225. Nervous System Harmony: Healing Stress Through Somatics With Stephanie Nelson

225. Nervous System Harmony: Healing Stress Through Somatics With Stephanie Nelson

I knew this episode was going to be powerful the moment we started recording… but I didn’t know how powerful until I listened back and had chills running down my spine. This one is for every high-achieving, overfunctioning, type-A woman who’s been doing all the “right” things—therapy, journaling, breathwork, mindset work—and still feels stuck in cycles of burnout, overwhelm, or emotional reactivity.

If that’s you?
This conversation is your permission slip to stop trying to fix yourself… and start listening to the language of your body.

My guest is Stephanie Nelson, trauma-informed somatic guide and creator of the Somatic Bliss Method. She helps women move beyond surface-level tools and drop into true nervous system harmony—a concept she beautifully explains (and reclaims) in this episode.

Nervous System Harmony vs. Regulation

One of the biggest takeaways from this conversation was Stephanie’s reframe of the term “regulation.”

If you’ve spent any time in the healing world, you’ve probably been told you need to “regulate your nervous system.” But Stephanie points out something I’ve felt for a long time but didn’t have language for: the word “regulation” can feel… tight. Constricting. Like we’re trying to control or “correct” our experience.

“The root of regulate is to rule or control,” Stephanie says.
“But I don’t want to control my body. I want to be in harmony with it.”

Enter: nervous system harmony.

Harmony is relational. It holds space for nuance. It’s not about “calming down”—it’s about creating a symphony inside yourself that includes your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, energy, and breath.

It doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence.

The Somatic Bliss Method: 4 Non-Linear Pillars

Stephanie’s approach to healing is rooted in what she calls the Somatic Bliss Method—a four-pillar framework that helps women reconnect to their bodies and reshape their relationship with stress:

1. Recognize – Develop awareness of your current patterns, stress responses, and somatic experience. How do you respond to stress? Fight? Flight? Freeze? Collapse?

2. Resource – Build the safety, capacity, and support needed to meet life from a grounded, regulated place. This is the foundation of all somatic work.

3. Release – Gently process past experiences that haven’t been fully metabolized. Because what the body doesn’t release, it stores.

4. Resilience – Rewire your nervous system to respond to new stressors with more flexibility, grace, and empowerment.

These aren’t steps you move through once. They’re cyclical. Fluid. Interconnected.
And they’re designed to help you feel safe enough to thrive, not just survive.

Stress Isn’t the Enemy—It’s the Portal

One of the most mic-drop moments of the episode?

“The goal is not to reduce stress. The goal is to heal your relationship to it.”

And this:

“Stress makes for a meaningful life.”

YUP. Let’s sit with that.

The real problem isn’t that we have stress. It’s that we’ve been taught stress is a sign of failure.
But what if stress is a sign that we care deeply?
That we’re growing? Stretching? Saying yes to something bigger?

Stephanie reframes stress as a neutral experience—one that can build character and depth if we meet it with tools, support, and somatic awareness.

And she doesn’t just talk about it—she lives it. Her method was born in the wake of personal tragedy, after the sudden death of her father. She walked through the fire, and now she helps others come out the other side stronger, steadier, and more self-connected.

Breathwork Isn’t Always Safe (and That Matters)

Another truth bomb in this episode?

Breathwork can re-traumatize.

Yes, even something as simple and trendy as breathwork—if done without awareness, preparation, or trauma-informed guidance—can push the nervous system into a state of overwhelm or shutdown.

That’s why Stephanie recommends starting with foundational practices:

• Orienting to your breath (simply noticing it without changing it)

• Learning how to breathe properly (most of us have forgotten)

• Coherent breathing (equal inhales and exhales—start with 3/3, then 4/4, 5/5)

These gentle practices build somatic trust. They help your body feel safe again. And from that place of safety, real transformation can happen.

