#5: Navigating the Layers of Stress: Katherine Watkins on Unleashing Your Nervous System's Potential

In this episode, we are joined by Katherine Watkins, a holistic health and nervous system coach from the United Kingdom. Katherine shares her inspiring journey of transitioning from a lawyer to a health coach after healing her autoimmune disease naturally, without recourse to Western medicine. With her extensive knowledge in health and nutrition, Katherine now helps people worldwide recover from chronic health ailments, including adrenal and thyroid disorders, mold poisoning, and Lyme disease.

Katherine employs various techniques in her practice, such as limbic brain retraining, polyvagal exercises, somatic therapies, breath work, and functional neurology. Her holistic approach aims to help clients reclaim their vibrant health, develop deeply connected and intimate relationships, and awaken to their fullest purpose and potential.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN:

Natural Healing: Explore how holistic approaches can effectively heal chronic health issues without relying on conventional Western medicine.

Nervous System Significance: Understand the nervous system's critical role in overall health and how it impacts relationships, stress, and well-being.

Stress Management: Learn techniques like limbic brain retraining and polyvagal exercises to manage and mitigate stress effectively.

Gut-Health Connection: Discover the vital link between gut health and the nervous system, and how stress can affect digestive health.

Holistic Practices: Gain practical insights into holistic practices like meditation, breath work, and somatic therapies to enhance mental and physical health.

01:18 Katherine transition from a lawyer to a nervous system coach

08:59 The importance of the nervous system

10:19 The limbic brain retraining program

11:55 The effects of stress 

12:10 The importance of the nervous system in our relationships

13:13 The nervous system into detail: What it is, its functions and types

20:16 Polyvagal chat

28:17 A regulated nervous system

30:10 The gut and stress relationship explained

31:24 Forms of stress

34:29 How to build your window of tolerance

38:27 The limbic brain exercise

42:06 Meditation

1:03:08 Practical exercise to keep you in the moment

1:09:26 What is Heart Rate Variability and its importance?

Connect with Katherine :

Email: katherinehelenwatkins@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherine.watkins.716

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

1. Deb Dana
   Deb Dana is known for her accessible work on Polyvagal Theory, making it easy to understand and apply in real-life contexts.
   Deb Dana's Books on Amazon
2. Stephen Porges
   Stephen Porges is the creator of Polyvagal Theory, which is foundational to understanding the science behind nervous system regulation. While his works are more technical, they are essential reading for those interested in the deeper science.
   Stephen Porges' Books on Amazon
3. Arielle Schwartz
   Arielle Schwartz is a somatic therapist and author with a focus on trauma recovery and nervous system regulation. Her work is an excellent resource for those exploring somatic healing.
   Arielle Schwartz's Books on Amazon

