353: Unlocking the Power of Nervous System Regulation at Midlife w/ Irene Lyon

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them. Not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life indispensable action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host Courtney Townley. As always, I hope you’re doing awesomely well and I sure am glad you are here listening to the show. She’s back. Who am I referring to nervous system expert Irene Lyon.

Courtney Townley 0:45
If you’ve been a longtime listener of the Grace & Grit Podcast you are very familiar with the name Irene Lyon. Irene does massively important work in the world, she helps people to better understand how their nervous systems work. And more importantly, she helps people to develop skills that will allow them to more easily regulate their nervous system, because life gives us a lot of opportunity to dis regulate our nervous systems.

Courtney Townley 1:12
Now I repeatedly invite Irene back to the show, because while I teach a lot of skill sets to my own clients in regards to stress management, Irene teaches a lot of work that I consider to be very foundational, in creating any kind of meaningful behavior change. And twice a year, Irene opens the door to her 12 week SmartBody SmartMind™ program, which I am a very proud affiliate of, I always remind people this is the only program I’m an affiliate of which hopefully says a lot about the value in the program. Not only has this program influenced my own life, but I have seen it influence a lot of the women in my communities lives. So I have seen it affect my own clients in very profound ways.

Courtney Townley 2:02
If you are interested in finding out more about Irene 12 week nervous system program, I would just encourage you to head on over to graceandgrit.com/smartbodysmartmind.

Courtney Townley 2:18
Now, at the time of this episode, dropping membership to this program, or registration for this program is only open until February 22, 2024. So don’t delay if it is something that you are seriously interested in. And I do want to remind you as well, that every time we open the doors to this program, anyone who signs up through my link, graceandgrit.com/smartbodysmartmind, will also get six months of free membership inside of my Rumble & Rise community. And why? Because Rumble & Rise, the work that we do in there really helps to support the regulation of the nervous system. So I think it’s a beautiful companion to Irene’s work.

Courtney Townley 3:01
Now the conversation you’re going to hear today was actually recorded on an Instagram Live that I recently did with Irene and I decided to repurpose it as a Podcast so more people could listen to all the goodness in this interview. But I do want to just kind of preempt the show by saying this is a repurposed audio file from Instagram. So the sound quality might be a little bit less than perfect, but hopefully it’s still really good.

Courtney Townley 3:31
In this episode, specifically today, we are going to cover how a dysregulated nervous system makes midlife so much harder than it needs to be. We are going to talk about why the nervous system is so important to regulate and such a brilliant place to begin. If you are on a quest to improve your health. We are going to talk about what the nervous system of course actually is and how it gets dysregulated in the first place. We are going to explore how to go about finding qualified nervous system professionals. And of course, we’re going to share a little bit about what separates smart body smart mind programs from other programs out there. So I hope you’re ready.

Courtney Townley 4:12
Welcome to the show, Irene Lyon you and I first met almost a decade ago like you were one of the very early guests that I had on the Grace & Grit. It’s so crazy. And I mean I knew nothing then I just kind of knew that nervous system health is kind of an up and like up and coming. Yeah, even though we’ve been living with nervous systems for the universe. Yeah, at the dawn of man. And now having gone through your programs and just I just feel so much more educated in this topic still doing your own work all the time. But what’s interesting, I wanted to bring this out and when we first got on because when you and I last spoke you kind of made this off the cuff comment that I see so Much more regulated than when you first met me. And you’re so not wrong. I felt it.

Courtney Townley 5:06
I felt that comment in every fiber of my being. Because I think not, I think I know that when you and I first met, there was almost a frenetic energy to me, you know, it could come off as confidence or just excitement or passion. But in my heart of hearts, I really knew that so much of that energy was not coming from the best places. Yeah, and so it’s really cool to be in this phase of my life, having done this work, and still, of course, practicing this work, to just feel so much calmer, and so much more at peace and so much more even keel with my energy. So anyway, I want to thank you for that, because it’s a huge testament to your work. And also, I think, a testament to just managing the stressors of my life, which I don’t think I was taking responsibility for, for quite a while. But now I am.

Irene Lyon 6:04
I mean, yes, thank you, Courtney. And you’re welcome. And what’s interesting, I mean, I’m in the same boat, too. I like cringe when I look at some of my older videos. Yeah. And I hear my voice face. And it’s faster. It’s sharper, higher. You know, yeah, I’m younger, no gray hair. But you know, there’s there’s still an imaturity, not and imaturety, it was immature, there’s a dysregulation? Yeah. Right. And that I think is important to point out that, I mean, you were in fitness and health. So you knew how to stress relief, and all those things through your movement. And just like I did, because I was in fitness and health. Well, I mean, our trajectories are very similar. But even when we have those good tools, it doesn’t replace good regulation of the nervous system.

Irene Lyon 6:57
Well, and you and I have talked a lot over the years about how unregulated a lot of health professionals are regulated. And some of that energy that again, from the outside can seem like such a good thing. It’s coming from almost an urgent place, like almost performing, or hustling or earning, I’m not really sure exactly how to describe it. But it’s not necessarily coming from the best place. No. So no, I wanted to start this conversation, because the work that I do, largely in the world at this point, is helping midlife women to unpack some of the stress from their lives. Because there’s stress in our life that we don’t necessarily have a lot of control over, right?

