Body-First Healing Podcast

My Nervous System Health Toolkit: Daily Practices for Regulation

• Britt Piper • Episode 34

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Curious about what nervous system support looks like in daily life? In this episode, Britt shares the daily nervous system routine that helps her stay grounded, present, and supported She explains why mental health has to be approached through the body, not just the mind, and offers a deeper perspective on regulation through the lens of devotion, recovery, rhythm, nourishment, movement, and protected space. This conversation is both practical and personal, and it cuts through the aesthetic version of self-care to focus on what truly helps the body hold more. 

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Related Episode:

  • Food Therapy: How Nutrition Impacts Anxiety, Stress & the Nervous System with Luis Mojica


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LISTEN, FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE:

Why Better Mental Health Starts In The Body

My Morning Routine For Nervous System Care

How Movement Supports The Nervous System

Food’s Impact On The Nervous System

The Importance Of Consistency, Unplugging & Cultivating Connection

Tips For Supporting Your Nervous System Daily

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing, you have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here. Hello and welcome back to the Body First Healing Podcast. I am your host, you guys, Britt Piper, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Trainer, Autor, Survivor, and I am excited for today's episode. Now, I am recording this in the middle of a really full season. By the time that this episode airs, I will be traveling across the country for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which is the month of April, moving from city to city, stepping onto stages, holding rooms that carry so much weight, so much humanity, um, so many stories. And to be honest with you, there was a version of me years ago who would have entered a season like this, already kind of braced and adrenalized and running on purpose. Yes, but also running on depletion. I probably would have told myself that I was fine because, you know, I'm functioning. This is part of the gig, literally, and because I was doing really meaningful work, but my body was telling a different story. And what I've really come to understand now, after all of these years of doing this work, is that the way that I show up in those spaces has very little to do with how much I know, and it has everything to do with how supported my nervous system is. Because my body comes with me everywhere. It is there on every stage, in every conversation. It comes into my home at the end of a day with my kids. And if my system is depleted, then there is a limit to what I can truly hold, no matter how much I care or how much I want to willpower my way through it. And I just want to say this clearly, especially for those of you who hold a lot too. I mean, so many of us do. Even though I technically work part-time. For instance, I am only really in the office, you know, doing group work or session work Mondays through Wednesdays. I really truly work full-time because the most important work that I do is not what happens when I am on, when I am in session on a stage. It's what I do when I am off. It's the way that I tend to my nervous system so that I can hold, so that I can contain and really anchor the people that I serve. That is the work. So this episode today is kind of a behind-the-scenes look at what actually supports me, what supports my nervous system, what supports my work and my mission and my family. And this is not going to be the aesthetic version of self-care. Okay. This is not like some curated routine. It's going to be real, lived in, daily ways that I take care of my body and my nervous system so that I can keep showing up in a life that asks a lot of me without abandoning myself in the process. All right. So let's get into it. Before I walk you through my routines, I just want to ground us in something really important here. So when we talk about mental health, okay, today's topic is our mental health toolkit. We are actually talking about nervous system health because your nervous system state creates your story. For instance, if your nervous system is activated, okay, if you're stuck in a fight response, your thoughts, your behavior, your life is going to mirror and reflect that activation. If you are shut down in your nervous system, your thoughts will reflect that too, which means we cannot simply talk or think our way into better mental health. We actually have to start with the body. And more specifically, we have to start with the nervous system. And then everything else kind of organizes around that. So everything that I am going to share today, okay, the routines, the structure, the choices that I make, it's not about controlling my life or optimizing it. It is about supporting my physiology or my nervous system. Because when my physiology is supported, my mind follows. Now, before I get into some of my routines, I just want to have a bit of like a mindset shift here. Okay. And I want to talk about this concept of moving from discipline to devotion. So for me, there was a time when my