198. Day 6:Why Your Body Shakes When Stressed (And Why That's Actually Good)

In today’s episode we discuss:

🔗🔗Links for today’s episode:

Book a quick call with Kathie: https://tidycal.com/kathie-owen/top-workplace-15minutes
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Blog post for today with bonus links and content: https://www.kathieowen.com/blog/day6-burnout-jenna

Managing Burnout Through Movement and Nervous System Regulation with Jenna

In this episode of the 12 Days of Burnout Breakthrough, I'm excited to welcome my friend and colleague, Jenna, a movement expert and chronic pain coach.

Jenna introduces herself and dives into the relationship between chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation, and burnout. She shares valuable insights on how stress affects our health and offers practical techniques, such as deep breathing and shaking, to help our bodies return to a balanced state.

Jenna also describes her work in somatic movement and body awareness and invites viewers to join her Facebook community, 'Thrive Beyond Pain,' for more resources and support. Tune in for actionable tips to manage stress and improve well-being!

00:00 Introduction and Special Guest Announcement 
00:36 Understanding Chronic Stress and Burnout 
01:42 Recognizing Symptoms of Nervous System Imbalance 
05:24 Practical Tips for Managing Stress 
06:51 The Shaking Technique for Stress Relief 
07:54 Connecting with Your Body and Nervous System 
09:54 Conclusion and How to Connect with Jenna

Transcript

Kathie: 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another day of the 12 Days of Burnout Breakthrough. And today I have a special guest. It's one of my friends and colleagues. Her name is Jenna, and I'm going to let her introduce herself.

Jenna: 0:14

Thank you, Kathie and thank you for having me on the podcast and the live stream. I am, really grateful to be here today. And just to tell you a little bit about myself, I'm a movement expert, a chronic pain coach. So I work with folks who are struggling with chronic pain or an injury. And this also applies to chronic stress. So that's why I'm excited to dive into this topic today. to discuss how, chronic stress and more specifically how nervous system dysregulation and imbalance can lead to overwhelm and burnout.

Kathie: 0:56

Awesome. Perfect segue into what we're talking about. So we're talking about burnout this week and today, just like every other episode during these 12 days, I want to get you a quick win. And I think Jenna's going to Be right on, spot on for that. Because as we've talked about, burnout has all these different names. It's overwhelm, anxiety, I'm tired all the time, all kinds of things. And that is regulated by your nervous system. And when you're overstressed, which is burnout, which is an overstress of emotional, physical, and mental, too much stress of, All three of those. So I think Jenna is really going to touch on some really quick wins for us today. And I'm going to turn it over to her and let her explain that to us.

Jenna: 1:42

So chronic stress, um, can be so damaging to us because it keeps our nervous system stuck in this fight or flight mode. When we're really meant to experience And that is how our bodies are designed, that's how our nervous systems are designed to have these short term periods of stress, and then we're meant to be able to come back to a place of balance where it's called rest and digest, so I'm sure folks have heard of that before, that's also called the parasympathetic state, that's where our body heals itself, so it's really important that we have periods of time Where we are able to find that state of relaxation, whether it's, you know, even just sitting on the couch and being able to chill with our family, having time for a walk out in nature, um, and just being able to give ourselves that of time where our body is able to realize, okay, this is a moment where I can, um, start to relax and come down off of this, what we call hyper arousal, which is that stress response state. So when we start to down regulate is when our systems can come back into that state. place of balance. And that way, some of the symptoms that we may be experiencing that go along with chronic stress could be fatigue, a weakened immune system, so if you're getting sick a lot, or if you're developing more kind of long term chronic health issues, that can all go back to the state of of your nervous system. And, when we experience burnout, I know for myself, I could share a little bit about my story with burnout, but I know that it's when, basically our system says, I just cannot keep going on like this. And that can lead to more more serious health issues. So that's why we really want to catch it before it turns into that.

Kathie: 3:45

All right. Awesome. I love that. And I want to hone in on one particular thing, because almost every guest I've had on here has talked about the word balance. I talk about balance a lot, and when it comes to what they call work life balance, there's really no such thing. It's more important to get in touch with your body and where it's like feeling these symptoms of overwhelming stress and how to balance that out. And Jenna is an expert, like, I know she teaches Pilates, she teaches a lot of movement. to deal to bring our body back into balance. So Jenna, how do we, get in touch with the imbalance in our body and maybe what can we do to get that balance back?