Insta/TikTok: @BiohackingEve
Website: www.BiohackingEve.com

Transcript

0:00

the other end of the spectrum. And this is where many, many, many people are existing and have no idea. It's a state of numbness and dissociation, and it's very low level. And people are so used to it that they don't realize that that what they've actually done is they've lost true connection to themselves. They've kind of dissociated from their feelings. To be able to detach from the situation. Welcome back to Biohacking Eve, health Optimization for Women with Judith Miller, where we shine a light on everything that will help you reach your best self. As a woman, as unique and individual as a, you can be live long. But my friend. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode. Today we have Katherine Watkins on the show. Katherine is a holistic health and nervous system coach from the United Kingdom. After healing her autoimmune disease naturally without recourse to western medicine, she decided to use extensive knowledge of health and nutrition to help others all over the world recover from chronic health ailments. including adrenal and thyroid disorders, mold poisoning, and Lyme disease. In her practice, Katherine draws on limbic brain retraining techniques, polyvagal exercises, somatic therapies, breathwork, and functional neurology to help clients reclaim their vibrant health. Give them the ability to experience deeply connected and intimate relationships and awaken them to their fullest purpose and potential. Catherine, welcome to the show. Thank you, Judith, so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So I would say you have a very interesting journey. You started as a lawyer. Now you're a nervous system coach. Tell me about that. Well, it has been a very interesting journey. So when I was a lawyer, I have to say I was a little bit disappointed by the corporate life, you know, I thought it was just going to be very exciting. Um, high flying, it turned out to be very, very stressful, really, really long hours, and I was really struggling health wise and it was, it was pretty clear after a while that it wasn't really. For me, you know, my health was kind of getting run into the ground and towards the end of it, I remember asking for, I think I'd worked for six months without a weekend. At that stage. And I asked for some time off and they said, no. And I said, that, that that's enough. And I took it and I took a holiday and I came back, went to Mexico. And while I was in Mexico, it all caught up with me. So basically I, you know, people would say it's adrenal fatigue, you know, all these different words, but basically it was total burnout. And I got myself an autoimmune disease. Um, so that was Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And back then I knew absolutely nothing about holistic health. Okay. So I started studying a little bit myself by doing some health coaching courses, and I also started, um, I actually was training to be a personal trainer at that point in time as well. And I started working in this gym where they were training bodybuilders. So women and men to kind of train for physique competitions, but using principles of functional medicine. And I'd never heard of any of this before. And I was actually wanting to do this program myself. So they signed me up and got me to do all these tests and stuff. And this is where I started, started learning about functional medicine. Now, at the same time, my then boss Dane, who is incredibly intelligent man, he was actually seeing some of the best health consultants all over the world to deal with his toxoplasmosis, which he was suffering from. So at that point in time, I actually started meeting and mingling with all these amazing people. So it's kind of a twofold. thing. I was kind of healing my own stuff and I was consulting with meeting all these amazing people at the same time. That's when I first got into it. My, my autoimmunity hadn't really kicked in then. It was more a case of, I'd say, you know, adrenal fatigue. Um, but I managed to get that under control and I decided that That was enough in my kind of corporate life. And I started studying full time to get more into the health sphere. So I finished off my course, which I was doing at a college in New York, which is about a six month, a very, very basic health coaching course, finished off my personal training. And also. the functional medicine stuff that went along with the personal training. And this is where I learned that all this is fascinating to me. And most women don't know this, but all the different areas in which you hold fat in your body are related to different health and hormonal imbalances. Okay. So for example, if you've got a lot of weight around your stomach, this is going to be to do with insulin and cortisol. If you've got, if you're holding a lot of weight around your thighs, this is likely to be excess. estrogen. And so it was really amazing. I was getting to learn about all of this stuff. And I, back then I was quite, you know, very into what I looked like. It was very important to me. So I was quite obsessed with all of this stuff. And you know, all these clients were coming to us and we said, well, basically we can help you do this target fat reduction, which everyone of course Been told that they can't do so, you know, it's a very easy product to sell, but at the same time, what we were really doing is we were, we were giving them what they wanted, which was basically fixing their body and getting them to look a certain way. But what we were actually doing is fixing all of these underlying hormonal imbalances, gut inflammation, et cetera, et cetera, nutrient deficiencies. Um, it was interesting because many of these, especially the women that I was working with, they had come to us from backgrounds where they had been training too rigorously for competitions. They'd been dieting heavily. They'd been training far too much. And they'd gone into this state of, you know, we call it metabolic adaptation. Some people call it starvation mode. So your body just goes into this. It's usually shut down state and then we would actually have to bring them back from this and some of these girls, it wasn't just they were having trouble losing weight because some of them were eating 800 calories a day, exercising two or three hours a day and they still weren't losing weight, but they were starting to get really, really sick. You know, they lost their periods. They were getting adrenal issues, thyroid issues, um, autoimmunity. And so that was really when I started really getting involved in this work. So both healing my own adrenal fatigue because I've been doing, you know, it. stress from the lawyer job, also over exercising, doing a lot of these dieting, you know, us women, we tend to like starve ourselves for a while and then we go the other way. We just kind of this yo yo dieting. Yeah. Some sort of holiday. There's always an excuse for that. I agree. Yeah. And it becomes, you know, I think for a lot of women, it becomes. Cause there's so much pressure to look a certain way. And we, we start to really play so much of our importance on these things. And we've become, you know, the amount of time I used to think spending, like used to spend thinking about what I was going to eat. Even I went out to a restaurant or what my. Diet plan or, or exercise plan was going to be for the next week. I mean, these are all stresses and actually, you know, this will kind of take us on to where we're going, but all of this kind of mindset stuff and this stress all creates imbalances in the nervous system, which actually in the long run makes it so much harder for us to lose weight because we're actually not in a physical state. Where we're able to lose weight. Okay. So anyway, so that little period of my life ended. I actually moved to Mexico full time. I went there for five years while I was there. I really went heavily into my learning everything. Okay. Mexico is a really interesting time for me. I've got myself into some really, really stressful situations. I had a lot of money stolen from me from a con man. Um, and that, that was really, really interesting. I didn't really have any idea of how to deal with stress at that point in my life. Um, luckily the periods of stress were interspersed with long periods of lying on the beach, which I think got me through, but when I ended up moving back to Australia in, uh, So that was like five years later, I got myself into a bad relationship and that was the point at which I got really, really, really sick because I'd been avoiding stress for really a lot of the time that had been keeping me through. But when I was thrown into this situation of actually being in a very, very stressful situation all the time that I wasn't really able to kind of get out of, my health just fell apart. And that was when my Hashimoto's really kicked in. Big time. You know, and I really got myself into a terrible state. I felt like I was having what I probably was. I mean, a nervous breakdown. Um, I went through periods of being really, really skinny, then periods of being unable to lose weight, really, really depressed, really, really anxious, unable to sleep, but it's still exhausted all the time. This whole, you know, wide and tired thing, which you probably Heard about and I was like, okay, so I need to stop all of this and I need to put everything that I've learned into practice and this was the point of time in which I realized that there was a lot more to health than just supplements and all of these things, which I've been using with clients for this time. Okay, so this went on, I fixed some of my stuff again, I went back into working. Very, very stressful. I was working with, um, by then I was working with a lot of clients suffering with some really complex illnesses themselves. A lot of autoimmunity, a lot of thyroid stuff, a lot of, um, some mold and Lyme stuff. So really amazing, you know, very, very difficult things to fix. Um, and what I saw, and this is when I really started to learn about how important the nervous system is. So what I saw is that the clients that were healing, they all had a pretty good handle on their stress. And they had also a really positive attitude, right? They had this like, I can do it. I will do it. I'm going to uncover every stone and I'm going to get better. And then there was on the flip side, there were, there were the clients who were just, you know, literally a nervous wreck. And they also had an attitude of, I can't do it. I can't heal. My body can't do it. Nothing's going to work. You know, and I saw this clear cut distinction between these two types of clients. At the same time, one of my really close friends who I really, I have to credit her for, for me moving into this line of work. Cause she really showed me what could be done. She had been struggling with Lyme. I don't know how many years, maybe five, maybe 10. Really, really, really long time, um, Australian girl. And she had literally been on death's door. And I think the doctors had actually told her that she, she might die. She was, she was in a really, really serious state. And then she signed up for a brain retraining program, and it was just a simple online program. And in two weeks, she had fixed 90 percent of her symptoms and I was like, that's incredible. So I need to learn more about this. So that's when I started studying all of these different systems. So she had done a limbic brain retraining program, which I went into that. And then I really discovered along the way that that had its limitations and that you need to. Also look at the stuff which is in the body. So the limbic brain deals with, you know, your actual fight or flight response that's happening at the cognitive level. And then you've got your, um, your body, which is storing a lot of the trauma. Okay. So we need to go there as well. And then I learned about the polyvagal nerve, which goes from your brainstem down to your. Well, throughout your whole body, where it's called the wandering nerve, and then that links your basically your brain and your body, and that's really relevant. So I started learning about all of these different systems, and I started saying to my clients, you know, my really sick clients, I'm happy to work with you, but only if you're willing to go and do. this work. I wasn't teaching it officially at this point in time, but I knew other people who were, so I would send them off to do this work. And it was just, I started to realize after a while that it was actually probably more important than the work that I was doing with the supplements and all this stuff. So, After a while, I just transitioned over and, you