe you're still buzzing from the day, maybe you're tired, maybe somewhere in between, but we don't. Do anything intense or cathartic. We're not diving deep into the emotional work. We're just breathing together in a coherent rhythm, and what I often hear afterwards is exactly what sparked this episode. I feel calm. I'm not sleepy. I feel clear. I'm not wired anymore. I feel ready to go home and actually be present with my family. And that is the benefit of coherence, not deep relaxation, where you need to lie down and nap for the rest of the night and not the activation where you're buzzing with energy. Just regulated available here. And then you can go back to your evening, make dinner, help with homework, have a conversation without feeling depleted or overstimulated. And that is the power of working directly with the breath to create coherence. So now let's talk about alignment.'cause this is different. Again, alignment is more about direction, values, integrity, how you want your life to feel. And I want to share a little of my own story here because again, it really supported my recent realizations. A few years ago, I chose a year of alignment. I like to choose an intention for the year, so I was really intentional with this one that year. I wanted my life and work to feel authentic, meaningful, really true to me, there's something important I want to mention here too. I actually tried a bit too hard. I was still gripping onto this old version of success. Still really forcing outcomes, still pushing just in a more conscious way. I was doing my self care, but perhaps treating them a bit like a tick box exercise. So towards the end of 2023, I was feeling completely burned out and I ironically though that burnout became the thing that helped truly align me, or at least so far anyway, but it taught me some really big things. Alignment without regulation is not sustainable. And the image that came to mind for me when I was thinking about all of this, it's a bit like walking on a tightrope. I was taking all the right steps, moving in the right direction, doing work that mattered to me, but I was doing it through force without enough boundaries, without enough daily support for the very things I needed to maintain alignment with more ease or comfort. And it just felt a complete energy drain, like one wrong step. And I was just gonna completely fall off and hurt myself essentially. And it doesn't mean that my sense of alignment was wrong, but because I was trying to hold it without the foundation that regulation brings just didn't quite give me what I needed. But that's where coherence has supported me ways, that I really didn't expect, not by doing more or by pushing harder, but helping me clear the fog in a different way. So this is what I really want to bring to here. I don't expect anyone, myself included, to live in a perfectly coherent state all of the time. Breathing at five or six breaths per minute, calm, steady, regulated, endlessly grounded. We do have lives to live, and modern life will pull us out. We will get excited, we will get frustrated. We get angry. We feel joy, urgency, grief, motivation, disappointment. And none of that's a failure. That's essentially being human and that's great. I'm here for the variety. And of course it's healthy to stretch ourselves, to be challenged, to move into moments of intensity or effort. But what matters isn't staying constantly in coherence. What's kind of more important is learning to recognize how that feels, to know how it feels in in your body, what that sense of coherence really means to you. So that you can return to it gently and intentionally when you need to. And that's where the real power is, because when you have that reference point, the ups and downs of life don't need to feel so destabilizing. You don't need to panic when things feel messy. You don't assume something's gone wrong, you know you can come back again and again at your own pace. And that makes life with all its movements. Much easier to stay present with. At least that's been my experience so far. So let's talk about something else that I see quite a lot and has also featured quite a lot in my journey too. And that's that brain fog, and the fear of stopping. So one of the biggest places I use coherence now is when I notice brain fog creeping in the urge to push through work and that fear of stopping because I might not get going again. That one was absolutely huge. A big factor perhaps because of my A DHD style brain and also because of my levels of conditioning over the years for hard work pays off. And I know so many of you are gonna recognize this, that habit of. Just one more thing, I'll rest later and we can put off so many things, even go into the toilet, food, rest, any other of our self cares. Just after one more thing, I'll finish this and then I'll rest, I promise. But there's a bit of a paradox here, because when we don't allow pauses, our body stops trusting that rest will come. So it forces a shutdown instead. From a brain perspective, when you're pushing through without breaks, you're keeping yourself in that high beta stress state. Your brainwaves are fast and scattered. Your heart rhythm can become erratic. And that erratic heart rhythm, well essentially sending signals to your brain that reduce cognitive function.'cause we're in the stress state. You are working harder, but thinking less clearly. So if you feel like you're pushing up against a wall, that might be what that is. So coherence, breathing gives me a way to pause without disappearing, to rest, without losing momentum, and a few minutes of coherence, breathing really helps me shift from that. Scattered beta to the organized alpha state brings my heart rhythm feeling more smooth, coherent pattern. And yes, I'm not hooking myself up to an ECG, but I can feel a difference in my body. I definitely feel the clearest signals between my heart and brain and that cognitive clarity and focus is amazing. Even when I think my day is done, I've got nothing left. Sometimes a few minutes of coherence breathing, I find I've got a little bit more left in me and that's really does restore my capacity and work starts to flow again, and not from pressure or