The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Mindfulness and stress management for families raising kids with big goals, big feelings, and everything in between.
Hosted by mindfulness coach Lindsay Miller, The Stress Nanny is full of practical strategies for calming anxious kids, supporting high-achievers, and teaching emotional regulation in everyday moments. Each episode offers easy-to-use mindfulness practices, stress management tips, and confidence-building tools that empower kids (and parents!) to navigate challenges with ease. Whether you’re raising a child who struggles with big feelings, a high-performing student-athlete, or simply want a calmer home, The Stress Nanny will give you the resources and encouragement you need.
The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Ep 181 How Simple Movement Tricks Your Brain Into Feeling Happy Again
Kelly Hale, a 25-year veteran occupational therapist and nervous system regulation specialist, shares powerful yet simple movement techniques to help families shift from survival mode to a state of regulated calm. Through her Gutsy Brain Movement methodology, she combines developmental movements, nervous system regulation, and gut health practices to help people reconnect with their bodies and tap into their natural resilience.
• Finding calm through movement when traditional meditation fails
• Creating a personal regulation practice in just 3 minutes per day
• Using the "walking the midline" technique to quickly ground yourself
• Practicing "balance buttons" to manage multiple roles with more ease
• Learning the powerful fear paralysis tapping sequence for anxiety
• Understanding how the vagus nerve connects brain function to gut health
• Implementing the MORO reflex exercise for better breathing and reduced stress
• Using co-regulation to help calm children by regulating yourself first
• Adapting nervous system techniques for teenagers and grandchildren
• Integrating regulation practices before other movement activities
Access Kelly's free "Inner Peace" resource with three short videos for nervous system relief at www.inspiredwell.com/innerpeace. Find Kelly on Instagram @inspired2wellness or in her Facebook community "Nervous System Regulation with Kelly."
Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.
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You're listening to the Stress Nanny Podcast and I'm your host, lindsay Miller. I'm here to help you keep an eye on your family's stress levels. In our fast-paced lives, the ability to manage stress has never been more important for kids or adults. When it comes to stress, we have two choices we can decrease stress or increase our resilience to it. Here on the number eight ranked stress podcast, I interview experts and share insights to help you do both. When you tune in each week, you'll bring your stress levels down and your resilience up, so that stress doesn't get in the way of you living your best life. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the Stress Nanny Podcast. I'm your host, lindsay Miller, and I'm delighted to have you joining me today for my conversation with Kelly Hale.
Speaker 1:She's affectionately known as Kelly Kale due to her love of growing and eating veggies. She's spent over 25 years as an occupational therapist, movement specialist and nervous system regulation practitioner. Therapist, movement specialist and nervous system regulation practitioner. Helping people move from fight flight freeze to ease. With expertise in Pilates, brain gym and craniosacral therapy, she empowers people to reconnect with their bodies, tap into resilience and find healing through movement. She's also a former meditation dropout. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't quiet her racing mind or sit still Hello ADHD. So instead of forcing what didn't work, she met herself where she was in movement. When she couldn't find exactly what she needed, she created it. That's how Gutsy Brain Movement was born. It's a blend of nervous system regulation, corrective exercise and developmental movements, combined with gut health and emotional well-being, to help people feel strong, safe and at home in their own bodies.
Speaker 1:Kelly's work is deeply personal as well as professional. Her own journey through chronic health challenges, celiac disease and fertility struggles reinforced what she now teaches. When we support the gut and regulate the nervous system, true healing becomes possible, and y'all know I believe in that. She's also a passionate advocate for emotional well-being, helping people process and move through the patterns that keep them feeling stuck. When she's not creating inspiring content and loving up on the amazing people in her membership, kelly loves spending time with her husband and teen daughter in Metro Detroit, dancing, hiking and caring for her ever-growing collection of houseplants, which we can see on the wall behind her, and walking her two rescue hounds, including Snoopy, who happily snores through sessions at her practice, modeling the nervous system regulation that she teaches. Kelly, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, lindsay. I love what you're doing and how you're serving people and I've been meaning to tell you I love the name of your work the Stress Nanny. I worked years ago, when I was in college, as a nanny and that's a huge role and such a caretaker for this young, developing person. I feel like everyone should have a stress nanny, because you can't live life without coming into some stress right Unless you're hiding in a hole and I feel like we all need that loving, supportive, nurturing stress nanny to support us through life. So thank you for doing what you do.
Speaker 1:That's so sweet of you. Thank you, that means a lot. I also agree I think we could all use a stress nanny and I think that having also nannied, you know, during college, so I had a similar experience. There are so many, you know, things that go into the day-to-day care of life and children right, and so if we can have that same kind of care for ourselves when it comes to our stress levels, that just the sky's the limit in terms of kind of what we can navigate and what we can work toward.