know, it's the one thing that I credit as being mainly responsible for me healing my own stuff. Um, I had a big relapse about five years ago. Again, I've been put in a hugely stressful situation and I'm prone to, to anxiety and stress intolerance. Anyway, I think, you know, there are certain genes also, which predisposes to this kind of stuff. But I realized when I was in this position, the issue was really me, you know, I needed to learn how to control my stress so that I could actually one heal, but I also realized how much it was affecting my relationships. And I don't think any of us really know how important the nervous system. Is in our relationships, because it's actually the one thing that determines our ability to connect. So that's a long story, but that's, that's how I got into it all. And, um, the transformations that I see in people, and it's just so interesting because people come to me for, um, health stuff, but we end up working on their relationships. Or their life purpose or because it's all interconnected. And once they start kind of getting in touch with regulating their nervous system, they start connecting with their authentic self. And from that place, you really realize that anything is possible and all these possibilities start opening up for us. So it's, it's really, it's an amazing thing, the nervous system. So tell us more about that. Sort of what are the, I mean, you know, some of the listeners will have come across that, uh, in, in more or less detail. Some of them will not have, tell us about what is the nervous system? What is its functions? What are the different, not different types, but the different sort of states that you can be, because I find that really, really, so the nervous system broadly is split into two branches and most people may have heard of, um, One of them, which is called fight or flight. This is a sympathetic arm, and then parasympathetic is your rest and digest function. So people have normally thought of sympathetic as bad and parasympathetic as good. It's not quite as simple as that, but you can broadly think of this distinction between. Rest and digest and fight or flight, uh, fight or flight being where you're, you know, all amped up and you're anxious and you're, maybe there's a bit of aggression, but it's a very stressed state, you know, a noticeably stressed state. Now, it actually goes a little bit further than that, because if we break down the nervous system, though, on the parasympathetic side, which people normally think of as good, they think this is relaxed, right? This is the way we're supposed to be, but actually the parasympathetic nervous side has a more, um, sinister, Part to it called dorsal vagal and in this state, this is more of a shutdown state. So there are actually three main states, the nervous system. There's ventral vagal. So ventral vagal is basically the good part of our parasympathetic. And actually we do have a little diagram that we can show some of our people. I think you're going to put it in the show notes, aren't you, Judith? So the state that the green zone, we can call it is ventral vagal. And this is the state in which we are really, really calm. we're grounded. Importantly, we're open for connection. It's the only state which we're truly open for connection. And this is the state in which everything is possible for us, including the ability to heal because this is where restaurant restoration and regeneration occurs. Um, this is a state where I would stay calm and grounded. This is the state where we're able to connect with other people on an intimate level and also open up to, you know, more spiritual connections as well. Then there's the sympathetic, which we spoke a little bit about. This is fight or flight. I think of this is the red zone. This is where for those of you who know the analogy of let's say we have a lion, okay, and we've got an animal and the lion comes along and the animal needs to mobilize a response. So sympathetic is a state where we mobilize energy and we take that energy from all the different areas of the body. So all the things which aren't an emergency. reproduction, digestion, right? All of our hormones. It takes all the energy from all of these really important functions and it directs it to dealing with the threat. Okay, so either fight or flight. So you're either going to fight the lion or you're going to run away from the lion. So when you see the animal, it's still got this energy and it's trying its hardest. It still thinks it can get away and it's giving it, you know, this is fight or flight. Now, dorsal is the state of the parasympathetic, which I just alluded to before. So both the parasympathetic part of the nervous system, in contrast to sympathetic, is a state of immobilization. Okay, so in sympathetic, we're mobilizing energy, and in the parasympathetic, it's the opposite. Okay, we have to conserve energy. Okay, so this can either be ventral vagal, where we're very relaxed. And happy to conserve energy. We're very still and calm, but then we have dorsal vagal, which is like a freeze or a shutdown. We can't move. In this state, because our brain is telling us that this is where you are. And this is what you need to do to survive. And if we take in the example of the animal that's running away from the lion. So at first it has the energy to fight or the energy to run away, but then the lion catches the animal and it's in the jaws and the animal just goes limp and it's just there. And this is because it's brain has told the limbic brain has told it that, that this is what it needs to do. That it's pretty much, it needs to give up because it's going to die anyway. So it's a state of, I give up, I can't, helpless, numb, dissociated, you know, like switch off and just be somewhere else. And your whole body is just immobilized. Okay, you can't move. And this is dorsal. So would you say that the human equivalent is depression, burnout, etc? It's really interesting. So I think what's a really important principle to understand Is that the nervous system, the state of the nervous system limits what is biologically possible for us in terms of thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Okay. So for example, from ventral vagal, certain things are possible from dorsal vagal, certain things are possible and from sympathetic certain things are possible. And I kind of touched on this a little bit before, but when we're in ventral, which is our green zone, this is a state of. I can. It's a very positive state. It's a state of I've got this. It doesn't matter what you throw at me. I'm, you know, I can handle this. I've got everything under control. Even if I have adversity, I will find a way. You know, it's very grounded, positive and you are open for connection, right? So you are open. You're actively reaching out like a tree in its branches, looking for resources, looking for solutions, looking for support, looking for connection. Okay. Now, when you're in, let's go through each of these states in turn. So when you're in sympathetic, this is a state, as I said, of mobilized energy. So you're very, you're either at one end of the spectrum, you could be angry, right? So maybe you're having a fight with someone, right? Energy's mobilized to have a fight, or you're mobilizing to run away. That might be one end of the spectrum, but at the lower end of the spectrum, it might, for example, be low level anxiety, right? Rumination, thoughts going over and over in your head. What else would be sympathetic? You know, we have good sympathetic too, that can be a little bit confusing, but anything with energy is, is sympathetic. So if you're out playing sport, for example, you need to mount a sympathetic response. Um, but dorsal is a state of very much I can't. So if we go back to the example of the animal, it's lying in the jaws, it's given up everything. So your brain is telling you, your nervous system is informing you at that time, that you can't. So you are going to be in the state of I can't. If someone says, do something, I can't. You're going to feel like there's no hope. You're going to feel hopeless at the extreme end of the spectrum for a human. This would be suicidal ideations. Okay. And you can see that with the animal, right? It's already preparing for death. So it makes perfect sense. Right. But then at the other end of the spectrum, and this is where many, many, many people are existing and have no idea. It's a state of numbness and dissociation. And it's very low level and people are so used to it that they don't realize that that what they've actually done is they've lost true connection to themselves. They've kind of dissociated from their feelings. To be able to detach from the situation. So we've got, um, the audience can take a look at the little chart that I've got there, but basically we can think of it as a ladder and we can put Ventral Vega, which is our green zone at the top of the ladder. In the middle, we have this. Sympathetic zone, which is the fight or flight, red zone, angry, anxious, ruminating, still got some energy, right? To put into the stress. And then we've got this dorsal at the bottom. And what I see dorsal as is a state where all of the things that we want to feel in sympathetic have become too dangerous for the brain to deal with. You know, so the brain sees all these uncomfortable feelings, stresses, emotions, all these things going on, and it can't cope. The limbic brain says, no, dangerous, shut down, and all of those things get pushed down into a very depressed, dissociated, dorsal state where you're not really feeling much of anything. You might be feeling like, like depression, but a lot of numbness. You've, you've become very dissociated from your feelings. And there's a very flat state, apathetic, no motivation. You don't have the energy. And, but it's, it's masking all of these very activating emotions, which the brain has just not had the capacity to deal with. So it shoved them down under the surface. So in this state, so maybe you've got someone who's just had an awful lot of trauma their whole life, or even a lot of, not a lot of trauma, but a lot of constant stress, or they're just a person who's very sensitive to stress, right? So a lot of people will be like, but I haven't had any trauma. But maybe you're really, really sensitive and just someone jumping out at you too many times can cause trauma for you. So everybody is so different. So when you have a person in dorsal, this is where life has just become too much and they've just decided it's more comfortable for them or their nervous system has decided for them that it's safer to live here at this level with everything bottled down under the surface, rather than letting it come up because it's too much to bear. And, um, you know, I used to be very closed off in relationships and I, I didn't. Really know what it was. I remember I went to a therapist when I was like 25 or something. I said, I was a lawyer at the time. I said, got in there thinking I knew everything about the world. What's wrong with me? Why can't I fall in love? She said, you've got intimacy issues. And I said, what do you mean? She said, you have problems letting people get close to you. You're not in touch with your feelings. I said, Oh, what a load of hogwash. And I laughed and I never really looked at it again until years later, but she was absolutely right. Okay. But then I went through years of learning about relationships and attachment theory and you know, why I was, why I was like this, but nothing really helped. Right. Like I was learning a lot of stuff with my brain, but my, it was because my nervous system had. It was, it was determining what was possible for me. So then we have the different states and different possibilities. So from this state of dorsal vagal, being intimate in a connection was not possible for me. But there was me blaming myself, why can't I do this thing, telling myself to do something differently. But you can't do something differently if your nervous system is in that state. Okay, so then it gets us to the question of once we're in this state, how do we? Think about getting out of that state, right? And what's really interesting is if, you know, your audience want to take a look at the handouts and look at the polyvagal ladder map. You've got, as I said, you've got ventral at the top. You've got sympathetic in the middle and you've got vent, uh, dorsal at the bottom. Now, if you're in dorsal to get to the top ventral, you have to climb through sympathetic, right? That means you're going to have to start feeling all the things which you've been pushing down under the surface. And as you do that work, it can bring stuff up, right? So