Survival Strategies in Disguise

We also talked about how symptoms like anxiety, ADHD, and hypervigilance are often just brilliant survival strategies that have been pathologized.

“Most of the things we dislike about ourselves are adaptations,” Stephanie shared.
“They were ways we learned to stay safe, to belong, to survive.”

This episode is a love letter to those parts of you. The ones that are still holding on. Still trying to protect you.

You don’t need to shame them.
You need to understand them.
And gently, somatically, teach your system that it’s safe to try something new.

If You’re Tired of White-Knuckling Your Healing…

This episode is a breath of fresh air.

It’s gentle.
It’s grounded.
It’s real.
And it’s wildly empowering.

You don’t need another thing to fix or force or control. You need safety, tools, support, and truth. And Stephanie brings all of that and more.

Embodied Activation: Coherent Breath for Nervous System Harmony

With Stephanie Nelson, creator of The Somatic Bliss Method

This activation is about coming home to your breath.
Not forcing it. Not fixing it. Just meeting it with presence and intention.

You can do this anywhere—eyes open or closed. Seated, standing, or lying down.

Step-by-step:

1. Begin by noticing your breath.
   Don’t change anything—just observe.

   • Are you breathing through your nose or mouth?

   • Is the breath shallow or deep?

   • Rapid or slow?

   • How does it feel in your chest, belly, and back?

2. Now gently begin to regulate the rhythm.
   Start with a 3-second inhale and 3-second exhale.
   Count in your mind:

   Inhale… 1… 2… 3
   Exhale… 1… 2… 3

3. When that feels natural, move to 4/4.

   Inhale… 1… 2… 3… 4
   Exhale… 1… 2… 3… 4

4. If your body is comfortable, move to 5/5.

   Inhale… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5
   Exhale… 1… 2… 3… 4… 5

Take 5–10 rounds at your chosen count.
Let the breath be smooth and steady.
Let it guide you back to center.

Why This Works:

• Coherent breathing balances your nervous system gently and effectively.

• It meets you whether you’re anxious, flatlined, scattered, or overstimulated.

• It builds somatic trust and helps you feel safe without bypassing your emotions.

• It supports both restoration and activation—whatever your body needs in the moment.

Connect With Stephanie:

•  Stephanie On Instagram

• Stephanie's Website

• Stephanie's Membership: Resourced

Transcript:

Kayla: Hello Stephanie and welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast.

Stephanie: Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to connect with you today.

Kayla: Yeah, I am excited to have you on here because you do. Very important work in the world, especially for high performing overachieving, over functioning type A women, which is a lot of who listens.

So can you share exactly how you help this particular group of women?

Stephanie: Yes. So I work really closely with the nervous system because the nervous system is the master coordinator of everything in our experience in our inner world, like our digestion and our cognition and ability to think, and plan and be creative, make decisions.

Also how we relate to other people, how we relate to ourselves, how we relate to the planet, is all stemming from the health and harmony of our nervous system. And so we know now that when we're stressed, and I think most of us have a lot of stress in our day-to-day life, that the thinking part of the brain is not.

Functioning well, but the body, the primitive centers are what's driving the show. And so for so long we thought only talk therapy or affirmations or vision boards. Create change in our physical, mental, emotional health. But now we understand that it's really the body that's driving the health and harmony and the functioning of our nervous system.

So we call this somatics. And somatics is body based, but it's more than the physical body. It's the living, breathing dynamic body. And that includes the physical body, the mental body, our thoughts, our stories, our memories, our emotions, our perceptions. And so I work with the nervous system. I work with somatics, particularly I work with a method that I developed many years ago in the wake of the sudden death of my father.

He died just one month between, a cancer diagnosis. And so it was shocking. It was very shocking. And after that I really dove into another layer of my own personal healing. And so I was working with this method that I now call the Somatic Bliss Method, and there's four pillars that hold up the experience of what it means to live a blissful, fulfilling, and meaningful life.

