02. How To Regulate Your Nervous System With Somatic Tools

Your nervous system is working 24/7 to keep you alive, but when stress adds up it can start to feel like your own body is against you. We talk about why that isn’t true, and how learning nervous system regulation can change the way you handle anxiety, overwhelm, shutdown, and the everyday pressure of being a mom. If you’ve ever thought “Why am I reacting like this?” this is a practical, body-based map back to steadiness.

We go through the window of tolerance, the sweet spot where you feel calm, content, alert, and connected. From there, we name what it looks like to move above that window into hyperarousal (fight or flight) or below it into hypoarousal (freeze or shutdown). The goal is not to eliminate stress, it’s to expand your capacity so life’s ups and downs don’t throw you off balance so easily. That reframing alone can bring a lot of relief, especially if you carry a trauma history or feel like self-regulation is hard. 

Then, we get concrete with somatic healing tools and why consistency beats intensity, and why forcing yourself to “calm down” can backfire. 

You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of your stress response and simple ways to create safety in your body. 

If this resonates, subscribe, share this with a friend who’s been struggling, and leave a review so more women can find these nervous system regulation practices.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And we're back with another episode. Y'all, I'm so excited. I've been loving recording these episodes. It's so much fun. These little scripts that I'm following, which feels good because when I try to do it off the cuff, I'm like, ah, what am I gonna say? So yeah, it's really cool to have our theme and just lean all the way in. So today is about nervous system regulation and finding your window of tolerance. What does that mean? What is regulation? What is window of tolerance?

Why Regulation Matters Daily

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Um, so yeah, we're gonna explore it because it affects every single one of us every single day. And yeah, learning to work with your nervous system is powerful. If you haven't listened to episode number two on somatic healing and nervous the like nervous system 101, go listen to that episode. I highly recommend it as the starting place before this one. What we went through in the episode is what your nervous system is, it's the body's electrical network running through every cell in your body, nerve-ending, connecting your brain to every part of you. And within the system, we have this incredible mechanism that's like a seesaw, which is the sympathetic nervous system, the gas pedal that activates you into survival states during stress and excitement and discomfort. And then the parasympathetic part of the nervous system, it's like the brake pedal, helps you slow down, come to a stop, helps you rest and digest. If you want all the details, go back and listen to that episode. Now, talking about the window of tolerance, thinking of those two aspects of the nervous system as a seesaw. Imagine there's an optimal range in which the seesaw can go up and down. Right? You're picturing the seesaw. Now, also picture if you're someone who is visual and can have images in your head. If not, perfectly fine when I started my healing journey and spirituality and all the new age things, and I would go to guided meditations and it'd be like, imagine blah blah blah blah blah. I'd be like, I don't see anything, my mind's blank. I would still do the practice and try,

Window Of Tolerance Explained

SPEAKER_00 2:52

but I could I just have a very hard time picturing things in my mind. So, all of that to say, if that's you, look it up. Pull it up on your phone, pull it up on a computer, a graph, a chart, a line chart where we have ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs, right? These lines, these squiggly lines that go up and down. No, imagine the optimal range. Somewhere in the middle of all those ups and downs is a zone, right? Again, we're gonna keep saying the words over and over again. Window of tolerance. It's the zone where you feel calm, you feel content, but you're alert and you're focused. You're not overwhelmed, you're not exhausted, you're connected to the right here and right now, to your body, to your being, to your experience, to your environment. That's your window of tolerance. When you're within that range, you can handle life's ups and downs. You can respond to challenges thoughtfully, you can feel emotions without being overwhelmed by them, connect with others authentically, and it's where healing and growth happens. But when stress or life becomes too much, or when you've experienced trauma, this window, this zone that's tolerable and doable for you shrinks. It means that the ups and downs can't be so big because you'll get out of whack. And this is when regulation becomes essential. Now, if self-regulation feels really tough for you, this is where co-regulation can be really powerful. As children, we are supposed to learn to co-regulate with our caregivers, but if we're raised by caregivers who don't even know how to self-regulate, then we don't learn how to self-regulate. And my hope is that listening to this podcast, you can co-regulate to me, and that can help you learn

Hyperarousal Vs Hypoarousal Signs

SPEAKER_00 5:37

to self-regulate. Now, there are two ways we move outside of our window of tolerance or this zone where we feel content and calm. When we go above the zone, we are hyper-aroused. It's where the gas pedal gets stuck in go mood. Can feel like your heart racing, your muscles tensing, your mind racing, can feel anxious, irritable, like you're on high alert. It's that fight or flight mode. The other way is below the window of tolerance, it's down. Hypoarousal. It's when the brake pedal, the slowing down, the stopping gets stuck. You feel numb, disconnected, maybe space out. You might feel flat or unmotivated, or like you're moving really slow, like moving through molasses.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

This is the freeze or shutdown mode. And the goal isn't to eliminate stress, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

