Listening To Your Body: From Stress To Safety

Are you feeling tired but wired, stuck in overthinking, or cut off from your own signals? 

In this episode, we dive into a body-led path to calm that starts with the spine and ripples through your mood, focus, and energy. As a chiropractor and nervous system coach, Naomi unpacks the difference between stress chemistry and the parasympathetic holiday state, then shares simple tools to move from survival to safety without gimmicks or grind.

We start by reframing the body as barometer, using interoception—the sense that reads our inner world—to notice jaw clench, shoulder armour, low back ache, or that restless fizz in the chest. From there, you’ll learn a quick daily check-in to capture thoughts, emotions, and sensations in real time, and a practical way to translate those cues into action. Instead of rigid routines you won’t keep, Naomi teaches organic, spine-first movement: slow stretches, gentle spirals, breath that widens the ribs, and micro-movements you can weave into any day. The goal is not performance; it’s creating enough safety for the system to settle and heal.

We also explore a music-and-move ritual that helps complete the stress cycle—mirroring how animals shake to process adrenaline—so emotions don’t get stuck. You’ll hear why the spine is the bridge between body and brain, how movement shifts state faster than thought, and what signs show you’re landing in that holiday state: deeper sleep, steadier digestion, and more outward energy. Expect clear prompts you can try tonight, plus reflections to help you notice real change: lighter mood, softer breath, or simply more space inside your day.

If this conversation sparks something, share it with a friend who needs a gentle reset, then leave a review so more people can find their way back to their body. Subscribe for future episodes on nervous system health, interoception, and movement practices you can actually keep.

Transcript

Welcome And Core Mission

Naomi Mills 0:01

Welcome to You Are the Answer, the podcast that helps you reconnect with the most powerful healer you know, your own body. I'm Naomi Mills, chiropractor, healthcare professional, and believer in the natural intelligence within us all. In this podcast, I explore what it means to trust your body, decode its signals, and take ownership of your well-being without quick fixes or health fads. Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer. Hello and welcome to episode 18 of the You Are the Answer podcast. If you are new to the program, I am Naomi

Nervous System States Explained

Naomi Mills 0:51

Mills. I'm a chiropractor, empowerment coach, author, teacher, and everyday clinical worker seeing people and helping them understand how their central nervous system dictates their life and their health. So this is your brain and your spinal cord and the way in which the system is operating for you, whether that's in a high degree of stress and feeling overwhelmed, maybe a bit tired but wired, or whether you're in burnout and shutdown. Compared to this state I call the holiday state or the parasympathetic state, where you sleep and you digest and you feel full of energy and you're really outward looking into how you can lift up your life and the life of the people around you. So that's the mission of this podcast to give you interesting and easily understandable snippets that you can take away, put them in your pocket to apply today and tomorrow and into next week. So if you are returning to the podcast, thank you so much. I really hope that you found something useful so far and that you like, comment, and share so that I can reach other people.

Why Embodiment Beats Overthinking

Naomi Mills 2:06

And if you have been following along, we are getting towards the end of our second arc, which has been the embodiment arc. Now, of course, in reality, everything I talk about on this podcast is about the body-brain connection and they are always feeding off each other. But this series arc has been around taking things more from the body perspective because it's actually where we struggle the most. Most of us are very familiar with thinking our way through life, mind over matter. And if you tuned into the episode on firewalking, you will understand that mind in matter, using your brain to change the physical state of your body, is a very powerful thing indeed. But where most of us lack focus and tools is really tuning into our body and what your body needs in this moment, and actually how the body can lead us down a completely unexpected path, but it being really what you need in that moment because the brain is often concerned with survival, logistics, and practicalities. Whereas tuning into the body through what we call the eighth sense of interoception is a very important way of bringing about that sense of calm and safety that we all crave. And maybe you've not been able to figure out how to get there. So that's the first nugget

Daily Check-In Practice

Naomi Mills 3:49

of today. It's perhaps not something you need to think about and figure out with your brain, but actually placing that brain aside and allowing the body's intuition and impulses to shine through as a means to bringing your nervous system into that state of safety, connection, and healing. So I'm going to invite you to think about either today or if it's very early in the morning, yesterday, and see if you can notice or remember what were your main thoughts and emotions that you experienced?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Were you even present enough to be able to answer this question?

Naomi Mills 4:40

What was the overall sense of emotion that you've had over the last few hours?

SPEAKER_01 4:53

And did your body feel calm and relaxed? Or did it feel something else?

Naomi Mills 5:04

And I'd like to suggest a daily practice for you to try. Where with any tool or skill, you can't just pick it up and suddenly it becomes second nature. So it would be wonderful if you made the intention to tune into your mood and your thoughts and your emotions throughout the day. Now that can be in your head, it can be physically writing them down or noting them on your phone. But starting to tune into what's going on inside your body in the day and your brain. So tuning into what your mood feels like, what your mind has been running, how your body has felt, and any physical sensations that come along with that. Tension, relaxation, a fizzing. Most of us will know, although come in and say, you know, oh, I hold a lot of tension in my jaw, or I'm always really tight across my shoulders. My lower back always aches. And very often these are physical signs that your central nervous system is running in that fight-flight stress mode.