pushing through, but from true presence. So perhaps I can share with you a few ways that you might notice when you're entering the coherence or the non-coherent states. I like to be practical as we know. So let's talk about what it might feel to be outta coherence or incoherence. It can feel very much like rushing, but not getting much done. It might feel like mental fog or scattered attention. You might feel irritable or more emotionally reactive, maybe even a bit snappy. You might notice your breathing is more shallow. You might feel like you're just efforting and nothing wants to move and nothing is flowing. You might get a sense of my body and brain just aren't on the same page. And from a brain perspective, this incoherence can show up. As the erratic heart patterns, perhaps you might feel it's palpitations. Again, I'm not here to diagnose. Please check in with your healthcare practitioner if you are sensing changes in your heart or your chest. I do not want you to ignore any red flags here, but also you might notice feeling more scattered, and that is the scattered high beta brainwaves, that poor communication between heart and brain. And also feeling like parts of your brain are just working independently rather than together. Perhaps you feel as a sensation of a heavy head in the front of your head or the side. Perhaps those of you that experience migraines might notice that. Those sorts of things and those symptoms start to arise. But when we access coherence, it might feel like. That steadiness, but not the stiffness of doing things exactly by the book clarity, but not that sense of urgency. You might find yourself in ease for focus or that sense of, I can meet things as they are, I can meet what's here, and like a body and mind are actually working as a team and what's happening in your brain at this point. That's when the smooth wave-like heart rhythms are happening. It's how they. Brain is organizing into the alpha state, and it's that clear communication between heart and brain. That synchronized activity across all the regions is what's creating those nice feelings. So it is subtle, but I think once you feel it, you will start to recognize it. And again, as we revisit these states, we start to strengthen our neural pathways that supports how easily. How accessible it is to reach this state. So there is an element of practice here as well. Perhaps a bit of patience and definitely a lot of compassion, especially if you are starting from a very busy state. So if you're not driving, if you're in a position to take part with this, I'd like to share with you just a simple coherence, breath practice. Just give you a go. It's a very simple way to explore, and perhaps you wanna pause this episode and come back to it if you're not able to take part right this moment. So if you're able, you might want to sit comfortably placing your feet on the floor and perhaps place a hand on your chest or heart area. And if you can breathe through your nose at the moment. Starting to breathe slowly through your nose and just notice can the breath become just a little smoother, a little more even. And there's no need to force a specific count, but you might find a gentle rhythmic pace. Maybe four seconds in, four seconds out five and five, just letting your body guide you. So I'm just gonna guide you in say three breaths and we're gonna try a count of four now that you've had a moment for your breath to settle. So at the bottom of your next breath, just resting there. And then we inhale, 2, 3, 4. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. Inhale, two, three. Four. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. Inhale, 2, 3, 4. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. And then just continuing that pattern, noticing the inhale and the exhale matching the pace. And then again, you can pause this and stay here for a minute or two. Join me back into the episode, normalizing your breath into your natural pattern, and perhaps just taking a moment to see how does that feel? Even just those three or four breaths, I can make a difference, but again, it's not a miracle. Mm-hmm. You can return to this at any time. You don't always need to have me talking at you to support this. Again, having someone holding space while you explore these things can be super helpful though, especially if you're someone that maybe finds it hard to be patient or compassionate with yourself. I've been there, so this is why I can say this, but again, just notice how your breath, your body, your mental clarity can shift when we change our breath. And hopefully they can help you feel a little bit more together. And that's coherence. There's something else I want to address now, and that is the role of coherence with work and my values. So you'll sometimes hear that coherence is talked about quite a lot in productivity spaces and yes. It can support focus, reduce sick days and improve performance, which is super amazing and I often will go into workplaces to support this, but something that I want to be really clear on about my values here. I don't use breath work or nervous system tools to prop up toxic systems. Coherence isn't about squeezing more output out of depleted people. It's about supporting humans to function better. Without self abandonment. So when people are more coherent, they can make better decisions, they can notice their limits more easily, they're less likely to burn out and can maintain alignment without force, and that benefits everybody, and that comes from care and not control. So if you've been chasing calm or relaxation or alignment, it might be worth asking, am I actually looking for coherence? A state where you don't have to shut down to feel okay, where clarity returns without force, where you can finally move through life with yourself and not against yourself. And that's the work I care about and it's available moment by moment. So thank you for joining me in this episode today, especially with this topic that I'm feeling especially passionate about. So on that note, I will see you next week and until then. May you meet yourself with Compassion, walk with presence, and remember you already have everything you need. Take care.