this is why, when we're doing this work, the first thing we need to do, because we do this work on multiple levels, so the first thing that we need to do is teach the brain itself that when these activating emotions come up, it's actually okay. Right? Because at the moment, the brain's reaction, as soon as it senses something like this, it's going to push it straight back down again. Right? So we have to do some brain exercises to teach us that when something comes up, okay, it might not be pleasant. But, but it's not gonna kill us.'cause our brain actually is, is seeing it as a lion. You know, an emotion is a lion says, this is dangerous. I need to, to get rid of you. So that's the first thing we need to do. And then we need to get in touch with things. We need to get in touch with our body, you know? So if we've been end doorless especially, well both sympathetic and dorsal really, I mean. Ventral is our state of connection and both sympathetic and dorsal are states of protection. Okay, so whichever one of these, it's really our body's way of trying to protect us from something, okay, to keep us safe. The nervous system, I'll say this, the nervous system is foundationally seeking to answer one question. Am I safe? That's it. If the answer is yes, almost anything is possible. And if it's no, almost nothing is possible. Okay, so. We need to deal with things on the level of the brain, first of all, so that when emotions and things come up, the stresses, we're able to be in a place to say, okay, I'm ready to deal with this, I can sit with it, I can feel it, I'm okay with it, without the brain immediately pushing it down into Shut down. And this is why also I don't recommend people jumping straight into meditation without doing the limbic brain work, because if you go into meditation and you're really, really quiet, you're going to suddenly be left alone with all of these things, all of these traumas, all of these stressors, and they're going to start coming up. because when we're silent with ourselves, all of that stuff comes up. And I think this is why many people are distracting themselves, right? With various things, keeping busy, whatever it is, to avoid being alone with themselves, because when you are, all this stuff comes up. Now, if you haven't done the limbic brain work and you suddenly dive into meditation, all of this stuff starts coming up. And your brain is immediately going to go, I can't handle this. So either you're going to go straight into dorsal shutdown, or you're going to have a massive sympathetic reaction. You know, you might get insomnia, all kinds of things could happen. But meditation, if you jump straight into it, can really set you back if it happens too early. So that's why I like to introduce meditation a bit later on, after we've been through some of the other work. So does that mean meditation could actually be damaging or would just be unnecessarily painful at that stage? I would say it doesn't help things at all, because we are trying to teach the brain that we are safe. So if we're introducing more things that our brain perceives as unsafe without teaching that they're safe first, that just sets us back. Because it's reinforcing the story that we have in our brain, which is It's not safe. Life isn't safe. I'm not safe. Because if we have a dysregulated nervous system, so say we're trapped in sympathetic or say we're trapped in dorsal or a combination of both, our brains already decided the world's not safe. So we're always scanning for danger and we're looking for it and you know that what you look for you find. So we're looking, that's not safe, that's not safe. So we're always looking for something to be wrong and we'll find it. Whereas from Ventral, you're actually scanning for cues of safety. And so you're constantly getting your, your, story to yourself is I'm safe in Ventral and you're constantly seeing and finding things to reassure yourself and confirm that you're safe in the world where it's the opposite in sympathetic and dorsal. You're hypervigilant and you're looking for all the bad things, all the scary things, all the dangerous things to prove to yourself that you were right about not being safe in the world. Does that mean when you're in Ventral and you're constantly scanning and or finding these cues that you are safe, you are Ignoring or that your, your system is ignoring any signs for danger or does it mean it's just responding then to them more appropriately? Exactly. So, you know, a regulated nervous system is not one that never goes into sympathetic and never goes into dorsal, right? The point of our nervous system is to scan for danger and keep us safe for that way. So it needs to be responding proportionately. Yeah. So when we have the part of our brain, which is responsible for this is called the amygdala. And when someone's stuck in sympathetic or dorsal, the amygdala is very overactive. Okay. So that's the thing that's always kind of looking for danger. We've got a regulated nervous system. It's it's a little bit calmer, and it's also balanced that by the free prefrontal cortex, which is our rational decision making part of the brain, right? So if the if the amygdala is super, super overacted, we think everything is a threat. The prefrontal cortex. is not even acting right. So let's, let's look at food intolerances. Okay. Cause a lot of people who can't eat this, I can't eat that. What's actually happening is your nervous system telling you that that food is dangerous. So in a person with a regulated nervous system, there might be an immediate kind of a bit of a sympathetic reaction that says, Hey, wait, this is something I haven't seen before, or this is something that might be a bit unhealthy. Um, and in the dysregulated person, it will be. you know, a huge thing, right? And we'll start off sending to different states and immune imbalances and goodness knows what else. But in the healthy regulated person, the sympathetic will kick in at first, but then the prefrontal cortex will say, wait a minute, this is just a piece of gluten, or this is just a bit of dairy. Does that mean? That if you do already have a leaky gut, it exacerbates these issues, or does it cause a leaky gut or does a leaky gut cause the exacerbated, uh, response as aware, or what's the connection? Both is the answer. It goes both ways. So, um, stress, any, any stress is going to cause problems with the gut, you know, the gut, especially because the vagus nerve comes from the brainstem to the gut. Okay. So if we have problems with the nervous system, we're going to have problems with the gut. Okay. Now, when we have problems with the gut, that's going to create more issues, right? Because you've got all the lipopolysaccharides, you've got all the, um, you know, you've got bits of food particles, which aren't broken down. You've got bacterial dysbiosis. What does this do? This creates more stress. And then that's fed back to the nervous system. Nervous system says more on safety and that carries on this perpetual cycle. And you're never able to get back into ventral. So basically it's an endless feedback loop. And we need to interrupt that at both ends. This is really interesting. I think as you said, that's also part of stress. So maybe we need to define and redefine stress. Cause I think when someone talks to me about stresses, I don't know, someone, you know, cutting me off at the junction while I'm driving the car, or it could be something like that as a physical, but it seems to be something that could actually be, internal that you've self induced as a way through nutrition, for example, as well as external. Absolutely. And that's a really, really, really important point. You've brought up, um, stress can take many forms and like you, I was always of the opinion that stress was something emotional. You know, you're getting in a fight, you've got work deadlines and you know, of course all those things are hugely stressful, but there are so many more other stresses that are going on that people are completely unaware of. So. digestive function, leaky gut, internal dysbiosis, pathogens, toxins, um, structure is absolutely huge. Physical structure, the spine, the neck, even the jaw. Other things which people don't, the environment, electromagnetic radiation is huge. So we're now in an environment where they're Constant stress is coming in a really, really huge one, which people really don't pay attention to is blood sugar imbalances, right? So if we don't have, if we're not eating the right size meals, the right macros, the right frequency, our blood sugar is going to get imbalanced. That sends a massive cortisol surge. Okay, so all these things that we need to take care of internally and manage, you know, externally in our environment in order for us to be able to relieve the burden of stresses. But in the end, we've got two different things. We've got one is the total burden of stresses, and we could always work at that, picking things out and supporting. But then overriding all of that, we've got something called a window of tolerance. How much stress can we actually take? And some people, some people are sick and some people aren't. Why? Mainly because some people can handle more. Why can they handle more? Because their nervous system is more responsive and more resilient to stress. They have a larger window of tolerance. So in the work that I do, I like to approach things from two angles. Firstly, yes, of course, let's clear up our life so we can remove or, or diminish as many stresses as we can. But we also need to expand our window of tolerance because you never know. When something is going to come along that's just going to knock you off. And this is what happened to me. So the first couple of times that I healed my health issues, I did it simply by doing everything right, removing lots of stresses, but I hadn't changed my window of tolerance. It wasn't until I did that, that I was able to really heal completely. So let's dive deep into this window of tolerance. I mean, the, the. Image i've got in my head is for example, if you've got a computer and you've got 20 programs open So everything's already running a bit slow clogged up Delayed and you've got one thing that crashes everything. So you have a very small tolerance But if you've only got five programs rather than 20 programs open, you say okay well, there might be this other six program that you're opening which has Too much demands on your RAM, on your, uh, I'm sure I'm missing up all the technical terms here. Um, but that you're actually able to do, you might freeze for a couple of seconds, but then things work again. You can figure things out without having to completely restart the computer basically. So how do you, other than, as we said, reducing the number of, of taps metaphorical that are open in your life by doing things right, or by reducing the, the number of wrong things, quote unquote, how do you build that tolerance? So using your analogy, what you'd have to do in that situation is you would need a better computer with more memory, more ram, right? So the small computer with a small window of tolerance is only going to be able to take so many windows. Doesn't matter really what you do. It's still just not up to the task. We need to increase our capacity. We need to upgrade our model. And that's where the nervous system work comes in. Okay. And coming back to found your point on structure, really interesting. What does the physical structure have to do with stress? Tell us more about that. Okay. So this is something that I've had to learn in my life because it's probably been my major continual source of stress that was underlying everything. So our vagus nerve passes from our brainstem all the way down through our body into, into our Into our gut and one of the major points is in our neck. Okay? So if our neck is out of alignment, we are gonna have a huge stress that's put on the, on the vagus nerve. Now your sympathetic nervous system, um, runs through your thoracic spine. Now, when our posture is bad or when our, we have issues with our spine, that part, our sympathetic nervous system gets compressed. Now all of the nerves or major organs come through that part. Right. It's a lot of your digestive organs as well coming through your sympathetic nervous system. So if your, if your spine is not in alignment, you're either compressing or you're kind of overstimulating certain nerves, which is going to throw your nervous system off. And one really, really important thing, which I only really learned about. Relatively recently is the importance of the jaw. And if your jaw is out of alignment, that can actually put your neck out of alignment, your cervical