Episode 44: The Domino Effect of Co-Regulation with Lisa Danahy

What if the calm you cultivate could ripple out to every person you encounter?

In this episode, Dr. Santi Tanikella MD sits down with Lisa Danahy, an educator, yoga therapist, and founder of Create Calm, whose work has transformed classrooms, communities, and families across America. Lisa talks about the “domino effect of co-regulation” -  the way one person’s regulated nervous system can influence the emotional balance of an entire group, and how this can be the key to collective healing.

Together, they explore:

• How a single act of grounded presence can shift chaotic environments into calm connection.
• The unseen impact educators and leaders have on emotional culture.
• Why self-regulation isn’t enough and how co-regulation teaches us to heal together.
• Practical steps to bring these lessons into classrooms, workplaces, and homes.

This conversation isn’t just about calm, it’s about reclaiming connection in a world that often forgets how much we need each other to feel safe.

Resources:

• Weaver LL, Darragh AR. Systematic Review of Yoga Interventions for Anxiety Reduction Among Children and Adolescents. Am J Occup Ther. 2015;69(6):6906180070p1-9.
• Sibinga EM, Webb L, Ghazarian SR, et al. School-Based Mindfulness Instruction: An RCT. Pediatrics. 2016;137(1):e20152532

Connect with Lisa Danahy:
 🌐 www.CreateCalm.org
📸 Instagram | LinkedIn
📘 Facebook

Transcript

Are you a busy parent? Do you feel like you're being pulled in multiple directions all at once? Are you exhausted and overwhelmed? Meet my mom. Her name is Santi Tanikella. She's a pediatrician, expert in mind body medicine, and a life coach. She can help you break free from guilt and overwhelm, so that you can enjoy the life that you've worked so hard to create.

She can also teach you how to support your family in a more holistic way.  

 Hello everyone and welcome back to the I Am Well MD podcast. Today I have a special guest and her name is Lisa Danahy. She's an educator and entrepreneur, her non-profit Create com has facilitated cultural shifts and deep healing for thousands of students, teachers, and families in schools and community organizations across the country  with an MS in yoga therapy, a BA in psychology, over 30 years as a school administrator and SEL Curriculum developer and certification as an advanced educator, Lisa is highly skilled at creating accessible, evidence-based  successful curricular for behavioral and emotional regulation, as well as physical and mental health.  She specializes in providing programs for neurodiverse, disabled and underserved children, and trainings for educators, therapists, parents, and caregivers in practices of self-care and resiliency. 

Lisa, we are so excited to have you on the podcast today.  

Uh, Santi I'm just thrilled to be here. I just love that we can have a conversation that, crosses over your expertise and mine and really brings some helpful tips to folks out there who are working with and raising kids. 

Absolutely. Well, it sounds like  you have done so much in your career already. Tell me a little bit about your path and how you got to where you are today.  

Wow, in some ways it was a direct path and in some ways it was a really windy zigzag. Um, when I was a little girl, I envisioned being a teacher and I envisioned caring for other people.

And then as life would have it I headed off to college and needed to pay for school. So I became a legal secretary. because in 10th grade, my typing teacher said I had amazing skills and that I would make a great secretary one day. So,  so I paid my way through college as a legal secretary and then got into law firm management. 

And it was this really, high stress,  really powerful learning space where I got to gather a lot of business management skills and people building skills. I was in human resources and then I was in, uh, eventually an administrative manager as part of this,  firm that went from 56 lawyers to 200.

So I was in a really wonderful time of learning and then had a couple of kids and as my children were going off to childcare,  I went and joined their board with my human resource background and really enjoyed contributing to the support of these young families with babies through six year olds  and helping them be comfortable and able to be working and be parenting and to have a little community of people with a similar challenge. And so I was on the board there for a couple years  then one day our director said that she was getting married and moving to Cleveland and  my board turned to me and said, oh, hey, how about you find us a replacement and you have a human resource background?

So I looked and looked and one day at lunch with a friend, I said.  I don't know what to do. I can't find someone. And she said, you know what, you have a bachelor's in psychology. You focused on developmental psychology you've always had, um, and this was no offense to you lawyers out there, but she said, you've always been surrounded by big babies.

Maybe this is the time for you to go work with little ones.   So I went and ran the school and,  as I came on board at the school, I was really thrilled to have the opportunity to build my own curriculum. And I built a social emotional,  learning based curriculum. Back in the nineties. We had yoga classes and meditation happening,  even in the infant classrooms every week.

