Speaker 1: Oh good a team. It's a bloody you project, Craig,
Speaker 1: Anthony Harper from the Thriving Metropolis and Melbourne Geez Winters. Here,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Love it. I'm excited about the day ahead,
Speaker 1: but I'm very excited about the hour ahead because I'm
Speaker 1: going to be straight up and honest. Most hosts wouldn't
Speaker 1: do this. They'd go, oh, I've watched this woman from Afar.
Speaker 1: She's amazing. I didn't know who she was, but now
Speaker 1: I definitely do. And it's my bad and I've been down.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is appropriate to say, but anyway,
Speaker 1: Jessica Maguire rabbit Hole for the last twelve hours, eighteen
Speaker 1: hours since probably a state of lunch. It's eight in
Speaker 1: the am here and as I said to her off
Speaker 1: here before we started, straight up smarty pants. So smarty pants,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. How are you?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much? Craig. That is the best intro
Speaker 2: I've ever had to a podcast. I well do it.
Speaker 1: That's it. Let's wrap up. It's been great everyone that
Speaker 1: was Jessica. You projects see you tomorrow. Yeah. Well, it's
Speaker 1: good to have fun, right, It's good to be able
Speaker 1: to share our thoughts and stories and knowledge in a
Speaker 1: way that's resonant with the folk. Before we start talking
Speaker 1: about your stuff, tell us a little bit about you
Speaker 1: so we can figure out who's talking at us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, as I confessed to you at the start,
Speaker 2: I am a huge nerd. But I have had a
Speaker 2: few years of study under my belt, a couple of degrees,
Speaker 2: a bit of post grad stuff, but probably learned the
Speaker 2: most about the work that I do from my own
Speaker 2: personal experiences and loss and life. So I try to
Speaker 2: connect what I teach to the human experience rather than
Speaker 2: just the science, because I believe this is the most
Speaker 2: transformative work that we can do, and it you know,
Speaker 2: it's at that intersection of emotion, mental health, and physical health,
Speaker 2: and that's the space I absolutely love. So I teach
Speaker 2: people all about nervous system regulation. But I'm also a mother.
Speaker 2: I've got a two year old daughter, which has taught
Speaker 2: me a lot about myself and my own nervous system
Speaker 2: and the power of coregulation. And that probably sums me
Speaker 2: up and my life at the moment, which is very full.
Speaker 1: Is there extra pressure because you're you and you tell
Speaker 1: the world how to get it shit together? You go
Speaker 1: I really better have my shit together, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you can't walk the talk, or at
Speaker 1: least look like you walk in the talk, why would
Speaker 1: I listen to you.
Speaker 2: I'm very honest and say that no one is perfectly
Speaker 2: regulated all of the time, including me. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think self regulation that we hear a lot through
Speaker 2: social media and other platforms, isn't nes necessarily about calming
Speaker 2: down and being this zen person. It's actually about how
Speaker 2: we listen inwardly to our voice, and we use those
Speaker 2: messages to help manage our physiology, our emotions, and sometimes
Speaker 2: we need to get angry, sometimes we need to get
Speaker 2: up and make a decision about something. So I think
Speaker 2: it's really about using our nervous system and it signals
Speaker 2: as a way to guide our life and live really well.
Speaker 2: And sometimes that's messy. It's definitely not about being a
Speaker 2: calm person one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I always tell people if if you wait until love
Speaker 1: got all my shit together before I teach you anything
Speaker 1: or talk to you, you'll never hear from me, right,
Speaker 1: because I definitely don't and I definitely won't as in
Speaker 1: all right, I think I'm a slowly improving work in progress,
Speaker 1: but I actually think that as you know, as an
Speaker 1: educator or or a motivator or a scientist or an
Speaker 1: author or whatever space you're operating in, the more ground
Speaker 1: that you are and the more that you talk within
Speaker 1: reason about your stuff and your challenges and your fuck
Speaker 1: ups and failures and triumphs, the more people lean into you,
Speaker 1: because people connect with you, and people people relate to
Speaker 1: you and see a bit of you in them or
Speaker 1: you in them when you're talking about the challenge, the
Speaker 1: challenges that you had and probably continue to have.
