From Triggered to Tranquil: Reset Your Nervous System for Lasting Calm | Spotlight Convo

Episode Transcript

You can find Jonny Miller at: Nervous System Quotient (NSQ) self-assessment | Nervous System Mastery course

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So have you ever noticed how some people seem just unshakable, calm, clear, focused, even joyful in the midst of utter chaos while others get triggered by the smallest things? The difference isn’t willpower or genetics. It’s often something far more fascinating, and it’s hiding in plain sight within your own body. Your nervous system holds the key to transforming how you experience every moment of your life. Yet most of us have never learned to speak its language. My guests today bring together pioneering research and practical wisdom to decode this hidden force that shapes our every action and reaction. Jonny Miller shares breakthrough insights from his work training thousands in nervous system mastery, while Emiliya Vitovska reveals practical tools for moving from anxiety to calm presence. You’ll discover why additional approaches to managing stress often fall short. How to recognize the three key states of your nervous system and specific techniques to return to balance when you’re hijacked by tension or stress or anxiety. And these conversations reveal really what I consider a missing piece in most approaches to emotional well-being and offer a practical pathway to greater resilience and ease. So excited to share this conversation. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:28] Our first guest today is Jonny Miller, a wellness educator and founder who’s dedicated thousands of hours to researching, training and mentoring high performers from CEOs of rocketship companies to startup founders recovering from burnout to busy parents just navigating family life. As the founder of Nervous System Mastery, an online training that has helped over a thousand students cultivate calm and enhanced resilience, Johnny brings deep expertise in practical tools for nervous system regulation. In this conversation, he breaks down the three key states of our nervous system, shares his powerful rise framework for developing greater awareness and control, and offers insights into how we can work with our physiology to respond more skillfully in any situation. You’ll also learn how to recognize when your nervous system is hijacked, and learn practical ways to return to a grounded state. Here’s Jonny.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:21] We’re having this conversation at a time where I think a lot of people are experiencing multilevel stress and disruption and groundlessness and head spinning and heart spinning and a sense of uncertainty for what’s to come. And we tend to be really terrible at handling all of these different sort of external circumstances in our lives. And one of the things, one of the things that allows us to step into a space of being able to just exhale and breathe and feel grounded and okay, through all of this is the state of our nervous systems. So big picture question why do we care about the state of our nervous systems? Why should we care about them? It’s probably a better question.

Jonny Miller: [00:03:09] Yeah. Why should we care? It’s a great question. I think for me, I’ve thought about this a lot. For me, it comes down to living more intentionally and living with more agency. And in my experience, when our nervous systems get hijacked, when we’re triggered or when we’re in some kind of reactivity, it’s very hard to live in an intentional way, to live in a way that is aligned with our values. And so for some people, reactivity might look like kind of anxiety or outbursts of anger, or for other people it might be kind of like shut down, collapse, lethargy. And for me, having awareness and capacity and also skill in what I call emotional fluidity allows us to live more intentionally and form deeper relationships, deeper connections, and show up for the people around us. So I think it’s a hugely important area, and I think it’s really overlooked as well. Like, I wish someone had had taught me these things when I was at school, when I was growing up in the UK. It was only in my in my 20s that I even found out that this was like a thing, that you could have some agency over your nervous system state, and that it was more of a set of skills that can be learned. I think it’s most obvious in kind of interpersonal relationships. That’s often where it shows up first, but it impacts our capacity for performance. It impacts how much energy we have, how much aliveness we feel. And my sense is that a lot of the problems that people are trying to solve in the world are downstream from nervous system dysregulation, you know, and how that impacts, um, organizations and companies that are created by humans with varying degrees of dysregulation in their system. And yeah, I think it’s a it’s an enormous challenge. And it’s part of why I care so much about this work.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:01] Yeah. So let’s just talk broadly about sort of like the three nervous system states. Walk me through these.

Jonny Miller: [00:05:09] Yeah. So this is drawing from Polyvagal theory. The idea is essentially this, the sympathetic nervous system, which many people are familiar with from like high school biology. This is like sense of alertness, activation, like energy. Let’s like go go go. And then there’s the parasympathetic system, which according to Polyvagal theory is split into two branches. There is the ventral and the dorsal. The the ventral is responsible for our kind of sense of like connection, social engagement. We feel grounded. We feel safe, we feel able to play, to create all that kind of stuff. And then what’s known as the dorsal is sort of in it’s kind of like low tone, healthy state as like deep rest digesting deep relaxation. But when it’s activated in it’s kind of reactive mode, it’s almost like an emergency handbrake. So to use the analogy of a car, the sympathetic is like the gas pedal like provides the energy. The ventral is like the foot brake. It’s got it’s a lot more myelinated, so there’s a lot more kind of control. And then the dorsal is like the handbrake which is like the emergency like the fuse blowing up in the system.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:18] So we’ve got these systems that basically run in the background all day, every day, and they influence the way that we experience our lives, but they also influence the internal states of our physiology, of our psychology. When you lay out those three different systems, it’s probably easy to say like, oh, that’s the one I want to be in. Like or like like if you could pick one of the three, you know, like to really spend most of your time in, which would it be? Does it work that way or is it really just that, like, these are all three critical systems in our body, and we move between them on a very fluid basis. It’s more about understanding each and how to meaningfully activate or deactivate or turn them up or turn them down.

