How Do You Calm Your Nervous System? (Transcript)

Episode transcript, ShelbyRADIO · 81 minutes

Short answer: To calm your nervous system, first understand what it is: your command center, made up of your brain, spinal cord and nerves, deciding every day whether you're safe enough to open the windows or need to lock the doors. It has one branch that mobilizes you into fight or flight and another that restores you so you can rest and digest your life. The problem isn't that it activates, it's when it activates and doesn't shut off. Regulation doesn't mean being calm 24/7. It means how quickly you come back from stress, and slow breathing, steady rhythms, gentle movement and safe people help you get there. A simple reset: feet on the floor, unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, breathe in for four to five seconds and out for six to seven for two minutes, name three neutral things you see, then notice where your body feels 1% more space.

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Key takeaways

• Your nervous system is your command center and security system: your brain, spinal cord and nerves, constantly deciding whether you're safe.
• One branch mobilizes you into fight or flight. The other restores you so you can rest, integrate and digest your life.
• The issue isn't that your nervous system activates. It's when it activates and doesn't shut off.
• Leaving a stressful situation doesn't power your system down overnight. Your body keeps running the old pattern for a while.
• Regulation isn't being calm 24/7. It's how quickly you bounce back from stress.
• Breath is like a remote control for your nervous system. Slow breathing, a neutral focus and noticing space in your body can reset you in about three minutes.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

You're not crazy, you're calibrating (00:00)

Have you ever felt a calling, something deep, something you can't quite explain, that's urging you to step into a higher version of yourself? Hello, welcome to ShelbyRADIO. I am Shelby Carino, and today I'm going to discuss how to calm the nervous system.

I've been coming off the process of resigning from my teaching job, and if you've been following, I've been sharing that story and the after-effects. The irony is that while I've been talking about it, I've had an influx of people messaging me and contacting me through my website with their own stories. Some resigned because they knew it was no longer their path. Some quit spontaneously because it wasn't what they were supposed to be doing anymore. Others had their position eliminated. Reading your stories has been another validation for me that I'm on the right path and having these experiences for a reason.

Moving toward new kinds of work (02:48)

We've all been out here working a job at some point. As we move forward, we're moving toward being more self-sufficient and less reliant on a corporation or entity to give us a paycheck. Will we ever stop having employers? No. But we'll be shifting to different kinds of employers: businesses run by people who have been on a very intense spiritual growth path, who will run them more ethically, responsibly and with balanced nervous systems, so it's easier to work within them.

People have even messaged me saying, "Please let me know when the businesses you and your husband are building are up and running. I want to work for you." That warms my soul, because that's what Joe and I are after: drawing in people who have been through very hard nervous system breakdowns and are ready to keep producing, working and making money, but as part of something close to our hearts, where working under that umbrella is healing for their nervous system.

So again, it shows the alignment in why I resigned when I did, the human side of withdrawing from the job, and my nervous system realizing it no longer has to protect itself every day. And that isn't only because of the job. I've realized I've been under this nervous system stress for quite a while. The job just accentuated it.

So I want to start by saying: you are not crazy for what you might be feeling in your body and your mind right now. You're moving towards calibration. You're not crazy. You're getting calibrated.

Understanding the nervous system (07:00)

In my opinion, quite a few people don't understand the nervous system, and I say that because I was one of them. I knew the term. I even got information on it through my big awakening process that began in 2011. But I don't believe you can truly understand what your nervous system is going through until you test it in so many different ways that one day it hits you: "Oh my gosh, it's been my nervous system increasing my stress, my skin conditions, all of it." Then you go down the rabbit hole of learning why the nervous system matters and how to calibrate it, which means calibrating your life to create a safer space for it to function.

