Thanks for listening to the show.

This is better than yesterday.

Useful tools and useful conversations to help make you all.

Day today better than yesterday.

Every week since twenty thirteen.

My name's Oosha Ginsburg.

I am a podcaster, I'm an author.

I'm a recovering television host.

I'm a dad.

I'm a stepdad.

I am revisiting the lap swimming of my youth as I try to make the lap time cut off for my bronze medallion course, which is only a couple of weeks away.

So am I'm in the pool three times a week.

Yeah, it's amazing.

I'm a guy that swims laves now who knew?

And I'm glad you're here.

Thanks for being a part of it.

It's summertime.

We're taking a break.

You're taking a break.

And just because we're taking a break doesn't mean I want to leave you without an episode.

Oh No, we're taking the best and most well received episodes we've had all year, and we're going to give them another run.

And today is an absolute brilliant listen from Jess McGuire.

Let me ask you this.

Let's say you and I are having an argument, right and I mean nless.

I We're really gone for it.

We're raising our voices, our hands are flying around it, and in the middle of it, I say to you, calm down.

Is that going to work in a highly emotional state?

Has that tactic ever been effective on you?

No, it hasn't, has it.

There are ways to calm down, but that is not one of them.

But what is interesting is that our response to pain, physical pain, it's kind of similar.

And it's something that my guest today, the physiotherapist and the author Jessica Maguire, spent an entire career focusing on.

Today, we explore the complex relationship between pain, the nervous system, and emotional regulation.

Jessica has some brilliant insights on how our body's process pain and some really practical, useful techniques for regulating your nervous system.

Her book excellent Books well worth read.

The book is called The Nervous System Reset.

I hope you get a lot out of this.

I did, and I made an entire documentary about pain.

Enjoying this conversation with Jessica Maguire.

It's kind of interesting to cross paths with you today because a lot of the stuff that you write about talk about is stuff that I have gone through, very similar principles that I've gone through with my mental health and stuff that I'm now going through with movement patterns.

And I find the parallels to be incredibly interesting.

But let's get to let's get to how you got to be someone who could do such a thing and.

Write a book called The Nervous System Reset.

What was it that made you want to go?

You know what, physio, That's it, That's what I want.

So I had always been interested in looking at you know, I guess from a bit of an athletic point of view, movement like I was always interested in that fairly kinesthetic in that.

Way, just for people who don't like I speak in this language now because I've got to communicate with people like you all the time.

I know way too much about anatomy, but for folks kinesthetic for people that are familiar with that workplace.

So that's really our awareness of movements.

And so I was always interested in the senses and the sensory experience.

And then physio is a great fit in the way that I thought I would just go in and treat sporting injuries, you know, But what I soon discovered is that a third of physio is that the other third is looking at the chest and the lungs, and then the other third of that is really neurology, so the brain, how the spinal cord and the brain communicate, you know, working with stroke patients and this amazing scene called neuroplasticity, how the brain and nervous system can change.

But before that, I was actually I did a degree before physio that was really looking at a lot of heart rate variability, which without knowing it, I was studying the vagus nerve and a lot looking at the gut too.

So I guess I came from a pretty broad lend of how I looked at things.

Even as a physio, I was still looking quite wide with.

That much science.

How they how did you even get past Bangalore?

Like?

How are you even allowed into the Northern rivers?

I know, right, It's it's interesting.

I do like to take in a lot of information, but I think what I like to do is taking a lot and then find how can I make this as simple, clear and actionable as possible for patients?

So you know, and then I had my own experiences with this work, with the work around the nervous system too, So it was it was great to come in with a deep understanding of it and to know how much it can help relieve suffering.

Part of people ask me all day, like why do you want to make this documentary about pain?

And a large for me, a large part of it was.

Like, well, in my own seeking of relief for things, I started to learn about what my pain system does and what can happen to it when it's just been on for six months.

I was like, how do people how do more people not know about this?

I know?

Right?

And and then it's like the way that it's been relayed for people who have chronic but persistent pain has really been quite poor.

And so then we've got this message of like I've got an injury, it has to be like tissue damage or it's all in your head, you know.

So there's not like this like really nice way to educate something that's so complex.

I feel like we haven't done a good job of it as health professionals.

How do you as a physio approach someone who is they're coming to you for help.

I don't know, they can't pick up their kids.

Let's say, for example, I've got a busted shoulder.

I don't want to be able to pick up my kids, but I can't.

I can't actually lift them.

You examine the joint and go, actually, there's nothing that I can see or feel that is wrong.

But because the accent of injury.

Was more than six months ago, the very movement itself is causing so much tension and fear and catastrophization about what happens if.

We do move that they're just so wound up.

It's like it's almost less physio and more psycho psychology at that point.

So how do you start to explain to someone about what their own sense, the relationship to that sensation does to the joint in question?

Yeah, it's a really good question.

I would start personally looking at the in the examination processes, at the biological, psychological, and social factors.

So we say that pain is a biopsychosocial event or experience, which means like, yeah, there's the biological factors, which could be inflammation or the initial injury, it could be faulty movement patterns.

And then the psychological factors that are in place are definitely like beliefs, expectations, the language we use, and then the social is what else is going on in somebody's life.

So you know, we might look at somebody who was really fit and healthy and then they started to experience challenges in there where they were living and the cost of living got really high.

Maybe it's impacted on their work, and those social factors will contribute to pain.

The second thing that I've loved to teach people with the education component is that pain isn't linear and pain doesn't always equal tissue damage.

So if you look at somebody who's going through an initiation ceremony, they can have no pain.

You know, they can have tissue damage.

They might do something that you know damages that tissue, but you know, they say it didn't actually hurt.