Jonny Miller: [00:06:58] Yes. I think for me it’s like, is the response kind of appropriate to the situation? So for example, I mean, if like if I’m out surfing and a shark kind of comes after me, it would be very like appropriate and adaptive for me to get very activated and to swim to the shore as fast as I possibly can. But it’s less appropriate if I’m like having a conversation with my wife, and then I start to get very activated. So I think it’s about, um, is my nervous system response appropriate to the situation? And then the other kind of nuance here is that the ventral state is another way of saying it is like, ah, our nervous system capacity. So our capacity to stay present and grounded in the full spectrum of whatever’s going on. So, for example, you could be in a very high stakes. Maybe someone. I’m using surfing metaphors today because we’re by the sea. But let’s say you’re surfing a huge wave like you could be in that ventral mode, in that connected mode, and also in the sympathetic mode so they can be blended. The challenge is where when you lose contact with the ventral, that’s often where there’s the the some form of reactivity is present because you’re you’ve lost the ability to stay grounded and connected with your your internal state. A sense of somatic awareness, or interoception is the technical term. And being able to track and map like what do? What does it feel like in my body when I’m in this state of ventral connection? What does it feel like in my body when I’m activated or when I’m going towards dorsal? And that’s, I think, the first step towards being able to choose different paths.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:32] So you developed sort of like a really cool framework to help understand just the concept of nervous system mastery that I love, because you get shorthands as rise these four different elements, and I think it’s super helpful for us to maybe drop into that framework to really understand how to think about the bigger concept of nervous system mastery. You kind of already referenced a couple of them, but let’s actually walk through them one at a time, starting with R, which is the shorthand for reactivity.

Jonny Miller: [00:09:01] Yeah. Great. So the um, like you said, Rise stands for reactivity, I is interoception, S is self-regulation and E is emotional fluidity that we kind of already already touched on. And um, it’s the framework is rise out of reactivity. So the reactivity piece is tied to interoception. And it’s about exactly what we just talked about. So noticing in your body what are the so-called somatic markers which indicate that my nervous system might be trending towards some form of reactivity. And that’s either collapse or some sense of overwhelm or anxiety. And as you mentioned, it’s completely unique and different for everyone. And and often you’re kind of looking for something that’s like, like a 2 or 3 out of ten as opposed to like, because it’s very obvious when you’re like a 9 or 10 out of ten. And that’s kind of it’s not too late, but it’s like it’s not ideal. It’s much better to track, like for some people it might be a sense of like their toes curling or like heat in their chest. Or it might be like attention or like a knot in their stomach that they’re kind of tracking. It really takes a lot of practice to notice these things in real time. And often in the beginning, it’s only in hindsight that you’re like, oh yeah, like I was feeling X, Y, and Z. And then I shouted at my friend or whatever the scenario is.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:21] But if you can pick up on those markers before, like early on, if you can start to actually develop the skill of picking up on the markers when there are two or 3 or 4. Mhm. So big picture, something happens. You’re in a meeting, you’re in a conversation, you’re in a relationship. You’re in an environment where there’s some kind of stress that gets added to the system, or there’s something external that happens that in some way triggers an internal sense of reactivity, like your body starts to react to that thing. Your nervous system gets triggered in the different ways you would love your nervous system to be triggered in a different way, or to react, respond in a different way that actually allows you to be more present, more intentional, more connected, whatever is the better response. You sense this internally, right? That interoception that gives you then the ability to move into that’s part of the rise framework, which is basically self-regulation. And this is where we step into a mode of like, okay, so something just happened. Or maybe I’m in a sustained environment for weeks or months or years.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:25] Sadly, a lot of people are, especially in a work context where like it’s just constant low grade stress or lack of safety or, um, but you start to actually be able to tune into your body’s internal signals and realize something’s something. This is not okay. Like I’m not feeling okay. I’m not feeling the way that I want to feel. And it’s probably showing up externally in my situations, not being the way I want them to be. So then we drop into okay, so now self-regulation and then emotional fluidity as you describe the S and the E and the rise framework, let’s start to unpack what those things look like. Because I feel like this is a place where we start to step into a sense of agency. We’re not just noticing what’s happening. You know, now we’re saying, okay, so what can I do about this? Like, what can I actually do to start to once I catch myself in this space, to intervene in a way that makes me feel better internally, externally, and gives me more of a sense of power over what’s going on.

Jonny Miller: [00:12:24] Yeah. So this is this is the really, like, fun and practical aspect of what I teach. And, um, I think about there being three main buckets of self-regulation. So the first is top down. The second is bottom up. And the third is outside in. The top down bucket is a lot of what I think we see in mainstream through kind of CBT, things like cognitive reframes, things like positive affirmations, anything where you kind of change the story, you know, maybe you just say, I’m actually angry because I care so much about this thing, and you’re kind of reframing it around like why it’s important to you. And mindfulness as well is kind of like in this category. And these are all for sure helpful and effective. And the second bucket of bottom up I view particularly for people that are in activated states, I think the bottom up approaches, which is essentially means leveraging your physiology to change your state. Typically, breathing practices are like the very easy go to, but there’s also other you can even kind of play with your the focus of your eyes and your gaze to kind of create more relaxed states. And so that’s an area that just creates like very quick wins for people that typically when they get activated, they don’t have any sense of agency. Like they try and be mindful or listen to a meditation, but it just, you know, maybe makes it worse.

Jonny Miller: [00:13:42] And then the third bucket is outside in. And this is obvious in some ways, but it’s also, um, I think, one that people can have more agency than they think. So changing your environment. I have this idea that we create our environments and then our environments design us in return. So changing the type of stimulus that you’re around, changing the lights, going outside, taking a walk in nature. And then also critically, the people that you’re around like the co-regulation kind of being in the presence of someone else who has a, a grounded nervous system is actually one of the fastest ways to, to downshift that we have. Um, and so maybe it’s asking for support or asking for help in some way. Those are, broadly speaking, the three categories. And you can obviously combine them and stack them and experiment with them. And I think the way that I like to share these is to kind of treat yourself as like a scientist of your own experience and by playing with different combinations. So maybe it’s a box breathing or alternate nostril breathing or a vacuum, which which is also really effective. And then going for a walk in nature. And you can kind of combine these and see what is most effective again for your kind of individual system.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:55] So I want to drop into some of those specific techniques to, as you’re describing the last category, like what came to my mind, I remember a number of years back reading research on what was described as emotional contagion in the context of the idea of co-regulation. And the research was done in a work environment where, you know, a manager or a leader, a boss of a group of people was effectively taken into a separate room. And there were two different sort of contexts. One, they were shown pictures and videos of like, you know, like bunny rabbits and puppy dogs and things that would make them smile and put them just in like kind of like a really happy, upbeat mood. Then go back to the team or the group of people, and they weren’t told what to do or how to act and how to act and act differently. And the research showed that the team sort of like they caught that emotion from the leader. It rippled into the other people astonishingly quickly. Then they kind of did the opposite. They did the dark side version of that. Like they showed this person some pretty horrific images that put them in a very agitated and upset state.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:59] You know, send them back into the group. And what they found was that very quickly, that agitated, upset, you know, like sort of like annoyed or triggered state, um, infected the group at an astonishing speed. And I feel like that’s a lot of what we’re talking about here. When you talk about Co-regulation, it’s like we don’t realize that both the way that we show up in the presence of other people, even if we think we’re hiding it, even if we’re not really even if we’re not talking all that much. There are so many cuz there are so many. Just small towels that we bring to our interactions with other people. And the same thing like we are affected by all those same cues and towels by other people in a really profound way. And I think oftentimes we don’t realize how much that can either help us come back to the state that we want or send us spiraling out of it. Do you see that in a lot of the work that you do?