And I went from  this yoga practice that was my survival in, in working in a law firm and my survival as a parent to building it and sharing it in this community. And it, I started to recognize these cultural shifts in the dynamics of the organization. And I thought, oh, I wanna do more of this.

So after 20 years of bringing it into my school, I built my nonprofit create calm so that I could bring it out there into more schools. And what I really wanted to do was bridge that gap for healthcare professionals, for pediatricians, for psychotherapists, for folks that were still very much,  in that  trench of allopathic care.

And I don't mean any disrespect in that, but  for me to be able to bring them some really practical, ways to regulate the nervous system, ways to explore, um, you know, socialization,  emotional regulation  and how they can create shifts in, in their work, in their homes, through those techniques was really what I wanted to do.

And so that's where I'm today.  

That is amazing. Yeah. I feel like I've gone through a very similar path myself. I needed tools to feel like myself again at specific times in my life where I was very stressed out and I would say that, I would venture to say that it was through yoga in high school that I really learned to appreciate what yoga had to offer.

And for those of you who are unaware, yoga actually is not just a series of poses.  But it's breath work plus poses and it literally  translates to union. So you're joining the mind, the body, the soul, the spirit, together  and we're not dissecting them apart, right.  So I love that you were able to bring yoga practices, mindfulness and meditation into your work with children and teachers.

 And yes, you're correct. Like the effects of that do come to us physicians, because I find that the more children are able to self-regulate, the less likely they are to have symptoms of anxiety or depression.

 So yeah, we don't see those kids as much because the wheels are not as squeaky for them.  I would venture to say too, that  when kids are well-regulated,  their families are too.  Their families are too. So  there is an absolute domino effect that happens here. Um, and I think that that's beautiful that you've been able to encapsulate that in your work. 

Thank you. Yeah. You know,  it's been  a primary focus of my work because it's like a spiral, right? So when you're dysregulated,  you have a disconnect between the mind and the body. You're less capable of interpreting your situation accurately, and then you become more hypervigilant and more out of regulation and further away from accurate interpretation of your environment.

And then it starts to show up as these physical illnesses and, and it's your body trying to say, Hey, wait, wait, we're at, we're out of kilter here. And,  in my book,   in "Creating Calm in your Classroom," I speak about Steven Porridges and his magnificent work on what he calls the polyvagal theory. 

And what I think is phenomenal in his research and his work and the way he describes it is he's really good at laying out the layers of the nervous system and how we access it but what I think is really fascinating is he hones in on the fact that when we're stressed,  we do not feel safe. We do not feel connected.

And when we have that sense that we are not safe and not connected, the nervous system starts to shut down. The nervous system cannot process accurately. And what happens is in that hypervigilant state, we cannot accurately read other people's signs and signals to us. Hmm. So even as a child, let's say I come into your office and let's say I've been dysregulated.

I'm hypervigilant, and you smile at me, I might still interpret that as a threat.  Because I see your teeth and somehow the limbic brain goes, oh my gosh, there's teeth there. This is a dangerous situation I'm not safe  and so I find it fascinating that,  even   as we, the adults, try to bring comfort and security to our kids, if they are dysregulated,  then they may not be able to see it. 

And so that's where it's really important that we are co-regulating. We are showing up for them in the energetic space that we want them to obtain, to access, in order to feel balanced, in order to feel safe. And then, once we've met in that energetic space,  only then  can I smile and know that they see me, and they don't see me as a threat.

 

 Life can feel like a constant balancing act, work deadlines, family responsibilities, and everything in between.

It's really easy to get stuck in go mode without ever stopping to ask,  "what do I really want?"  Imagine if you could set boundaries with confidence, say no without guilt, and start doing more of the things that light you up. That's what life coaching is all about, helping you get clear on what matters most and giving you the tools to make it happen. 

Your life is unique, your journey's unique, and your solutions should be too. If you're ready to stop surviving and start living with intention, let's talk.  Visit me at iamwellmd.com  and click on the link to contact me.  Send me a little message and we'll get you started with an introductory call.  I hope to see you soon.  

 So you mentioned this word co-regulation, and I think it's really important to define that. How would you define co-regulation to somebody who's never heard that word before?  

