Ep 44: You Can't Outthink a Dysregulated Nervous System

What if one of the most powerful tools for changing your brain isn't another productivity hack, mindset strategy, or morning routine?

What if it's your breath?

In this solo episode of Rewired, Tiffany shares a personal story from a particularly full week that led her to rediscover something we all do more than 20,000 times a day—but rarely with intention. Inspired by James Nestor's Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, she explores the fascinating neuroscience behind why slowing our breath can help us think more clearly, make better decisions, regulate our emotions, and reconnect with ourselves.

Together, we'll explore:

• Why your brain is constantly asking, "Am I safe?"
• How your breath directly influences your nervous system
• The connection between breathing, emotional regulation, and clear thinking
• Why you can't access your wisest self from a survival state
• The role of interoception—your brain's awareness of what's happening inside your body
• A simple breathing practice you can begin using today

Whether you're leading a team, navigating a difficult conversation, supporting others, or simply feeling the weight of a busy season, this episode is an invitation to pause, breathe, and remember that sometimes the fastest way to change your mind is to first calm your body.

Because rewiring isn't always about finding a better thought.

Sometimes it's about creating the conditions for your best thoughts to return.

Resources Mentioned

• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use one deep breath today.

Until next time, stay curious...your brain is always changing.

Stay connected with Rewired
Listen anytime on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or yesempower.com/podcast

Join the Empower community on LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube
for weekly tools, neuroscience-based inspiration, and stories of real change.

Discover upcoming workshops, LaunchPad learning, and coaching opportunities at yesempower.com