There was like a different experience with that.

Like I love time massages, you know, I love when they get up on my back and walk on my back and it's like all that pain.

But imagine if that experience was at night time and I was walking home by myself and somebody did exactly the same thing, it would be a completely different experience.

So the threat part of this is really important, and this is where it ties in with the nervous system of how do we perceive that or how does and a lot of that's outside of conscious awareness that we detect it as a threat, and so basically we can say, well, pain is actually an alarm system if you like, that is there to notify us that something could be wrong and get our attention.

And that's a great thing.

But when when we have a persistent pain that keeps going on and on despite the initial injury happening per se from the start, it's most likely related to a process of neuroplasticity where in a way, our brain, our spinal cord and the receptors have gotten better, have turned up the volume on pain signals to tell us faster, like yeah, this is here, this is a threat.

And what part of our work is is basically to turn the volume back down on those those signals.

It was very difficult for me to accept that some model some of the pain that I was experiencing was in my head.

I mean, I watched as my doctor and the radiologists pointed at the latual fermial contaneous nerve and when it's perfectly fine, nothing wrong with it.

It took about two or three days for me to accept that part of what I was feeling was being invented in my head because I so wanted it to be something else.

I so wanted it to not be me.

I wanted I don't want if I wanted something to someone to blame it on or like a reason that wasn't me for why I was and so much pain.

Yet once I did come to that acceptance, and I was working with a pain CC at the time, Oh there's ways that I can make this better just me.

I don't need a drug to do it.

And now now it was empowering, but that was that was like a light year of space to make that leap.

Yes, it's hard, isn't it, because we're so used to thinking my shoulder hurts, it's a shoulder problem.

But we don't have pain without our brain processing it.

And I think even when I was at Union studying this, I was like, this is so complex and that it's like against what we know.

And I think that that is a challenge for health practitioners to educate people because it's a complex thing, you know, And it's not like we like black and white, we like simple.

We like to say, you know, this is back pain.

I must have a slip disc.

And even if you think about that right, like your belief around what's going on.

Say it's a lower back pain and a slip disc makes it sounds sound like our discs are like a bar of soaps that can just go out and you know, fly out somewhere.

But when we look structurally at it, there's some really thick ligaments in place holding those disks and they're not really moving back that far.

So I think as well, that belief of the language of this is what's wrong.

That's the amplification of pain.

And you know, we see it with a placebo like we talk about the place Ebo effect and how that changes our immune system, anxiety, sleep, fatigue levels, pain.

It's definitely hard though to say, ah, there's part of this that's in my head, and I don't think that's even I think for a lot of people it's not always a super helpful framework if we say this is in your head.

I think it's actually more helpful if we say the communication between your brain and body, you know, it's more the signals.

Otherwise we think, well, it's just my brain has got a problem.

It's really you know, a lot of things around more signaling and communication between the truth.

One of the things I learned as well.

Was and I mentioned it earlier with the catastrophization and not only that, catastrophizing about and then in many ways.

I'm very lucky that I have the brain that I've got.

You know that one of my psychiatrists explained to me that I have two time zones.

I have now and not now, and that's it.

And what is lucky is that I would wake up every day and forget how much it hurt yesterday.

And then wouldn't worry about what it was going to feel like today.

You know, I wasn't.

I was got really lucky with that, But then I'd forget how much it hurt the day before, like I should really do something about this.

This has been three months where it feels like, you know, that was the problem.

However, I also learned that a care is catastrophizing.

For example, over a child can increase the pain of the child, and that is just staggering.

And so, you know, in relation to the work that you do, you know, when you're trying to manage caring for someone or you know, and you're trying to you know, there's a lot going on.

And you mentioned the social aspect of pain and discomfort earlier.

What are some ways of.

Trying to stay calm and stay centered when you're trying to handle hopefully not a kid in pain, but even just the stuff going on around your career, your house, school pickup, not week big, so my god, we need to mid the lawn.

What's that to be like?

All that stuff.

Yeah, it's a good question, and I think, you know, for a health professional, I've been really aware of the language that I use with people.

There were some good research that showed the number one predictor of how much disability somebody would have with lower back pain was really related to their belief of what was wrong at the start.

And so for a lot of old school health pros, they've gone in and they said, right, we'll send you off to get an MRI if you love it back and the person has walked back into the GP and they've said, Wow, you've got a spine of a seventy year old.

This is stuff my patients were telling me.

You know, you've got disc degeneration and all these things, which really they're like having a gray hair, they're like having a wrinkle.

So you know, we've seen that with a lot of imaging of the lower back.

It's across the population where there are you know, signs of normal aging if you like.

And so that's where I got really mindful of how I was communicating to somebody what was wrong, because if there was fear, then I was turning up the volume on pain signals.

So that got me really interested in the work of the nervous system in terms of the autonomic nervous system, which is out in a surveillance system.

And I learned that through a heightened nervous system where we're either you fight or flight or freeze and shutdown, we can be experiencing greater because of how closely this system speaks to every system, like our immune system.

It can heighten inflammation, the endocrine system, it can create changes there.

So I went deep into the work of the autonomic nervous system to be like, well, how can I help people turn down this protective threat system?

And that is really like where we're looking at that we're seeing this amplification carried largely out, and so what people can look at is like one portal that's really helpful for managing pain is nervous system regulation.

The other part of this is to probably look at the concept if we're speaking specifically to chronic and persistent pain of pacing or activity pacing, and this is where we would look at in a given time.

Can if you know, we've got busy life, kids, work like, there's physical demands, there's things we have to do, and then there's probably things we'd like to do, and sometimes that means having a list of like, well, these are all the things that I have to get done, these are all the things I'd like to get done, and how we structure that.

