God Given Ways To Regulate Part 1

Hello to you. 

After a short break, the podcast returns with an honest and gently reflective episode about waking up feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and physically on edge. From that real-life moment, this conversation explores what it means to regulate your nervous system in a way that is both deeply therapeutic and rooted in faith.

Blending neuroscience with scripture, you’ll be guided through simple, grace-filled practices like breath prayer, gratitude, singing, and getting outside, reminding you that your body isn’t a barrier to God, but part of how you were designed to heal, connect, and feel safe.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your head, weighed down by anxiety, or simply exhausted, this episode offers a gentle reminder: you make sense, and there is a way through.

For free resources, reflections, and regular encouragement, come join me over on Substack. You’ll also find the option to subscribe to The Faith-Filled Collective — a monthly space for women who are pursuing wholeness and holiness. 

You can also find my e-books and webinar links here

Love and hope

Jo

Transcript

Hello, welcome back to the Faith Filled Therapy podcast. Of course there's been a hiatus, of course there has. This seems to be the story of my life. However, I have set myself a goal from April, 2026. And this is me being accountable from April, 2026. We will have two podcasts a month and I have a wonderful friend working in the background to help me with this and also

To help do some video work now. I couldn't possibly do video today because I'm recording this from being sat on my bed I'm not a desk. I'm not anywhere with a proper microphone. I've taken to my bed like some kind of Victorian lady ⁓ But I'm not ill or anything like that. I'm just really tired. I'm really tired. I've had a really full week And then come back from a full week into a very everyday ordinary life with three fairly young kids And I'm tired this morning

but also want to record a podcast because I just love to share experience. I love that. I love when I hear somebody else's story and I can think, thank goodness I'm not the only one. that makes me feel better about myself. I just love that. And so maybe if you've taken to your bed, like a Victorian woman today or a Victorian man, maybe this will make you feel better, but this is only just the start of it. Actually, I want to talk you through something that I experienced yesterday and

something that's helped me get out of the times where I feel like this. And so it's waking up with that feeling of impending doom. Has anybody felt that? Maybe you're listening to this and you feel that right now. Maybe that's something that you've experienced or maybe you know somebody and love somebody and leading somebody who that is their regular experience or whatever it may be, maybe.

I just know yesterday, I really felt it in my gut. I felt it in my gut and I felt it in a raised heart rate. Put my ⁓ hand on my chest, I could feel that my heart was going really fast. And I've learned in these times not to stay in my head when I'm feeling like I have a hundred thoughts, a hundred tabs open, that sense of impending doom that lives in the pit of my stomach or raised heart rate.

activated feeling, I've learned the power of getting out of my head and into my body. I've used this phrase before, if you can't think your way out of something that you thought your way into, often you have to move out of your thinking, out of your mind and into your physical body. So I knew what I needed to do, I needed to go for a swim. There's something for me, you may have your own version of it. I know some people go for a run.

Some people go for a nap and if I'm honest, if I feel really like I don't know where to go with how I'm feeling, I will often just go for a nap if circumstances will allow. And then often I'll wake up and I'll feel better. And there is science and scripture behind that. Actually, we know times where an angel of the Lord has visited a person and said, Elijah, and said, have something to eat, have a nap. And then...

things will start to feel better. That is my paraphrase, by the way. But for me, I know I needed to go, I didn't quite have the energy to go for a full gym workout. So I thought I'm to go for a swim. There's something about getting my head underneath the water that I feel almost like in about sub five seconds. And I'm sure Andrew Huberman or someone like that could give me the exact science for this, but there's something about it that I know I feel a switch after three to five seconds of getting my head underneath water.

And I've learned to know that that switches from the sympathetic nervous system, fight, flight, feeling activated into the parasympathetic nervous system where you feel grounded. So, and all the way throughout scripture, there are wonderful examples of how to regulate yourself, how to manage your mind. So I want to focus in today on God giving ways to regulate your nervous system. I've posted on this over on Instagram. ⁓

But I thought it'd be really helpful to start here and to start like I always start with myself, with other people, people that I am sat in the therapy room with or pastorally at church is that you make sense. You may have heard me say that before. And so not just your thoughts, not just your behaviors, but your body as well, your bodily responses. I wrote on Substack a while ago, you can be full of faith in God and yet your body can still brace.