Jonny Miller: [00:16:50] 100%, yeah, I think I think I’ve seen that study as well. It was from I think at Wharton.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:54] And I think that’s right.

Jonny Miller: [00:16:55] The best metaphor that I’ve come up with is this idea that our nervous systems are almost like instruments, and that it’s our responsibility to keep our instruments in tune. And just as how if you if you kind of play a tuning fork, then another one in the same room of the same key will kind of resonate. And I think that we’re constantly resonating with the other, like human instruments in our vicinity. And they’ve even been studies around this applies to animals too. So like our HRV or heart rate variability will often sync up with pets with like dog owners. Also, when you’re if people are singing in the same environment, they’re again they’re kind of heart rate variability will sync up as well. Yeah, it’s fascinating to consider how we are almost like playing each other’s nervous systems. Like even right now we’re kind of like through through our voice, through eye contact, through things like that. We really are impacted by that other people around us. And we also have agency as well. And so like you said, in the example with leaders in particular, they have a greater or a disproportionate impact on the nervous systems of those people around them, which is why I think bringing this work to leadership in particular is is a very high leverage area.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:09] So for somebody who’s sort of like following along this conversation like, well, like I breathe like I would love to know how to breathe a little bit differently or try an exercise maybe at home that could help me go from this activated state to a much more calm and relaxed and grounded state. What’s a sort of like a good starting type of breathing exercise that somebody might think about exploring.

Jonny Miller: [00:18:29] Yeah. So one of my favorite ones is really simple. And there have been studies on this. It’s called the single breath hum. And essentially it’s an inhale through the nose. And then you hum all the way to the end of your exhale. And that humming releases nitric oxide in the system and is a surprisingly effective at downshifting. And you can even there’s a, there’s a version in yoga called breath where you can put your fingers over your eyes, your thumbs and your ears and your ring finger on the bridge of your nose, and it amplifies the sense of vibration in the sinus cavities. I’m sure you’ve done it in yoga before, and, you know, within maybe 3 to 4 of these, if you breathe all the way to the end of the exhale, it creates a profoundly relaxing effect. And then the other really simple one is, um, essentially any breath that has an extended exhale. So if the exhale is ideally twice as long as the inhale, that will have a relaxing effect. And there’s literally a part of the brain that is spying on the way that we’re breathing. And when the exhale is extended like this. So maybe it’s an inhale for four, a hold for four, and then exhale for eight. That then sends signals to the nervous system which then notices.

Jonny Miller: [00:19:36] It sends signals to the endocrine system and creates measurable changes in blood chemistry, which then makes its way back to the cross as the blood brain barrier. And we start to have calmer and more easeful thoughts. And this is almost like a kind of like a virtuous cycle. And, you know, the opposite is if we’re breathing in a kind of, um, in a shallow way, breathing in, in our upper chest, the inhale is more pronounced than the exhale that will be activating, and that will have the opposite effect of activating the sympathetic branch, which then also creates changes in the blood. Chemistry releases things like adrenaline, cortisol that then creates our mind in a more busy way, and we start to kind of tell a story or confabulate about why we’re feeling stressed. And that amplifies the breathing pattern. And so that’s how we can get caught in these like positive or negative spirals. And the breath is almost like the kind of like a remote control for how you’re feeling. And it’s remarkably effective. My favorite go to are the humming the 448. And then even just like a Andrew Huberman talks about the physiological sigh. So like a and just having like a.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:43] Like two short inhales in through the mouth.

Jonny Miller: [00:20:46] Yeah. Like a, like a full inhale through the nose and then like a little top up and then just like a ah sometimes like with an audible sigh as well. That’s also just a super effective way to, to downshift.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:58] Yeah. I mean, I have found that breathing for me, actually probably two of the fastest mechanisms for me to downshift my nervous system and just my overall state breathing is one for sure. The right kind of breathing where I’m really just, you know, for me it’s about doubling the exhales as you described. And it’s funny because for anyone who’s who’s taking a yoga class or studied yoga for any meaningful amount of time, you’ve probably heard this phrase pranayama. You know, and people translate that roughly to breathing exercises. This is the part where we do some kind of breathing exercise at the yoga teacher is bringing into the practice. Now. I’m like putting my hands on my face in some way or changing my breath. And yeah, but this is a thousands of year old practice. There’s a rich body of work around a variety of breathing exercises to both down regulate and up regulate. Like if you need the energy and you need to be activated or you need to come down really quickly. And I have found it works so astonishingly quickly for me. It is. It’s generally my go to like, this is the thing where if I’m I’m on a call, you know, and I feel like I’m getting activated or triggered, you know, this is the thing where immediately I just start to alter my breathing and people can’t really tell I’m doing anything, but I feel it very quickly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:07] Um, if we zoom the lens out, we’ve talked a lot about the nervous system, how it affects so many different aspects that are really important to us in life. How? When it’s well regulated, it can really allow us to drop into states that are healthy and fun and connecting and calming and grounding and what’s not. It can cause mayhem that shows up as symptoms in all different parts of our lives. And we talked about ways to actually alter our nervous system states. Zooming the lens out. Now, if somebody is sort of following on this conversation, they’re like, okay, this this all makes sense to me. I want to say yes to this and, and take a first step in what is sort of an easy first step into exploring these concepts for somebody.