So I'm gonna share actually   part of my work in my training in learning yoga and doing yoga. Over and over again,

as you learn these tools, whether you are officially trained in it or you happen to go to a yoga class, you hear all the time. It's a practice. It's  a practice, not a perfect even, right? And you are going into a space of trying things out and so from the yoga perspective, the more you go to your yoga mat, the more you practice things, the more you can connect with them and the more you can choose from them. 

So, on a yoga mat or in a yoga class, or as I engage in mindful breathing or meditation, I have the opportunity to access my nervous system and regulate it. I can raise my energy, I can lower my energy,  I can feel where I'm out of alignment and come back in. And that's the act of regulation.

That is what I need to regulate. So if I start with self-regulation, if I start with this practice of self-connection, then I can begin to connect with and regulate others. And there's a relatively recent finding of something called mirror neurons in in all of us, because we are creatures that connect and want to be part of everything that's happening around us.

We have these mirror neurons that look for signs of how to behave, what to do, what decisions to make, so.  As the adult. If I am practicing my self-regulation, then my mirror neurons can be a little bit more selective but I also know that everything I bring to the world  is impacting your mirror neurons when you're sitting across from me and everybody else's mirror neurons when they're in the room with me.

So I start to realize that the more I practice the skills of self-regulation, the more I can impact your access to self-regulation. And then at one point, if I'm modeling it, you know out and we can do something in a second to try it out. If I'm modeling it, you can pick up on it, it becomes your regulation and then you can step away and the next most beautiful part is autonomic regulation. You do it without me, you do it on your own, you do it instinctively, you're coming back to yourself again and again so my job as a  mental health  and physical health professional is to model  and to share and then encourage you to, to build the skills yourself. In the trainings I do for yoga teachers, I say you need to practice it to know it, know it to teach it, teach it to lead it, lead it to allow it.  

Beautiful. 

I think that that's also very relevant to not just teachers, but to parents, to bosses and their employees. I mean, this is relevant to everywhere.  When I think of co-regulation, I think of two people helping to manage each other's emotions and in doing so, their stress levels, and downstream their behavior.

 So as an example, um, it's probably the reason why when we go to a yoga class or go to a meditation class we feel so good because the person who's leading the group tends to be in a very well, very emotionally well-regulated place.  Same thing at home. So let's say you have a toddler and your toddler's happily running around, but slightly dangerous, they don't know that they're dangerous.

The parent tends to get dysregulated and will say, "stop it. Don't do that. Don't, Hey, be careful." Right? And then the kid is like, caught off guard. Okay, I'll act like that. Yeah. And then, right? Yeah, exactly. So,  so then they  literally copy  what their parent does. Yeah. The energy level rises, they start acting dysregulated,  right?

Yeah. And it may look a little bit more chaotic than what they were doing before. So it's really interesting how our behaviors, our emotions, our stress impacts the people around us. Yeah. 

Yeah. So I'd love to do a quick little experiment and this works whether you're in-person, live or not. And  this is sort of an example of co-regulation.

So I want you to follow along with me   with me, I'm in.  Okay. Breathe really fast. Shake your arms, wiggle your body. Okay. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. Make a funny face, blah.  All right. Now reach your arms up. Take a big breath in and imagine you're filling yourself up a like a balloon.  As you breathe out, bring your hands right down the middle, really slow, like there's a tiny little hole in the balloon. 

Let's do that a couple more times together. Breathe in 

and breathe out.  One more, 

take a moment and notice how you feel.  Relax. 

 What did you notice?

So, definitely during the time where I was hyperventilating a little bit and acting frenetic, I could feel the energy levels rising.   Then when I shifted and I took  the three deep slow breaths,  I could feel my energy shift. So I still feel energetic, but I do feel calmer. 

So interesting. You were able to 

focus. Yeah. And by us engaging the body, by moving the arms, we took that frenetic energy and we literally brought it out the limbs. And then when the hands came together over your head and down in front of your heart, you actually did this instant rebalancing of the left and right hemispheres of your mind and body.  And so it was this lock in, but like you said, you didn't become lethargic or low energy, you just channeled the energy so you could be focused and, and you were aware and attuned, and that's what we want. And I just wanna point out that nowhere in there did I say a  calm down.  Take a deep breath,  we're gonna do this. 

We just did it. I let it for me  and I felt it in me and I consistently brought it until I felt my energy shifting and you could feel your energy shifting.  But I purposely didn't direct you in how to do it, because I think  as parents and I, I am a parent and I'm guilty of this for many years, I would tell my kids, you just need to calm down or why are you crying? That's not something to cry about. Or, you know, so many of these catchphrases and I realized our children do not need us to speak to them. They need us to carry them.  And I realized that I was trying to impart my wisdom and my control. And as a parent, as an educator, I'm really a platform.