Speaker 1:And so I love the idea of having a generation of kids growing up who know how to regulate stress and optimize it, so that they can, you know, move through whatever, whatever hurdles come their way and gracefully create the futures that they want.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, I love it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm super excited too. You know, as we talked about a little before we started, you and I have so much in common and I am enamored with the way you have synthesized so many of these pieces that are crucial for well-being, right, and managing stress, to be frank, right. But, like, let me just like, let's give our listeners a small little intro into how you did this, because you don't just accidentally tether these like powerhouse tools together.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for acknowledging that. It really was a labor of love over many years, many decades of synthesizing. I always say I take creative license and I'm not a purist, I'm not a Pilates purist, I'm not a brain gym purist. I bring them together. And you know, I started out as an OT in a traditional healthcare setting and very quickly I had 20 minutes to serve the person in front of me and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't provide the kind of care I would want for anyone in my family. So after only three years of the traditional realm of healthcare, I was brave enough, or stupid enough, in my 20s to open my own practice a multidisciplinary, the first in our area with rehab and Pilates, and I was so excited I had an hour with everyone. Oh my goodness, this is what I longed for.
Speaker 2:But a few years later people were more and more distracted because phones and texting and everything coming at them all the time that I was thinking, oh my gosh, it's taking me at least half, if not more, of the session to get people back into their body. They were so operating from the head up, they were not embodied, and so we'd have to take part of the session to really get them back into their body. And I would notice, oh my goodness, these people are living life in survival mode. And I wasn't judging it, I was noticing it and trying to figure out how to help them. And so that made me want to study things, go back to the roots of my occupational therapy training and really look at developmental movements, because we move through them, hopefully in healthy ways, early in life, but then life stress, trauma, illness, car accidents trip it up. We need to go back and nurture those early developmental patterns.
Speaker 2:And then I also, as a young, 20-something, naive business owner who was also struggling with fertility, I was trying to find a way out of survival mode myself. But, as you mentioned, I struggled. I became a meditation dropout. Fast forward, spoiler alert I can now sit in meditation because I've learned how to work with my nervous system through movement first.
Speaker 2:But I just kept studying and I felt like I wanted a form of a moving meditation that could help me find the calm, help me stay grounded and focused. But really there was nothing out there. Again, I had studied Pilates in depth, but I wasn't getting that feeling the calm, and I found out why we needed to bring in some of the developmental sequences into the Pilates realm. But I figured I can't find this, I'm going to have to create it. I'm a creative person, so I kept studying and kept tinkering and bringing it together and I'd bring back bits to the people I serve and also practice what I promote, and I'd see these changes and then I would say I want more, and so of course I'd go and study more. I mean, I'm always taking courses and studying because there's more to learn and so I really had to create what I knew the people I have the honor of serving needed and what I myself needed, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so powerful. That approach right, and I can relate on different levels to what you're saying, because I think it's like when you've navigated a stretch of time without the resources and then you access them. There's such a stark contrast, right In your level of care for yourself, in your ability to move through life, that you're like everyone needs these, and your own experience, blended with the knowledge that you acquire, just is such fertile ground for growth that other people can access. They can come in and be like, oh my gosh, I need this, I need this, I need this, and you can kind of just spread out the tools in front of them and be like, okay, let's let you access what you need in order to grow, in order what you know, what you need in order to move through this difficulty that you're facing. So I love, I love that. I love that you have again each like component of your work so beautifully, beautifully tethered.
Speaker 2:Thank you. They really do compliment one another and what you just said is so important about people coming in and saying I need this and I need this. And sometimes they have awareness and they'll say well, I know, I'm just feeling ungrounded or untethered or I'm feeling very anxious or I'm struggling with sleep. But a lot of times they don't know what they don't know because their nervous system is a new concept to them and emotional regulation is a new concept to them. So I will do testing.
Speaker 2:I'll do muscle testing and see which of the major survival reflexes are needing nourishment and support. Or I'll watch the way they move or the way they breathe and I can see. I can really zoom in. So a lot of times people will refer to me and their doctor will say you know she's working on nervous system regulation as well as joint stability. I can't quite explain it, but she'll zoom into what you need. And that's where I'm really grateful that people trust me to say I'm not feeling like myself, I'm struggling. Or a mental health therapist will say this person's been dealing with depression, we're doing the cognitive behavioral therapy or different types of mental health therapies, but they need that embodiment. So I love the collaborative effort, both with the client I serve and the other professionals that I have the honor of collaborating with. It's really great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Again the idea of synthesis right Like a holistic approach to wellness wellness I. It reminds me of a time I was in graduate school for a while because I thought I wanted to do like therapy, be a marriage and family therapist, and so I was in a counseling program and I, we were in a circle and we were talking about. I can't even remember the tool, but the. The memory of it is just like so poignant in my mind because I was standing there and I wanted to move right.