So I would say that people with persistent pain probably find they struggle the most when they're feeling good, like where you said you weren't remembering, and then they get really excited and do heaps and then the next day they have a flarer.

That's when I see a lot of happened.

So when it comes to like we've spoken a fair bit about pain.

But you know, regardless, as you mentioned, stress for long enough is bad for you.

It's sluck smoking cigarettes.

Really it can over time, it can really mess you up.

It can give you you can affect your heart, it can affect everything.

Right.

We're lucky though, because sometimes when I'm going on stage and I talk about mental health in the workplace, I show a video of a chicken getting hypnotized.

We like to think we're all smart and stuff, but we can just do things with our bodies deliberately that will turn on relaxation reflexes like that, And it's and it's skills that I see them now teaching my youngest son stuff that I never knew though as a kid.

What are you you know, I don't know what are your go tos?

If people find themselves getting a bit out of that window, get themselves a bit a bit up.

My hands are a bit shaking, my heart's running.

I think I yelled the last three things I just said.

I need to downregulate a bit.

What are your kind of go tos when it comes to trying to downregulate?

It's a really good question, and I think I love how you've already worded it.

We downregulate, so it gives the clue that, you know, if we are up regulated, there's like a mobilization.

We've got too much energy in our system.

And one thing I think that's really interesting, and you know, there's like this little bit of a lie from the wellness in this around being calm all the time, A live.

From the wellness industry.

They've kicked us only be thinking we should become all the time.

But what I bought a linen shirt?

Why isn't everything okay?

You're talking about to someone from the Bay and Bay region.

Remember, linen's the thing.

But if we look at this in terms of how we experience a range of emotions or sensations in that state where we're upregulated, it's typically fight energy or flight energy.

And so if it's fight energy, I typically see people struggle to contain fight energy because we have this thing that we think that anger is bad or role we're not a spiritual person if we get angry.

But really it's allowing fight energy to come in and express it in our body in a way that can actually, if it's channel right, really help us have strength and agency and mastery and set boundaries and stand up for ourselves.

And I think for a lot of the time we're pushing it down before it gets a chance to come in.

But I think for the if you look at the natural response of how fight energy wants to come through and express itself, we will feel a contraction of our muscles right there will actually be this.

So sometimes it's as simple as allowing our body to come into contraction through the wrists, the hands, the arms, really the shoulders where that strong energy is, letting it be activated rather than trying to calm it down, like go, okay, this is how it wants to express.

And for a lot of the people that I work with, that is the fastest way to regulation rather than a you know, I shouldn't be feeling this way and that's like, well, okay, this is anger.

Now how do I want to let it move through?

And what does it want?

What does it want to do?

That's so interesting.

It sounds very similar to some work I did with a trauma therapist where she would get me to do just that.

We would recall, you know, things were not fun.

I like, for example, if one thing I wanted to run, she would get me to do stuff with my legs.

If there was one thing I wanted to gouge people's eyes out, she had me shove my thumbs into a Swiss ball and it was almost like my body was like, okay, we're done here.

That's exactly it.

Because we're working with a part of the brain that doesn't have a concept of time, and it stores these memories as an implicit response, or what we would say in phy zero terms as a procedural memory, which is like say you know how to get up and surf.

You've like got step one, push up, stand up, you know, move your feet and it becomes automated.

It's stored in your brain.

You don't have to think about it consciously.

We store nervous system patterns in the same way in this simplicit memory system.

So we can't talk our way out of that trauma response.

We can't talk our nervous system into feeling safe.

We need to experience safety in our body or allow that activation that once came up from an event to play out how it needs to, because otherwise the survival brain, which is the part of the brain that today will say something is safe, dangerous, or life threatening, will continue to think that that experience is going on.

It has no concept of time, almost like what you said before.

So if we let it, if we say, okay, body express it how you want to, Like I think about this with grief so much right, we've made grief a very cognitive experience when it's actually very primal.

Until we let the body express how it needs too, we stay stuck and that's where we see things like anxiety, depression, anger, despair.

So what your therapist is doing if we can, if we do come back to an implicit memory, then we let the survival brain play it out in our body a nervous system, and it completes this stress activation cycle from the past and it's gone.

It seems too simple, and it seemed too simple until it happened to me and I was like, oh, okay, well, I'm glad I came.

Where does breathing play a role in helping us get more regulated and have access to a bit more bandwidth when it comes to making good choices in a moment?

Yeah, breath it can be super useful.

You know, we can use a longer breath.

There's various variations we can use of that.

You know, I work a lot with teaching now heal's practitioners how to deliver nervous system informed care.

Yeah, like a little bit like you're talking about with the person you worked with, and it's good.

But I don't think it's where we should start with trauma.

I think it's been probably generalized that everyone should do breath work, but the breast can be really triggering for a lot of people, particularly who you know, froze in the moment of experiencing something.

So I would start with more cultivating more safety first, if we're looking for this through the lens of trauma, if you know, if it's for we're feeling pretty grounded and resourced, it can be great.

You know, it can improve heart rate variability, which is the measure of the vagus nerves functioning.

And we know that high heart rate variability or high vagual tone is correlated with better psychological and physical health.

So we can look at it as a matched in breath and out breath than both of those are quite long, and then if we extend the exhalation, we can see we're bringing more of a slowing down of our physiology.

But just to be mindful, for some people, they're already too slow and to shut down or burnt out or exhausted, so they probably would be better not using that breath pattern.

So the key is really specificity of where what state are we in to what we need?

What about I don't know, let's say I mean I'm guessing I'm ask for from someone that's Anxiety has been a part of my adventures to the point where it gets too much and then get ends the depression and then you know you're just to shut down.

