063 Listen To Your Body With Fiona Smith

Join Fiona and me as we talk about the importance of connecting with one's body and mind to create a more active and fulfilling life. 

The necessity of tuning into your body and mind is increasingly important to heal patterns formed by trauma, stress, or grief, and to balance and rejuvenate the nervous system for a life that is more assured and lived.

Join us as we discuss:

• Body wisdom, trauma, and healing through somatic therapy.
• The importance of connecting with nature and listening to one's nervous system.
• Stored survival stress and its impact on mental health.
• Importance of slowing down and connecting with nature for physical and mental well-being.

Listen to your body's language, and pay attention to sensations and emotions to achieve a better balance between mind and body.

About Foina Smith:

Fiona Smith is the founder of Bodywisdom Therapy and a brand partner with The Mental Wellbeing Company.  She's a certified body therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), Safe & Sound Protocol Provider & yoga teacher and a somatic trauma-informed coach with over 20 years' experience of working with the body & mind and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Fiona works with women to heal the patterns created by trauma, stress or grief and teaches them tools so they can regulate and restore their Nervous System and feel safe in their body and become empowered to create a new story of ease, confidence, and clarity from the inside out.

Also a peri-menopausal mum & step mum, dog owner, nature lover, avid reader, winter swimmer and dancer... as long as there's no learning of steps involved!!

Instagram www.instagram.com/fionabodywisdom/
Website www.fionalsmith.com
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-smith-bodywisdomtherapy
FB Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/stresslesslivemoreforwomen

About Sarah Bolitho:

Sarah Bolitho helps fitness and health professionals develop their careers and grow their businesses by providing specialist training in teaching, assessing, and internal quality assurance, together with qualifications in exercise referral and disability.   

With over 30 years in the health-related fitness and physical activity fields, Sarah has a wealth of experience and knowledge.  She has worked in most roles in the industry from group exercise to personal training but specialised in working with specialist populations.  For over 25 years Sarah has trained fitness and health professionals to work with clients with long-term conditions, mental health issues, disabilities, older adults and pre/post-natal women.  

She has a post-graduate diploma in exercise and health behaviour and extensive training in supporting behaviour change.  She has worked with awarding organisations to develop qualifications and training and with accreditation bodies to endorse high-quality non-regulated training. 

For more about the training and support Sarah offers, visit www.sarahbolitho.com or contact her at admin@sarahbolitho.com.

Follow her on social media
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fabnewlous_active_lives
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fitnesscareer mentor
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahbolitho

Transcript

Sarah (00:01.902)

Hello and welcome to this episode of Creating Active Lives and my guest Fiona Smith. It's really exciting actually because this is another podcast that really focuses into the body, into nature and all the sorts of things that I love. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Fiona Smith is the founder of Body Wisdom Therapy and she's a brand partner with the mental wellbeing company. She's a certified body therapist, a somatic experiencing practitioner a safe and sound protocol provider and a yoga teacher and a somatic trauma informed coach. And she's got over 20 years’ experience of working with body and mind and is based in Copenhagen in Denmark. Fiona is going to tell us a little bit about what all of those actually are in a moment for those who aren't quite sure. But she works with women who want to heal patterns created by trauma or by stress or by grief. And she works with people and gives them tools so that they can regulate and restore their nervous system and feel safe in their body and really move on and create a much more confident, much more clear life that they own rather than just kind of participating, which I think is something a lot of us do. So Fiona, tell us a little bit more about yourself and then we can move into what some of those terms actually mean and then we'll get on with talking about life.

Fiona L Smith (01:23.485)

Thank you. What a lovely introduction. It's really lovely to be here. And yes, so I've had a journey, I've had a journey with a body for 54 years now, but I've had a journey of actually realizing what that means for around the last 25 years. And until that point, I think my body was just this part of me that carried me around and carried out functions. And while my brain and the rest of me kind of got on with life.

And unfortunately that had led to a massive disconnect between what I was actually experiencing and what I thought was happening. I ended up with a horrible viral infection. I was in a terrible relationship. And I think sometimes it just takes hitting rock bottom to realize that you've got to change something.

