The Subtle Art of Slowing Down with Beverly Atkins

You've lost the weight - so why does your brain still see you as heavier? And why does "slowing down" feel nearly impossible when pushing through is how you've survived?

Feldenkrais practitioner Beverly Atkins, a lifelong yo-yo dieter and former Facebook exec, joins Ana to explain why nervous system regulation may be the piece of your GLP-1 journey that willpower and meal plans can't touch.

In this episode:

•  Why your brain takes around 6 months to update its internal body map after weight loss and why you still feel heavier than the scale says
• What somatic exercise actually did to Beverly's food noise (and what it didn't)
• Why "flexible brains, not flexible bodies" is the real point of this work and why the best lessons are audio-only on purpose
• The "hot candle wax" technique Beverly uses with clients and why it doubles as a 2 a.m. sleep hack
• How to tell your nervous system is regulating (hint: other people notice before you do)
• A starting point if every somatic program you've tried felt impossibly slow

About the guest:
Beverly Atkins is a Guild-Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner and the founder of Pauseture, an app that makes Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® lessons accessible. After putting her back out while working in tech in 2014, she discovered these movement awareness lessons and was surprised to find they improved not only her pain, but also her stress response and relationship with food. Today she focuses on making this approach more accessible through Pauseture, helping people improve nervous system regulation, movement efficiency, and body awareness.

Connect with Beverly at pauseture.com | Instagram: @pauseture | Download the app: iOS | Android

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Online wellness care plans for women, including GLP-1 and NAD+ therapies under medical provider guidance. Learn more at https://www.brellohealth.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So as you lose weight, especially if you're losing weight rapidly, you may still feel that you're overweight when you're not. And that's why, as a yo-yo dieter, with my weight up and down and up and down, my brain map always, even when I was at my goal weight, my brain map still had the proprioception it was putting itself in space at a heavier weight because I even when I was at my goal weight.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Welcome to the GLP One Hub Podcast. I'm Anna Reisdorf, registered dietitian and GLP1 user. If you've ever felt like better choices should be simple, but your body still feels stressed, reactive, or stuck in old patterns, then this episode is for you. Today I'm joined by Beverly Atkins, a somatic exercise practitioner, and we're talking about how nervous system regulation can support your GLP1 journey. You'll hear how slowing down can improve awareness, reduce reactivity, and help you make the intentional choices with food, sleep, and stress that help improve our successes on GLP1 and life in general. If you're a fan of the podcast, please make sure you leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you share your thoughts in the comments. Now let's get on to the episode. I want to welcome Beverly Atkins today. She is coming here today to talk about nervous system regulation and how she was a high-powered, productive, super successful woman who found a different path and how that influenced her food and eating and all of the things. So, Beverly, can you introduce yourself a little bit and tell us what you do and a little bit about your story?

