From the outside though, I just seemed quiet, shy even, polite, observant. I was easy to be around, a good helper, and a chameleon of sorts. Able to blend in quietly into the background of whatever else was going on.

Whether it was the Hollywood lights and rolling cameras of the audition rooms I’d be in front of on a weekly basis. Or the slamming doors and screaming between my parents from across the hallway. I learned to go into my own little world and hold tight onto whatever I might have been feeling.

And this served a huge purpose for me for so long. It helped me navigate the overwhelming waters of life that I constantly found myself swimming in. It helped me stay acutely aware to what was happening around me while simultaneously leaving my own body.

And it helped me to never have to feel the white hot rage inside me that felt too big to know what to do with.

So instead, every few months, I’d have a break down. I’d react to something seemingly small and I’d cry and cry and cry as if someone had just died. Because really that was the only way I knew how to feel. I think so many of us, especially women, only learn how to express what we feel through crying.

It wasn’t until I was 24 when I finally realized that actually, I was angry. Like really really angry.

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Every couple months or so, I tend to hit a wall. With my creativity, my writing, my ideas, my energy. When this first started happening (or at least it became very apparent that it was happening) I panicked.

What do I do if I can’t write?

How do I make things happen if I'm out of ideas?

What will happen to my business if I have no inspiration to share?

Round and round I'd go in a tizzy telling myself that everything I’ve worked hard for was going to burn away simply because of my writers block.

So I'd do what any woman who lived her whole life in urgency would do. I tried to force things to happen.

I’d try to write from ideas that didn’t really feel like mine. I’d try to make work feel inspiring. I’d try to force a flow state. Only to end up bracing at my desk forgetting to breathe, anxiously typing away the day.

Because if I didn’t, if I just let that lack of inspiration, lack of ideas, lack of flow just…. be. Oh god, then what? What would happen to everything I’ve built? Would a week without an amazing idea make me fall completely behind? Would all the opportunities that might have come my way suddenly take the next train and pass me by?

Likely, no—but that’s exactly what I thought.

I spent so much of my life anticipating worst case scenarios, worrying about what could go wrong, trying to get ahead of things falling apart, that I developed a pattern. One I call Anticipatory Hypervigilance.

Anticipatory Hypervigilance

Bracing for whats to come. Preparing for something bad to happen. Already anticipating what could go wrong. Yup, that’s the pattern and that was me my whole life.

But it was more than just “anticipating what could go wrong”, it was also my system stomping on the gas pedal and saying GO to try and prevent said fear from happening. So not only would I brace for an impact that probably wasn’t coming, my system would shift into overdrive to control the direction.

Did it ever work? Sometimes. Did it actually help? No.

Because even if I did divert the car from driving off the cliff, I’d still end up in my own crash. Depleted, burnt out, and afraid every time I felt uninspired.

So round and round the cycle would go.

Lack of inspiration, ideas, productivity or energy became the trigger for me. If things weren’t happening in life, in my business, in my work, an alarm would go off inside my body. What’s going to happen now?

I learned that not having things “happening” was a threat. That not having ideas was dangerous. That not having a plan for the next 4 weeks was not okay.

This kept me from ever seeing what all these signals were actually calling for from my body. To honor my internal rhythm.

The Rhythm

All nervous systems have rhythms. I talk about this a lot on my work and wrote a whole separate article about why I shifted from focusing on regulation to rhythms. Because it took me a long time to actually allow that truth to land in my own body. For my own system to have permission to have a rhythm.

You see, your rhythm expands and contracts, all on its own. Sometimes in small moments throughout your day, sometimes in weekly fluctuations, sometimes through larger seasons of bigness and quietness.

But when we live our life conditioned to adapt to one setting: go mode, productivity and performance, energetic and available, the one that can do it all. Then fluctuations in rhythm can feel TERRIFYING. Like suddenly, something is wrong, and we need to fix it. We become accustomed to seeing certain feelings or responses as dangerous when they don’t fit neatly within the feeling we want to feel.

So suddenly, we try to avoid fatigue, anger, uncertainty, vulnerability, fear—all because it’s not the same as productivity, clarity, high energy, focus, or feeling good inside.

But what we are rarely taught, is that the contractive feeling or response is a part of a rhythm that gets you back to where you want to be. Without it, and with resistance to it, it actually takes longer to arrive back to expansion.

Think about it, everything and nature expands and contracts. The sun rises and sets, The ocean tide rises and pulls back. Even our breath inhales and exhales. Without one, the other couldn’t happen. It is by design, it is in our nature. And our nervous systems, our bodies are no different.

The moment that feels contractive—the lack of focus, the depleted energy, zero inspiration—those are all inhales. They pull us back, maybe because we need it, maybe because we have to recalibrate, maybe because our system needs a pause in time before moving again. But if the contraction has to happen, then so does the expansion. And this realization changed everything for me, my urgency, and my anticipatory hypervigilance. Because once I understood: oh, even stickiness if a part of the movement, all contractions come with an expansion on the other side. It gave me relief.

I wasn’t super happy about it in the moment, I'll be honest, it’s still uncomfortable—but it’s not nearly as threatening as it once was when those moments or season felt infinite. Now my system can soften a bit in the knowing that all the times I’ve been here before have passed, and every single time, new inspiration emerged on the other side, energy returned, my engine started turning again.

So perhaps maybe I dont have to rush it, force it, or try to make it happen. Maybe if I actually meet my capacity where it is, it helps it expand naturally. Who would have thought?

Turning the Trigger Into a Reminder

So now, when I have these moments, or days or weeks, and I start to feel that “uh-oh” feeling spark again, I take a minute. I recognize what has been happening for me before this sudden lull began.

Have I been traveling alot?

Did I just come off of a really productive few weeks?

Am I just finishing a project that required alot of my energy?

Did I just have a ton going on and things are finally slowing down?

Usually, it’s a yes. And because all of those things are inherently expansive, it gives me a chance to reorient to what might be more true than just “I’m stuck”. But rather, “My body is entering another state of it’s rhythm”

And with that, I let that be a reminder for me. Instead of “Oh no, I have to do something about this.” I’ve practiced reminding myself “This means that something else is coming afterwards”.

And instead of just trying to tell my system this and hoping it will believe me, I use my past experiences as evidence: “Remember a few months ago when you felt like the world was falling apart? Two weeks later you had the most energizing week and had so many ideas flowing. Remember last year when everything felt really uncertain and you weren’t sure what to do? Soon after, everything fell into place in a way you couldn’t have predicted.”

Phew, big sigh of relief.

Because then my system can go “oh yeah thats true that did happen, multiple times”. Which means it can happen again!

Here’s what I always come back to:

Your nervous system learns from experience…..

And all your fears and patterns are based on past experiences that taught your system to expect that bad thing to happen again. At the same time, we have hundreds of other experiences that can SHOW our system something else is possible. Like all the times the thing actually worked out. Like how you are here today, alive and well and made it through. Like how the small glimmers that exist in your life get to be proof that change can happen, that something other than what your brain is freaking out about is possible.

Sometimes, all we need to do is remind ourselves that, and maybe take a minute to see stickiness, fatigue and lack of inspiration as a reminder that were in a rhythm, a wave, a spiral, that is always moving. Better days will come. Ideas will return. Movement will resurface. Give it time.

This is what I tell myself on a monthly basis. Because I often find myself in this place, at least for a day or so, and yet—I always come out the other side.

Maybe you’re in that place now, I know I am. A few days of no inspiration, of low energy, of just not feeling “it”. I’m with you in that if you’re there. And I want to extend some of the peace I experience while I’m here. Not that it isn’t uncomfortable, but I don’t feel panicked like I used to. And maybe you don’t need to be either.

Maybe your system is in a moment of contraction. Maybe your body is taking its well deserved break from an ever-present rising tide. Good, take it.

Your ideas will come, your inspiration will spark again, your opportunities wont be going anywhere. You can just, be. And in no time, you’ll find yourself riding the wave of expansion again.

xx

Alexis

P.S: I’d love to know how this pattern shows up for you! How can you relate? What happens for you when you have days of low energy, or lacking inspiration? What supports you through that?

P.S.S: If you struggle with Anticipatory Hypervigilance and want support in better understanding and changing the patterns that keep your nervous system stuck, im hosting a free 4 day experience called Pause the Pattern. You can learn all about it and join us here.

Shift your state, release your trauma, regulate, change your mindset.

Don’t get me wrong, all of that has a place. But I can’t help but see a theme within most of the messaging behind so much of what’s being sold online, in retreats, programs and even written in many self help books: just do this and you’ll be healed.

Just release your trauma from your body

Just control your thoughts

Just shift your state

And then…… (insert unattainable goal)

You ever see this?

It’s not, come explore this interesting body of work. It’s not, let’s support your body together. It’s usually: Do X to achieve Y. No wonder we’re all exhausted. There isn’t enough mindset tools, nervous system hacks, cold plunges and breath work classes to revive the burnout so many have felt from the personal fixing they were told was personal growth.

Because the content merry go round of find the wound, eliminate the trigger, arrive somewhere better isn’t really building a relationship with yourself—thats a renovation project with a permanent moving deadline.

But maybe inner work shouldn’t always feel that hard, that intense, that much….work.

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I have always been an ambitious woman with big ideas. I love to create, build things, and I truly love my work. If I'm not working on a project, no matter if it’s big or small, there’s always a little yearning inside to create something.

In the same body, lives another woman. One that loves to do absolutely nothing. One that romanticizes simple mornings, zero structure and frolicking around cute streets. This version of me could happily bake all day, write poems, never touch social media again and stroll through a farmers market with no where else to be.

So when these two women emerge at the same time or alternate at rapid speeds, it can feel, well, disorienting to say the least!

And I think SO many people, women especially, have been navigating this game of inner tug of war for a while too. I hear it everywhere:

I want to scale my business but I also want to just explore my creativity and live a slow life.

I have this big idea I want to pursue but I also just want to delete social media and go off the grid.

I want to share my gifts with the world but I also just want to move to the mountains and grow tomatoes.

It feels like it’s always this OR that, and we must choose ONE.

Ugh, what a drag!

I know this point of tension all too well because it exists within me constantly. The same week I’m launching a program, I’m fantasizing about going to the woods. The same week I’m off work and exploring a new city, I’m coming up with so many Ideas I can’t wait to build out. And that constant whiplash can make life feel very confusing and even stir up an identity crisis (been there!)

You know that feeling when suddenly you start second guessing everything you want, everything you’re doing and you wonder who you even are anymore? Yeah, that kind of crisis. Sometimes, it’s truly an identity shift needing to happen, sometimes it’s the overwhelm of two things grabbing your attention at once.

And because we are SO conditioned to believe that everything we want in life has to be ONE or the OTHER, it feels like this impossibly confusing feat to constantly bounce back and forth between soft, whimsy, slow, quiet living vs. ambitious, creation led, growth lifestyle.

And as someone who works with the nervous system for a living, and a fellow both/and woman, I’m here to tell you whimsy and ambition can coexist!