And so I went off on a bit of a journey of self discovery to Thailand. I'd known that I wanted to do some yoga for ages and I thought, well, this will be great. I'll go somewhere. I'll do some yoga. I'll learn how to meditate and I'm going to get massaged because in Thailand I could go and do some massage, learn some massage and receive some massage. And to my huge surprise, it changed the entire trajectory of my life. I started to to listen to what my body was saying, which was basically that there was something wrong with my relationships. There was something unhealthy about the fact that I'd been ignoring all of these signals. And yeah, it was time to listen. It was time to listen. And interestingly, you mentioned the connection to nature, and I've heard you mention that in other podcasts too. And I think what was really key was that where I was in a small Lahu hill tribe village in a remote area of Northern Thailand, at the edge of the jungle, essentially, was a place which was far, far closer to nature, not just in its location, but in the way that the people there lived than I'd ever been in before. And I've often talked about the fact that one day somebody put me into a spinal twist on this bamboo platform where we were learning Thai Massage. And I came out and breathed in and just cried for hours. And I think it was the first time I'd ever felt safe to simply express emotion without anything necessarily attached to it at that time, but to really feel and express the emotion experience that was inside me. And I kind of popped out of the other side of that, feeling a much lighter and quite different person. And yeah, carried on from there really.

Sarah (04:23.094)

just popped into my head here is a little thought which is do you think we've got caught up in the fact that we need a trigger for an emotion, whether it's laughter, crying, anger, whatever, but it's interesting that you're saying somebody's just putting you in a position, it all came out. Do you think that's something we've lost is that ability to just release without it, this has happened, this is my reaction, we've just lost that ability to release a build up.

Fiona L Smith (04:52.253)

I think to, there's two things there. One is very much related to the way I work now somatically as a trauma therapist, which is trauma doesn't occur through the event. It's in the body's response to the event when there isn't the time, space, opportunity or support to actually feel what we're feeling. So, I think we do get really disconnected, but it's often because we're living such busy, intellectually led, multitasking lives. And we are often very disconnected from what the impact of the experience is at the time that we're having it. So I think what was going on for me there was not just something that happened, a trigger that happened, but that there was space and support and opportunity to feel what was stored essentially in my body. So when I start to work with clients now, you say, well, can I explain what some of these terms mean? When I work somatically with somebody, instead of starting to talk about a problem, we go first to the body to find out, well, where can we, where and how can we experience something as a resource? Like what's okay, even if it's the tiniest thing, what feels okay? And for somebody, it might be going for a walk with their dog. It might be a really nice cup of tea. It might be sitting by the fire or playing with their grandchildren. Whatever it might be, everybody, no matter what the circumstances, can find one tiny thing that feels okay.

And then we learn to expand that. And when we learn to feel and experience what is okay, then we can start to create more space to experience some of the things that are more unpleasant because our brain is designed to stop us from feeling pain. We don't want to feel pain. Of course we don't. And so if there's something that feels painful, our instinct is to push it down, push it away and get on.

We want to get on with life and with living. But the problem is when we don't create these spaces and opportunities to feel what we're feeling in the moment, particularly if it's not comfortable or it's not pleasant, then it's simply there waiting for us.

Sarah (07:31.982)

It's interesting, isn't it? Because you talk about the body holding grief or illness and the messages it sends. But I think it's something that we've lost touch with our bodies. We just, like you said earlier, it just carries you around all day. Every day it does what it needs to do and it moves on. We treat it a bit like a car.

Fiona L Smith (07:48.029)

Yes. Yeah.

Sarah (07:52.43)

it gets us from A to B or it does what it needs to do. Whereas with our cars, we take them in for a service or a checkup every year. But with our bodies, we don't, you know.

Fiona L Smith (08:02.077)

Well, you say that Sarah, but I also think it's a really good analogy because we might wash the car, we might brush it out, but it's all very mechanical, isn't it? And I think we could probably say the same thing about some of our so -called self -care, that we tick a lot of boxes. I'm eating healthy food, tick. I'm going for a walk, tick. I'm going to the gym, tick. But how do we actually feel about some of these experiences. What's actually happening in our body? Are we going to the gym and totally overriding the fact that our body doesn't need or want or isn't capable of being there on that day? You know, are we eating food but then having a horrible argument with, you know, our kids or our partner while we're eating?

Are we, you know, are we ticking a lot of boxes and then doing many other things that are actually unconsciously really not very supportive or caring?

Sarah (09:04.398)

It's interesting, isn't it? Because one thing I talk about a lot within my main field, which is sort of health-related activity and exercise, is that for most of us, if you go to a yoga session, you start by relaxing. You start by getting back in touch with your body and just feeling it and everything. We don't do it for any other disciplines, any other types of activity. And I always say to people, spend five minutes also even just completely switching into your body, relaxing, feeling it, where is that tension, what's going on in your brain, because you will have a much better session as a result, because you will be focused on the session, not carrying tiredness or tension or anger with you. But it's something that people don't, I suppose they don't value that kind of, what's going on in my body, let me just scan through and see what actually that bit's a bit sore today. I'll take that easy today. I won't focus on that body part. I'll focus on something. We don't necessarily ask our bodies what they need on that day at that time. And it's like you say with food we eat, we don't necessarily spend a bit of time thinking what does my body need today? Does it need more hydrating foods? Does it need more energy giving foods? Does it need more whatever protein? We've lost that communication, that two -way communication between our mind and our body.

