FINAL Ep14 S2: The YIN Side of Nervous System Regulation
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Hey, welcome back to the spiritually embodied leader I am tripping out on this particular topic today because I have been going through like the magic and the medicine of the topic myself, as well as an experience that I had with a client recently and I just think it's so funny that like, you know if you're on this entrepreneurial path and if you haven't come across this yet, you will at some point as long as you keep moving forward on it that when you decide you're going to support people in a particular way, the universe is going to bring things into your life for you to really learn it in a deeper level to have that like firsthand experience of that thing you want to support people with because you know, I truly believe that you need to learn how to support yourself through it before you can support other people. right? and some respect. So yeah, I'm not surprised at this topic was like honed in on leading up to this episode. So yes, the yin side of nervous system regulation. And this topic first came up with my client but we kind of talked about it and dove deep on it in a different way. We focused in, on a particular aspect as to like why she was behaving in the way she was but then I had my own personal experience with this podcast and all of that I don't know if you've noticed, but last week there was no episode published, so I took a week off. Okay and yeah, I'll get into the details of that and how that is related to the topic of the yin side of nervous system regulation I met back up with my client again, and we just like double clicked on this particular topic and I was just like, man, like, Ah, it was such a great call and it inspired me to just talk more about it here on the podcast.
The yin and the yang of nervous system regulation so the yang it's more the productive side. It's like okay, nervous system regulation in order to be able to do something, right?
So like in terms of, especially business and entrepreneurship, like regulate the nervous system in order to show up online in order to host the masterclass in order to raise your prices or whatever right? and who it is that we are being in the business, and it's a lot about taking action, it's a lot about the doing the yang side, right? And that's all great and it's what like, it's the motive behind why people would want to look into nervous system regulation in order to do more and be more, Right? Have more.
Yet, the yin side sometimes gets a bad rep even though it is so essential and maybe even a bit more essential than the yang side, because the yin side of nervous system regulation is all about the self care. It's all about the rest and the recovery process the digestion, yeah? And it's like we really can get into the self-soothing techniques of being able to regulate ourselves or process emotions, blah, blah, blah.
Like they all kind of come back to regulating ourselves, but even that like sometimes regulating the nervous system is not about like being, I don't want to say being numb. It's like, it's not about just like being this super solid, earthy, like neutral tone. Like not reactive to anything but to be able to do the hard things right and recover from it. And so yeah, I just noticed that like, there's certain soothing techniques that people are like Ugh, like why do I do this so much? You know? And it's kind of like, let's say you're working out at the gym and you're only doing legs. It's always leg day. So you got some good thighs go in your booties, pop in, like, it's like, yeah, I'm really good at this, but if you're not exercising your upper body, You know, or I guess it's more it's it's more common for men specifically, maybe for women, it's more common for them to work the lower half than their upper half, and for men it's more common for them to overwork their upper half and not their lower half, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when there's the guys that are like upper body most of the days, and like hardly any lower body. And it's like, they're big and bulky on top, but it's like sticks on the bottom their legs, you know? So there's this imbalance basically and yeah, it's like it, it just won't work and you will have a lot of issues going on too, right? With the structure of your body, if you're out of balance or like I, in my dance background, we say don't become a one-sided dancer where you're only doing turns on one side or leaps on one side or choreography on one side. I mean, of course anyway whatever that's just I was about to get into the nitty gritty of like choreography, but we don't need to talk about that right now anyway, when you're training and when you're practicing right, it's so important to do both sides to even out your system and the same thing goes for nervous system regulation.
If you're taking big, bold, brave, courageous action, it's so essential that you take care of your nervous system and you have the time to slow down, you go inward, you process your emotions. If things feel scary and you're just like, oh my God, like I have all this anxiety. You know, and it's like anxiety and excitement are like on the same spectrum, but one's more positive and the other's negative, right? And it's just like one is worry and one is like open to possibilities either way you have this reaction and sometimes if we don't take care and process digest some of the emotions and sensations that come up from that it's like the anxiety then can lead us to self-sabotage or, you know what I mean? All of a sudden we go into freeze mode, we get too overwhelmed and we just decide not to do anything.
