It’s Not Laziness, It’s Your Nervous System

Last episode we zoomed out into the soul. Today we zoom in, because your soul is navigating a human body and that body runs on one operating system: your nervous system.

If it doesn’t feel safe, intuition gets quiet, creativity dries up and presence feels hard, and this doesn’t mean you’re “failing spiritually”, it’s just your body doing its job: survival.

In this episode, I break down the four survival states of the nervous system, so you can recognise your default, including the high-functioning versions that look “successful” on the outside. We explore why procrastination isn’t laziness, why people-pleasing is protection, and how so much of what you call “personality” is actually wiring.

Then we go deeper into the link most people miss: your subconscious beliefs shape your nervous system’s safety patterns, which is why mindset alone often doesn’t stick. And it’s why I fell in love with RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy), because it updates the program at the root.

I speak on:

• Why you cannot spiritually expand from a body that does not feel safe
• Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn and the high-functioning versions nobody talks about
• Why your survival state is not your personality, it is your protection
• Why safety is the doorway to intuition and healing
• How subconscious beliefs and nervous system patterns are running 95% of your life
• Why logic alone will never override a fear that lives in the body
• What happens between the ages of zero and seven that shapes almost everything
• How Rapid Transformational Therapy works and why it goes straight to the root
• My own eight sessions and the tangible shifts that followed
• Why my awakening was not just spiritual, it was neurological
• What becomes possible when the nervous system finally learns it is safe

Work With Me:

• ✨ Experience the energy live: Secure your spot for the next Online Kundalini Activation Workshop.
• ✨ Deepen your transformation: Apply for my highest-level, private space: Elevation Intensive: A Bespoke 1:1 Container.
• ✨ Ready to lead? Step into your power with the Kundalini Elevation Facilitator Training.

Stay Connected:

