Welcome to the balance code podcast, a place where you have permission to step outside the hamster wheel of day to day life and learn tools for better balance. My name is Katie Rossler. I'm a licensed therapist and hidden grief and burnout specialist. I help ambitious high achievers who are ready to get off the one way train to burnout and learn better tools to embrace life.
Oh, and by the way, I'm an American living in Germany, who's still learning the language, a mom of three and an entrepreneur. Living my balance code is what helps me keep working in incredible ways without burning out. So let's discover our balance code together.
Welcome back to the podcast. Okay, dear listener, I've heard you. You feel stressed, you feel overwhelmed, and you're trying to avoid burnout. So we're going to be talking today about three quick ways to de-stress. Things you can do right now as you're [00:01:00] listening. And if you're watching, you'll be able to do it along with us.
I've got Kate Carson here, and she's going to be teaching us these three tools. Let's get started. that are getting our mind and our body reconnected, helping us to just chill out. Kate, thank you so much for being here. Please share with us a little bit about yourself, what you do, where you are and who you serve.
Thank you so much for having me. My name is Kate Carson. I am a somatic coach. Somatic just means through the body. So when I help people, I help you as though your mind and your body are one unified thing, not two separate things. I came to this work, I used to be a teacher, a science and a math teacher, and I was an engineer.
I came from like a long history of to this work, which is more on the woo end of the spectrum, because It helps. It helps so much. I lost, taking a sort of sad turn, I lost a baby in 2012 and my grief journey from that to here has [00:02:00] been really formative. And what I found holding grief space because I've been holding a group called ending a wanted pregnancy For women whose pregnancies have gone sideways who have had to release babies that they loved wanted and planned for because of medical emergencies the path from there to feeling like a whole person again is Pretty extreme.
So I came to this profession from a place of grief and from a place of helping others in grief. My certification is officially as a love, sex, and relationship coach. And what I noticed in grief space is that embodiment, like your relationship to your body, your relationship to your spouse, and particularly for reproductive loss, your relationship to sexuality, are hugely impacted.
So I went into the niche that I thought was the most underserved in the grief world. And I came out of that certification, Leila Martin's VITA [00:03:00] certification for coaching with so many tools for helping women at various stages of grief. these tools we're going to do today, the nervous system tools are perfectly suited to any stage of grief.
But especially early grief when it's so raw and you're just like trying to get through the day and it's it's like an eternity to get to bedtime when you get to go to sleep again, right? And when your nervous system is like that, it's like every moment is a trial, whether it's because of grief or depression or anxiety or any reason.
Rather than try to like think your way out of it or logic your way out of it or be like, I'm not in danger anymore. Why can't I just calm down? It's much more efficient to approach the body first. And so I'll teach you three ways today to start just with your body, to just cool the nervous system down and tell the nervous system we're safe, we're safe, we're safe, we're safe.
So please do these when you actually are safe. I don't want to like gaslight your [00:04:00] nervous system. Don't do it while driving because if you're stuck in traffic, you're just kicking back up your nervous system. No, Kate, I love that you shared your own journey of, um, learning a lot of these skills and really coming to the work that you do through grief.
Those of you who followed me for a long time know that. My work in burnout is around hidden grief and that there's a lot of things that's unresolved. And I got there through my own grief journey of a death, grief, and miscarriages that led me to realize that grief is actually very normal, natural part of our lives and happens not just because of death.
So I love that you are here. And I know that the tools you're going to teach us are going to be ones that anyone listening, whether you're heavy in grief, whether you're Or you're just heavy in stress, you can do. So let's start with quick way number one. And again, if you are, you know, moving, doing something heavy or like what was it?
What they always say, like if you're driving or moving heavy machinery, don't do this. The [00:05:00] first one you actually can do if you're operating heavy machinery, as long as you keep your eyes open, because it's just a breathing mechanism. You don't want, when you're like having to pay attention, you don't necessarily want to get to the bliss point.