Jenna: 4:34

Yeah, well, I think the first step is just recognizing that that's happening. I think Many people know, that they're stressed, so that would be the first step, but there are also some symptoms that you could, you know, pay attention to that could go along with being in that sympathetic, um, nervous system state, which could be, I think when it's, when it comes to the workplace, um, there's a couple of really common symptoms, which maybe is like racing thoughts or the inability to focus. That's actually a nervous system state. Forgetfulness, mental fog, lack of mental clarity, and even overanalyzing or second guessing our decisions, that can also be a nervous system response. And we might find that we, if we are able to come back into that place of balance, we're able to think more clearly. And that's why this is really important. So I can share just a couple of really simple ways, that you can do that without having to take your whole day or Take a couple hours out of your day, this could be something that's really quick and simple. And the first thing I would suggest is that when you're starting to notice that you're in that heightened stress state, you may notice that your breath is kind of shallow or maybe it's more fast paced. And a really simple thing you can do is just start to notice that and begin to take a couple long deep breaths. So what I suggest doing is breathing in through the nose for four. Out the mouth for four and take a couple of those long, deep breaths. That's a really good tool. It's not always easy to remember that, but the more you practice it, it gets easier. You start to remember, oh yeah, let me just take a couple deep breaths. Let me just kind of catch myself here. Especially before I respond. So in the workplace, maybe that could look like before I respond to this email that's really triggering me, let me just catch myself and pause. So it's really about taking that momentary pause to collect ourselves, take a couple deep breaths and then see from there how we feel. But sometimes that in and of itself is not enough to actually release that stress because we're really going into a survival mode and energy is meant to move emotions or energy. And so sometimes we really want to move that energy, right? So one of the ways you could do that is, just by kind of shaking it off. That's how an animal in nature would shake off survival stress. So say a gazelle is being chased by a lion. then if it was able to escape, that's that fight or flight response. It's like, am I going to be able to fight this lion? Probably not. Okay. I'm going to run. And if it's able to then survive, the first thing it's going to do is try to release all those stress chemicals from its body. by shaking. And so this is actually a real physiological response that's wired into our nervous system, via our reptilian brain. That's like our dinosaur brain that's very primitive that is just there to keep us. It's our survival brain. So when we're able to physically release stress just by shaking, it could be something really quick. And of course, if you're, you know, working in an office, that might be kind of embarrassing. So maybe you want to go outside and do that. But I know a lot of people these days work from home. So that should be something that, you know, is easy to just move the energy through your body. And one of the things I suggest to my clients that they find really helpful when they're working with this, Especially at first, they're getting to know their body, they're getting to know their nervous system responses, is to ask yourself, how does this energy want to move? And, you know, sometimes you actually get a response. You hear, Oh, I want to shake, or I want to move my hips, or you'll actually, your body will talk to you. And that can mean, you know, developing a deeper and deeper relationship over time. with ourselves, with our body. Um, and this is why I teach this kind of work. We do somatic movement in my programs. We do a lot of, you know, body awareness exercises so that we can start to develop a deeper relationship with ourselves, with our body. And then over time, this just gets easier and easier. I know it can maybe feel a little overwhelming at first, like how does this even work? How am I going to do this? But you'll notice if you even just do that practice, that shaking practice. You'll probably feel better after doing that. So, um, you know, you can just try it out, experiment with it and, and see how it goes.

Kathie: 8:59

Wow. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that because here's something I really want to point out is nobody else has mentioned that shaking process in the interviews that I've done. And I've heard of that before. And I want us to maybe practice that. And when she said, if you can't get up in the office and do it, Well, you've gotta go to the restroom and maybe you can go run in there and if you feel uncomfortable doing it in in front of everybody, because I know that that works and it helps a lot. And I myself have a tendency, I can feel myself listening to my body and I notice if I start shaking my leg a lot or something like that, that's that automatic response. But I probably need to do a little bit more, especially if I'm feeling a lot of anxiety or burnout or stress or overwhelm, all that good stuff. So we can get back into the focus and get back on there. Thank you so much for being here today, Jenna, and helping us with this quick win. I love it. And before we go, please tell us where we can find you and how we can work with you.

Jenna: 10:05

Yeah, so the best way to find me is through my Facebook page. I have a Facebook community. It's called Thrive Beyond Pain, and that's my program. But I have a lot of, classes like we've been talking about on, you know, the nervous system, on movement, and we also go over various, you know, common injuries like knee pain or, you know, neck tension. I'm actually doing a live stream. This week on, um, five minutes to release neck tension. So that's really great for anyone in the workplace. So yeah, if you just search me Thrive Beyond Pain Facebook community, that's really the best way to find me on there. Join the community. It's a really great supportive group of folks and we do those live streams there every week.

Kathie: 10:51

Awesome. That is perfect because, um, Jenna also, okay, let's say you're watching this much, much later because YouTube is evergreen. She also has those replays back up on her Facebook page. And one thing I really want to note, and I always say this, but if you're new to my channel, um, I write a blog post that goes with every single video I do, it will be in the show notes and description below, and it will include all of those links to Jenna's channel, her, to her, her Facebook group, and I invite you to join. I mean, it's, talk about a quick win we got today, and, uh, you'll get more quick wins with Jenna in all different aspects, because as a corporate wellness. professional that I've been for all these years, she always answers these questions like, what do I do with the tension in my back? How do I stretch when I'm just sitting down? And she talks about this in her Facebook group and then she's very active in there and she can answer your questions. So that's my episode. for today. Thank you so much, Jenna, for being here. And, um, I trust that you found today's episode helpful. If you know somebody who can benefit from this, please share it with them. And until next time, I'll see you next time. Peace out and Namaste.