Speaker 1:Like we're talking about these big emotions and I was just like why are we not moving? Like why? Are we not moving our body right now and it was.
Speaker 1:It was such an interesting insight. You know, like, I had a strong yoga practice at the time and had navigated a stretch of, like, chronic health struggle that I, you know I'd come through, and I remember thinking like, like, harnessing the power of presence in your body is something that we, frankly, can't do without. Right Like that, that wisdom that comes from being in embodied is something that, like, is crucial for life, and so what I love, too, is that, in these different settings, you know you weren't willing to relinquish that wisdom. Right, you're like, no, no, no, we will not be moving forward without the wisdom of your body and I'm going to help you figure out how to access it if you're not familiar but, like, we will not be moving forward from this without this beautiful vehicle you've got, and so, yeah, just the power that that offers your clients, right as they're making their journey forward more holistically.
Speaker 2:Just yeah, I'm sure the stories are incredible they are and I love the wisdom you just shared, having that moment where you felt the urge to move, because movement truly does heal and certain movements and this is where I movements, homologous movements, and you're not coming back to a cross-body oppositional movement or contralateral movement.
Speaker 2:You're going to leave that person sort of swimming in the tough emotions, the old triggers. So we definitely need to move and move through the old trauma, whether it's big T or little t, but we always want to make sure we come back to an integrative opportunity for oppositional and so I love that. You sensed in a deep, wise way the need for movement and I know when I was first working as a Pilates practitioner, I didn't always end with the cross body and I'm thinking, gosh, they're not as relaxed or grounded. And then I realized, oh, because we need to end with these movements and I love helping other movement practitioners discover it's just simple patterning that honors natural early development, that makes a huge difference in how whether it's yoga or Pilates or any other therapeutic movement how it can truly impact us on a deep level, not just us but our families and our communities, because when we're integrated, everybody benefits.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, oh, I love that so much. Well, and let's okay, let's talk about this from the perspective of a mom, right?
Speaker 1:So like we, you know a lot of the listeners of this show have kids at home. It's tricky to balance the schedules and all the things and just you know the work that comes with caring for your own self. So I do have, you know, in my circle we've got women who are navigating their own, you know gut challenges while trying to help kids navigate gut challenges, or they're watching their kid and seeing you know all these different struggles and feel like, hey, I think this has a nervous system component. I'm trying to piece, piece it together. Like how talk to me first about like how can moms in that place use nervous system regulation to just feel grounded and steady in themselves so they can address you know, just even start to kind of address what's in front of them?
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that idea because, first of all, bravo to these moms, knowing that they need support, being grounded, right Now more than ever. And then I love that nervous system regulation is becoming more of kind of a household conversation. You know, 20 years. I would talk years ago, I would talk about nervous system and emotional regulation and people were like what, what are you talking about? And now there's this awareness. So I think the first thing that a mom wants to think about is how can we bring the calm to us? We may have kids that are melting down and I'll talk about the gut piece too but the first thing I want to do is help these amazing moms support themselves and then, of course, their children too.
Speaker 2:And getting out of survival mode. You know that overwhelm, that feeling of being scattered, not able to concentrate. And, let's get to it, a lot of women, when they're in their prime momming years, they're also experiencing hormonal shifts, whether it's postnatally, perimenopausal, postmenopausalal. So that's another component. But getting grounded, and the easiest way to do that is to come to your midline, and so mom can just take a hand and put it at the top of her trunk body, right where her collarbone and breastbone comes together and then put the other hand underneath it and just press a little bit. Get that tactile input. Then take the top hand and put it underneath the second hand and just again press a little bit. Get that tactile input. Then take the top hand and put it underneath the second hand and just again press a little bit. We're going right down the middle. We're going to keep going, just pressing for a couple of seconds and it gets mom, and you'll go all the way down to the end, right above the cubic bone. It gets mom back in her body, it gets her grounded, it gets her feeling, a felt sense again, because sometimes we're all out there trying to logistically manage oh my gosh, I have to get this kid out here or this one there and I have this work deadline due and whatever it might be, all the load right, the mental load and physical load and so just kind of touching yourself and going oh yes, I'm here now, in this moment, and there's a lot of exercises. I teach that. Bring us back to the midline. When you do that, make sure that you keep your feet grounded, like if you're seated and your feet are dangling. Try to get those feet down on a surface, because we want that grounded sense.
Speaker 2:Another thing I share with a lot of moms and I do this myself quite often first thing in the morning. My husband describes it as often. We feel shot out of a cannon first thing in the morning. That's why I do a lot of prep my daughter's lunch, what have you the night before because I don't like that feeling of rushing in the morning and I need to take a few moments two to three minutes, for my own nervous system regulation practices. But one of the best things I can do is, if she's not getting up, to attend to a crying child, of course, but swing your feet around, sit at the edge of your bed, get your feet grounded, put one hand over your belly button, just gently place your hand over your belly button, take the other hand, put the two fingers behind your ear, back there. These are called balance buttons from the brain gym body of work and they're yes, they're going to help with balance so we don't fall over, kind of balance.