But if you're at the breaking point with anxiety, this should help level you out. The first one should be safe. It's just humming. In the same way you might say, Sing or hum along to a song. We are going to use humming to bring it down it though. You can get to the bliss point if you don't have any distractions or any responsibilities, and you can just surrender your whole body to the hum.
Okay. So now zoom sometimes, I think we're recording on zoom. It's sometimes suppresses things that sound like motors or drones. So when I hum, you might not hear it, but I'll describe it. It's very simple. You're going to breathe in. If you can breathe through the nose. That's better than breathing through the mouth for calming your nervous system down, because we create chemicals in the nasal passages, which are anti inflammatory [00:06:00] and anti stress.
So the more you can breathe through your nose throughout the day, the better. if you can pass air through the nose, breathe in through the nose, and do the whole belly expanse of breathing. Do the, your ribs fall, sort of, cry apart and accordion open and your belly gets a little bit soft and expansive.
I'm sitting. If you're lying down, your belly can go all the way expansive, but if you're sitting, you'll need a little bit of engagement, but make room, make room for the air to come into the lungs, make room with the gut for the lungs to expand even into the pelvis. The pelvic motions of the pelvic floor are very subtle.
So they like a little bit of a drop or a bloom of your pelvic floor to let the air. all the way into your torso. Once you've had a nice deep inhale, you just hum as long and as slow as you can. At the[00:07:00]
bottom of the hum, pause and feel the stillness. And then when you need to breathe again, In through the nose, expanding your whole body around this beautiful inhale. And hum again, the note, the tone, doesn't matter. Just keep it nice and steady. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Pause and inhale for a third one. Mmmmmmmm
And then just pause at the bottom and breathe normally through the nose.[00:08:00]
You don't have to over breathe, in fact, breathing the minimum amount that is necessary to make you feel satisfied. And what you'll feel is the stillness that's left behind after all that vibration. Just let yourself rest into the stillness. And just notice. Notice if anything's settled out in your nervous system.
Notice how it feels now. And that's the whole thing. Three long hums. I love this. I was humming this weekend. Those of you who follow me on Instagram know that I was skiing recently and I have fear of falling and hurting myself and I was going down the hills humming. All I can do is just like, hum and affirm.
I am strong. I am capable. So I, the fact that your first tool is humming, I was like, yep, I know this one very well. I love using it. And I have my, my children actually use [00:09:00] it. We usually do a vowel sound or hum something to just let's all relax. Mom's having a, you know, a moment right now. And I just need all of us to hum so that I feel the collective vibration.
So I love humming. And I so love that this is your quick tip. Number one, humming is amazing. Absolutely. It is really amazing. I have one of my Children finds it hard to regulate and part of our bedtime routine every single night is humming. And we both often because when I don't know, we feed off of each other.
We do as humans were very social. And so when she's like getting agitated and activated, I'm getting agitated. We just feed off of each other. So when we just like, Okay, we're gonna do our homes at the end of that, both of our nervous systems are so much calmer. And we're both able to like give a nice hug and my heart's not racing and my arms aren't tense, right?
It's really beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to do at bedtime. Oh, I love this. Okay. So I just want to stop at the humming, but we [00:10:00] have to, I will not stop us, listener. Do not worry. What is our quick tip number two or second way to de stress? I'm going to do a little bit of self massage centered around the lymphatic system in the head and neck.
Okay? So the order of this does matter a little bit. And I am wearing these headphones. I would take them off if I weren't recording a podcast. So if you're wearing headphones, take them off so that you don't have any obstruction. um, of your lymphatic pathways as you do this. So you're going to start with, I'm not mirroring you, right hand, left clavicle, and just start with like some light strokes, and then a little bit of tapping, and then three drags towards the heart.
Good. And then we're going to do the right clavicle. So a little bit of light tickle touch. And then a little bit of like tapping and then three drags towards the heart. Then I can do both side necks at once. So sort of from right behind your ear [00:11:00] down the side of the neck, I'm going to do a little tickling, a little stroking, and then a little percussion.
Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. And then three drags down. And then you're going to do like under your chin and your jaw, a little bit of stroking from the chin towards the ears. And then a little bit of tapping. I have to use the back of my hand to get this one. And then dragging like you're shaving down towards your heart.
Now the front of the jaw, so starting at your chin, tickling or stroking up towards the ears on the front of the jaw, like where your mandibles are, and then tapping, like you're putting on aftershave, and then three strokes up towards the ears. Next is your smile lines, the lines that go from your nose, down, down around your mouth.
So just a little light here. It's a little area. So a little bit of like tickling or stroking and then tapping more aftershave. And then again, we're going to sort of go towards our ears. [00:12:00] Like you're, you're like, you're going to tuck your hair behind your ears. Next up is the temples. If you're wearing glasses, you might take them off.
You're gonna stroke and scratch into the temples, into your hairline, and then percussive with the fingertips. Ooh, and you might find that there's some tension stored in some of these places, and that's okay. And then just stroke back like you're putting your hair in a ponytail.
Last stop is behind the back of the skull. So you're gonna sort of stroke into, into the bottom of the hairline there. And then you're going to tap under the skull, and then you're going to drag down again towards the heart, so sort of down the back of the neck towards the heart. And then just sit and breathe through the nose and one of the things you might notice that I'm noticing is some of my congestion and my nose opened up, which makes it easier to breathe through the nose, which again, It gives us more regulation [00:13:00] as well, because every breath we take through the nose delivers us some calming hormones.
Hormones is the wrong word. Calming chemicals, nitric oxide, will calm you down. So, just feel into it, feel for the impressions, see how it lands in your body. Whenever I do the lymphatic drainage massage, I always find I start swallowing a whole bunch, because I, like, you feel, you know, things are moving along, and so you're like, Mm hmm.
Like I need to swallow, I'm feeling this. So if you notice that as you're doing this, it's okay, nothing's wrong, but you just help and move things along. And you're right, Kate, like you start to feel like you can breathe better. It's like that, the humming, right? It's just kind of breaking up congestion in a variety of ways, within us and allowing us to take those deep breaths that we need to de stress.
Thanks. And one of the things that happens when the nervous system regulates, we call it the rest and digest state, right? When your nervous system is [00:14:00] regulated and knows that your world is safe, your body gets ready to sleep, which is one of the reasons why I do these before bed. Your body gets ready to eat and digest food, which is why you might find yourself salivating.
When you do these, it's one of my tells when I start to write like a lot of saliva in my mouth, that's one of my tells that it's working. You might yawn, you might sigh, or you might hear a gurgling in your belly. That's another digest one is the gurgling in the belly. And that's your clue. Like, Oh, it's happening.
It's happening. The last, it's not a part of rest and digest, but also your sexuality. You know, I'm a sexuality. supporter, right, will come online only when your body feels safe. So you might also feel like some more blood flow to your genitals, you might feel a little more loving, a little bit more turned on either in a sexual way or in a to life way, like turn, oh, the colors are brighter, right?
These things happen when we regulate. Absolutely. Just a [00:15:00] desire for more connection, whatever that is. Your guard is not up. What? Right. We're going about our lives so much with that guard up and now we can just be present and here, man, again, I'm like, okay, now I just feel like going to sleep. Good. One more.
One more. So, I'm going to move, I'm going to move this, and I'm going to stand up. now, this one, I'm going to move around, but if you're doing it, I'm only moving around so you can see it. So, if you're doing it, you stand in the same position, feet hips width apart, like, arms down, like, nice posture and I'm going to move myself so that you can see me the best in this video.
So the first one is actually, you'll want to see my feet. You're going to take a step forward with one foot and trail the other foot behind. Now I've moved over my toes so I'm resting on the top of the back foot and I'm going to rotate [00:16:00] around the toes. So I'm one half of the little circle. I'm on the top of my foot and on the other half I'm on the back of the foot.