So in terms of my client, that I was first speaking with the first time we spoke, actually, it was like the topic went down a whole different road in terms of like, oh you know I do this thing where I literally like curl up. It feels like I'm in a cocoon and I just want to be in bed most of the time, because it's so safe and comfortable and I'm just like, do, why would I want to get up and out and like, go do the thing that scares the fuck out of me or and she even has told me that her partner will come, like she'll like request to like be cuddled or whatever and she is just so like safe and warm and nurtured in his arms, under the covers and all of that, right? and it's just it's so soothing to her that she just doesn't want to do anything else and she's like even though, like it feels good, she's like it's keeping me from doing the thing that I need to do and there's reasons for that, right? because the nervous system and our ego if it's going into uncharted territory it will deem it unsafe. And anything that is a risk to our safety to our survival, our nervous system and our subconscious mind will do anything to avoid it. Okay, and even bring things up in our reality that we may not even realize that like, okay I didn't have a direct contact to this thing that happened, but it happened just like oh my car broke down or this or that, or blah, blah, blah and some of it I will say is like divine timing, like. Some things like this when I say all that was spirit led like that, that was like the divine, like putting an obstacle in my place for me to realize like, oh actually this isn't really meant for me but there are many other times where our subconscious mind will bring things in our reality so that we avoid the thing that we're afraid of in some way, shape or form.
And so in the first call, we went down this whole other rabbit hole in terms of like, okay well, what are you afraid? You know she was a little lost about creating her offer like, she wasn't sure as to like what her unique thing is and like what the offer will be and blah, blah, blah and I was, and she's like I would feel really lost in it and I'm like, are you lost about the details of the offer? Are you lost about yourself and blah, blah, blah and it was kind of both but anyway, got into the whole story of this like fear of disappointing her clients, her future clients, and that if they're disappointed, it would prove the story that she's a shitty coach that she is trying to avoid having to face that. And so we went into that rabbit hole in terms of like emotions and the disappointment and how that actually stemmed from her mother and that she felt like she was disappointing her mom throughout her childhood because of the way in which her mom would speak to her and this and that and so the fear of disappointing her mother has been carrying through all her life and into her business and keeping her from actually moving forward in her business and taking risks and putting herself out there, right? Even being able to conjure up an offer this fear of disappointing her mother, it has been holding her back and so that's why I say nervous system regulation is so freaking important because there's so many ways that our nervous system and our ego is wanting to keep us safe from, and if it thinks that it's trying to avoid something stressful, something fearful, something that is potentially putting you at risk, right? Especially if something deathly, even though maybe, you know, coming across one client that is actually disappointed like, okay are you gonna die? Like,no but you know, having to feel that is so uncomfortable and something that she so wants to avoid, because it was so uncomfortable for her as a child that her subconscious mind is just avoiding that. Right?
So anyway, by the time we got to the second call and she went back into the tendency of like curling up in her bed and in her partner's arms and like feeling you know, wanting to stay within that comfort zone and all of that I was like you know what actually like that is a safety mechanism and it's a way that you're self soothing and there's a time and place for that. Actually, I'm so glad that at least it's a healthy one, right?
There's a particular coach, a trauma coach. Mastin is it? On one of his pieces of content, I saw a whole list of low level coping and high-level coping and low level being like addiction or you know putting up with abuse and different things that are more detrimental to our health and wellbeing versus high level coping. Like exercise or the arts, right, music or just higher levels of coping that are actually supportive to our health and wellbeing. And so I was telling her hey, at least that coping mechanism of you curling up in your bed and staying within your partner's arm is a healthy, you know safety strategy and I'm like, and you can actually use that like to your advantage yet, that's one Yin strategy of helping herself regulate, right? and the beautiful thing about that is that she is turning to her partner when he's in a regulated state, so that she's able to co-regulate because as infants all of us as children we're not born with the skill of being able to regulate ourselves. Okay? We learned how to regulate or did not learn how to regulate from our caretakers. So depending on their level of regulation and how they manage themselves.
