Nervous System Regulation For Real Life

The most confusing part of “nervous system regulation” is that you can do the right thing and still feel terrible in your body. You set the boundary, you make the smart choice, you finally choose yourself and then your stomach drops and your mind starts second guessing. We’re Amy of Whole Body Harmony and Heather of Embodied Rejuvenation, and we’re naming what’s really going on: discomfort is not always a red flag. Sometimes it’s unfamiliar safety.

We break down what a resourced nervous system feels like in real life using the wave metaphor: getting caught in the wave versus being able to see it. From there, we connect the dots to the body. When your system is under-resourced, cortisol patterns can stay elevated, sleep gets fragile, everything feels urgent, and even good events can spike stress because your body doesn’t know how to receive them. We also talk through why midlife weight gain and “my metabolism is broken” can be tied to years of stress and reduced metabolic flexibility, plus how stress can show up as symptoms like TMJ, frozen shoulder, or recurring “tennis elbow” flare-ups.

You’ll also hear practical guidance on individualized nervous system support. We talk meditation myths, why falling asleep during guided relaxation doesn’t mean you failed, and how to titrate practices in small, doable steps so your body can learn safety over time. We close with a short guided pause you can revisit whenever life goes straight to 10.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who feels stuck in urgency, and leave a review so more midlife women can find this work.

Connect with Amy Wilford on social media at @amywilfordhealth, or on her website at wholebodyharmonycoach.com

Connect with Heather Fontenot on social media at @embodiedrejuvenation, or on her website at embodiedrejuvenation.com

Transcript

Welcome And The Wave Question

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Body Drama Shift, where we move from confusion to clarity without guessing. Because your body isn't broken, it's communicating. If you're a woman in midlife dealing with stubborn weight, low energy, mood swings, or poor sleep, you're not imagining it, and you're not alone. I'm Amy, creator of Whole Body Harmony.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

And I'm Heather, creator of Embodied Rejuvenation. Together we help you decode your symptoms by addressing both biology and the nervous system. Because real change happens when both are in alignment. Let's shift. Welcome to another episode of the Body Drama Shift. We are on episode four. And today we're talking about what does it actually mean to have a regulated nervous system or to be regulated? So I want to ask you something. When something is hard in your life, do you get caught in the wave? Or can you see the wave? Because there's a difference, and most of us have never been taught that difference. We've just been told to push through, stay calm, keep going. Today, Amy and I are talking about something I get asked about all the time. What does it actually mean to have a regulated nervous system? Not the clinical definition, not the Instagram version. What does it actually feel like in your real life? And I want to start with a story. So I was working with a client who had just held a boundary, and this was really fun to watch in the moment. So she came to me and said, I I knew I did the right thing, but it still feels uncomfortable in my body. And I asked her, Does it feel uncomfortable? Or does it feel unfamiliar to choose yourself? So she got quiet. Because here's what's actually happening. She hadn't done anything wrong. She hadn't made a mistake. Her nervous system had just never felt what it was like to put herself first. An unfamiliar, even when it's exactly right, can feel like a warning signal when your system has been wired a different way for a long time. That's the difference between being in the wave and being able to see the wave. So being regulated doesn't mean the discomfort goes away. And she experienced that. It was very uncomfortable for her to do something new. For her to choose herself when

Boundaries And Building A Buffer

SPEAKER_00 2:40

the old programming was running that this is not okay. This is not how I normally respond. A regulated nervous system means you have enough of a buffer to get curious about it instead of consumed by it. Enough flexibility to ask, wait, is this wrong? Or is this just new? That's what we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

And Heather, I really love that story because it's so real and it is so much what women experience. We question ourselves all the time, even though we might be proud of ourselves and we're happy that we set that boundary and we made a decision, we question ourselves and we second guess ourselves all the time. So I really love that story. And I love that you asked her that question that got her to truly dig deep and think about it. So that's awesome. Um, and what you're describing, that buffer, is also something that we can actually see in the body. So when the nervous system is resourced, which Heather's gonna talk more deeply about that, what happens is our cortisol responds more appropriately and it comes back down. And cortisol patterns I see being out of whack for so many women. So that's able to respond appropriately when the nervous system is resourced. Sleep is more resilient, the body can move in and out of states out of into activation and interest without getting stuck in one or the other. And when we're under resourced, the body stays in that activated state and everything feels urgent. And I know that the majority of our listeners can feel that urgency and it's hard to feel that all the time. And so the small things then feel unsurvivable. And sometimes good things happen and your body still won't let you land in that place. And a story that I want to share is just about retiring on May 21st. Those two weeks of school before that, I felt this. And my aura ring was waving this red flag at me with my data. My blood pressure in the morning was super low. But the things that I've learned over the past few years have been priceless. I knew exactly what I needed to do to combat that low blood pressure. And I was able to do it with ease. Whereas in the past, I would have crashed and burned and I would have gotten sick. I would have been calling off school the last few days that I was going to be there because my body would have just fell apart. So this work that I've been doing on myself really supported me there. And I know that all of you can get there too.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yes. And I think too, um, Amy, I know we talked about this in the last episode, but like even with going back to the story where my client said that, right? Um we can feel these things when we talk about the nervous system, we can feel these, experience these things in our body. And maybe we don't understand what what our body is trying to tell us. So, like you said, like your aura ring showed you, showed you that, and you notice with your low blood pressure, right? But it can show up as so many things, and it's individualized for each of us. And I know