Do eight little circles like this. Nice and loosey goosey. Nice and, they don't have to be fast or slow, just sort of medium. And then go the other way. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight in each direction. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So we're rolling on the top of the foot. Then switch feet.
One foot's in back and we'll do one, two, and they're really loosey goosey. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And the other way, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Next one. is shoulder rolls. Now, these are, my teacher calls them mini muffin shoulder rolls. So we are not doing like big shoulder rolls.
We're doing little ones. Back [00:17:00] first, one, two, really loosey goosey, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight, and then forward. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One to the back to reset. Next one is tiny little neck circles. So picture you walk right up to a, like a blackboard, and your nose is chalk, and you want to draw a circle like the size of a nickel or a dime, a small circle.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then the other way. One, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Now clasp your hands in front of you so that your forearms are vertical and your upper arms are horizontal to the floor. We're going to like piston the forearms against each other and make figure eights with the hands and just make it loosey goosey.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. [00:18:00] I switched the interlace. And go backwards. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Don't stress if you don't know what backwards means with figure eights. Just shake out your hands like they've got water on them. Now we're going to be twisting and letting our arms be really fluffy. Like one of those drums that you twist to do one each way, two, each way, three, each way, four, five, let the head go with six,
And then just wind it down. You don't have to stop it suddenly. We're going to go straight into hip circles. So it's like if you were standing in a cylindrical telephone booth and dragging your hips around the walls. I'm at 3, 4, 5, 6. Arms [00:19:00] are floppy. 7, 8. Eight. And then the other way. One. Let your body be so floppy.
Three. Two. Sorry. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Now, the next one, point your toes a little towards each other. Pigeon toes. And then, squat down. Like you're about to sing a cappella. Like you're about to do a barbershop quartet. Lean on your, on your thighs. Knees come sort of towards each other. And little circles of the knees.
Little. Uh, One. Two. Thank you. Three, don't do anything that hurts. Four, five, six, seven, eight. You can back off or make them smaller or skip if it hurts. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Good. Now the last one is the silliest looking one of all. You're going to come down with your back straight or a little bit [00:20:00] even looking up like a cow pose.
Squatting down and then you're going to come up like your back's like a cat pose. And your arms are just going to flop. This is called Sarpa or Serpent. So you're really like, sort of coming down with your chin forward and your butt back, and coming up with your spine curved like a, like a cat on Halloween.
And we just flop around like this to mobilize the whole spine. Again, you're going to listen to your own body. If you have back pain and this is not good, you're going to skip it or make your range of motion smaller so it feels safe.
And once you get to eight, I didn't count that one because it's sort of hard to do and count at the same time. Once you get to eight of those, just stand and notice how you feel. Oh, [00:21:00] how do you feel? Like, I was like, Ooh, the blood has run up and down. I feel invigorated. Like I found that all of those movements felt like blood flow is going through my body.
And I just feel like I feel balanced. I don't feel like, Oh my God, I'm gonna go run and sprint, but I feel very present and grounded. And like awake, awake is a good word for it. Yeah. Good. Yes. I included that one to show you that it doesn't. When you down regulate your nervous system, you don't have to put yourself to sleep.
You can put yourself into a more alert state. as well. I think that's so important. We often think with de stress that it's like, Oh, I got to wait till the end of the day. It's going to make me tired. You know, we, we avoid guided meditations or things that where it's like that relaxing music. Cause it makes us tired.
But this is a great activity that, you know, even in your cubicle, you can just be like, I'm going to roll my ankles here. I'm going to do the piston hand thing you can do. To just wake yourself up. But [00:22:00] also speak to us for a second about the circles. Like it was always circles, circles, circles. Tell us about what is the significance of the circles.
So this particular practice comes to me from my Ayurveda teacher, not from my coaching teacher and in Eastern medicine, we want to be like loose in Western culture around the body. We want to be like tight, but in Eastern culture, you really want to be loose. And so the way my Ayurvedic teacher. She would basically call it like freeing up energy and freeing up the pathway for the prana.
with my more science mind, what I notice we're doing is mobilizing all the joints, the sinus synovial fluid. We'll come into the joints and everything will be better lubricated and you don't have to do the whole range of motion. We're not stretching ourselves to the extreme. We're mobilizing the joints.