mental health toolkit was really just, oh gosh, like endurance, we could say, dressed up as strength. I thought that resilience meant pushing through discomfort, overriding my needs, proving to myself and even the world that I could handle more and more and more. And in many ways I could. And I kind of built a life around that capacity. But underneath it, my body was constantly bracing, constantly adapting, constantly carrying more than it actually processed. And so what changed everything for me wasn't my schedule. It wasn't actually my workload. It was my relationship with myself. I stopped approaching my life from a place of discipline, rigid discipline, and started approaching it from a place of devotion. Because discipline can sometimes be rooted in like this energy of I'm not enough yet, or I need to fix myself. And I feel like sometimes we see that in the wellness, self-care, nervous system space, healing space. But devotion, on the other hand, says something entirely different. Devotion says, I am already worthy of care. It says, I deserve to show up for myself the way that I would for someone that I deeply love. And that shift, for me at least, it really softened everything because I now wasn't forcing myself through my life anymore. I was supporting myself inside of it. Now, one of the biggest things that I have learned, especially doing the work that I do, is that I don't need to just be okay or at baseline before I give to others. In the roles that I show up in in my work, as a practitioner who leads a very large group of clients in the Body First Healing program, as a trainer in the Body First Healing Institute who's training the next generation of practitioners, as someone who stands on stages and shows up for survivors, as someone who is teaching and training the military and violent crimes units, and then also showing up for my kids and my family and my friends and my community and myself. Oh my goodness. I can't just be at baseline. I have to be at overflow. So with that in mind, okay, as I'm sharing my routines, my practices, what works for me today, I just want you to know this is coming from a place of overflow. Now, that overflow for me is important because I find that if I try to pour from a place that's empty or even just again at baseline, I can feel it immediately. My nervous system can feel it immediately. My my patience really shortens, my presence really kind of thins. I notice that my body feels really tight, my mind gets so loud. And so what I do is I build my life in a way where I am constantly pouring into myself, not as an afterthought, but as a first step, as a priority. Because what I pour into myself is what allows me to then pour into everything else. And part of that, I'll also say like something I've learned very deeply, is that support doesn't always look like doing more. Okay. Sometimes it actually looks like doing less. And that is why I work part-time because I've realized that the space in between my work when I have time just for me, it is not empty. It's actually where everything really starts to integrate. It's where my body can really catch up. It's where my nervous system can process things, can decompress, and it's where I can really come back to myself. And if you even think about this, like just think of the analogy of, you know, like working out. Like you don't build muscle in your workouts. Okay. For those of us who love like sports science and things like this, your muscle actually expands and grows on your rest days. You build it in the rest. And so the workout creates the stimulus, but the growth happens in the recovery. That's why they always say, don't ever, ever skip your recovery days. And it's the same thing with your nervous system. If you are constantly outputting, constantly holding, constantly doing, even if the intention is to help yourself, heal yourself, support yourself, without giving your system space to integrate and breathe and settle, then you do not build resilience. You actually deplete it. So a huge part of my mental health toolkit is not just what I do, it's also the space that I protect, the rest days that I really honor, the pauses that I do not skip, and the moments where I choose not to fill my time with something to do. Because that's where my capacity actually expands. And that's where that devotion that I was talking about matters. Okay, because this now doesn't come from a place of self-hatred and I need to fix myself and I need to be better and I'm not good enough. It now comes from a place of self-love. Okay, so now that I've given my TED talk, let's get into the actual tangible things that I am doing. And I am going to start from first thing when I wake up. If you guys have followed me on social media over on Instagram or TikTok at Heal With Brit, I talk so much and I share so much in my stories about my morning routines. My mornings are so, so sacred to me. So I wake up every morning around 5 a.m. and I wake up at that time intentionally because it's before my family and my kids wake up. It's before anyone needs anything from me. And I don't do that again from a place of discipline. I do it from a place of devotion. And I will also just say that I've always been a morning person. I just naturally wake up earlier. But I do this because my life is so full. As I've mentioned, and I'm