Cortisol, Sleep, And Constant Urgency

SPEAKER_00 5:50

we talked a little bit about that on that last episode too, but all I think that's just really important to name that, you know, the symptoms can or I don't want to say symptoms, I want to say experiences that we have within our bodies. Um, you know, it can show up as so many different things. Do you want to add to that? For sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, it does definitely show up in different things. And there were also just this feeling of being exhausted all the time during those two weeks leading up to my retirement. I feel like it was like there were a lot of emotions running in the background. There were a lot of thought process running processes running in the background. And my body was just responding to that.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

And that last piece that you said um is something I want to sit with for a moment. Because I think a lot of women know what it feels like when bad things knock them over, but fewer recognize what Amy just described. When good things happen and your body still won't let you receive them.

unknown 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah. There's all this excitement about how great it was and how I was so excited to do it, but it also was stressful and that took up a lot of energy with all the emotions I had been going through.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

And I also want to um pause there and say that you know, when you're doing um work on yourself and healing work, and we're talking about the nervous system, what I noticed for me was that I had built what we call the window of tolerance to see the wave and not be consumed by it for the hard things. But for me to feel the good things was really hard because I was so used to feeling and navigating all the really hard things. So then what I noticed also is me self-sabotaging because I wouldn't, my body still wouldn't let me receive the good.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, and I think for me, um, the coach that I work with brought this up to me of like needing to make sure I gave energy to both the positives about leaving my job and the part that was hard about leaving my job. And I told him that I feel like all the way building up to the last probably week, it was all excitement. It was all, yes, I'm ready. Yes, I can't wait for this part, this part, this part. And then the last few days, it was like, oh, but I'm also really sad to be leaving. The day that I left was super hard. And so I feel like I gave was giving all my energy to the positive side of it and not enough to, I don't want to say negative side, but to the side that was hard. And so that last day, the hard part of it hit me. And so I wasn't giving equal sides to it.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

So I want to clear something up because I think there's a big misconception about this work. Most people think nervous system regulation means being calm all the time, unbothered, zen, never reactive. I actually don't love the word regulation for that reason. I prefer the word resourced because resourced means something different. It means your nervous system can flexibly move in and out of states. Fight, flight, rest, digest, freeze. Those are all normal, all necessary. The goal isn't to eliminate them. The goal is flexibility,

When Good News Feels Unsafe

SPEAKER_00 9:30

awareness, the ability to notice when you're moving out of your window and to know how to come back. At its core, being resourced means your nervous system can return to a state where you can think, feel, and respond rather than react. The difference between being in the wave and being able to see the wave.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah, and I love that analogy because a lot of us don't actually think about it that way. Like we're in the wave and we're just going through the motions, riding that wave the best we can, but we don't see what's actually going on. We just like, you know, go through our day, go to bed, wake up, repeat. And so we don't really see that. So I love that analogy. And I want to talk a little bit about biologically how that fits in. So biologically, flexibility is everything. If you have a resilient nervous system that's not flat, it's one that can move. And we see women quite when we see women who are chronically under-resourced, we often see things like that adrenal fatigue, which leads to cortisol dysregulation. We see the thyroid issues, we see the disrupted sleep cycles. And so your body has been running in that emergency mode for so long that it forgets how to shift gears. So resilience isn't the absence of stress, it's the ability to recover from it and have, like Heather said, those ebbs and flows where we're going, yeah, we're going through those states of stress and all of that. But then we can recover from it and we can step back. And those periods of stress don't last as long and they're not as intense. And also, it's part of the reason that women in midlife experience that weight gain that so many of my clients get frustrated with is because you've got those years of stress and a liver that can't function properly due to those things that I talked about in one of the other episodes, the toxins that we put in on and around our body, it causes our metabolism to no longer be flexible. And I hear that from a lot of women about I'm gaining all this weight. There's something wrong with my metabolism. And all of those things lead to an inflexible metabolism. And so that's why we all of a sudden feel like our bodies are failing us. But it really is just more of a deeper level nervous system type of situation.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah, and like frozen shoulder or TMJ-bow in my case. Yes. Yep. Yep. Do you want to talk more about that story?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, so I started having issues with my elbow and was told that it was tennis elbow. I did chiropractor, I did PT, I've done all the things to try to help it. And it has gotten better, but it does still flare up on me sometimes. And I think that when it flares up, it's in those times of stress. And I definitely, or when my body doesn't feel safe. Um, and Heather had told me she had seen