Fiona L Smith (10:16.925)

Absolutely. I mean, while we're on the subject of eating healthily, one of the things that I do is I run a program twice a year in spring and in autumn, which is very much about getting us to focus on what we're eating, why we're eating it, how we're feeling. And it's a body mind detox. I think precisely for the reason that you're talking about is we're doing these things, but we're not really considering what the rhythm, what the part of the cycle we're in at that time. You know, again, I've heard you talk on other occasions about the feminine cycle, about the seasonal cycle, and we're so disconnected from these things. And I think part of working somatically is that we learn to tune in to our cyclical nature, particularly as women, and that we are very much a part of nature, not just as women, but as human beings. We have an animal nature, first and foremost, and living the way we do, where, for better or for worse, a lot of us are in front of screens for a large portion of the day, it's so easy to get disconnected.

Sarah (11:45.614)

It is and I do a lot of training courses online. You know, I mean, on the one hand, seems the online world's great because more people have got access to things. On the other hand, I'll always say, people will say, can we have a short lunch? And I always say, no you're going to have a long lunch and for at least 15 minutes of it you're going to get outside. Don't care if it's raining. Don't care if it's cold. 15 minutes, get outside, get away from the screen. Just do something outside because you need those regular breaks away from what we now consider to be the normal way of working.

Fiona L Smith (11:53.821)

Yeah, we need sunlight. Yeah, we need sunlight. Absolutely.

Sarah (12:15.15)

You know, and I could, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just that daylight, just that thing. And it's interesting because I very much work with my circadian, I don't work completely with circadian winds, I don't think many of us do now, but we do our best. But I mean, I haven't used an alarm for years because, you know, in the winter months, I go to bed really early. I do still get up early, but I don't push myself to get going as quickly. But whereas in the summer, I'm up at four o 'clock in the morning sometimes and I don't go to bed until later and actually I've got more energy sometimes than I have in the winter and it's kind of something that I intend to track it and see what's going on but I sometimes don't but it's again it's that connection isn't it with the rhythm of nature, the seasons.

Fiona L Smith (13:04.797)

Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, we are designed to be up and about and have more energy for longer in the summer months. It's only, you know, post -industrialized world that we've stopped doing that. And you said something really key there that I've just made a note of was that you don't push yourself. And I think that's something that we sadly have learned to do almost all of the time is to ignore our natural impulses and to push through, to push ourselves. And I think we hear that not just, well, I was gonna say we have that in our behaviors, but we also have that in our language. Like when we think about that inner critic, the way that we can talk to ourselves, the language of should, got to, all of the shoulding that we do to ourselves to make ourselves do things that, our natural impulse, our natural animal impulse, our nervous system is screaming out at us not to do. So it is, we were talking before we began to record about this slowing down and the language of the nervous system is slow.

Sarah (14:11.534)

Slow down.  And this is the thing, isn't it? I think the majority of people out there will be aware that we have a nervous system. But I also think that probably the majority don't really understand what it does. They'll just know, my nervous system has kicked in or something like that. Whereas actually your nervous system is always kicking in. It never switches off. What they mean is their sympathetic response has gone, wah!

Fiona L Smith (14:27.997)

Yes.  Yes, it's an elemental part of who we are, yes.

Sarah (14:50.03)

And then we don't deal with that sympathetic response in the way that we're designed to. But that's a whole other thing. Get moving, everybody. But it's, you know, our nervous system can have a very positive impact on what we do, a very negative impact on what we do. And it's about, as well, it's not necessarily about controlling your nervous system, because the whole function of it is to respond in a way, but it's about listening, I suppose, to the way you react, when you react. I mean, is that something that we can, we need to do more of?

Fiona L Smith (15:24.125)

Absolutely. And you've said something there, which is, you know, it's not about controlling our nervous system. We would love to think that we could control our nervous system because with this cognitive prefrontal cortex that we have, this human thinking brain, it thinks it's in charge. The conscious mind, which is about 5 % of our whole brain, loves to think that it's in charge. But it's like putting the toddler strapped into the back in charge of driving the vehicle. It's actually our nervous system that is in charge of everything, in charge of hormones, in charge of our emotional responses, in charge of the thoughts that we have, because there is a reciprocal loop between the thoughts that we have and what's going on in the body. If we are feeling unsafe, we can't have creative thoughts. We don't make good decisions because the first thing that happens when we feel unsafe is that we lose access to this cognitive thinking brain. And we can literally flip our lid and listeners won't see this, but I'm flipping the lids of my hand, my fingers, because yeah, we don't have full access to our frontal cortex, which is why when we get overwhelmed, super stressed, we start to feel confused. We have very foggy thinking. 

