Episode 26: Calming Your Nervous System
- Tina Boogren
- Mar 1
- 6 min read
Description: When your nervous system is overwhelmed, everything feels harder than it actually is. In this episode, Tina shares simple, micro-moment practices to help you calm your nervous system throughout the day. Through longer exhales, grounding, and gentle physical resets, this invitation offers practical ways to return to clarity, compassion, and steadiness.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Everyday Wellness with Dr. Tina H. Boogren. I am your host, Dr. Tina Boogren, and this is episode 26. And I just want to start by saying I am so grateful that you are here. I am so, so grateful that you are here. Thank you for sharing this podcast with others, with your fellow educators and caretakers and just other people living busy lives, which seems to be all of us.
I just so appreciate it and I just really, really am feeling so grateful for this community that we've built together. And so I just wanted to start off with that. Per usual, I'm going to ask you to just, uh, take a nice deep breath. Which is actually kind of a perfect segue as we move into this week's invitation. So this week we're going to talk about our nervous system. Really our nervous system, gosh, I've been thinking about it, I always think about my nervous system, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I feel like with everything going on, our nervous systems are really, really activated.
When our nervous system gets overwhelmed, I don't know, by the news or our lives or all of the above, here's what happens, everything feels harder than it actually is. Our decision making, patience, focus, sleep, concentration, connection. Even hope feels harder when our nervous system is activated. That is pretty incredible. And here's what I want you to know, that your nervous system isn't broken. It's responsive. That in reality your nervous system is trying to protect you.
Most of us right now are living in kind of this near constant state of activation. We are worrying, we're rushing, we are absorbing stress. We are carrying individual and invisible emotional loads. We are moving quickly from one responsibility to the next without any pause. And here's what happens, over time, that state of being becomes our normal, and that is exhausting. So this need to calm our nervous system shouldn't feel like something indulgent. In fact, it's not even optional, I would say that this is foundational because when our nervous system settles, here's what happens. We regain access to clarity, compassion, creativity, and resilience, which is exactly what we need right now. And the good news is like everything that I try to share here, we don't need an overhaul of our life or even this long, hour-long routine to do this. In fact, it's really, really just about my favorite thing, small moments that can be incorporated throughout our day.
So I'm going to share a few examples of things that we can do, things that I've been working on and that I'm going to continue to work on to try to regulate our nervous system throughout the day. That's our goal here. We're trying to regulate our nervous system throughout the day. So some of these are familiar, we've talked about them before, but it's nice to get them fresh in our mind.
So first thing we can do is practice the longer exhale. So you're going to breathe in through your nose and then you are going to exhale very, very slowly through your mouth for longer, doubly as long if you can on the exhale than you did for that inhale. So here's why this is important. That extended exhale tells your body you are safe right now. And that's exactly what we need to do to counteract when our nervous system gets deregulated. So we're just going to do that longer exhale as many times as we possibly can throughout the day. Maybe we can take three at a time, maybe just one at a time. But the key to this is that longer exhale than inhale.
So in fact, let's just try it right now. I'm just going to pause and I'm going to let you just take an inhale through your nose, and then I want you to take the world's slowest and longest exhale through your mouth. Ready go.
Doesn't that feel so good? I did it too, and it's like I can feel my body just kind of melting. Oh, so tuck that in your pocket. Take that with you this week. The longer exhale. We can do that anytime, anywhere. I love that strategy.
Here's another one. Feet on the floor. Feet on the floor. Here's what I mean. I just want you to literally reground yourself, and I want you to do that by putting both feet firmly on the ground. Press your toes down slightly and notice that support beneath you. Here's what's happening when we do this. This is grounding your body in the present moment, and it's interrupting that stress cycle that deregulates our nervous system, and it doesn't take very long. And again, you can do this anywhere. No one even needs to know you're doing it. And gosh, combine it with the longer exhale. Win, win, win, right? So feet on the floor. Place both feet firmly on the ground. Go ahead and do that right now. Press your toes down slightly and just be aware of that support that's beneath you. And again, here's what's happening, is this grounding your body in that present moment and interrupting that stress cycle. I love it.
Okay, here's another one. We've talked about this one, but I love the simplicity of it. Name what you notice. So this is one to just kind of, again, get you out of ruminating about the past or worrying about the future where our thoughts can just kind of take off on the speeding train. When we name what we notice around us, again, it's just pulling us back into the present moment. That's our goal here. And by doing that, we are reregulating our nervous system. So name what you notice, just look around the room. And just start silently naming three things that you can see, two things you can hear, one thing that you can feel physically. Just doing that, and I'm keeping it so simple. Three things you can see, two things you can hear, one thing you can physically feel. What this is doing again, is bringing your brain out of that worry mode and back into the present, which is exactly what we are looking for here.
The final one I'm going to share is just a shoulder reset, so go ahead and lift your shoulders towards your ears. Hold that for about three seconds, and then slowly release. Here's what we know. Stress lives in the body, and so releasing that tension physically can help that nervous system reset. So again, you're just going to lift those shoulders towards your ears. Hold for three seconds and then slowly release.
Those are my favorites. Let's try 'em this week. Again, they're not dramatic. They're not major. They don't require special equipment. None of them take more than a few seconds, and that's the whole point. So remember, our nervous system regulation happens in those micro moments, which I absolutely love. So think about calming your nervous system the same way that you think about other things that you're trying to incorporate into your life, remember that 1% better, teeny, tiny, little, small resets repeated often, gentle and consistent.
I'm cheering so hard for you. Make it a great week. As always, we're so stinking grateful to Adrienne, to Solution Tree, to Marzano Resources. And to you this badass Everyday Wellness squad. I'm just so grateful that you're here. I'm so grateful that I feel your hands on my back, and I hope you feel my on your back as you move through this week. Take really good care of yourself and your nervous system. Make it a great week, you guys. I love you.
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