How do you know your nervous system might be on the blink? You may think you're overreacting, being dramatic or being weak, when really your body is just doing the job of what your nervous system is picking up. If you've made a big change, like quitting a job, moving states or a shift in a relationship, your mind might go through grief to process the change. Your nervous system, meanwhile, is saying, "Hold on a minute. Are we safe?" It's the nervous system creating many of those feelings: overreacting, being overly dramatic, feeling weak or out of control. That's what I want to dive into today, because it's everything I've been learning, and the teacher in me wants to share it.

Why it doesn't power down overnight (11:12)

You can leave a job like I did, but it keeps affecting you after the fact, because your system was powering up every day to survive the environment you spent most of your day in. The nervous system doesn't power down overnight. It takes time.

When I went back into a job where an employer paid me, I had to fit that system. It paid me to be there at a set time in the morning and leave at a set time in the afternoon, with no flexibility. My nervous system had to go from waking up when it wanted, pulling into my world what I wanted and not being around much stimulation, to being overstimulated overnight. And I couldn't power down enough to recover. It took my entire Friday off to power down, so that Saturday and Sunday I felt like myself again. Then Sunday night I'd power back up, because I could feel everything coming in for the week.

A lot of people don't notice this, because they get used to being in that heightened state and it becomes a way of life. That's what happened to me. I was losing touch with what it felt like to be in the flow of God, I'll put it that way. That doesn't mean I wasn't supposed to be at the job. I was supposed to be there, I enjoyed it and I did a lot. But once my spirit got the learnings, because it wasn't meant to be indefinite, everything started exposing itself: alert, alert, things are changing, pay attention. That was my nervous system blowing out, telling me I didn't have much more time in that version of myself.

Listening to the knocking (14:28)

My ego was saying, "Whoa, I'm doing this, I'm enjoying it." But the knocking kept coming: this happened, now this happened, pay attention, you're about to catapult into something else.

Some of the messages I've received have been from people who felt they needed to leave their job but didn't listen to the knocking or the inner voice. They stayed longer without a plan, and then they got fired or let go. How many of you has that happened to? You start hearing inside, "This isn't working anymore. A change is coming." But you don't listen, because your mind, that ego side, says, "But I need this paycheck. But I like who I work with. But I can't afford to leave." This is where the lies come in, the things we tell ourselves to stay stuck, because movement is hard for a lot of people. They don't like change, and movement requires change. But when your nervous system is ready for that change, it's going to push you to move.

Your command center (16:48)

Look at the nervous system in very basic terms as your command center. It's your brain, your spinal cord and your nerves, constantly sending signals to run your body and respond to the world. Let me say it again: your nervous system is your command center, made up of your brain, your spinal cord and all your nerves, constantly sending signals to run your body and respond to the world.

Think of it as your internal power grid and your security system at the same time. Every day it's asking, "Do we open the windows today and cook dinner? Or do we lock the doors and scan the street to see what's going on?" One is safe and open: you feel free. The other is restrictive: we've got to be prepared for anything. Every day, your nervous system is deciding whether you're open and free because nothing is challenging you, or whether you need to be on guard because there's a lot coming at you to survive.

Why you relax on vacation (19:36)

This is why so many people say, "Every time I go on vacation, I calm down. I relax. The real me comes forward. There are no problems." Why does that happen? Because your nervous system knows it's on vacation. It knows it's safe and isn't going to be challenged by things that require high alert, so it isn't holding on asking, "Are we safe?"

For me, being a teacher around kids and their nervous systems and emotional energies was a lot, because I'm very sensitive and empathic, which most teachers are. So are many nurses, doctors and healers. You pick up those energies every day. That created what I called shrink-wrapping. I had to shrink-wrap myself because I could feel all this energy coming at me that would peck at me like a bird, because they could feel my light or wanted something from it. It was a safety mechanism so I wouldn't burn out emotionally or energetically.

Somewhere in me I knew I was there for the learnings, to build immunity in my nervous system. The stronger it got, the more I realized I was safe and didn't have to put up a shield. When I was actually resigning, I let that shield down, and that's when I started seeing all the problems, because I let everything be organic instead of changing it to keep myself on high alert. My lesson was: don't take it personally. It's not my job to hold space for these kids or this school anymore.