Resourced Not Zen All The Time

SPEAKER_01 12:40

something about that in a book, that it's kind of connected that um connected to stress and connected to not feeling safe. So one of the things that I started doing that I do think is really helpful is the uh meditations that I listened to in the evening. I found some that were around safety. And so listening to those really, I do feel a difference in it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, and I want to say too, like um, because so today's episode was triggered by the question was triggered by someone asking me what regulation is. And she also um asked a question about if when I do meditations or when I do um guided relaxation practices, sometimes I fall asleep or they don't they don't really match what's going on for me. So again, I want to go back to that individualized approach. In my work, I look at what is going on in the nervous system. So I assess to see, okay, what is specifically going on in all these layers of the system, and then I design the practice specifically for that person. If someone comes to me and says, Oh, I'm not, I'm feeling this in my body somatically, then I can say, okay, this is what I know. And I can link their the experience that I give them to them. So what I would ask them is questions like, what brings you joy? What would help you rest? And we can navigate that, those types of things. So it's specifically designed to that person. And I do want to dive into that more in another episode when we talk more about like breath work and meditation and movement, all being very specific to the person.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

And I want to chime into you for a second about falling asleep during meditation. I do mine at bedtime and I fall asleep every time. And people think that, oh, I fell asleep, I missed it. But really, you didn't. So when you, if you fall asleep during a meditation, if it's a guided meditation, which is what I do, then your subconscious mind still hears everything that and internalizes everything that is said in that meditation. So you're not missing out on it. It's still going into your system and you're still benefiting from it, even if you fall asleep.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yes. And I would like to name something else. Because I just thought about it. So when I first started practicing meditation, I would do mine in the mornings and I would always fall asleep. So um, I love what Amy said because yes, that is totally true, 100%. And if you because I thought something was wrong with me. So I'm like, something's wrong. I'm falling asleep. Like this is and then I would feel guilty, right? Or I would beat myself up over it because I'm supposed to meditate. Like I'm supposed to sit here and be able to be present. But what I begin to understand is that if the nervous system doesn't feel safe, sometimes it will like it will do that. Like it will bring us to sleep or something else that we might would experience, right? We just want to run and get away from it so we would get up. So I want, I love that you brought that up because I want to I want to give people space for that. Like knowing that you're not doing it wrong, that yeah, sometimes you have to titrate the experience. And what I mean by titrate the experience is just like anything else. If you're working out, you're not gonna go to the gym and lift 20 pounds the first time. You're gonna lift three pounds, you're gonna lift five pounds, you're gonna so that's the same thing with nervous system practices, meditation, and really anything that we do in our work, right? That we give people.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah, it's okay to start with a two-minute meditation. Yeah. You don't have to just sit in silence for hours at a time.

Practices That Fit Your Nervous System

SPEAKER_01 16:40

You know, you can do two minutes, build up to five minutes, build up to 10 minutes when you're ready. It's not, there's no like scripted you have to meditate in this way. It's completely individualized.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Yeah. So um I I I would like to tell another story here. Today's full of stories. I love your stories. So recently I was invited to speak to a small business and their leadership team uh at our leadership retreat. And one of the first questions they asked me was, What is nervous system regulation? So we thought it just meant staying calm, which we talked about a little bit about this earlier, right? And I love that question because it's the honest question. It's what most people think. What I saw in that room was a group of capable, committed people dealing with real pressure, uncertainty about how to lead, anxiety about the future, the weight of being responsible for other people while quietly not knowing how to take care of the themselves in the middle of it. And what shifted for them, the thing that landed was this if you resource yourself first, you can actually support your team and your family. Not from depletion, not forcing, from a place that actually that's actually sustainable. And so when I say you can actually support your team and your family, you can actually support even if you work with clients or patients, if you resource yourself first, this is universal, right? If you resource yourself first, then you're gonna be able to better support the people around you. Your nervous system is not just personal, it's how you lead your life, it's how you make decisions, it's how you become the CEO of your life. It allows you to see opportunities and create a life that feels fulfilling and sustainable. And you cannot pour from a system that has never been shown it's safe to fill.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