So I generally, if I'm going anywhere, I'm spending time on the higher side of things, and that does limit my choices of response and limit my ability to get in the way between the stimulus and response.

Things can flow out of my mouth too quick.

Where it happens to all of us.

So in those say, for example, what are some ways, like if we're losing it at the kids or whatever, what are some ways that you can help yourself get a little more together without anybody knowing.

Ah, Dad's doing the breathing thing again.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

So the body is sensory, like what's happening that sensory information.

This is really linked with persistent pain too.

So if you think about the brain being in the dark and in the sky, it's a little bit like being in a box and it doesn't actually know what's happening so well, but it relies on the body's holistic response to tell it how it is.

You know, we're very top down centric.

We're very about mindset, think more positive, which can have its place that I'm not downplaying that at all.

But in the time when we are super heightened, it doesn't work for us so well, So what we need is to look at, well, how can I change the sensory information from my body traveling upwards to my brain.

And we are sending signals to the brain, Hey, you're good down here, and that will settle down our experience the quickest.

So in the heat of the moment, we want to connect with more the information on the outside of our body, because what's inside can feel so overwhelming.

So we call that our exter receptive information.

And as you're sitting here now, orsure you might think, well, okay, I'm feeling pretty charged.

But if I was to feel the sense that my chair was really supporting my wage, and I paid attention to the outside of my skin, like the backs of my legs, the base of my pelvis, and I let my body, particularly when we're heightened, if we can let the body settle into the chair more and we send that message to the brain.

So we need to come back and notice it again, and we start to notice as well with that a feeling of stability, steadiness, and a settling our survival brain starts to go, oh, that must all be okay.

Down there because all I'm getting is a message of steadiness and stability, and often the outside of the body is less activating than say the breast, where we might notice air hunger, and we're paying attention to air hunger and the brain's getting a message of air hunger, it just ramps up the amplification.

So we need to find these places in our sensory information that is safe and send that message upwards to the survival brain.

Just taking a break from Jessica to let you know that the story Club YouTube is.

Up and absolutely firing.

If you're looking for something interesting to watch over the break, you can find brilliant, fresh, insightful, hilarious Australian stories on the YouTube page for story Club.

Each story is absolutely true and less than fifteen hundred words, so they're between twelve and fifty minutes long and it's from all shot at our fantastic monthly live storytelling show that we do here in Sydney called story Club.

It's been running for sixteen years now and the next shows are in February.

Tickets are in the show notes for that as well as the YouTube page.

That's where you can also grab a copy of my books.

So what now what?

And of course back after the break.

The ABA nominated Book of the Year.

So back after the break, I mean I lost that award to someone called Trent Dolton with Boys Swallow's Universe.

But hey, you're going to get that's okay.

It's a very good author and a very cool book.

We're back in a moment.

These things can be useful in the moment when you're in a peak.

But what are some things or some practical ways that we can work whatever.

It is into our day to day.

You know?

For example, I knew a guy and whenever he walks through a doorway, he did ten push ups, all right, So it was just like, this is my trigger, this is what I'll get my stuff done during the day.

He ended up at the end of the day, you know, doing eight hundred push ups or whatever like.

But that's how he it's what he did.

So what's something that we might be able to hang on some sort of action in our data, make sure that this stuff just happens we don't have to think about it, or we stay ready.

So we have to get ready.

I think the biggest thing is to be able to build something that we call inter reception and this is our ability to read our bodily signals.

And so for people who tend to be more on the flatter side, the depressed side, and there's research showing that it's harder for them to notice bodily signals.

And then people who are more on the anxious and wound up side, and this is linked now with persistent pain inter reception, we know that their accuracy isn't so good at reading bodily signals.

It immediately is detected as a threat.

So what we want to do is like check in with our body often.

And so for a lot of people who tend to be disconnected from their body, it can mean that you might set an alarm on your phone three times a day.

That's like, hey, check in.

Like neurodivergent individuals will certainly be able to say, oh, yeah, that's me I miscues of hunger, and then I get angry, Like that's all impacting on the nervous system and our physiology and how we feel.

So it can be as simple as that.

But if we're looking at the foundation of emotional regulation, it is tuning into bodily signals, because it's two or more bodily signals that make up an emotion.

You know, there's not one spot in our brain where our emotions are.

It's like it's coming from the bodily signals, creating a whole brain experience, which then feeds down into what happens physiologically in our body.

So it's like a continual feedback, you know, like a figure of eight.

So the more you can tune in and be like, oh, it could be as simple as like I'm working all day like this, it's got to go faster, I got to do more, got to go faster, and there's like no connection to my tight shoulder.

Yeah.

So just for people who are listening, you're sitting with your shoulders forward, you're hunched forward, you're you know, it looks like you're trying to touch the front part of your shoulder, your shoulders together in front of your chin.

Exactly.

I've certainly been like that, you know, when I was really worked up.

Yes, we know that when we're more wound up, we are going to be less connected to our bodily experiences, or if we are noticing them, they're amplified.

Like we said, we paid it.

It's a really similar experience with that anxiety or hypervigilance and the amplification of pain signals.

It's just different networks going up to the brain.

And that's why I find it crossover so fascinating.

And really it's now where the sciences all leaning into this process of how the brain and body communicate with each other.

So just through the day, as you mentioned, like setting an alarm on your phone and just noticing where your body is.

Yeah, and so if it's like as simple as oh my gosh, I've been sitting here with my shoulders up, like that's going to feed into the survival brain.

It's checking in with the breath and being like, oh wow, I'm really like you know, if you look at people in their upper chest breathing and it's like they're just breathing up here.

