Episode 82: The Missing Piece: Nervous System Healing

In this solo episode, Laura shares the biggest insight from her most recent qualification in trauma therapy, and why it feels like the missing piece of a puzzle she has been exploring for over a decade through yoga, psychology and personal development. While practices such as yoga, meditation, breathwork and mindset work can be incredibly effective at helping us regulate and soothe ourselves, Laura asks a deeper question: are we actually healing, or have we simply become very good at coping?

Exploring the nervous system, trauma, neuroplasticity and emotional capacity, Laura explains how unresolved stress can become trapped in the body, keeping us stuck in cycles of anxiety, burnout, reactivity and overwhelm. Through the concept of "open loops," she shares why true healing requires more than understanding our patterns intellectually—it requires safely feeling and completing the emotions we were once taught to suppress. This is a hopeful conversation about moving beyond survival mode, expanding our capacity for life, and finding greater joy, resilience and freedom through nervous system healing.

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Becky:

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www.therosealmanac.com

Laura:

www.soulsanctuarystudios.com

www.lauraclaytonwellness.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody, it is Laura here doing a solo episode today. And I wanted to share something around what I've been studying and learning recently and what an impact it has had both on me personally and professionally in the hope that it will help you guys somehow. And yeah, I think you'll understand why when we get to the end of it. So, what I'm going to be talking about today is how our nervous system is the foundation for life. So, as lots of you will know, I've spent over a decade now studying and teaching yoga and psychology. And I truly believe that yoga gives us the self-regulation skills to withstand the relentless challenges of life. And that life is obviously designed, you know, with challenges to help us grow. And more recently, during my trauma therapist certification, it really does feel like the final piece of the puzzle has finally clicked into place. So I've always believed in treating the root cause of disease. And by disease, I always write that with a sort of hyphen in the middle, like dis-ease. So by that I mean not being at ease in the mind and/or the body rather than its sort of literal definition of illness. So I have always believed in treating the root cause of disease. Taking medication to stop an expression of disease without ever getting to the root cause really only works for pharmaceutical gain and profit, but often it keeps us dependent on medication and then further medication for those side effects of medication. And so the cycle spirals and continues. Medication has been amazing and is amazing, and I'm very grateful for it. My issue with it is that in our world that we live on today with the NHS on its knees, it seems that we just outsource our power to people in the medical profession to sort of say, help me without doing anything to help ourselves in the first place. And I've always seen yoga, and by that I mean all eight limbs of yoga. So that is breathwork, meditation, self-study, ethics, and the yoga poses as a way to treat the root cause. And for over a decade, I have seen it work. So we use the frameworks in yoga to bring our samskaras, which are these deeply trodden thought patterns, into light. And we start to see how so much of our disease has come because of the cultural lie that we aren't good enough in some way. So we spend a lifetime trying to prove that we are via a ton of compensatory behaviors. So if you imagine, like when you're going to maybe a yoga teacher training, we do a lot of this self-study, Svadishaya, we call it, and we're looking at these samskaras, these deeply trodden pathways in the mind, and we bring them into light, and we start to see quite quickly that really it was this lie that we're not good enough that has led to all of these compensatory behaviors. And maybe those compensatory behaviors look like trying to be perfect, right? Trying to feel good enough by looking perfect. And that's where we see all this like cosmetic surgery and everything going on, all these diets, all these products. Like maybe if I look perfect, then I'll feel good enough, you know, then I'll be lovable, which is this like core human need. Maybe if I buy more things, maybe if I have better clothes, better car, better house, maybe if my kids go to a better school, you know, all of these things to make me feel like I'm good enough, finally. Or, you know, maybe I'm gonna work more. Maybe my self-worth is connected to my achievement. So I'm gonna work more. I'm actually gonna become a workaholic so that I then feel like a good enough person, like I feel deserving of good things. Or maybe we punish ourselves, you know, maybe we inflict pain on ourselves in some way. And sometimes, you know, there's obviously the really literal ways that we can do that, but I think there are lots of other ways that we inflict