Courtney Townley 7:44
Like there’s always going to be stress in life. And it’s not always a bad thing. No. But there’s a lot of stress in our life, that we have a lot of control over that if we don’t take radical responsibility for it, we get ourselves into a whole lot of trouble. And I want to have this conversation with you today, number one, so you can definitely share kind of the value and the delight of smart body smart mind, which is coming up. But I would like you to maybe speak to the challenge that midlife women face because you and I are both in that camp. And I know we work with a lot of those people, where there’s this simultaneous, simultaneous thing happening where the hormones that help us to manage cortisol are starting to leave the party. And we are also contending with more stress than we’ve ever had in our life. And I guess where I would like you to start is maybe talking about how the nervous system does that and how it can either support us in that or really make it painfully hard.

Irene Lyon 8:48
Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, five hours. No. No, I’m joking. No. So you know this. That’s actually a good question. I don’t I don’t think about midlife that much. But I guess technically, yeah, I’m in it. And I want to say one thing, and then we’ll get into the nervous system. More personal, but about a year and a half ago, my cycle started to get wacky. And I was someone that was like, perfect, perfect, perfect. Not you know, I’m like what’s going on and who knows what was going on? It could have been environmental factors. I have no idea but all the emotional nervous system work in the world actually didn’t help. So I want to say that, you know, I’m someone that will seek out more than what my profession is. I know at the end of the day, I needed to see a really good naturopath. I had to go from labs done and I needed to supplement with some bioidenticals you know, I’m not going to try to be a circadian rhythm say like some of my good friends are and it’s just it’s not my nature to just go one way so like I I’m going to do some other things.

Irene Lyon 10:02
I’m gonna get really into length and castor oil packs and proper supplements and movement in a different way. And that completely shifted back to normal, super rock more regular and more healthy than even in my 20s and 30s. So I want to say that because, yes, our hormones shift, but I also think we can maintain them at a much higher level than what they are mothers went through. Because we have all this information and access to more natural healing supplements. Yeah. And then if you put the nervous system piece on top of that, it’s like, holy moly, it’s a winning combo. Yeah. So I want to say that I’ve met some women who, when they do work on their emotional, nervous system traumas, their deep traumas, their cycles, completely, miraculously change, and that’s all they need.

Irene Lyon 10:56
So there’s no cookie cutter, everyone’s every female is a little different. And I do think this is where genetics do play in a little bit with our cycles. Sure. Yeah, it’s that that’s the one thing kind of like our hair color, where it’s like that, that I think does rule a little bit more than, say, mental illness. And addiction that we’ve often said is genetic, but now we’re seeing is much more nurture based, due to dysregulation of that nervous system. So I want to start with that. Yeah.

Irene Lyon 11:29
And I think it’s a really fair point. And I think it’s so important that we are all number one, we’re all multi dimensional. And we all have such different histories, and different biochemical misaligned. And there is so much that goes into a healing process that differs from person to person. Exactly. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 11:52
And the thing that I see consistently with the midlife population, is they’re trying often to make really big change in their lives. I always call it the renovation years, like we’re trying to like renovate a house, which is no small row. And we are not a lot of times people are not prepared to do the work, because that is a level of stress, it’s good stress to do renovation work. But it requires a lot of resources to be on board in order to do that work. And if we don’t have those resources on board, for a whole host of reasons, we just add a lot of unnecessary stress to our life. And things just get Messier. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 12:35
And so I have found and this is why I’m constantly referring out your program is when a woman comes to work with me, and it’s so clear to me how dysregulated she is because everything is stressful. And even the way she’s talking and the inability to give herself permission to rest, all of these things are coming to light. And I always makes me turn to nervous system work. Because I want them to learn about the health of their nervous system, and all the simple measures that they can start taking to actually help regulate themselves. So they actually do have more resources on board to do this bigger work at midline. So yeah, if you want to speak to that at all, yeah,

Irene Lyon 13:18
definitely. I mean, I think the first thing that’s important to realize is, and I was just talking about this, this hour, with a peer of yours. We don’t, it’s so hard to convey Courtney, how much as humans we are whole have held in so how much we have had to cope, manage push down at the expense of our biology, my biological health. And, and I also like to say, because a lot of people hear the word trauma, because trauma gets connected with my work. And that’s true, right? We’re working on healing old traumas, old survival, stress. A lot of people will get a little scared of that, or some people know they had trauma.

Irene Lyon 14:05
Like, it’s like, like, yeah, there was abuse, there was this, it was terrible. You know, parents were alcoholic, whatever, it is bad. But then there’s a lot of us and I fall into this boat where everything kind of looked fine. Like there was food on the table. And you know, people were nice to you, and you got to go on ski trips. And, you know, there was never stress about money and all these sorts of things and had a good school. You know, it’s like I had a boyfriend, like we have fun, like all these things like, how could there be trauma there, but it’s like breaking down the structural norm that had been placed, put in place in front of the domestication of plants and animals, which is crazy to think about.

Irene Lyon 14:50
But it’s when we stopped being nomadic in our way of being and living but it also made it so that we stopped Connecting to the natural rhythms of Earth and the end like rather than I kind of feel like going over there today, it’s like, oh, I can’t, because now my animals are in this spot, and I can just move them in are all the way down to, you know, aristocracy. And you know, I’ve recently watched Did you ever watch the GOP gilded ages? It’s a new show. Oh, you love it. It’s like, it’s 1800 1800s in New York City with the high class. Yeah.