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The thing nobody tells you about these two women living in the same body: they aren’t actually fighting over which ones gets to be right. They aren’t two completely opposing identities that you have to choose between. They are both reaching for the same thing just through very different doors.

The ambitious version of you wants to feel alive through creation, through building something, seeing an idea come to life and creating something out of nothing. And this isn’t always driven by urgency or hustle culture, sometimes it’s really just aliveness moving through the door of expansion. And your nervous system NEEDS this door!

The part of you that wants to disappear into simple mornings, no social media and escape to the forest? They are reaching for aliveness too, just through the door of presence. It’s an unhurried, unstructured, “nothing to prove” kind of door. A place where you can be fully here, where your mind can be quiet and your body soft, with no where else to be.

Its the same longing, just through two different doors.

Once I saw it this way, the whiplash stopped feeling like this sudden personality disorder and just became information. My body wasn’t in a crisis, it was just telling me (in 2 different languages) that it needed more aliveness through more than one doorway. o

Sooooo then….. why does it feel so impossible to hold both? Why does it feel like we can’t experience one without giving up the other? Well, likely because somewhere along the way, most of us were taught that ambition and simplicity are attached to opposite people.

That the ambitious woman is driven, serious and “going somewhere” but also has to be living in urgency, burning out, and never actually living her life.

While the simple-living woman is soft, unbothered, present but also has no passions, isn’t doing anything with her life or is missing out on opportunities.

Pick your character, stay in your lane….oh and each will be defined by their shadow side each time.

And wanting both? Well then that makes you look—what, indecisive? Unfocused? Like you don’t actually know what you want?

Maybe, actually, not. Maybe wanting both is just you being a full human instead of a curated aesthetic.

And maybe realizing that growth and softness can coexist without burning each other to the ground is what actually leads you to the freedom you’re craving.

So here’s what I’ve actually done with that realization, and maybe it will help you too:

I stopped trying to pick a lane.

Instead of bouncing back and forth between each “identity” I started asking myself “which door does my body need today?”

I stopped trying to resolve every moment of tension between the two, and instead meet myself where I was, giving each version of me time to lead. Some days, the ambitious side of me will lock in for a full day: putting big ideas into action, creating things, leaning into that expansive kind of aliveness.

Then other days, the slow, unplugged version of me takes the stage. I spend less time online, I lean into slower mornings, have zero agenda, and let my body lead. Even on days where “doing nothing” all day isn’t accessible or I have commitments I can’t just cancel in the name of a whimsy day, I find ways to allow slowness, and softness be the primary theme. More breaks, longer meals, noticing beauty, scheduling in time for play, or creativity, baking, or picking up flowers on my way home to arrange on my counter. Small moments to allow that urge inside to disappear and frolic, have some space to shine.

Both are parts of me, they just get to take turns.

I catch myself in the existential spiral

Because a big part of the ongoing crisis that is the whiplash between “build and grow vs disconnect into the forest” is in part because your system begins to think in existential terms.

I have to sell my business to live the life I want.

I have to hustle in order to create the thing im passionate about.

I have to burn everything down in order for things to feel clear.

WHO even am I anymore?!

Sound familiar?

I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve entered the vortex of existential thinking only to find a week later that all of this is not necessary more often than not. And it actually is a sign that your system is overwhelmed, not in need of a revival tour.

So when I find myself creeping into that territory, I pause. I find my feet on the ground, take my thumb off of the restart button, and take a full break from the “this or that” internal convo.

And then I usually, reach for something really small through both doorways, one at a time. Maybe I will write a substack and just let things flow through me. Maybe then I’ll go to a farmers market and wander for 2 hours. I’ll give myself small moments or “flavors” of that in which I’m reaching for and almost always do things soften a bit.

I started letting the urge for each be signals

Especially because I live in a cyclical body (hello women, we have cycles that change what we want and need on a given week). And some weeks, the ambitious side would come out bursting at the seems, so much creative energy flowing, so many ideas, I can write for days and show up within my work with lots of capacity. And then….that plummets. And suddenly all I want is to be rocked to sleep with a slice of bread and butter and a hot bath. You know what I mean?

So naturally, I have learned to let these ever changing urges point me in the direction of what my body is actually needing on any given day.

The “unproductive day” of baking doesn’t mean your business goes down the drain. And the fully engaged day of creation, ideating and flow doesn’t mean you wont’ get time for rest too. Meeting one, doesn’t discard the other. Instead, it helps you build a relationship with your body.

One where it says “this is what I need” and you can reply with “no problem!”

The whiplash between this or that gets a lot softer when you stop needing an answer to the question “which one do I actually want” and start letting both exist. “I want to build something incredible and I want to disappear into a garden for the weekend” does not have to mean you’re confused, indecisive or having some kind of identity crisis. Sometimes it can mean you’re a whole person, with more than one way of being alive and you get to use. more than one door to get there.

So if you’ve been feeling torn lately, one foot in a big vision and one foot dreaming about a life with drastically less action going on, I don’t think it’s as existential as your brain might be making it out to be. Maybe it means it’s time to let your ambition build the thing it wants to build, let the whimsy water it, and let yourself be both, experience both, have both.

I’m writing a book, about to launch my most popular program, Attune to You, and I’m loving writing here on Subatck every week. I’m ALSO doing less on the weekends, I’m leaning into beauty, I’m decorating my home and making flower arrangements and trying out new recipes, I’m creating moments for magic, and whimsy and wonder. And all of those things get to coexist. All of them get to live within me. All of them get to live within you.

You don’t have to choose between one desire. Ambition and whimsy get to live inside the same body.

xx

Alexis

It opens me up to new culture, new experiences, and inspires me, my writing and my work.

At the same time, sometimes, my body hates it. Because what else comes with travel? Stress, sitting for long hours, crowds, jet lag. And much more.

So when I started to travel often, I learned quickly that my sensitive system wasn’t just something to override or push through in the name of a good trip. I needed to work with it.

As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner with my own history of chronic symptoms, anxiety and global high activation (read about that here), I’ve developed a tried-and-true protocol of practices, tools and packing essentials that make traveling not only possible for me but actually enjoyable.

In part one of this, I’m going to break down very simple but very effective nervous system practices anyone can do during and after traveling to support their system. In part two, I’m going to give you my full list of medicine cabinet travel essentials and gadgets i bring that have become staples in my travel bag. And don’t worry, I guarantee you have not heard many wellness influencers tell you about these.

So let’s start with the nervous system practices, shall we?

These are simple, accessible and not complex for a reason. Because we need things that work, that are helpful and easy to remember in the heat of a moment, right?

How to support your nervous system through travel:

Full Body Drop:

Before leaving the house, lie on the ground, your bed or a couch and let your muscles fully drop into the surfaces holding them. Communicate with your body and muscles that they can let go, soften or release. Breathe into any areas of tension and breathe out your mouth as you let your body “drop”. Preparing for travel can already tense our body and begin a bracing pattern in our system. This 5-10 minute body drop gives our system an opportunity to soften and interrupts the anticipatory bracing cycle.

Double inhale:

While you’re on the road or on the plane, practice the double inhale or physiological sigh. I know, I know, this is one of those common tools you probably hear all over the place but hear me out. It’s common because there’s science behind it and it’s shown to signal your parasympathetic nervous system in the most discreet way. And for those moments where stress or anxiety hits in public, it’s handy.

All it is is two quick inhales followed by one long open mouth exhale. Inhale, then at the top of that breath, take one more small inhale before you let the breath out. Three- four rounds. Try it.

Humming:

Yes, another incredibly simple one but stay with me. Anxiety, motion sickness, bracing—you name it, humming helps! It tones the vagus nerve naturally (so does singing) and is another very discreet way of supporting your body. Hum your favorite song and watch how it takes the edge off of your angst.

In transit: orienting your senses

When things start to feel like too much: turbulence on a plane, bumper-to-bumper in the back of an Uber, that closed-in feeling that comes with being stuck somewhere you can’t control, one of the most effective things you can do is orient.

If you’re in a car, look out the window and find the farthest point you can see. Count windows on a building, follow a tree line, take in a wider horizon than what’s immediately in front of you. If you’re on a plane, bring your attention to the details right around you—the texture of your seat, the safety card, the shapes of the overhead bins, the pattern of the ceiling.

This isn’t to distract yourself, but rather, It’s about giving your nervous system real, neutral information about where you are, right now, in this exact moment—which interrupts the spiral of “we’re trapped, something’s wrong” and replaces it with concrete, sensory proof that you’re just a person in a seat, looking at a window, counting buildings. It slows everything down, almost immediately, because your system can’t stay in high alert while it’s also busy noticing detail.

Post flight 90/90:

One of the MOST effective practices that requires you to literally do nothing. after your flight or drive and once you get to your destination, lie on the floor with your legs rest on the bed, a chair or a couch at a 90 degree angle (90/90 position). You can also lie on the bed with your feet up the head board and pillows supporting underneath your knees, legs or hips.

This does a few things, decompresses the back and pelvic floor (important after sitting for so long) and it helps blood flow from the limbs to the core which signals the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. (Fun fact: fight and flight rushes our blood from our core to our limbs to prepare for movement, this helps it move back to your core)

Breathe here for 10-15 minutes and watch your whole system decompress. I will stay here and allow my breath to move down to my pelvis, create space in my back and lumbar spine and open up my abdomen and diaphragm.

With this, or if you can’t get your legs up for any reason, atleast give yourself a decompression window once you arrive to your destination. A 15-20 min pause to lie down, rest, put your feet up and let your body arrive to its new landing point. Your system needs a beat to register that transit itself is over and you are no longer in moving mode.

Now these practices can go a long way. I can’t tell you the amount of times humming has helped my motion sickness, or the 90/90 position has completely softened my tension after a long flight.

But sometimes, we do ned tools. We need some extra support that we can rely on to help ease a symptom or take the edge off of anxiety or help us sleep in a new environment.

Cue: my travel toolkit.

ALL of my travel essentials for a sensitive nervous system and body that loves to see the world but hated the process of getting there.

This part of the post is for you if you also have a highly sensitive nervous system, want to travel without everything going out of whack, or are an avid traveler and are like “yes, I need some tools because I get STRESSED”

You are in the right place my friend.

All of these “must haves” have been accumulated over my life time. I’ll share exactly what I use each for, how some have multi purposes, and where to get them.

Let’s dive in!

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Speed, chaos, crash, can’t move. Round and round we’d go.

This is the same cycle your nervous system lives in when you experience Global High Activation Intensity.

A physiological chronic stress state as described in Somatic Experiencing as being always fully on or fully off but never in between.

Just like the hot wheel car, running a million miles an hour or completely crashed out. And either way, still highly activated.

Clinically, this is characterized as

high sympathetic activation (fight/flight) along with freeze.

It’s often seen as a response to past shock or high impact situations, developmental or birth trauma, or even near death experiences, anesthesia, or induced altered states. The body stays activated, stuck inside of intensity: urgency, anxiety and reactivity or shut down and collapsed. Both global experiences of high intensity activation.