Jonny Miller: [00:22:52] Yeah, I think simply taking a day and running an experiment of how is my nervous system throughout the course of one day, how does it change around certain people, around certain times of the day? And what are some of those kind of early warning somatic markers or signs for Reactivity and maybe taking one of the practices that we mentioned. Let’s say humming is a really simple one, and I find that people tend to really get it when they notice how they feel before, and then they take a moment to actually tune in and notice how they feel afterwards. And when people experience the difference, it’s like, oh, wow. Like it’s like it’s so simple. And the trick is, is really practicing that. And so then these practices become more available when we are approaching triggered states, or maybe we’re at work or maybe we’re in a less like mindful environment. Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:46] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Um, and it’s something that, you know, that’s accessible to anybody as sort of like the first way to start exploring these ideas. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Jonny Miller: [00:24:05] Ahhh. Yeah. I think for me it comes down to living intentionally and. Treating life as a like one big curriculum. And noticing the ways in which we contract or we don’t welcome our experience, and learning how to embrace and, uh, love all aspects of the human experience.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:40] Thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Next up we have Emiliya Zhivotovskaya. She is the CEO and founder of the Flourishing Center in New York City, based B Corp, dedicated to increasing flourishing worldwide. As the creator of the acclaimed Certification in Applied Positive Psychology and numerous other wellbeing initiatives, Emiliya brings both deep expertise and engaging energy to the signs of Thriving and with a master’s in Positive Psychology from UPenn. Current PhD work and mind body medicine and certifications ranging from coaching to yoga, she offers a unique blend of academic rigor and practical wisdom. In this spotlight conversation, we’re sharing our favorite tools that Emiliya originally shared on a previous episode titled 20 Tools to Tame Anxiety. From body-based techniques like Havening and Forward folds to mental strategies that help quiet racing thoughts. You’ll learn how to assess anxiety level and choose the most effective approach for any situation. You can explore the complete list of tools in the link in the show notes. Here’s Emiliya.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:49] So I wanted to talk to you because you have always been my go to person for getting out of your head and actually getting into skills and tools that make you feel better. And that’s kind of where I want to go in this conversation, but I think it might be helpful, just as an anchor for us to start out to just really talk about, just for a few minutes, this word anxiety. You know, like what? What it really is. And just on a on a basic level, what do people really need to know about it?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:26:15] Yeah. What I believe people need to know about anxiety is that it’s part of a spectrum of emotions that fall under the umbrella of being afraid. A very human, natural thing to feel fear if you believe that something bad might happen. And emotions, all of them fall on a spectrum. So when we’re talking about fear, we can say something on one end of the spectrum as little as, okay, I’m just concerned about what might happen, or I’m feeling a little apprehensive about the situation. To the complete other end of the spectrum, which is you’re not just feeling anxious, you might have a full blown panic attack. And what makes for the difference between where you fall on the spectrum is everything from the severity of the circumstance you’re facing, but it’s also something that is under our control. We can actually control where that pin is on the spectrum going from I’m just feeling a little worried or a little fearful to I’m full on debilitated by my fear. And so fear is human. It’s natural. And we want to be able to work with it. Because if you think about the increased experience of feeling fear, what that usually comes with is a desire to want to run away from the situation. And oftentimes the things that we’re worrying about are not things that are happening immediately in the moment we’re going into the future. It’s all of that.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:27:35] What if thinking. And what will happen? And when we’re living under tremendously uncertain times, we don’t have the capacity to project accurately into the future. And what we’re experiencing is people just being paralyzed by their fear. And so it’s important to know that worry, fear, anxiety is normal. It’s natural. It’s a part of your physiological response of trying to protect yourself. But emotions are meant to be signalers to us. They’re meant to make us pay attention to what’s going on in our environment. So anger is meant to signal to you that someone or something might be causing you harm. Fear is meant to signal something bad might happen. Sadness is meant to signal, hey, you’ve lost something that’s important to you. And when we don’t know how to work with those feelings, we feel like emotions just happen to us, where instead we can actually use emotions and actually dial them up or dial them down, depending on what we’re experiencing, depending on what’s needed in the moment and during times like this, what we need is for people to be able to access their creativity, their resourcefulness, and to problem solve. And when we’re feeling high levels of worry and anxiety, we actually want to do the opposite. We are frozen, we want to run away. And that’s the last thing that we want to have people doing during these uncertain times.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:57] Yeah. You mentioned, um, one of the things that makes us uniquely human is our capacity to choose our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors. It’s interesting that you have a frame for this that I had never heard before, about whether the appropriate response is to work with tools that involve the body versus the mind.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:29:16] Yeah. I come from a psychology background, and traditional psychology uses a lot of talking cognitive behavioral approaches. Look at the fact that our emotions are linked to our thoughts. And so traditional cognitive behavioral therapy calls it the ABC model that an activating event, which is the A causes a B, a belief or a thought to go through our mind, which leads to a C and how we feel. And so the model was if you want to change how you feel very often change how you’re thinking. So if I can catch myself worrying about the situation, I want to catch my worrying thoughts and then redirect my worrying thoughts to more useful thoughts. And that can work and can work well, but it can work in a slow manner. And at the same time that I was studying positive psychology, I was also studying yoga with you at Sonic Yoga, studying to be a yoga teacher, and also getting into the field of mind body medicine, where I was learning these body tools. And I very quickly recognized that while a cognitive approach to calm a person down can work, it often did not work when a person was in severe threat mode. It’s like a person’s having a panic attack and you’re trying to convince them, calm down, everything’s going to be okay.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:30:33] Well, if you’ve ever been highly worried, it’s very rare that someone’s words that everything is going to be okay, is actually going to make you feel better. What we want to do instead, I believe, is more effective, is during those high stress states, is to use the body. It’s the same thing we do with children and babies when they’re crying. This also ties into how our bodies are physically wired, so we have an emotional brain and a rational thinking brain. Our emotional brain is our core brain. It is the part of our brain that houses our limbic system and our amygdala. And the rational part of our brain, our human neocortex, is the logic, reasoning brain. And what happens when we’re in a state of stress is that our emotional brain kicks into gear, our pre-verbal brain kicks into gear. And the reason you don’t hold a crying infant in your hands out in front of you, and just talk to the infant and explain to them that it’s just a wet diaper and they’re going to be fed in just a few minutes and everything is fine. And instead you brace the baby onto your chest and you rock them and you soothe them with your body intuitively is we know that an infant has an underdeveloped neocortex, that you’re not going to rationalize and reason with the baby.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:31:49] You actually have to use the body to create the calm response. So I advise to people the importance of being able to take your emotional temperature. So the first step is becoming aware of I’m feeling something. I’m triggered. I’m upset. I’m worried. Whatever it is I’m experiencing. And then you name it. What am I experiencing and how strong is it on a scale of 0 to 10, where ten is a full on panic attack and one is I’m calm and relaxed. Where am I experiencing this? If the emotion is at a 4 or 5, it’s very likely that you can sit. You can write out your worries, you can rationalize and reason with yourself. But if you’re getting into the 6 or 7 or eights where your body is physically charged with so much stress, it’s hard to inhale, you’re kind of grasping for breath or your mind is racing. Your emotional brain has kicked into a physiological response that it’s hard to talk yourself out of, or reason with. Or if you’re around somebody else and somebody around you is panicking and their emotions are strong. You trying to reason with them while their emotional brain is kicked into gear is not going to work.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:59] So to recap, just because I want to make really crystal clear, sort of like this important threshold is if what you’re feeling the emotion is below a six, then we focus on walking through the mental sort of interventions. If it’s a six or above, then that requires something more immediate. And we want to probably focus more on the body oriented tools.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:33:28] Yep. Exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:30] Okay. Let’s walk through these. And I think because a lot of people are probably feeling right now that they’re in a state of six or above in terms of the level of fear or anxiety that may be feeling and looking for something more sort of immediate intervention. It’s kind of walk through these. Um, the first one is exercise. So why does exercise work on an anxiety level?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:33:54] The reason that exercise is so helpful is that we’ve been evolutionarily wired to experience stress and release a cascade of chemicals throughout our body. Cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline are just some of the few that we hear the most about. And the thing about stress is that so often when people are experiencing stress, they don’t know how to complete the stress cycle. So the normal cycle would be that you either see a stressful stimulus or in our case, because when we imagine something stressful happening in our brain, we know that the same very similar areas of the brain light up as if you were actually physically seeing something. So even if you’re imagining a stressful stimuli, your body will release these chemicals. And in the wild, we would use those chemicals up by running away or by fighting back. Yet instead, what often happens to us is that we end up sitting with these chemicals and in our body and we’re saturated with them. So one of the best ways to decrease our stress response is to actually sweat it out, and to force the body into needing oxygen to to carry these chemicals out of our body. One of the best, the most powerful ways that we detox our body is actually through our breathing, by our carbon dioxide. Carbon is a waste product in our body. And so we’re actually looking to move that waste out of our body. And when we exercise, we’re causing a need for our body to pull these things up and out of ourselves. And so using up those chemicals and completing the stress cycle is a simple thing that we can do. And tiring yourself out, tiring a weary mind is all related to the use of the body and using exercise.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:42] Yeah, I think I love that because I think a lot of us don’t really realize that a lot of the discomfort that we feel with anxiety is actually chemical. Um, is that, you know, there’s a there’s a mental trigger or a circumstance that changes our state that that floods our body with all these chemicals, that in a different circumstance would prepare us to act in a certain way. But they’re meant to be dissipated when they don’t stay with it, they don’t get dissipated. We feel physically terrible, but a part of that equation is chemical. And I love this idea that exercise can help effectively kind of like use up the chemistry that’s making us feel bad and get us back into a sort of like a reset, more centered, more neutral state. Second on your list of body tools is what you call self-soothing through touch one. Tell me about that.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:36:31] So touch is the most primitive way that we can create a sense of calm in the body. Safe, appropriate touch. Going back to the image I gave you before of picking up a infant that’s crying. And we swaddle babies when they are upset. We put them into a cocoon. We squeeze their body. And doing this uses our largest sense organ, which is our skin, to tell the body I am safe. Everything is okay. So if you can, in today’s day and age, get things like massage or use touch that comes from appropriate touch, let’s say within your family. Like this is a great time for people to be cuddling, to be physically close to one another. Some of the famous psychology studies on monkeys. When a monkey was given a cloth monkey that could give it soothing petting and touch, versus a monkey mom that was actually giving it food, the monkey would choose the cloth monkey because this was a source of of soothing for the body. And so anything that we can do to begin to get that touch in is going to be important. Massage offer to rub your partner’s feet. Wash your hands. Don’t put them in your eyes or in your nose or in your mouth. But if you are quarantined trying to find those opportunities with your family to say this is a really great time for us to cuddle if possible, make love things that we know are physiological needs that we have as humans. And if you are by yourself, you can use self-soothing as well. Which gets me to our third tool, which is a new psychosensory therapy that started a few years ago.