• Visit my Website for more information, resources, and updates.
• Follow along on Instagram for daily insights and behind-the-scenes moments.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Divinely Wired, a space where you come to remember your divinity. Because in a world that profits from your disconnection, your very presence here means you are choosing remembrance. Your intuition, that inner compass guided you here for a reason. And this podcast is an invitation to reconnect with that sacred blueprint within you that's coded for abundance, joy, and expansion. Here, healing, consciousness, spirituality, and personal development are our playground. And I'll be sharing some powerful stories, tools, and modalities to help you elevate your life into deeper alignment and magic. Because you are not here to merely survive, you are wired to thrive. So let this be a living, breathing transmission to remind you of that. I'm your host, Sarah Vinards, and I'm so grateful that you're here. Let's begin. Hey, beautiful soul. So, last episode we zoomed out. We talked about being a soul having a human experience. And today we're going to actually zoom in because we're souls navigating a human body, right? So we need to understand the human operating system. And that operating system is your nervous system. And I talk about this a lot in my work. And that's because you can't access your intuition, which is the language of your soul, and you can't access higher states of consciousness and embody that energy if your nervous system feels unsafe. So let me say that again. You cannot spiritually expand from a body that feels like it's not safe, it's under threat. Because your nervous system's only job is survival. It's not caring whether you're happy, whether you have a purpose or not, whether you want to be enlightened or not. Survival. It scans your environment constantly, asking one question. Am I safe? And depending on that answer, it will put you into one of a few states. And let's make this simple and practical. There are four main survival responses of the nervous system: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And we're going to go through them right now. So fight looks like irritation, anger, snapping, control, and dominance. And it's what happens when your nervous system believes the way to survive is to overpower the threat. It's this kind of need to win, if you like. But underneath the fight is usually fear. And it's a body saying, if I push harder, I'll stay safe. Many high performers actually sit in fight energy without realizing it because they're constantly pushing, constantly proving, constantly defending. And it may feel powerful on the outside, but inside it's often a braced system that never fully relaxes and it can be exhausting. Now, flight looks different. Here we're talking anxiety, overworking, overthinking, restlessness, and perfectionism. This is the energy of escape. Staying so busy, so you never have to feel. And the nervous system believes safety comes from movement, from doing more, fixing more, planning more. So people in flight often look productive and successful, but internally they feel restless and wired. It's the I'll feel safe when state, and when I hit that goal, or when I earn that money, or when I control every outcome on the outside world. But safety never quite arrives because the body hasn't actually learned to settle. Then we have freeze. And freeze looks like numbness, procrastination, shutdown, disconnection, and the I just can't energy. And freeze happens when the nervous system believes the threat is just too big to fight or run from. So it just shuts down. And you can experience brain fog in this state, low energy and feeling stuck or paralyzed. And people often judge themselves quite harshly in this state. Or they get called lazy or unmotivated. But freeze isn't laziness, it's actually a survival response. It's the body saying, if I stay small and still, I'll survive this. So freeze actually needs gentleness and safety, not extra pressure. And finally, we have fawn. And fawn looks like people pleasing, overgiving, avoiding conflicts, and abandoning your own needs. And this is a survival strategy of pleasing. It develops when the nervous system learns that connection equals safety. So you adapt, you please people, you avoid conflict, you overgive, and you abandon your own needs to keep others comfortable. Now, on the surface, Fawn can look kind and selfless, but underneath it's a body that's learned if they're happy, I'm safe. Over time, this leads to resentment and burnout because the self just keeps getting pushed aside. Now, here's the thing: most people are actually living in one of these states chronically, and they think it's their personality. And it's not, it's just a dysregulated nervous system. Because when you grow up in an environment where love feels conditional, as a child, if you had to perform or you felt unseen, or where there was chaos or emotional turbulence, your nervous system has to adapt to that. And it learns what it needs to do to survive. And that adaptation becomes your normal, right? So you become the overachiever, the rebel, the anxious one, the strong one, the overworker, the quiet one, the caretaker, the perfectionist. But underneath it all is simply a body that's trying to stay safe. Now, here's where this connects back to our soul conversation. If you are constantly in fight or flight or freeze or fawn, your body is burning cortisol, your heart rate is elevated, your mind is racing because your body and your system believes you're in danger. And in that state, your brain prioritizes survival, your intuition. And all of your energy centers are not open and expansive and ready to receive more of your soul's light. They are in protective mode, which means you can't hear your inner voice clearly, you can't think expansively, you can't access those juicy creative ideas, and you can't feel presence deeply. And then imagine we judge ourselves for not being spiritual enough, for not being connected enough. It's not a spiritual problem, it's actually a regulation problem. So let me get you to do something right now. In this moment, I want you to go ahead and close your eyes. And I want you to shift your awareness to your breath. And I want you to notice without judging, without trying to change it, is your breath deep or is it shallow? Does your body feel calm? Or is there a nervousness or a tension in the body? Is your jaw tight? Are your shoulders slightly raised? Because most of us are actually living slightly braced as if we are ready for danger or the threat, and we don't even realize it. You can open it up your eyes now if you like. That was just a little exercise for you to tune in just to see where you're at. So your nervous system regulates through safety cues. I want you to