The high achiever and GHIA

The thing about this patterning is that it is further perpetuated by society. And it shows up in ways we’ve normalized much more often than even clinical observation ever speaks to.

It’s not just an “extreme case” or a “severe trauma response” (although, yes it 100% can be). But it can also show up as just the average Type A, busy body, who works 40 hours a week, can never sit still, and is always working on 4 projects at a time. But to society they are just “driven”.

It can also show up as the person who can seemingly “do it all”. They can hold it all together, move from one thing to the next without falling apart (or showing that they are), and they seem to be superwoman/superman.

For me, it showed up as a baseline anxiety that was always either fueled by urgency or freeze, making every day tasks feel like mountains I’d have to climb. I was always behind schedule, always running late, always living with 40 open tabs in both my computer and my brain and my body was always on edge. On top of it, my body is syndromal. In SE, syndromal physiology refers to symptoms in the body related to chronic stress or trauma. Think unexplained chronic pain, migraines, tension, GI distress or any physical symptom that seemed to always happen on the other side of something else. All syndromal bodies are also Global High bodies. So for my life, it was a real treat.

Many who experience Global High, experience recurring burnout but never truly recover from it.

In a previous post I broke down how reoccurring burnout is driven by scarcity and the urgency that keeps us running around the fear of never having enough. You can read that here, which I highly suggest before continuing on here. In this post, I’m going to expand on that, and more specifically the nervous system patterning no one talks about that can be driving the cycle.

So if you are someone who feels like:

• Every day life feels like an emergency, urgency is always present and you’re always rushing or go-go-going

• Your body has any syndromal patterns (chronic unexplained symptoms that seem to happen in a predictable way)

• You tend to burnout often

• You experience freeze, all the time

• You often feel overwhelmed (even if you are still functioning seemingly okay)

• You’re overstimulated easily and it tends to send your system into a cycle afterwards

• You have past trauma of any kind, but especially shock trauma, brith trauma, developmental trauma, history of car accidents, surgeries, or near death experiences.

• You grew up without attunement and consistent safety from caregivers

• You are a space holder, creator, practitioner or healer who tends to take on too much OFTEN and then crashes

Then please read on. The remainder of this article is paid. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and this patterning I am going to explain is not something mainstream nervous system education talks about because it is extremely complex yet extremely common. I’m going to break down more behind it and share ways you can work with the pattern in yourself or with your clients. If you’ve been around for a minute and have been meaning to join the paid community, this is a great time to do so!

Let’s dive in:

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Like right now, so many good things have happened for me. My recent launch was successful without burning me out. I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in a place I love this whole summer. Oh, and I’m SO close to finishing the book I thought i’d never be able to complete. There’s a lot of goodness.

And, all at the same time—I have been struggling.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been in a deep flare with my endometriosis. I’ve had a pinched nerve on and off that’s been really uncomfortable, and for the past month, I’ve been in a deep, ever changing season of grief after my friend’s recent passing. There have been so many on again-off again situations that have been out of my control and sometimes felt like they were weighing me down HARD.

And because of it all, I’ve often felt like I’ve been torn between a rainstorm and a rainbow and I don’t think we talk enough about this.

The duality of the human experience is always changing

Grief and joy so often sit side by side. Longing and gratitude sometimes live really close by. Pain and celebration can often coexist. Progress and struggle almost always sleep beside one another.

This is my inner experience, more often than not.

And honestly, I’m tired of seeing so many people portray a binary experience. Usually one that says “fully healed” or “i achieved X” (often to then sell their version of that unrealistic destination in a course)

I’ve been tired of that story for a long time. Because as someone who helps people for a living—who hosts programs and has worked with thousands of people. I’m not interested in selling a version of my story that doesn’t exist. I’m not interested in pretending I’m fine when I’m not always. Or only giving binary glimpses of my inner world.

That isn’t humanity, that is performance.

And I don’t know about you, but those kind of performative highlight reels are the exact reason why so many people are exhausted and feel like they are never doing enough.

What those highlight reels will never tell you is that, no one is ever “fully healed”. No matter how good their life may appear.

Can you experience healing and recovery from the intensity of a chronic symptom? Absolutely.

Can you change the patterns you feel stuck in? Of course.

Can you feel safer in your body and live life more fully after a lifetime of stress? Definitely.

But that does not mean you will forever be “healed”.

And I know that sounds grim, but it’s actually good news.

Because all those moments when a bad day occurs, stress hits, your anxiety spikes, or you just aren’t feeling like yourself—could you imagine how much harder it would be if there was this very achievable destination you were supposed to be at but in that moment (because you didn’t feel great) you suddenly felt more like a failure? More broken? Like you were never doing enough?

Well, my friend, that is what happens when we consume the narrative that “fully healed” is some designation that people arrive at. We set ourselves up to never feel like we do enough, or are enough.

Why is this good news?

Because the moment you start embracing your humanity (HELLO, a full range of emotions, cyclical body that changes on the daily, and needs that require being met) then your bodily experiences, your mental states start to. make sense. You start to make sense (to yourself)

The pressure to arrive to an impossible place starts to soften. The expectation to always feel calm, cool, collected and in control just because you have been practicing nervous system regulation, is no longer the case. The inner battle that consists of constantly trying to change how you feel, constantly criticizing what you’re experiencing, and taking every bad day at face value begins to slowly reshape. Because you become more in tune with the fact that bodies have cycles, they move and change and you are bound to experience more than one thing at a time.

And that, my friend, is why I do this work.

For my own body, yes. Because things aren’t always roses and rainbows and sometimes I have really hard days (like two days ago when I cried in the bathtub). And the most healing thing I have ever offered myself is to just meet my body where it’s at, to stop putting so much pressure on it and to sometimes just let what is here, be here.

AND, because I care way too much about other people experiencing the kind of freedom that comes from ending the self fixing cycle and begin to build a relationship with themselves. Not one that comes with an expectation to reach that one life coach’s claim of being “fully healed”. But one that allows all things to exist, and allows you to ride the waves of both the good and the not so good.

So if you’re in a place right now where two things are occurring at once. Maybe you too are caught between a rainstorm and a rainbow. Maybe you’re grieving while also experiencing beautiful things. Maybe you’re navigating a tough mental state while also celebrating a milestone. Whatever it is, I’m here with you—always. Because we’re all just human, after all.

This is how I’m navigating these waves, and how you can too….

Read more

But something else was happening. An old familiar part of me was yelling into a bullhorn that we had NO time to waste.

You need to be writing, you have a deadline for your manuscript coming up!

You need to be preparing for your next project!

You need to be ideating!

I couldn’t go 5 minutes without this pesky pulse.

After about 30 minutes or so of dancing around it. I finally realized what was happening….

My nervous system was terrified I was going to run out: Out of time, out of money, out of resources, out of opportunities. This one day of being down and out suddenly felt like it was the one day the train was coming and I was going to miss it.

And it was in that moment I realized, I wasn’t in the drivers seat, scarcity was.

And I’ve known scarcity all too well.

For most of my life, the phrase, “we don’t have enough” was always echoing out of my mother’s mouth. We would put things back at the grocery store mid checkout because as the number on the checkout screen went up, she would realize “we don’t have enough money to cover this”. When the 1st of the month would come around and she would frantically go through the bills, I would hear her say “we don’t have enough to pay these”. And living with both her and my older brother in a one bedroom apartment, it almost always felt like we didn’t have enough. Enough money, enough space, enough anything.

So naturally, my system learned, before I was ever even old enough to work, that there would never be enough.

Scarcity loves urgency

You see, there’s always been a part of me wired around scarcity. That “running out” feeling that propels me into action even when I don’t have the energy for it because I need to “do something” to avoid running out. Historically, this was most often connected to money. I had to work harder, keep going, keep pushing, keep checking. I could never take a full break without my body taking it for me. Overtime, it became connected to running out of time, resources, and opportunities.

In my early twenties I’d work two, sometimes three jobs. I was always spread thin and always feeling like I was running out. Then in the first couple years of my business, I started making money that would actually cover my bills and then some. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just living paycheck to paycheck. But instead of feeling the relief of that, I attached the outcome to the output. I would only have enough if I kept up with the pace. So I would see too many clients in one day, say yes to far too many things I didn’t want to do and constantly feel the pressure to create something new. Anytime money would come in, it wasn’t long before I’d start to anticipate it leaving.

I have it now, but it’s going to be taken away, it’s going to run out.

So instead of waiting for it to run out, I’d keep running.

I’d push, and hustle, and stay in a pace that was never sustainable until I’d crash. I’d get sick, end up in full body pain, or completely burn out where I’d need a break from everything for a week. But the forced break would never actually revive me. And I’d gain just enough capacity to start the same cycle all over again for another few months.

There’s a name for this cycle, by the way. In Somatic Psychology and SE we call it Global High Intensity Activation. A nervous system patterning that leaves you operating at a level 10 all the time until you are forced to stop by a crash. I’ll do a whole article on this one soon, so stay tuned for that.

The scarcity-burnout cycle

What I've learned from my own very intimate relationship with scarcity and many many cycles of what we call “burn out”, as well as nearly a decade of seeing this same pattern in those I’ve worked with, is that almost all reoccurring burnout is driven by scarcity.

The cycle repeats because you’re afraid of running out.

This is why a vacation or even a sabbatical doesn’t quite do the job when your safety and livelihood is anchored to that job you’re taking a break from. If your level of output is coupled to your sense of everything being okay or even, everything being controlled—then you’ll likely end up in this cycle.

You might come back home from a two week vacation, but the moment you’re back you start thinking of the numbers you need to hit to make up that time off or the money spent while away.

Maybe you take a break from the project you’ve been working on and your fear of running out is less about money and more about time, opportunity or relevance. So you force creativity, you force flow (although that doesn't really work much). You live off caffeine and high cortisol for a false sense of productivity that keeps you closer to the certainty of having enough time and resources all the while burning a whole in your engine without ever realizing it.

Sound familiar?

Survival disguised as productivity

This isn’t a discipline, boundary, or mindset issue. Despite social media gurus maybe telling you so. This is your body’s way of doing everything it can to keep you from running out.

Just like my restless body had no idea how to comfortably take the day off when my pinched nerve was making it impossible for me to focus, your system may have learned that slowing down wasn’t just uncomfortable but a threat to your resources. That running out meant you had to keep running towards. Towards the work, towards the opportunity, towards the grind, towards the chance to keep the resource bank flowing.

But what happens when the flow of resources still never feels like it will be enough? Still feels like it’s bound to be taken away? Still feels like it’s dependent on you driving the car at max speed 24-7? The only way for the car to stop is to eventually crash. And this is how reoccurring burnout happens. Push-collapse-push-collapse.

No amount of vacation time can retrain your nervous system to believe it’s safe to slow down when scarcity is driving the car.

So instead of staying in the same cycle, you have to start giving your body proof that a life outside of it won’t lead to losing everything.