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:13] Before we go there. Um, so if you’re in a scenario where even if you’re with other people, it makes sense from a safety standpoint, it’s it would not be appropriate to have other people touching you. Um, even if you’re in a, in a similar location with them or you’re just freaked out about it or you’re just concerned, you know, and are there ways to experience the sense of or the benefits of touch without it coming from other people?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:38:46] Yes. Self-massage and self-soothing touch, which we’ll talk about in our next skill, which is having to do with with Havening. So you can definitely do use imagination. You could kind of massage your, your own shoulders and imagine that it’s somebody else. But the great thing about the use of the body is obviously it’s always, uh, always better when someone else touches you. And the reason for that actually has to do with novelty and the element of surprise. There’s a reason you can’t tickle yourself. You can’t tickle yourself because you know your own motive. And so or when someone you can run your fingers through your own scalp and give yourself a scalp massage, and that feels really yummy and delicious. Always better when somebody else does it for you if they know how to scratch the spots appropriately. And that’s because there’s this element of surprise. However, self touch is another way that we can soothe the body. Right now, many people who struggle with getting into deeper stages of sleep are starting to turn to weighted blankets when they sleep at night, because it’s that compression into the body that creates that safety response.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:53] Mm, that’s so interesting. I wonder also about things like massagers, you know, whether it’s a massage chair or massage device or, you know, like the like we have like this ARM type of thing where you can sort of like do your own back and change the heads on it and things like that. You know, part of it, I think, is the surprise, but I guess part of it is also, um, sort of like related to the stimulation, which probably also, I would guess, changes your chemistry as well.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:40:17] Absolutely. As you’re breaking up that connective tissue and knots that you might have in your body or places of tension just in general, breaking up the connective tissue in your muscles will be calming. If there’s a body mind and mind body connection here, that if I told you to lift your shoulders up towards your ears and clench your jaw as tight as you can. Your brain chemicals are going to release a stress response because they’re saying, hey, we’re getting tense. It must mean we’re getting tense for a reason. There must be a stressful situation. Likewise, getting deeply relaxed, like taking a bath or being in a sensory deprivation tank tells our body, hey, we’re really calm and really heavy and really relaxed here. Something good must be happening that I feel safe to be able to relax. So when you’re actually utilizing any element of touch, whether we’re just using the sense organ for just relaxation and self-soothing of the body because we are physically being touched, or because you’re breaking up some of the tension places that you might have tension in your body, in your back or your hips or your neck or your jaw. That will help to create a relaxation response throughout the body.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:31] Got it. Okay. And that kind of leads into the third one here, which is something that is called havening, which I know I have heard you talk about and rave about for a couple of years now. What is this and how can it help?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:41:45] Havening is a psychosensory therapy that was created a couple of years ago by two doctors here in New York, and it came out of a curiosity that they had around things like EFT and eMDR, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, as well as strategies that we’re creating a sense of calm in the body and helping people move through traumatic experiences and memories that they were having. And they took what the science was showing about those modalities and added on the use of touch. And so Havening, when you go to see a havening practitioner, they’re looking at people who have amygdala based disorders, meaning experiences that have to do with the amygdala being triggered, whether it be a phobia or anxiety or panic attack, or just a traumatic experience or strong negative emotion, and a havening practitioner would work with you to use different tools to combine physical touch to unpair that that emotional response with the memory that you’re having. However, in these times, we can do a great deal with the use of self havening, because self havening is when you take the three different touch modalities that these researchers have identified, and you do it on yourself, and it is a form of self-soothing or petting of oneself that can create a tremendous amount of calm. And they’re very simple to do, because if you have permission to touch someone else, you can do this to them, or you can actually mirror it for them and have them do it to themselves. And so during these highly stressful times, I’ve been havening myself like crazy.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:43:24] I’ve been encouraging people to haven themselves, and the word havening comes from the word haven to create a safe haven. And so we use touch to downregulate the nervous system. And what the researchers identified is that when you literally pet yourself in a particular way, in a particular place, that soothing sensation begins to translate into a delta brainwave frequency, and that delta brainwave frequency is a slower brain wave frequency that tends to be associated with sleeping or getting into a more trance like state. And that’s very different than a beta brainwave frequency, which is what we tend to have when we are worrying or when we are when we’re stressing about something, especially a high beta brainwave. Frequency is what happens when we’re ruminating about something. So we use touch self touch in particular during self havening to create a calming response within the body. And then you can actually pair that self touch with a brain tricking activity. So I’ll go over the three different types of movements, and theirs will obviously make the resources available to listeners. But the three movements go stroking the side of your arms from your shoulder down to your elbow, so you’re crisscrossing your hands across your chest so that your right hand touches your left shoulder, left hand touches your right shoulder, and from your shoulders to your elbows, you’re just stroking downward. And then rather than rubbing back up, you just lift up your hands and stroke downward again.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:57] And we’ll be right back. After a word from our sponsors. Next up you talk about something called butterfly taps or crisscross hands. What is this?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:45:06] So these are some of the other physical exercises that we could do. And when you’re crossing the midline of the body, you’re activating the left and right hemispheres of your brain. And so very similar to the evening where you’re criss crossing your arms across your body. Here, you’re criss crossing your arms across your body, and you just start to tap one hand and then another. So it’s like you’re flapping one butterfly wing after another. And we’ll give a little video linking to this. But this is again another simple exercises. This simple exercise that you could do to start getting the brain out of this worried state. A lot of what we’re doing is we’re using the body to trick the brain into a more calm place.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:47] Got it. Um, and thank you. Awesome. So we got a video resource for that. This next thing is something that I’ve heard that has become so popular. Really, I feel like over the last five, five years or so, this thing. And people call it different things, right? Some people call it tapping, some people call it, uh, EFT. I can’t remember what that stands for. Tell me what this is and and what the idea is behind it and how it might help with anxiety.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:46:12] Yeah. Eft stands for Emotional Freedom Technique, and it’s often referred to as tapping. And you’re basically tapping different points on the body while repeating certain affirmations. And this is something that I think has become so popular because so many people can instantaneously notice the benefits of it. It’s something that has had quite a bit of research behind it, but it’s also very hard to research because you can’t separate out, uh, it’s hard to run a placebo of it, even if you’re having other than having people tap random points, which has also been shown to be somewhat effective. But it is a set of exercises that you do tapping in a particular, uh, order of points while also repeating affirmations. Now, half of the benefit of EFT and other exercises like these body exercises that we’re giving you is actually remembering to do it. So if you can catch yourself in the heat of the moment and actually get yourself to say, let me use one of the techniques that I have learned on this podcast and put it into action. That already is putting you ahead of the curve, because so much of our tools for how to overcome worry have to do, and anxiety have to do with interrupting.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:47:29] The response of something stressful triggers me and my body is releasing this. So anytime we start to redirect ourselves to a new behavior, whether it be tapping, whether it be a butterfly stroke, whether it be soothing and stroking the side of your arms, sometimes you could even do something as silly as do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. If that’s an exercise that you have associated with something that might make you laugh and actually interrupt the pattern, you’re going to begin to see benefit. These tapping places are actually tied to meridians, which are known within eastern medicine as points of energy that we can stimulate within our body. And when you’re repeating these affirmations along with the tapping movements, essentially you’re tricking your brain into a new pattern. And after just a few rounds of this, you’re going to experience benefit. And some people would argue that it doesn’t matter what you do for a certain number of rounds, if you if you sing something like a song for 3 or 4 rounds, you might find that you actually feel somewhat better as well. And that’s because you’re using your body to actually shift your physiology.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:37] Yeah, I love that. And I confess to being somewhat of a skeptic of this modality for a while. Um, I’m friendly with some of the people who really popularized it, and I was always questioning them. I was kind of like, really? Does this really do anything? And I have experienced this benefit, and I know so many people now that have gone into it, skeptics. It’s not the type of thing where you, you know, it only works if you believe it. You just do it. And it actually makes can make make meaningful change. And there’s no downside in giving it a shot. So why not. And it tends to. What I love is that it tends to and I guess a lot of these things too. There are things that tend to change your state fairly rapidly. Okay. So for number six. You talk about something called forward folds, and which is fascinating because, as you know, we both have a history in the world of yoga as practitioners and as longtime teachers. And there’s a whole category of postures or asanas that were sort of generally known as forward fold or forward folding. And as a teacher, you would come to learn very quickly. This had a very identifiable and repeatable physiological and psychological response. So tell me more about what this is what you mean by that and and how it works in the context of what we’re talking about.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:49:55] Yeah. So all the things that we’re talking about that relate to our body tools is using our body to down regulate our nervous system so we can calm the anxiety, calm the worry response of the body when we do a forward fold, whether it be me inviting you to stand up, put a slight bend in your knees and then bend yourself over your hips to try to touch the floor. You would be folding your body in half in a forward fold. Or let’s say I invited you to take what we would call a child’s pose, where I would have you kneel on the floor and extend your hands out in front of you and allow your body to fold onto your thighs, letting your forehead touch the floor or a pillow or a blanket. What happens when we fold our body is one. It gets you activating your vagus nerve, which comes through the whole front of your body, and very often it brings more of your body lower than your heart, and so your heart does not need to work as hard in order to pump blood into your body. If I wanted to get your body stimulated or excited or upregulated, if I wanted your heartbeat to start going faster, the simplest way for me to tell you to do that is, I would say, lift your arms up over your head and leave them there with your arms up, straight up over your head. Your heart is going to speed up just because it has to work harder to pump blood up.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:51:19] If you bring your arms down and you fold your body forward, your heart rate actually slows down because it doesn’t have to work as hard to keep your muscles, uh, receiving the blood flow. So when we fold forward, it starts to stimulate the parasympathetic response, the relaxation response in the body. So a very simple, calming routine for yourself. A really great one to do at night before you’re about to fall asleep is to spend a little bit of time, sit down on the floor, extend your legs and take a gentle forward fold over your legs, or take a child’s pose. Or if in the middle of the day you need to take a break or you’re feeling stressed out. You can even sit and then put your hands on your desk and fold forward, resting your head onto your hands or from a chair you can actually fold forward by spreading your legs just a little bit, so there’s room for your body to fold in between your legs and let your body just sort of hang down. You also will get some bonuses in here, such a little, such as a little bit of traction to your spine and to relax your shoulders and your neck. If you’ve been typing for a long time, or sitting at the computer for a long time. But this is a very simple way to kick up that relaxation response by moving your whole body into a specific position.