think slow breathing, eye contact, presence, a warm tone of voice, touch, grounding, predictability. And this is why community heals. This is why modalities like kundalini activation, rapid transformational therapy, or any type of therapy works. This is why being seen is powerful. And this is why modalities like breath work change states of being. Because in these moments, you're signaling safety to the body. And when the body feels safe, something magical happens. It opens. And when it opens, you can feel more, process more, trust more, receive more, access your intuition. Safety is actually the doorway to spirituality. So here's something important. Regulation does not mean you are calm 24 or 7. It means you can move between states and come back to your baseline. So you can feel anger and not live there or be consumed by it. You can feel fear and not drown in it. You can feel sadness and not become it, right? That flexibility is the resilience of the nervous system. And resilience is embodiment. And this is also why trauma lives in the body, because when the nervous system experiences something overwhelming and it doesn't get to complete the survival response, it stores it. Now, in episode one, I speak about this when I found out that my body shaking and vibrating and jolting was the kundalini activation coming online and shaking the trauma out of my body. I actually learned this from the Animal Kingdom, watching YouTube clips of animals who were prey getting chased by predators. And if they were lucky enough to escape, they wouldn't just go about their lives. They would stop after that chase and they would shake and tremble. And that was their way of completing that survival response. So the trauma wouldn't live in their body. So the body is then able to finish that survival cycle. So there is no additional cortisol or adrenaline in the body. And this is literally how we are wired. So here's something practical you can take away today. The next time you're triggered, instead of asking, why am I like this? ask what state is my nervous system in right now? Am I fighting? Am I fleeing? Am I freezing? Am I fawning? And just that awareness alone creates space. And in that space, you move from unconscious reaction to conscious response. And that, my love, is sovereignty. Because remember, you're a soul having a human experience, right? And this human body is not an inconvenience or a limitation. It is an advanced, intelligent, miraculous piece of biology. But it needs to feel safe to function optimally. And when you learn to regulate your system, you don't just feel better, you expand more, you awaken more, and you feel more aligned with the flow of life. And this is where something really important clicks for me. Because when I left my corporate job, which I speak about in episode two, I thought I had just changed jobs. I thought I just went from an old version of me to this new version of me. But what I didn't realize was that I had removed the environment that my nervous system had adapted to for years. So imagine like deadlines, KPIs, managing a team of men, that constant pressure. I was smoking socially because I worked for a tobacco company, right? I was drinking at all the corporate events to bond with all my new buddies. I was being on all the time. And that wasn't just a lifestyle, that was a survival state. I was living in this low-level fight or flight constantly. And when I quit, it was like my body finally relaxed. And when a body that's been braced for years suddenly does that, it doesn't just float into bliss, it starts releasing all of that stress that's been penned up, all of that tension. And that's when I realized that my awakening wasn't just spiritual, it was neurological. And here's something most people don't actually understand. Your subconscious mind and your nervous system are actually deeply connected because your subconscious stores beliefs and your nervous system stores safety patterns. So if growing up you learned, I have to perform to be loved, I have to be strong, I have to hold back my tears, I can't show emotion, it's not safe, I can't trust people. Money is the root of all evil. I'm not enough. What I want is not available to me. I'm not lovable. Success creates danger. Sexuality isn't safe. Expressing myself leads to rejection, and I could go on and on. Those aren't just thoughts, they become programs. Your body reacts to situations based on those subconscious programs. So you can say affirmations all day long. But if your nervous system associates success with pressure and burnout, for example, you will sabotage it. If your body associates intimacy with vulnerability and risk, you'll shut it down. If your subconscious equates visibility with criticism, you'll procrastinate. And you'll think it's part of your weakness, but it's actually part of your wiring. And from a neuroscience perspective, right, your subconscious mind forms predictive models of the world based on early experiences that you've had. And then your nervous system operates according to those predictions. So the brain is constantly scanning for those cues of safety or danger. And it uses stored beliefs to interpret those cues, which is actually very clever when you think about it. So if your early conditioning taught you that conflict equals rejection or success equals pressure, your nervous system will activate a stress response long before your conscious mind even understands what's happening. And this is why logic alone doesn't override fear. And this is why the body is responding to old programs, because when you work at the level of the subconscious through modalities like rapid transformational therapy, which I'm about to speak to you in a moment about, you are not just changing thoughts, you are altering the predictive coding that drives your nervous system. And when that changes, behavior naturally shifts without force. And this is where rapid transformational therapy, my first ever love, comes in. Now I came across this revolutionary, mind-blowing modality when I was doing the deep study in Mind Valley, and I came across this incredible, incredible work. And what fascinated me was this. This modality works directly with the subconscious mind. So it goes straight to the root. It's psychology, neuroscience, and subconscious work combined. And rapid transformational therapy, RTT for short, was created by Marissa Peer, who's been a therapist for over 35 years, and she's worked with everyone from Olympic athletes to CEOs and billionaires to people who struggle with deep trauma. And what she did brilliantly was combine hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, neurolinguistic programming, inner child feeling and belief reprogramming into one structured method. Boom. Imagine 10 years of therapy condensed into one session. And here's the simple