Empowered people empower people. Live intentionally. Lead thoughtfully. Grow through awareness.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to Rewired. I'm your host, Tiffany Grimes, with Empower Coaching and Training. Hey friends, welcome to the Rewired Podcast. This is episode 46, and the title of today's recording is You Can't Outthink a Disregulated Nervous System. So let's talk about this. I want to tell you about my week last couple weeks, really. They haven't been bad weeks. In fact, they've been really great weeks. They were also extraordinarily full. I work with a lot of state organizations. We contract with a lot of state organizations to provide coaching and professional development. And June 30th is the end of the year. July 1st is the beginning of the year. So beyond just the regular fullness of things, we also were moving into a new program year, closing out old program years. We were doing lots of teaching and coaching in our CPEC Academy, our coach training academy. I've been meeting with amazing people to record podcasts. I've been in many, a many, a many meetings, answering many, many, many, many an email, you know, supporting our clients and our contractors and our staff and really also being very present for my family. I've had some time off. We've been playing, we've been transitioning from school year to summer, keeping the garden going and all the little animals, you know, happy and cool as summer heats up, and keeping the business moving forward as that is all happening. And so, somewhere in the middle of all of that, also remembering to eat well, to move my body, to drink water, to take all my hormone replacement therapies and my collagen and my, you know, all of those things. And so it's just a lot. That is what my last few weeks have been like. The good, the bad, the ugly, the wonderful, the wild, everywhere in between and full time all the time. And I know that you have weeks like that. Yours are made up differently, obviously, or maybe they look pretty similar. Nothing terrible has happened, but by the end of this time period, personally, I noticed something. My shoulders were tight, my jaw was clenched. I was moving quickly, very quickly, from one thing to the next, and feeling irritable about things that would slow me down, like, oh, my children wanting to talk to me or my partner wanting me to look at something, you know, things I value, things that are so special to me, but feeling like I've got this list that I've got to keep moving towards and checking things off. My mind was always one step ahead of where my body was. So I'm always working on this list. And the funny thing is that I didn't even realize how much tension I was carrying until I stopped. And that happened literally as I was jamming from one place to another, listening to podcasts, as I often do. And there was an interview with the author and researcher James Nestor in his book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. And I do want to preface this by saying I have not read the book. It's now on my list, it's heading my way from my local bookstore. But I was just so moved by the interview with him and to hear him talk about so much about breath and how we're doing it. I hesitate to use the word wrong, but we aren't using it to our fullest capacity. He started talking about belly breathing and not in a mystical, you know, way that's going to require me to go sit in a pose for a long time. It was right there as I was driving it, not just as another life hack or something I can do to quickly move on and get more done in a day. It was just breathing, just slowly, deeply breathing, allowing the diaphragm to do the work it was designed to do. Knowing that in our modern society where we keep our belly so tight because we want to be, you know, whatever, want to have the thinnest waist or whatever it is, that we're actually doing this major disservice to this powerful tool that we have all of the time. And so just letting the belly do its work to soften, to fill. And so I just, as I was driving, decided to try it because during the podcast, he was kind of guiding this process. So he would talk all about the science of it, and then he was just guided this process, and they had a little timer going and so it was very easy to follow along. Eyes are open, I'm driving, right? Fully aware. So I did it. I decided to try it. I paused, you know, my list, made a conscious choice to go into my mindfulness practice. I took one slow breath and focused on filling my belly first and then my chest, and then exhaled my chest first and then my belly. And I did it again and I did it again. And he guided several times through. And then he asked, Do you feel that? Do you feel that your shoulders have come down and there's a softening? And I was like, Oh my God, I do. I really do. And I'm, you know, I'm an active mindfulness practitioner, like I'm engaged in this, but I really just felt this shift with five breaths. I felt what I honestly wasn't expecting. I could literally feel my body soften and my shoulders did drop, and the tightness in my chest did ease, and the thoughts slowed down. They became present in the car with me in my body. Nothing in my life had changed. Everything's still full, everything's still gonna get done, everything's happening, but I had changed, and what part of my brain I was in had changed in these five breaths, and it fascinated me. And so, as I do, I go on a deep dive because that's what you know, the neuroscience that backs this podcast, the Rewired Podcast, is all about are these really amazing ways that we can be engaged with our lives. So, understanding why something so incredibly simple can have such a profound impact on the way that we think and feel and respond really guided me. So, today's episode isn't necessarily about breathing, it's about your brain on breath, is what I'll say. Reminds me of the commercials, your brain on drugs. This is your brain on breath, on deep belly breath, and really utilizing this new science and the new research on this tool that we have accessible all of the time. So I want to talk about, let's start with the brain, as we do so often. So, one of the biggest misconceptions we have is that our brain simply creates thoughts, right? It doesn't. Your brain is constantly collecting information, so it's not just outputting, it's inputting, it's collecting the information. It's listening, it's noticing the environment, it's noticing relationships, it's noticing memories, and it's noticing our body. Our body sends signals, so it is very much noticing this. Every second your brain is asking one question Am I safe? Not consciously, automatically, thousands of times every day. And one of the loudest signals your brain receives comes from this thing that we rarely think about, but are doing all of the time breathing. Our breath, when your breathing becomes short when it's quick, when it's shallow, your brain interprets that information. Historically, that's what happened when humans were running from danger. Your brain doesn't necessarily know