And I'm supposed to stand here steady and calm and confident and consistent and clear. And sometimes that means very firm that I will stand here for you to launch from. Hmm. Launch without words, just with my energy and my love. 

That is so profound. It really is.  How, and this is something that I  am very curious about  in those times where we are feeling very dysregulated as parents or as educators,  um,   how do we avoid engaging in toxic positivity? 

That is a real problem today.  Yeah, for sure. With social media, it's really particularly challenging for, I think, for parents because, we're always searching for a better way to do things and searching for cures of our imperfections and signs that we can somehow eliminate them.

And I think,  I think the more we do yoga and mindfulness, the more we have the space  to allow  and  almost, I wanna say enjoy  the  reality in a way that we don't have to inflate the good stuff. We don't have to always be happy and perfect.  Actually, I'll share a personal experience.

Just the other day I had a really big challenge. Um,  my fridge broke on top of a bunch of other things in my house, right? Real life stuff.  And  all of my friends who, the few friends that I told, I had actually friends visiting from out of town who were here, and I was mortified. And I got really upset and I started to cry and be angry and, and my friend said, oh, it's okay.

Everything's gonna be fine.  You know, that like shove, shove my feelings down with this positivity. And I looked at her and I said, maybe so, but I am gonna feel my feelings right now.  And I was able to say yes, and  yes, I'm sad. Yes, I'm angry and down underneath it all. I am okay, but I don't need to be happy right now.

I don't need to be steady right now. I will and inside somewhere I am. But it's okay that I, I play with these feelings. It's okay that I bristle. It's okay that I am  edgy sometimes, it's okay that I make a mistake and hurt your feelings  as long as I come back to it and say. I was doing my best. And I, and I hold myself in a space of humility.

That's vulnerability, that's accountability and I say to you, you know,  I got really upset about that fridge. Was it rational? Nope.  Was it where I was feeling right then? Yep. And the worst thing for me to do is go great when I don't feel great. 

Yeah. And I think that's, that's really important because I think for kids, especially  when we act like everything's okay all the time, um, and I've heard this story so many times when a, when a parent passes away and the other parent has to take over care  and they pretend that everything's okay,  and they save their tears for after the kids go to sleep,  right

emotionally, the kids are going through things too, and the parent is putting on their bravest face, their  calmest.   They're doing all the things. It doesn't mean that what they're doing is wrong but on the flip side there's this piece which is, we too have emotions, we too feel grief, we feel angry, we feel frustrated, we, we feel all the negatives.  Yeah. And sometimes our kids need to see us experience the negatives  in order to know how to handle it when it enters their own life.  

Yes. And this piece is part of 

co-regulation too.  

That's exactly what I was gonna say. That's a critical piece because children are energetic beings. 

They come into this world communicating through their senses and through their sensory experiences and they don't have language, but they can read how you feel, they can read how they feel. So as energetic beings, if you show up all the time as contained and you show up as,  as dismissive or positive, or any of these things that mask your real feelings as a child, I'm getting mixed messages and what it's gonna tell me is,  you know, my intuition tells me that she's not okay and I'm not okay, but her words and her actions are telling me that she's okay.

So my intuition must be wrong. Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  Yeah. So we have, we're setting this expectation of children to stop going to their internal knowing,  because we want it to be perfect and happy and everything to be you know,  easy for them. But what we're doing is we're confusing them and we're saying, yeah, it, it's too much for you.

And the the reality is these kids have the same energetic selves as we do. They're the same selves that we are, but they're more sensitive. So in some ways, we need to be even more transparent, even more authentic with children than anyone else because they're reading it. And if we mask it, we're saying to them,  you're wrong.

Don't trust your insides, go to the outside and that's why I think so many children in schools today are not able to self-regulate because they're looking for  someone else to tell 'em when their behavior is out of alignment or they need to do something differently or how to react to something, you know, their, their intuition's been  squished.

Yeah. I mean, what essentially what we're modeling unfortunately is  someone who feels the feels but  acts in a way that's not aligned with themselves. And  I can't help but wonder if some of that is just survival behavior, right? We are acting okay even though we don't feel good on the inside and in this example, if I'm feeling grief,  we're still acting okay.