We're not making good decisions. If you think about an angry toddler who's crying and screaming, you're not gonna have a rational conversation even if they were verbal. They are completely in their limbic system, in their emotional animal responses to a situation. And so we need to wait with all of the talking, whether that toddler is three years old or 33 or 63, we're going to need to wait to talk until the cognitive brain, this thinking brain is back online. And unfortunately, when we are in a state of dysregulation, when there is trauma, or we can call it stored survival stress in the system, when there are things going on that have not been resolved, then we can spend very large parts of our lives trapped in a cycle of being ready to defend ourselves, ready for threat, perceived threat that actually isn't there because we are stuck in this part of our nervous system you've just named, which is this sympathetic response, this fight -flight response. And when that gets too much, we'll go into freeze, which is this sense of disconnection, disassociation, collapse, depression. 

So we can move without, if we don't find a way to regulate ourselves, we can move through life in this over busy, overstretched, pushing through, swinging between an overactive, sympathetically aroused state where we don't have access to very creative thought or good decisions or full capacity to focus. And swinging from there into what we can call a functional freeze where we're not feeling very much of anything at all and just going through the motions of life, feeling very disconnected from what's around us, which again, of course, links into this disconnection that we have from nature and from our own nature, our own animal nature. So when we're regulated,because it is, of course, you asked, well, in what way is it useful? When we're regulated, when our nervous system is in balance, then our sympathetic energy is simply what gets us up in the morning. It gets us moving. We're using a sympathetic energy when we're dancing. We're using sympathetic energy when we're running, just going for a walk. And we are in balance because the part of our nervous system and I'm going to just use the technical term that ventral vagal, our green and grounded, our balanced part is also online. So that's what we want in a well -regulated system is to have access to this energy that gets us up in the morning. And it's there every time we breathe in, that's a sympathetic action. Then we have the parasympathetic we breathe out, but we've also got this sense of being in connection when we're in a well regulated state. We're in touch with our body. We're in touch socially with one another because we're designed to be in touch socially. We're genetically engineered to be sociable animals who are together. And I think this is why we've got such a problem with sort of mental health in the post pandemic world is that we were disconnected from one another for so very long. And genetically, we're not designed to be living in isolation. So it's not just the fact that we weren't able to hang out with family and friends. It's actually that affects the way that we are able to respond and be in our nature, in our nervous system. So, yeah, we need to be doing things to regulate, to come back online. And in order to do that, we need to slow down and be able to listen to our bodies and to our impulses.

Sarah (21:12.174)

And this, I'm going to come back to nature in a moment, but something you just mentioned was stored survival stress. That sounds really interesting. And I think it's something that. Probably a lot of us experience. But tell me a little bit more about what that is.

Fiona L Smith (21:18.333)

Yes. So we often think about trauma as being big events, sort of big impacts or the terrible thing that happened. Maybe it was abuse, maybe it was an awful car accident, maybe it was an act of violence or aggression. And yes, these big events can and do cause trauma. But as I said before, trauma is not so much in the event, but in the way that our body responds too events. And so there's another very different, well, there's many different kinds of trauma. But basically, trauma is a word for the way that our body is storing the effects of the experience. So we can also experience a cumulative trauma. So that would be something that is happening over a very long period of time, a series of apparently insignificant or, it wasn't much, it didn't really count. We can really discount the effects that life is having on us while we're having it. And so when we're not paying attention, when we're not giving that time or attention to really notice how that's impacted us, then we can end up storing it. And I don't mean that necessarily that we're still thinking about it, although that may be the case that we're still ruminating over things that happened, but that we're caught in this cycle of always feeling alert, always feeling busy, not being able to relax properly, not being able to sleep properly or digest. And it can give rise to symptoms that sort of move from anything from a lower back pain that just doesn't go away or migraines towards then some of the more serious things that people are living with, you know, like anxiety, depression, and fibromyalgia, or sort of other chronic conditions. In nervous system terms, they are all manifestations, physical, emotional, or mental manifestations of stress that is stored, because there hasn't been space, time or opportunity to process that. And it happened to me after the...

the death of my mother, I ended up with a frozen shoulder. So it's not, I speak perhaps as somebody who's been doing this work professionally, but I've also had my own very personal experience of what happens when there isn't the opportunity to process things.