So, as you're talking about the Heather, it brings up a couple of things for me. So, one of the things is my own story. And I know that um we've talked before about how my not the job that I just retired from, but the job I had before that, how hard it was for me because of the stress and because of all of the things and the mold that was in my office and everything else. But I also remember how hard it was because it was a very stressful environment. And we were expected to go above and way above and beyond what we should have been expected. And I remember trying to regulate my own nervous system and also seeing all the people that I worked with, all of my coworkers and all of the stress that they were under and how unregulated they were. And it was really hard for me because I wanted to help them, but I was struggling to help myself. So it goes right along with what she was just saying. Like we have to be able to help ourselves first before we're able to help other people. And I got to a much better place when I was there, but I still wasn't where I needed to be in order to support all of my coworkers that I cared deeply about. And it was really hard for me to watch them struggle. And then also just remembering that when I want to remind people of whenever you fly somewhere and they are going through the safety protocol and they tell you put the mask on yourself first before you try to help anyone else, there's a reason for that. Because if we ourselves can't breathe and are in a state of panic, then we can't help other people. So putting that mask on yourself first allows you to calm so that you can help other people to survive. So I want people to think about that too, that remembering that helping yourself is helping other people. And also related to that, I always tell people that we can't out-supplement, we can't out-diet, we can't out-exercise a depleted nervous system. And I think that's one of the main things that Heather and I want everyone to learn who is listening, is that you have to take care of yourself and you can't out-diet, out-exercise, out-supplement what's going on. You can do everything right in all of those ways, nutritional, hormonally, and still feel like you're running on empty, because that nervous system is the foundation of everything else. And when it's under resource, the body can't absorb, recover, or respond in the way that it's designed to. It's not selfish to do that for yourself. It's the strategy. And I think a lot of women forget that.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

I would like to add this too, Amy, because I actually had something related to this come up um this week. So when I saw my mentor this week,

Self Care That Helps Everyone

SPEAKER_00 21:40

um he reminded me. So as long as I've been doing this work, I just want to name this for people too. Like you can be doing this work for a very long time, and you still forget that very foundational thing right there, right? So he reminded me, he's like, your number one job. is to take care of your system.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

And that's why this is a practice. Yes. Because it's ever evolving. Life is always going to throw us curveballs. And that's also why Heather and I both have coaches. Yeah. Because we're just because we're coaches doesn't mean that we don't need a coach. We need we're human beings. We always need reminders of those things. And we're human beings having a human experience. And that's the fact. There's no escaping that human experience. We're going to have that no matter what. So we need those guides who are home guides on the side. You know, they're over there reminding us of the things that we need to do. And my dad even reminded me of that um the other day he said I think it's time that Amy takes care of Amy and lets other people take care of themselves. And I was like oh my gosh, you're right. I need to practice that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And I think there's layers to it, right, Amy? How do you do it, you know, we and then and then we pull back another layer like okay now and and like we've talked I think we've talked about this in previous episodes too the the resourcing might change the rhythm might change. Like you're going into a different phase of life now. You know your work your work will look different. So building rhythms now that support you is very different from when you were going to a place where you worked a certain amount of hours.

unknown 23:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

So I think like it's just layers to it like we have to navigate like you said those those seasons of life. Yeah. For sure. So I want to ask you again when something hard happens are you in the wave or can you see it? And if right now the honest answer is I'm in it, I can't see anything, I want you to know that is not a permanent state. That is a nervous system that hasn't shown up yet that is that it's safe to have a buffer. That's the work not more doing not more pushing through creating enough safety in your system that life stops going straight to 10 and you start having enough room to actually see what's happening around you. That's when decisions get clearer. That's when opportunities you couldn't see before start showing up that's when you stop just surviving your

A Short Guided Closing Practice

SPEAKER_00 24:30

life and start actually living it. Before we close today I want to give you a moment to feel what we've been talking about. Not just hear it. I'm actually going to guide you through a short practice. So if you're driving then I invite you to do this when you're in a place that you can stop. Please do not do this while you're driving um you can do this in your car but just not while you're on the road you could do this at your desk on a walk just give yourself a moment to pause. Maybe you place one hand on your chest and just feel your breath moving you can have your eyes opened or closed just take a moment to let the breath be enough let the breath be the only movement. So even if you're walking maybe you stop pause place your hand on your chest and just feel your breath and we just want to close by thanking you for spending this time with us today on the body drama shift I'm Heather nervous system coach and yoga therapist and founder of Embodied Rejuvenation. My work is rooted in the belief that lasting transformation isn't just about knowing what to do. It's about your nervous system feeling safe enough to actually do it. I know what it feels like to be capable, smart and driven and still feel like something is holding you back that you just can't name. Through nervous system assessment and high touch coaching that's exactly what I help women uncover. I also deeply believe in the power of women healing and growing in community which is why community is woven into my programs and why I host retreats for women who are ready to go deeper together. If any of that sounds like what you've been looking for, I'd love to connect you can book a call with me at embodiedrejuvenation.com. The link is in the show notes.