spine, which puts the whole of your rest of your body out of alignment. And a lot of this work that people say, you've got a child and they're really young and I don't know how they do things where you're from, but. here in the UK, especially when I was young, they say, Oh, your, your mouth is too small. You've got teeth coming in. Your mouth is too small. Let's just take them out, which is literally the worst possible thing you can do because your teeth and your mouth determines the formation of your cranium, the space that you have in your skull, the pressure on your glands, all kinds of things. But what they do is they take out the teeth. And then what happens? It gets even narrower because It doesn't have that structure anymore. Then what happens that disrupts the bite that disrupts the cervical spine, the whole body gets out and it can set you up for a lifetime of, of dysfunction. I'm actually about to go through a couple of years of extensive orthodontic work to expand my. Palate, my upper palate, to move my jaw forward a bit because for years and years I've been living with this chronic stress on my neck and my vagus nerve which keeps me in a permanent state of fight or flight. So, you know, we need to look at all of these different areas in our body, things that are putting stress. And, you know, I definitely, you know, my chiropractor, I've been seeing him for about six years and I, you know, he's one of the people that keeps my nervous system on point. I would really like to not have to do continual work on my neck to keep myself in check. So yeah, that's definitely something which people might want to look into. If you've got any history of extractions, any history of neck. stuff or injuries or just bad posture, this can really be affecting your nervous system. Okay. And that's super interesting, actually. Regarding limbic brain retraining, which we touched on at the start, and you said sort of how to teach the brain to feel safe as well. Tell us more about that. How does that work? Well, so this is, this is mainly a lot of kind of cognitive based exercises. A lot of this stuff comes down to learning how to be in the present and not, not lose your shit, basically. Right. So, you know, we're constantly our heads off here and there, and we have these, we basically, we, we re we react rather than responding. So when we do the limbic brain exercise, there's all kinds of different ways we can do this, but it's basically learning how to bring your, all your attention and all your focus back into the present. We learn how to use all of your various senses as well that we have smell, sight, touch, and we use all of this to bring ourselves back into the present to send a message of safety to our brain. Okay. And we keep doing this again and again and again and again. And then what we do is we rewrite some of these old stories that were not safe with new. new story. So we actually do practices which we create new scenarios, which then actually creates a whole new set of brain chemistry. So we create new neuropathways. So our brain goes from a state of feeling this, your, your default is unsafe. to a default of safe, or at least you go into unsafe, but you're able to pull yourself back to safe very quickly. And then you're in a position where you're open for connection that then allows a lot of the old stuff to come up and we can start dealing with a lot of this stuff that's trapped underneath the surface. Does it make sense to walk us through an example at the moment, or is that something for another session? Yeah, so well, it's something that you really build on, but something very foundational is, you know, you can be. Walking on the street and you notice yourself. Well, actually, I recommend people do this just anyway, because most people in a dysregulated state and don't really realize. But just walk along maybe about five times a day. You need to do this quite a lot. It's just stop and notice your surroundings and notice every single thing about them. Like, for example, if I were going to do that now with you. I'd say, I'd say to myself, stop, okay, this is like a pattern interrupt, and I would, I would start looking at everything in my environment like I've never seen it before with curiosity. So curiosity is something which only comes in ventral. So if we become curious, we're immediately putting ourself back into that. state. Okay. And then start experiencing your environment with all of your senses. So with your touch, so I'm touching my laptop and I'm noticing it's pink because it's very pretty pink and I'm touching the keys and I'm noticing that it needs a little bit of a clean, you know, but I'm very much in the moment, you know, I've got my coffee here, a little sip of coffee. So I'm using taste and what I'm doing instead of ruminating and thinking about all of these things, which are obviously having an effect on my Nervous system state, I'm bringing all my attention back into the here and now. And I'm giving my brain a break from this constant reinforcing of the stress loop. And then what happens is we build upon the exercise, you know, we, but, but that's a good foundational place to start because most of us are not very good at being present. So two points that I find really interesting that curiosity for me is also. Highly related, correlated with creativity. And I don't mean creativity in, I go and paint something, but in, for example, when I do strategic work, these deep insights, thoughts only come out of that. place of, of calm, of peace, of complete focus on what's actually in front of me versus, Oh, I need to do this. And I need to pick this up and I need to call that person. The other thing that I've noticed is this is actually, you've mentioned previously a meditation is not something you should start with until you've done the retraining. Having said that this kind of awareness, mindfulness exercises, and obviously meditation, mindfulness, all that. Get thrown into the same pot these days. And there's lots of various different types of meditations, types of exercises you can do. But where is the, why is this different to meditation? When I was referring to meditation before I was really mainly referring to state of complete stillness and. not doing anything, you know, and most maybe we're focusing on our breath or a mantra. Um, I do find that guided meditations can help bring people back into the present generally just as a practice, but we're probably not really going as deep in those kinds of meditations and it's not so intrusive. Let's say when we have complete stillness that allows a lot of stuff to come up and even people who meditate a lot, say someone who meditates a lot like me, say I go and do a Vipassana retreat or a dark retreat that takes it to a whole new level. And even for me, that's going to be very. confronting because a whole lot more stuff is going to come up. Hopefully I'll be able to handle it now. I don't know. We don't know until you get there, right? But there are different levels. So, you know, things like, you know, even if you go out on a walking meditation, um, which is being present, right? So that is perfect as a starting point. Going out, being present, noticing everything, noticing your breath, right? Just So that kind of meditation is perfect. It's more than being completely still and alone with your thoughts, because you get into that situation where all the thoughts are going to start coming up. And then you're going to tell yourself, don't think I can't do this. It's too hard. And it makes you agitated, right? I can't do this. I can't meditate. I'm not a person who can meditate. Right. And so then just sends all these negative messages and it just. makes you more stressed. And so it's just a bit counterproductive at that point in time. So for that kind of person, the kind of the walking meditation or the guided meditation, um, depending on what it is, of course, could be, could be beneficial for sure. And if you do this and you're in a particular stressful situation, it might be someone very sick in the family, or you've lost your job, or some other profound problem, even something as simple as Going outside and stopping for, you know, a minute, whatever it might be, might be completely overwhelming. It might get you out of that numb state into maybe not thinking, but feeling as aware. What do you do in that situation? You know, it's such an interesting thing, and this is why it's so useful to be aware of our nervous system state. And one of the first things we start with in the work is helping you really get in touch with Which of these states you're in, what triggers you to be this, in these states? What are the, what do these states look like for you? So, you know, you can see, you know, if the audience wanna go and look at the, the first handout, which is the, the polyvagal map. And you can see all the three states and you can see all these various, um, thought patterns, health symptoms associated with each state, but not everyone, obviously it manifests in the same way. So what I love for people to do is to really get in touch with what each of these states means for them. What sends them into these states, you know, for example, we might see someone who maybe they are in sympathetic most of the day because they're stressed at work and then one last straw breaks the camel's back and sends them into dorsal, whereas you might have someone else who's living all of that time in dorsal. So we need to learn where we're at. We need to be able to, if I said to you, Judith, right now, where are you right now? And most people are like, uh, Um, but you would be able to immediately go, well, I've got my heart rates increased. I feel a bit flushed. Um, I've got a ruminating. Okay. I'm in sympathetic. This is what sympathetic means like for me. Okay. So once we know what state we're in, we can know what to do. Okay. It's because what you do in sympathetic and what you do in dorsal is very different. So we have a block of work that we do daily. Anyway, this is basic general work that will improve. Your ability to handle stress wherever you are, but then we also have when we're in the moment What do we do in the moment if we've gone into sympathetic or we've gone into dorsal? What do we do now? Dorsal is a state of very low energy very low motivation and it's a state of I can't Okay. Dorsal is a very difficult state to be in. You don't want to reach out for help when you're in dorsal. You don't want to do anything that requires energy. You're, the world is unsafe, you're scared, you're shut down, you're fearful, you're hopeless. Okay. But the first thing to do is to recognize that you're in dorsal and things that we do when we're in dorsal. And I get clients to make a list also of the things that help them when they're in this state. But these are things where we need safety and nourishment. This could be cuddling with a partner or a pet. It could be going, sitting in the sunshine. It could be having a hot bath. Every single person is different, but we want them to do things which are very nourishing and calm for them. It's definitely not something where you say, I'm going to snap out of it. Just snap out of it, Catherine, but you can't do that. Your dorsal state has determined that's not biologically possible for you at that point in time. So what we need to do is we need to do things which are really calm and nourishing for the system. And so we need to basically use our resources. So when we're in dorsal, we need to make a decision that when we're able to recognize that we're in this state, we know it's not us. We are not that person who is sad and hopeless. That's our nervous system. So we say, right, to get out of this state, what can I do? And we'll have a list of things that we've gone through and techniques that we've learned to help us move out of dorsal into a state where we have a little bit more energy to be able to deal with the situation. Okay. So that would be an example of how you might deal with in the moment of dorsal. It was really interesting because, um, I don't know whether I spoke to you about this in our conversation last time, but my father passed away in May and the week prior to him passing, he was in hospital and it was extremely stressful situation for me. There was all kinds of things going on. He was really in pain. I was trying to run around finding doctors and nurses. I could feel I was in. crazily unsympathetic, like elevated heart rate, like would have snapped at anyone. You know, it was, it was the most extreme levels of stress you can imagine. And then, you know, I remember very clearly the moment they told me they were putting you on end of life care and suddenly all that