You can hear it sometimes in people's voice and you see all the muscles in their neck tightened up.

So the breath coming back down again is another way.

If we looked at the research that was done on there was day traders in London who were they were looking at who was successful or more successful, and it was tying into making these big decisions on trades and the traders we're talking about.

We're talking about stock exchange.

We're talking about people who are making a choice, making a decision based on available data, a very time critical decision that can either make or lose millions and millions.

Of dollars exactly.

And those who listen to their bodily signals accurately, you know, it wasn't like completely oh yeah, I rationally chose this decision.

We're more successful and so there is this linking to our values, our decisions, like trusting the signals that we're having going on inside of us.

The tricky part is deciphering that from what is a trigger, you know, like today and say, wow, I feel like a trigger will be a much louder, overwhelming signal than say, listening to a quiet intuitive signal.

But when we can check in, you know, whether it's through the alarm or whether it's we say, like habit stacking like you're saying of if I do after my teeth brushing a time where I'm like, okay, what state am I in?

And this can be as simple as I'm in the middle, I'm regulated like what you're saying with the window of tolerance, or I'm in hyper arousal, or I'm in hyper arousal, you know, really noticing that from an embody like through the body, rather than trying to be too cognitive.

That in itself is making us our intercept do signals clearer and more accurate, so tying it into simple things that we do every day.

After I got divorced, there was a really clever fellow that I spoke with, is a kind of life coach mentor kind of guy, a really interesting guy.

And he told me about and exactly what you're talking about.

He said, just literally just walk with your head facing up, walk with your head high.

I literally walk with your head.

I'm like, what do you mean?

Goes?

Your brain doesn't know where it is, and if your head's high, that's a signal that things are okay, and your brain I'll be like, okay, things are okay.

I said, is that because yes, that's simple.

I couldn't believe it.

But it's fascinating hearing this kind of stuff.

And I'm so grateful that we know this stuff now, that the choices we may not realize that we're making about our posture and the way we stand can unwittingly, unwillingly sell send signals that end up give us an experience of discomfort and emotionally difficult.

You know, things that should be easy become difficult emotionally because we're now in these tightened states we don't really.

Need to be in.

You mentioned being down before sometimes.

I mean I spoke with my cardiologist a couple of months back and it took a minute, but I'm just down to one double espresso a day.

Which is congratulations.

Man.

Like, I don't do any drugs that aren't prescribed, and caffeine is what you'd be able to pry out of.

My cold dead hands.

However, it is.

Definitely something that people reach for, whether a cup of tea at four in the afternoon or you know, an extra shot of this or that or the other.

But ultimately, what caffeine, caffeine's doing is just borrowing.

What's the one worrying for Peter to PayPal?

It's like borrowing something out of your body to use it in the moment, but then eventually it's gonna it's going.

To come back down again.

So what are some ways that if we need to like we've talked a lot about down regulating, if there are ways that we need to lift, what are some ways that we can do that without you know, putting unnecessary stress on our adrenal system.

I love what you just said because we talk about this as the artificial window of tolerance where people like come into this pseudo state, which is like a band we're you're not really going into the window.

But for people who are shut down, they will often do it through exactly what you said, caffeine, stimulants, drugs, horn, video gaming, horror movies like anything that gets that adrenaline system pumped up.

But it's not true regulation.

I mean it can go the other way as well, from the wound up state, typically alcohol, you know, getting lost on social media because it is a distraction and it brings us down, but it doesn't it's not the same as regulation.

It's not a true refuge.

It's more a false way of feeling different.

But what it means is we've got to say, well, what's my true need underneath that?

Like we look at the behavior as being like, oh, it's an addiction, and it can be, but it's also looking at well, what is the true need underneath that behavior that I need to change?

And so for people who were down regulated, we can see a lot in that state that could be going on.

So it could be like a shutdown collapse, which is related to you touched on this before when you said you were like heightened for a long time and then crash down into that more of a shutdown, And so it can be physiologically there's been a depletion of that sympathetic energy and there's definitely a lot of the vagus nerves regulating energy.

So one of the things that we can look at is we want to upregulate the nervous system in a safe way.

And now this sounds a little bit curious, but I think play is one of the best things that we can use for our nervous system.

So it's more the play that we use with other people.

That's where we feel safe and we can mobilize energy safely.

So for me, that is like on the weekend we took our daughter surfing and hurt giggling and her play, my husband and I in the water.

That's that's definitely a feeling of play.

But I would say it's a very subjective experience, you know, like it will feel different for other people.

But how do you mobilize energy safely?

You know, it can be karaoke, going to a comedy show, and often when we're in that state, the narrative is that we don't belong, we're alone, we're like you know, shut off in a cold dark room by ourselves, and so we will isolate.

But if we look at the antidote to shame, which also maps down into that state, it's belonging.

So if we can bring ourselves to get past the narrative that comes from this state, if I don't belong and connect with other people, doing something that mobilizes us, that will upregulate us.

If we're not at the place where we can talk, it can be just going to a location where other people are, So that could be a park, a beach, a shopping center, just a cafe.

You don't have to talk.

This isn't about telling your story.

It's about changing your physiology and all of that can regulate you do because we are wired to feel a belonging through being around up community.

You would never know that you know you have this bachelor health science that are Masters physiotherapy because the stuff you're talking about is the kind of stuff I've spoken about with so many sykes.

But the crossover is something I've been starting to notice very recently.

This is the stuff that really it really gave me personally a lot of a lot of relief and a lot of freedom, you know, and still now.

I mean, you know, I'm like two or three out of ten most days of discomfort.

I don't really call it pain, but it's okay.

You know, I've got room.