We're still going to work, coming home, cooking, dinner, helping the kids with homework, and then saving the tears for bedtime. You know, after the kids have gone down, right?  They know that something's not right and we are just not telling them  and that starts to create distrust,  uh, that starts cr to create a model.

What, where, what we are showing them is that being genuine with our feelings is not safe, it is not okay, it's not acceptable socially.   Um,  and it shuts them down, unfortunately. Yeah. And then, yeah, just like you said Lisa, they don't know how to process their feelings properly. 

Yeah. Yeah and, and to the other extreme, we don't want to bombard them with our feelings because they are sensitive.

They're little antenna and they're gonna pick up on it and so if we're constantly, um, emotionally dumping on our children and asking them to be the holders of this space for us, they, they're going to be overwhelmed. They're going to mirror it back. And,  and so there's this, this space that we need to occupy as adults of being authentic and honest and vulnerable, and also accountable

and regulated and responsible for,  for helping children develop those skills within themselves to know how to manage themselves, to know, um,  where to align and where not to, to feel secure and safe. To develop coping skills that are going to help them navigate big emotions of other people, but also  to not have to carry that burden.

Mm-hmm. I am a, um,  in process reforming people pleaser  as many of us are.  Yes and  as a, um, an intentionally reforming people pleaser I know, like you were saying a moment ago,  we want to belong. We want to fit in, and we want to help people and hold people. And so as children,  we, we take on that burden very readily, but it doesn't mean it's right for us to take it on.

Hmm. And so I think that  it's a, it's a really big ask of parents, but I'm gonna ask it.  Practice your regulation, go to your space, go move your body, move your energy. Feel into your needs, feel into your values, feel into your feelings, and work with them on your own, work with them with your adult friends, your therapists, your support team, and, and then  get yourself in a regulated space so that you can work with them alongside of your child as they work with theirs. 

That is great advice.  I will interject a personal story here, uh, because I feel like it's very relevant. It's this fine balance of things, and I have no way of knowing whether I did it right. But I'd like to think I did it right.  But you did it.  I did it. We got through it. Um, I was,  we had moved to this house when my, soon after my dad had passed away. 

My son was about two and a half, three at the time. And  as I was unpacking, I unexpectedly  came across my dad's new wallet that he never got to use and,  and I was so surprised by it.

And all of a sudden this wave of grief just washed over me and my son happened to be right there,  and I started to cry.  And as many children do, he instinctively came over and he hugged me. Hmm.  And I didn't push him away and I didn't say no, and I didn't, you know, uh, rush through the tears as I had previously been doing.   I gave myself a moment to cry  and then I explained to him,  Hey, I found that this old wallet  and I wasn't expecting to see it, and it made me miss him. And he under, he seemed to understand all of that and he held my hand and he know, he patted my knee so little and so cute, you know, he said, it's gonna be okay, mom.

And I said, oh, thank you. I know it's gonna be okay 'cause I have you and I have your dad, and I have all these people around me that love me and care about me.  Thank you for that.  And then the moment passed and I said, how about we get some lunch?  And so we transitioned, we got lunch and you know, that to me,  demonstrated a different version of myself where I would've quickly wiped away the tears. I'd have pretended that nothing happened. I'd have, you know,  tried to collect myself and he probably would've seen me do all of that  rush through the emotions and then, you know, go and then become very stoic and then transition to the next activity. 

And I'd like to think that  that sat with him. You know, a lot of people don't know what to do when people experience grief.  And oftentimes there's nothing to do except to hold space for them, just hold their hand. Nothing's gonna change necessarily except the processing of emotions.  

I wanna say something really that struck me in this example. 

Your son was offering you a regulation state. Mm-hmm. He was co-regulating you. Yes. And what a gift you gave him  to trust  him, to bring his energetic self into your space and say, mama, this is what we need.  And he held your hand and he, he touched your knee and he, he offered you his breath and his calm state because, because he knew that, that that's what you needed.

But he wasn't afraid because you weren't afraid. Mm-hmm. You weren't afraid to be vulnerable.  What a gift you gave him in his being able to practice those skills, that empathy. Empathy is  an innate quality in all of us, but we tend to squish it down from when we're very early on in life because,   very often it's dismissed.

If he had come over and  you had tried to be stoic and he said, mommy, it's okay. And you went, no, I'm fine. You know, it's, look, if you had shut it down.  Yeah. What a gift. What a sweet, sweet gift.  