can still feel overwhelmed, activated or shut down at certain stimuli. So your whole nervous system makes sense. the way your heart races, yesterday, honestly, I could just feel my heart physically racing. Nothing had really happened. I'd overstretched myself actually, and that's often a trigger for me, but there wasn't any other trigger than that. So heart racing, my chest was tightened, feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you feel the other way, you feel shut down.

exhausted, numb, going through the motions, all of that makes sense. And not only does it make sense psychologically or neurologically, it makes sense theologically as well because you were designed, you were created. Psalm 139 tells us that God knit you together, which means that your nervous system is not an inconvenience to your faith. Your biology is not a barrier to God. It's part of how he designed you.

to live and relate and respond and restore and renew and of course to regulate. And that's what we're talking about specifically here, how to regulate your nervous system God's way. And I noticed that in my own thinking, ⁓ and I think this can be particularly pervasive in Christian spaces, we can be taught to override our body. Seems like the spiritual thing to do. It's kind of Gnostic if we're gonna go down that theological route, but I don't wanna go there as much today.

⁓ of like the denial of the body, the body bad but the spirit is good, whereas actually scripture teaches us this holistic view, it gives us some interesting nuance between the body, soma, and the flesh, sarks, the sinful nature, but again I'm not going to go into all of the theology of this today because I want to keep it succinct because really what the whole purpose of this is to say yeah me too if you felt like that.

and also to give you some tools. ⁓ But God didn't design you to bypass your nervous system, he designed you a way through it. That just reminds me now of I'm thinking of like Psalm 23, that even when we feel in the valley of the shadow of death, in our real circumstances, or in our somatic experience in our nervous system, that we have a God who shepherds us through that.

That's a good thought. I'm gonna meditate on that thought a little bit. There's something in there, isn't there? Yeah, God designed us a way through. ⁓ And absolutely, as always, with all good discoveries in neuroscience, with all therapeutically safe, sound work, it's theologically sound as well. They're not in conflict together.

So let's look at some God-given ways to regulate your nervous system. And I'm not talking about hacks. Here's how to hack your biology. Here's how to optimize. We're saying here's how we can just trust God that he's designed a spirit, soul, body is making us holy and whole in every area of our being. That holistic approach to nervous system regulation isn't a new idea. It's God's idea that by rhythms that God has already woven into your design.

So just quickly, what do I mean by regulating your nervous system? What I don't mean by regulating your nervous system is just calm down and be a better Christian. Just stop being fearful and have more faith. That's not the narrative here. What I mean is moving from a state of threat and activation into a state of safety. And I just love how all the way throughout scripture, God's like, you're safe, you're seen, you're loved, you're known.

incredible metanarrative of scripture is that we're safe and we're secure, maybe not in our everyday circumstances, but when we look to Christ we're secure in him. There's an interesting like Ephesians nuance there that we are seated in heavenly places and even because it is a privilege to feel safe on this earth isn't it? It is a privilege to live in a safe postcode, to live with safe people, not everybody has that.

but there's still wider meta narrative over our lives that in Christ we are safe, eternally we are safe, we're hidden in him. ⁓ Okay, where was I? Okay, we're just, that's what I was doing. I was talking about what it means to regulate your nervous system. And we know that regulation impacts your brain. Of course, your brain is the CEO of your nervous system and regulation is what allows you

I think it's regulation is the peace of God that surpasses all understanding coming to take residence in your physical body. Not so it's just a spiritual idea. the peace of God, the spiritual idea that if I was just a better Christian, I would feel the peace of God. But actually, I mean regulation that allows us to access that feeling in our body through groundedness, through parasympathetic nervous system activation, through wisdom, connection, by residing in the prefrontal cortex, by the...

and silencing of the fear center of our brain, the amygdala. ⁓

So regulation isn't self-indulgent, it's how you come back into alignment with truth. In fact, it's therapeutically sound, therapeutically safe and deeply theologically sound. So let's look at some of these. Let's walk through these, not as a checklist, but just as invitations of things that we can do. So the first one is gratitude. Your brain has something called your reticular activating system, essentially a filter, how you filter the information that your brain sees.

all the time. It's taking in so much information all the time and this reticulated activating system, I've talked about it before on the pod on the pod that sounded really really pompous. I've talked about it before on the pod. I've talked about it here on the Faith Filled Therapy podcast. ⁓ So we know that when you practice gratitude, it's not a case of pretending that everything's good. It's allowing your brain or working with how God's designed your brain to scan for what you've told it matters.