I can have it.

It sucks if I let it, but I've got enough room for it to suck and to roll around on jiu jitsumat.

With my son.

You know, I can have both.

And but you can't do that if you don't, if you aren't able to like make the space for it, you kind of have to kind of make the space for it.

It's a lot to try.

But I'm lucky, you know, I've got years of speaking with people and being diagnosed with this and that, learning how to get better before this happened to me.

Like if I had gone from nothing to this, I would be I would struggle to hear some of the stuff you're trying to tell me.

Yeah, it can be really challenging without context, but also without it feeling like it's you know, wishy washy when you have a lot of pain.

And I think this is because we haven't joined the dots so well with you know, connecting the systems.

We've sort of said, well, the body's here, the brain's here.

And like what I think about when I was a physio of going, well I treat the body.

It's a brain problem.

I'm going to say this to any Hell's pros.

If you're working with people, you are counseling them like, it's not okay now to go, oh, well, I don't deal with that, and as well with you know, from the psych point of view, if you're saying, well, I work with the brain, well, if you're working with trauma, you're working with the body.

So there's a step up now that Hell's practitioners I believe need to take to work that intersectionality exactly what you're saying.

And also I just wanted to say how much courage it takes to keep doing that work.

So you know, you've really owned that, and I think it's it's hard if you're not proactive in getting the help that you need.

I think that's thank you for saying thank you for saying so.

But it did get to the point where that was the only option.

And this is you know, change only happens when the fear of change is smaller than the pain of staying the same.

That's what drives it.

That's with anything really like and if it is connecting with your values, and particularly when we're talking, you know, speaking with you, we're talking about I wanted to be able to move where well and be able to stay regulated to a point where you may really want to connect with someone.

You may really want to but there's some stuff about them that you don't realize is reminding you of someone that there's.

Got nothing to do with them.

But when so when you speak to them, you're a fucking puffer fish and you're spiky and nasty, and then you don't understand why they don't want to come near you, and you're like, ah, what's going on here?

You know, it's so important, you know, to be aware of what happens when we get just regulated and how we can move into choices we may not realize don't belong in this moment, but it's simply our body trying to keep us.

Safe, exactly.

And I think you've really nailed it with that process of how we move between the different states that we call neuroception.

It's happening outside of conscious awareness, you know, we don't know what's happening, and it's influenced by our past experience.

This is like the same with pain.

It has the same thing.

We think about our house being broken into and we didn't want it to happen again, so we installed a super fancy alarm system, and then we have this alarm going off all the time.

That's like saying there's a danger, you know, like we're wound up with anxiety, we're down in shut down.

But pain is the same way, and so we have visibility even though it's happening in those centers outside of conscious awareness, to bring them into awareness and work with them.

And I think that's probably what's so exciting now, is knowing that you know so much of this we can have an influence on.

Even if we have a history of traumatic experiences like developmental trauma.

We have seen from the orphanages in Romania that they had better outcomes once they got the right connection and the right adopted families.

Like it doesn't have to be the whole story.

It can be that was a chapter, and we have the tools to change things.

God, it's very hard to hear you say the sentence without seeing that I remember the footage of those kids all just sitting on the floor and nappies.

Yeah, it was nobody holding them, nobody touching them, and just this thousand yards stare in every one of them.

There was horrible, horrible, horrible stuff.

We keep mentioning this thing, the vegus nerve.

What is it that the vagus nerve does in our body.

If you ran your hand down the back of your head and you feel that bony ridge, and we know that's where the brain stems starts, so it comes down today, it's got a branch to the heart, and then it's got a branch that runs all the way down to the coalon.

So the branch to the heart is like the break that will regulate our emotions and physiology.

It's a bit like if you ride a bicycle downhill, it keeps enough for that breaking gauge so you don't go too fast.

And then the branch from the brain to our gut is regulating all of our organs.

This is why we see that link between pain and inflammation, because you know, if we are in this regulation for a long time, the vegas nerve gets interrupted from its job of regulating our organs.

But in that process, It actually controls the level of information in our body, and so if we are always anxious, then the vegas nerves interrupted, then it's more likely that we can have higher levels of information.

That's one portal to persistent pain.

So most of that signaling of the vegas nerve is actually running from the body up to the brain, and when we're tapping into noticing our bodily signals, we're actually using that network.

You know, if we're paying attention to signals in our gut, that's the vegus nerve that's sending those messages.

Now, if those messages coming up and we reach part in the brain called then that's related to our emotional awareness.

It plays a role in our social connections with other people as well, and all of this will influence our physiology of how the vagus nerve comes back down.

So it's a little bit like this continual feedback loop of information that we can jump on to, particularly with the fibers running up to change our physiology on the way back down.

I do have to say that I do get a little bit ranty when I see people say you can hack it.

It's not like we can just go ah, I'm just going to turn this on or off or something like that.

It's like saying you can hack your spinal cord.

But I think what's interesting to know is that we can build our ability to cope with and recover from stresses.

Because stress isn't going to go away as part of life, so I was paying you know, we're going to still have them, but we can build our ability to in that moment have a wider window like we were in talking about, and so we may not necessarily move into fight or flight in the face of a challenge.

And it's actually the part of the vagus nerve that we call the vaguel break that acts to control that, and it can we can train this to be very fine tune to match what's happening in our environment.

And just like we're talking about with neuroplasticity and this ability to change, it means that we can match what's happening in our external environment with the same amount of activation that we need to meet that challenge and demand.

Because most of dysregulation is really that our inner world is responding to something in the past, but we want to come back to responding to what's happening today.

From the way I understand it.

The vagus nerve.