We were then given that level of regulation or lack thereof was transferred over to us and one of the major ways that you can develop self-regulation is by co-regulating with somebody else, and that requires a caretaker or adult, whoever you're spending a lot of time with to be in a regulated state and know how to help you to regulate right? By holding you or whatever, or speaking to you in a loving tone or, you know what I mean? Like able to put pressure on you that's a big one for me. I used to do this thing where I would lay down on the hard floor or carpet and have my partner at the time to lay on top of my body and he weighed more than me. Right? But just to have that high pressure contact point helped me tremendously. So anyway, I told my client like, hey at least you have him and that particular thing that you can go to and so I was like look what is the next doable thing that you can do? So I asked her like, okay, what is something that you want to do in your business that you feel like is the next best step? Right? and she mentioned social media, blah, blah, blah but there was like this nervousness about it and I'm like well what's doable for you? You know and I asked her like, is writing a lot easier for you or showing up on camera and talking easier for you? And she's like writing, like, you know, captions, text, all of that is way easier and she was like, once I like get on the camera and I like see myself and you know she gets all up in her head and I'm like that's okay. You don't have to make yourself do that, eventually that'll come, but lean in on your strengths. Yeah? Do things in your business that is manageable, that is doable, that is like, okay, you know what? I'm really good at this thing let me utilize that and be able to show up in my strength. Right? and so I was like all right like let's go for that and make one post you know, utilizing your strengths in writing and captions and text and blah, blah, blah and see how that goes, and if, and when you post it or you were in the process of doing it and you're feeling like, oh my God, you can lean back on your self-soothing strategies because we're very similar to plants, when the plant is first given the proper soil, the conditions, the water, the sunlight, the air quality rate it will begin to sprout, but it can only grow to a certain extent until it starts to wither, right? And contract and get small and it's beautiful because we can actually see the signs of it needing more resources and so we give it more food or fertilizer or water or sunlight, whatever we can.
Oh, maybe it's not doing too good at this side of the house where maybe we need to take it outside. Blah, blah, blah. But it's like, It'll start to grow and expand, and then it needs more resources in order for it to continue to grow and expand and then it will contract and maybe with her to show signs that hey, I need more support to then grow and expand even more. Yeah, and we are the same exact way.
It's very normal for us to want to go back to the self soothing mechanisms. Hopefully that our high level coping mechanisms that is beneficial to us and healthy for us, right? Body minded spirit to then help us restore our energy and capacity to then do the next brave thing, and the next courageous thing, yeah? and so I told her let yourself do it, do not deprive yourself of the soothing mechanisms or else it'll just contract even further.
And I actually led her through a practice that you're welcome to do with me if you'd like. If you're driving don't do this, but it's a really like, oh, I better understand it now. Cause you get a felt sense experience of it. So, if you want to do this with me, you're welcome to okay? Now pick one hand, maybe your dominant hand and clench it in a fist and this fist is going to represent you wanting to stay small, wanting to hide, wanting to contract, wanting to keep within your comfort zone, right? and it's wrapped up within itself and it's like no I'm fine here.
I don't need to do anything else and with the other hand, your desires, your goals, your aspirations but I want to do this other thing over here. Like, can you just stop doing this contracting thing and come with me over here? And so try to with that ambition with the desires and the goals, try to open the fist and make it go do the things that you want to do and notice what happens. For me, typically my fist gets stronger.
It's like, no, right? It wants to continue to stay. I don't want to see it fights back, but it just continues to constrict within itself even more. And then it's like oh fuck and then that's the point where we're just like, God, I can't fucking do anything, like why can't I do this and blah, blah, blah. I'm a shitty person right? and then it just makes it even worse. But, if we allowed , that aspect of ourselves to stay in the fist and realize hey, you know what, there's something here that you're gaining, there's something here that's meeting the need of safety and comfort and maybe belonging or whatever and if we were to go out in a different way and say, Hey, you know what? I see you, I hear you and I feel you. And let me with the other hand, even though it has this ambitions and its goals and its dreams, right? Take a moment to just be with that aspect of yourself, that's contracting, and if you like the free hand right, is kind of the palm is facing up and you're allowing your fist... if you're watching the YouTube, then you can see what I'm talking about but the Palm is facing up and you're allowing the fist to curl in on itself and be held by the supportive hand and say, Hey, it's okay I see you, I've got you, I'm here for you, I understand why you're doing this and in this moment, you don't have to change. Actually I can accept you for how you are and notice what happens to the fist.
Typically, the fist starts to relax it starts to unravel a little bit there's actually space a little bit more space between my fingers right now it's still kind of curled up the knuckles are still bent but there's this openness, this unfolding that happens when you support the yin side, the safety, the soothing mechanism yeah? Hopefully that's high level safety mechanism that's healthy for you.
And that's why the yin side of nervous system regulation is so essential because until you're able to support yourself when you're contracting in, when you need restoration, when you need a mental health day, when you need to just like walk away and have a spontaneous day or do something fun or creative or finally, let yourself cry after that really hard thing.