Sarah (24:07.534)

I suppose it's the body's way of saying you know hello there's something going on here yeah it's yeah it's it's like there's a point at which you can't it's like if you're filling a glass of water you turn it off when it's full whereas if you don't it's obvious yeah whereas with the body we haven't got a gauge that says you know what I'm kind of full of stress now

Fiona L Smith (24:11.005)

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. You can't keep filling it. Exactly.

Sarah (24:32.814)

So here's what we do, this is where we need to listen, yeah, we need to be listening to symptoms.

Fiona L Smith (24:33.245)

Well, the gauge is the symptoms, yeah. Yeah, the gauge is the symptoms. Symptoms are not the problem. They are actually the body signaling that it needs some attention. So if we can learn to listen to the symptoms, to tend to the symptoms, to give space, care and attention, and that's not something that we can easily do on our own at home because that's part of the problem. We were on our own at home and therefore there wasn't the opportunity or the care or the attention to offer this. So it isn't, I'm not suggesting that people should just switch off the podcast and sit down and listen and then everything's gonna be okay. But we can do certain things for ourselves. Of course we can.

Sarah (25:03.406)

No.

Fiona L Smith (25:26.973)

But for example, I can just speak about what happened for me was that my mother had had a short illness. She had stage four pancreatic cancer and she died at home after two, three months after her diagnosis. And I was very fortunate that I was able to be there with her and support her while she was dying and support my father.

My sister was also around a little bit, but she had much younger children at the time. And it's always felt like a gift to have been able to do that. It was a huge thing for me to be able to do for and with my mother. And then after that, I came home and I picked up life and my practice and realized that actually, no, I couldn't work because it wasn't something that I couldn't give massage, I couldn't coach while I was in a state of grief. But I had to carry on being a mom and a stepmother. I still have a daughter to my father who was on his own and grieving. And then we got a pandemic and suddenly all the doors closed. And I just carried on. I carried on homeschooling my son and taking the job for a walk. And I had to sell a house in the UK and I bought a house in Denmark and life just continued.

And over a period of time, I then went back to work and I started to get terrible pain coming through my left arm that started at my wrist. And I was going to doctors and they were saying, well, there's nothing physically wrong with you. It's like I was in a lot of pain. And over time, a period of about six to nine months, I ended up with a frozen shoulder. And it was only then when I was doing my somatic experiencing sort of training and had that time, space and opportunity to really deeply listen to what my body was telling me, that I made the connection between yes, the grief of the loss of my mother, but all the other things that I had not tended to before that, all the other apparently smaller things that I'd been through that I hadn't had space, time and care to attend to. So it's really been a very personal practice for me to give time, care and attention to my body. And one of the big, big things for me has been connection with nature, simply slowing down and being outside, walking in nature, noticing how I felt in being outside and to tune into what made me feel good, even in a body that I felt really it betrayed me. You know, I was a yoga teacher, I'm a massage therapist. I've been working with my body for more than two decades when this happened. You know, it shouldn't have happened to me. That was one of the stories. And the sooner I got rid of that story, the better really, because yeah, you know, it can happen to all of us. We can all experience things that we can't process, but when we slow down and we give a little bit of time and care, and gentleness to our system, then we come out the other side.

Sarah (28:52.942)

It's so important, we know that for health we need to move our bodies, we need to get our cardiovascular system working a little bit harder than normal, we need to strengthen our muscles, we need to stretch our muscles, we need to load our bones, but we also need to be active in a slower, more gentle way, don't we? It isn't all about harder, faster, stronger. Sometimes it's about slower awareness. And, you know, people say, we have to run outside. I spend lots of time in nature. No, you don't. You spend lots of time rushing past nature, not necessarily in nature. And that's the thing, isn't it? It's the slowing down and being in nature that so far, and like anybody knows who listens into this podcast that nature is one of my big things and it doesn't matter if it's a park, a national park, a mountain, an ocean, a river, a pond, a puddle, it doesn't matter what it is. It's that connection with nature. We need it and yet we're often outside but we're not connecting, are we? Why is that connection just so important?

Fiona L Smith (29:35.613)

Yeah!

And I think, you know, there's different elements at work here because when I think about a frozen shoulder, you know, this is literally the freeze state where the body can't feel anymore because what it's feeling is too painful and too much. So we go into freeze and we can think of freeze as being a part of winter. You know, it's a state of dormance. There's less movement, but there is still movement. Nature never stops moving. You know, even in the deepest part of winter, nature doesn't stop moving. So I think, you know, it is really key and it was certainly key for me that we keep moving. Because I look out the window now and it's like the leaves are moving, the branches are moving, the flowers are moving, the clouds are moving, the birds. So it is a case of keep moving, but do it in a way that feels nourishing, that is slow enough.