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Yes, thank you so much. And I appreciate you having me on and giving um us the opportunity to co-regulate with each other and have this conversation. I am um a guild certified Feldenkrais practitioner. And that is not um how I've really identified myself and my self-image most of my life. I would describe myself going back a little bit in my history with food. I would say I was born hungry, incredibly hungry. And for years, I was told it was a willpower issue or it was a psychological issue and spent a lot of time in therapy about what was the childhood trauma that made me so hungry. And I realize there's a lot of your listeners maybe may not have been born as hungry as I was born, but definitely from a very young age, I was never satiated ever. And I had my uh first experience on a first diet when I was probably 10, maybe 12, the Scarsdale diet. So that may give you an idea of my age. So having Melba toast with the Scarsdale diet when I was very young. And so I had dieted my entire life and managed my weight through restriction and then not restriction, restriction. So I was very much a yo-yo dieter up and down and up and down. And in my 30s, I began running and signed up for a 10K, which led to three marathons in 18 months. And I really found that I was able to eat more if I ran more. So that running then led to triathlon. And I that then I had three sports to keep me busy: swimming, hiking, running, to burn calories, frankly. It wasn't because I was necessarily enjoying the sports. I certainly made friends and it became a lifestyle, but it was a way to manage my weight. Um, in 2014, I was working at Facebook and I was it was a very stressful environment. And also, I'll mention that we had unlimited free food at Facebook. So somebody who had food noise and thought constantly thought about food, I am now surrounded by a tremendous amount of food. And so exercise was important. And with that stress, I it led to me putting my back out. And I could not walk for three weeks upright. I could walk at a 90-degree angle. I could not I could not stand upright. And I did what I knew to do at that point, which was yoga, physical therapy, Pilates, acupuncture, tried everything that had worked when my back kind of went out. But this time my back was really, really out. And I happened to have a vacation planned at a fitness resort because what does a high-performing do person do on vacation? They go to a fitness resort. But I got to the resort with my sisters, and my sisters were going off to cardio kickboxing and hiking, and I couldn't walk. So I literally crawled into a lesson called awareness through movement. And it was in the course description, it was described as lie on the floor and make small gentle movements to improve your movement and your posture. So I thought, well, I'll do that. And the instructor told me to close my eyes and listen and do what I what she said to do. And I thought this is the weirdest thing ever. I'm making these weird, funky movements. And she said, do not open your eyes, do not compare yourself to anybody. She's like, if you do it wrong, do it wrong. Just do what you think the interpretation is. And I stood up and an hour later, my back pain was completely gone. What? Yeah. Wow. And I'm not selling this method as a one-lesson fix for people, because I will preface that by saying I was three weeks in and I was moving from three weeks, is usually when pain goes from acute to chronic. So I did have that risk of sticking with chronic pain. So it was the right timing. And then also my inclination is when the teacher saw me walked in, she saw my pattern and she saw what lesson I needed. And so it it happened to be what we call a folding lesson, which is really flexing your spine instead of extending it. And that particular lesson was what I needed on that day. And I stood up and my back pain was gone, but I was so deeply curious how that could have been possible that to me, I just thought voodoo magic came down and fixed me. Sure. I would too. Yeah. So I went to the instructor and I was like, excuse me, what just happened? And she just said, come back tomorrow. And so I did it while I was there that week. And when I got home, I was so committed to the back pain not coming back that I began doing the lessons. She had sent me 21 lessons to do at home. And fortunately, they were the shorter versions of this method. And they didn't have long scans of notice this. She got right into the movements and the action. So I loved when I reached out to you, Anna, how you replied and said, I've tried somatics, but I have to do them at two times speed. And, you know, this this meditation, slowing down, going slow. I think for a high performing person who has a lot to do, we sit there and we think, I have more important things to do. We need to get through this quickly. And so I think trying to shift us from a high performing, I have a lot of things to do on my list to notice your breath. When it's too not active, then it's too it's it's a bridge too far from where our nervous system is. So for me, with this method, I happen to have found a teacher who understood that some of us need more of a gateway into the more regulated system. And it doesn't mean that we can't get to the more subtle lessons, but we need to move in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

So when you found this method, I mean, obviously the back pain resolving was huge, but how how did that impact your uh food issue and your hunger? Like, what was the influence there?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

So I began doing the lessons before work, and initially it was to keep the back pain away. But what was happening working at Facebook in an open workspace, which was really overstimulating for my nervous system. It was also navigating in in retros, you have to really jump forward 10 years and then look back and go, oh, that was going on. So I was beginning perimenopause at that time. So I was hormonally incredibly reactive. I was agitated, I was overstimulated in the workplace, in the open workspace. But what I noticed when I was doing these lessons before work for my back pain, I was just more settled when I walked in through the doors. So instead of feeling combative and angry and reactive, I began to understand other people better and co-regulate with them better and realize for, I mean, uh one example is I was having issues with a manager and it felt very combative. But with this, I began to say, he's he's concerned about his job security. He's he's navigating the challenges on him. And I could start to frankly put myself in his shoes a little bit more and have a little more empathy. Um and and and that changed. And what I found was when I was more regulated with myself, I was co-regulating with others. And the more I was aware of how I was feeling in my body, I began to notice how outside things influenced how I felt. In the morning when I did these lessons, I felt some people would describe it as a slow dopamine hit. So you have this little bit of a high and a little bit of a softness to you. So you the lessons really bring you into improving your interoception, which is noticing how you feel. So I think for so many years, because I was constantly battling my weight, I had to be in high performance, high achievement mode. And I was really disassociated from my body. I wasn't noticing how I was feeling. Now I was swimming, biking, and running and doing yoga and Pilates and all these physical things as performance and as a calorie burning mechanism. But what I wasn't doing was noticing how I felt. And when I slowed down and noticed how I felt, if I ate a chocolate chip cookie after lunch, I noticed an hour later I didn't feel, I didn't have the brain energy to make it through the next meeting. And so I just began to notice when I choose that to eat, I don't feel as good. So I really had a big shift in what I was eating. And I will say that the food noise did, I'm not going to say do these lessons and food noise is going to go away. For somebody like me, everybody's different. But for me, I was making better food choices. So I was choosing almonds and cashews over the chocolate snack because I was noticing certain foods were, I just noticed I wasn't able to stay in that feel-good feeling when I ate certain foods. So I just made better food choices with my food and really eliminated foods that I didn't feel good.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