Irene Lyon 15:32
And it’s like, this is not good for the way that the women were dressed, and you couldn’t express and if you fell in love, it was good and all your impulses. So what I want to say about that is, our animal nature needs to come out. But we also don’t want to be savages. Because a lot of people like if I let my anger out, I may never stop. Or if I start crying, I may never stop. And that’s valid, because people I think, know how much they’ve been holding in. So the key to doing this work in a sane way, in my opinion, is to slowly enter into it. And the word we use as titrate in a tight graded way, so that we’re not blowing the system open so quickly, that we don’t know how to clean up the pieces we’ve been.

Irene Lyon 16:24
Right we want to, I think it is important to realize how much repression we’ve lived through, not just us, but our parents and their parents and the sacrifices. And we know this through through research with intergenerational trauma, like it gets passed on. But at the end of the day, we are the ones who are left with the residue of this history of trying to figure out humanity on this planet. Yeah. With civilized like civilization. I like running water. That’s fun coming out of my back. I like that I don’t want to have to go burn a fire build a fire to get hot water. So yeah, it’s again, this balance of, okay, these things are good. This other stuff. Not Yeah, good. Right.

Irene Lyon 17:13
Yeah, two things come to mind to me. Yeah. And the one I hear you saying like there is almost there is a level of trauma that comes with modern day living, because it is so much constraint and like you said, suppressing the way we truly want to express even just the lack of mobility, right, just sitting all day and kind of looking at these cubicle lives. I think all of that is a level of micro trauma. And I know that you and I have talked a lot about the macro and micro trauma over the years. But the other thing that comes to mind is I remember watching an interview with Gabor Ma Tei last year, and he was talking about autoimmune challenges, and how to him it’s really no surprise that I think it’s like 75% of people diagnosed with autoimmune disorders are women. Yeah. And he was like, Yeah, because you think about all the suppressing and quieting and sort of, you know, being the nice girl and trying to keep the peace that women do. And that toll, which is on the nervous system.

Irene Lyon 18:14
That’s 100% True. And I mean, we’re, I don’t have my own biological babies. I know you do. And, like, the, the world that the feet and this might be controversial, but I’m just gonna say it. You know, the world of mom being at home with the kids. There’s goodness, in that, you know, and I’ll never forget meeting that you’d love the story. I was at a conference was a very bro type of conference, like Tim Ferriss was there. So it’s all dudes. Yeah.

Irene Lyon 18:45
And at but there was a mother there, the mother of the two conference organizers. And she was, you know, exploring the second part of her life. You know, her, her babies now have husbands and kids and they’re off. And I remember sitting at this round table with her in a conference room, and she was almost like two so stressed. So this goes back to what you’re asking about stress. And like you could see the stress because she was speeding herself up because she wasn’t more accomplished. Yeah, he she didn’t have a career. I hear this a lot. And I and I looked at her and I said, I’ve met you I get goosebumps thinking about this.

Irene Lyon 19:28
Now, this a year ago. I’m like, I’ve met your two sons. There are amazing men to men. One of them had kids, the other was about to get married. I’m like you did your job. Like you don’t understand how much goodness those two boys are going to put out into the world. And she just started crying. And I’m like, wow, nobody has ever acknowledged how important being a stay at home mom was because we know it’s not just that it’s cleaning and cooking and keeping the home life long. Have Li and in regulation and imbalanced and balance, like that is so important. And I think this stress that a lot of women feel, and this is just my own speculation is this fear that we’re not doing enough, because we’re not doing more than just jump. And then there’s some people that don’t have kids. And that’s fine. Like, that’s choice, right?

Irene Lyon 20:23
But it perative Um, you know, to go back to that original question of stress, and women, if we don’t realize how much survival stress is driving our actions and behaviors, we can do all the clean eating, all the extra size, all the mantras, all the journaling. But if you’re doing the journaling, and there’s this part of you, that’s like, pissed off, that’s not doing any good. And maybe you have to work on stored anger, because as girls, we’re typically told, girls can cry, but they can’t get mad. And our boys are guys, poor guys. It’s like they’ve been told you can’t be sad and show vulnerability, you can only be angry. And you know what, I’m this a stereotype. But it’s something that’s really harmed us because we as humans, we have all of it. We have to be angry, sad, grieve when something bad happens, be joyful, have surprise be feeling. And sometimes we need to pull up ourselves by the bootstraps, or whatever they say, and maybe push a little.

Irene Lyon 21:28
But then we have to balance that and I find was so many women, there’s just been pushing and toil. I have people in my life who have passed because of this, this, you know, they’ve gotten sick, because they’ve tried to do it all. And at some point, you have to go what’s most important, you know, what’s most important, and it’s and that’s where, again, getting back into that biology, when we really sink into this body. And listen at that cellular, emotional nervous system level, it actually knows what we need. But we’ve been covering it up literally, like you mentioned, the remodel, you know, when you paint, you got to cover everything and masking tape. And like, there’s so much tape and covering on us like we have to start peeling this stuff off.