Gather evidence > force slowness

The moment I gave myself permission to let the day be unproductive, especially when I just didn’t have it in me to press the gas pedal, was the moment I started giving my system real time proof that performance and output wasn’t the only pathway to things being okay. Because the next day, after doing the bare minimum the day before and letting the to-do list wait and my manuscript sit, nothing happened. I didn’t miss the train, my business didn’t blow up, my book deadline didn’t go anywhere. hmmm, strange.

Could it be that the world will not fall apart and I won’t run out of time after taking days off?

You see, your nervous system does not adapt to new beliefs and stories by simply telling yourself the new story. It becomes more and more familiarized with it through new experiences. Ones that are repeatedly shown can be safe to have.

But how often are we just gliding past experiences that carry evidence that disconfirms the fear we had? How the conversation we thought would for sure end in a blow up, didn’t. How we thought a friend would be mad at us if we rescheduled plans, but they weren’t. How we thought someone else would beat us to the finish line if we took the weekend off, stopped posting on social media for 2 days, or didn’t get all 10 things off our list done today. But that didn’t end up happening. The thing we were afraid would happen didn’t. How often do you let yourself recognize that?

We have thousands of moments in life that disconfirm our deepest fears. And using those moments as new evidence for our nervous system that the old story doesn’t have to be the full story is how we begin reshaping this scarcity burnout loop.

Because there may always be a part of your system, my system, that has a little fear of running out—that’s okay. But what determines if that fear becomes a part of you that you can hold with love and recognition versus a part that takes control of the wheel and drives you off the cliff…. begins with giving yourself evidence that taking your foot off the pedal or even, parking your car….isn’t dangerous.

This is a conversation that deserves to continue. So if you resonate with this at all, first of all—I see you. Thank you for being here and I hope this offered even the tiniest glimmer of hope for you. And secondly, you may want to stick around as I plan to expand on this soon <3

xx

Alexis

It took some time, but after a bit more digging, I finally landed on a video. It was of a male clinician talking about something called “the fight response” and chronic illness. Intrigued was an understatement.

“Peter Levine?” I thought, “who the heck is that?”

Little did I know, that video would unlock a whole world where everything I was experiencing finally made sense.

One video turned into 5, then I knew the right words to search: “stress physiology” “somatic experiencing” “nervous system dysregulation”. Before I knew it, everything I was reading sounded like me. How was this possible?

Naturally, I dove head first into this topic. Researching everything I could, finding my own somatic therapist, and starting the work. To my surprise, it changed everything.

From client to practitioner

When I eventually went on to train to become an SEP (Somatic Experiencing Practitioner) the word “regulation” wasn’t quite yet a mainstream topic. People often looked at me confused when I’d babble on about stress responses, and vagal toning. But it didn’t stop me from sharing it from the rooftops.

By then I was LIVING and BREATHING the work. My life revolved around regulation skills. Which at first was incredibly helpful for my very frozen nervous system. I was thriving in a world where I finally felt like I belonged, where I made sense.

This was a gift, it truly was. But like with all things we dive head first into, sometimes we can get so far stuck into the deep end it feels like there is no room to breathe.

For me, regulation became something I was so focused on, it felt like a full time job. I was already serving clients as a full time job, but managing my own system felt like overtime. And at a certain point, some of the tips and tricks and tools, started to feel like something I had to do, rather than something my body actually needed at any given time. But if I didn’t, if I skipped that practice or didn’t keep up with all of my tools, then what would happen?

The shift from regulation to what my body needed

About mid way through my SE training I decided to train in a new modality focused on touch. Touch, bodywork, and anything working with my physical body had always been a huge part of my life from a very young age, so this new chapter of training felt right. But as I worked through it, and felt how different it was to be in contact with my body rather than just always trying to regulate my body with the intent of shifting it’s state, it suddenly became very clear to me how the spiral of regulation had started to take a form it was never meant to take.

Later that year, nervous system regulation was starting to become more and more popular. My social media was blowing up out of nowhere, and I was being flooded with DMs, reshares and comments about how people were just discovering this work and wanted to learn more. I was thrilled. But within a year, I started seeing how the language around the nervous system was becoming a “trend”. Uh oh.

Suddenly, everyone everywhere was talking about the nervous system. Clients were coming to me with a list of things they wanted to regulate or shift. Influencers were sharing the daily tips to change their state, and cathartic breath work retreats to “release your trauma” was popping up all over social media ads. Before I knew it, I was seeing the same misconception I had previously run into, now being blasted as facts all over the world.

“Calm” was now the goal. “Regulated” was now a trend. And what was supposed to be an invitation back to your body, had now become a performance.

You may have seen this wave play out. People everywhere were assuming calm=regulated (and often still are). And most of my clients were coming to me overwhelmed by the amount of tools they now had, yet didn’t know how to keep up with it all.

Somewhere along the way, the idea of nervous system regulation changed from a capacity we build to a state we achieve—a report card, a place we arrive to and then poof all should be well. But the thing was, all was not well.

The students who were joining my programs were burnt out—not just from their lives but from healing. And for some time, I stopped using the word regulation all together. Not because I don’t believe in it anymore, I do (it’s essential) but because it’s taken on such a different meaning since I was trained that now the term itself needs its own psycho-education.

Because what many have had to learn the hard way (I know I did) is that you can't have a regulated nervous system and a body you treat like a compliance problem at the same time.

And no matter how much you try, you cannot regulate your way out of a cyclical body.

Your body has an innate rhythm, a pattern, a cadence. It moves, and expands, and contracts, and rises and falls and shifts all on its own—especially female bodies.

So the idea of regulation that social media has created cannot and will not be regulation for a human body. Because the way to regulation isn’t through force. It doesn’t come through cold plunges and forced breath work practices that push you into catharsis. It doesn’t come by down regulating yourself every time you’re activated. It doesn’t come by constantly avoiding triggers or monitoring your every response and trying to regulate it at all times.

It comes by reconnecting with your natural rhythm.

I had to stop focusing on regulation, so that I could relearn my body’s own rhythm….

Rhythm, what’s that?

Rhythm is the frequency of your body’s ever-changing state. It’s not a woo-woo idea, it’s science. All energy has tides. Hormones have weeks. Seasons change the body that lives in them. And regulation (as it’s been sold) assumes a flat baseline you return to and maintain; but actual bodies, actual nervous systems, were never flat. They move in waves, they move in a rhythm.

When I started to recognize my own rhythm, it felt out of whack. Erratic. Confused. And yearning for my attention. Tension that I kept trying to release wasn’t asking to be released, it was asking to be paid attention to, heard and met. My irritability patterns were not asking for more vagus nerve tools, my body was in a hormonal flare. And the weeks that seemed to make me feel like I had gone back to zero, while other weeks felt like I was on top of the world were all apart of my cycle, the ever changing tides—something that couldn’t be “regulated” but needed attunement.

Following my rhythm felt like a dance. One that changes in pacing and tune and flow. Sometimes it’s like warm honey, melting slowly, other times it’s fast and energized, other times it’s a soft sway that ever so gently reminds my system that we’re here.

The more I attuned to my body’s changing rhythm, the less I actually felt like my body was fighting against me, and the more I felt like I really knew what my body needed.

Which made my toolbox much simpler. It made the way I relate with and connect with and support my body much clearer. Which then translated into my practice, my programs and how I taught my students. They were no longer practicing how to “regulate” their nervous system. Now they were learning how to attune to themselves. Which brought the birth of my flagship program, Attune to You almost three years ago.

What following my rhythm looks like

Now, I follow this rhythm on a daily basis in a variety of ways that make obstacles in life feel much more manageable, and ever changing energy feel like a wave I can actually ride. On the days my writing isn’t flowing and the words won’t come, I don’t beat myself up. I don’t force it. I meet my capacity where it is. I let myself play with writing without an agenda. Sometimes it’s just gibberish that was more of a venting sessions, sometimes it’s poetry that ends up becoming art, sometimes it’s just messing around with sentences. And I know, the energy, the flow, the words that I need to write will come back. Whether it’s tomorrow or next week. They always do when I don’t force them too.

On the seemingly bad days where my body is flaring, I’m in a mood, or I just have zero energy. I pay attention to where. my cycle is (female bodies this is crucial), I take stock of what I’m actually going through (it doesn’t have to be some huge stressor in life to impact you) I cut myself some slack and meet the fatigue with scheduled time on the floor. I let myself end work early to curl up on the couch with some tea. I really let my body’s “no” be heard and listened to. Because I know what it’s like to override it for decades.

None of this is a “tool” to shift how I feel. It’s a practice in meeting myself where I’m at that honors the current rhythm I’m in. And that, my friends, allows. my body to regulate on its own.

Because here’s the thing no one talks about: regulation isn’t something you do, it’s something your body experiences.

Naturally, on its own, as an expression of feeling present, met, balanced, safe, or connected with. Your body knows how to get there. It just needs to be honored in its current state first.

And I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: ’m not anti-regulation. I’ll never be anti-regulation—it’s the work of my life, and it’s essential for everything we do. But what I do not subscribe to is the version of it that got sold to you: the performance, the report card, the idea that your body is a project with a finish line, that all seasons are the same or that “calm” is the answer. Because that simply isn’t true.

Rhythm isn’t the opposite of regulation, it’s what regulation actually looks like when your body is finally being met instead of managed.

And this is the frame for everything I’m sharing over the next several weeks! This post is the first of the anti-protocol protocols series. And don’t worry, it’s not going to be about more tools to master, but the small, simple and sustainable things I actually do to stay in relationship with my own rhythm and my body.

Some of what’s coming is for paid subscribers only (the deeper, more specific stuff I’m not sharing anywhere else.) If you’ve been meaning to go paid, this is a good month to do it!

xx

Alexis

Every 10 minutes, I check my phone. I get up, grab a drink, then get distracted by something else again. And in the matter of several hours, I’ve written half a page that I’m not even convinced is going to make the cut. It’s July and my book contract’s deadline has moved up to September by my own request. Why did I do this?

Who would have thought that a lifelong writer couldn’t sit down to write her book without looking for a million distractions?

Who would have thought that after months of consistent writing, a chapter every two weeks, my system would suddenly pump the brakes the moment I said “I'm going to finish early”

Suddenly I can do everything but write.

And now, I’m down to the wire with three chapters left to write and a nervous system that has decided it doesn’t want to. Great.

The funny thing here is that I know exactly what’s happening. In fact, I wrote a whole chapter about what’s happening in me right now. It’s not that I’m avoiding the writing (or maybe I am a little). It’s not that I just need less distractions (because when I’m in flow, I can write in the middle of chaos). It’s that the moment I realized “wow, I might actually finish this thing. I’m actually going to write this full book” something inside of me realized how vulnerable that is.

What?! I’m going to finish this book? What if it’s not the right book? What if it fails? What if it’s trash? What if no one wants to read it? Or even scarier, what if it succeeds?

The eight tabs open, the three trips to the fridge and the persistent impulse to check my phone weren’t distracting me from productivity. They were distracting me from something that matters so much to me that it’s safer to keep it at a distance than risk meeting the pain of failing.