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SPEAKER_02 13:47

I would say it improved my food choices. But the for me, I mean, I think I had a pretty extreme case of food noise. It was a constant. I had done hypnotherapy at one point when my weight went up. I saw a hypnotherapist. And I mean, what I learned in that experience is certain people can't be hypnotized. And I don't think I really was true under hypnosis, but she was a great coach in making better food choices. But the way she described it was it's like an old school phone ringing. And in the old days, when a phone was ringing, you could not keep having a conversation. You would say, Go pick up that phone. I need that phone to stop ringing. And I mean, that is what my life was like for 57 years. Um, there was so even though I was feeling good and I was making better food choices, there was always, especially working at Facebook with free food, when I was working, it was always go get more almonds, go get more cashews. I still had food noise for sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Okay. So there is still something there that was still a little bit dysregulated in terms of the food. Well, I think oh, go ahead. Yeah. No, I was gonna ask you if you could explain a little bit more about the method, what what it entails, like what you do. Because I've done some somatic, I purchased one of these like programs. I don't remember if it was a 30-day fix or what, but found it very difficult to slow down enough. And so, like I said, I started to do it on double time. So I was like, Well, at least I'm doing something. And the goal is like, do this as slowly as possible. And I was like, Oh my god, I don't have time for this. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

So that's the thing about this method. And so the Foldenkrais method, which is it's a form of somatic education, and what it was my only understanding of somatic education. So I've been peeking into what other somatics are doing. And I think what's very, very different about this method is it's awareness through movement. It's not really about doing the movements, it's about your attention to how you're doing the movement. So that's why if you're doing the movement wrong or you're copying the way somebody else is doing the movement, you are staying in performance mode and you're not sensing and feeling. So the first thing is this method is an audio only method. So there's no videos by design. And when I made the posture app, the feedback I got over and over and over was you need videos, you need videos. And I understand that culture that we want to do things perfectly and we want to do it right, and God forbid we do the movements wrong. But the key to this method by design, it's audio. Because for me, first and foremost, listening and slowing down and listening to those verbal cues became a form of meditation for me. I could not think about my to-do list. I could not think about food. I could, I can't tell you how many times when I did yoga, I would be in a pose thinking as soon as I get out of this class, I'm going to stop at the store and get this to eat. That's how I did yoga. Same. So this method, you're being given verbal cues. And if you aren't listening, you get lost in the lesson, which is okay. You can rewind it, or you can just, you know, like I said, it's it's not about doing the movement, it's about listening. So I think the reason I was able to show up at work with a regulated nervous system was first and foremost, I was listening to, I was forced to listen and stay present in the lesson. And then the next thing on the to-do list is listening to myself. So in the beginning, there's a lot of inquiry of how does your shoulder blade feel? How does this feel? And I literally, the answer was, I don't feel anything. I didn't feel anything. And I would go see practitioners and they would give me the inquiry of does one shoulder feel higher than the other? And I was like, Yeah, I feel nothing. And it it's a practice, and it took some time before I started to feel things. But just the inquiry of looking for the answer, even if you don't have the answer, really primes the brain for neuroplasticity. So Moshe Feldenkrais, who developed this method, and he developed it in the 1940s, 1950s, he said he was not after flexible bodies, he was after flexible brains. Now, this is really important because the word neuroplasticity was not validated until the nice, so he was that much ahead of his time of knowing he was really after rewiring brains. And so the lessons create a condition for learning to go from autopilot to the awareness of choice. So our nervous systems are programmed to be on autopilot because if you have to think about how to breathe, if you have to think about how to walk, it would be incredibly exhausting. Yeah. But having that capacity to notice and be aware and create the so these lessons create conditions of learning so that you can make those new neural connections and rewire the brain. So if you're wired for always go, go, go, you're now slowing down, you're paying attention, and you are finding new paths to do things. And the other thing is you reduce your effort. And I think what's important about this method and the difference between signing up for a 30-day nervous system reset, what's really important about this method is the novelty. So if you every time you do a new lesson and you have no idea the direction it's going, and you have to let go of the achievement-oriented nature that we have of, okay, I'm gonna do this lesson, tell me what the outcome is. And what's interesting in the app is we do give lesson titles, we say what the lesson is. So it kind of gives you a clue. And we have instruct we have directions that say what the lesson entails, but I would say having no idea what the lesson's about or is the best because then you're curious. And when you're curious, you shift from autopilot to a learning mode. And when you are shifting to a learning mode is when those neural connections and new pathways begin to open.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Right. So how do you know if you if you're consistently doing the lessons and you're trying to listen and not just rush through it? How do you know that your nervous system is regulated? You've mentioned a few things. You felt more empathetic towards your boss, and you're the you're able to make better choices with your food, but how would somebody know that they are on a better path?