Courtney Townley 22:17
I shared the story before but years ago, I was my husband and I were trying to buy our first home in Boston. And we were so desperate, we were willing to look at anything. We went into this one home that from the outside actually looks quite lovely. But I’m not kidding you. When you walk in the front door, the floor was like sloped downwards, and you can feel the whole house imploding. Look at my husband, who’s a builder and I’m like, we’ve got this. And he’s like, No, we don’t own like, you would have to literally like demolish this entire house and rebuild it in order to make it livable again.

Courtney Townley 22:56
And I’m telling you all this because I think that this is one of the issues I bump up against a lot in the work that I do is women are so fiercely focused on diet and exercise. Like that’s the house, but their foundation is imploding. And the foundation is that nervous system dysregulation, they have so much stress and so few Stress management techniques, and understanding really kind of the how to nurture the nervous system, that they can do all of that work, and still feel wildly dysregulated and incredibly unhealthy.

Irene Lyon 23:33
While I was in fitness and nutrition, you know, for my 20s. So I know that and I saw it and I knew something was missing. I’m like something’s missing. I knew in my 20s working at the gym, I’m like, I am not going to be content working at this level, because nobody’s following through or if they are they’re being psychotic about it, you know, and they’re coming in thick and injure. Yeah. And I’m like, This isn’t good. And what I have seen in my students, and I have no doubt you’ve seen this in yours is that when that regulation when that listening comes back at that core level, and not because there can be some people ask, my impulse is to like, do bad things. I know. So what’s a healthy, healthy impulse and what’s a non healthy impulse? And I kind of say, well, you’re just gonna, that’s trial and error. Like you’re gonna have to figure it out.

Irene Lyon 24:30
Kind of like the cry of a baby at the beginning. You’re not sure what that cry is, but after enough attunement, you’re like, oh, that cries this and that cries that. It’s the same with your body. You start to listen to this is a feeling of I think I’m a bit rundown. I don’t think I should do that hardcore workout. I should just go for an easy walk. Versus is. I don’t want to do it. It’s gonna, you know, I just I feel lazy. That’s real. And then you get into the gym and then the energy is there. It’s like, I just I had a mental block. Right? And it’s that just being able to discern, I need to take it easy. Because I actually am a bit rundown. Yeah. Or maybe I don’t have to do I did nothing. I just need to like, take a bath and go to sleep early. Right? And then there’s the ones where it’s like, no, I need to get my energy going, that, that ability to discern what the body needs, from my experience comes when we have regulation on board, just like an apples in the wild, that we’re gonna go for run. If they’re not wanting to run, they don’t go for runs.

Irene Lyon 25:45
Right? They go waste energy,

Irene Lyon 25:47
they graze. They chase their prey animal. And they sleep and they play. Like you don’t have a zebra thing and come and go for our exercise run. Like they don’t do it. Yeah, we’re constantly in that movement cycle. Yeah. And so it’s kind of a funny, parallel. But humans, we do need to implement structured exercise, because of our lack of activity. So that’s in our environment that we’ve put in place. So yes, when people say, Oh, I’m asked if I go for a walk, you know, a couple days a week is not enough. Yeah, right. And I’ve had, you know, it’s like, no, you have to, you’ve got to lift and you got to exert.

Irene Lyon 26:26
But those of us that have, if I go into the kind of groups, I’m sure you work with folks who have chronic illness from time to time, when we have been pushing and pushing and pushing and overriding our need to rest or need to scream, you know, Gabor Ma Tei, will talk about the women who are sick at age 40 are the ones who have suppress their anger their whole lives. So I’m being general there. But it’s a very common trait, that we need to also maybe spend some time before we get into that structured exercise routine, nurturing the part of ourselves that never got to express the pain, the anger, the frustration.

Irene Lyon 27:08
And if we do have a chronic fatigue thing going on, or a joint problem because of inflammation due to the nervous system being in dysregulation, there might be a period where Yeah, it is just going to be soft, gentle yoga, or soft, gentle walk. When you had in your 20s been a hardcore athlete, this was me, like I was an athlete of athletes in my ski town. And then there was like these periods in my last few years where I’m like, it was held for me, Courtney to not be able to go and pump weight. Yeah, but my joints would flare. Like if I had gone to a real doctor or a real doctor, a medical doctor, they probably would have diagnosed me with rheumatoid arthritis. Yes, because I were getting these flares in my joints. But it wasn’t an autoimmune condition. It was my old traumas. My old freeze was was like pomp was pushing up against my, my psyche of wanting to push and like, No, you got arrest, and shifted now but yeah, there were there. This I say this, because there’s no like cookie cutter explanation, of course.

Irene Lyon 28:19
And the final thing I’ll say around that is to not you know, if someone is like, Oh, my goodness, I have no, I really have no energy. It’s like, okay, that’s okay. You might need to rest. This is one of the concepts of the five stages of neuro plastic healing, which I teach neuro relaxation, there might be a year or two where you need to hear it down into

Irene Lyon 28:42
Yeah, and hearing this, you know, this kind of this level of healing, it takes time. And it often requires a little bit of pulling back in order to eventually push forward. And I think you’ll notice that for like, literally a decade of my career, I was very rooted in the fat loss world. Yeah. And what kind of got me out of that was the the number of women I was having come in, who were stressed to the hilt. They weren’t sleeping, their marriages were broken. They were having to stress at work, they didn’t eat well, like all the things and then what did they want to do in the gym? They wanted to push themselves really hard when I’m like, that you do realize exercise is more stress. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 29:26
And in a system that’s already drowning and stress, this probably isn’t a great idea. But there was a lot of pushback on that. Right? Because we’re conditioned to believe that no exercise and calorie cutting is always a good thing. And it’s like, well, no, it’s a good thing and a system maybe that can handle it and dependent on the person who’s asking for it. Yeah, but it’s not great for all people. Okay. One question I think is really important for you to answer is, you know, people may be watching this now or later and not really understand what nervous system regulation even is. So Like if nobody had ever heard that term? How would you explain it in the most basic of ways? I feel like it’s like a test. If you’re gonna need a break,