pain on ourselves that are sort of branded as good, you know. Sometimes the level of pain that we put ourselves through, maybe physically through endurance events or you know, very extreme physical events, is is putting ourselves through pain. Maybe if I punish myself enough, then I've kind of done my time, like repenting, and then I'll feel like a good person. And consumerism feeds off these insecurities, right? It shows us more and more pictures of perfect lives, perfect faces, perfect bodies, always reaffirming the lie that we aren't good enough because it really works for their bottom line. But yoga sees through it. The Maya, the illusion of the material world is what it calls it. It calls bullshit on it, if you like. Its frameworks explain the poisons of the mind, how we can get caught up in them, the traps of the illusion of the Maya, the material world, and remind us of the truth of sattva that we were always good enough as we were, Atman. So the compensatory behaviors eventually, when we start learning about all this stuff, do fall away. It's almost like an emotional inoculation process, right? Like done right, and that is you have to do it right, your yoga classes should be your safe space to practice a new way of being, so that when a pose triggers us to not feeling good enough, which it can do, right? Those of you who feel nervous to go to a yoga class or nervous to do a certain pose, that's what's going on, right? It's triggering you to not feel good enough in some way. But if we are doing that in a safe space and we are reminded by the teacher through the teachings that we were always good enough, we still are good enough, this is just a trigger, and it's an opportunity to learn how to make something work for you, to adjust the pose to make it work for you, and give them options to do that, and that is empowerment. That is moving from a victim, I'm not good enough, I knew I've never been good enough, feeding into that cycle of not feeling good enough, and switching it into you can change this to make it work for you. That is empowerment, and by doing that and by trying a different way of doing the pose and realizing, yeah, that does feel good for me. We learn like independence, confidence, autonomy, self-trust, to not follow the crowd, to not worry about what my neighbour's up to, to not have to keep up with the Joneses, to not worry about what other people think of me, to prioritize health over appearance, right? In your value system. This is what yoga can teach us if it's taught in the right way. If it's never about what it looks like in a yoga pose, but it's all about what it teaches you about yourself, the tools, the self-regular regulatory tools that it gives you to feel good enough as you were. And eventually, by doing that over time, we can really re-strengthen our muscle of intuition. You know, that voice inside that starts to genuinely, wholeheartedly believe that I do know what's good for me and that I am enough. I've always been enough. Our neuroplasticity literally can change in the brain, and we start living that way off the mat. So we no longer end up lured in by all the shiny temptations that the ego wants in the material world, and we're no longer overcompensating for a lie that we weren't good enough because we start to believe that we always have been and we always are. And so the compensatory behaviors start to fall away. We don't feel like we have to do the perfectionism thing, we don't have to be addicted to the gym, we don't have to be a workaholic, all of that stuff starts to fall away because we realize that we were always good enough through this practice. So it's pretty powerful, right? And that's why I've been so passionate about yoga for so many years. And then astrology came along and went, okay, now that you realize that you're good enough and you no longer need to do that job to prove anything to anyone, what do you really love? What is your real purpose of being here? What is the reason that your heart beats without you telling it to? You have been given this gift, you've been given a soul, you are here to share something. What is your gift? And astrology can show us that. And it shows us also the challenges that we're going to face on that journey and gives reason to those hardships because it shows us the lessons that we're here to learn, why we're growing in that way. What is our lesson of this lifetime? Our North Node, hence the title of the podcast. So, for a long time, you can imagine that combination of yoga and astrology felt pretty unstoppable. And, you know, hence why I talk about it on the podcast and I teach it and I do it, and you know, that's what I care about. And more recently, I've been doing my trauma therapist certification, and I have realized a deeper part of the puzzle, and in a way, it's just made everything else click. And it's it's just real it's made me realize something that as amazing as yoga, psychology, astrology are, and of course they are for all the above reasons, it's made me wonder does their information actually heal the root cause or does it just help us soothe and navigate it? So, to explain that, right? A grossly oversimplified summary of