You know, it's like we have to slow down in order to come back to the spring. And so we, again, we come back to that part of nature that, again, I heard you on a podcast with Fiona Winter talking about our cyclical nature. And she was talking about the second spring. You know, I'm not quite in my second spring yet, but it's coming soon. I'm in that perimenopausal phase. But yes, it's a time of really going in and listening.

And then we get that rebirth, then we get the energy rise again. We've got to go through it to come out of it. It's not a part, not with grief, not with the body, not with the nervous system. We can't skip it. We need to be able to go in and quieten down and listen just in the way that the winter does. And then we can come out and we get that energy back and that rise and that vitality and joy. So yeah.

Sarah (31:59.502)

But it's not about doing nothing, is it? Because, you know, like you said, nature is never doing nothing. There's always something going on, whether it's germination or rest, you know, slowing right down doesn't mean you do nothing. It means that your body actually gets a chance to do things at a really cellular level. Your mind gets to do things at a kind of a chemical level neurotransmitter, chemical, whatever level, but it means that by not moving you're giving your body a chance to do its kind of cellular stuff.

Fiona L Smith (31:59.613)

We just need to move in quieter ways.

Exactly. And this is our parasympathetic function. This is our, when we're in safety, this is what our nervous system is doing when it, when it slows down is exactly this process of renewal and digestion and, and regeneration. No, it's what we do when we don't eat at night. We stuff ourselves until we go to sleep and then we eat the first thing in the morning. We're not giving our bodies that long time overnight. So yeah when we don't eat overnight, we get this process of rest and digest. If we're in a state of stress when we go to sleep, that's not happening particularly effectively or efficiently. So, yeah, our bodies simply reflect and mirror what's going on in the natural world. And the closer we can get ourselves back in connection with that, the better.

Sarah (33:32.014)

It is so important, isn't it? Going back to the car analogy, you wouldn't just keep driving your car. You let it rest. You know, you get a check up to make sure that you get that funny noise. Check that. Yeah, exactly. You know, but it's like I say, it people say, well, I rest when I sleep at night. I think it's that conscious stillness where you are aware that you're still. It's different to sleep. It's a different phase isn't it?

Fiona L Smith (33:41.117)

Yeah, well we don't want to burn the engine out, that's the thing. Absolutely. And people will say, I'm too busy. And one of the first things that I will do with clients is introduce the one minute pause. It's not my own invention. I can't remember where I got it from, but simply building in pauses of one minute throughout the day. And whether it's like when the kids have gone to school or before you get out the car, when you get to the office or before you make your cup of tea or while the cup of tea is brewing, whatever it might be, building in micro pauses. Not where we're scrolling or doing, but simply noticing, I'm breathing. Okay, releasing the weight of the shoulders, feeling the feet on the floor, letting the eyes soften or close or look in the distance or look down simply being here in our body for one minute. And then of course, once we realize we've got time for that and that it's actually often a relief then we can start to stretch that. But of course, for some people to stop can feel really painful. It can feel really anxious making because there's so much stored in the system that the second we stop, we start to feel it all. It's uncomfortable. So we keep moving again and then we perpetuate the problem.

Sarah (35:19.566)

Yeah. i have a rule that i mean i like my coffee i don't drink much coffee but i do like my coffee and my m rule i don't that sounds a bit distorted but it kind of is you know is when i have a coffee i do nothing else i don't have my coffee at my desk i don't i will sit in the summer i the spring I’ll sit in the garden in the winter I’ll sit inside or whatever but i will just sit and i will enjoy my coffee and it'a amazing how restful that just that few minutes is and like I get what you're saying that like the minute micro breaks would just be such a lovely way of that little pause just and it just means that you can catch your breath. It is like a runner every now and then they will stop and catch their breath and that's giving your body the chance to do that, isn't it? So what would be, I mean, there'll be a lot of people thinking, gosh, this all makes so much sense because it does. And there'll be a lot of people thinking, such me, always running. What would be good, what would be good ways for people to start to get in touch with their body? Because you're not going to do it overnight, are you? You're not going to go, hello, body.