And for you too. Oh yes, definitely. It's funny because, because, you know, we have our daughter who tends to be a little bit more stoic when she gets upset and it's so funny 'cause he'll go over, now they're, they're almost six and 11, but she'll get upset and he'll come over for a hug and she's like, she'll run away from,  he's like, "I don't know what to do with myself."

And I'm like, "listen kiddo. Yeah. I'm just letting you know that there are different types of people out there. Some people are going to accept  the co-regulation, if you will, and others are gonna need a little bit of time to process their emotions in their own way,  and then they will be ready to come back to you," you know? 

Yeah. And, and I think that is, um, it, it's an interesting dynamic of yoga and mindfulness because there are a lot of people who are very resisting. And I think it's because it requires a level of vulnerability that some of us haven't practiced. And some of us from, you know, our personalities and how we came into the world are wired a little bit differently

that that is really intimidating and so we have to do it in small doses. We have to do it in  practicing breathing and doing a little breath work, you know, for your daughter when she's in that state, maybe there's, uh, breath that we can practice when she's not in that state that she can go and use herself.

One of my favorite for kids like her is B breath  and B breath is simply creating a sound like a bee, but humming and creating a vibration in your throat and your chest. And it's uh, very soothing uh, and it also stops the ruminating, the thoughts, especially if you drop into feelings of shame and blame.

And so you on the exhale you hmm,  and you buzz like a bee and you can even cover your ears or cover your eyes. And it's a great thing that we can do on our own to sort of  turn the switch and begin to self-regulate and we can buzz our, our way into our rooms by ourselves and sit and buzz by ourselves and, and practice that, that form of regulation that isn't just the breath or you know, the way that others might regulate. 

So for somebody who's not familiar with B Breath, how long would you recommend doing that for? 

So  I think you do it until you feel better.   Uh, that usually translates into about 30 to 90 seconds. I'd go, I'd air towards the 90 seconds. So one to two minutes and it's really a matter of dropping into it where all you hear is that sound, that vibration in your head.

You maybe even feel it in your nose, and you feel it in your chest, and you allow yourself to drop into that vibration. And it, it is very, very difficult to have thoughts when you're humming. Humming is an amazing mind clearer. And so if you can do it for about five breaths, I think five breaths is really when you start to go, oh, this feels really good.

And do it longer if you want. So, um, but yeah, and then you're covering the ears and the eyes. Now you're tapping into this whole world of sensory regulation. So it, you can create a more intense or less intense experience, and you can allow some of your senses to rebalance if you're always looking for signs or you're always listening for signs to regulate, if you cover those and you breathe and and hum into them, then you really turn your focus inward to yourself and, and now you're activating that gut brain, that vagus nerve.

And once you do that, you're going into the limbic and, um, frontal um, brain cortexes and shifting out of that survival mode into that thriving mode.  

I love it. That's great advice, especially for, for kids. I honestly feel like adults should do this too. 

 I actually 

do these practices in this book all the time in my adult classes.  I just don't call them the animal or the piece of nature or whatever it is. I just guide it and we're doing thunder and lightning and they don't know it. Or we're doing tiger crutches or volcanoes. And, um, and I think you're right.

I think we, adults need to, to be playful with our energy, and not uncomfortable in it.



 So one of the things that you talked about earlier in the podcast was  cultural shifts. Now, in your book, "Creating Calm in your Classroom," you talked about the inner world of the educator and the student, and we've been touching on that here and there through various examples,  but it really seems like the internal state of a leader, whether it's someone who's a boss and has employees, whether it's a teacher with students, whether it's a parent with kids or other family members, that their internal state really can shape the culture of the whole group. 

How might leaders, educators, parents, how might we begin to build environments that normalize emotional awareness and co-regulation? 

 That is a great question. I think, um, the first step is practicing tools ourselves so that we understand how they operate and I think the second big step, and this is whether it's in your home or in your office or at your school, um, I think

 we have to practice these as part of our daily routines and I do a lot of trainings in schools where I will,  I come in and the first thing someone says is, I don't have room to do one more thing in my day  and that is wherever you are, whether you know, whatever the environment is. I don't have room to learn another thing to try another thing, to fit another thing.

And what we do is we build these practices into our daily routines in places where we are not dysregulated so that in the few times of dysregulation, which happen primarily in transitions, when we feel out of control.  We can access those tools because we practice them in a regulated state. So let me give you an example.

