Have you ever felt caught in the clutches of stress, unable to navigate through the fog that it creates within your mind and body? Self-regulation is a critical first step toward meaningful behavior change and action.
Self-awareness isn't just about introspection but about feeling, processing, and releasing emotions that may have historically felt unsafe to explore.
In this episode explore Dr. Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain, providing a tangible roadmap of the deep interplay between our brains and bodies, where we can self-regulate and move towards reflection.
Discover how tools like breathwork aren't just quick fixes but part of a vital practice in nervous system hygiene that shifts our physiology for the better. We're not reprogramming a machine; we're nurturing a lifelong relationship with our own biology.
By the end of our discussion, you'll have gained practical insights into how consistent practice can morph our state of being, enabling us to face future uncertainties with newfound clarity and resilience.
Get in there and give it a listen for more!
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
Have you ever felt caught in the clutches of stress, unable to navigate through the fog that it creates within your mind and body? Self-regulation is a critical first step toward meaningful behavior change and action.
Self-awareness isn't just about introspection but about feeling, processing, and releasing emotions that may have historically felt unsafe to explore.
In this episode explore Dr. Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain, providing a tangible roadmap of the deep interplay between our brains and bodies, where we can self-regulate and move towards reflection.
Discover how tools like breathwork aren't just quick fixes but part of a vital practice in nervous system hygiene that shifts our physiology for the better. We're not reprogramming a machine; we're nurturing a lifelong relationship with our own biology.
By the end of our discussion, you'll have gained practical insights into how consistent practice can morph our state of being, enabling us to face future uncertainties with newfound clarity and resilience.
Get in there and give it a listen for more!
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
What is up? Hello there. My name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Hello friends and welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience podcast. I'm your host, jpb, and this is episode number 172. Today's episode is inspired by a conversation that I was recently having with a friend. He said something like you teach people how to breathe and regulate so that they can reflect right. And yes, that is exactly it. The self-regulation is only a part of the puzzle. It is the first part of the puzzle, because action and behavior change have to come next. If we want things to change, we have to do something different, and so we'll talk about why the order of those things is so important here in a second.
Speaker 2:A quick shout out to this person. I am constantly impressed with their self-awareness and ability to feel things and then move on, to feel, process and then release, and this isn't something that I find easy. I'm still learning to do this and I know for a lot of folks it's not easy, especially when it hasn't felt safe historically to feel things, express those feelings or have space to even consider what those feelings are. And if we don't have the space inside of ourselves to process and reflect, it makes it really hard to do so, and the longer that we've been living in this constant state of internal turmoil, the harder it can be to see through the fog and we might need to learn or relearn to self-regulate, to be with ourselves enough to see what's happening and then process so that we can reflect. And an aside here when we are in a constant state of chronic stress, we can't just expect to do a thing like breathwork or whatever other intervention tool, self-regulation, nervous system hygiene tool that we have one time and have it just like fix everything and we're good. Sometimes it will give immediate relief because we're working with our shifting, our physiology and some tools are made for immediate intervention.
Speaker 2:We practice, and the practice part is so important because we are practicing building a new way of communicating, like speaking a new language to ourselves, to our physiology, by practicing sending these new messages and then practicing listening to the responses. This is how long-term change happens in our baseline state of being, our day-to-day and our ability to navigate future stresses as well and uncertainty with more clarity. This is why we practice nervous system hygiene, because you're not just a computer that you can program a command into and get the result you want. You are constantly building and reinforcing a relationship with your physiology and so let's look at that the reason we regulate first is because it's how we work as humans. So you have to be able to access your frontal lobe in order to have the ability to self-monitor and self-direct, in order to pay attention and direct where that attention is actually going and to process information, to make sense of that information, to practice cognitive flexibility or just changing your mind with new information, to reassess a situation or your reaction to the situation, to be able to plan for the future how you will approach something or problem solve in that moment or again, thinking ahead.