Fiona L Smith (36:42.685)

We're not going to do it overnight, no. And I would say that, well, we've just mentioned one of them, that is just to build in these micro pauses. And it sounds so simple that we kind of dismiss it and we look for some things that are bigger and more important. But actually, you know, we all know that habits are formed gradually and, you know, attach your micro pause to something you're already doing. So that would be absolutely the first thing because, when we are carrying a lot of stored stress, when we are over busy, when we are in a state that takes us out of the here and now, anything that we can do that brings us here now is invaluable. So the micropause is one way, but another way is to tune in to things that, there's a wonderful psychotherapist in the US called Deb Dana, and she introduces this, the concept of glimmers and glimmers are the opposite of trauma triggers. So we all are aware of what sets us off. They did that, we get cross. This happens, we get frustrated, but we're not so aware of the little things that make us feel joy or pleasure or laughter or fun. So one of the first things I will send a client off to do and anyone who's in my world for any length of time knows that this is something that I talk about a lot is to seek out the glimmers, to notice the glimmers. So it can be anything. It can be as simple as your cup of coffee. Like, what does it smell like? Like, do you have a special frother that you've got of milk on the top? Or do you go to a coffee shop and you've got those beautiful heart -shaped patterns on the top? Whatever it is, whether it's a flower or a tree in blossom, sort of waving against the sky, when you notice something, you think, that's nice. Or that you're just laughing at a really funny joke or a silly moment with a friend. When we can capture this and not just be aware that it happened in our mind, but, how do I feel? there's a sense of lightness. Maybe there's bubbling. Can we find the sensations in our body related to this moment, to this glimmer. Is there a noticing that, my chest has opened up or, my shoulders just relaxed or I smell that lovely smell and it reminds me of, and then that connects to something else that was beautiful. And maybe you think, I feel happy or I feel glad or I feel relaxed or calm or whatever it is, the more we can train our mental attention towards these things, but also train our body to notice what they feel like, the more resilience, the more capacity we develop for managing the not so pleasant things and the not so comfortable sensations that are there. Because actually what happens when we don't want to feel the uncomfortable stuff, is that we also block the good stuff. We can't selectively stop feeling. So whether it's grief or pain, when we block that, we're blocking the access to joy and to fun and to pleasure. So train the attention to glimmers. That would be the first thing.

Sarah (40:11.502)

No, and it's funny isn't it? I'll often say to people to try and get them to slow down when they're out walking and to start noticing is look for heart shapes in nature. And but it's because it could be a leaf, it could be a bit of a tree, it could be a puddle, it could be I've got I've found a couple of stones of you know, heart shapes. Now I see glass and things like that. But actually what would be good is find the heart shape and then just feel how it makes you feel. Add that into one thing people do. Yeah, it's an extra layer.

Fiona L Smith (40:33.245)

Beautiful.  I've got some beautiful stones that are heart -shaped.

Add that part in, absolutely, because that's the part that's missing for so many of us. Even as a yoga teacher, I realized I could talk about feeling grounded. I feel really grounded. But I was still missing the level of sensation of, but what does that actually feel like at the level of sensation in my body? Because otherwise it's just, it's still just a word. I feel grounded. I feel happy. How do you know?

Sarah (41:17.326)

That's it.

Fiona L Smith (41:20.637)

So this is the question to ask ourselves. I feel happy. How do I know I feel happy?

Sarah (41:28.846)

So we've got micro pauses, we've got attaching the micro pause to something that you're already doing, because then it doesn't feel, initially it won't feel uncomfortable, I'm guessing after a while, it actually becomes important in itself, you don't have to attach it, it's just like, no, I need a pause. We've got noticing in nature, but noticing the feeling as well as the thing, whatever. What else could people do?

Fiona L Smith (41:35.261)

Yeah, it's just I would say just to say noticing in nature, I think that's really important, but it doesn't have to be in nature. It can be just, you know, a good book, a moment. It can be some music that is your glimmer. It can be hanging out with a friend that is your glimmer. So, I mean, not everyone necessarily is gonna want to start in nature, particularly if people live in cities, but just for them to know that actually there's a starting point wherever we are. And I would say other ways are so, I mean, it's all to do with the body. So I would say just a simple self massage is another thing that I, that I often will, will teach my clients or simply to, to notice, for example, when you, or hug, that's another one, a self hug. So we can put one hand around our rib cage and we can put the other arm hand over the opposite shoulder and just feel the contact of our own hug. And maybe we feel skin, but to notice what the muscles feel like, to notice what the body feels like and to give ourselves what, many, many people are touch deprived. Many, many people, it's not just about disconnection from people, it's disconnection from touch, but we can give ourselves touch.

And self hug is a really, really powerful way to offer a little bit of self -nurture. So that would be another doing thing that we can really feel that contact with the body and give ourselves a hug. And one last one is the VU. So this is another great one that I first heard from Peter Levine, who's the founder of Somatic Experiencing.

Sarah (43:42.51)

I love this.

Fiona L Smith (43:50.205)

And the VU is a great way to reconnect, because we haven't really talked about the vagus nerve, but the vagus nerve is like the powerhouse. It's the central part of our autonomic nervous system. And one of the ways in which we can tone the vagus nerve and bring ourselves out of a free state is to VU. It's VOO, and I can do a little demonstration now. So you can join in. I don't know if the recording is going to let us both do a VU.