sure you guys can relate to this too. I'm a mom, I run multiple businesses, I support clients, practitioners, online communities. I'm just constantly, constantly plugged in. And so that early morning solitude is my lifeline. It's where I get to come back to myself. So how my morning starts is I start my morning with a shot of Magic Mine, which is a mental performance shot, which I have taken every single day consistently for almost six years now. And it really just gives me kind of this gentle, like mental clarity and focus, but it doesn't spike my system. It's made with things like Ashwagandha, which helps to calm you down, but it also gives you matcha to give you clarity and energy. It has L-theanine and just lots of other wonderful like adaptogens in it. But taking it, it feels like my brain kind of comes online while my body still gets to stay a little calm. So first things first, I take my magic mind shot and then I start making a pot of coffee and I sit down for 10 to 15 minutes to do some sort of reading. So sometimes it's a devotional, sometimes I'm reading from a book. But for me, it's not about like consuming information. It's about letting something grounding kind of land in my body before I start outputting. So I'm in the input mode. Then I listen to this five-minute visualization that I recorded. It is a voice memo and it's a future version of me. It's 2027 Brit speaking back to me and just kind of walking me through my life. And I let myself feel into that. I embody the emotions, I embody the feeling of that abundance and that reality and those things manifesting and playing out. After that, I then do just a little bit of journaling. So sometimes it's a brain dump. Sometimes I'm doing gratitude practices. Sometimes I'm doing future gratitude practices. And if you want to learn more about some of the practices I have learned, there's actually an incredible book called Beyond Wanting by Matt Cook. And little sneak peek, I actually interviewed Matt for our podcast, the Body First Healing Podcast, just a few days ago, guys. And this episode will be coming out soon, and you guys are gonna love it. But go get his book, Beyond Wanting. It's the science of manifestation, moving beyond just wanting things in your life and really aligning with them, because a lot of my practices I've really gathered from his work in his book. Okay, so let's get back to the routine. So by the time I'm finished, okay, I've done my matcha, started the coffee, done a little bit of journaling, a little bit of reading, a little bit of visualization. And then by the time I finish, I feel like my brain is online, it has movement, it is mobilizing, it's got clarity. And the next thing I do is I start to move my body. So I do that by going out to the garage and getting in a workout. And this has become honestly such a core part of how I support my nervous system, not because I'm trying to achieve something physically, but because I understand what my body is actually carrying. So I start with my Nordic track treadmill for about 20 to 30 minutes. I usually do some kind of incline hike or I go running. And I love the Nordic track because it has a big screen and it takes me through these guided programs like out in nature. Like one was, you know, a month-long series in Switzerland, and there's one in Patagonia. I did one in Argentina. And for me, it just helps me to feel like I'm outside, I'm exploring, like I'm in movement with something, even though, you know, I'm in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. So after I've done some kind of warm-up of just a gentle run or a hike, then I get into lifting for about 30 to 40 minutes. So we built out our garage gym this past year. And honestly, having that space has been so huge for me. It might be my favorite space or room in our entire home. And it's great because it's not just there for consistency, but also accessibility. Like there's no barrier between me and the gym. We actually have a gym membership, but our gym is like 20 minutes away. And with my kids' waking cycles and getting up early sometimes, I often found that I wasn't able to make it to the gym. And when I go days or even weeks without moving my body in that way, I've always loved weightlifting. It definitely impacts me. Like I can notice it. So with this, I can just go move my body when it needs it. And what I've really come to understand about this is that it's not just about a workout. Okay. This is where I get to complete stress cycles because so much of what we carry throughout the day, especially in these high capacity, demanding lives that we have, is incomplete activation or energy or stress hormones that got mobilized but never had the chance to discharge. Now, if you're in the body first healing program, if you're a client of mine, or if you're in the practitioner training in the Body First Healing Institute, you know, this is such a large component of the work that we focus on, which is helping the nervous system and the body to complete stress cycles so that we don't remain stuck in survival mode. So for me, working out helps my body to really allow like conversations that didn't fully land to be processed. It allows emotions that didn't get to move through to finally be metabolized. Because when that energy doesn't move through the body, it doesn't just