Speaker 2: Yes, And it's so funny you say that. Great, because
Speaker 2: one of my biggest challenges has actually been sharing my
Speaker 2: personal stories. And my book came out in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four and the publishers said, you know, we'd really like
Speaker 2: you to share more about what led you personally to
Speaker 2: this work, which meant sharing stories that I felt didn't
Speaker 2: just belong to me, longed to my family. So my
Speaker 2: older brother had died eight years prior to that by suicide,
Speaker 2: but I'd also lost my younger brother when I was four,
Speaker 2: and so that's probably what drew me to this work
Speaker 2: and allowed me to understand the experience that my patients
Speaker 2: had gone through. But it took me up until it
Speaker 2: took me eight years after my brother died to publicly
Speaker 2: feel ready to share his story. But a large part
Speaker 2: of that was respect for the rest of my family
Speaker 2: as well, and for my brother. You know, it's his
Speaker 2: story too, So with the permission of my family, I
Speaker 2: did share that experience, which resonated with a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and I think it connected with them with me as
Speaker 2: not just the educator or the scientist, or the health
Speaker 2: professional or the clinician, but also the person who knew
Speaker 2: what it was like to lie awake it with insomnia.
Speaker 2: You know, I got gastro intestinal symptoms after Samdar, and
Speaker 2: then I had times where I couldn't get off the couch.
Speaker 2: So I've been to those places as well and experienced
Speaker 2: the impacts on my nervous system. So it's still what
Speaker 2: keeps me coming back to this work over and over
Speaker 2: with such a clarity and a belief and a conviction
Speaker 2: that this is what the world needs right now.
Speaker 1: I love that intersection of real world life, experiential, hands on, messy,
Speaker 1: painful learning and academic learning, you know, study research, and
Speaker 1: I've you know, like I said to you before we started,
Speaker 1: I'm just finishing my PhD in psych and it's been great.
Speaker 1: It's interesting obviously, you know, when you do a PhD
Speaker 1: or whatever, you're studying like a drop of water in
Speaker 1: an ocean of stuff, right, So you're not actually studying
Speaker 1: the ocean. People go, oh, you're whatever. I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: but not really, like you're studying something so small in
Speaker 1: the overall field of psychology or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you're studying whatever area of research. But I've learned infinitely
Speaker 1: more building businesses, talking with audiences, teaching classes, training, I
Speaker 1: set up the first personal training center in Australia and
Speaker 1: had gyms for twenty five years, like talking to thousands
Speaker 1: of people like I did Jessica or I did over
Speaker 1: fifty thousand personal training sessions, just me, not my team, right,
Speaker 1: So fifty thousand hours of conversations like that is the longest,
Speaker 1: biggest PhD of all time. And you just learn so
Speaker 1: much being with people and listening and hopefully not judging,
Speaker 1: but just trying to be aware and trying to empathize
Speaker 1: and understand. And all the academic stuff is great, of course,
Speaker 1: but I love that intersection of both.
Speaker 2: Me too. Yeah, And I love hearing you say that
Speaker 2: I think there's something about almost being in the trenches
Speaker 2: with people and it's like you do your time first,
Speaker 2: so we probably get the same in that way where
Speaker 2: you know, at fourteen years in clinic with people and
Speaker 2: it was one to one sessions, a lot of post
Speaker 2: traumatic stress disorder, a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression,
Speaker 2: but a lot of chronic illness. That's who I ended
Speaker 2: up working with, which you know, I really enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: but from a deep understanding, I always felt like I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm working with an iceberg of what's above
Speaker 2: the water, but I'd really like to get to what's
Speaker 2: underneath the water. And that was that utation of emotion
Speaker 2: and the physical. But it led me to a lot
Speaker 2: of the work I do now, which is in understanding
Speaker 2: this process called inter reception, which is how our brain
Speaker 2: and body communicate, especially body to brain, and we also
Speaker 2: call it our eighth sensory system. So it's very much
Speaker 2: involved with instinct, maintaining homeostasis or balance between our systems.
Speaker 2: But since at the seat of self regulation, emotional regulation,
Speaker 2: and I love now teaching that work of understanding bodily
Speaker 2: signals with accuracy, not just the pecision making, but for
Speaker 2: keeping that homeostasis and we see that changes for some
Speaker 2: people in their life through difficult situations, which that's what
Speaker 2: I was seeing in my clinics. So it was some
Speaker 2: people were depressed, shut down. There was apathy and flatness,
Speaker 2: and it was like the volume of their signals from
Speaker 2: their body had been turned down and they couldn't hear.