So, back to basics. The nervous system is the command center: how your brain wires everything each day, what your spinal cord picks up, and your nerves, which is why people get irritated and don't stay calm, because they're overstimulated. If you as an adult get overstimulated, imagine what the kids in a classroom feel.

Two branches: mobilize and restore (24:44)

Your nervous system has automatic functions. It affects your heart rate, your blood pressure, your breathing patterns (you'd be surprised how many people forget to breathe), your digestion and your body temperature. Sweating has been a big one for me, and that's not just perimenopause and menopause. That's a nervous system needing to regulate.

I talk about a two-time learning pattern: things usually run through your system twice. Picture the nervous system as a tree with two branches, each doing a different job. The first branch mobilizes you. That's fight or flight. If you feel something coming in that you don't like, you either fight it or run from it. People usually fight or run. They don't try to integrate it, and that's where spiritual ascension comes in.

The second branch restores you. Here you don't feel like you have to fight or run, so you can rest, integrate and digest your life. For me, I was in the first branch four days a week. On the fifth day I'd begin moving into the second, and by Saturday and Sunday I was fully in it. But four days out of seven, I was in fight or flight. Until the last couple of weeks after I resigned, when I started letting everything go, because I didn't have to protect myself anymore. I had no judgment and no personal attachment to whether a child blew up in their behavior. Everything became what it needed to be, and I moved into that restoration phase.

When you're stuck in fight or flight (28:56)

When you're in that first branch, you may notice your jaw getting really tight. You may clench your jaw or teeth in your sleep because your mind is still saying, "I've got to go to work tomorrow." You may have thoughts that won't slow down, and then you can't sleep. Your digestion is off: you're in the bathroom constantly, or you're constipated. The flow in your body isn't moving fluidly, because you're always on.

I told Joe when I went back to teaching, "I'm always on. I'm never off." I was talking with this person, with this child, teaching all these kids, then getting home and still having to do things. I was never able to just be. It affected my digestion and my thoughts: Did I enter my test scores in that spreadsheet? Did I plan for this segment? Where does this new score go in this new system? My brain was always keeping up so I wouldn't fall behind. My face was getting tight and my skin more irritated than the rosacea I already had. But I was so in it that I wasn't fixated on it. I thought, "This is my life, and I'm dealing with it." Until life started changing, and my nervous system said, "Wait a minute, this isn't okay."

When restoration begins (32:12)

Branch two is restoration. That's when you feel like you can exhale, and the exhale takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. I'm still in the exhale.

Your appetite returns. When your nervous system is constantly on guard, you're moving so much energy that you don't get hungry. Joe has learned this about me. Whether I was at work, doing mediumship with his mother during her transition or running my business, if I was running a lot of energy, I had no appetite. Afterward I'd be ravenous. I'd tell him, "I can't eat right now because my nervous system is on alert, but once this is done, I'm going to need to eat." Even when we travel, I'm tapped into him driving, the dogs in the back, the camper behind the truck and the people around us. If we fly, I often won't eat. So what am I learning? Shelby, you don't have to be on alert. If something needs to come into your world and you need to know it, it'll show up without you knocking out your nervous system.

I lived most of my life not knowing I had a nervous system. When I woke up spiritually and began understanding what it does and what my empathic parts do, I had to learn how to trust myself to be safe in the energies. Then I met Joe, and that heightened it more, because now I had a partner and had to balance it on my masculine side too, not only my feminine.

In the second branch, you're finally exhaling. Your appetite returns after a while, you start sleeping more soundly and you can actually feel your body again. That's a big one for me. When I've been running things through my nervous system, I don't even feel my body. These things calibrate along the way, based on your level of mastery with your nervous system. And yes, it's something to master.