And so I work with that method, with my clients on one-on-one and also in group settings and the membership that I offer.

Kayla: I am so sorry for your loss, especially the suddenness of it would've been something that a nervous system would have to recalibrate from For sure.

So if you are comfortable sharing, can you tell us a little bit more about those four pillars?

Stephanie: I'd love to, yeah. So really important to note is that none of this is linear. Linear time is a man, man construct. So the pillars all support each other and we sort of like weave and pull in things when it feels helpful.

But I'm gonna list them in a linear manner. So just knowing that, the first one that I like to orient us to is, is recognized. So it's actually four Rs. Easy, easy that way. So recognize, we recognize like, what is my relationship to my body, to my mind? What is my relationship to stress? How do I respond to react to stressors?

Do I have more of a fight flight response of, anxiety or frustration or impatience? Or do I have a more shutdown response where we get numb or collapse or get quiet or cold or distant? So recognizing everything that's sort of organizing our current experience and also recognizing where we wanna go.

How do we wanna show up in this world? So that's, that's the first pillar. The next pillar is resource, and this is my membership is really the first two pillars. So resourcing our nervous system to feel safe. Enough to thrive to be with what's in front of us. Safe enough to face challenges head on, rising to the occasion rather than burning out or getting depressed or anxious, or feeling hopeless or feeling really scattered, or taking on too many things and not setting the right boundaries.

So resourcing the nervous system to feel safe enough to meet the moment in the way that we want to meet it. And then the next pillar is release. So as we go through life and we experience stressors, if we don't process them, if we don't let them move through to completion, then they can get stuck. They get trapped in our tissues, and it keeps us in this overdrive stressed out state.

And so because of the conditions that we live in society, it's not encouraged or recognized or supported or taught to us how to actually move through stressors so that we can process and release them. So that's this pillar where we're actually sort of going into. The past, but in the present moment, processing stressors of the past, we can kind of like clear out some of the gunk so that we can create space for the inevitable stressors that we're going to experience in life because stress is not going to stop.

So that's the release. And then the last one is building resilience to new stressors so that as we are faced with the inevitable stressors, that we really embody that new shape. We really have a somatic memory of showing up in the way that we want to, to show up.

Kayla: Thank you so much, and as you mentioned, that's not a linear process, so you would kind of cycle through them as needed.

Stephanie: Yeah. And so many of the practices that we can do in somatics sort of pull from different ones. Or there might be a couple of components inside of one practice. We're leaning more heavily into more the recognized phase or the resourcing phase, but we're sprinkling some resilience building stuff in there at the same time.

Then maybe we'll release some things and then we resource. So we're just kind of like feeling for what do I need in this moment? What feels helpful to me and my system so that I can show up, from a place of safety where I am more clear, I am more aligned with what matters to me rather than just living in our old conditioned survival tendencies.

Kayla: Absolutely. And what I love about that is people are gonna need different flavors of that or different combination of that based on what's going on in their life. So you can kind of meet them where they're at, which is so powerful.

Stephanie: Exactly. Yeah. We're all so unique and it's important to meet ourselves where we're at, or have people who are supporting us to meet us where we're at rather than just being like, oh, we just do this one thing.

So it's a really integrative method, because I've, studied so many different things that there's so many different, elements inside of the method.

Kayla: Thank you so much for that. And then this is something I stumbled across on your Instagram that I would love you to share more about, and it's this idea of nervous system harmony instead of nervous system regulation,

so can you share the distinction between those two?

Stephanie: Yeah, that is definitely the word that you'll hear in the somatic world is nervous system regulation. And years ago when I was living in South America, I was living in Metagene, Columbia and I'm Oh, regulation, regulation, regulation. Like, ooh. It was just feeling like tight and constricted and, and sort of bound up and.