stress, that feeling just stopped. It was like a brick wall and I felt literally nothing like I couldn't connect. I couldn't feel I was suddenly this monotone level of calmness. I've gone straight into dorsal because it had become that that news was so much for me that had sent me into that state and I recognized it immediately. I got on the phone to a friend and I said I'd just hit dorsal and I knew what I needed to do in that state. This was not a time for me to be running around doing this or that. This is the time I needed to focus on doing the things I needed to nourish myself enough. to allow myself to move out. And actually, to be honest, that's actually a state in which dorsal, dorsal is necessary sometimes. Sometimes the stresses are so big that we need to go into dorsal to protect ourselves. And then what happens is when we're able to deal with it, our body will then release that. So even a regulated person goes into dorsal. When it's absolutely necessary for them going to shock is also going into dorsal, right? So that's an example of dorsal. Now, when we're in sympathetic, this is a state, we've got a lot of energy, right? Like, Oh, I want to go and have a fight or I want to is. And if, you know, if there's someone else involved, it's going to be a situation of like moving towards that you want to confront them. You want to conflict, you know, you want to have an argument, you want to discuss this, you know, you want to take action. It's an activated state. When you feel like this, the first thing to do is to notice you need to know you're in it. Right. And then you can practice these exercises, bring yourself back into present regroup. Like, right now, you know, you've got all of this energy. What are you going to do with it? Let's channel it in a healthy way. Okay. So a healthy way to channel sympathetic energy would be. Exercise or play, right? But when I say exercise, I don't mean when we exercise to self medicate that's actually a bad thing. So if we're like really, I'm gonna run on the treadmill, I'm gonna get angry, or I'm gonna go and punch a bag. We're feeling angry. This is, we don't want to feel angry, right? But we can do things that we love. Okay, that make us happy, we can dance, right, we can play tennis, we can do something that we love, not doing it just to process negative emotions, right, but we're doing it because we're actually, because this play and exercise, healthy exercise like this, are actually a blend of states, so this is a blend of ventral and sympathetic. Okay. So we can, if we're in bad sympathetic, we can kind of transmute that and move into good sympathetic by, and then we've got this excess energy, which we're actually then channeling to something positive. And then after a while you'd be like, you know what? I don't feel so bad after all. You've put that song on that always makes you happy. Let's listen to that song. Let's sing. Singing is always great for the nervous system, you know, and that will help move us back into. ventral, then we're in a position to make better decisions. Do I really want to go and have that argument with that person now? Do I really want to bring this up? Maybe we still do want to confront them, but we might do it in a more healthy way. So we're responding, not reacting. Okay, this is super interesting, actually. From, uh, so two questions. When you Are in state of shut down yourself. Should you get yourself out of it? That's question number one. And the second point is we set that obviously being in anything that isn't ventral, there's this point of safety. Social connection is difficult because you're either too removed, you're too remote when you're in shutdown or you're in this fight or flight, engaging actually would be counterproductive, so it's difficult to reach out for help. But if, for example, you have someone that, you know, obviously you're, you know, you do this as a therapist for a living, but for someone isn't aware of this and they can see someone else needs that help, cannot get themselves out of whatever state they might be in. What can you, as a, as a partner, as a friend, as a parent, as a colleague, what can you do? Okay. So nervous systems really need something called co regulation. And our nervous systems talk to each other. And the way that our nervous system is actually shaped is largely dependent on the way we were with our primary caregiver when we were growing up. And, you know, people will talk a lot about no secure attachment and insecure attachment, but a lot of this comes down to nervous system state. So if we don't bond healthily, if we don't co regulate healthily with a regulated nervous system, We will find it difficult to self regulate. So if we have a friend or partner, it really depends on what they are going to need and how they feel. So when we are in dorsal, we only really want to be around people that we can feel 100 percent safe with. So the person may not want to be around you, depending on what their relationship with you. is, you know, um, really, it's really up to, up to us to be able to recognize when we're in their state. But if you're with someone else and they really don't know what state they're in, it's probably going to be maybe asking them, you know, what makes you feel better in this moment? You know, for that person, it might just be cuddling with a pet or having a bath or something that requires very, very little energy. You know, I always say to my clients, you need to call on your resources when you're in Dorsal. And Reach out to people who you can just sit with and not speak. Maybe you just wanna have someone to give you a hug or someone to be there in the room, but he's not gonna make any demands of you'cause you don't have the energy to give at that stage. Okay? So you, you don't wanna like go out with a friend and have a, like an activated conversation that's not really gonna help so much. You just need to be around in the situation where you feel. safe. So as you know, as someone coming in, you have to be very careful not to be, you know, intruding upon that person's. So you might just want to ask them, you know, would you like me to come over or sit with you? We can just watch something funny and we don't have to do anything Just I want to let you know that i'm here for you So I guess you know as the as the person coming in Is like letting them know that you're there and that you're a safe presence But that you're not going to put any pressure on them and likewise if you're the person in that situation is to be like Who can I call on? What resources do I have to nourish myself that I know work for me when I'm in this state? And then I can kind of gradually transition out. If you have someone in clinical depression, which might be the first time, might be regular, and You ask them and they say, I don't know, what do you do? Is there anything you can do? That's really interesting. So generally when people say, I don't know, that's a very common response you get when someone's in dorsal. And the reason they don't know is because they've dissociated. So it's quite okay for them not to know. So they're never going to know what's wrong. But what we do know is that when you're in that state, if you take steps to move yourself out of that state, you will then be able to know. So it's all about moving through the states because the states. determine what's possible, they determine where we can go, they determine the stories, they determine literally our internal narrative that's going around. One of the exercises I love to give my clients is, say they're in a dysregulated state, say they're in sympathetic, okay, and they've got certain sets of stories and symptoms and beliefs, and then I get them to imagine the same situation but through the lens of the other state. And you see the different stories that emerge and the way they're able to handle a situation differently from that state. So the first thing is always knowing where we are and when we know where we are, we, we have things that we can do. Okay. Slight change of topic. We've previously talked about neuroception and sensory awareness. So neuroception and enteroception are the terms I've got noted down. Tell me about that. Okay. for having me. Okay. So neuroception is basically our body's way of interpreting signals, our nervous system's way of interpreting signals as to whether they're safe or dangerous. And enteroception, um, is inside of our body and exteroception is outside of our body. So interoception is, you know, maybe any kind of internal signals that are coming from the body that could be hot, cold, hunger, pain, Tingling, buzzing, warmth. You know, all of these are little signals that are going on in our bodies. Interpreting those signals as something pain is a signal of danger standard, A signal of danger in our body in a regulated nervous system. Obviously pain is a normal one, but, but we might also start misinterpreting signals if we have a dysregulated nervous system, right? And we become very hyper-focused on some of these things. And then reception is very similar. signals coming from the outside. So a normal signal, for example, would be me. I can see you smiling right now. So my body interprets that as safety. I'm like, Oh, she's smiling. So this is a primal, you know, thing inbuilt thing that basically tells me. that it's safe to co regulate with you now. So there's a nice, you know, relaxed ventral situation going on. Um, but if you are frowning, that sends a signal of danger to me. And even if I'm not consciously aware of it, my body will be responding to that. So I will immediately put up my guard and maybe I start feeling more tense. If I'm not in touch with myself, I won't even notice that. Then maybe that starts manifesting in the way that I speak with you. maybe I become reactive or defensive. So our nervous systems are talking to each other. And this becomes really, really apparent in relationships. And I actually, I experienced this to the extreme in a relationship that I had, and I only realized afterwards what was happening. And it was a guy that I was dating. And we actually really, really adored each other. Um, he lives quite a long way away from me. And we would talk for hours and hours on the phone. There was never a problem. We never fought. Then when we met up in person, Without fail, we would get into these terrible fights. And I just didn't understand why, and when I kind of, after we broke up and I looked back on it all, I realized what was happening, it was our nervous systems were making each other feel so on edge that neither of us felt safe. And that was manifesting in the way that we were speaking to each other and we would interrupt and speak over each other and such silly things that didn't need to be, if we'd have just understood what was going on, we would have been able to. to combat that. But what was actually happening is he had been feeling a little bit of insecurity and there was some just some stuff in his body language he might or in his tone of voice and my nervous system could pick that up and then that would make me feel stress and then I would do stuff and then his nervous system would pick that up and so there was two conversations going on here and neither was like what is going on and of course because we were both in a state Rather than connection, we couldn't get over that. We ended up breaking up. This is very sad, but if it had just known these things, I don't know how many relationships could be saved. If people understood this nervous system work, you know, people who, you know, like I was before I wasn't open for connection at all. Or people who always seem to get into fights or people who have trust issues or people who have insecurity issues. Most of these things are coming from the nervous system. So what he's saying is if I understand that correctly, that your reaction to another person also depends on the state that you're in. Absolutely. Yeah. And actually we can help another person co regulate a lot just by being calm in presence. I don't know whether it would have been enough to save the relationship in my case, but if I had known I could have made sure that I at least was calm and sending out the right vibes. And then he probably would have responded naturally to that because he would have felt more safe, not to say he didn't, because obviously he's got issues, right, that are coming up that are, you know, childhood stuff and past stuff that have shaped his nervous system that way, that stuff still needs to be dealt with, but we might have been able to have better communication and more intimacy and more connection and a much more healthy relationship if, if I'd have known and been able to