Sarah (44:14.094)

I love the Voo. I love the Voo. Yeah, we'll both do it.

Fiona L Smith (44:20.061)

So we can do this with or without a hand on the belly or a hand on the chest, simply to take a breath in and there doesn't want to be any strain just to allow the sound to vibrate in the body. And what we're doing is sending a message, a signal of safety to our guts through the vagus nerve. just a little gentle vibration. And then the guts recognize, okay, that feels okay. And it will send that message up to the brain also through the vagus nerve, because the vagus nerve is 80 % afferent, which basically means that 80 % of the information that is traveling through this nerve is coming from the body, from the guts to the brain. And only 20 % is being sent from the brain to the guts. So we can argue that basically, no matter what we're thinking,

If the body is in a state of distress, is not feeling safe, is not feeling relaxed, we can't force our mindset on anything. We can't think our way out of stress, but we can start with the body and remind the body that, I'm here now. I feel safe. Send the message back to the brain. it's okay. I'm okay. I'm here. So it's about bringing us back to the here and now through sound. through feeling and hearing that sound deep.

Sarah (45:57.678)

It's a lovely practice, isn't it? I always, the way I was taught was just think of sounding a bit like a foghorn. That kind of foghorn on a very misty day. It's that very low, deep vibration that you feel. And you do, you feel it. Like a foghorn, you feel as well as here. And it's the, the Voo breath is like that as well. It's, but it's a really, and it does take practice because you do feel a bit, she's a bit silly and this feels a bit, it takes a little, even a gut, yes.

Fiona L Smith (46:38.685)

Yeah, you want to be somewhere private when you do that the first time so that you're not feeling self -conscious about it. Because yeah, if you've never done, for many people that I work with, hearing themselves make that kind of sound feels very vulnerable. Because part of the pattern is to not express, to keep quiet. So yeah, you know, it's, go gently with any of these things. You may find that you connect, or not.  I think this is why I tend to start with the glimmers because everyone can relate to seeing something, having a moment of, that's nice.

Sarah (46:43.01)

Yeah, and it is, isn't it? But you start to... It's like anything with the brain, isn't it? The brain is a creature of habit. The more you notice the negative stuff, the more it will notice. Whereas when you start to look for the glimmers, it will start to notice and feel more glimmers. And this is where I think this is, you know, it's retraining the brain into a better reaction, a better response, which will in turn impact on absolutely everything that you do.

Fiona L Smith (47:27.549)

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks on everything. The moment the nervous system comes back into regulation, the ripple effect is huge. Then people are sleeping better. They are digesting food better. They have better relationships. They're feeling calmer. Things are going better at work. So all of the things that, you said something really key there, it's like the brain hates change.

Sarah (48:16.494)

It does.

Fiona L Smith (48:16.605)

Even if life is terrible, the brain will resist change. So I do understand that we can sit here and talk about this and people can listen, but the very fact that people are listening to this podcast is signaling that some part of them is ready to change something. And whether that starts with noticing a beautiful flower or hearing a piece of music or smelling the coffee, or going for a walk, you know, it changes always, always possible. And yeah, so coming back to the whole theme, it's like moving one little step, one tiny step is enough to start creating change.

Sarah (48:52.654)

That's it.

Fiona, we could talk about this all day probably. And I think I'd definitely like you to come back in and talk about the Vagus Nerve because again, it's something I have looked into and studied and it's actually significantly more important than people realise on so many levels. But for the meantime, thank you so much for coming along. It's been absolutely fascinating and tell everybody how we can get in touch. I will put the links in, but where can people find you if they want to find out more about what you do?

Fiona L Smith (49:04.125)

We could.

Yeah, love to.

Fiona L Smith (49:28.573)

My website's probably the first place, which is www.fionalsmith com. So it's basically my name with a .com at the bottom. And I'm on Instagram. I'm starting to get a bit more active there, at Fiona Body Wisdom. And I have a Facebook group, Stress Less, Live More for Women. So people are exactly, so yeah, people are welcome to get in touch and If anyone does visit my website, there's a free download there, which is another way. Meditation is another way. It's what I call a somatic meditation and people can download that with a PDF about a little bit more about the nervous system and a little bit more understanding of what we've been talking about here today.

Sarah (50:09.006)

Excellent, well thank you so much for coming along, it's been really interesting and it just fits so many of my kind of beliefs and practices and things like that so it's good to know I'm on the right lines. You've been listening to Creating Active Lives with me, Sarah Bolitho and my guest this week Fiona Smith talking all about listening to your body so thank you for listening to us, now go off and listen to your bodies please.

Fiona L Smith (50:29.085)

Excellent! Yes we are!