Speaker 2:But it's really also about balancing all the roles we want to juggle. You know, a lot of us moms are multi-passionate. We are passionate about being involved in our kids' activities and our communities. Perhaps a career. In addition to that, we might be the sandwich generation, helping care for aging parents and also our children.
Speaker 2:So, putting the feet on the ground and just setting up an intention in the morning, with a hand on the belly button, the other hand two fingers behind the ear that I will move through my day from a place of balance and and then of course, you could do the other side, but maybe you're short on time so you don't get to do the other side, and that's okay. And then sometime during the day, see if you can do that again, like I like to do it after lunch, so that I feel balanced. And I like to do it when I transition from my role in my practice as a practitioner to the role of Uber mom, because my daughter's not driving quite yet, so I have to transition. I want to make sure that I'm kind of putting myself in that place where I'm ready to be a present, and of course it ain't talking, it's more about listening than talking.
Speaker 2:But I'll do my balance buttons and I even have a video that I could share with your audience where I go through some of these tips, like walking the midline that I do in my car. I have something I love to share, called mama in a minivan, because I'm running around in my minivan and how can I get? While I'm waiting for my daughter? I've got three minutes before she comes out. What can I do for my nervous system and I really think that's important for moms and dads that are looking to regulate nervous system-wise and emotionally, because we don't have time for a 30-minute program. So, honestly, some days it's three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the afternoon, and I'm going to be moving through my day from a place of awareness, groundedness, centeredness and much more peacefully productive instead of that chaotic, overwhelmed productivity right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, and I think again, like us, just tuning into what it means to be in parasympathetic dominance right is what we're aiming for, which is that relaxed and ready state where we can be flexible, we can adapt, we can move with whatever comes to us, instead of feeling frantic and frazzled. I think sometimes, like you're saying, when we're in a sympathetic response all the time, we don't even know that that's possible to be otherwise right. Yes, oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:I lived a lot of my life there, decades. That's how I was, decades Exactly, thank you. I was an overachiever, classic overachiever, perfectionist. I didn't know it could be any different until I started really practicing this work and I was like, oh my gosh, I can be peacefully productive and be proactive instead of reactive distress coming at me. And it's such a game changer. That's why I want it for everyone, because life is so different when you can live in this place. And it doesn't require fancy equipment. Sure, I've got the great Pilates apparatus, but to get into a state of regulation and groundedness and being centered and peaceful, you just need the tools you have within. I actually have a program called Within, because it's all about the tools you have to work with your nervous system instead of against it.
Speaker 1:I love that, and the other thing that I think is important to sit with is the recognition that, like co-regulation, is such a powerful way to show up right.
Speaker 2:Like if we are able to.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes as moms, I think we're like I don't even have three minutes, this kid needs this, or I need to go do this, or I've got so much to do today. And we, we sometimes don't harness the power of our ability to co regulate, like our children or different situations, and just like co regulation being the I know, you know, but like the opportunity to like, utilize your nervous system balance to perpetuate a state of calm around you and let other people calibrate off of your nervous system, oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yes, can I share a story? Yeah, please, sorry, I so resonate with what you're saying about people will come in and say I don't have the time. I've got this toddler. I can't turn my back for a moment. So I'll share a personal story and then also some a quick professional one.
Speaker 2:But when my daughter was two and a half three, she at bedtime you know how they get that second wind and her energy and she was curious and precocious, which I love. But my husband and I were like we are exhausted and we're trying to get her to bed, so we would lie on the floor. We'd shut the door so she couldn't get towards the stairs, but we would lie on the floor and go into another range and move, called a hookup, where you cross your ankles and you bring your arms in front like you're going to clap. But miss interlace, come together. Here we are at the midline right, and so we would just lie on the floor in this position and you could even just cross your forearms and have your hands touch the opposite upper arm if that's not comfortable the other way. And so we would just lie on the floor like that and she would be running around kinetically. We would just be on the floor trying to make sure we were both there, that someone didn't fall asleep, right, because we're exhausted and spent, and over time she could feel that we were just really down, regulating and coming into this relaxed position, and then she would climb on us and lay on us, and then she'd lay between us and it just brought that energy exactly what you said so beautifully, lindsay. It brought us to that state of co-regulation so then we could get to the energy of being in that state of ease right Now. That's one example.
