Part 3 Default to YES! - Breathe, Feel, Reset: How somatic practices accelerate change

Breath, Somatic Awareness, and Nervous System Reset: The Missing Piece for Lasting Change (Episode 3)

In episode three of a six-part series, we take a look at how lasting personal change happens in the body, not just the mind, and how nervous system regulation plus thought awareness creates a powerful loop for transformation. They describe how dysregulation can sabotage habits through physiology and “chemical drivers” like dopamine and cortisol, and why you can think calm thoughts yet still feel anxious. The episode highlights breathwork as an accessible tool to influence the nervous system via the vagus nerve, parasympathetic activation, and improved heart rate variability, and introduces somatic awareness—listening to what the body is holding, including stored stress and past experiences (referencing The Body Keeps Score). Practical exercises include a 4-2-6/8 breathing pattern for 2–3 minutes (coherent breathing) and sensory grounding (5 things you see, 4 feel, 3 hear). The speaker connects embodiment to scripture, emphasizes building capacity for stress and crisis, and offers reflective questions about what the body is signaling and how to feel 10% more grounded.

Reference: The Body Keeps Score, by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to episode three of our six part series, and we are going to talk about breath and feeling and reset. This is somatic practices that regulate the nervous system and accelerate. Change. So this is more of how to default to yes, your extraordinary self. Now, so far in this series, we've talked about two powerful things, your nervous system and your thoughts. Today we're gonna bring those together because real change doesn't happen in the mind, it happens in the body. These things are all connected and one doesn't go without the other. Now, why The body matters more than you think. For a long time, personal growth focused almost entirely on thinking. We focused on mindset and beliefs and reframing, and while those are important, Neuroscience now tells us something very critical that the body often changes before the mind can follow. We talked about how I've discovered through a lot of conversations that if the nervous system is dysregulated, change becomes really difficult. Our transformations don't stick the way we want them to. We find ourselves wanting to do things that we can't seem to sustain or wanting to stop doing things that we can't seem to stay away from. Your thoughts don't exist in isolation. There's a lot of mention of this in personal growth about, chemical drivers. we talk about dopamine and we talk about cortisol levels. All of those things that can be quietly sabotaging your efforts to transform your mind. They are constantly influenced by your physiology, so your thoughts don't exist in isolation. Your breath, your heart rate, your muscle tension, your internal sensations, and again, all of that chemistry. This is why you can think a calm thought but still feel anxious and it's all because the body is holding a different signal, so you're always kinda in conflict with what you're trying to think. Now there, there's science here, but of breath and regulation. So let's talk first about breath. Breathing is one of the few systems in your body that is both automatic and controllable, and because of that, it becomes a powerful access point to your nervous system. Research in neuroscience shows us that slow controlled breathing reduces activity in the amygdala. It increases activity in the prefrontal cortex and approves emotional regulation, and it enhances attention and focus. I love breath work because it's free. everyone has access To it at all times, and you can't forget it at home. You always have it with you and one key mechanism behind this is the vagus nerve. When you extend your exhale, you stimulate the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the part of your body that's responsible for calming, restoring, and regulating. This also is reflected by something that's called heart rate variability. Higher HRV heart rate variability is associated with better stress, resilience, and improved emotional regulation and overall nervous system flexibility and the breath is one of the fastest ways to influence it. I am gonna talk a little bit about somatic awareness because you will see this, and if it's something you wanna research more, this would be a term that would immediately bring all of this up. Somatic awareness is basically listening to your body. Somatic simply means of the body. Somatic practices help you become aware of what your body is holding Because here's something important. Your body keeps a record of your experiences. We have books that have influenced a lot of our personal growth And a really good book to read on this is called The Body Keeps Score. I'll put it in the notes so you can easily find it, but. if you search the body keeps score, you'll find it. Your body keeps a record of your experiences, stress that wasn't processed, emotions that weren't expressed, and moments that moved too quickly to integrate. This is what happens in any kind of stressful experience, car accidents, even things that you don't think you remember. So going back to childhood experiences. And, there are records of even in the womb, babies experiencing something or an emotion or a chemical messenger. the body holds all of this. Have you ever gotten a headache or a shoulder, a muscle ache, maybe shoulder tension, neck tension that you really couldn't explain by an action that you took? Sometimes that's stress. My stress shows up in the right side of my neck and shoulder. I always know that I'm holding stress when that part of my body starts to hurt. and so then I know to activate the clarity loop and find out what's going on. because they just don't, those things don't just disappear. They're often stored as patterns of tension, posture, and reactivity. And this is why you might feel tightness in your chest without knowing why. Notice your shoulders are always elevated. Maybe react quickly before you've even had time to think. These are all things that, are evidence that your body is holding all of this and responding based on past patterns. Here's the hopeful part, is your body can also learn safety. So this is where those somatic practices can really accelerate change. When you combine nervous system regulation with thought awareness and body-based practices, you create a powerful loop of change because now you're not just thinking differently, you're. Feeling differently. And when the body feels safe, the brain updates its predictions, and this is how lasting change happens. My first real intense breath work session with a breath coach was, I was told, don't worry about what's going to happen. you're just letting your body experience this. It might not, maybe