What stress actually does (35:56)

Now let's talk about stress. We use the word all the time: "I'm stressed. This is stressful." We keep saying it when we're stressed, which makes us more stressed, because our unconscious parts are becoming conscious to say, "Wake up and figure out something that won't stress you."

Stress activates the body and releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and that's what shifts the system into gear. It's like driving a stick shift through first, second, third, fourth and fifth gear. If you're used to living in stress, you power up your nervous system by creating stress to get those hormones going so you can shift gears. Stress becomes your power supply. A lot of people live that way daily, even spiritual people, because you don't know what you don't know. Over time you learn you don't have to create stress. You can relax into being and joy, and you'll get a better result because you're in divine flow. When your body feels safe again, the second branch comes in and starts downshifting the gears.

When it never shuts off (39:12)

Here's a big takeaway I had a realization about: the issue isn't that your nervous system activates. The issue is when it activates and doesn't shut off. That's when problems occur.

I woke up in October 2011, when my Kundalini energy flipped and everything activated, and I went through a massive learning phase about my energy, my nervous system and spirituality. Through that time, I created a life where I produced my own income from my soul purpose, and I created everything you see today. That meant I was in control of what heightened my nervous system. I chose when I woke up, when I recorded a podcast, when I worked on my courses and when I had sessions with clients. Even with a husband and kids and family stress, I was more relaxed, because it was personal and I could manage it.

But when I went back to work in a school, I realized I was under layer after layer: the education system, the district, the school, the school's leadership, my team, and then me, the teacher. I went from being at the top, in control of my stress, my decisions, my expansion and my freedom, to being at the bottom, in the trenches. I was never going to be stress-free under all those layers. In my opinion, the system isn't set up to protect teachers the way they need to be protected.

That's why so many teachers, if they're honest, even if they love teaching and love their kids like I did, hear a truth knocking every day: "If I could do something different, I would, because this is too hard." I'm not saying people don't like their jobs. You can love your job. I loved going every day. But it was incredibly stressful on my nervous system, and that's where people's health starts to be in jeopardy. People start asking, "Is this worth it? I don't have time for my children, my husband, my life." Even with all that time off, it takes teachers that long to decompress, and many get sick during their breaks, because their system finally gets to shut down and their immunity drops. They were running on cortisol and adrenaline just to get to work. Then they collapse.

It's a cycle we're not supposed to live in, but we're trained to. So again, it's not about whether your nervous system activates. It's whether you know how to shut it off and power it down, and whether it stays powered down longer than it has to be activated. That's the balance I've been learning.

How the body learns stability (46:40)

We all have a body. That's the avatar we move through life in, and our energy lives in it. That's why I tell people to change things in the energy first, so they can change in the body. Your body learns to maintain stability as you go through change. That's how you learn. The more you wake up, the less your nervous system tolerates you staying unaware.

Wear and tear in the body happens when stress activates frequently and doesn't shut off well. That's where the breakdown begins. When I got hired, my cortisol and adrenaline went high right away. It was like going from meditating peacefully on top of a mountain to being dropped on the Indy 500 racetrack. There was no middle ground, no balance. About three months in, I was asking, "What is happening?" It was constant. I told Joe I could see I'd changed, because I was handling it. I wasn't saying I was functioning well, but I was functioning and happy somewhere in the stress, because I was creating change. Once that change moved my path, I had to come out of that system, so I took myself out. And my nervous system said, "Congratulations, you listened."

After I resigned, I noticed my body had more wear and tear than I realized. While teaching, I still tried to do Pilates, but I had to be at school by seven, and the first class started at six, so mornings were out. I tried the five, six and seven o'clock evening classes, and six and seven were impossible because I was exhausted. To make five o'clock, I had to leave by 4:15, which meant extra stress the rest of the week, staying late on other days. Even if I kept up with everything, the next day something new came in. I'd have a meeting during my conference period or an issue with a student. I can't tell you how many times I worked through lunch.