That's that's pretty pretty impossible. You can reduce stress, but eliminating it um is a big ask. The goal is to expand your window of tolerance, expand your nervous system's capacity to hold what is doable for you so that you can handle more of life challenges, more of life's challenges without getting thrown off balance, without getting out of whack, like I said before. So,

Expanding Capacity With Somatic Work

SPEAKER_00 7:36

how do you regulate your nervous system? How do you expand your window of tolerance? This is where somatic work comes in. It's ways, right, to work with your body directly to find regulation. Somatic breath work, we focus on grounding. Your mind racing is normal, happens to many of us. Grounding brings you back to the present. It can be noticing your feet on the ground, feeling the solid surface beneath you. The simple act activates that parasympathetic system, that slowing down, signaling safety to your nervous system. Somatic breath work. Your breath is directly connected to your nervous system. In episode two, we talked about the autonomic nervous system, part of your nervous system, that's your life support, it's keeping you alive, it's functioning without even thinking about it, your heart beating, your breathing. You're unconsciously breathing, your body is just doing it. And this is where the breath can be so powerful because when you consciously breathe, when you have active breastwork, a rhythmic breathing pattern helps regulate your heart rate and calm your system.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

And bodily awareness.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Talked about, right, when you're hyper-aroused, what can come up in your body? When you're hypo-aroused, you might feel disconnected, slow.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

It's about meeting your body where it's at.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Gently bringing awareness to the different parts of your body, feeling your toes, feeling your fingers, noticing sensations without judgment, noticing if you feel tension, you feel spaciousness anywhere. And if you feel nothing at all, that's perfect too. It's really about re-establishing that connection to your body. What I think is much missing in so much of the somatic work I see out there on social media, and why I'm like, I'm gonna do a podcast, I'm over creating social media content and all the things, is that regulation isn't about forcing yourself to feel better, it's not forcing yourself to feel calm. When you force or push yourself, you can actually make yourself feel worse. Because truly, no one wants to be pushed or forced into doing anything,

Safety Over Forcing Feeling Better

SPEAKER_00 10:59

and as humans, we do that to ourselves all the time. It's about creating safety for your body and for your nervous system. If you think of the window of tolerance like a muscle, the more that you practice co-regulation, self-regulation, the stronger that it's gonna get. This is where small consistent practices are more powerful than occasional big efforts. Um, I have been hosting day retreats for the past three years in Connecticut, and I love them. I will continue hosting them, but right now I'm taking a pause to focus on my online offerings, my recorded programs that you can access again and again and again. Because going to one day retreat and experiencing the power of healing in one day, yes, it can change your life, but it's not gonna heal your body in one day. Because it's just this occasional big effort

Small Practices Beat Big Efforts

SPEAKER_00 12:18

that you made. It needs to be small, consistent practices that are gonna be more powerful.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

When you're outside your window of tolerance, it's important to try not to judge yourself.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

To just notice, oh, I feel dysregulated right now, huh? Not analyzing it, not attaching a story to it. Oh, this is how I'm feeling. Okay. Interesting. See if you can get curious. See if you can be proud of your nervous system for doing its job. It's keeping you safe. And again, it has been doing this for how many years? How long have you been alive that your body has been protecting you and you didn't even realize it was protecting you? It's gonna take

Curiosity And Self-Compassion In Stress

SPEAKER_00 13:14

time for it to learn to regulate and to feel safe. Right? The goal is to gently expand what feels safe for you, not to push yourself beyond your limits.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

The journey of nervous system regulation is personal.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

What works for one person might not work for another. Be curious about what helps your body feel safe. What helps your body feel regulated? I've mentioned that in my healing journey, it's felt so powerful to make you a noise and yell and scream and have these visceral primal sounds come out of me. That might not work for you. That might not feel good for you. You have to find what works for you. Some days you're gonna feel spacious and expansive and want to get creative and be productive, and other days your window of tolerance might feel narrow, might not feel like you can do a lot, and that's okay. This is not about perfection, it's about progress and learning to have self-compassion. As you explore body-led practices and somatic regulation, be patient with yourself.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Be so patient.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

We're not here to avoid stress, we're developing the capacity to handle it with awareness and grace. Final reminder as we wrap up this short and sweet episode: your body is not the enemy. It's your ally on this journey. By learning to regulate your nervous system, you're not only managing your stress, you're healing your body. You're creating generational well-being. You're healing your lineage forward and backward. You're creating space for joy, connection, and healing to flourish in this lifetime

Your Body As Ally And Closing

SPEAKER_00 15:37

and for generations to come. Thank you for joining me today. Until next episode, please start practicing and learning to listen to your body. Even simple cues like when you need to drink water, when you need to use the restroom, when you're hungry. Take care of your nervous system. It's been working so hard to protect you, to keep you safe, and to take care of you. See ya on the next episode.