nothing will happen, maybe nothing will come to mind. Maybe you will not notice any changes. And with that experience, I was able to move forward because I didn't control the outcome, But I had committed to learning the practice and he really walked me through some exercises to do every day exercises to create awareness. a more alert state, a more restful state. And just to know that this was going to happen and trust it, trust the body to know. When the body feels safe, the brain updates its predictions, and this is how the lasting change happens. Now, scripture speaks more to the body than we often realize. Romans 12, one says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. And we assign that to a level of purity. But there's more to that then. It's not just symbolic. It's an invitation really to live with awareness of how we show up physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Another verse, a gentle answer, turns away, wr. I love the proverbs for all the, the nuggets of wisdom that are there. This gentleness is not just a thought, it's a regulated state. It's a tone of voice, a softened posture, a slowed response. It's really embodied wisdom. Now a simple breath practice. This probably won't be new to you. We're gonna make this really practical, is just to inhale through your nose for four seconds, then hold it for two, and exhale for six to eight seconds. Repeat that for two to three minutes. I am gonna put a link to a video guide that will help walk you through this, and help you like stay on track so you're not having to count the two or three minutes, but just set a timer and count in your head to four, to two to six or seven or eight. However, whatever feels good to you depending on the depth of your inhale, maybe you need a longer exhale. So. Inhale through your nose for four seconds, hold for two, and exhale slowly for six to eight. Try this practice for two to three minutes. As you breathe, notice your shoulders and your jaw and your chest, your thoughts. There's not any need to change anything. Just observe it. this practice is sometimes called coherent breathing. And the research shows that it improves heart rate variability, it reduces anxiety and enhances focus. This is a really great practice to do. transitioning between activities, going into a meeting, maybe going into work, maybe going into home from work, getting in the car. We all have two to three minutes here and there. takes more time to open up socials or pull out your phone and just see what's going on in the world than it does to do this. So maybe even put it on your front screen on your phone. So when you go automatically to pull out your phone, it reminds you to breathe, and you can do that first. Here's another practice that you can use during the day. Just pause, look around your environment. Name five things that you can see, four things you can feel, and three things you can hear. This is called sensory grounding, and it brings your brain out of that internal stress loop and back into the present moment and presence is where regulation happens. I've done this at work with patients even when breathing wasn't. Taking hold. I would just ask them to, just while I'm setting up here, name five things that you can see, four things you can feel and three things you can hear. Now. Sometimes the things were, the things that were traumatizing them. I remember the first time I did this, and the guy said, when I said five things, you can see, the guy said, I see a very sharp needle. And I'm like, okay, well maybe this isn't helpful, but it did. It was helpful in the end because it brought what he was thinking and the threat out, and really grounded him in the sensory of it all. And it brings your brain out of that internal stress loop back into that present moment. And it actually also introduced a level of humor there. And we had a good laugh about some of the things that he was almost trying to prove that what I asked him to do, wasn't going to work, and that it did. Presence is where regulation happens. If you've been trying to change your life through thinking alone, this may be the missing piece. So give it a chance. your body is not the obstacle. If you're somebody who's doing this, I know that you know that this is true, and I'd love to hear from you too. I'd love to hear what you're working on, because this, I think is taking hold in our culture and personal growth circles anyway. That somatic healing is really important, that body and brain connection, your body is not the obstacle, it's the pathway. And when you learn to slow your breath, notice your body. You create moments of safety, you build resilience, and you build awareness and you build capacity. Capacity is something that can sneak up on you. I think I shared in an earlier episode how we had a storm and we were out of power. which meant we didn't have heat in, freezing weather we were very cold for a number of days and nights and really couldn't go anywhere because our streets were blocked. And while I knew that there was gonna be an end in sight, I didn't know when that would be or how long this would last, and it was very uncomfortable and it felt not safe. Well, I think I shared earlier on is that it wasn't until a couple days after the episode that I had a trigger that. Made me aware that my capacity to manage things like that wasn't what I thought it would be. And so I needed to build that capacity. So I went to work on some of these somatic practices that create awareness of safety so that is really invaluable because we can't predict when things are going to happen that, maybe we're gonna be thrown into some, some form or some variation of crisis. we can't say when we're going to face a traumatic event, but we can build capacity to manage it in a way that we really want to, in a way that's helpful to us and those around us. So as you go through your day today, gently ask yourself, This might be, another couple questions to put on that page. What is my body trying to tell me right now and what would help me feel even 10% more grounded? Nothing that you do is going to make you feel a hundred percent grounded all of the time. Maybe not ever, but a 10% increase is worth it. life is 50 50, good and bad, and that's what our expectations should be. So saying that you're gonna be grounded and calm and happy and joyful and wise a hundred percent of the time is very unrealistic for anyone. So that is not even the goal. So what would help me feel even 10% more grounded? Sometimes it's gonna be less. Maybe 1% more grounded is worth pursuing. This is how we begin to live differently, not just by thinking differently, but by becoming more present in our bodies. More aware, more regulated, more intentional. So tomorrow morning, take a breath, feel your body, create a moment of calm. And then Move forward in your day. To default to yes, your extraordinary self.