Is this this thing that influences subconscious reacts in our body like peristalsis digestion, whether we're breathing fast or slow, hard right, et cetera.

Yet, if we do things like slowing our movements down, noticing what my T shirt feels on my skin, taking some extra long exhales, that is influencing the information as you mentioned, that's going back over to my brain, which then changes my experience of things.

And then it starts to flick all these switches going, well, I guess if I'm feeling that I'm okay here and my T shirt's good, and we're breathing a little slower, then we don't have to be so wird right now?

Yeah?

That because yes, I love that explanation, especially about my T shirt.

It's good.

You've summed it up beautifully.

But it's definitely the bottom up information that we can connect to that will tell the brain, yep, we're sweet.

And then it's that lower center of the brain that changes how the vagus nerve will then play out.

But it's really the connection to safety and trust, right That's the key.

So if we're sending messages of safety, trust, I'm okay.

Then that's how our physiology will change to adapt, and that's when the Vaga stove will come back online.

I understand why people want to be so excited about it, because I mean, I can't control how quickly.

I digest breakfast.

Yes, right, I can't control.

I can't decide when I'm going to pooh like it just I can hold on, but I can't go yet at seven o'clock.

Like, It's just so much of our bodies out of our control.

It just happens, you know, in cycles of whatever, sleep, wake, you name it.

So the idea that we had could have some.

Influence over this unconscious way our body works is very exciting, particularly when it relates to how we feel and the ability to make good choices in a moment.

I understand why people get a bit ramped up about it.

You mentioned your child before.

I get really excited when I watch this stuff that they teach young Wilfee at school.

Yes, all right.

We started him really early.

We started him with snake breaths, which is.

A love making my hand with like this, right, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

What are some things that people can do, like, say, for example, let's start with five year olds.

And we'll go up.

You know, it was some things ways that people can teach or get, you know, just at least a bit of regulation going on for their kids.

Just to do it as a habit.

It's all play basic kids.

So when we work with kids with you know, looking at different pediatric things that we're always using play because when they're focused is where their brain body system will be activating where we can change them.

So with kids, it's almost like you put your mind with their mind, right, so let them lead, you come in with them.

So let's say they're doing something and they're you know, right into it, Like with my daughter, we might play something like smell the flower, blow away the pedals.

So that's what you're saying with breathing.

But particularly if we want to use like play and music to feel the body, particularly like talking about interception like we are, there might be something like let's make our hands open, close, open clothes.

Can you feel the tingly sensations inside your hands?

And you know, we're naturally doing this a little bit with kids when say we're like, do you need to go to the toilet and they're like no, and they're like Oh, it looks like you've got your legs crossed and you're jiggling around.

Do you need to go to the toilet?

So directing them to that is how we develop their ability to notice their inner world.

So, you know, lots of that play based, body based, directed.

But if you think about music as well, in the way that you can you can entrain the system to come up with certain music or come back down.

That's another one.

But a lot of it as well is the validation around emotions are okay, big feelings are okay, and like kids aren't born with the ability to self regulate.

They need us as coregulators first.

So it's hard, you know.

I mean, parenting is the toughest.

John as amazing, but you're also a challenge with it.

But I think we've spoken about some things we can use in the heat of the moment without contact points.

But if we're feeling rild, this is the time where we can use our movement with kids as well.

I really like the things where there's a bit of testing them, as in playing a game where you might be doing something then they need to stop and you have to hold and they're like they feel the mobilization, like they're really excited, they want to go.

They've got to be able to hold.

That's like a self regulation and then you go again.

So that might be like exciting music, exciting jumping.

Stop, they've got to hold go again.

So that will teach them to be able to bring in their vagus nerve or the vagel break to slow back down.

And here is how to jo Brahm is teaching us as a whole community.

The opening theme of Bluey with the Dan the musical statues game.

Fine, all right, Joe, you're a genius.

You deserve your money.

And if you're the gen your success because it's incredible.

Yes, totally, but they will, you know, like a parent with the voice where we have vocal prosody, like if we're in our if we're in our Winner of Tolerance, we say that we've got our social engagement system online, which is part of the vegas nerves job or its role in connection with other people.

So you know, we're not we're not necessarily regulated when we talk in our calm, whispery voice like this, it's actually where there's ups and downs in the voice.

There's changes in pitch and rhythm, and if a child hears that in their parents' voice, they're going to feel already closer to regulation.

When we smile at them and they see the wrinkles around our eyes.

I know that we love to like botox these, but these are actually these wrinkles are actually on the outside of our eyes.

Are actually the wrinkles that send to people cues of safety and connection.

So if you see someone smile at you, and they really smile with their eyes and you feel that waltz inside you know where you're like, oh, that's oxytocin and your vegus nerve coming online and you're having that connection.

So kids really need that too, And a lot of it is it's an embodied state that we're in.

You know, we can't fake it.

They see through it.

It is interesting how were you're describing is that sometimes as a parent, or sometimes even as a couple, you may need to do some heavy lifting with regulating a situation.

You know, if you're going hammer and tongs at it with your like not like in a quarrel.

I should say, if you're in a quarrel with your partner right and one of you is starting to become you know, a little too elevated and things are getting there, You've got to do some work.

You can't get upset at them for like, hey, can you calm down?

Like never ever has that ever?

Would No one's come down.

I told to calm down.

No.

But it's interesting, isn't it How one person if they if they're in that moment and they can identify or we're escalating here, that their regulation can affect the other person.

Yeah, it's a mirror.

You know.

It's like if you think about what coregulation is.

We've got research like definitely with child and parent, but this is between anybody like in the coregulation aspect of And this is what we're teaching to our health practitioners at the moment that yes, we can have all these tools, yes we can have all these skills, but your energy and the way you show up for people who are having a really hard time.