be with him. a different state at that time. And this is something that comes out of being aware in the moment or out of having a generally well regulated nervous system which is then, which then has more capacity to respond, if that makes sense. Both. So, you know, we need to always do the work to make sure we have a well regulated nervous system. But we need to be always present in the moment. We need to be able to notice, you know, in someone's tone of voice or someone's body. We need to be able to sense what's going on with them and what's going on with us. And this enables, we have that level of achievement, it helps us create some really beautiful connections. You know, because we're able to sense what other people need. We can literally tune in to them because our nervous system is like a very finely tuned system. I kind of like to use the example of, you know, a tree or an antenna. You know, we've got when we're in ventral, you know, we've got. our roots, which are going down into the ground. So we're very grounded, but at the same time, all these little branches which are reaching out, looking for connection, looking for information, curious, you know, and the branches get smaller and smaller and smaller, we're able to pick up more subtle, subtle vibrations. If we're sympathetic. It's like noise. You know, it's like, let's say we're white noise. We're not picking up any signals. Everything's just frazzled and too much. And if we're in dorsal, all the branches are curled in like a snail. He's got his antenna in, right? So we're not reaching out. We're not going to pick any signals up that way. So the more safe we feel, the more we can spread out our branches and we can grow new little branches and we can pick up on all these tiny little subtle nuances in someone else's behavior. And so in ours, and we can learn how to have these really beautiful connected. So that, you know, I'm sure the extreme level, this is where you're going to be having telepathy and all of these things, right? Because you're both so tuned in to each other, but we're never going to experience that level of connection until we really master the nervous system. Is there, and this is someone asking who likes to keep very busy, who likes to do, do, do, achieve, achieve, achieve, which I'm sure many of us do. I mean, you know, you were a lawyer for a reason as well. Is there a way to get into that world regulators? state whilst still keep being very, very busy? Or is it a necessary requirement to say, I need to have, I need to cut back. I need to do X, which I personally really don't want to do. It depends. So it depends what state that you're in. You know, I'd gotten to a state where I just overloaded myself and it was just too much. My nervous system at that point in time was not capable of handling the amount of stress. I was putting on it so I had to take the load off now for someone else who's kind of managing Okay, but they still got some work to do. I would say you need to create time and space For certain periods of your day, you need, you need to bring that into your life and you need to develop a constant state of presence. So even when you're really, really busy, you're still really present and aware. Um, I was just talking to one of my friends this morning, he has an issue with being in his head all of the time. Okay. And he's really, really, really busy and he never notices anything that's going on in his body. So I taught him an exercise where he can be really, really, really focused and doing his things. But at the same time, he's learning how to, with the interoception, he's learning how to be in touch with his body. So he's never going to be disconnected. So you can be doing your work and focused, but you're also present and aware of all the other things that are going on, so you're not disconnecting. Can you walk us through that? That sounds really interesting. Alright, so close your eyes for me for a moment. Okay. And I want you to see if you can tap into any kind of physical sensation in your body. It could be anything, it could be a warm tingling, buzzing, it could be hunger, cold, if you've got one. I stubbed my toe this morning, it's still hurting. So just take a deep breath and focus on the sensation, and I like to call it sensation rather than the pain, because we like to look at things curiously, without judgment, okay? Because we don't want it to stress us. So just observe this, this feeling in your toe, and keep feeling that. Now what I want you to do is open your eyes, and look around you, and find any object there. that takes your interest and focus in on it, okay? Now I want you to look at this object like you've never seen it before. I want you to examine all of its characteristics. Is it shiny? Is the sun shining off it? Can you see the texture, the colour, the little details? So you're putting all of your attention on this object, okay? And now what you're going to do is you're going to move around the room, find something else and repeat this. Find another object. We're being really super present here, focusing all your attention on that object. Textures, colors, details, shadows. Wow, I never noticed any of this before, right? Okay, so now while you're doing that Bring your attention back to your body and whilst you're looking at the object, feel your toe. So you're both examining the object and feeling your toe at exactly the same time. So open your eyes and look back at your object and feel your toe at the same time. So you're being curious and asking questions about the object and you're examining the object, but at the same time you are not losing that sensation in your toe. And now while you're there, now move around your body and find another physical sensation. So keep no, keep, keep looking at the, uh, an object or you can find another object if you want. We want to keep that attention on the outside. And then while we're doing that, we're finding another internal sensation in your body and hold both of those together. And so we can alternate around, but the point of the exercise is so we're able to both focus all our attention externally and internally at the same time. And this can actually be really, really challenging for a lot of people because we're not used to doing. Well, sometimes we're not used to doing either, right? Because if we're really in our heads, we're not even focusing on our external world or like around us. We're not present in that sense. So this is requiring us to be both present in the sense of. Curiosity, looking around, what can we see? Wow, like really giving attention at the same time, really giving attention to the inside. Then we both do it at the same time. It can be very challenging. This could be a good one for you to try. I'm definitely candid for that one. Okay. Um, we've talked about sustain with the body. Actually. We've previously talked about adaptation and receptors, adaptation, actually creating more receptors, which receptors are these, how does the nervous system actually adapt to that stress and why this is the specific. Yeah. So basically, um, I think we spoke a little bit about the different kind of stress hormones. And, um, chemicals that we have in the different states, you know, when we're in a sympathetic fight or flight kind of state, we've got a lot of the stress hormones going cortisol, we've got adrenaline, we've got noradrenaline. And then we're in eventual, we've got more of the endorphins and the oxytocin, right? These things which make us feel really, really good. But if we're a person who is. or has been in sympathetic for a lot of their life, we've got a lot of cortisol and adrenaline going. But the thing is, we actually get addicted to that as well, right? So when we actually start taking those things away, our body can go through some withdrawals, which is an interesting thing when we go through this kind of work as well. But sometimes what happens is if we've been in sympathetic for such a long time. And we've been producing all this cortisol, all of this adrenaline forever. Your body's like, this is kind of too much. You know, she's giving me so much cause on adrenaline. What I'm going to do is I'm going to actually increase the number of receptors on my body for these stress hormones. So they're spread out over a larger area, so it doesn't feel so much. And so that happens. And so we adapt. So it doesn't feel, you know, we might not be getting these intense bursts of, you know, cause normally you can feel it. Someone jumps out, you can feel the sunbursts of energy, right? This adrenaline, but if you've got a lot of receptors, we build up a tolerance. Right, so we might not notice it so much. So this is why it's really good to really kind of do the work, getting in touch with the different states you're in, so we can actually identify exactly where you are, so we know how to deal with the situation. As I said, just being in your head a lot, you know, is Sympathetic. You've got a lot of little energies going round and round and round. Our brain uses up an awful lot of energy, by the way, like a huge amount. I think about 25 percent of total energy consumption goes to the brain, which weighs something like 2%. Don't quote me on this off. We need to use our brain for work and everything else, but how much extra energy are we be expending by worrying and being anxious? All these things that we're thinking about, all of that energy which could be directed towards our digestion and our reproduction or weight loss or any of these other Functions in our body is going towards something which is not helping us at all. So let's use our brain for the things we need to use it for. And let's keep it quiet and calm and saving energy for the rest of the time. And sticking with stress, HRV or heart rate variability gets thrown around a lot. What is it? Why is it important? So HRV really is the space between your heartbeats. And I think most people, certainly me in the past, used to think that, you know, a very regular heartbeat is a good thing. But actually we need to have variation in our heart beats and this is reflective of the resilience of our nervous system. So the more flexible our heart rate is, that's respect of how we're able to respond to a stress in the moment. So for example, let's take the example of you're walking on the street, you've got a regulated nervous system. Some car comes out in front of you and nearly knocks you over. Your natural response would be to have that. Big bursts of stress hormones. You're going to jump out of the way, get your fight or flight going, and you're going to keep yourself safe. Now, if someone is trapped, say in a dorsal ventral. Mode, they might not get the danger signals that they need. They're not going to get that huge surge. They're not going to get that, you know, impetus to move. Maybe they actually don't even end up jumping out the way. Maybe they get run over. Who knows? That'd be a worst case scenario. But that person is certainly not going to be, it's going to be quite numb and quite like, Oh, and maybe the car drives past. And he's like, You know, whereas the other person will be like, Oh, my God, you know, they'll still be in a, in this stress state. Now, if you take that back to HRV with the person, with the, with the very regulated, um, heart rate, the dorsal person, their heart rate probably stayed quite regular, whereas the regulated person, it's going to be all over the place because we're responding to a stress. So we want to have a heart rate variability that is responsive. And this is why a higher HRV is normally associated with a healthier. nervous system. There can be times where a higher HIV isn't reflective of that, but that's kind of too complex to go into today. But for the main part it's like, and also the other thing with HIV is you can't compare your HIV to somebody else's. You know, we've all got our own baseline. And we move up and down from that point in time, but what is good when I'm working with someone is we do like to see that baseline going up over time. Okay. So baseline is actually individual for each person. Interesting. Okay. So maybe one thing that I'd also like to define, because we've talked a lot about regulation, co regulation, et cetera. And again, these are terms which are floating about quite a lot, which I think people instinctively kind of understand, but sometimes they're not entirely sure what they mean. What's your definition? So regulation, I would probably say, is a combination between co regulation and self regulation. So self regulation is what we do on our own to basically master our nervous system. And, you know, as I've kind of mentioned before, the way that I teach this with clients