Irene Lyon 30:11
right now, well, the basic way is we get up. And we don’t need to do anything specific to feel good. Or digraphs or digestion work, our immune system is robust. We’re not needing to, you know, dopamine hit ourselves with a cold plunge, or social media. Yeah, we’re not looking for the next survival thing to glom on to to like feel adrenaline like it.

Irene Lyon 30:45
Someone asked me this a little while ago, like, what would it look like if every cent if everybody was regulated, like everybody would just it would look kind of boring, because we would just be like, back in the day, nomads, hunting thing, gathering, having sex, having babies raising kids playing, you know, when you hear about what tribal culture does, and not tribal culture and war, but where there’s peace, there’s a lot of lounging, there’s a lot of slaying, there’s a lot of games like it’s and the hunt. And that and that the the processing of food is a very short period of time, it’s intense when it happens. But then it’s a lot of chill out. It’s a lot of that ventral vagal, which we talk about, right? It’s social engagement.

Irene Lyon 31:32
So regulation is where we’re not having to do something to feel better. And we’re in a culture and I liked that fat loss world I was in fitness, and we have and all that. And even the mind body world has kind of gotten co opted into, okay, we’re going to do this thing so that we can feel this and manage this. And there’s a time and a place for that. I always say to folks, if you need to take a deep breath, so that you don’t hit your kid that please take a deep breath. But what would be even better is that there’s no need to feel like you have to hate your kid because that kid is being attuned who, so they’re not being difficult. You’re just in your own regulation, which then then gives regulation to them. Right? And

Irene Lyon 32:18
let me see that. We’re all regulated at all times. It makes me wonder, like, Where would art and, and a lot of the things that we create come from? Because what would drive us to do these things? I mean, I don’t know, this is a genuine

Irene Lyon 32:38
question. You know, my, if I think back to like, I wish if I had another lifetime, Courtney, I would study history. And I not like World War Two history, but like, what the Egyptians did, and the Incas and like it because you go and you excavate stuff from those days age. And if we go into even like intergalactic Atlantis, like, there was advanced stuff going on. And my sense is that history that’s starting to get uncovered of advanced civilizations. That’s the potential. Like, there’s a world out there, but like those pyramids weren’t built with, with like, bulldozers, you know? Yeah. And cranes. Yeah, like, were some thing going on that put those things there. And whether that was from human intervention or some other intervention, like there was powerful stuff going on. And then it got we don’t know.

Irene Lyon 33:40
But something happened, like, say that we think that there was a cataclysmic event like this has been talked about more right now. And then we started over again. And our starting over was a little clunky, a little clumsy. But I think that yeah, I mean, as I become more regulated, because there’s no end to regulation ArcPad Sorry. Yeah. I mean, the amount of psychic ability I now have with my husband, Seth, it’s crazy. Yeah. Like, like he’ll, he’ll be about to say something. And then I’ll be like, Oh, is it this? He’s like, right. He’s like, get in my brain. But it’s because we’re so in tune and in Santa. And so I think like if I mean, if we were all regulated, I mean, certainly there’ll be no war, there’d be no abuse. There’d be no destruction of the planet, we would treat our animals and human kids as they should be. Yeah. And I think art would be created when it is when it feels right. Yeah. And we would, we would just be in a much more simpler situation. But I do think our technology still has place, but it would be used not to escape. Yeah, it really will be used for the advancement of innovating more things that are kind of cool. You know, And I thought but again, the betterment of humanity, right?

Irene Lyon 35:03
Like for exactly. Yeah, yeah, I

Irene Lyon 35:05
think it’d be interesting one if we had a crystal ball to look into that. But you know, there’s a great show is a little bit of a sidetrack called station 11. I don’t know, if you watch that. There was a book really good, very artistic. And it was basically about the world coming to an end due to a pandemic, funnily enough. But what it showed was the push for one side of the people to be creative and artistic. And they did play is and all sorts of things. And then there was this other side that tried to bring order back. And that didn’t work. No, it’s a great show for that, because it does show what might happen if we kind of went back to zero. Yeah, and we are creative.

Irene Lyon 35:50
You know, we’re, of course, for creative look at all this technology and art that’s being created. But there is this dark veil that’s kind of, you know, descended upon us due to industrialization, domestication, but how can we have those things? And, and stay? A Well, yeah, you know, we don’t we don’t have to die of an illness. And yet, that’s become kind of the common thing is that so, you know, back to regulation, regulation is just doing really well. And that, knowing what our system needs and knowing what our immediate family needs, and that’s really what what in the past we were designed for, we weren’t designed to know what was going on on the other side of the world? Well,

Irene Lyon 36:36
I’m trusting that right. Like, I feel like that’s a big piece of it is not just knowing it, but trusting it. And, and honoring that truth. Because I find so often with my clients, like they, I always remind them, they do know. And then the word they get caught up is in the self doubt. And the second guessing that someone else knows better Oh, and the 10,000 video clips that’s on Instagram to the air telling them something else, you know, and so there’s that lack of self trust, which I think the further away we get from self trust, the more dysregulated we become.