trauma is having open stress leaps in our body. And if you have listened to any of my podcasts before about stress and stress leaps and trauma in the nervous system, you'll have an understanding of that. Very simply put, an animal shakes after being stressed to complete its stress cycle in the body, and humans basically need to do the same. But whether that is shaking or whether it's crying or shouting or expressing whatever emotion needs to be expressed, however, it needs to be expressed, it's going to look different for everybody. It needs to complete the stress cycle, just like an animal shaking, to close the loop. But if we are taught not to cry or shout, to be a good girl, or to suppress emotions, or to be taught that some emotions are bad, like sadness or anger, then we will interrupt that stress cycle. We will not be able to close the loop, and so the loop remains open. But with an open loop, the body is stuck in fight or flight, it's in survival, and that will feel like living with anxiety, and that is only because the body is actually trying to close the loop, it's actually looking for a trigger to be able to complete its cycle of stress response. But over time, as we continue to interrupt the cycles, the open loops accumulate, and our body is then triggered by so much, so often, we are stuck in fight and flight. We're living in survival. And if we live there long enough, we might eventually go into burnout and then into freeze shutdown mode, which often looks like depression. So it begs the question then, how do we close these leaps? And this is where the overused phrase feel your feelings really does mean something. And please stay with me on this because I think that phrase is being so overused now that you know it's often accompanied by an eye roll. But the importance of it is that, like the animal shaking, we have to bring it back to the body to close the loop. So it's not about thinking about it more, it's not even about understanding or intellectualizing it more, it's about actually physically feeling it in the body for our nervous system. We have to take a moment to feel any physical sensation in our body calling our attention and stay with it. Follow it around the body, not go into the story, stay with the body, the sensation, until we feel safe enough to fully release it, however, it needs to be released, whether that is shaking or crying or shouting or talking, maybe breathing, sighing more like somatic movements to complete the body's nervous system, stress response. So movement can help, but only if it is specifically connected to the sensation that is calling your attention in the body. So not just moving in a way that looks nice, you know, or is working on getting us more toned, but in a way that is a physical response to a sensation in the body to close the loop. So, in that way, you can then imagine how lots of holistic practices like yoga, like counting breaths, like sound bath, help us to self-regulate so that we calm down temporarily, but they don't actually close the loops. So, in a way, we are back to symptom treatment again. We are soothing open loops and definitely in a more holistic way than medication, but it is still symptom treatment, really, because it's not getting to the root cause, which is closing the loop. A bit like psychology, right? We talk a lot, and this is what I've done, right, for over 10 years. Talk a lot about the problems, help people fully understand them. But that still is intellectual, it's in the head, it doesn't actually move us into the body and give us the time and space to sit specifically with the nervous system sensations that need to close the loops. And as someone who wholly believes in treating the root cause of issues, as first mentioned, I can't help but feel the absolute importance of trauma therapy in this way. And what is a shame is that the name trauma therapy is so off-putting because people assume that you have to experience acute trauma of some form, you know, like a house fire or being in the war or being in some form of accident, etc. And of course, that is trauma. It's what you call big T trauma, but it's so far from the truth of what trauma really is. So trauma is is never actually the event itself. Like some people go through those big events and they don't have PTSD, right? They don't have post-traumatic stress syndrome because they were able to feel the sensations and close the loops. So it isn't about the size of the event. Trauma is never the event itself, it is anything that occurred where you interrupted the loop, where basically you were not seen or understood in the event, where you didn't give yourself the chance to fully feel the emotion because it didn't feel safe enough for some reason. It was interrupted, so the loop didn't close. And now your nervous system is stuck in fight and flight, and you have loops open, so you're constantly triggered. And the more you continue that pattern, so the more you continue to suppress over the years and interrupt the processes, the more loops are open, the shorter your fuses. I often liken it to like the image of a candle in a container. So the more emotions that we stuff into the container, the shorter