What an annoying and brilliant protective strategy.

But even though this all too familiar freeze response is surging through my system at the most inopportune time, I know how to work with it. I know how to put one foot in front of the other, even if I then put one foot to the left and right and do a little dance all around before ever actually typing out a paragraph.

So with 7 chapters of this book done, a deadline that is creeping up on me and edits that still need editing—here’s whats working to help me actually get this done (that can apply to anything you do that you procrastinate around) Without overwhelming my system, without trying to turn off the brakes, but to actually be able to write and finish this book even with them on.

Read more

But maybe, just maybe if I get everything done as quickly as possible, I can lie down.

How often do you find yourself here? Be honest….

The mental spiral that happens sometimes before our feet have even touched the ground in the morning—that’s the spiral that sends our body into urgency. And before we know it, we’re listening to a podcast about sleep optimization while rushing through traffic to the workout class we booked last minute. We’re throwing laundry in the dryer just before realizing dinner is burning. And running through our day like time is running out just so we can get to the point where we can put our feet up and lean our head back.

Only once we get there, what happens? Usually we don’t feel relaxed at all. We feel exhausted, frustrated, and sometimes even like we can’t help but think of all the things we missed.

You see so many of us are living in a chronic urgent state. Rushing from one thing to the next. Speeding through our to-dos to get to our wants. Rushing to relax, only to not feel relaxed once we’re there.

And the pattern I keep seeing in this cycle of rush rush rush, is that it’s further driven by wellness culture shouting from the rooftops the newest top 10 things to optimize XYZ. It’s impossible to keep up, yet, so many still try. So the urgency gets amplified by the pesky voice in our head that says “but we need to journal!” and “we’re supposed to be regulating!” and “what was that mindfulness practice my therapist told me to do again?”

Life becomes jam packed with or to-do’s on top of the list of tools we’re told we have to do to achieve X.

The problem here is, any tool can backfire if it’s being forced, rushed into, or only creating more urgency in our life.

So what to do? What happens when we get to the point of go-go-go with no return in site? When life is still life-ing and we still want to feel better, and we do want to take care of ourselves but we’re spread as thin as cream cheese…

First? We pause.

Literally, right now, while you’re reading this—look up from the screen, put the phone down, look outside or around your space and let your system catch up to the moment. Slow your attention down. Let yourself feel how right now, there is nothing to respond to. Nothing you need to figure out. Even if in 10 minutes you have a meeting, or you still haven’t got dinner planned for tonight. Pause. Right now, in this very minute, there is nothing to figure out. Can you feel into that?

Does your breath get a tiny but deeper?

Do your shoulders drop?

Do you yawn? Or sink a a bit more into your seat?

Good. Welcome back to the present. There’s no emergency here.

We don’t rewire urgency patterning by forcing calm or trying to get everything done in one day. We also don’t teach our nervous system that everything is not an emergency by simply telling ourselves it isn’t… we have to show our system in real time, in tiny doses, what it’s like to actually break the cycle.

One way you do this is by first taking stock of how inundated you are right now with wellness culture chatter.

Turn down the volume

Quite literally turn the volume down on how much noise you’re consuming. I know, I know, you may have some fave wellness influencers who post the best recipes, or therapists who give good tips. Thats all fine and great. But take a minute or two to recognize where and from who’m do you feel you’re receiving more information than you need. Where the advice, content, or shares go beyond what is helpful and turns into more pressure.

Wherever it is, without you having to explain it, remove it or distance yourself from those spaces or voices—at least for a little while.

Because we can’t feel any less overwhelmed while staying exposed to overwhelming information, voices, or content. (One reasons I love substack so much is that we can really be intentional about what we consume, read and take in!)

Lower the bar for “enough”

Here’s the sneaky part of the rushing-to-relax cycle: somewhere along the way, “enough” became a moving target. You finish the laundry, but now there’s dinner. You finish dinner, but now there’s tomorrow’s to-do list, already forming in your head like a storm cloud that hasn’t even rained yet. There is no version of “caught up” waiting for you on the other side of today, there never was.

So the unsexy truth is that maybe you don’t always need to do less. Maybe you need to stop waiting for “done” to give yourself permission to feel okay. What if enough was decided by you right now, instead of by the bottom of a list that refills itself the second you turn around?

If it peaks your interest, try this: tonight, pick one thing, (yes, just one) and let finishing that be enough. One thing. Notice what your body does when you let yourself actually feel the relief of that thing being finished before jumping to the next. You might just realize how often you forget that it feels good to finish just one thing.

Stop outsourcing your “okay” to your nervous system’s worst critic

This one’s a little spicy, but I’m going to say it anyway: half of you reading this are more regulated than you think, and you don’t believe it because you’re measuring your nervous system against an Instagram reel instead of your actual life.

Wellness culture has slowly convinced a lot of us that feeling slightly tired, slightly touchy, slightly overwhelmed on a hard week means we’re “doing it wrong.” But that’s not dysregulation, that’s called being a human being with a body that’s allowed to have weather. Not every flat mood or anxious moment is a five-alarm fire requiring a protocol. Some days your body is just having a day.

The skill here isn’t more vigilance over your own state. It’s loosening your grip on needing to know you’re “regulated” at all times. The need to constantly check in can become its own kind of urgency—just dressed up in wellness language instead of productivity language.

Work With The Patten Not Against It

That go-go-go-crash cycle isn’t just you being a busy and stressed person. In somatic psychology, we call it the Global High Intensity pattern. It’s essentially a global (whole body) response of being locked into one gear, urgency, because urgency is what's familiar, and what's familiar is what your body trusts, even when it's exhausting you.

The caveat here is that those of us who have the membership card to this lovely patterning can’t sustain it forever. We crash. Then we pop back up, push, push, push and crash again. Sound familiar?

Here’s the thing with this patterning, we can’t work against it. And we certainly can’t just tell ourselves to slow down. Ever tried? It usually doesn’t work, right?

That’s because you can’t interrupt high intensity with an abrupt stop. Ask anyone who’s tried to slam on the brakes from 80 to 0. The body doesn’t trust a hard stop either. It needs the deceleration, not the demand.

This is also why slowing down for the sake of slowing down so often fails. Your nervous system isn’t always just looking for less stimulation—it’s looking for a reason to downshift. Something to slow down for, not just away from.

And you don’t have to just take my word for it. The fascinating thing here is that researchers actually caught this in the lab. In a set of Stanford and University of Minnesota studies, people who watched something awe-inducing like vast nature, a waterfall, something genuinely bigger than them, reported time feeling more spacious afterward, like they had more of it, and they felt less rushed and more satisfied with their lives than people who'd just felt generically happy. Leaning into awe didn't ask their nervous system to slow down. It gave their nervous system something so absorbing, so worth paying attention to, that slowing down happened on its own.

That’s the “trick” here. Instead of forcing yourself to slow down, stop, or waiting for your body to crash. You’re handing your body something to orient toward, and letting the slowing happen as a side effect, the way it does when you walk outside and the sunset grabs your attention, or a song you haven’t heard in ages catches you off guard, or you watch your dog discover snow for the first time (my akita winds his whole body up and does a dance, it’s amazing).

Ina ll these moments, nobody told your nervous system to just relax in that moment. It just did, because it had somewhere better to be than the to-do list.

So the practice isn’t “try harder to slow down.” It’s: give your system small, real doses of something to actually orient toward, repeatedly, in tiny moments, (not just once a year on vacation) and let your nervous system catch up to what it’s just been shown. Over time, that’s how the pattern loosens. Not through force, but through evidence!

Notice how nothing I’ve said above asks you to add anything to that list. I’m not telling you to wake up earlier, journal longer, or find one more pocket of time to optimize. That would just be urgency wearing a wellness costume, another item demanding to get done before you’re allowed to feel okay.

This is the actual fork in the road. Self-care, as most of us were taught it, is just one more task competing with the laundry and the inbox for your attention….. which means it usually loses, or it gets rushed, or it becomes one more thing you “should” be doing that inevitably adds to the pile instead of relieving it. No wonder it feels impossible to keep up! You were never just managing a to-do list. You were managing a to-do list and a side list of things meant to undo the first list, with the same depleted nervous system trying to power through both. Exhausting.

What we’re talking about here isn’t a third list. It’s not a new habit to maintain on top of everything else. It’s evidence, tiny, repeated, embodied evidence, that there’s something worth paying attention to that isn’t a task at all. That’s the difference. A routine asks more of you. This offers your nervous system to notice something is already here, already good, already enough to soften for. You don’t have to carve out a huge chunk of time for that the way you’d carve out time for a workout or a meditation app. It can happen inside the rushing, mid-laundry, in the shower, or on the drive to your appointment. And slowly, your body starts believing rest, presence, ease, JOY, doesn’t have to wait for the list to end. Because it never was going to end, was it?

It makes sense why your system is in a rush. Now, maybe what your body needs is not another megaphone yelling SLOW DOWN. Maybe it’s dedicated moments that remind it that it can. That there is no emergency. That other things exits, right now.

This is why I created the Joy Challenge. And no, it’s not a program to work on your trauma or dig up more of your wounds. It’s quite the opposite. A break from it all, the rush, the hustle, the self fixing cycle. An agreement with yourself for 30 days to practice exactly what I named here. I’m going to teach you every single day how to find moments that meet your body where it’s at and allows your system to come back into presence, joy, aliveness and awe on it’s own. We start July 6th, click here to learn all about it and jump in <3

xx

Alexis

Okay, maybe chicken. But mainly his walks.

Every single morning after his breakfast, he waits by the front door to see if we’re going to grab his leash out of the disorganized basket tucked behind the wall of our entryway. On the days that we don’t get to take him first thing in the morning (and I feel guilty all day for it) he waits by the window of the guest bedroom that faces the street and watches the world outside. He notices the birds, every child riding by on their bike, and i’m sure he counts every single leaf that flutters across the street looking like a squirrel.

By the day’s end, he looks to me with his big brown eyes and begins to throw his head back and wiggle his hunky body in the direction of the front door. All he wants is his walk.

And as often as I don’t feel like walking him, because sometimes i’m tired or i’ve had a long day, I always remember once we’re out the door why it’s so essential.

Every sniff, every extra long pause to explore a new bush, or to run across the grass, is his moment of experiencing the world. Of taking it in. Every morsel of it.

He doesn’t move through the world trying to get somewhere, he moves through the world trying to experience it.

And every time I watch him experience the world the way he does, i’m reminded of what it looks like to be in your body, because, he fully is.

He makes sound when he wants to (he breaks out in song through his night time howl very often). He follows every impulse to snarl or growl and every instinct to protect without hesitation. He rests without guilt or care, he listens to every bodily need he has to eat, drink or go to the bathroom, and he gets excited over the seemingly small things.

Animals know how to be alive.

They don’t optimize their morning routines. They don’t try to hack their bodily impulses. They don’t try to change how they feel, or refine their need to move. They just follow it. Their needs, their feelings, their impulses, their wonder, their curiosity—especially their curiosity.