As I am in this Latin country, speaking Spanish, we were using this word regla as as rules, and so I'm sort of piecing this together like, oh wait, the root of regulation is an externally imposed ruler. Controller, right? And I was like, that's not at all what we're doing. And around the same time, shortly thereafter, a few of my different teachers were also saying like, that's not the word that I like.

It's not the word that I use. And so that really gave me the confidence to go, well, it doesn't have to be regulation, because I believe that everything has an energetic frequency. I mean, we even say like, spelling to cast a spell is really important. Our language is so important. And so for me, I was sitting with this like, wait, but I'm, I don't want, I don't want anyone regulating my body.

I don't even want me regulating my body. I want my body to feel like it can flow in the way that feels most aligned, most harmonious. And so the word harmony kept coming to me because harmony is. Like a symphony. There's all of these different parts, all of these different aspects, and they're all coming together to create this beautiful sound and rhythm and music and aliveness.

And so that just resonated so much more with me. And, and it's funny 'cause I've since spoken to a few other practitioners who also had the same download that I had to call it Nervous system harmony. So that's what aligns for me. But of course, you know, pick and choose if regulation feels right for you or for your listeners, then use it.

But if it also is feeling. Constricted, like really just shrinking us into, well, this is what it's supposed to look like or supposed to feel like. Then I would encourage you to just sit with that in your own system and see what feels right for you.

Kayla: Absolutely. And it's interesting, you are the second person I've heard from recently who talks about regulation is not being ideal, and this person talked about regulation versus rewiring.

Her definition of regulation was so interesting because her definition of regulation was you feel something and then you take an action to Ryan, you know? Get rid of those negative uncomfortable feelings. And then I thought to myself, because one of the things I help people with is binge and emotional eating.

And I thought to myself that is actually a way someone's regulating. It's not a sustainable way, but it is a way they artificially get out of sympathetic and into parasympathetic. 'cause when you eat enough food, you have to go into rest and digest. So I love that there's these different con conversations about.

Maybe regulation isn't the goal. Maybe there is this, desire for harmony, which just sounds more embodied and just more just feels better. You're totally right.

Stephanie: Yeah, I'm so appreciating that you had this conversation with somebody already because I'm finding that in especially I think the breath work, 'cause that is, it's becoming a lot more mainstream, this breath work component of somatics.

'cause that's a branch inside of somatics, that we're regulating out of dysregulation. And that is another way of suppressing our experience. And whenever we suppress our experience, we're not actually. R processing and releasing that experience. We're sort of shoving it down and just like, if you can imagine, like a beach ball and so you've got this experience, you're like, I do not want to hold right now.

And so you're just sort of like shoving it under the water and you're just spending so much energy pushing it down, pushing it down, pushing it down by regulating out of it. It's going to eventually pop up and hit you in the face. Yes. I really think it's important as we start to do these somatic practices is that we're not trying to regulate out of the discomfort.

We're actually trying to meet the discomfort with curiosity.

Kayla: It's interesting that there's certain practices, things like breath work or movement or fitness that can be done in a very disembodied way, ironically, or you can do them from that place of presence and curiosity and leaning in.

So I love that you're making this distinction, and I think it's a powerful one for people to keep in mind as they're doing whatever it is they're doing is. Am I leaning in? Am I actually feeling the thing? Am I embodied or am I doing it more as a distraction?

Stephanie: Yeah, it's a great question for people to be.

Curious with themselves with, am I doing this for the sake of supporting my nervous system health and harmony or am I I doing this to avoid the thing that I'm feeling? If we're doing it to avoid the thing, then it's gonna come back. 'cause it's, we're again, we're just suppressing it. We're shoving it down into our tissues, but it's still impacting your stress response.

So you're still overproducing cortisol, you're still in either that, that fight flight. Sympathetic or it's tipped and now you're more in a shutdown or dorsal vagal experience. So a really important question for people to be asking is, why am I doing this for the sake of what is is, is a really powerful question that I'm always asking the people in my world for the sake of what practice.