SPEAKER_02 21:18

You become more responsive instead of reacting. So I I mean, that's one reason I named the at posture. So it's really the power and the pause. So I think you know you're regulated when something you when you begin to respond in a different way, and you're like, wow, I just took a breath and I didn't feel the need to respond to that person. And you realize you have a choice when you move off of autopilot and you start to make different choices. I will say, I think other people noticed it in me before I noticed it. People. Said to me, You're you're listening back because I I I had undiagnosed ADHD, so I was constantly interrupting. And I I think, you know, whether people have ADHD or not, I think we're getting so accustomed to swipe, you know, being on social media, swiping things away, or I do I listen to most podcasts at two times speed. I get, you know, I'm my brain in a conversation was always three steps ahead. And I would want for people to talk a little bit faster and to get to the point a little bit quicker. And now I can sit with people in their conversation and understand where they are. And my trick for this is often in a conversation, I will notice how my feet are on the floor. And so really becoming somatically embodied, and then I don't need to interrupt. And I, you know, the person doesn't necessarily know that I'm toggling my attention between my feet and what they're saying. Sure. But it is, but it is helping me to stay present with them. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

So, how do you relate all of this to those of us on the GLP1 journey? And, you know, my my goal really is to help people have lasting success. And I think that nervous system regulation is one of the untalked about pieces of this for all the reasons that you you mentioned is you can make better choices. You can be more in like control of what you're doing with your with yourself and with your choices. So, how would this apply to somebody on that journey?

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Well, I think this particular method and and maybe with many somatic methods, the nervous system is first regulated. And if it if it means doing the lessons at two times speed, that's okay. Like you can speed it up, or choosing a five-minute lesson versus a traditional 45-minute lesson. So that's starting on that journey. So it begins with the nervous system regulation. But I think what's also important with the GLP one journey is when the food noise for the people who have food noise, I realize not everybody on GLP one has food noise, but for the people who've traditionally had that food noise, when that noise goes away, something interesting happens. It opens up space in your brain. And now you have choice. What do you do with that space that's now opened in your brain? And we live in what some people call an attention economy. So who's gonna hijack your attention? Who's is it gonna be TikTok? Is it gonna be, you know, whatever is out there competing for your attention? And I think there's an opportunity for you to shift, you have choice, so you choose what you're gonna do with that brain power. And I think there's an opportunity to replace the food with awareness and attention on yourself, and taking that 30 minutes of lying on the floor, noticing how you feel, and giving yourself the attention you have always deserved and going deep and exploring. And it's not about you gotta love your body. I think that's a bridge too far. Many of us have hated our bodies for too long to just be like, you gotta love your body. That's I think these lessons help you to notice and give your attention to the body that you may not have given it to, and to notice without judgment. So you move, you're no longer hating it, you're not yet loving it. You're just awareness and giving the attention to your body that it's so needs and deserves, but you're doing it non-judgmentally. So when we give a cue, put your hands together and glide one hand over the other, you're like, my shoulder's also moving. There's no judgment there. There's no, there's no expectation, there's no performance. So it's it's not about doing the movement, but just noticing when when I move my hand, my shoulder also moves. Oh, that's interesting. I've I've never noticed how the hand and the shoulder are connected. I now have that awareness. And so I think that is um an important part of the journey. The other thing I will say is that our brains map our bodies. So whether it's through weight loss or an injury, the map takes about six months to update. So maybe you've heard of phantom limb sensations.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