They remind us how being human is supposed to be a whole lot simpler than us humans have made it out to be. And in the process they also remind us how fun life can be, how joyful it can be, and how good you can feel in the simplest every day ways.

Animals are healers because they remind us of the things we tend to forget. How to be present, how to be curious, how to feel connected, how to look for joy and how to feel alive.

And maybe, just maybe, they can help us ask the honest questions to help us uncover the truth behind our “stuckness”. Because, let’s face it, many people feel stuck right now. Many people are confused, navigating transitions, burnt out, or just feeling unfulfilled and wondering “what do I do with this?” And I wonder if we could use our animals as inspiration to ask the deeper questions?

My guess is yes, so I’m starting here. Maybe you want to join me.

The questions i’m asking are:

Have I become more interested in managing life than experiencing it?

Many people have lost the ability to become interested in their own lives. Dogs notice birds, grass, smells, people, squirrels. Humans tend to focus on problems, news headlines, deadlines, stress, and what needs fixing. So the question here is not, how do I go chase more birds? But more so, how am I managing life rather than experiencing it? And can that flip even in the tiniest way?

I’m also asking: what “ordinary” things have stopped mattering to me?

My dog celebrates a walk like he just won a grammy. He treats seeing me come home like the Super Bowl. He gets a new bone and does laps of excitement around the house like a parade. But us humans? We tend to wait for that joy until vacation, until the promotion hits, until we’re “fully healed”. But what if that’s robbing us of the thing we’re working towards? Who made the rule that every-day joy had to wait for some extraordinary event? Maybe it could exist in the little afternoon treat you have after lunch, or in the feeling after a really good workout class, or when you take that first bite of a meal you’ve been craving, or slip into freshly washed sheets (one of the best feelings!). Where have we stopped letting ordinary things be extraordinary? Where have we lost joy in the every day simple pleasures?

And lastly, but definitely not least, I’m asking…..What am I repeatedly returning to?

Because when life gets hard, when life feels flat, what do you return to? I know what my dog returns to. Play, treats, cuddles, movement. But humans? We tend to return to worrying, fixing, analyzing, stressing, anticipating. And don’t get me wrong, that’s not your fault, we are conditioned for this. But at some point we have to take the wheel of our own car and take a left turn towards something else once in a while.

So what are your anchors when life isn’t sunshine and rainbows? What’s your version of a dog’s walk? And how do you return to it again and again as an act of self love or even (gasp) medicine?

These are the questions worth asking and maybe you have clear answers right now, maybe you don’t. The point worth noticing is, do they help you stay curious? Curious about what’s working for you and whats not, and more importantly, curious about where you might be able to find a little more glimmers in life again.

xx

Alexis

P.S. Lately I’ve been wondering what would happen if we spent as much time looking for what brings us alive as we do looking for what’s wrong.

That’s the question behind a new experience I’m creating called The Joy Challenge. You can add yourself to the waitlist here to be notified when it opens

It’s an interesting thing to observe. How moments that bring so much joy, so much wonder, so much awe have a profound effect on the body.

And I find that I return to this theory that joy is one of the most potent medicines we all have. Not just happiness, but joy.

The emotion that emerges in the face of warmth, energy, and aliveness. Joy is something so many of us long for but have learned not to trust, and not to even look for in our every day life anymore. We’ve instead learned to anticipate its absence, brace for something else to come in and take it away. Which is valid considering trauma and stress and the tragedies of life that happen within all of our experiences.

And yet, I find myself dumbfounded that cultures around the world have historically engaged in practices dedicated to finding joy even amidst grief, even amidst pain, even amidst tragedy. And yet, our modern day society focuses heavily on the “what ifs”. People fear monger over rain in the forecast, and shut down plans because what might happen to the state of the world. And don’t get me wrong, the world has been on fire and thats nothing to ignore. But you know what else we shouldn’t ignore? How joy still exists even amidst the chaos.

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That every week, I go to the store and pick out what I need, what to make for dinner and what needs restocking in the fridge. I decide which berries to get: blueberries or strawberries or both? I decide if chicken or steak is a better option for tonights dinner. And I decide which brand of hot sauce to get without thinking too hard about it.

There’s no one there to check with. Should I get this granola or this one?

I just notice what looks good, check the ingredients and choose.

So when I find myself stifling over an answer when someone asks “what do you want?”, I forget that I do things often without any one’s input. Instead, my nervous system just remembers what it’s been like to get it wrong.

Most of my life, I have second guessed every single decision I was going to make. Whether it was which color shoes to buy or whether I wanted to go to college or not or whether I was really in love with a guy or just dating him because he liked me. I often felt like I never really knew.

And if someone was with me, whether it was at the grocery store, out to dinner or sitting next to me while I was texting someone back—my initial reflex would almost instantaneously be to ask them “what do you think?” “which one should I get?” “should I not?” “what should I say?”

And if they shrugged back and said “whatever you want” I’d become flooded with fear, suddenly feeling the pressure to choose without someone telling me what to choose.

And the strangest thing about this stupid dynamic? Is that when they would suggest something, I’d question that too! Are you sure? What if this one is better? I kind of think I should get this? What do you think?

The indecision was paralyzing. Because truly, no decision, whether it was mine or someone else’s felt right. It only felt risky.

And that my friends, left me in a cycle of constant outsourcing for most of my life (and something I’m still actively working on to this day)

Outsourcing Vs Inner Sourcing

When I say outsourcing, I mean the way in which we look outside of ourselves for an answer. Which is needed at times, of course, we don’t know everything. But the caveat here is that the type of outsourcing im speaking to replaces what I call Innersourcing. The ability to source an answer from within. And boy was I deficient in that skill most of my life.

Instead, I became really skilled at understanding this “deficiency” of mine. I could trace all the ways in which I outsourced and second guessed myself and anxiously overrode my own inner voice. I got so good at it, I studied it. All the ways in which we all do the things we do, and feel the way we feel. I knew my anxious attachment primed by my neurotic mother from the moment I was born contributed to it. That my childhood in Hollywood audition rooms, constantly being compared to other kids and learning to second guess everything I wore or said, contributed to it. I knew my school years, where I would have to pretend to fit in with wealthy beach teens when I, in fact, was not wealthy and had to play it cool while living in a one bedroom apartment with my brother and single mom, contributed to it. I knew the six car accidents I was in, contributed to it. The list goes on.

I learned, like many of us learn, not to trust myself because how could I when I learned from the outside world that what I felt and needed and preferred internally didn’t always match what was needed, wanted and preferred externally? So instead of ever developing my own inner trust, despite having a wicked sense of intuition my whole life, I learned to ask “what do you think I should do?”

This is outsourcing. And it’s the number one way we lose trust in ourselves when it replaces Innersourcing. Because unlike the way I can easily choose what to get at the grocery store when i’m by myself, when we’re around others, outsourcing becomes the safer option that we learned we had to take.

So when we’re finding our way back to self trust and building inner security, the kind that makes you go “this is what I want” without having a full blown panic attack. We start with building your Innersouricng muscle.

Innersourcing

Innersourcing is actually a lot simpler than it may sound. It isn’t some grand gesture where you practice sitting quietly, cross legged and “omming” until you suddenly feel enlightened enough to know the right thing to do. Innersourcing is about orienting your attention inward as consistently as you do externally. It means, you learn to check what your body has to say before you check with everyone else around you.

Easier said than done, I know.

But again, Innersourcing isn’t about finding the right answer or even fully trusting it. This entire post is not about some magical way to find certainty (sorry to break it to you). Rather, it’s about how you stay with yourself when you dont have it. Certainty, that is.

The way I like to practice Innersorucing is first by leaning into the places where it already shows up effortlessly. Like at the grocery store. When I choose the avocados I want without second guessing it. Or when I see a piece of jewelry I love and immediately feel that inner “I want that!” voice. Or when I taste something and immediately know “this is so good” These little moments of my body saying “yes” to something without me immediately worrying if I’m right or wrong is where I begin.

And it’s where you can begin too.

The first step: Where in your life do you experience effortless decision making or easy “yes’s”? How often can you lean into that? Embrace it?

The second step: Where in your life do you experience some inner tension around decision making or trusting yourself? Something that feels like a 5, 6 or 7 out of 10 tension. Maybe it’s something at work, or with your family or being seen online. Whatever it is, can you begin to practice one small step there before second guessing yourself and outsourcing what you “should” do?

That one small step: When you consider both options, choices or feelings, what sensations show up in response to each? Does one bring contraction, rumination, confusion, or dread? Does one bring softening, a lighter feeling, ease, or curiosity? Let that difference in sensation be your first compass before asking externally or second guessing anything.

Learning to check with your body before the external world, is the first step to building trust with yourself. But building trust is not just about creating full certainty with yourself that everything will go as planned, it’s about how you stay with yourself even when everything doesn’t.

Staying Even When Things Don’t Go As Planned

If you tend to self criticize when the choice you made goes sideways, or what you put faith in falls through—this part is especially for you (and for me). Because maybe you’re like how I was most of my life.

You chose the wrong shoes and now your feet hurt and you are beating yourself up internally for not choosing the other ones. You decided not to go to the party but now you’re regretting it and criticizing yourself for being so anti social. You get vulnerable with someone and ask for what you need or share what’s on your heart and you don’t receive the response you had hoped for and now you’re in a shame spiral.

Whatever it is, however it shows up, sometimes what we choose doesn’t go well. And that triggers every part of us that says “I told you so” to show up to the party and rip us apart from the inside.

But on the other side of those moments, are the other moments that can either disconnect us or reconnect us. And for many of us, historically, they have been the moments we learn to not trust ourselves.

Because if we abandon ourselves on the other side of a decision gone wrong, or if we shame ourselves for trying too hard, or saying the wrong thing. What do we teach our body? Our nervous system? Every mistake will end in self punishment.

And that is a pretty good reason to stop trusting yourself.

“A bird doesn’t land on a tree because it trusts the tree branch will never break, it trusts its own ability to fly”

Self trust rebuilds the moment you begin to say to yourself “that didn’t go as planned” or “that hurt” or “this sucks” AND “I’ve still got you” “I’m not going anywhere” or “It’s okay”

This is reparative. The type of repair most of us didnt get when we made a mistake or didn’t know what to do. And it’s imperative for rebuilding trust. It shows our nervous system that no matter what happens, there wont be an internal cost.

The Power of And

More often than not, self trust feels difficult when we have pinned ourselves between one of two options. It’s either this or that. And that black or white, binary lens to life rarely ACTUALLY applies to anything we’re deciding because the truth is, there is ALWAYS more than two options. Even when it feels absolutely impossible.

How often are you pressuring yourself to make the right decision or trust a certain path between TWO very specific black or white options? To do or not to do? To say yes or to say no? To go or to stay? That is very this or that. And in most cases, there is even the tiniest space for an alternative option. One that brings the word “and” into the picture.

“And” says two or more things can be true or chosen at the same time.

I can go and do so in my timing, on small step at a time.