disappear. It gets redirected, usually into the mind, usually into overthinking or rumination. So all that to say, movement gives my body somewhere to really process what it's been holding on to and it gives that activation a pathway. But I also just want to say here that this is where I really feel that analogy of rest come in. Because again, just like building muscle, it's not just about the movement, right? It's also about the recovery and giving your body time to integrate what just happened. So for me, I don't push my body every single day. I honor rest days, I let my system come down because again, resilience is not built through constant output. It's built through cycles of activation and rest or expansion and contraction, which I did an entire episode on. And so that's something that I really try to live by. Okay, so after my workout is done, then what I do is I will take the dog and we will go on our early 10-minute walk just right around the block. That allows me to get out in nature, to breathe in fresh air. I call these my God morning walks because I like to do a little bit of a sensory scavenger hunt just to kind of bring my body and my senses alive, which is so regulating for the nervous system. Morning light has been proven to decrease your stress levels, to increase your serotonin. So I love getting outside for just 10 minutes on kind of my sunrise walk. And by the time I get back home, that's usually when everyone in the house is starting to wake up. Okay, so now let's transition and talk a little bit about food. Okay. Food is one of the most important and honestly one of the most overlooked parts of nervous system health. Because food is not just nutrition. Food is regulation. Food is fuel, it's information. And it's either supporting your nervous system or it's stressing it out. And this is something that I've become really passionate about, not just from a scientific lens, but from a personal one. Because my relationship with food has not always been the healthiest. I had seasons in my 20s. I'm 37 now, but I had seasons in my 20s of feeling really disconnected from my body. Also, seasons where I felt like I was really controlling and micromanaging my body, or just really kind of not being in relationship with it. And so rebuilding that relationship changed everything. Now, one little fact that I want to point out here is that about 90% of your serotonin, which is your happy hormone, is actually produced and stored in your gut. And that is why your gut is often referred to as your second brain, because what you eat, what you're putting into your body, is directly going to influence your mood, your emotional stability, and your nervous system. Now, I did talk about this much more in depth in a recent episode with Luis Mojica, who is a somatic experiencing practitioner and a food therapist. It was an incredible episode. Make sure you go and catch up on that. But his entire body of work is really around the intersection of food and the nervous system and how the way that we eat can, again, either support regulation or it can contribute to dysregulation. So, coming back to the relationship with food. So I'd say over the past, especially decade, food has become a way that I really partner with my body. So I do That by eating very predictably. For instance, I have the same breakfast almost every morning after my workout. It's kind of boring, maybe to some, but for me, like I honestly look forward to it every single day. It is cottage cheese with a chopped-up hard-boiled egg, um, some sliced avocado, and then some kind of berry or fruit, like blueberries, um, strawberries. And then sometimes I add like almond butter or some kind of nut butter. But it's simple, it is balanced, it has protein, healthy fat, carbs, fiber. Like my body knows it and it trusts it. Uh, some other things I do to really just strengthen that relationship with food and to come into partnership with it is I meal prep every single week. So I like to plan out our meals. I go grocery shopping on the weekend, and then I usually prep all of our breakfasts, most of my lunches throughout the week, and then maybe a couple of dinners. Now, my lunches are usually like my big meal of the day, and it's usually some kind of bowl that's really like nutrient dense. So things that I know are going to sustain me. And the reason for that is because I don't want to be in the middle of my day trying to function on an underfed nervous system. These bowls usually consist of some kind of grain like brown rice or quinoa with some kind of green, maybe roasted veggies, protein, usually an avocado, and then some kind of like sauce or dip to go along with it or like hummus or something like that. Now, side note here, I also have been breastfeeding for almost six years. I nursed Noah for three years, and Shia is about two and a half now, and we're still going strong on our breastfeeding journey. So, because of that, I also have to make sure that I'm eating more, which means that I snack a lot throughout the day. I kind of graze. I eat things like jerky, protein bars, um, carrots and hummus, crackers. I just really make sure that my system is consistently fueled. And I also don't restrict either. I eat really intuitively. So I allow flexibility. And that allows me to really enjoy food because regulation, again, as