Speaker 2:And then I have clients that work with right Now, that's one example. And then I have clients that work with their children are, let's say, eight, nine, 10, right, and so their kids need the co-regulation. And so she would do some of these things before school or before. You know. We could say it's about school, because Brain Gym was originally started to help with learning differences and help optimize our learning that we all innately are so capable of. But a lot of times for young people we'll make it about their favorite thing, whether it's playing an instrument or playing soccer or what have you. So mom will say, oh, I want to do this move with you because it's going to make that soccer game at lunch or before and after school activity. It's going to make that violin practice so much more enjoyable for you. So mom is doing it with the child, mom is benefiting. They're piggybacking off the co-regulation and the child is being exposed to this. Now I have a 14-year-old, you have a 15-year-old, and so we get big eye rolls. We get no way. We're not doing that. A 14 year old, we have a 15 year old, and so we get big eye rolls. We get no way. We're not doing that Now.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of this work with my daughter when she was younger and at this stage she'll only, if she's in a crisis, go okay, let's do the fear paralysis tapping or let's do the bonding squeeze if she's in a crisis.
Speaker 2:But the crazy thing is and I'm so grateful for this when she thinks I'm not listening, I will hear her tell her friends oh, you're struggling right now. Why don't you try this? I'm like, okay, it's still in there, even though she doesn't want to do it, because it's mom, she still has these tools and someday she'll come back to them. So it's really at different phases in life and I serve people that have grandkids and they'll do them with their grandkids because they're like, oh my gosh, I'm exhausted and I'm caring for this grandchild and I need to keep going. So they'll do some of these integrative movements with their grandchildren and they're getting the benefit of feeling alert and still awake, and the kiddos going to feel alert and awake, but grounded. They're going to feel clear energy and maybe they do it before they start their homework or what have you. So we have to be creative in the ways that we invite young people in our world to do this. Make it about something they're really intrigued or interested in.
Speaker 1:Right, yes, a hundred percent, yes, oh, I loved all of that and I think, I think the the idea of doing it, like teaming up to do it, is also so powerful because I mean, even as an adult, right, we don't want to be told like go do your X, y, z, right, so you feel better, right?
Speaker 1:I mean there'll be times in my family I'll be like have you meditated today? I mean like, ah no, the dogs got me up earlier this morning, you know like, and I was just out of my rhythm and and I'll be like I'm gonna, I'll go, you know, but yeah, but I think you know we it's like you said we're super motivated for the things that we love and are passionate about. So if we can tether nervous system regulation, stress management, to those activities we get so much more buy-in and then, like you said, if we can do them alongside each other, the power is multiplied. I love that story about your daughter. I was reminded of a podcast episode I recorded a couple of years ago where the guest I was talking with he was like the strongest nervous system in the room wins. Strongest nervous system in the room wins. And I was like yes, yeah, absolutely the strongest one is often the dysregulated one.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:We've got to bring the strength of our regulated nervous system to those moments, and I think, as parents, sometimes it's just like the overwhelm is is constant, right, and there's just so much coming at us. But if we can, if we can harness the power of our own nervous system, it sounds like such a simple thing, but if we can harness it, there's no end to the creativity we can access, right to the, to the resilience that we have the capacity to exhibit. And so for anyone listening who still feels a little hesitant about taking just a few minutes, like I would say try it out and see, so that you can experience the difference between a nervous system that is in parasympathetic dominance, ready and relaxed, ready to go, and one that just feels like you know, like everything's flying out of you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and one thing that's so important, that's so well said, thank you. We, as we work with our nervous system, more we need to, what we're really honing. It's very commonly used the word resilience, which I love, and really what that means is being able to downshift and upshift. You know, sometimes we have to downshift into those lower brain areas. We do get kind of in that survival. We pass through that amygdala and then we need to be able to come back up to that executive functioning place and I think the more we work with that, we feel that. And so if we have an upsetting, stressful situation, it doesn't take so much out of us.
Speaker 2:And some people come to nervous system regulation because they're really struggling, they're really bumping into some current or past trauma, for example, and they're motivated to do it. But what they find is that the more they practice it, it becomes kind of like brushing your teeth, like I'll brush my teeth in the morning and do this four-step sequence of nervous system regulation, because if I don't do it I don't feel like they get off to as good of a start, and so that's where we get creative with people. You know, there's one woman I serve who has two dogs and her dogs take a while to eat in the morning and whatnot. So she's doing some of these movements while she's waiting for her adorable dogs to eat and then, when they're outside, she's in a better place, ready to take them for their walk. And they're kind of you know hectic in the morning.
Speaker 2:So you got to find a way to make it work for your lifestyle and everyone's life is so unique. So I love helping people find, in three minutes or less, ways to care for their nervous system. And sometimes the day didn't go as planned and you didn't do the first part of three minutes in the morning. So before you go to bed, we're going to make sure we do things that aren't increasing energy, but things that are calming. You might do a few of them as you're falling asleep at night and it's going to help you sleep better. And there you go. You did your nervous system regulation for the day, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I think that the practice, like you said, and the creativity to fit it in, like the commitment to the practice coupled with a commitment to the creativity it will take to make it a part of your rhythm, is essential. Well, let's see. I would love to hear some more tools, like I know it's a little tricky on audio to describe, but what are some other ways, like reducing anxiety, helping kids you know, either their own kids or themselves manage feelings of anxiety.