A lot of the work I do in kindergarten classrooms is around morning circle or morning meeting. So we, we all come in and some of us come in with lots of energy or a little bit of energy. Some of us come in really happy or really grumpy, whatever it is,  and the teacher has to bring everybody together. So we start our morning meeting with some movement.

Maybe we shake our bodies, maybe we do some cross body movement or, or just walk in place and then we connect with our breath, we do a couple of balloon breaths, we start to come together as a group, and then we sit down.  And then that allows us to all enter into the experience in a regulated state. So then a little bit later on, when somebody gets dysregulated, someone else can say, I think we need a balloon breath or Let's be crouching tigers and get that grumpy out.

And so they start to regulate each other, and that's where you have this shift of no longer is the reaction, getting the attention,  but the, the dysregulation is automatically being accepted and reformed.  And so my goal in, in giving these tools to people to use in schools, in classrooms, in uh businesses, in doctor's offices, is for you to make it such a regular routine  that. 

That there, you don't have these big  extremes and you don't have these  focuses on reaction, rather on,  on  experiencing and moving through it. And, and  I think, I think that then  um,  everything goes much more efficiently.  And so I would say every board meeting that that high powered exec starts to lead should start with a breath and a movement. 

Um, every transition that we have at home or school, if we're walking out the door with the kids,  you know, the kids are sitting there slumped in their little beds and we're jumping up in their room going, we  go, right? That's an energy disconnect. Um, we gotta meet them where their energy is and bring them in.

And so whatever environment you are in, if you can interpret the energy  and assess your energy and then give a modeling of the, the space to regulate the energy, then everyone comes to a really balanced state and you can be a lot more efficient. 

I love that. It sounds a lot like what I do with my kids in the morning. 

Yeah. Which is, you know,  when it's time to wake up, I end up in their bed with them, snuggling them. We take a few deep breaths together  and then my alarm clock goes off, not in an, not in an obnoxious way. Um, but I find it's less nagging if it's not me who's, yeah,  it's a timer informing them that it's a transition time.

Right. It's coming from a machine who is very neutral.   Is very neutral, and I think that's, 

I think I love the use of timers. I use timers often because that sense of time is a, is a human construct. It is something our children have to understand and you're right, it is a neutral party. It's not, you know, the alarm clock intentionally,

now maybe someone out there is going to create this voice, but they intentionally don't go, get up, get up. Come on, get up. Oh my gosh. Get up.  

My husband used to have this siren that went off on his phone. Oh my gosh. Oh, I hated it and he was like, well, it gets me up in the morning. I'm like, honey, we are not residents anymore where we need like that loud, obnoxious, almost scary like heart, you know, like, ugh,  my heart would race when I heard his,  his alarm go off but yeah, like I have a gentle tone on my phone and you know, it's loud enough to wake me up, but not so loud or so harsh that I'm waking up  fearful or part racing or, you know, any of that.

So 

you're waking up in a stress response, starting your day in a stress response  is likely going to make it very difficult to endure your day.  

Yeah. Like, who wants to wake up to that? Like,  you know, oh, anyways, I'm, I'm glad he's changed his ringtone.  

I like that. I like that. But I love what you're doing with your children, giving them that space to slowly step into their  energy in a way that they can

bring it when they need to, because the one thing that  I really want to be clear on is we are not trying to squash the energy of children. We are not trying to always contain them, that is not what yoga and mindfulness and, and holistic practices are for. We want them to be big, we want them to be so big, but we want them to feel in, in their own power in that bigness

and, and sometimes we need to teach them how to be big. And so sometimes if they're really quiet and, and, and  have a little less energy, we're gonna bring 'em up gradually. And then sometimes when they're big, we wanna be in that big with them and show them it's okay. And then maybe bring it down. 

Absolutely.  And for, for those of you who like evidence, like research, there are definitely, there's research about  use of mindfulness in the school system and the benefits of that. Um, there is evidence that yoga helps children as well. So if anyone's looking for articles or looking for, you know, hard facts, I can help fill in that void

and I'll, I'll put a couple of articles in the show notes as well to help people to understand where this can actually really improve life. I mean, what would it be like if every school taught mindfulness, meditation, you know, yoga,  we would have children who don't feel like they need to be screaming to be heard. 

Right.  So huge. Yeah.  

And, you know, I am, I am a science nerd and um, a lot of people assume because I have a background in yoga, that I am some sort of absent minded.  You know,   I ignore, um, concrete evidence in the science, but I'm actually the opposite and that's why I got my master's in yoga therapy because I really wanted to understand and to be able to help people understand the science behind the practice.