Jonathan Fields: [00:52:39] To be able to feel my body kind of reset if I’m stressed out or anxious or whatever it may be, in a matter of a minute or two or a couple of minutes. You know, it’s a really powerful it’s a really powerful skill to be able to have. It’s kind of like something to to know that you have that available to yourself, no matter what your circumstances are. I think for all of these tools is just really powerful, and especially the idea of being able to to work with them and potentially combine them and see sort of like, what are the tools that work best for me at any given moment in time? What are the ones that work best together, what’s most accessible to me at any given moment in time? What can I do most easily myself versus through someone else? Super helpful. Okay, so that wraps up our ten body oriented tools to help you move through work through anxiety. And they can be used individually. Um, intertwined, engaged, compounded whatever really works for you. But as Emiliya shared with us earlier on, there’s this threshold where when the emotion actually is, um, what you described as sort of a five or below that, sometimes there’s a different type of tool that can be sort of like more of your go to. And she calls those mental tools. And just like we had ten body tools to share with you, Emiliya is a huge fan of Under-delivering. I actually had to call a much bigger list down to ten tools so that we didn’t have a six hour podcast today. Um, but we want to share ten mental tools with you to kind of, um, to tap and get you to a similar place, but differently. And again, these are tools that may also be used in combination with some of the tools that we talked about above. Before we jump into the ten different tools, Emiliya, is there anything else that you feel is sort of important in the setup for this?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:54:32] We want to continuously cultivate the checking in with yourself and checking in with your body. So that is how you’re going to know. Am I in a place where I can just talk back to my thoughts the way we’re going to talk about it now, or do I need something different? And so the more times we’re checking in with ourselves throughout the throughout the day, where am I at? What do I need? Where am I at? What do I need? The better? And that will be a good way to tell which tool you’re going to draw on from your toolkit.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:59] Love that. You know, it’s kind of funny, as you were mentioning, that I was thinking about how some people set their devices or their wearables, um, you know, to kind of like vibrate or have a little, some sort of little alarm or some sort of buzz to remind them to get up and move their body. So they’re not just sort of like sitting all day, every day, nonstop. I almost wonder if you could do that to a certain extent during this window. Um, with with that check in that you just were mentioning, do you feel like that would be useful, or would that start to get to a level where it would actually be too much?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:55:30] No, I think that would be tremendously useful. And in fact, that brings us to our first mental tool, which I call catch the chatter. You have to catch the chatter in order to know what you’re working with. So the same way I wouldn’t feel comfortable. Let’s say something was wrong with my computer taking out a screwdriver and trying to take my computer apart and trying to fix it because I have absolutely no clue what the parts are all about or what I’m actually taking apart. I’m not going to go dive in and work with what’s broken in my computer. I can’t work with my thoughts if I don’t have the capacity to catch my thoughts. So catching the chatter has to do with being able to pause and ask yourself, what am I thinking about? Or what was I just thinking about? Some of us are very aware of our thoughts and you can use the image of a radio dial. Sometimes you have to dial up the volume in order to hear what’s actually happening in there. For some people, they’re so aware of their thoughts, it’s actually going to be a matter of quieting it down. And when we talk about putting systems in place to help you catch the chatter, you can begin to work with both. So one way to do this is absolutely to set what we would call in psychology a primer, which is something outside of yourself that’s going to remind you to pause and to actually stop and notice.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:56:46] What was I thinking about, which could be a smart device or a wearable that gives you a prompt. It could be a post-it that you put on your computer. It could be every time you walk into a door, you ask yourself, okay, what am I thinking about in this moment? And when you write down the thoughts, what happens is it can really quiet down the chatter. Oftentimes, the things that go through our mind feel like they’re overwhelming and it feels like it’s just so much. Some people might relate to this experience where you feel like you’ve got so much to do on your to do list, and the ideas are just overwhelming you. And then you sit down and you actually write your list down, and then you write the list down and realize that it’s got to be more than this because it seemed so much more overwhelming. But once it’s written down, it doesn’t seem so big. And that’s because when the thoughts are just in our mind, they’re constantly, oftentimes looping. And it’s not that we’re just thinking lots of different things throughout the day. You tend to find trends. So catching the chatter, writing it down, becoming aware of your mind is going to facilitate the remaining nine mental tools that we’re going to be offering you. And it’s really the doorway in to start to work with repair, upgrade, rewire your thinking.