we've learned, is not about rigidity. Okay, it's not about forcing the nervous system, controlling the nervous system. Regulation is about relationship. And even when I travel, I bring food with me. So I bring snacks, I bring meals, things that feel familiar from home. And I have found that really supportive because when everything else around me is kind of changing, you know, I feel a little ungrounded. Food becomes my anchor. So yeah, I think, you know, nutrition and food is something that we really don't talk about enough in mental health. Like we talk a lot about our thoughts and our emotions, but we don't talk enough about the food that sustains us. We don't talk about blood sugar, nourishment, and how, you know, our body physically feels safe with the food that we are eating. And I think that that really matters. Okay, so now let's move into talking about having consistency. I also want to talk about sleep and circadian rhythm. So one of the most regulating things for the nervous system is predictability. We often say in the somatic and nervous system space that same equals safe. Your nervous system is always going to prioritize what feels familiar because it's predictable. And if it's predictable, then the nervous system, which is not a rational system, will see it as safe. So for me, I have built my life in a way where my body can really rely on rhythm or predictable rhythms. I wake up at the same time every day. I go to bed at roughly the same time every night, usually between like 9:30 and 10:30. And I have the same wind-down routine, the same morning routine. Uh, but at night, let me just go into that for a second. I like to do my skincare. I decompress, I might go for a night walk. That's kind of been one of my favorite things lately, especially as the weather is getting warmer. But having consistency, especially around our sleep cycles, like the time that you're going to bed and the time that you're waking up. I want to speak on this really quickly because what's interesting is the research shows that consistency in your sleep and wake times is actually a stronger predictor of quality rest than the total number of hours that you get. So for instance, it doesn't matter as much how many hours of sleep you're getting if you're going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time consistently. That's actually more regulating for your circadian rhythm because it keeps your body in homeostasis, which then stabilizes your stress response system. So it's not just, again, about getting enough sleep. It's about giving your body a rhythm that it can truly trust. And when I stay consistent in my routines, I see that have an impact across everything in my life. And I just want to stress here, it's not because I need control, but because, again, the nervous system thrives on predictability because it reduces load, it reduces decision fatigue, and it allows the body to really settle. I mean, just think about kids, right? For those of us who have children, we know how important routines are, right? Having those nighttime routines, those nap routines, those lunch routines, those morning routines, routines help to minimize stress. And in a world that is constantly changing and stimulating and asking more and more and more of us, having that internal rhythm really becomes your anchor. Okay, I want to talk now, you guys, about just the importance of solitude and unplugging and protecting your energy. So for me, solitude is not optional. I have shared about this so much in previous episodes, like the one on self-abandonment, where I talked about, you know, really, really prioritizing solitude as I went on that trip to Northern California just for myself. Solitude is necessary for all of us. And for me, because of how much I hold, again, how much I give, how much I'm in connection with others throughout the day, I need time where I am not being accessed, where I am not responding. And my practitioners in the Body First Healing Institute Somatic Practitioner Training, we know how important solitude is so that we can show up at full capacity for our clients. So we build in solitude intentionally. For me, that looks like unplugging from social media over the weekends as much as I can because so much of my work requires me to be online and to be, you know, present and engaging. And so my system needs a break from that. I also don't sleep with my phone next to me. It actually stays across the room so that I'm not scrolling at night because that time before bed, like it really, really matters. That's when my nervous system is coming down. We also try to have phone-free time in our home in the evenings, especially between like five and seven o'clock, so that we can be really fully present with our children without distraction, without them staring at the back of our cell phones. And the reason that we prioritize that is because presence is regulating and constant input dysregulates. And what I have just learned from personal experience and professional knowledge is that if we are always plugged in, your nervous system will never get to complete the day. So I have to create a lot of intentional moments where I get to step away, where I need to unplug, and where I let my body just come back into baseline. Now I know we're talking about solitude, but I just want to transition and