So if somebody loses a limb, they're gonna still feel that limb on average for six more months. And it takes the brain about more or less different for everybody, it takes the brain to update that that limb is gone. And so it's similar with weight loss. So as you lose weight, especially if you're losing weight rapidly, you may still feel that you're overweight when you're not. And that's why, as a yo-yo dieter, with my weight up and down and up and down, my brain map always, even when I was at my goal weight, my brain map still had the proprioception it was putting itself in space at a heavier weight because I even when I was at my goal weight.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

So hear that a lot. Like people get lose 100 pounds and they're like, This isn't what I expected. I'm still see myself as overweight, even though they're not, you know, and it's hard for that brain to catch up. So you think that this is something that could maybe help them start noticing catch up a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 28:00

It literally is rewiring the brain. So you're accelerating the brain map that is identifying where you fit into space, and it's because you're noticing how your leg meets the floor, you're able to update that map a little bit quicker than it's going to be on its on it. Definitely it, it it that is a huge benefit. The other thing is you really start to move because most of us think in parts. So we think I have an arm, I have a foot, I have a leg. We're really thinking about, and especially if you have any aches and pains, it's like, oh, my neck is separate, my back is separate. And these lessons begin to bring in the whole, the whole picture. And I would say we also often have unnecessary muscular effort and tension and holding happening. And what we what we don't have in the lessons, um, and as we continue to grow our library, I definitely want to have the teachers. I also want to preface that saying I do not teach in the app at all. Currently, we have 10 different teachers because I know voice is important for different people and people need to find the voice that resonates for them. So I have only guild certified Feldenkrais practitioners teaching in the app. But just what I what we don't have in any of the lessons, but I will give a tip or trick to your um to your listeners. What I did in my private practice, um, I don't think I mentioned I study this for four years and to get certified. And then eventually I left Facebook and I opened up my private practice. And working with my clients when they would work, come to mind to me for hands-on lessons. The trick I learned for people, and I think this is incredibly helpful for people on a GLP1 journey, is clients would, you know, they would rush between appointments or work and they'd end up on my table and they had aches and pains. And I I could see that they were very, very activated. And I would have them say, imagine your hot candle wax and all of your muscles, all of your tissues, everything is melting into the table. And the only thing left is your skeleton. Let everything melt away. And our lessons do we work on skeletal connections a lot so that people can let go of that muscular effort. But I think that exercise of imagine your hot candle wax and just letting that tension. And so whether you still have the weight on you or it's coming off in your journey, if you can visualize just being a skeleton. I saw it work so it was so helpful in the practice for so many of my clients. And it's a technique I use when I wake up and I can't fall back to sleep. I'm like, you're just hot candle wax, you're melting into the bed. That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, I'm gonna try that next time by 3 a.m.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

And I do four breaths in, six breaths out, and I don't I let go of how do I get back to sleep? And I just say, breathe in four, breathe in four, breathe out six, breathe in four. Only worry about the process, not about the falling back to sleep. And between envisioning being hot candle wax and four and six out, I'm usually back to sleep within four or five breaths.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

That's awesome. I think that's great advice because I know a lot of my audience also struggles with sleep. It's a big deal. So, where can people find out about your app and connect with you online?

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Our website is pause sure. So it's like posture but with a pause, P-A-U-S-E-T-U-R-E.com. And you can read more about the method there, and then we have links there to the app stores where you can download the app.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Thank you so much, Beverly. This was so informative, and I think it's a really important piece of the puzzle. Because we can talk about nutrition all day, but if you're a disaster and your nervous system, it's not you're not going to make the best choices, no matter what I tell you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the GLP One Hub podcast. I have been using Beverly's app and I find it very relaxing and helpful with uh stress management. So check it out if that's something that you are looking for. You can find all the information in the show notes. And if you want to stay connected with everything that's going on with GLP One Hub, make sure you are on the Steady State newsletter where every week I provide uh weight loss advice, information about the GLP One world, which is changing so quickly all the time, and just updates on things that are going on and content that I am creating. And I'll see you in the next episode.