Spine As Barometer

Naomi Mills 6:25

And so today's invitation is to use your body as a sort of barometer, a way of feeling into what's going on in your nervous system, rather than only thinking about what's going on in our brains as we just try and get through today. But going one level deeper into our thoughts, our physical experience and noticing how that feels in the body.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

And there's a little game you can play, and it is just that.

Naomi Mills 7:11

And of course, being a chiropractor who's very concerned with people's spines, we're going to make it about your spine, but it could be about a different body part as well if you want it. But what does your spine need today? Does it feel strong? Does it crave some rest? Or what kind of movement would it like? What would feel good? And how would it feel to move your spine organically? And that could be in a big way through dancing, it could be in a lovely, luxuriant way of stretching slowly and really feeling into each individual vertebra. Imagining sending some breath to your spine, thinking about this in a physical way and an emotional way as well. What is it that your spine, your back, your body, this column that holds you up all of the time, how would it like to move? And if you're walking or you're driving at the moment, you can still play with it a tiny bit now by just bringing your attention there for a second, shifting your weight, stretching, moving.

Move The Way Your Body Wants

Naomi Mills 8:36

Because the key to the embodiment work, to using your body as a means to creating more calm and better health, and ultimately feeling better, more energetic in yourself, which we could all benefit from is making the intention very consciously in the beginning to just check in with the body. Like, I haven't thought about my spine today, I haven't checked into my hips, are they feeling tight? Would I like to move or stretch in some way or breathe? And clients often say to me, like, are there any stretches or exercises I could do? And all I say to them is, Yes, move your body in a way that feels good. Once we have reinstated the motion in your spine, especially, you really need to go out there and use it. And a set of exercises that are very prescribed are very helpful for some people. But for most of us, we're not that good at doing them. What we can all become good at doing is making it a habit to just tune in and move at all, just paying attention to the body, taking it through its range of motion, and allowing the body to tell you what it needs to feel good, just as it does by producing pain, numbness, tingling, aching, or removing in ways that aren't good for the body. It has all of these signals and cues for us, if only we can train ourselves to listen better. And so here's the final invitation of the podcast today. When you get

Music, Motion, And Emotional Release

Naomi Mills 10:29

a chance, probably when you get home at the end of today, and maybe you're on your own or with a pet or with family, I would love it if you would take a moment to tune in. Like I said, what's your mind been chewing on in the last few hours? How has your body felt physically in response to that? What have you noticed? What have you experienced? How would you rate your feelings right now? How would you describe how you felt or your energy or your emotion or whatever way that makes most sense to you that you're able to describe it? And even if it's an I don't know, we can still do this next step. And the invitation is just to stick some music on. Any music that you feel called to do. It could be heavy metal, dance, pop, ambient stuff, more chilled-out, spiritual things, whatever comes to you first, and then move your body in response to that. Not through thinking of how it should move, but allowing your body to organically move in response to the music. Get your pets, children, spouses, friends, whoever you're with, to join in, ideally. And then take that moment to tune in afterwards. And notice if anything feels different. Maybe there's a lightness or a humor or a release or a freedom. But really try and notice how, even in just a few minutes, that shift that happens inside of you, motion is such an important part of us processing our emotions. And of course, we talk about thoughts and emotions as one of the greatest barriers to our nervous systems operating the way we were designed to. And you'll have seen it in nature when an animal gets caught, and let's say the predator, it plays dead, and the predator casts it aside and goes off, and then the animal shakes. And that shaking is very clever biology, and it's allowing that release of adrenaline, it's shifting the chemistry inside the body, and it's allowing it to be processed because emotions are tunnels, we have to go through them, and when we stop the processing,

Shaking, Processing, And Nature’s Lesson

Naomi Mills 12:50

they tend to get held and can get very stuck and can then lead to undesirable consequences. So, what we want to do is use movement as an invitation to creating change in the body, and this is how you start using your body as a tool to changing your state. And you already know this is true because the times you allow yourself to really let go, or you parted at some point in your life, or you've done a beautiful yoga session, times where you've really allowed your body to just simply move and be, will almost always notice an improvement or a significant change in how we feel in ourselves. The spine is the bridge between your body and brain and between thoughts and feelings. And so, really, by playing with this whole spine concept, you are bringing in your whole central nervous system and connecting to something that is so natural inside of you. So that is your podcast for today. A whole host of reflections and invitations. Enjoy them, take what resonates, leave what doesn't. If something feels a bit edgy, I would really recommend you try it because that's usually our intuition's way of showing us where we need to go, even if our brain doesn't feel particularly comfortable going there. Let me know how you get on in the comments and have a wonderful day. Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparks something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too.

The Spine As Body-Brain Bridge

Naomi Mills 14:41

For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.uatheans.co. Stay curious. And remember you are the answer.