You know what I mean? It's like when you let yourself surrender into the rest and restoration and digestion of whatever big thing is happening in your life or the big thing that you want to happen in your life. It is so much easier to help meet those needs. And when those needs are met, even despite like 20%, it is so much easier to be like okay, come on like, just come with me for a little bit we're going to take a few steps forward and it might clench up again and contract and you might be like, ah no and then you pause and you say, okay I hear you,I see you. What do you need? How can I support you? and then again, it'll start to release yeah, and relax and then when you're ready, you just say, okay, we're going to go a little bit further, okay doable manageable actions and you just keep going and then it's much easier to move farther, maybe a little faster, maybe for longer durations right? and of course the more that you're ,able to handle yeah, the greater capacity you have to be able to do bigger bolder riskier things as long as you are able to balance yourself with the yang side of taking action in the yin side of caring for yourself, body, mind, and spirit.
Now the situation with my client was very fear-based right, like very heavy on the fear where she was procrastinating a lot and like it just it was really over-powering on her behaviors. Yet I feel really called to share about my experience with the podcast because it wasn't very fear based, of course there was you know some fear of like oh, you know what will people think of me if I skip a week from my podcast and oh, I've done this in the past right? In season one where I've skipped weeks and then I fell off the bandwagon and like oh my God, what if that happens again? But, there's something that I want to share with you that really turned it around and is keeping me from falling back into those habits, okay? so I came about this in more of like energy management, which is more related to cyclical living.
So, a lot of our society, especially in corporations and like the industrial fucking society that we live in the modern age, blah, blah, blah a lot of the workforce and education is set up in a way that supports more of the male hormonal cycle, which is representative of the sun. Men have hormonal cycles that are the same every 24 hours just like the sun it'll show up in the same well, I don't want to say the same way, but because you know even in the seasons we're still earthlings, we're still affected by the seasons and the moon but the hormones of a male body is experienced differently on a 24 hour cycle very similar to the sun and female bodies experience their hormonal cycle on a 28 day ish cycle. Yeah? Very similar to the moon the moon has a 28 day cycle and it is divided up into four seasons. Okay? Four phases, I should say. So there's the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon, the last quarter. Right? and in a menstrual cycle, there's the bleed, there's the follicular stage, the ovulation stage and the luteal stage. Yeah, and this also correlates to a creative process where if you have something that you're creating a project or a piece of art, you have an idea, right? It's kind of like the new moon fertile void at first where you get an inspiration for something, right? And then you start taking action on it, you start bringing it to life in some way shape or form and then the thing has been created and you're like, oh my God, here it is, it exists right? And then maybe it's just a matter of like sustaining it, or maybe you sell the art piece or you complete the project in some way and then it's done. Right? and you start the cycle all over again you get another inspiration and then you build it and then it's done or you complete it and then it's the process of letting go. Usually you'll have like a reflection process or something like that. So the energetic signature of those phases are all very similar. And the way in which it relates to my podcast experiences that you know, when I realized okay the podcast is coming together, I'm going to do it, I'm going to get my virtual assistant, I'm going to get my childcare, blah, blah, blah.
All of the things that I needed in order to prepare for the podcast, get it going and then launching it right, and then putting out an episode the following week and then I was like, man, like I felt this huge burst of energy, right? But then it felt like I had to keep going and going and going and it felt more like a sprint that was going on for far too long, because I could feel the sensations of burnout coming on like stress responses and like oh man like, I can't even bring myself to my computer to like build out the outline, blah, blah, blah
and then I started noticing the fear-based thoughts of like oh well what people think of me? and what if you know I fall off the horse, like it did in the past and blah, blah, blah and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute first of all, a podcast is a marathon honey it's not a sprint. Okay? It's one thing if you're launching a program for a week and you have that one launch experience where the cart is open and the car is closed, right? But a podcast it's like, yo like, okay this is you know, a marathon and I realized that like, look, I didn't create many episodes ahead of time for me to be able to get a week off, but still have an episode prepared. Right? And that's okay it's like, okay I learned my lesson from that, I became aware of that and I was like, okay even though I don't have an episode prepared in time. What can I do to still support myself within this marathon so that I'm not sprinting myself into the ground? So that I'm not over extending myself trying to live like three, four or five summers in a row, trying to extend my ovulation phase when nature is calling literally and it's like, you know what? It's time to slow down, it's time to take care of yourself, it's time to restore your energy. So that then I am able to come back onto the podcast with renewed energy with enough ideas and this whole thing to be able to help you and be of service and live my Dharma and do this amazing thing that I've been wanting to do, which is the podcast and grow my business. Right?
And so when I realized it was time for me to take a step back and be like okay, I'm going to take a week off and noticed oh, but remember the last time you took a week off and it turned into two or three and then all of a sudden you kept doing it right, blah, blah, blah and it was like okay, hold up just because that happened in the past doesn't mean it has to happen now and so I said, how am I going to do this differently so that I can avoid from that happening? And I made this very intentional conscious decision. I made an agreement with myself I said, look I'm going to take this week off with the intention to restore myself after launching the podcast so that I can come back the following week with more content and more energy and a greater capacity to be of service.