For the sake of what? Take a walk for the sake of what do breath work. The why is the intentionality behind it is everything.

Kayla: It really does make all the difference for sure. So would you say that's this. Tendency to do a practice without the intention is one of the reasons why high achieving women can stay just stuck in these cycles of stress or overwhelm even after like therapy, meditation, breath work, mindset work.

Stephanie: Absolutely. Yeah, because we're not actually moving through the stressor because we've never asked the soma, is this helpful or am I doing it because I heard that, oh, I should be doing breath work. Well, what type of breath work and is that right for your system? Because there's different breathing practices that are supportive for different states and.

It's really about choosing the one that's going to support your nervous system in releasing that sympathetic overdrive or support your system climbing up from the more shutdown states.

Kayla: Mm-hmm. So would you say that most people have kind of a. Breath work that's best for them most of the time, like a more high strung person is gonna want something to bring them down.

And a person who's more in that low state needs something to bring them up a little bit. Or does it vary kind of day to day, month to month based on what they're going through?

Stephanie: It's both. It's both. So if you are someone that, generally goes through life with the more sympathetic, then finding practices that support more restoration is probably more likely helpful unless you are trying to tap into states more of creativity, right?

So it's, again, it's intentionality. Like what am I, why am I practicing breath work? And I would even recommend before anyone do a breath work practice like Wim h is very big, or holotropic breath work. There's so many different breath work practices that are really psychedelic, and really meant to encourage that level of activation in the system.

I've always shared that there's a few like really foundational practices that we should be doing before we jump into something like that. So one of 'em is orienting to your breath. And so you're really just noticing like, can I be in the practice of noticing my breath? Because if you are in a Wim h breathwork or a holotropic breathwork and you start to have adverse reactions to it, if you've never oriented to your breath, you won't know that you're there.

And those breathworks can be re-traumatizing. Oh, wow. So orienting to your breath, getting just, building that relationship to the breath is so important. And then learning how to breathe, because most of us breathing correctly. So if we don't have the somatic memory of breathing properly, then we, it's like we're trying to run a marathon before we can walk.

Like it just doesn't make any sense.

Kayla: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: So that's the second. Practice is how do I breathe and how do I breathe in a way that eventually it feels normal and natural to me. And that takes practice, that takes consistency. And then the third one would be coherent breath, which is just even in and out.

So all three of those breath practices would be really helpful no matter which. State you're in. Mm-hmm. And for anything new, I would recommend really short, like starting with two or three minutes, rather than being like, I'm gonna do an hour breath work, practice with this person. It might be really helpful if you have no history of trauma.

Um, but most people have a history of trauma, so it, it's just an interesting thing to pay attention to.

Kayla: I love that you mentioned the importance of the foundations and then consistency over intensity, because I think that is something we know to do in like the fitness and workout world, but then we forget about it in these other arenas and like you said.

Breath work is powerful and I didn't actually know it could retraumatize a person, so that's very unsettling as well. So can you share a little bit more about how to avoid that happening? Is it just starting slowly? Is it working with a specific practitioner? Like what does that look like?

Stephanie: Yeah, great question.

The first one would be if you are doing one of those practices to make sure that that breath work teacher is trauma informed. The breath is one of our, is really our most primitive survival center. When we think about the nervous system, it's responsible for safety and survival.

That's what it's designed to do is safety and survival. So our basic survival needs are really important to the nervous system. So like a lot of the work that I do with clients is, are you sleeping well? Are you eating well? Are you moving your body? Are you getting some really basic survival needs is a really beautiful foundation for, let's say if you know somebody has an anxiety diagnosis or a bipolar or OCD diagnosis.

Foundation before we start to process and release the things that are contributing to, to the diagnosis. So food, we can go weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without breath. The breath is so crucial to survival. So making sure that the breath work teacher is trauma informed is. I would recommend everybody do if you go to a breathwork practice or do something online, make sure they're trauma informed.