is, you know, we do the limbic brain work, we do somatic work, we do breath work, we do polyvagal work, which is specific exercises to tone the vagal nerve. And we use these techniques. to regulate ourselves. Okay, self regulation. Co regulation is very, very important to our nervous system and we must do this with another. We can do it with a pet, we can do it with a partner, we could do it with a friend, we could do it with a therapist. You know, some people that come to me, they don't have anyone or anything they can co regulate with in their life. So they need to have that solid, safe presence of someone else, another nervous system to interact with to help give that feeling of safety. You know, people who are brought up safely co regulating with their primary caregivers, they're going to learn how to naturally self regulate when they're older. Whereas for people who haven't had that, it's going to be a lot harder, which actually is most people, you know, not many people have this really secure relationship. with their primary caregivers these days. So we've all kind of been brought up in the world feeling unsafe in some way. So then we have to learn how to feel safe on our own, which is obviously harder than learning to feel safe with a primary caregiver. Okay. Super interesting. I mean, it's, it's, I think widely acknowledged that when you look at the blue zones research, so where people live to, to very old age, That the social connections, et cetera, are very, very healthy. But this, I think this brings them more into a scientific frame. Question for you, given that we're all about health optimization for women specifically, is there any advice or anything that you see in your female clients that's different to your male clients? Yeah. And the one, um, really big example that kind of jumps out when you say that is when we're moving through perimenopause into menopause. So when we are pre menopause, when we're still ovulating, we've got plenty of estrogen and plenty of progesterone. And estrogen performs a very, very important function, which is to buffer cortisol, our stress hormone. Now, as we move through perimenopause, we're going through periods of high estrogen, low estrogen, and then eventually menopause, we lose our estrogen. So what's actually happening now is we're losing our ability to buffer stress as well. So as we move through this period of time, it's vitally important to learn how to regulate your nervous system because our burden of stress just went up dramatically. And this is why women after menopause have the same cardiovascular risk as men, because they've lost that protective effect of estrogen. And how does that work exactly? How does estrogen project? It's just the balance of the way that hormones work in the body, you know? So, I mean, I couldn't go into the very, very detailed. mechanisms of it. But estradiol and estriol, which are two forms of estrogen, are very, very protective against, against the stress hormones in the body. Um, so when we lose it, you know, we're at a disadvantage. But you know, I'm, I'm a big fan of HRT, to be honest with you, because I think this is vitally important for women to be able to regulate their stress and their cardiovascular systems as well. So, okay. And I think the, we'll, we'll touch on this in another podcast, but there's the importance is to go with the bio dental hormones rather than the synthetic hormones. Yeah, this is really important. It's really important to, I mean, that's, that's definitely my preference. Um, I still think, you know, that if it's a choice of synthetic or nothing, I would probably go for the. The synthetic, like, you know, for me, I think it's that, that important. And depending on where you're at, like every single person has such an individual constitution, right? So it requires a full workup. Some women can just go through with no need for anything, right? But everyone is so different. So I suggest get a complete workup, but if you're really, really estrogen deficient and you're really, really struggling and you don't have a choice. I personally would go for the, I would just probably have it, but definitely bioidenticals would be my preference. There are also some other things that you can do homeopathics or herbs, which could also help get you through healthily as well. So my, my top choice would be herbs and bioidenticals. And then as a last case resort, the synthetics, but only some of the synthetics and you should never, ever take estrogen without progesterone. Cause this is going to set you up for, you know, higher cancer risk and things like this. And I think that's also the risk, especially in the US, uh, with the soy products, for example, which, um, have a lot of, uh, I think phytoestrogens was the term that obviously you're getting a lot of estrogens, but you're not getting progesterone. So that's another interesting factor. When we started the episode, you've touched on where your fat is in the body as a woman is actually a reflection of some hormonal imbalances. Uh, you specifically said, I think that the five fat is actually related to estrogen. Does that then have a sort of of a stress triangle, stress, estrogen, by fat as their connection. Often the excess estrogen that we're holding onto, it could be a liver issue, you know? So, you know, stress impacts every single system in our body. But I would say that when we have a lot of. Fat in the leg area. It's going to be a detoxification issue. So for whatever reasons we really need to look into supporting the liver and helping that. And the thyroid is also comes back to that cycle too. And then of course, stress comes into the thyroid. Everything's related to, to each other. I mean, working on stress will impact every single system in the body. It's a no brainer. Yeah. Once you get through the initial pain. Okay. Speaking of, are there any, any facts or any advice that. Is not commonly known in the field that you really wish that other practitioners or your clients or people who really need to work in this particular field or do need to have. Some work, not really work done, I think that's probably the wrong term, but to, to get into the work or work in them themselves should know about that they don't. I think that most practitioners just don't know the importance of the nervous system in general. I mean, this is, you know, a few of the kind of the lime in the mold practitioners really started using this, but for the most part, most health practitioners I know are not doing this work with their clients. And for me, you cannot heal without doing it. Or you can plug it, like I did for years, and you just take away some of the stresses but you're not increasing your window of tolerance. Which just means the first time something bad comes along, it's going to knock you off. You know, everybody needs to do this work, whether it's for your health, whether it's for your relationships, you know, every single person needs. And I think most practitioners don't. And within, within my kind of sphere itself, where people are teaching nervous system regulation, I personally don't think people are giving much enough attention to the structural. part of it. The exercises, the posture, you know, the alignment of the spine, you know, the way that we chew or where we hold our tongue. These are all really important factors and they're largely ignored both in standard functional medicine community and in the nervous system practitioners. Okay. Fascinating. And, uh, what does the work look like in terms of, uh, let's call it program, for example. So we've touched on some of the exercises to get started, but what would it actually look like if someone wanted to start this work on themselves? So basically I would say that the best way to start is by learning about the different states and really, really becoming familiar with where you're at in each state. You need to get To know yourself inside out, you need to be mindful in the moment and be able to stop and call yourself out in any particular moment. And then it's going to be going through a process of limbic brain retraining. This is the order I do things in limbic brain retraining. And then I introduced. Polyvagal work, somatic work, breath work, we can use at different stages, depending, there are different kinds of breath work. So, for example, you'll use different kinds of breath work in sympathetic than you would in dorsal. So we could use, so for example, Wim Hof is a very sympathetic activating type of breath. Okay, so if you're a super, super stressed out person, it might not be the best thing for you to do to do a whole bunch of Wim Hof. Likewise, if you're so deep in dorsal, you're really in a depression state, that's going to be too much for you. So there are different kinds of breath work for different kinds of states. Sometimes when we're just climbing out of dorsal, it might be good to have a more activating breath because this is the way we can transition out. So it all depends on where you're at, but yeah, it's, it's very, it's, it's, it's a very interesting thing to observe. And the thing that I love to see most is to watch people's stories change as they move through the States. So, you know, someone who is very, very stuck, you know, we see when someone's stuck in victim mode and very negative, we can really not like being around that person. Very draining for us. What we need to understand is that's all that's biologically possible for them. So you can say, just be more positive, but they can't because their nervous system is telling them that they can't. So as you know, we were talking about before we can help support them to, you know, be a bit more understanding of where they're at so they can get out of that state and then use stories. It's like they become stories of, I can't to stories of maybe, and how that then moves through to venture and I can. Okay. Are there any books or resources you would recommend for people to get started at? Yes. Anything by Deb Dana. She's amazing. Stephen Porges is the pioneer of the polyvagal work, but his, his work is very, very, it's just more about really long scientific papers. It's not really practical advice. I love Deb Dana's. She's kind of translated into more of a psychotherapy clinical context. I love the work of Arielle Schwartz. She's a somatic practitioner. Those are the two main ones that stand out for me. I've done personal training with both of them and they are incredible. So coming back to you. How can people find you? Um, at the moment, my new website's under construction, so they can just email me. So my email is KatherineHelenWatkins at gmail. com. I've also working on a course with my colleague, Cindy, for relationships. And I'll give you the link for that as well. So people can kind of look in some of the relationship. Aspects of the work that we do. But yeah, anyone feel free to reach out with any questions. I'd love to hear from you. Fantastic. Catherine, any last words, anything you want to give to the audience? I would say for every single person looking into the effect that your nervous system is having in your life is probably the most life changing thing. You can ever do. And there's this beautiful quote by Steven Porges, which says this work is the science of connection, the science of learning how to love life while taking the risks of living, which says it all really. It does indeed. Thank you very much, Catherine. Thank you, Judah. Thank you for joining me on this transformative journey. Your presence in this community is truly valued. Now, you may not realize it, but your words hold immense power. They have the ability to reach others who may benefit greatly from the wisdom shared here. If you found value in what you heard, I kindly ask you to take a moment to subscribe to Biohacking Eve, leave a glowing review on your preferred podcast platform, and share Biohacking Eve with your friends and family. Your support helps spread the message of health optimization for women far and wide. Lastly, I want to express my gratitude to you. For investing in yourself by prioritizing your wellbeing, you serve as an inspiration to others. I'm eagerly looking forward to bringing you many more exciting episodes. And thank you for being a vital part of our community live long and prosper. My friends, the biohacking Eve health optimization for women podcast is for general informational purposes only, and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services. Including the giving of medical advice and no doctor patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be substituted for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 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