Courtney Townley 37:09
Well, I know one of the things that you and I wanted to talk about on this specific Instagram Live today was just that nervous system regulation has almost become a buzz phrase. Yes. And it’s now becoming a marketing strategy. I mean, dear Lord, like, it seems like everyone now is teaching some component of nervous system regulation, which is dangerous, because not all people are qualified doing this work. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to that a little bit, maybe kind of what separates your work from what else is being sold out there. And also just to maybe educate consumers, like if you are going to do this level of work, which we certainly hope you will do at some point in your life, the sooner the better. What do we look for? And how do we know that we are engaging with somebody who really has the skill set?

Irene Lyon 37:59
That’s a great question. And the first thing I’ll say, because I just learned the other week. I don’t know if you see Instagram ads, Courtney, there’s a whole bunch popping up of women doing somatic workouts. Oh, yeah. And I just found out because I’m like, this is not this isn’t like they’re doing movement. Okay. But that is not going to heal your trauma. And I found out for a friend of mine, who is an old fashion runway model that she was hit, she was like approached to be one of those people. And one of the in the ad so their model. Oh, and there’s graphics and it’s basically a business that’s trying to make money but they’re selling you this it’s like a magazine cover.

Irene Lyon 38:49
Yeah, but that’s the first thing I’m going to say is if you see these ads with you know, and nothing wrong with that beautiful lady with a good figure, nothing wrong with that. But she’s got you know, she’s doing the movements with her hips and this is this Gil my trauma. Know that that is one red, lots of red flag right there. Um, you know, what I would say for myself is I, I started this work back in 2004. Right? And so that’s when I started learning Mind Body Feldenkrais. It’s hard for me to say this without like Pooh poohing others, because I know that others do really good work. Sure. But the one thing that you want to look for is Does somebody have credentials? So that’s important. But it’s also tricky, because just because you have credentials, doesn’t mean that you actually know what you’re doing these sharings and the other tricky thing, but you kind of have to lay out all the table and see some credentials. But also do they do they teach?

Irene Lyon 39:53
Further to find is that a lot of the fancy influencers that have the nervous system words and lingo Though I have I can’t find something where they’re actually teaching. Like, more than a quick video of these are some techniques to regulate your nervous system. And that just that literally dawned on me this week, Courtney, because I was like, I want to fight like, I want to give this person the benefit of the doubt, I want to hear them talk about polyvagal. I want to hear them talk about fight flight, I want to hear them talk about healing chronic illness and, and the lack of flow at the bladder level and the digestive level of cardiovascular level. They’re like, there’s nothing. So that’s one other thing is to look for that level of education. The other thing is, does it look this person look regulated? Yeah. And sometimes that’s hard to know. Because if you’re not in your own regulation, you actually might be attracted to someone who’s in a deep freeze.

Irene Lyon 40:55
Well, and this goes back to where we started this conversation, like you telling me, the last time we spoke, that I appear more regulated than I did when you first met, which is 100%. True, yeah. But I think as you become more regulated yourself, you really do start to see it and other people you do, and it gives you so much empathy. I mean, when I see someone freaking out at the airport last week, because I was stuck in Salt Lake for three days hoping and people were just beside themselves. And it does, like give me empathy that, wow, their nervous system is really jacked. Yeah, like they just do not have the skill set to be able to parent themselves in this moment. But I just want to I just wanted to speak to that, that I definitely see dysregulation everywhere.

Irene Lyon 41:37
And so this is what I often do this because I get a lot of people asking me, What do you think about this person, this person? And that’s part of like, the thing I hate the most. Because then I go to these accounts, and then I kind of go home. And I’m not perfect, by the way, like I am not this perfect specimen. But I do, I will say my regulation is pretty strong. And I’ve one could say shown it through all the work I’ve done with my students. So I’ll put that there. Yeah. But what you do is you turn the sound off, and you watch people interest and you see their eyes, and how much they might blink. I can’t really mimic it, where their eyes will roll. Or they look like third year. And I can’t I can’t stop something you can mimic because it’s a deep rheology. Right? Or so there’s either that that deep freeze that deep fear, or there’s a there’s an arousal that’s just so high and so high. And like,

Irene Lyon 42:43
yeah, that’s how I was.

Irene Lyon 42:47
Yeah, and you know, that’s fine. And what’s cool is you can recognize that, right? And so what I have found is if you see certain spots where you’re following people, and since we’re on Instagram, we’ll use that as an example. And there’s very little variation. There’s very little, we talked about heart rate variability, right? Good heart rate variability is big. And that means good regulation, we want to be able to move back and forth through activation in these deactivations through our responses. But what you’ll see is a very thin line variability, and it’s either high or very low. And that’s kind of a telltale sign. It’s not the only sign, but it’s one of the signs. Because there’s something about that. And then I really can’t stress it enough. Like are the people are they educated? Yeah, we levels? Well, I think to what what

Irene Lyon 43:44
helps to build trust so much with your work is that you have so many people testifying to the work, right, that they didn’t do the process. They’ve been doing the work not just for a year or a few years, for years. And so I think it also, you know, just kind of referencing the communities of people that have come up through that practitioner, I think it’s really important. And even if they’re not readily available, which I do think they should be. But if those testimonies aren’t available, just asking for them, like, can I speak to a student? Can I talk to somebody who’s been through this work? I think that’s really important for

Irene Lyon 44:22
know what I’m trying to say with that, because sometimes people will be like, Why? Why are they having to do this work for years? If it’s working? Why do they have Yeah, right. And I think that I want to answer that, because that will always come up as a question is, like, again, back to what I said a few seconds ago, we don’t realize how much stuff we have stored as humans in this current timeframe on planet Earth. And I mean, I have a senior student who just yesterday was sending me a note he’s like, Is this ever gonna end like physics ever?