version of how it works. When you're in hypnosis, your brain moves into a slower brainwave state. So we're talking alpha and theta. That's the same state you're in just before you fall asleep, when you're deeply relaxed or in a meditative state, and when you're highly suggestible. And in that state, the critical thinking mind, your conscious mind, softens, which means you can actually access the subconscious. And the subconscious is where all of your beliefs and programs live, your core beliefs, right? The ones that say, I'm not enough, I'm not safe, I have to work hard for love, money is hard to come by, success creates pressure, I don't deserve this and that and the other, right? And when we trace those beliefs back to where they were formed, usually childhood, we realize something powerful. Belief made sense at the time. It protected you. But now, as an adult, it's outdated. And once the mind understands why it created the belief in the first place, it becomes willing to let it go. And that's the transformation. And through hypnosis, you can access the part of the mind that formed your beliefs between the ages of zero to seven, because between the ages of zero to seven, we are actually operating in that alpha-theta brainwave that I was speaking about. So we can download these programs, so we can learn how to be a human being and a part of the world. And the issue is if you are downloading self-limiting beliefs, if you are thinking the world is unsafe or that money is hard to come by, those early interpretations become your very programs. And your subconscious mind governs 95% of your life. That's a lot. And those programs drive your nervous system, which then drives your behavior. Do you see the full cycle here? So, of course, once I learned all of this from her course on Mind Valley, I dived straight in. And I had eight sessions of rapid transformational therapy myself. And I picked the themes that most of us carry in our lifetime. So money blocks, mother and father wounds, relationship patterns, fear of failure, sexuality blocks, lack and scarcity mentality, self-worth issues, and low confidence, you know, the works, right? And every session I would go under and I would trace the belief back to the moment, to the part of my childhood where I interpreted that scenario in a way that created a self-limiting program. So I would be going back to a younger version of me trying to survive what was going on from a very limited perspective. And there was no one there to help me reframe or rewrite the situation. And here's where it gets powerful. When you revisit those memories, when you bring awareness and you reprogram them, you give the nervous system a new meaning. And then your body responds to that new meaning. Because the subconscious doesn't know time, it just knows association. So if you change the meaning of the memory, you change the body's response. And I started noticing something. After each session, my nervous system felt calmer, more at ease, had more presence in my life. And situations that used to trigger me before didn't. And all of a sudden, money became more easy to come by. It started flowing in more abundantly. Intimacy felt less threatening. The idea of being seen felt less scary. And I didn't go into a panic if there was conflict. And it wasn't because I was pretending to be this new person or pretending to be confident. It was because the wiring had shifted my way of moving through the world. One of my favorite ways to work with people is through my Elevation Intensive, which is this bespoke private one-month transformational package designed to completely shift your life from the inside out. And together we work through subconscious reprogramming, hypnosis, inner child healing, nervous system regulation, and those powerful energy activations to create change at the deepest level possible. And people often enter this space carrying years of conditioning, self-doubt, and fear. And over the course of a month, they begin the shedding, the shedding of everything that was holding them back and pulling them down. And yours truly has the honour of taking these brave souls to the depths of their darkness to befriend those shadows. And they get to emerge on the other side, lighter, brighter, and more empowered than ever before. I only take on a small number of clients at a time, but if you're ready to stop circling the same patterns and step into that next chapter of your life, I'd love to hear from you. You'll find the application link to work with me personally in the show notes. So let me give you another grounded example. Let's say as a child you experienced rejection, and your nervous system may have learned being seen equals pain, right? So as an adult, when you try to start a business, you wanting to post online on social media to be seen, speak your truth, your body activates fight or flight. So you start procrastinating, you overthink, you freeze. And this isn't laziness, it's protection. So RTT works by helping you revisit that original imprint and update it. So your body no longer sees visibility as danger, but instead it sees it as safe. And that's when confidence feels natural. And that's where you reprogram your subconscious mind and your nervous system. So during this time, I realized something huge. My awakening wasn't just about becoming more spiritual, it was actually about becoming more regulated. And the more I cleared my subconscious beliefs, the more my nervous system relaxed. And the more my nervous system relaxed, the more I could access my intuition. And the more I accessed my intuition, the more I made decisions from my soul and a place of expansiveness, which led me to more magic, more synchronicities, more soul alignments. Just wow, do you see the connection? They're not separate. So this work impacted me so deeply that I knew I couldn't keep it to myself. And the shifts were too tangible, they were too rapid. So during the pandemic, I just put aside everything else and I began studying hard to become a rapid transformational therapist. And it was a year-long course, but I completed it in 10 months because I was so passionate about it. I felt so embodied in these results, and I couldn't wait to share them with the world. So here's what I want you to take away from this. You are not broken. You are just holding a set of programs. That feeling of laziness could just be your body's protection. And your nervous system is responding to outdated information. And the beautiful thing is, all of this can be rewired. And not by pushing harder or forcing anything, but by understanding your patterns and a willingness to work on them. Because knowledge is power. And when you understand the link between your subconscious mind and your nervous system, you stop biting yourself and you start healing compassionately and intelligently.