whether you're, you know, getting chased by a tiger or trying to answer 30 emails before lunch in a short period of time. It simply notices the breathing is fast, the heart rate is elevated, the muscles are tight. There must be a threat. And without realizing it, your nervous system begins preparing you for survival. Let's experience this together. So before we go any further into the science of this, I want to invite you to try something with me. And uh, wherever you're at, whatever you're doing, engage in whatever way is safe for you to do so. And you can notice where we're at and come back to this practice if you'd like. So, what I want you to do is take one slow breath in through your nose. Let your belly gently expand. So just relax those muscles and allow it to expand. Now slowly breathe out of your mouth longer than your inhale. So keep it going. And then we're gonna do this again. Inhale through your nose, belly expands, chest expands after the belly, and then exhale slowly. Chest collapses, belly collapses, and we elongate that. And then one more time. In and out now just notice. Don't judge, don't try to feel a certain way, just simply notice. Did your shoulders move? Did your jaw soften? Did your breathing slow? Did your mind become just a little bit quieter or present? Maybe yes, maybe no. Either way, you've just practiced something incredibly important, and that is awareness. And awareness is where rewiring begins. We've talked about this a hundred times on here. You can't outthink survival. So that was part of the title of today's podcast. And here's something that I think we may forget because we are so disembodied most of our waking hours and just in our head, checking things off, getting things done. So when we're overwhelmed, our first instinct is usually to change our thinking. We tell ourselves to calm down, to think positive. I've got this, I'm gonna do it, right? We look on the bright side, we reframe it, and those are all really powerful, wonderful tools for sure. I teach a lot of these tools. The catch is that our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that's responsible for reasoning, for creativity, empathy, planning, good decision making, doesn't function at its best when your nervous system believes you're under threat. You literally cannot access your wisest thinking from a survival state. So we're giving ourselves thinking tools, but we haven't yet gotten into the thinking region of our brain when we are in a survival state. That's why you've probably said something you later regretted, or you sent an email you wish you hadn't, or you made a decision that looked very different after a good night's sleep. Just, you know, mentioning a few of my own. It wasn't because you suddenly became a different person. It's that the nervous system was driving the bus, right? So the survival, or what I often call the lizard brain, that lizard is down there making decisions. So back to the book and the interview with James Nestor. One of the things that James explores throughout his book, and again, I haven't read it, I want to say, so this is just via my research here, is that modern humans breathe differently than our ancestors. Many of us breathe through our mouth. We breathe quickly, we breathe shallowly, and often more than our bodies actually need. The research around slow breathing is really remarkable. And I've been practicing it now for about seven days solid as I lay there at night, as I'm driving. Anytime I think about it, I notice, oh, I'm breathing. For me, I'm breathing out of my nose, but I'm breathing shallow, which makes me breathe more quickly. My belly's tight. I'm like working on my abs all the time, I think. And so I just go into it and I slow it down and I practice what he guided in that podcast I was listening to, which is the belly, then the chest, through, you know, using the nose to do that breathing. He talks a lot about the science of breathing through our nose. Studies have shown that when we slow down our breathing using that diaphragm, so again, that belly breathing, we improve heart rate variability, which reflects the kind of flexibility of your nervous system adapting to stress. Higher HRV is generally associated with better emotional regulation, resiliency, and executive functioning. So, again, that's that prefrontal cortex. Slow breathing also helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the part of the nervous system that we are designed to spend most of our time in, and yet in our modern states, don't spend a lot of time there. So that sympathetic nervous system is the stress response. The parasympathetic nervous system is that optimal place where we are practicing rest, recovery, restoration. So think about that. One intentional breath doesn't change your circumstances, it changes the environment your brain is operating within. It's like trying to solve a complex puzzle while a fire alarm is blaring, right? Turn down the alarm. And suddenly your brain has access to abilities that were there all along, but we couldn't see it through that blaring alarm. That is the power of breath. So in the past, we've talked about TEB, that's that thought, emotion, behavior cycle. So if you've listened to the Rewired Podcast before or for a while, you've heard me talk about TEB. Again, sometimes it's called T, so thoughts, emotions, actions, or TEB, which is thought, emotion, behavior. We often assume that the thought comes first. And sometimes it does. But lately I've been wondering if something else deserves a place in that conversation and it's breath. What if before the anxious thought? And I know we might not feel like we can get there yet, your breathing has already changed. So before the frustration over the thing that is outside of our control, your shoulders have already tightened. Before the emotional reaction, your nervous system has already shifted into protection mode. What if changing your breath changes the emotional landscape in which your next thought appears? It's not magic, it's really, it's neuroscience. It's working with this brain. If we're breathing more deeply, then our thoughts, I should say, if we're breathing more deeply and slowly, and with our diaphragm and through our nose, and we're working with this heart rate variability, and we are already in a place of rest, recovery, and restoration, and we're already in a place of better emotional regulation, resiliency, and executive functioning, our thought might be different. So we might be changing our TBs. We're always running Tebs. Sometimes they really benefit us, and sometimes not so much. So if breath changes and impacts these things, they will change the Teb cycles that we run, I guess, is what I'm thinking. And I love that thought. And I think the science backs it up. I said, I think, but I'm pretty sure that it does. So there's another word that I've been learning that I really absolutely love, and it's this idea of introspion. So if you aren't familiar with what this is, it's your brain's ability to notice what's happening inside of your