Irene Lyon 44:58
Like am I in Africa, you know, Yeah, like I but but at the end of the day, it’s like, they still are like, sensing that there is capacity, the capacity has collapsed. But holy cow, there is another boulder that I’m bringing out of my swimming pool, which is one of my analogies. Yeah. Where did that come from? And and I think because we haven’t charted this territory until now, we really don’t know what is possible for healing but also how much we’ve learned. So when people hear oh, I’ve done sbsm smart body smart minds six times, and we’re going into the 15th round. Yes, right. Right. Yeah. Right. Like, like, why are people still coming back? And it’s like, because some people need to keep doing this work. Yeah, constantly. And I still am like, I someone asked you the day do you do your own lessons? I’m like, No, I that’d be weird to like, listen to myself.

Irene Lyon 45:51
But you know, I have an osteopath. I see body workers. I have other mentors and coaches that keep me in check. Like, I’m talking to people constantly. I’m getting feedback. Like, is my ego getting too big? Like, what is it? And so we’re always that’s the other sign, Courtney that I forgot to mention someone who is really in this work is doing their work?

Irene Lyon 46:16
Yeah, for sure. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, just like acknowledging that life is dynamic. Like we are always like, our stress levels don’t stay the same. I mean, we’re always dealing with stuff and different things and new things and different different dosages of stress. And so I think to think that this work would ever be done to me is a little weird. Because as long as you’re living, breathing human, you’re going to be contending with uncertainties and unknowns. And so these skill sets can just go a really long way in helping you to stay regulated,

Irene Lyon 46:51
throughout all of it. They even keel gain regulation. And you know, what people have said, if it wasn’t for the work they did through, say, smart body smart mine or my other courses, they would have been a mess the last four years, for example. Yeah, and the router that, you know, I use that example of the people in the airport is perfect, because it’s like, they’re maybe not getting to where they need to go, that’s, that really does suck. And they’re reacting as though the world is ending. And it actually isn’t. Yeah. But that reaction is based in dysregulation not not being able to see perspective. Yeah.

Irene Lyon 47:31
Yeah. Lully Absolutely. I just saw a comment come through here that I thought was really interesting that I don’t want to be so focused on healing that I forget to live 100% Yeah. And what’s so interesting is, I feel like a lot of the women that I work with, they aren’t living, they’re surviving, like, they are just barely keeping their head above water, because they’re in survival mode. 24/7. So as they start tapping into work like this, they actually start living more because they start setting boundaries, they start saying no, they start going after the things they actually care about, they start taking better care of themselves, not because they to lose five pounds, but because they actually know it helps them to show up more in a more powerful way in the world. So I think this level of work absolutely helps you to live on a much more powerful plane of life. i Before we go, there’s there’s kind of two opportunities here. Smart body smart mind opens when remind me of the opening

Irene Lyon 48:33
13 So next a week from now, okay, so what opens

Irene Lyon 48:36
in a week, if your 12 week course, which is really a kind of a self, you’re teaching, obviously, there’s modules, but it’s it’s really giving you self-leadership skills in a realm of nervous system regulation. And I definitely encourage if anyone is interested on really doing a deep dive into nervous system healing, it’s an incredible horse. I can’t say enough good things about it. But because that doesn’t open for registration for another week, you also have your healing trauma series, which is free Yeah, yeah, we speak to

Irene Lyon 49:11
that a little bit. Yeah, so that was created years ago. So I’m gonna put a disclaimer I am I am younger. I am a little the sole phrase there. So you’ll see Marina the way that now yeah. So don’t think that that’s how the teaching CSM comes out. But it’s still you know, to be fair, the content the theory is still 100% Nothing has changed. So that three videos I would say the first video to me is the best one because it goes into the swimming pool and beach ball analogy. Yeah. It also goes into my person, a person B analogy, which explains why some people can have a trauma and walk away and really be fine and other people have one and the whole life goes into shambles. That is really important to understand. Because for some of us, we might be like, I think I’m okay. But then, and I’ve recently had this happen in my life or some some people that I know have had some accidents and it has unveiled a lifetime of story stored up stuff, right?

Irene Lyon 50:21
The view can preload that knowledge and start to work on building capacity for that. Oh, event occurs. I mean, light years ahead, have no way of healing. So that that video is super important. The other cool thing about that training is there’s a 20 minute neurosensory exercise. That is me guiding you through audio, the basics orienting following impulse feeling the ground following breath, not changing breath. So that just gives a little intro it’s by no means the full kit and caboodle because in our PSM we go, we got pretty darn deep. I mean, we’re working with the organs, the viscera, the layers of the body, the movement. We’re working with the different tones of the vagus nerve like it’s, it is a comprehensive program because it’s not just one methodology. It’s three. It’s the work that I studied through the Feldenkrais Method, a somatic experiencing Peter Levine’s work and then the work of Kathy Kane and Steve Terrell working with early trauma at the at the Oregon level, and not Oregon, Oregon level. And that that that trifecta, from my experience, is what makes sbsm unique. Yeah.