also talk about community. Okay, because at the same time, something that's just as important as solitude is connection. And we know this. We know that we are wired for connection. It is a biological imperative. We talk a lot about co-regulation here. Okay. We are not meant to do life alone. So I'm really intentional about the spaces that I plug into. And I'll give you guys just some examples. So, first of all, I'm part of a Christian women's group in my neighborhood. It's me and about eight other women, and I am definitely the youngest one there, which I find honestly so fun. But we meet once a month. And what we do is we pick out a book that is based in spirituality or faith, and we all read that book over the course of a month, and then we get together and we reflect on it together. And it's wonderful. We get to talk about life and faith and just what we're really walking through. And it's a simple commitment, but it's really grounding and it's a space where I don't have to be the one holding everything and finding spaces like that where you're not just pouring into others, but you're also being poured into as well, I think is really important. Now, something else that I do for my mental health, which might be something that you weren't expecting to hear, but I love challenging myself to keep learning and to keep growing because our brains, especially as adults, can become very patterned. Okay. We stop learning new things in adulthood. Adult learning is so hard because our brains are not primed for really like learning past the age of 25. And when we're not learning and not growing, we often find that we just stay in what's familiar. So for me, I like to step into things that feel new. Um, recently, that has looked like taking up jujitsu classes, which has honestly been humbling and challenging, but also just so good for my body and my mind. Uh, it's something that I do with NOAA. And then I'm also in the adult classes as well. I'm also currently learning Spanish on Duolingo, which is like an app. It's a free app that you can download and you can pick a language to learn every day. You have these little like lessons which take just a few minutes. But for me, it helps to stretch my brain in a really different way. I'm also starting horseback riding lessons soon. Now, I say all that, but I'm also really intentional not to overwhelm myself with too much. But I do believe that learning really keeps us alive in a different way. It keeps our nervous system engaged. It is so great for our brain and just our overall mental health. It builds confidence, it creates new pathways. And for me, it's really just this loving reminder that I am still expanding. Now, at the end of the day, okay, none of this comes from, again, a place of trying to fix myself. I feel like that was important to repeat. It comes from a place of loving myself, of treating the relationship that I have with me the way that I would treat someone that I deeply care about. And I'll even invite you in this moment to just reflect on someone that you really deeply care about, someone that you love. How would you show up for them? How would you nourish them? Would you give them rest? Would you take them outside to go on a walk? Would you give them space to breathe? Right? That's how we want to try to live with ourselves. If you could take anything from this episode, I would hope that it would be this. Okay. Mental health is not something that you fix, it's something that you tend to. It's something that you build a relationship with. It's not just a one-and-done thing. It is a lifelong relationship that you're committing to. And sometimes supporting your mental health, which is also your nervous system, isn't about doing more. It's actually about simplifying. It's about doing less and giving your body the space to actually integrate your life. Now, before we end, I just want to give you guys a couple of quick practices. If you're wondering, like, where can I really start with this? Okay, so here's a few simple things that you can begin integrating for yourself. I'd say, first of all, can you step outside for just five minutes of morning light before checking your phone? Can you place a hand on your body when you feel overwhelmed and just pause with that touch? Can you eat something nourishing within an hour of waking? Can you go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day? Can you build just one small predictable routine that your body can rely on, like maybe opening the windows every morning for 30 minutes? Okay, these are small, gentle ways that you can start tending to yourself that can have a really drastic and beautiful impact on your life. All right, my friend, thank you so much for spending time with me this week on the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, then just know this is exactly the work that we go deeper into in the Body First Healing program. These are things that I love sharing about over on social media at Heal With Brit. You can go to bodyfirsthealing.com to learn more about how you can step into this work alongside me and our incredible community. But enjoy the rest of your week and I will see you guys here again soon on the Body First Healing Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week. And until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.