body. So your brain's ability to notice your heartbeat, your breathing, your muscle tension, the quote unquote butterflies in your stomach, the warmth or heat, the tightness, the calm, the cold. It's how your brain makes sense of your internal world. So introsphen. The more aware we become of those internal signals, the earlier we recognize stress. We recognize fear. We recognize joy, or we recognize things like overwhelm. As coaches, we spend a lot of time exploring thoughts, and we should, for sure. But sometimes the body knows something before the mind has words for it. That's why paying attention to our breath isn't just a relaxation technique, it's a way of listening, listening to this body and what's happening and what it's believing, what it's reacting to. Of course, I couldn't help think about leadership as I think about all of this stuff. I work with so many leaders. Imagine what would happen if leaders took intentional breaths before responding to criticism, giving feedback, walking into a difficult meeting or many back-to-back difficult meetings before answering the email that made them want to, you know, type in all caps or resign. With breath, that simple tool we all have, not because it solves the problems, right? Breath doesn't solve the problems. Breath changes the person solving the problems. And I think that's one of the greatest gifts we can offer ourselves and the people around us is a regulated nervous system, working from, leading from, being in relationship from parenting from a regulated nervous system. So here's this week's practice. Here's what I want to send you off with. I'd love for you to practice this whenever you think about it. You can create dedicated time, or again, driving for me is such a wonderful place to be and to practice the tools I want to live into. So the practice isn't complicated, and I am hoping it's not just something to add to your to-do list, that really it's something that piques your interest and your curiosity. So several times a day, pause. And again, you can find kind of uh anchors for this before you're getting into a meeting, as you're walking to the restroom. For me, it's my car. It's I can do a, you know, on my walk before I go to sleep. I've been doing this more. So as I'm laying in bed at night, kind of practicing it. And ask yourself one question: How am I breathing right now? That's it. No judgment, no fixing, just noticing, just that curiosity. How am I breathing right now? Where is it? Am I in my chest? Is it high in my chest? What happens if I slow down? What happens if I try to fill my belly first and then my chest? What happens if I breathe through my nose? What if I inhale slowly to the count of four? And then I exhale slowly for the count of six? What if I do this several times? What's happening for me as I do this? And what I loved about this podcast, and I'm gonna have to figure out which podcast it was, the The first one I listened to, because then I again went on a deep dive. So I have to figure out where he said this. But you know, what he was saying is this is an intentional practice at first for many of us because we're not breathing like this. And so it is, it does feel like another task, right? Like, okay, and now I'm going to breathe. I'm going to put it on my calendar to breathe and really do this. But the beauty of the brain is also that it loves to be efficient. And so it learns these patterns. So as we're doing this, we are building brain pathways. The body is being noticed and then it's slowing down. And the brain is being noticing the body. And that relationship creates this process of getting us into a place that feels better for our body. And so we will start building more brain pathways that mean we're breathing better unconsciously, right? We're not having to put it on our calendar and to practice it and to count to five and to do the things. It's that we're training our brain to do it. And he also said, which I, you know, I think this is true for so many of the practices we bring on to here, is do it for a minute a day. Do it for two minutes a day. Like you don't even have to think about, I have to do this all day long. Just create a time. That's where I started. Again, laying in bed and when I'm in my car. And that's I'm just doing it a few times. I'm not there all evening. I'm not doing it for my whole ride. I'm just tapping in. Where's my breath right now? Almost always it's in my chest. So I'm gonna breathe in. I'm gonna go do this practice. And I'm finding, even just after seven days, that a couple of times I've asked myself, where is my breath right now? And you know where it is? My belly. So that's cool. I'm feeling really good about that. So I want to invite you to do that practice. Let us know what you think about it. Go look at the work of this book, of this author that I mentioned. I think it's it's really amazing. And as with so many authors, when they release a book, they go on the podcast tour. So Google the name, put them in the podcast, put them in your podcast cues, get the book. It's on my list. I'm excited. I know I'll be breathing better and bringing more of these techniques to you as I go more deeply into his work. The book is called Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, and it is by James Nestor. All right, so let's start to close this out. The goal is not to breathe perfectly all of the time, right? It's not to eliminate stress, it's not to become someone who never feels overwhelmed, but to remember that your brain is always listening. And one of the kindest messages we can send our brain is we're okay, we're safe. You don't have to solve everything in this second. And the way that our brain hears that, one of the ways that our brain hears that is through our breath. Maybe rewiring isn't always about finding a better thought. Maybe sometimes it's about creating the conditions for your best thoughts to return, right? We tend to the soil. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I appreciate you all. I hope that you're breathing and your bellies are moving. And if this episode encouraged you, A, go get that book and read it. B, go do deep dives into other podcasts with James. Also share this podcast with someone who could use one big breath today. Be sure to join us for next week's conversation. I had the opportunity to speak with Sarah Jacyl. She's the founder of Democracy, and she is changing the world. I cannot wait for you to hear it. So be sure to tune in. All right, take care, everyone. Rewired listeners, if this episode resonated with you, I'd be so honored to stay connected. Follow the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. Share an episode with someone in your life, and leave a five-star review. It helps people access these tools and this work and grow our community. At Empower Coaching and Training, we believe that when you understand your brain, you gain the power to change your patterns, your relationships, and your life. If you're ready to go deeper, you can always learn more about coaching and resources at yesempower.com.