So I wasn't doing Pilates in the way that would help my nervous system calm down and shut off. By the weekend I was so tired from being in fight or flight that even Pilates put strain on my body. In the last month or so since resigning, I've really seen how unhealthy that was, and we all do this. No wonder, when I meet people and find their gift or passion, I tell them to do something with it and try to bring in income from it. We can only go so long. Our bodies won't let us keep living in this old pattern of stress, because our energy is waking up and saying, "We're going to stop the madness." So get in front of it before you get behind it.

Too much, too little and the window of tolerance (55:04)

If your nervous system is chronically activated, your body's natural processes can have issues: sleep problems, anxiety, headaches, feeling tense all the time, gaining weight or trouble focusing. And people who don't work in a stressful job can have these issues too. I ask, "Where is your nervous system still not feeling safe? What relationship are you in? What does your financial situation look like?" Stress comes from everywhere, and a high-stress job often adds to everything else already going on. What we're working on as a collective is bringing balance to our relationships, home and family, workplace and health. Everything is about balance.

Even when you remove yourself from a situation, your body has learned a pattern, and it takes time to stop scanning like you still work there. I left three weeks of lesson plans behind, so my energy was in that building for three weeks. I resigned in December, right before winter break, and school didn't return until January 5th. My body didn't change the pattern over the break, because it thought I was just on vacation like my coworkers. It wasn't until January 5th, when I didn't have to get up and go to that building, that my nervous system started learning a new pattern and scanning less and less. After this third week, I feel the energy I had out there coming back to me and tying up my body and nervous system like a bow. Where was I still protecting myself by planning three weeks ahead so I didn't pull out so fast? That's the wisdom that comes after the fact. That's where the clarity happens.

There are two common patterns. One is too much activation: anxious energy, a racing mind, irritability, insomnia, digestive issues and not being able to relax, which is when you find yourself endlessly scrolling on your phone, trying to process what's in your system. The other is too little: you feel shut down, heavy, tired, numb or foggy. That's how I felt before I went back into teaching, while I was supporting Joe's mother through her transition with mediumship. My nervous system was on guard, but I was also bored. I felt disconnected, like I didn't even care about life, like if I wasn't here, so be it. I was living in her nervous system, in a way, because she was dying.

There's a window of tolerance where we can handle life without tipping into overwhelm or shutdown. With teaching, I knew how much I could do without going over the edge. Once you go over it, you have no more tolerance. After I resigned and still had those last two weeks, my tolerance was nil. On the last week of school I took two days off just to get through. Your ego tries to keep you hanging in and doing the right thing, but when that window of tolerance is done, it's done. It's like a light switch going off.

Some people think being regulated means being calm 24/7. That's false. Your nervous system isn't going to be calm 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Regulation means how quickly you come back from stress, how fast you bounce back without adding more stress. That's the ebb and flow. I was under stress four days a week, and it took me all of Friday to come back and stop feeling the school, the kids and the psychic parts. Saturday and Sunday I was myself again, and by eight or nine on Sunday night I was back in it. After I resigned, I realized my window of tolerance was only six months. And it's taken me over a month to start changing my patterns, after only six months there. Imagine if you've been working somewhere for 20 or 30 years.

Breath, rhythms and social safety (66:16)

I want to give you a tool, because breathing is so important in this process. Breathing is like the remote control for the TV. If your nervous system is out of whack, changing your breathing is like changing the channel. There is evidence that when you voluntarily slow your breath, it affects your heart rate and the balance in your nervous system. Breath is one of the only body systems that runs automatically without thinking, yet you can also run it consciously. That's why breathing is the bridge to a calm nervous system.

It's hard to manifest your best life through a nervous system that thinks it's always being chased. When you spiritually wake up and go through a lot of soul healing, you can constantly feel like you're under attack. That's just how it is. But over time it calms down at each layer you peel back. When you regulate and come back more quickly, your rhythms change: your sleep, how much and how often you drink water, how steady your meals are, because your blood sugar swings when there's anxiety in your body. I've had to remind myself to drink water and eat steady meals.