Now, as you do this, you'll notice that the joints are in a lot of the same places. If you know about the lymphatic system as lymph centers is where the lymph nodes are, right? Like the nose going, you're getting [00:23:00] all the ones we got on our side neck. The arms going, you're getting the ones in the armpits and the inner arms, right, in the wrists, right?
So, I noticed, too, that that invigorated feeling tends to come when we've got our whole body's lymph moving. Yes. Yes. And I think that is such a beautiful thing. If you can create a daily practice of that, that's been a big shift in the last eight months in my own health journey is getting the lymphatic moving and in healthy ways.
So, ah, yes. So, okay. If you're still just listening to this and you're like, no, I need to watch this YouTube Spotify video on my website, and you can look up, Specifically, it will probably be under . katierossler.com forward slash quick ways to de stress. but we will have this video in several places for you and you can watch it so that you can do these exercises wherever you are, the ones that fit to you.
And like you said, the ones that feel good and feel like, you [00:24:00] know, I can do this right now. And then once you've learned them, especially like the little circles exercise and stuff, you can just incorporate them. Let's say you're washing dishes and you just start kind of doing the toe roll kind of thing at the very beginning that you let us, like there are ways to incorporate all of this into our everyday and the things that we're doing.
That's what makes these quick and easy ways to de stress and keep these Awesome. I am amazing. Like I'm really like, okay, now what do I do next after this interview? Do I go lay down or do I go like, do something grand? I don't know. I don't have to make a decision. That's the beauty of your exercises you gave us is I don't have to add any more stress.
I can just sit and be, I love that so much. And one thing I would like to just offer everybody as a relationship coach in particular, if you are having stress, either bringing it to your relationship or you've gotten to the point where your relationship is like a stressor, where you brace around your [00:25:00] partner.
We always think like we have to talk our way through our problems with our partner. I don't think we have to talk our way through our problems with our partner, which is a little bit out there. I think we have to learn how to regulate our nervous systems together. Because imagine if you turn to your partner and you have Some sort of habit of, I know it may sound weird to hum with your partner, but why not?
What if that's how you start, how you come together at the end of the busy workday? How different would it be to be in relationship with that being something you train your bodies to do as soon as you see each other? Yes. I've worked with couples for 15 years and I will tell you a lot of the work is not words.
Yes. Mm hmm. it's linking this ability to regulate your nervous system to the one you love. That's what it is. Absolutely. Hey, thank you so much for these. Thank you for these tools. I know people are going to come back and watch and listen to this on repeat so that they can practice these things.
But if they want to connect with you, if they want to learn [00:26:00] more from you, feel free to Where do they find you? you can find me at nightbloomcoaching. com. N I G H T B L O O M C O A C H I N G no spaces. com. Excellent. I'll make sure that your website is linked below in the show notes so people can connect with you immediately.
Oh, Kate, now I'm like just in a peaceful place. And I'm so glad to hear that. So grateful for you. And, I know you're starting your day and I'm going into my afternoon, but I just feel like we both have. experienced something that makes it so that we can continue our day in such a peaceful state and really be able to face the stress that comes because we've de stressed.
So I appreciate that. I appreciate it too. Thank you so much for having me on. And dear listener, here's to finding our balance code.
Thank you again for listening to today's episode. As one of my listeners, I have a special gift for you. Do you ever feel like you're simultaneously doing way too much while also not feeling like you're doing [00:27:00] enough? I have a workbook that's going to help you solve that problem and get to the root of what actually needs to be done and what matters to you most based on your values.
Check out my juggling all the things workbook below in the show notes so that you can use this special gift. To simplify your life. We all need that. And if you're interested in working with me, check in the show notes below on information on how to do so. Here's to finding our balance code.
Thank you. Thank you.