Speaker 2:Sure, I work a lot with anxiety. I'm really passionate about supporting people with that. I know I myself used to move through from a place of anxiety and, truly honestly doing this work, I'll have times where I drop into anxiety, but it's so rare now, whereas it used to be my MO. So one of the first things you want to think about with anxiety is working with the idea of survival reflexes. So just a side note about reflexes. So reflexes are very much about the earliest development. I'm speaking about primitive reflexes which come online in utero and are integrated and move through the first few years of life. It lays the scaffolding for cognition and motor control and nervous system regulation. And so again, being that we are adults, we probably had the childhoods where we ran outside and played all day and we weren't stuck in contraptions, so we moved through those right. Today we have concerns it's a topic for another time, but these kids on screen so early it's affecting them. But again, life stress, trauma, illness trips us up. So the first thing I would think about for anyone with anxiety is to support and nurture the fear paralysis reflex and this is important too. I didn't get to your full part of your question earlier about the gut, but a lot of people with gut issues really benefit from this as well, because anxiety can be very tied to it. The vagus nerve is important. It's not the be-all, end-all to nervous system regulation, but it's very tied to the stomach, very tied to the cardiac sphincter of the stomach, and so this particular movement dialing down anxiety will help your brain and your gut, and so I particular movement dialing down anxiety will help your brain and your gut, and so I'm going to try to talk through it and I can help your listeners find a video I have that is easy to access if they want the visual. But we put one hand over the breastbone so the breastbone right there in the middle of your chest, and just gently place a hand there. We're going to put the second hand over it.
Speaker 2:We're going to do a very gentle tapping rhythm Now with this in mind, and I'm just going to teach you the abbreviated version. There's a full version that goes from here to the bottoms of our feet, but I want to give you the simplest, most accessible version that you can do regularly. So we're going to do a tapping rhythm Now. If the tapping feels excitatory to you, just hold and give a little press, like a little squeeze, because sometimes when we're really stressed out, tapping might feel a little bit like it increases your anxiety and we want to respect that. So you don't have to be a musician or a dancer. We're going to go into a chop-chop rhythm. It's a one, two, one, two, three. We're going to use the top hand to tap that on our bottom hand. So we're going to go like this One, two, one, two, three and then pause, take a deep breath in and exhale. Let's do that again One, two, one, two, three, pause deep breath in through the nose and exhale one more time. So it's three times. And here we go One, two, one, two, three, pause deep breath. So very simple and we can stop right there.
Speaker 2:There are other areas, placements in the body that we go to, really, really fantastic. I have people do it before you know. I have a person that I served as a teenager and their emotions are all over the place and they never know what they're going to walk into. So they will do that before they engage with their child. So they're in a really calm, grounded place. I have people that have anxiety about their health. They'll do it in the car before they walk into the doctor's office.
Speaker 2:I always say when you don't know what to do, you don't know where to go, you're overwhelmed, you don't know where to start. Start with that piece. I just taught the gentle tapping for the fear paralysis reflex. It goes deep and you'll notice the more you do it, the more your body and your brain go ah, help is here. And the more readily you will find the calm and the deeper and longer it will last, because it is a practice like anything else, right?
Speaker 2:So that's such a gentle tool and when my daughter was younger, we would do it almost every night at bedtime because she would have some anxieties come up, as children often do. It comes up right before bed and I would sit her on my lap and wrap my arms around and, of course you know, ask can I gently tap on your, on your chest, there on your breastbone? And so I would tap there and sometimes still it's rare, but sometimes when she's really overwhelmed, she'll ask for it or ask me to remind her, or they'll put her hand on her breastbone and I'll do the top hand. So it's a really beautiful connection. So it's just such a simple tool and it's going to help your nervous system realize that it can get out of survival mode, and so that's one tool and I can share some more. But tell me, if you first ask, any questions you might have about that or any curiosities I'd love to support.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that so much. I was just like soaking it up as I was doing it, you know, like mirroring you yes. Yes, I. I'm wondering if you can just really quickly give our listeners a little primer on the Vegas nerve. I know, it's something we've talked about on the pod before, but I think in this setting especially powerful to just like tie that in.