I can say yes, with some conditions.

I can do this thing and adjust how long I do it for.

I can say no and still offer other ways to connect.

And you can turn towards an option that gives your system a bit of what it needs in the process.

Maybe you really want to say yes, but the full YES doesn’t feel good unless some other things could be a part of the picture. Maybe you need a bit more time. Maybe you need an alternative day. Maybe you need more context. Maybe you just need an “and” on the other side of the choice you’re making.

AND gives you freedom and flexibility.

So try it with me. What is one thing you’ve been struggling with? You can use that same situation from the first prompt. Now that you’ve identified the inner experience and sensation of the options and choices, what would it feel like to play with more than one option or to add AND to the other side of one of them?

I say yes AND ______

I choose to go AND_____

I stop doing this thing AND____

or

I want to pull away from this AND I first need ______

I think I need less of _____ AND for that to feel okay I need ______

See what happens there? More options are on your table!

Did you feel that wave of relief wash over you? I felt it. What a relief to have a both/and approach to life! Let yourself play with this.

Give Yourself Permission to Be Trustworthy

We can’t build trust with ourselves if our fundamental belief about ourselves is that we can’t be trust, that we will inevitably get it wrong or mess up. And I know this firsthand. Because the anticipation of getting it wrong already sets us up for disconnection and self betrayal. If we always go into decisions or situations assuming we are going to get it wrong, we will. Because in that, we are actively choosing to orient ourselves away from our body and towards the mistrust of it.

But what if we could try on a different option?

What if we could explore possibility?

The possibility that you actually are a very trustworthy in many ways. That you know alot of things. That you have many answers within you. And alot of medicine within your own body. And maybe you could trust that? What if thats possible?

Possibility is the antidote to fear of uncertainty because it opens the door to options, to more than just the black or white of “knowing” and “not knowing”.

So, what could be possible for you?

Start Taking Your Yes and No At Face Value

I’m going to say this plainly, you have to start believing your body when it says no and when it says yes. Stop second guessing it, stop asking others to validate it when it already feels clear to you.

It’s one thing to talk something through with your therapist or best friend when you’re truly unsure. But when something feels like a YES, don’t wait for something or someone else to confirm it before you listen to it. Lean in to what your body is communicating without needing evidence of someone else agreeing with it to back it up.

The more you let your yes be yes and your no be no, the less you spiral around it because you begin to build the muscle of recognizing what feels true to you. And the more you follow that, the more you begin to trust it.

Believe what you feel is valid without needing anyone else to confirm it every time.

Give Yourself Permission….

• To not know

• To change your mind

• To keep promises you made with yourself

• To not have to over explain everything you feel

• To learn along the way

Because at the end of the day, self trust doesn’t build through a flip of a switch or one fast practice. It builds through daily devotion. Devotion to yourself, to your needs, your body and the parts of you who are still learning what it’s like to feel safe within.

And at the end of the day, you’re human. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll fall behind, you’ll say the wrong thing, and you’ll try again. You’ll learn from it, grow from it, and course correct. Let this unfold without it having to become a story about your life or hold meaning about you.

You can be imperfectly human and still whole heartedly trust worthy.

xx

Alexis

P.S Daily rituals of turning toward your body, of building a relationship with yourself, your nervous system and your emotions is an essential part of building self trust. If you’d like an easy, tangible and very accessible way to practice this day in and day out, click here to learn all about Reconnect & Restore, a 21 Day journey back to you. Daily support practices sent directly to your inbox to help you take the guess work and decision fatigue out of self work. Your body and your nervous system will thank you.

When did we stop laughing? Dancing? Exploring? Creating?

These are questions I began asking myself years ago when I was stuck in “healing”.

You know that place many of us arrive to. We were disconnected for so long, then burnt out, collapsed, got ill, or our life fully changed in some way where we had to face the pieces of ourselves we had been overriding. So then healing entered our life, we researched, read, listened, and learned. And all of that was truly life changing.

But at some point, I find many of the people I work with feel stuck in a never ending cycle of doing “the work” and “healing” 24-7.

They become consumed by limitations that are placed into their life sometimes by way of the belief that they are not yet healed and so therefore, they cannot yet live their life.

Ever been there? Maybe you’re here now. And if so, you’re not alone.

Healing, whatever that means to you, is a lifelong journey—yes. But it’s not meant to be the only journey we take. It’s not meant to replace living. It’s meant to be a part of your life, not the whole thing.

So whether you’re actively on a healing journey or you’re taking a break from one and beginning to wonder “what’s next? or “how do I get my life back?”, this is for you.

I also want to mention that many people find themselves at the crossroads of “nervous system regulation” becoming another form of suppression. Another “to-do” or checklist or way in which you’re trying to live but often feels out of reach. And this is common because “regulation” has taken the world by storm in recent years and has been mixed up with the idea of being calm all the time. Regulation can feel calm, but that’s not what regulation is.

Which is why you may have been “regulating” for a long time and still feel unfulfilled. Maybe you do all your vagus nerve practices, feel a bit better but still feel like something is missing. Maybe you maintain your perfected morning routine to regulate your nervous system but you still feel don’t feel a spark in your life.

I know that feeling all too well, like theres so much to “do” to feel well but then the “wellness” you reach is just…okay.

That’s because the wellness industry has missed the point of the nervous system entirely. It’s not to keep calm and carry on. It’s to return to you back to your innate rhythm. And one of the primary pathways for that is to reengage with a sense of aliveness again.

“The opposite of trauma isn’t healed, it’s aliveness”

You may have lived your whole life in survival mode. Many of us have. And coming back into peace and safety and presence is vital here. But the body doesn’t just need to survive and it doesn’t just need to feel at peace. It also needs to feel alive. And underneath what most of us are craving and looking for and constantly seeking out is truly that—feeling alive again.

Especially when we’ve spent months or years stuck.

Then our whole orientation has been focused on getting better, not living life to the fullest.

And the misconception here is that we have to be 100% healed or fully recovered, or in an entirely different circumstance than we currently are to LIVE again. And I’m here to tell you that just isn’t true.

Yes there are certain barriers to the things we want sometimes. But aliveness? That feeling that orients you so deliciously to the present moment and a full body yes or an energy inside that feels infectious…. that requires no specific thing.

Here’s the thing: aliveness doesn’t need to be big. In fact, it’s often most powerful when it’s subtle, simple and in the mundane…

And when we harness those simple moments that dip us into aliveness, a light turns on inside. That creativity you’ve been trying to find suddenly has a doorway that might be possible to enter. That inspiration you’ve felt far away from now has some spark. That further you’re working towards has more possibility shaped around it. Because aliveness reminds your body and nervous system “we’re still here”

Aliveness is healing

Aliveness is medicine

And you, my friend, can access it. Right now.

Some of the most powerful forms of aliveness came to me on accident. And while I’m about to share with you a list of different ways to re engage with aliveness again, know that the juiciest forms of feeling alive FOR YOU will likely come in themes unlikely times. But for now, until then, let’s explore some ways you can begin stepping towards that, practicing it and giving it to yourself NOW without needing to wait for anything drastic to change in your life. Sound good? Let’s do it.

1. Sit in the sun

Simple, easy, something you can do immediately. It’s low effort and quote literally has an incredible impact on your nervous system and circadian rhythm. Let the warmth of the sun move across your skin and remind you, without any effort at all, that you are here.

2. Lying on the floor

Yes, seriously. If you haven’t tried it, now is the time. You’d be surprised by how elating it is to let your whole body lay on the ground and be weightless while also giving your full weight to the earth. No mediation, not tracking, just lying there and not having to DO anything. Exhilarating.

3. Have a date with your favorite food

Dessert at 12pm? Do it. Make your favorite meal or stop at that bakery you love and grab the danish. Let yourself have a full blown moment with food that lights you up. Savor the flavors, enjoy it, indulge in it. Make it a 30 minute moment with ice cream or that mezze platter. Don’t rush the wildly satisfying moment that food can bring.

4. Go for a walk and look for life.

See how many different plants, trees and animals you can find. Notice what’s growing, what’s moving, what’s existing all around you. Life is EVERYWHERE and recognizing it out there has a way of helping you recognize it in here too.

5. Play

With your kids, your friends, your pet. Game night with coworkers, fetch with your dog, catch with your child or even just a solo moment on swing flying high in the air (my personal fave). Play doesn’t need a purpose (that’s precisely the point of it) Let yourself be in it without needing it to go anywhere or mean anything!

6. Move your body

And if nothing else, dance. Run, walk, hike, stretch. But especially dance. In your kitchen, in your car, alone in your living room at 10pm. Dancing is one of the oldest expressions of being alive that exists. And you don’t need to be good at it! You just need to let your body MOVE.

7. Sing

Without caring how it sounds! Sing your favorite song on the drive home. Sing a lullaby to your child. Sing with the windows down. Singing has been an intuitive an ancient medicine used for centuries in many cultures. Your voice is an instrument that lives inside your body, using it is one of the most direct ways to feel yourself from the inside out.

8. Laugh, often

The kind of belly laughs that make you tear up or almost pee yourself. Call your funniest friend, watch that hilarious new movie, go to a comedy show. Be silly and refuse, just for a night, to take yourself so seriously. Joy that moves through your whole body is not a luxury, It too is medicine.

9. Tend to something living

Watering a plant, feeding a bird, creating a flower arrangement, caring for a garden. The fully present act of keeping something else alive has a way of reminding you that you are too. There's something about being needed by something that can't speak that brings you back to the present without asking anything complicated of you.

10. Be of Service

Offer support, lend a hand or volunteer. Helping others has a unique way of filling you with a sene of purpose and aliveness that nothing else can replace. It reconnects you with things that matter and changes your perspective—which surprisingly can help you feel more connected to your self. Something we all want, right?

You see, aliveness doesn’t need to come in big moments. Sure you can jump out of a plane or climb Machu Picchu or travel the world to feel alive again (and definitely encourage it!) but aliveness isn’t reserved for the big, bold and intense. Some of the juiciest parts of being alive is that they can show up in daily glimmers that seem mundane from the outside. But inside? Those can be the moments you remember at the end of all of this.

So no matter where you are—whether deep in “the work”, burnt out from life, or somewhere in between, don’t forget the whole point to all of this is to be alive. Because you are, here, living, breathing, and that alone is a miracle.

Enjoy your aliveness.

xx

Alexis

It’s no secret that the body needs to be at the center of the conversation when it comes to just about everything in our life. And, in practicing that, I know how quickly the mind can be forgotten about.

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“Reconnect to your body!”

“Trauma disconnects us from what we feel!”

“Feel it to heal it!”

Don’t get me wrong there is some truth here.

But it’s only half the truth.

Because for a whole other branch of human beings, life, stress, or trauma didn’t disconnect them from their body per se. It kept them hyperfixated on it.