And then really the foundational three practices. So I offer these practices inside of resourced. You can find them really anywhere as like, how do I breathe? Like learning how to breathe, or coherent breathing, equal in and out. Orienting to your breath for like one minute a day, setting a timer and just without needing to fix or change the breath.

Like, how am I breathing? Am I breathing through my mouth or my. Am I breathing short and shallow? Is it rapid? Is it slow? Like how, how am I breathing in an, in just my normal, natural way? And I think it's really important to note that. If you're in any experience that you have so much agency and choice.

So a lot of the breath work techniques that are being used are what are called cathartic release practices. And this was really big in the sixties. At the sort of the start of the modern somatic practice means somatics is a lineage, has gone back for thousands of years in more like tribal, ancient lineages.

But in the more modern sense, a lot of the cathartic practices have shaped the way that we do somatics and anything what traumatizes us is too much, too fast, too soon. So you can take a normal experience. For example, you're exercising, but if you do too much, like if it's your first time in the gym and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna take this 50 pound dumbbell, and do a bicep curl, like you're likely to tear.

Right? And that would be a traumatic. Injury to your body. So things that are too much, too fast and too soon can traumatize us. So having the practice of orienting to your breath can help you decide in the moment, is this too much? Is it too soon? Is it too fast? So that you have the built in. Like what is helpful for me and my system right now?

And to ignore it, the teacher is like, keep going. Breathe harder. Breathe faster. And you're like, I am dumb lady. Like then you have that. Practice of choicefulness, by really attuning to what you need, and then also being willing to be courageous enough to do the opposite of what the group is doing if it's in service to your health.

Kayla: Mm-hmm. And that's the beautiful thing about having more of that body awareness so you can make that choice even if it is a little uncomfortable in the moment. Mm-hmm. And then as we're talking about. Survival. You've mentioned something else that's very interesting to me, and that's this idea that anxiety is actually a survival strategy.

So can you share more about that?

Stephanie: Yeah. Most of the things that we do not like about ourselves are survival strategies. We learn early on to adopt certain. States, whether that's a postural state or a hypervigilance state, in order to be safe, to be in relationship, to belong, to maintain our dignity. So we start to organize around other people in order to keep ourselves safe.

Because as mammals, we need the collective to survive. So for example, anxiety, is a collection of natural things that have been manmade labeled as a generalized anxiety disorder, or OCD is a type of anxiety or different phobias, but really what they are is physiological symptoms that are reacting to our environment.

So, for example, inside of anxiety, most people who experience anxiety experience a shallowness of breath and or a fast heartbeat. And this is to help you flee. It's to help you run away in experiences that your nervous system has unconsciously perceived as dangerous. Or nail biting or foot tapping. So many people who experience anxiety.

It's like that constant. And that's again, at like this mobilizing, sympathetic fight flight energy that's like, I am ready to run if I need to run. So, and, and same also, gut issues are very linked to anxiety. People who have anxiety often have gut issues. It's often comorbid, and that's because your nervous system is diverting blood away from your digestion because you don't need to digest the food that you just ate 20 minutes ago.

If there's a predator about to attack you. So that is diverted to the heart. So that's why it's beating so fast. It's diverted into your muscles so that you can run away or you can hit or punch or kick. So we have to sort of like look beyond the diagnosis, which can be helpful in certain instances to have like an area that we can start to get more curious about.

It's not the end all be all. So I feel like it's so important for people when they do have a diagnosis to remember that it's a survival strategy and that underneath it, if we support our nervous system, then we can heal a lot of the symptoms that are causing the diagnosis. Another example is I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and A DHD and I've been off meds for over four years now.

But for a DHD, most people can't concentrate, right? That's the hallmark. They can't concentrate. And that's a survival strategy because if you are constantly scanning your environment, then you know every possible. Threat that's out there. It is not evolutionarily beneficial to focus on one thing for hours on end, because if something comes up behind you or something comes into your field, you need to be paying attention so that you survive.

