346: Somatic Practices to Regulate Your Nervous System (with Nicole Smith Levay)
Vibrant Happy Women
Jen Riday
4.8 • 671 Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For decades mental health and child development experts have taught us to focus on thoughts and behaviors in order to be happier and more successful. Unfortunately, this approach wasn't fully effective for many people because it didn't address energy and nervous system regulation.
Join me and my guest Nicole Smith Levay as we talk about somatic practices that help us to more fully inhabit our bodies so we can experience more peace and calm.
What You'll Learn:
- Why it's essential for parents to address a child's nervous system regulation before trying to address a child's behavior.
- The reason breathing doesn't always regulate the nervous system and what to do instead.
- The gifts that can come to us when we "show up messy"
- Nicole's strategy for calming herself before performing or public speaking.
- Jen's experience of "recreating the womb" and enjoying being rocked by a circle of women.
- How autistic people can teach the rest of us so much about nervous system regulation.
- And much more!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Are you ready to expand your soul's capacity for joy? |
| 0:05.8 | Then this podcast is for you. |
| 0:08.5 | I'm Dr. Jen Ridey and welcome to Vibrant Happy Women. |
| 0:13.1 | Hey everyone. |
| 0:13.9 | I'm here with Nicole Smith-Lavey, who is a professional dancer turned energy coach, |
| 0:19.1 | who integrates somatic therapies, breathwork, and meditation |
| 0:23.1 | into her work. She helps folks struggling with anxiety and depression, which I am sure all of us |
| 0:29.2 | have at one time or another. And she uses body-centered techniques to help with that. |
| 0:35.2 | Nicole holds an MA and somatic psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. |
| 0:41.1 | And we, I joked with her, I'm like, somatic psychology. I want to take that. And she said there are only |
| 0:46.6 | two places in the U.S. that offer it, Boulder and, San Francisco. San Francisco. Okay. She is a well-known workshop facilitator, hosts wellness retreats around the world, and since founding her practice power with healing in 2013, Nicole has helped hundreds of people overcome their energetic blocks in order to step into their power and live out their purpose. So, energetic blocks. |
| 1:12.4 | Let's start right there, Nicole. What is an energetic block? Because we've all heard it, but I'm not sure we all |
| 1:17.9 | understand it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me, Jen. Yes, welcome, welcome. Yes, welcome, |
| 1:23.5 | welcome. Yes, I love this question. |
| 1:31.6 | So energetic blocks are truly somatic in nature. |
| 1:34.9 | Somatic means mind, body, and spirit are interrelated. |
| 1:36.6 | They're not separate. |
| 1:40.8 | It's not that your mind works from the neck up and your body works from the neck down. |
| 1:46.1 | And so an energetic block is, you know, it's like a pattern almost. You find yourself in a situation over and over again. There may be physical symptoms related with it, |
| 1:52.1 | emotional patterns related with it, mental patterns related with it. And so the whole of it is |
| 1:58.6 | called an energetic block because you're frustrated by this. |
| 2:02.4 | You feel blocked. |
... |
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