And so essentially you're training your brain to notice goodness. So not only do when you lean into gratitude, I know what I meant to say. meant to tell you what I did when I was sat in the car. So I went, I went to the gym. went for a swim, but beforehand I was sat in the car, feeling my heartbeat lost in this kind of overwhelmed, foreboding sense feeling. And I lent into the prayer of gratitude. I began to be grateful.

but I paired that with breath work. So I'm breathing in slowly and exhaling even slower. That's a great tip. A long, slow exhale is very, very powerful for when you feel like that. It offers safety to your body. It tells your nervous system that is always scanning for safety. It's okay. We're safe. It gives your body a safety cue. So hand on the heart, slow breath in, even slower exhale out. And this is why I love

because then you compare it with the scripture. I went into Romans 838, thank you Jesus, or remind me Jesus. And then on my exhale, in my head and my heart saying that nothing can separate me from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. God, would you remind me on my inhale and on my exhale that nothing can separate me from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus. And so I'm saying that with a grateful heart. And so not only

Am I offering a safety key to my body by slowing down, by intentionally breathing, by focusing my mind on a biblical truth that has an impact on my spirit, my soul, my synapses, my body. I'm beginning to slow down that fear center of the brain that's scanning for threat. And then also leaning into gratitude, which is where we were. ⁓ And when you lean into gratitude,

boost of serotonin, boost of dopamine, boost of oxytocin or hormones neurotransmitters that God has given you. God has designed to be released when you give in, when you lean in to gratitude. Gratitude gently tells your nervous system we're not in immediate danger. It tells it and trains it to scan for what matters. So gratitude, really powerful. Singing, singing is one of the fastest ways to regulate your nervous system. Why?

Well, one, because it stimulates the vagus nerve, that is your 10th cranial nerve, the key nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. So when you sing, you activate the vagus nerve, you get into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is all about rest, digest, renew, restore. You can be at peace there. And when you stimulate that vagus nerve, that pathway tells your body you are safe. Again, it's another...

safety key. This is why scripture is so full of singing, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, as worship but also as regulation. I love that idea. I just love that idea that when you're breathing rhythmically and again you're doing that thing extending your exhale, you're activating calm in your body. So when you sing, when you are worshipping, you are wired for worship. So when you worship,

you get a huge shift that happens in your body. So not only is it beneficial for your spirit, you're aligning your truth, sorry, you're aligning yourself with spiritual truth, you're declaring the word of God. That's why what we sing really matters. I'm really big on what I listen to. There are some artists that I love and often I listen to them and I'll just get a Holy Spirit nudge and think, okay, I'm not gonna listen to them. That might be different for you, but that's my personal journey.

because what we declare, what we sing out matters. We wire our brain according to it. So singing songs of safety. I am just utterly obsessed with Brooke Ligertwood I think that's how you say her surname. She was Brooke Fraser. Her songs are so theologically sound, so therapeutically safe. ⁓ lead me to the cross. That's where I am in at the minute. Lead me to the cross and that just has this line that I just sing.

again and again rid me of myself I belong to you that's such a set there's so much safety in that rid me of myself rid me of my own foreboding feelings rid me of my anxiety rid me of me trying to manage everyone's perceptions of me rid me of all of that because I belong to you that's so much safety and that safety is somatic safety as well as spiritual safety it comes to live in your body

I I might make this into a two part actually because I was only going to let it be 20 minutes. So let's, which one should we go to? Let's talk about in this one, well we've talked about breathing. So let's just unpack it a little bit further. maybe just take a breath now. The deepest breath that you've taken all day. Maybe do a nice intentional four second inhale and a six second slow exhale.

though you've got to do what works for you. I've tried to do breathing before and been like, I think this is making me more anxious because I'm trying to breathe in a rhythm that doesn't feel natural. Or maybe we haven't been breathing. I just took a deep breath then and I was like, oh, whoa, head rush. Shows that haven't been breathing deeply today. Just take a minute. Maybe we could lean into that breath prayer like we did before. Just breathe in and ask God in your head and in your heart, Lord, would you remind me?