A DHD is just an extreme version of that, where we're just constantly thinking about every possible other thing. But again, it's for control. It's to make us feel safe so that we can survive.

Kayla: Mm-hmm. I love what you said there about the things we don't like about ourselves are always survival strategies, and I think that that alone is gonna create a little bit of nervous system harmony, because then instead of feeling like.

I'm fighting with myself. I have these problems. It's no, my body actually wants to keep me safe, so how can I help it feel more safe? And that's the work you do, which is so important.

Stephanie: Yeah, exactly. For me personally, and with a lot of my clients, with all of my clients, there's. Such a level, like of a, just a deep exhale when you're like, oh, like it's not me.

Like I'm not bad. We can really release so much of the shame. And as you mentioned, the fighting, it's like this internal resistance that we're always like, oh, that sucks. I have to hide that. That can't exist. I'm fighting with this. And this actually creates more stress because stress is just internal resistance.

So as we were, were resisting what is, we're creating more stress. But if we can look at it through this other lens and go, oh wait, thank you. Like really dignify this thing inside of ourselves is like, wow, you are trying to keep me safe. You're trying to keep me alive. And then begin to start to exercise the choicefulness.

And like, how else can I support you in feeling this way? And what happens with all of my clients is that they don't have to effort on the other things that they'd like to improve on. It's like just sorts to, everything just starts to get better because when we feel safe enough, we don't have to grasp at all of these other things to help us get there.

It's just who

Kayla: we are now. Mm-hmm. One of the most beautiful things one of my therapists said to me once was that safety is the treatment. And that's so much of the work you're doing, which is beautiful. And then as we're sort of talking about stress and all the different impacts it has when someone's been told to reduce stress, for example, by their doctor, or maybe they just know that.

Stress is causing them some harm. What would you suggest to them? Like how can they get started on helping kind of reduce this stress in their life?

Stephanie: Yeah. I get this question all the time is such a great question. 'cause I think we've all been told to reduce stress either by our doctor or like just seeing it out.

Like, oh, stress kills, right? Stress creates cancer. And we're like, oh I gotta reduce that. The first thing that I'll say is with so much love, the goal is not to reduce stress. We live in a world filled with stressful life experiences, and even though a lot of the things. We might not even consider as stressful.

The nervous system perceives it to be stressful, and that's really what's important is not the like cognitive understanding of stress or like, oh, that was no big deal, that oh, it was no big deal, is actually a survival strategy. It's a way of numbing or downplaying. It's more in line with the shutdown response, which we can talk about more.

Reducing stress is not the goal because we can't control the stressors that are thrown out to us. We can only control how we respond. And that's why I'm so passionate about helping people heal stress rather than reduce stress, because we can't control what's on the outside for one.

So we're only gonna feel like a failure when we're like, why the heck am I still getting stressed out by all of these stressors coming in? Like every 20 minutes something else pops up and I'm like, how the heck am I gonna deal with that now? So shifting the focus. So that we don't feel like a failure because it's not your fault for all of what life is throwing at you.

Then the second thing why I am not at all encouraging people to reduce stress but rather heal stress is that I stress makes for a meaningful life.

If we think about any moment in our life that we really grew as humans. That we look back on and we're like, wow, I did that. Maybe it's running a marathon or starting a business or having a child. All of those really meaningful experiences require the stress is part of the package, and so stress is a neutral experience, so we're not trying to reduce stress.

We are trying to heal our relationship to stress so that when stress comes into our world, we don't feel overwhelmed by it, but we're like, oh, heck yeah. I got this, I got this challenge. I'm gonna do this thing and it's gonna be hard. It's not gonna be easy, but it's an opportunity for us to grow. So. I would recommend people heal, stress, and what we do inside of Resourced is exactly that.