Speaker 2:And when we are stuck in a threat state, an activated sympathetic state, there is another part of your brain that kind of takes over your limbic system. And while I was thinking about this, I remember that Dr Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain is a great visual representation to help have something tangible to reference. So if you hold your hand up and then fold your thumb in to your palm and then close your hand like you have a fist over your thumb, that is the representation of your brain here. Your fingers on top represent your cortex, the top parts of your brain. Then we have the thumb, which represents the limbic system, and in that is the amygdala, which deals with emotions, and kind of a guard or alarm center with that. When that alarm sounds, there are signals sent to the hypothalamus and the pituitary glands, which communicate to the adrenal glands to send out chemical messengers like adrenaline and cortisol. This is the activation of your stress response system.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then the palm under the thumb represents your brainstem and your wrist represents your spinal cord and connection to your body. So you see that there is no real separation between the brain and the body. It's all connected, there's information constantly flowing back and forth, and so when you are in an elevated state, it's like you're blowing your top open and your fist. If you open up, you can't see me, but I'm doing this, I'm trying to walk you along here, so you have your fist and then, if you open up your fist, your hand is open again, with your thumb in towards your palm. You can see that your fingers, the cortex representation here, is not integrated with your limbic system, your thumb, and so they are not communicating well.
Speaker 2:And so we need to regulate and bring a sense of safety with that parasympathetic input, which is what we do with breathing and movement and vagal activation, so that you can have better conversations between your rational self, your self-monitoring frontal lobe and then your fear activation limbic system. They need to have great communication in order to navigate with more calm, more clarity, more kind of rational views and be able to reflect. And so only once you've done that can you begin to build awareness and reflect on the situation, your reaction and then what to do next. You have to regulate before you can reflect. So now, reflection doesn't mean thinking about all the things that you fucked up or the ways that you feel like shit, or criticizing or judging. These only reactivate that threat state. So don't do that. What reflection does is allow us to better build a better sense of self-awareness and deepen our understanding of ourselves and how we want to show up in the world. Reflecting on our experiences can assess what went well, what needs adjustment, and help to improve our problem-solving skills. Without reflection, we will likely just continue to carry on as we always have, without questioning what it is that we do and why we do it, and then also consider if there's a better way to approach that in the future.
Speaker 2:Self-reflection is important because this piece of the puzzle building not only self-awareness but that leads to resolve conflicts more constructively and build healthier relationships with both ourselves and those around us, and it's not always easy. A lot of these things are simple, but rarely easy. It requires sitting with yourself, getting curious and resisting the urge to judge. It requires a level of courage and vulnerability. It is an intentional practice and one of my favorite reflection techniques is writing. It is a great reflection tool. This is why I make a practice of writing morning and night. Not every morning, not every night, but I try to get some writing in each day, even if it's just a few sentences and even when all I have to say is I don't know what to say right now. Usually when I start with that, there's something else that pops into my head and then I write that down. So there's no structure or right or wrong way. It's just writing what's in your head and heart.
Speaker 2:Because writing can help you clarify your thoughts and give words to your feelings, and sometimes this can be a slippery slope into self-deprecation and spiral into dune thinking. So try and keep it factual. Your reporting events, thoughts, feelings. There's no need to figure it out right now. There's nothing to figure out. Sometimes just getting things out of your head and onto the paper is most useful.
Speaker 2:Other times. It can be useful to report these events objectively what happened, how did I feel, what are my thoughts and then reflect on what worked well and what didn't. What made you feel at peace, what didn't, and remember, when doing this, to focus on what is in your control and that's you Period, how you choose to respond. That is it. So maybe this week my challenge to you is to take a few moments to breathe, long, slow, deep breaths and then write a bit. Maybe that will lead to some useful reflections.
Speaker 2:And as I'm outlining this episode, I realize that I am terrible at talking about my services and how I actually work with people. This is what we work with in the Manage your Stress Mentorship, which is a month-long mentorship to help kickstart your nervous system hygiene skills so that you can create the space and capacity to reflect on what is working and what is not, and then for more of a deep dive, the six-month deep dive we do just that. We go deeper into first building and understanding of your body's processes so you can stop wondering what's wrong with you when it's just physiology doing what physiology does, and then build your toolkit to shift out of constant stress so that you can create the clarity, energy and ability to reflect, so you can stress less and live a little bit more.
Speaker 2:All right, friends. That's it for today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for reaching out, tell me what lands, what episodes or have for words just stopped coming. Thank you for reaching out to tell me what lands and for the episode suggestions. If you want to connect and haven't, you can find the links in the show notes always, or head to Instagram JPBBrainBodyResilience and message me there. I always love to connect. So this week, remember regulate before we can reflect. We practice our nervous system hygiene tools and our nervous system practice so that we can have more clarity, more calm, more rational thoughts and problem solving when we are relating to ourselves and the world around us. Until next week we will do this again. I hope you have a beautiful week, peace.