So in my book I have pages at the end, literally pages of references of scientific research. I refer throughout the book to very, very evidence-based elements of nervous system regulation and physiology because the physiology fascinates me. Um, so I agree with you. I think, um, we. the more informed we are, the more empowered we are. 

And, and  I love to, um, to see that science is catching up to these traditional routines that were there. Yes. But now we're understanding a little bit more. Why. 

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, people are very much attached to the efficacy of things. Is, is this a useful way to spend my time? Like Yes, it is actually very useful.

And like I said, the,   like we said, there is no end to where this can go, this overflows into every department of your life. Um, yeah. So the benefit is huge. So,  

yeah, I just helped a large school system in Virginia, um, build into their kindergarten curriculum. In their math pacing guide, we built in points of movement and mindfulness.

So at the beginning of a math exercise, we gave a list of possible mindfulness and movement. 'cause movement is an important piece of it. Mindfulness and movement techniques that the teacher can choose as they enter in to this need for focus and then we have a midpoint where we give a list of movements and practices for them to wiggle through, come back into focus, maybe increase some energy or decrease it depending on where they are.

And then we have at the end, the transition, the closing, that breathing that allows us to let it go and move on to the next activity and, and we've been doing this a couple years now in the kindergarten classrooms and we're noticing this efficiency that has actually improved even though we added in these steps in the pacing guide.

So it's, it, it feels like it's more work, but it's really saving you a lot of 

work.  That is really impressive. I love that. You know, I have this conversation with a lot of parents where, you know,  when their kids come home from school, the parents are having trouble reeling their kids in to get their school, their homework done.

And  it's this, it's, we have to have these points where we can allow the child to be a child. Even if it's just for a few minutes you know, even if it's just to Yeah. Run laps outside the house to blow off some of that extra steam because  you know, many of them are staying fairly contained in the latter half of the day, right?

They, they have the beginning of their day at school, they have their lunch period, they have recess, they get to blow off some steam, and then many of them have a few more hours till the end of the day,  and now they have this break. Now we should use those breaks intentionally, right? Um, and that way you do have a child that is ready and more focused to start their homework  and hopefully this, this efficiency applies to those kids as well, right?

We can't expect children to sit for another two, three hours at home  and crank it out the way maybe we expected ourselves to do that when we're in high school or college.  Right. We for how soon we forget as parents what it was like to be a child.  Right. 

That's a great point, it's so true. And that's actually,  I think, um, that, that is the little piece of advice I wanna give parents is  connect with that child within, nurture that child within  cradle that child within, play with that child within.

Allow that child within you to be joyful and, and to express themselves freely because as soon as we can reconnect with the child within ourselves,  we have a much,  I think, clearer and stronger connection with the world around us.  

Absolutely.  This podcast. Lisa was created to help us to heal ourselves, our children, and our children's children. 

Do you have any last words of advice for our listeners? 

I think  what I hope  is that everyone will find a means for connecting to that place inside of them that I know exists. That essence that is pure joy, pure ease, that space that is okay, and no matter what's going on on the outside that you're able to know that little place in you.  Because I know everyone is always doing their best, and I want you to remember that for yourself and everybody else out there, we are all doing our best and we are all that little space of of beautiful  sweet okayness.

Right? Do you feel it? Mm-hmm. Let's feel it.  Yeah. And that's what I want us to remember as often as we can. 

I love it. Yes. Think back to that 13-year-old self,  the 6-year-old self, the toddler self.  Yeah. I mean that was still us. That's still us.  

So yeah. And thank them for doing their best and  let them off the hook and tell them right now you've got a few more skills.

So,  so you're good?  Yes. We've got this. 

I love it. Thank you so much, Lisa, for being on the podcast. Where can our listeners find you?  Uh, 

you can find me, um, social media. It's, uh, yoga therapy with Lisa Danahy. You can find me at createcalm.org.  Um, and I'll add some contents um, for you to share in your um, 

caption too. 

Perfect. Thank you so much for being on the show, Lisa.  

You are welcome. It was a real, real pleasure. Thank you.    

The information shared on the I AM Well MD podcast is for educational and informational purposes only, and should not be considered medical advice. Listening to this podcast does not establish a doctor-patient relationship.  All health related decisions should be made in consultation with your personal medical provider. 

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