And then on your exhale that nothing can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And I just love breath prayer. It is, I think, the most powerful way to integrate spirit, soul and body. Your breath is one of the only things that sits between your conscious and your unconscious control. It's incredible. So much amazing stuff around breath.

around the name Yahweh, that sounds like the breathing in, the breathing out. And sometimes stillness, safety, spiritually, at a soul level, somatically starts with your breath. So breath just so incredibly powerful. And then I love to pair breath prayer with going out for a walk. I am such a, I just can get stuck in my head so easily.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Sometimes I forget that my body is anything other than a vehicle to carry my head around because I'm just very happy in my head but I have to remind myself to get out in my body and so going out, engaging in breath prayer out and about, going for a walk is, I mean, what a hypocrite, literally sat in bed all morning. But I will go out on a walk at some point.

but I love going out on a walk, one because I pair breath prayer, ⁓ which is great safety cue. Also then you have the bilateral stimulation of walking. When you walk, you're using the left and the right side of your body, the left and the right. That's why I have a little theory and I haven't had time to prove it yet. Maybe you know more about this than me. Not to walk with your hands in your pockets.

or to walk holding a phone because in order to really lean into bilateral stimulation, you almost need that kind of left foot forward, right arm forward, right leg forward, right foot forward, left arm forward, that kind of left and right and left and right. When you put your hands in your pocket, you don't get that to full effect. Left, right, left, right. The bilateral stimulation, what that does, excuse me, ⁓ what that does,

is it ⁓ uses both the left and the right hemisphere. And when we do that, that's regulating and activating and safe for your brain to use. Sorry, I said regulating and activating. I don't mean that. It's regulating to your brain ⁓ using the left and the right hemisphere. One's not becoming particularly dominant. So you're breathing, you're activating ⁓ left and right.

⁓ or you're using left and right hemisphere of your brain, but also then getting out in creation. That's really important. Shifting you out of survival mode into creation, into a place of awe and wonder, which has amazing benefits on the brain, on your brain, is getting out in God's nature, which then kind of leads us back to where we started, is that brings us to a place of gratitude, grateful.

I was out yesterday and I saw the blossom and I'm so grateful for it. And I looked at it and I looked at the detail of it and I took a moment to kind of really Psalm 46 10 I was still and I knew that He was God. And if He paid this much attention to a flower on a blossom tree, how much more, you know, how much more does He pay attention to us? Does He know us? Does He care for us? Does He love us? And so

There we have it, getting out in creation. Little tip, bonus tip there about the bilateral stimulation. We could maybe do a podcast on that. That would be good actually. I have done a podcast on that using the left and the right hemisphere. It was the one just before my last podcast before this one, before the large hiatus with my brilliant friend, Perri-Ann Brownback, who is a church leader and a scientist, like a proper lab scientist and leads a brilliant church in Fort Worth.

Texas and called the Abbey, but incredible woman. ⁓ And in that podcast, we talk about the left and the right hemisphere. And ⁓ yeah, she really is an expert on that. In that podcast, it tells you where you can get her book as well. ⁓ can't remember the title, but I can always remember the subtitle because it's so witty is a tale of two hemispheres. So if you did go on Amazon and Google and put in, sorry, searched Perri Anne Brownback, tale of two hemispheres, I'm sure it would come up.

an excellent bit of work from her. ⁓ breathing, singing, gratitude, all incredibly important. Then in the next podcast, I'll talk about rest, talk about dance, movement, somatic expression, safe community, stillness. Maybe we'll talk about awe and wonder a little bit. And then there's all other kinds of things, joy, laughter, crying, sighing, prayer. ⁓ This would be a three part podcast actually, but I hope it was helpful.

I hope if you are feeling or at any point you feel that sense of highly activated, anxious, overwhelmed, panicky, or even that other end of the spectrum of low, numb, stuck, going through the motions of actually our invitation in that moment is to regulate our nervous system. You don't need to do it on our own. God has weaved ways all the way throughout scripture, just things that are just by their very nature regulating. So yeah.

Be grateful today if you can. I know it can feel difficult but it's an incredible invitation from God into a place of gratitude. Yeah, be grateful. Sing, sing to him a new song. Mind if you find something just brilliantly, theologically sound to sing, to declare. Get yourself out in nature. Maybe lean into a breath prayer but all of those things are beautifully, therapeutically sound, therapeutically safe.

and theologically sound. bless you and I will see you next time.