Recently I've brought back gentle movement: Pilates five to six days a week, walking the dogs and gentle stretching, so my body doesn't feel like it's under stress. That's been a reframe for me, because I was a bodybuilder back in the day and played sports, always go, go, go. Now my body says, "I need a break." Even when Joe walks faster, I tell him, "I'm not here to walk fast for exercise. I'm here to walk gently," because my nervous system needs to know it isn't working as hard.

I've also learned what I call social safety. I can be with one safe person, someone of my kind, have a conversation and enjoy being human, and I calm down faster than sitting alone repeating affirmations. That's why I keep my circle of spiritual people close. If they can do that for me, I know I'm doing it for them, and those are the relationships I nurture.

A three-minute reset (71:24)

Let's do this tool before I close. This is a three-minute reset for your nervous system. Do it with me now if you're in a safe place, not driving.

First, posture. Put both feet on the floor. Both feet on the floor will ground you. If you're in a chair, sit up straight, and move to the edge of the chair if you can't get both feet flat. Unclench your jaw. Drop your shoulders, because so often we walk around with our shoulders up. Now just exhale. When I exhaled, if you're watching on YouTube, you saw my body shimmy side to side and drop. I'm dropping the energy down into my body.

Now pace your breathing for two minutes. I'll set a timer. Inhale gently through your nose for four to five seconds, then exhale through pursed lips for six to seven seconds. Make the exhale a little longer than the inhale. Eyes open or closed, it's up to you. Here we go.

Now look around the room for 30 seconds. Wherever you are, name three neutral things you see, whatever neutral looks like to you.

Now take 30 seconds and notice where in your body you feel 1% more space. Is it in your feet, your lower stomach, your shoulders, your low back?

What you just did was combine slow breathing with an attention shift and safety cues to regulate yourself and move forward calmly. This is the power of breath and of slowing down. When your nervous system is heightened, come back to this simple, non-weird practice: breathe, look around and name what's neutral, then go into your body and feel where you have more space, because that's where the breath created space. Breath is healing to the nervous system.

So remember, your nervous system is never the enemy. It's your protector. If it flares up, that's never proof you're failing. It's proof you've been strong for a very long time, and it's time to relax. Take this with you through your day, share it with someone who needs it, and remember that you are always safe, always protected and always in divine alignment. It's a matter of whether you choose to be consciously aware of the alignment your nervous system keeps showing you. Remember, the journey doesn't end here. It's only the beginning. I'll see you on the path.

Frequently asked questions

How can I calm my nervous system quickly?

Try this three-minute reset: feet on the floor, unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders and exhale. Breathe in through your nose for four to five seconds and out through pursed lips for six to seven seconds for two minutes, then name three neutral things you see and notice where your body feels 1% more space.

What are signs my nervous system is stuck in fight or flight?

A tight or clenched jaw, racing thoughts, trouble sleeping, digestive changes, irritability, sweating, and feeling like you're always "on" and never off. Feeling numb, heavy, foggy or shut down can be the other side of dysregulation. Please also talk with your doctor about ongoing sleep, digestive, anxiety or other physical symptoms.

Why do I still feel stressed after leaving a stressful job?

Your nervous system doesn't power down overnight. It learned a pattern of powering up every day to survive that environment, and it keeps running that pattern until it learns, over time, that it's safe.

Does being regulated mean being calm all the time?

No. Nobody's nervous system is calm 24/7. Regulation means how quickly you come back from stress without adding more stress.

Where to go next

• Start here: my free 16-minute audio, When You Don't Feel Like Yourself
• The course: Out of Survival Mode, gentle tools to calm your nervous system and feel safe in your body again
• Listen next: Your Nervous System Isn't Broken, It's Upgrading
• Work with me one-on-one: private sessions