Instead of “feeling nothing”, maybe you feel everything. Every sensation, every response, every slight subtle shift in tension, temperature and heart rate. Maybe you have lived with unexplained symptoms for so long that now you’ve learned to go inward to check “pain? no pain?” “headache? no headache?”. Maybe your emotions and needs have been questioned so many times that when you start to feel something, a voice immediately follows “Is this right? Is this wrong? Where is it coming from?”

This is what I call internal hypervigilance, where interoception becomes hijacked by an impulse to scan for danger. And research on fear conditioning and the body suggests this isn’t a character flaw or a block to push through. It’s a learned pattern. One the nervous system developed for very good reasons

It’s also why somatic therapy can sometimes backfire if the primary focus is getting into your body right away. Because maybe you go inward and instead of relief, you meet threat. Instead of safety, you feel overwhelm. And because you’re always scanning your internal world, it doesn’t feel unfamiliar, it feels like too much.

And when this happens, you might see the endless posts and podcasts that say “just keep sitting with it” or “just connect with it more”. You may think “I’m trying to feel safer in my body, but every time I go inside, I feel more out of control”

If this is you, pull up a chair and hear me when I say this:

Stop forcing yourself to go inward…

Not for forever, just for right now.

Because where overwhelm meets us, that means we need less of whatever we’re contacting. At least at first.

We don’t build safety in spaces we feel like we’re drowning in. Our body included.

We build safety when we’ve built capacity and we’ve built capacity when we’ve allowed ourselves the space, time and the right conditions to feel less overwhelmed.

Because you can’t be overwhelmed and connected.

And when you try to keep “being in your body” for the sake of it, and it still feels really hard. That is your body communicating with you. It’s not always a “block” you just need to push past.

In order to be in your body, your nervous system first needs the chance to come out of it and into the present…

Because what stress, overwhelm and trauma all do influence in our body is that they disconnect us from the present. Whether we then look for danger inside or outside, we are pulled away from the here and now. So the first step in feeling safer in your body isn’t always to be in your body. It’s to give yourself a chance to come back to the present.

And how do you come back to the present?

Not by trying to manufacture presence, but by letting it find you in small moments of noticing things like:

What’s outside your window right now?

How many clouds are in the sky?

What’s your pet doing right now?

Are you thirsty or hungry?

How many shades of green are in your yard?

What’s growing in your garden and what does each plant look like?

How does the sun feel when it hits your skin?

What’s you favorite sounds to hear when you step outside?

How gorgeous are those flowers sitting on your coffee table?

What’s it like to feel the hot water fall down your skin in the shower after a long day?

What’s touching your feet right now?

How is it to rock or sway in your chair?

Those are present moment questions. And all it takes is a few seconds to feel it inside.

But notice how we’re not asking to go into your body, but to notice something around you….

This is orientation, a foundational practice in somatic therapy. It works not because it’s a distraction, but because it literally moves the nervous system out of threat detection and into the present. And that shift is the beginning of safety. It’s not forced presence, but arrived presence.

It’s also helpful to remember that “somatic” doesn’t mean being in your body all the time. It refers to the word “soma” meaning “body”. Which in my work, means “your body is having an experience”.

What’s around you isn’t separate from what’s within you. Sometimes it’s the door back in.

Take your experience of overwhelm at face value

When going inward feels like too much, don’t try to rationalize it or question whether it’s a valid response. Overwhelm is overwhelm. And if going inward feels intense it likely is right now.

The more you give yourself the chance to step out of your body and into spaces and places that give you a sense of relief, the more space there is to access your inner world with less activation bracing you for it.

Because you deserve to be in your body without being forced there.

Experiencing safety within comes naturally in small moments of showing your nervous system that the present moment can be okay. And sometimes that’s enough to feel the doorway back into your body begin to open again.

What’s coming up for you around this? What are your thoughts? I’d love to know below!

xx

Alexis

P.S If you’ve struggled to be in your body but finding yourself more and more ready to explore what it’s like to practice relating to it without information overload, I want to invite you inside Held. A monthly community space dedicated to supporting your relation ship with your body from a place of safety, slowness, and ongoing live support in an accessible community space. You can learn all about it and join us before our next session here.

I spent many of my formative years in the back seat of my mom’s white ford expedition dry heaving in LA traffic as we raced to our 5th audition of the week. I didn’t want to be there most of the time, but I also didn’t want to miss out on the promise my mom and agent often made that if we “made it” everything would be okay. And as a 9 year old, watching my parents on the brink of divorce, bankruptcy and home foreclosure, that seemed urgent.

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How often do you find yourself here? Maybe you’re here right now as you read this and if so, hi, hello, welcome. I’ve been here more times than I’d like to admit so I’ve got a lot to say about it…

And the first thing I’ll name is that we as a society are so incredibly conditioned to optimize. To optimize for performance, to optimize for productivity, to optimize for energy, to even optimize for regulation. But what’s so funny about this is that the things we want on the other side of optimizing can only truly come once your body, your nervous system feels safe enough to move through whatever it’s stuck in now. So that exhaustion, that overwhelm, that stuckness or lack of inspiration? That can’t be just shifted out of or reframed. I mean, it could, but it wouldn’t work long term. Because honestly, your nervous system doesn’t want to be optimized. It wants to be met.

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In the matter of minutes, I’ve seen messages everywhere telling me there is a “hack” for chronic pain, there is a quick fix to get rid of symptoms and there is a solution to the “problem” that is anxiety.

I let out a full breath, lean back in my chair and think to myself “no wonder we’re all so overwhelmed”

All around the world we’re seeing a rise in chronic illness, autoimmune disease, and unexplained symptoms. Doctors can’t explain it, bloodwork doesn’t show it, and supplements don’t seem to move the needle. People everywhere, especially women, are battling with chronic pain, brain fog, chronic fatigue, IBS, skin rashes, sleep disorders, anxiety, depression and more. And this isn’t “new news”. For a few years now, prevalent voices in the field of stress physiology and trauma have openly spoken about the connection between trauma, suppressed emotions and chronic illness. Mentors, colleagues and myself included have shared similar perspectives on this. We’ve experienced the correlation between chronic illness and chronic stress firsthand and we’ve seen it in our clients and community.

But what I don’t see being mentioned often enough is how the rise of chronic illness, and specifically the rise of information around these chronic symptoms has also come with an insurmountable amount of content and media positioned to fix or hack said symptoms.

It’s hard enough to be navigating dis-ease in the body. It’s an added layer to be told “these are problems to fix”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying chronic illness isn’t an issue or that we should just live with pain, fatigue and migraines. But at what point does our pursuit to feel better turn into an endless chase for a quick fix?

Words like “release”, “hack”, “reset”, and sometimes even “heal” are incorrectly used adjacent to chronic symptoms.

Is healing possible? Absolutely. But does healing mean forever being “rid of” emotional or bodily symptoms? Not exactly.

If you have been navigating unexplained chronic symptoms, and have been trying all the “things” to fix your body, change how you feel, and "hack” your system—hear me when I say this:

Your symptoms are not problems to fix. Your body is not broken.

And…the distress you feel isn’t something you can hack.

Symptoms are signals.

They are cues that the body can only communicate by getting loud. And until we learn to hear them, it’s going to be really challenging for any “tool” to land.

How The Body Speaks

What we don’t talk about enough is how the body communicates in the first place.

It doesn’t speak in verbal language, which is why it doesn’t respond to verbal language. Ever try to tell yourself to calm down when you’re panicked? Doesn’t work.

Thats because the body, the nervous system, speaks in sensation. They communicate through contraction, pressure, changes to breath, digestion, energy and focus. When something feels overwhelming, unsafe, too much or too fast, your body adapts in real time. Your muscles might tighten to brace for impact, your breath might shorten to prepare for what’s to come, your connective tissue that weaves through every part of you might subtly stiffen to create containment. And what begins here as a moment of protection can quickly become a pattern of holding.

These become patterns because the body is remarkably loyal to the responses that once kept us safe.

So If you learned to push through discomfort, maybe your system learned to numb certain signals. If you learned that emotions were inconvenient, maybe your body learned to swallow them. If you learned that being needed was safer than having needs, maybe your muscles organized around keeping it together instead of expression. Over time, these adaptations can then live in your tissue. They can live in your posture, your fascia, in jaw tension, in a braced belly.

So when symptoms come online and suddenly we’re being told to just breathe it out, reframe our thoughts, and or “do” something to “release” it… we’re being told to get rid of it without ever learning why its there in the first place.

As tough as it is to experience chronic tension, anxiety, brain fog or anything in between—it is not a sign that your body is fighting you.

It’s a sign that your body is fighting for you. It is fighting for you because it is fighting to protect you.

And tools, hacks and mindset shifts do not touch that.

They dont honor the intelligence that is your symptoms. They just aim to make them gone.

And trust me I know how seductive that can be when you’re in pain. But it just perpetuates the cycle. Because ultimately, our bodies are not machines you can just patch up, reset, reboot or switch out. They are relational organisms. And they need to be related to in order to experience change.

Self Relating

At the root of most unexplained symptoms is a longing to be met. To be seen, heard, loved, known, witnessed, believed, or held.

And yet, mainstream media, modern day wellness approaches and even much of the mental health industry focuses on diagnosis and treatment. Locate the problem, give a solution to fix it.

But where’s the relationship?

This is where so many of us stay stuck.

There is no “regulating” without relating. There is no healing without hearing. There is no change without attunement, one of our most primal needs.

Underneath so much of the pain we experience lives a collective desire to be attuned to. Attunement is that developmentally necessary experience of being met. Of someone tuning into you. Meeting you. Seeing you. And when we don’t experience this enough, we never build that muscle to offer it to ourselves.

Instead we try to fix and change everything we feel. Including our pain. We learn to view our emotions, feelings and needs as problems to fix rather than parts of us that are longing to be heard. And this is where we get stuck on the never ending merry go-round of healing from the belief that we are broken.

But you, my friend, are not broken.

And I wonder what it would be like, even for a minute, to turn towards your own symptom. Whether it’s physical pain, anxiety, brain fog—can you bring loving attention there for a moment?

And instead of seeing how you might fix it or change it. Try saying this to it:

“You’re welcome here, and, you’re free to take a break”

Notice what happens inside.

Let your body feel your genuine presence, welcoming it closer, while also letting it know it doesn't have to work so hard right now.

This is a small example of the foundations of what I call self-attunement. Beginning to give yourself what you may have never got. Turning towards yourself in the way your body likely needs most.

What happens for you when you practice this? What is it like to experience your symptoms as allies instead of enemies? How does your body respond to not being managed, fixed or forced to change?

I’d love to hear below.

This is the work we do inside of Attune to You. My LIVE 12 week experience beginning in just a few weeks. This is my signature framework that has supported hundreds of individuals all over the globe and i’m brining it back for the first time in a year! You can click here to learn a bit more and add yourself to the waitlist to be the first to get all the details, early registration, discounted pricing and more. This isn’t just another course, it’s a guided experience with me supporting you in learning to relate to yourself differently than ever before—so you can build self trust, self belonging, process your emotions and pain effectively, and finally feel at home in your body and your life. Click here to learn more and join the waitlist.

xx

Alexis