Jonathan Fields: [00:58:08] So let’s move on to mental tool number two. And that is um, talk back to the thoughts. So we’ve identified some thoughts now. And you’re saying let’s start a conversation.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:58:21] Yes. Let’s start a conversation. The simplest reframe or conversation that we can have is to separate you from the part of you that is thinking. So often we have this thought that might be, I’m angry or I’m scared or I’m frustrated. And in order to actually work with our thoughts, we have to separate ourselves from the thoughts and the feelings that we’re having. So the simplest reframe, and anytime we start to reframe, we are redirecting our brain. Whether we are redirecting our brain because we feel ourselves getting stressed out. And you use a physical tool that I gave you before, or you’re finding yourself herself chattering and you’re going, okay, I got to use one of my tools. Your pattern interrupting. So the simplest one is catching yourself saying, I’m scared. I’m overwhelmed. And you say a part of me is blank. A part of me is scared, or I am feeling scared as opposed to I am these things. When you are it, when you are insecure, how do you change that? When you are overwhelmed, it feels harder to change. So we can start to get ourselves into this habit. And a lot of it has to do with our English language.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [00:59:35] If you think about, for example, in Spanish, if you were to say, I’m hungry, they use the word tengo hambre, which means I have hunger. It’s very different to say I have hunger versus I am hunger. So we are conditioned through our language oftentimes to receive our emotions and our thoughts as things that are a part of ourselves which make it feel harder to change. But if we can start to do this very simple catch and redirect, then we start to gain control over our thoughts. And this is a simplified version of what’s used by cognitive behavioral therapist, which is we’re separating out the trigger. The thing that’s happening, what we would call the facts or an A, an adversity from the B beliefs we’re having about the situation from the C the consequence, which is how it makes us feel. And so what we’re going to start to create the separation from here’s what’s happening, here’s what thoughts I am having. And these thoughts are not me. These feelings are not me. They’re experiences that I, as a human being, am having. And when I can create that initial separation, then I’m able to actually work with these things.