Irene Lyon 51:44
And I just think it has that it there’s an essence when those three things are together. The other thing to mention is in SBSM, there’s support, so you don’t just get the course and have, you know, good luck. Yeah, there. There’s nine professionals who are trained, most of them at my level and beyond who are in the moderation threads. So it’s typing based on a website. And they’re in there for 16 weeks. So actually more we go over the course date when we end and they’re there to answer questions. So it’s like you also get these amazing coaches, for the tuition. So it’s an if life plan, you can come back and ask questions whenever we run again.

Irene Lyon 52:32
Well, on that note, it’s really funny. In my own journey, we do a monthly power move, which is something that you’re going to focus on this month is going to improve your well being right and it can be anything. Yeah. But it was really interesting this month, I think we had three people inside the community all say that they were going back to sbsm principles and practices for this month, because they were just feeling off kilter. And they knew how much those things helped to stabilize them. So I just thought you’d appreciate that. No, I made it there. So yay.

Courtney Townley 53:04
Yeah, so both of those for anyone watching this now or later, both links will be in my bio, I think the Healing Trauma series is always already in there. But I’ll also have the link for the waitlist for SDSM. And then I posted Irene, I don’t know a dozen times on the Grace & Grit Podcast. So if you want to hear more of our conversations, you can always go to the grace & grit.com website and just look at the like, just put in the search my name, and I read his name, and you’ll find all of that. Yeah, thank you so much for being here and join us. I always love talking to you. And so

Irene Lyon 53:37
good to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And yeah, keep keep up the regulation. Absolutely.

Irene Lyon 53:43
I mean, once you once you go there, you can’t go back. I mean, it’s really, really I have such a low tolerance for being in that space anymore, which is such a gift. You know, because I lived there. I thought permanently now to be able to kind of see. Adriel how uncomfortable that is I don’t want to be there.

Irene Lyon 54:02
It when you’re when you come out of it, you feel how grating and and destructive. That way of being is and it can take some time to get there. You know that I’m so honest about that. It’s like this isn’t a quick fix is a lifestyle. But once you cross into that lifestyle, and you really solidify in it, you’re right you can’t see them in any way.

Irene Lyon 54:27
It makes me crazy because we normalize and we almost glorify regulation. I think that’s what happened to me is I was being praised for it. I was you know, always you know, succeeding at things through and looking like I was you know, the jack of all trades that so many things and it was crushing me. And I think that for for me to start doing it because I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I started looking for that solution which is landed on your work. Yeah. And look, now I see so many people that I and sort of assume that they’re in that same space where like, they’re doing all these things. And it all just looks so glowing from the outside. But I’m like, are you okay? Because we’re not always okay. No, but we can make it. Look, we’re really good actors, and we can make it look like an awesome thing.

Irene Lyon 55:16
That’s a really good point. And I think that’s the, it’s impossible to get into someone’s house and see how they live out. When they’re not on camera. Yeah. And that’s impossible to figure out. But there is something about being a whole person. And I actually just talked to one of your peers, we’ll be releasing her interview in the next two weeks. Jerrica is her name, you’d really love it. And she’s so she’s young, I’m just loving these young kiddos that are coming through and haven’t had babies yet. Right. And she’s like, I was two people. Oh, yeah, this was probably what was in this way. And this is how I was in this way. And I am now one person.

Irene Lyon 55:58
And that is the part that is so important, because many have gone to their grave, not realizing that they can be one person. But the healing we have to do is pretty monumental. Because of that crap. We’ve been fed for so long that wrong. But when we work at this stuff, and keep working at it, as you have learned it, we become that person. And like the way I talk here is no different than if I’m talking in a workshop no different than when I’m driving my husband. A little different when I talk to my parents, but that’s you know, that’s something that’s different. Right? But this is how I am. And that’s what we want. Because when you’re pretending to be something else, it is energy sucking.

Courtney Townley 56:46
Oh, am I living one life is hard living is twice as high.

Irene Lyon 56:52
And that, you know, that’s the other benefit of really getting into this work and a DVI, you’re gonna save a lot of energy. And that energy can go through to better processes that just need the energy. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Love it. Love you. So

Irene Lyon 57:08
appreciate you. And yeah, thank you for being here. And we will be connecting soon. I have no doubt Thanks. Bye bye

Courtney Townley 57:23
if you enjoyed this episode of The Grace & Grit Podcast and you are really eager to learn more about the nervous system. Again, the doors to smart body smart mind the 12 week program that Irene talked about in this interview, their doors are now open. So again, you can find out all the details by heading over to graceandgrit.com/smartbodysmartmind. And just a reminder that anyone who registers in this round of SmartBody SmartMind will also get six months of free membership inside of Rumble & Rise, but you have to use that link that I just mentioned which again is graceandgrit.com/smartbodysmartmind

Courtney Townley 58:10
Thank you for listening to the Grace & Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you are taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.