the whip gets. And so we end up living with a very short fuse because we've got so many loops open in there, we're constantly triggered. But willpower cannot override our nervous system. You cannot willpower your way into feeling safe, happy, calm, joyful, or more positive. That is where toxic posity lives, and it's toxic because it bypasses the root of the symptom. And that is where inauthenticity lives, because you would have to fake looking happy if you don't truly feel it. And we wear all these masks to try and get through our life whilst we're in survival. But your body will keep the score even if you don't want to believe it. And if we don't listen to the whispers, the headaches, the joint pain, the brain fog, the body has to shout. And this is where the nervous breakdown occurs. The only way is through, but you don't have to do it on your own. In fact, it's hard to do it on your own, and this is why I do feel trauma coaching is so important to create that safe space for people to fully feel their truth, to grieve it, to release it, to complete the loops. And the fantastic thing about being a human is that we have neuroplasticity in the brain. So we can literally rewire the way that we think, and this is largely due to our ability to close loops. So the first few months of my training had to have my own therapy working through my own stuff so that I could hold space and not be triggered by others. And if I'm completely honest, I was not convinced. I was not convinced that this feel-your feelings thing was gonna work for me. And that's even me, right? As a yoga teacher, trainer, as a psychotherapist, I wasn't convinced that just sitting with sensation in my body was gonna be enough. But what I can't explain, and why I'm so passionately going on about this at the moment, is how changed I feel. Like for me, it comes down to capacity. Capacity is the word, right? That candle wick analogy. By closing the loops, by feeling the sensations in my body, the loops are no longer open, so I am just not nearly as triggered. And if I am, I can sense the sensation and welcome it and let it complete the cycle instead of using another tool to soothe it or interrupt it. And I do notice it most with my kids. I can hold space for them, and I now want them to fully feel their feelings, not just try and soothe them or shut them down or hurry it up. I'm fully with them as they allow themselves to fully experience the emotion uninterrupted. And I hope this is where the generational trauma ends. So if you are reading this and feeling emotional about the state of your nervous system currently, then first of all, feel it. Feel the feeling, grieve it, and also know that it can all change, that you can come out of survival and you can find joy again. You just have to close the loops. And what has been so wonderful about this education for me is yeah, of course, how transformed I feel now in my life, but also how I teach, how I teach yoga. So our USP at Soul Sanctuary was always bringing the psychology into yoga because I knew instinctively it should never be about what a pose looks like, it should always be about what a pose teaches us about ourselves, and that's why I always brought the psychology into it, why I did my psychotherapy training, combining the tools of yoga and psychology, and that is what made our teachers stand out. The success of the studio and what people love about our yoga teacher training is that combination. But now that I understand the nervous system perspective, I'm looking at these ancient frameworks with so much more understanding. And the amazing thing is this is where I have like even more sort of reverence for the practice, is that the word yoga means connection, and all the tools were designed to actually help us reconnect with how we feel, with sensation in the body, first with our physical body, then our emotional body, and it's all outlined that that is the route to bliss, to ananda or to samadhi, they call it. So when we start with our physical body and then our emotional body, and then we move to bliss, it's literally that diagram is outlined in the cautious, it gives us frameworks for how to feel because sometimes when we've been so disconnected from sensation for so long, it's really hard just to drop into subtle sensation in the body, and yoga literally gives us a map as to how to do that. So you can see how this is not only sort of transformed how I feel and how I live my life, but now how I do the teachings. So, yeah, the kosher's yoga is literally designed for this, and the poses are used to facilitate that process of reconnecting to sensation, if taught in that way. So it has not only changed how I live my life, but I am now I feel so much more embodied in what I teach, and I'm just really excited to share that with others. So I hope that that information has helped you kind of understand and clarify what is going on in your body and what tools you need for which part, because it's really important that we are able to understand how important it is to feel our feelings, how to do that, and how to use some of the other tools to self regulate and soothe during that process, but to know which one does what.