Jonathan Fields: [01:00:51] Yeah, I love that because it takes it from being an identity level thing, which We, you know, often have really sort of it’s a brutal challenge to try and change that, because if it’s a part of our identity, that’s a really big shift to make to a feeling thing, which is, you know, it’s it is something that I, it’s not sort of a core part of who I am and my identity, but it’s something that I’m experiencing. And, and that shift is really powerful because it makes it so much more changeable or sort of like subject to change, which I really love. Yeah. Love it. So this has been incredible. I have learned so much. I hope you listening have found this useful. Emiliya. Any sort of parting thoughts before we bring this all the way home?

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya: [01:01:32] Just that we or I, I’ll speak on behalf of myself. Am sending you all so much love and so much self-care and self-compassion and patience during this time, and to reach out if you need support. And I’m happy to connect with anyone that has any questions about these tools, or if I can be a resource in any way, just know that I’m here. I’m grounded, staying grounded and happy to be of service to the people or organizations out there that are needing to be resilient during this time.

Jonathan Fields: [01:02:04] Yeah. Thank you so much. This has been incredible. As I’ve mentioned before, be sure to check the show notes. There will be a link either to a document or a page somewhere that has full listings of all the the 20 different tools and skills and resources so that you can review them. Start to figure out what you might want to start to work with or explore, and also learn more about the different things. So excited to be able to share this with you. Thanks everybody.

Jonathan Fields: [01:02:33] And that is our episode today. Huge thanks to Jonny Miller and Emiliya Zhivotovskaya for sharing their transformative insights into nervous system regulation and resilience. Their wisdom about moving from stress to stability is something we can all benefit from. And if you love this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today’s guests. You can find a link to each of those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by, Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor and share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.