Like most of my patients were like PTSD clients, and that was like, okay, well, how do I stay regulated each day or after a full day of people telling me it is?

And that's probably not something that health practitioners talk a lot about.

You know, we've got to be the strong one.

We've got to be stoic, but we are influenced by each other.

We can either move towards coregulation, where both of us, you know, we see that heart rates synchronize, we see the breathing rate synchronized.

But we can also move to codisregulation.

And we've just been talking in one of our communities about in health practitioners, you'll see it as the fixer, the leaning in, talking talking, talking, talking, not letting anybody else say anything, the hurrying their patients through.

And this is all the things that you hear from people when they say, oh, I went and saw them and they didn't listen.

They didn't you know.

So it's really interesting.

Yes, there is a feedback loop that we enter into with our the people, and this is like an art and it's a practice.

We never get to the end, but to learn how can I keep working on staying regulated in the heat of the moment and support others That can be a big challenge.

You mentioned a few physical things through our conversation, but one thing we haven't pun intended, one thing we haven't.

Touched on is touch.

Yes, so there's physical, there's postural, there's thinking about and just noticing an awareness, But what role can you know by yourself what role and what are some things we can do using our own skin, touching ourselves to assist us in a moment.

And we might need to get a little more kind of ground.

These work grounded, but a little more stable.

You know.

We don't talk enough about touch with nervous system health, I don't think, but we can think about that touch to using our skin as a really good sensory feedback to the brain.

And so what I see in people who have had traumatic stress, particularly only people who went through an incident, and then let's say they froze at the time, and they're like, why didn't I say something?

Why didn't I stand up for myself?

I'm so, you know, but freeze is the most common response to a traumatic event, and it's what keeps us safe.

So when we have that feeling of shame, we need a way to be with those sensations, those bodily signals that are actually bringing a sense of atuvement, kindness, acceptance.

Some might call it self compassion.

And what's interesting is people who struggle with self compassion are more likely to experience anxiety and depression.

And so when we use touch, whether we think about this as like a hand on the hand on the cheek, and it's actually a way we can contain something that feels so strong.

That can be an incredible way to soothe ourselves by bringing on the other hand, like a strong pressure to the joints, like squeezing through the shoulders and saying, okay, this is my shoulders, these are my shoulders.

For people who dissociate or disconnect from their body, that can be a really great way to stop themselves moving down into shut down because it's like what I was saying before, we turn the signals from the body back up, like the volume back up on where the body is, and that can shift us out of the shutdown stage.

And one of the things I love so for people who have the sensitization or central sensitization where there's a lot of pain, and this has been shown in fibromyalgia, but other persistent pain conditions, the part of the brain that actually maps where our body is.

We know with sensitization it can get smudged, so it's not as clear.

Now if you think about someone who who's a pianist or a guitar player, the representation of their hands in their brain can actually be larger because they have they've trained.

That's an example of neuroplasticity.

And so what we sometimes see is like with phantom limb pain, the leg's gone, but they're still pain there and it can be the amplification of the brain trying to find that sensory or where the leg is.

So there's an activation in that sensory cortex.

And so one thing we'd touch is if we were to touch on someone's lower back who had lower back pain, then we use two fingers and we say, am I touching you with two fingers or one?

It's helping them work out what that discrimination difference is between two fingers or one.

That sharpens the map in their It calms down the immune system, that calms down the activation in the brain, and that can decrease pain.

I also love to do it with like you touch someone on their back and you say where am I touching you?

And they lay on their belly with like a picture underneath their face and it's numbered and so you make that more accurate.

And that's been shown to work really well for that central sensitization.

So touch is amazing.

As you mentioned, the people have lost a limb one of the people we talked to in our film.

She was not standing in her kitchen and she goes, well, right down my foot, Titchy, look down and there's no thought choose a thing called mirror box.

Yes, exactly, so amazing.

Astoundingly discovered after I think World War One, on the boar war or something like.

It's just extraordinary whatever brains can do.

And just the last thing I would say on that on the touch and the pressure pretty much every night, right before I read Wolfy stories, he I'm going to tell you what begs me, but he's very insistent that I squish him.

Yes, kids, squish him before bed.

It gets under his covers and he lies himself flat and I lie on him and I may make a game and I pretend to fall asleep, but he just mate.

It almost turns his little bright like I wish there was someone humongous that could come and squish me.

Yes, pretty cool.

It's so good kid, Like, you know, to know where your body is is so grounding and the brain goes, okay, got you.

And that's that's something we definitely don't talk enough about in the world of nervous system dysregulation.

You know, everyone's so focused on the breast, so focused on like the different ways that we can come down, but touch is one of the pressure and those sensory systems are really the fastest gateway.

It's no accident.

You get a good night's sleep in a hammock, whether on a sheep, whether on a ship or not.

The feeling of being crazy old man, it's the best.

I'm very excited that you are doing the work you're doing.

I think it's a great time for you to be doing it because you know, the work that I've been doing in this area, because we shot this film like nearly two years ago.

Now, the people I've.

Been speaking with and there's a big shift towards this crossover space that we've been discussing today, which ultimately I'm thrilled for because it means that a lot more people have a lot more relief and have better quality relationships with the people around them, which is ultimately what it is.

You know, it's not about this hurts.

It's like, ah, I keep having fights with my partner because I'm just cranky all the time.

And that's what was problem with me.

But that's you know, also also what it is.

You're great, Thanks for taking the time talk to me today.

Thank you, wesir, I loved it.

That was Jessica Maguire.

The book is called The Nervous.

System Reset, Get around It.

It's a fantastic read and well well worth it.

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