It's like really short, tangible practices. We start with five, 10 minutes, so every day we can pop in and go, how do I reset my nervous system to come back to health and harmony because life's gonna pull me out and it's my responsibility to come back in. Come back into harmony, come back into alignment, come back into my center where I feel how strong and capable I am.

I can feel my clarity, I can feel my creativity. I can feel my power, feel my strength. And I say responsibility. It's our responsibility with the utmost respect we are able to respond and how beautiful it is that we can learn these practices. And really, they don't take very long, you know, they, they really can take like.

30 seconds, one minute, two minute, maybe five minutes. And so if we can sprinkle those throughout our day, then we are giving ourselves, really the goal of all of this work is flexibility because we need to be able to meet the moment. So if the moment is requiring a level of activation, like the kids are running around and we're like, I gotta chase these kids and cook dinner at the same time, like, I need to elevate my energy.

But then sometimes you're on vacation and you're like, I can't fucking rest. I am thinking about a million things that I gotta do when I get home. My mind just won't shut up. I'm feeling restless and anxious and antsy. So we need to be able to be flexible to meet the moment. So the more that we do these micro practices, like little micro doses of somatic practices, the more that we give our nervous system, our body, our mind, our energy, our spirit, a way of coming back so that we can be more choiceful and meet the moment with, with whatever energy is required.

Kayla: That is one of the most empowering. Reframes of stress. I think I've ever heard both that stress makes for a meaningful life. Gonna remember that one. And also, it's almost liberating to know I don't have to reduce every single stressor in my life to have a good life. Instead, you know, a person gets to change their response to it and they can actually, what I'm hearing is use every stressor they come across to build that resiliency.

We talked about kind of in the beginning, which is, yeah. So much more empowering than again, trying to live in almost like a little styrofoam life where nothing gets under your skin. So thank you so much for that.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. I'm envisioning like Bubble Boy, if you've seen that movie from maybe 15 years ago or something.

Yeah. It's like, you can't touch me. But yeah. Then you block out all the goodness too.

Kayla: Yes. So Stephanie, this has been such a great conversation. Few more questions. If the listener wanted to take away one embodied activation, something they could do after listening to this episode, what would you recommend?

Yeah.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Because we've talked about breath work, that might be a really great place to begin. I would say the coherent breath is, can I be with my breath? And inhale for, I would start with three seconds. Inhale for three. Exhale for three, when that feels easy. Inhale for four. Exhale for four. When that feels easy. Inhale for five, exhale for five. And that's a pretty good place to be because that breath will meet you no matter what state you're in, because it will bring you back into balance.

It will support uplifting your energy, but it will also support restoring your energy in the same practice. So yeah, I would recommend that the listener, try that right now or after this podcast to equal inhales and exhales starting at three, then four and five.

Kayla: Definitely. Thank you so much. And when the listeners wanna learn more about you, check out your membership, all the things, where are the best places for them to go?

Stephanie: Yeah, so my Instagram is at the Stress Healers, and it's the. Period, stress period healers. And again, it's so we can heal our relationship to stress.

So that's a great place to find me in the social world. And then on my website as well is the stress healers.com. And the best place to start is resourced because it's the introduction to. What the heck is somatics and building somatic awareness and building that relationship to your body, which is not only gonna help heal physically and mentally and emotionally, but what my clients are finding, which has been just so cool, is really building a relationship to themselves where they're.

Really getting to know what they like and what they don't like, and building that authentic relationship with themselves. That just makes everything else so much easier. When we know what to say yes to, we know what to say no to. We know what feels good and do more of, and we know. What we don't want in our lives.

So resourced is the best place to jump in and experience the somatics for yourself.

Kayla: So it does sound like an amazing place to go, especially because you can do the practices and a little bit of time each day. It's not some three hour experience that it's, it's hard to fit into the life. So I love that you have that available.

Stephanie: Totally.

Kayla: Yes. Well, thank you again so much for being here.

Stephanie: Thank you so much for having me.