Speaker 2:Sure, then I go. How much time do we have the vagus nerve? I'll just, like you said, a quick primer. So there's a lot of airtime being given to the vagus nerve and it's important. The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve, it's the longest cranial nerve. It's called the wandering nerve because it starts up in the head, there in the brain, and it wanders all the way down and it comes down on the front of our trunk body and it crosses over that cardiac sphincter which is where the esophagus comes to the stomach and that's where a lot of anxiety and worry can hang out. And then it comes all the way down to the pubic bone and there's so many wonderful things people are talking about. You know doing humming. It resonates with the vagus nerve and I love that because a lot of the work I do we layer vocalization with visual exercises on top of developmental movements.
Speaker 2:A lot of people will talk about doing breathing exercises. I do want to pause there. Breathing exercises are great, except if you are in fight, flight, freeze and you start some deep breathing without some preparatory developmental movements, you might make it worse, you might send yourself into a more excitatory state and that's your vagus nerve saying hold, hold on. I need a little bit of prep first and that's where we might do a movement, for example for the moro, m-o-r-o reflex, which is tied to breath and survival and upper mid spine. It's the first breath of life when we come out into the world this motion, and so maybe we can get more out of our vagus nerve practices if we do the moro.
Speaker 2:I've taught a course about embodied breath. Don't start those breath exercises until you prep your nervous system. So I digress a little bit. But the point is there's a lot of people talking about vagus nerve and I'm so grateful they are, but a lot of times we need some more before. We need some more foundational pieces. Before we start deep breathing or before we start humming, we got to do a little bit of movement and then layer those in there. So it definitely is really important that we learn as much as we can about the vagus nerve, but we got to lay that scaffolding again sometimes first kind of about the vagus nerve, but we got to lay that scaffolding again sometimes first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Thanks for the integration, let's do. What other techniques can you teach us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so gosh, there's so many, I think, because I mentioned it, the MORO movement I'm going to try to use my words as best as possible to describe it and again, I have tons of videos that I've created with it. You can find I'm sure there are others doing videos too so you can do this seated, since we're seated right now and what you want to do is let your legs open and sort of a turned out position, the knees point out at an angle. It doesn't have to be a big angle, just go there and then, because I'm a big plant person, I'll describe this first as a cactus motion. Okay, we're making now my sports lovers. I tell them that it is a goalpost position. Our elbows are bent straight out from our shoulder, our palms are forward, and so we're in this cacti or goalpost position. Now go ahead and arch your back a little bit, let your chest stick out, let your head lift up a little bit and your low back's going to arch a little bit and stay in this position. Ideally, we want to hold it for six to eight seconds.
Speaker 2:Today I was working with a woman who sadly had a fall and she, thankfully, was okay, but pretty banged up, bruised up. So this is important to post-fall, because sometimes we'll fall into this position when when we're falling, and so I'm asking her to hold it more like eight to ten seconds, and then we're going to fold and let your knees come together. If they will round your spine, tuck your chin, looking down and holding this position. If you imagine you're in a big physio ball, your spine would be pressing against the ball right and again holding for six to eight seconds and we're going to repeat this pattern. Come back up to the calf thigh position, lift your back arch a little bit, let your chest stick out. Maybe your upper spine doesn't have that much movement as you're on a healing process, so just see if you can lift your chin and your eyes. If your neck doesn't want to lean back a little bit, just look up with your eyes the eyes are so important and you would hold this for six to eight seconds and then, folding back in knees, come together, rounding in the spine, and holding this position again six to eight seconds.
Speaker 2:For us adults, the key, the important thing, is to make sure we end in the up position. So if we come back up to the cat-eye position and let our tailbone stick out a little bit, let our chest stick out a little bit. We want to finish here. We don't want to finish in the core withdrawal kind of position where we're rounded. You know, when I first started my career I was like, well, we don't want that rounded posture and it is postural, but it's more than that, it's nervous system. We want our nervous system to feel this expansion. Than that, it's nervous system. We want our nervous system to feel this expansion.
Speaker 2:And again, the moral is so important for breath. It's really tied to our cranial system. As a cranial sacral therapist, I very often give this as home play instead of homework to people that I work with, because I can feel their cranial system needs it. And I have a photo I share a lot when I present conferences and it's my daughter sleeping in this position at about age nine, because she had an expander for her upper palate put in and I found her sleeping like that one night. Of course I took a photo of her poor kid, but what I realized was, oh my goodness, we're messing with her cranial system with this palate expander in preparation for braces, and so I was like, oh my gosh, we got to move through her moral reflex.
Speaker 2:So very often there are certain movements that I'll do with people after dental work at any age in life. I work with a lot of young people after they get their braces adjusted, so it's all so connected. You know, this is this movement's connected to survival, fight, flight, freeze, breathing, cranial system, jaw. So many of us hold our attention in our jaw, right, so that movement, people love that movement. When I give that to them and they'll say, oh, I was really stressed out. So I did the moro and I just felt more calm and organized and I say, look at you, you did that. I'm just your core guide, helping you find the tools that are already within you, right. So it's just, it's just so exciting because it's all in there. We just need to tap into it and move through it, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I say that all the time. I'm just here to give you the tool and you're taking it and running with it. I loved that myself. Like I was doing it alongside you and it was powerful myself, like I was doing it alongside you and it was powerful, I know I really I'm just sitting with what you said and really appreciating again this weaving together of so many supportive practices and principles.