And so I was like look, I'm only taking one week off, I'm going to do what I can to help myself to get back on the horse and come back even stronger because I realized that it's actually in service, not only to me but also to my listeners and to the people that I'm wishing to serve that I take this time off, I take care of myself and I come back with more. So, that was really helpful because if I didn't take that moment to make an intentional decision, I probably would have taken the week off, which was a good move but it's like, okay but what is the driving force behind this? Is it the worry that, oh shit like oh my God like I'm gonna do that thing again that I did in the past where I said one week, but then it turned into two or three and this and that right, where I get really stressed out or I started noticing when this new week came around, that procrastination habits started to come into play and I was like, no, no, no, we're not doing that I'm going to do what I need to do in order to continue and follow through on my intention. Right? And that was really powerful because look, you might do things in the old ways, because there may be things in the past that we did that were good at first, like taking breaks, but then it turned into this whole other thing, right? So to avoid from that happening again we can lean in on the thing that's good for us, but also be really intentional with a different way of going about it.
So, while it was super fun and exciting to be able to execute on the yang right, of taking action and putting out my episode and also like regulating my nervous system all along the way to be able to do it and this and that, and pushing myself to my edge in a little bit further. I noticed when my body was like, hey I'm tapped out, hey I need help, hey I need to curl up on the bed, hey I need to just like stop for a minute. Yeah? And it, the yin side was calling me back home and so I recognize that, that even though the sun rose and it's you know, gone past noon and everybody's having a good old time, the sun needs to set at some point, the sun needs to go down.
And, you know what, when I decided to make that intentional decision to one, take a break right, to slow my roll and be like you know what? I honor my body, I can hear it and I'm going to give it what it needs and I'm going to take a week off and I'm going to make the intentional decision to restore myself, do what I need to do to come back the following week stronger and better than ever right, and being able to sustain this longterm I started going into my luteal phase, which is part of that particular cycle to slow down, to go inward. And even though I had a pause naturally in my hormonal experience I was like, you know what? Okay, I'm preparing myself to record this next episode but standing at my desk it's a standing desk and I even have a treadmill under it. I was like, that does not sound fun at all, thinking of myself standing there through the whole recording I was like, that does not feel good in my body right now like just the idea of it I'm like, no my body wants to rest, my body is starting to slow down. How can I support myself in being able to take the next step in a doable, manageable way?
Okay. I'm in my luteal phase, I know I'm a little bit tired my energy is starting to dim out. Right? So I set myself up on the couch with the lavalier mic that I have clipped on my shirt. Because I really didn't even want to detach my microphone from the boom arm. Okay, I was like no that is not going to happen. So yeah, I did what I could to set myself up to be able to be comfortable in willing to do the thing. Yeah?
I just share all of this with you to see how you can apply this in your life and business as well, right? Like how can you support yourself and being able to do the next best thing, and what's doable, what's manageable and how can you lean on your strengths to be able to do it? And when you think about doing it is there anything that comes up that you're like ah this is too much, this is overwhelming that you can help support yourself, right, with the self-soothing techniques and yada yada and yet, I will say don't get caught up in the self-soothing techniques because sometimes we get stuck there right, because it's comfortable and blah, blah, blah. So that's why I'm like okay now that you've met some of the need of safety and security how can we just move a little bit ahead in the doable way? And when we start going, going, going, and we get too far over the edge and you're you want to contract a little bit or a lot a bit it's okay.
Allow yourself, let yourself get small, let yourself feel the fears, let yourself reach out for help. Because once you're able to do that, then you have a greater capacity to extend even further and then come back in and go for the route and come back in over and over and over again.
Awesome! So, I hope this was super helpful for you it's been really eye-opening and like mind blowing at times what it has done for my clients that I've been working with one-on-one and if you're interested in working one-on-one I have this really special beta offer right now that's only available to one person at the moment. So if you have any questions and really want some one-on-one support with nervous system regulation and embodied transformation in your business, so that you're able to make more meaningful income and a deeper impact, then definitely reach out to me on Instagram @embodiedfreedom.biz of course, the information is going to be in the show notes so check it out below and reach out and if you have any questions of course definitely DM me I love voice notes, all about continuing the conversation in the DMS. So I'll see you in the next episode.
All right. Ciao.