Speaker 1:You know to create this holistic sense of of wellbeing or resilience, being able to like shift, like you saying down or up as needed, but not feeling like that's an out-of-control process that you're helpless with, but it's something you can directly influence with your actions.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you mentioned earlier, at one point in your life you had a really strong yoga practice and whether it's a yoga practice or hiking, or I'm a huge fan of Qigong doing these simple movements before your practice or before you go out and go for a walk, you're going to get more out of any movement practice.
Speaker 2:Doing them before and maybe after, and just it really helps. Whatever it is you want to do in life, whether it's play that instrument, stand up in front of a group of people and share your passion, or be able to drive a longer distance you know you'll see me at a rest stop doing crossbody movements just to keep myself integrated and focused, for the endurance drive, for example. But whatever it is you want to do, sprinkling a few of these movements before you begin or after, you're going to get so much more out of it, because it's like that person all those years ago that wasn't embodied, that I saw, come in. And now the people I serve, they have their rituals. They do before we start a session and they'll say, oh, I already started this, we can just get going, and I'm like, great, fantastic, let's dive in further. So it really does become a habit, like brushing our teeth or removing our makeup at night. We have these rituals and we notice if we don't do them, we don't feel as vibrant or as energetic or as grounded.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh my gosh, I feel like I really wish I lived in Detroit so I could come to your studio, because I know I want to learn more. Yeah, thank you, I know, really, like genuinely, I'm so grateful for your work and just the effort that you've put into creating a process that's so empowering. You know, I think in in modern life I think it's really easy to feel at the mercy of the body and I know you and I both had experiences where potentially that's felt, you know it's, it's been easier maybe to to feel that way, and I love the ways that you support people in creating like a team, you know, and just the level of connection with the body that's empowering and supportive, so that people aren't at the mercy again of this beautiful vessel that is carrying them through the world, but like tethered to it in a really intimate and connected way. That feels supportive and just wise. So I love it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I think the key word that I so resonate with that you've shared is empowerment. You know, really feeling empowered because so many of us go through life not knowing how to manage our nervous system, manage our emotions. And that's my wish, and that's why I love sharing in places like this, because I'm over here in my little corner of the world, in Detroit, and that's why I've created virtual offerings, because I know I can't serve everyone that needs the unique work, and so my hope is that people will take it and run with it and use it and share it with their communities and their families so that we all I mean just imagine the world if we all were able to regulate ourselves more readily, both emotionally and nervous system wise. They go hand in hand. So my wish is for everyone to be empowered with these tools. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I wish for that too. Happy to give you a platform to share. Tell our listeners more about where they can find you, find your work.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I hang out a lot on Instagram at inspired, the number two, wellness, and so I share a lot there. I also share a lot in my Facebook community Nervous System Regulation. With Kelly I go live every week and share a tool that's you know. A couple weeks ago it was an organ release exercise. This week it was a tool for balancing energy after a time change here in the spring. And then I definitely would love, because I shared the fear paralysis tapping.
Speaker 2:I have a freebie called Inner Peace. It's nervous system relief for stress and anxiety, and it has three short videos, literally three minutes or less, and the fear paralysis tapping is featured in there, as well as some other self-soothing techniques, and you can find that at inspiredwellcom. Forward, slash inner peace and again reach out. I love questions, because the questions that people ask in my community or even privately maybe they felt more comfortable just DMing or emailing it I then turn those into videos because I have tons of videos I could create. But I want to know what do people need in the here and now? How can I best serve? I'm honored and grateful to know I'm on my path and purpose. I know a lot of people don't experience that. I know you are too, lindsay, and I want that for everyone, but I'm here to share this work, so bring those questions, because your question is gonna help someone else, right? So thank you so much. It was really a joy to share with your lovely community.
Speaker 1:Thank you again for being here. It was a joy to have you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:You've just finished an episode of the Stress Nanny Podcast, so hopefully you feel a little more empowered when it comes to dealing with stress. Feel free to take a deep breath and let it out slowly as you go back to your day. I'm so glad you're here. If you're a longtime listener. Thank you so much for your support. It really means the world to me. If you're new, I'd love to have you follow the podcast and join me each week, and no matter how long you've been listening. Please share this episode with someone who is stressed out. If you enjoyed the show, would you please do me a favor and go to ratethispodcastcom, slash thestressnanny and leave a review. The link is in the show notes. I'm so grateful for all my listeners. Thank you again for being here until next time.