Speaker 2: But then you had people who'd been through situations where
Speaker 2: they were left with like a hyper vigilance or an anxiety,
Speaker 2: and it was like the volume was cranked up on
Speaker 2: the moment. So there was a part of me that
Speaker 2: had an intuition that there was something more in this
Speaker 2: space that I needed to work in many years before
Speaker 2: I went into that, But it was because we were
Speaker 2: separating emotions from physical symptoms, and body and brain were separate.
Speaker 2: Like people go to see one person for their brain,
Speaker 2: one person for their gut, one person for their sore shoulder,
Speaker 2: someone else for medication, and it just becomes like this
Speaker 2: disconnected way of looking at who a person is. And
Speaker 2: I struggled with that as a clinician. I was like,
Speaker 2: there's got to be a better way to work with
Speaker 2: people who are really struggling than this, And that's what
Speaker 2: has led as well that just being very curious about
Speaker 2: how could this empower people more with either knowledge or
Speaker 2: resources that they could use themselves to help change the
Speaker 2: way that their brain and body were responding.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that he's a Craig theory,
Speaker 1: totally totally unproven. So we've been around allegedly for about
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand years, depending on whether or not you're
Speaker 1: which path you go down. More recently, they've said as
Speaker 1: a kind of thinking operating, you know, modern man slash
Speaker 1: woman and figuring stuff out and building shelter and cooking
Speaker 1: and growing and agricultures only ten thousand years old, I think.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I feel like for most of the evolutionary
Speaker 1: timeline of humans not I feel we didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of the shit we currently have, right, And I
Speaker 1: think over time we've become more and more disconnected from
Speaker 1: our body, like unaware of what our body because our
Speaker 1: body is always talking, right, biofeedback and as you said
Speaker 1: in terrorception and trying to like very unscientific, But I
Speaker 1: talk about building a relationship with your body so you
Speaker 1: get to know it, because it's always trying to tell
Speaker 1: you something, right, And when you think about like a
Speaker 1: person is one thing, not a multitude of things. But we,
Speaker 1: especially in different disciplines and research, we go, oh, over
Speaker 1: here is psychology, and then over here is like, oh,
Speaker 1: the emotional system, and then overhears the body, and then oh,
Speaker 1: there's the brain that drives all of that shit right,
Speaker 1: and then then it's like, no, dude, it's one system.
Speaker 1: It's like the human system, and nothing is operating in
Speaker 1: complete isolation. Nothing. Everything's integrated and that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like that old chestnut. You have a thought that something's
Speaker 1: going wrong or bad, or you're in danger, but you're not.
Speaker 1: You're safe, but your body doesn't know it because your
Speaker 1: body believes the thought. And now your heart rates up
Speaker 1: and your blood pressures up, and you're producing all these
Speaker 1: things and sympathetic nervous systems going nuts despite the fact
Speaker 1: that there's no threat, no danger and you're safe. But
Speaker 1: because your brain and your mind isn't disconnected from physiology,
Speaker 1: that happens despite the fact that your story is untrue.
Speaker 1: And knowing that is a especially with things like and
Speaker 1: knowing this isn't solving it, but especially things like anxiety
Speaker 1: and overthinking and rumination and self regulation. It's so important
Speaker 1: to understand that I think that integrated relationship.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's I completely agree with everything you're saying,
Speaker 2: and find that this has been a missing piece even
Speaker 2: for practitioners or coaches or health professionals. You know, it
Speaker 2: feels like a piece of the puzzle is missing because
Speaker 2: if you work more so with the cognitive or the brain,
Speaker 2: or you do coaching, or you use language, then the
Speaker 2: body is missing. But if you're working as a body
Speaker 2: based therapist, you know, using manual therapy, you might be
Speaker 2: a pilate's instructor, and you connect people with their body,
Speaker 2: then it almost feels like, well, you know, I'm missing
Speaker 2: the piece to work with thoughts and language and narrative.
Speaker 2: So I think that's a frustration that I hear all
Speaker 2: the time from our students, but we have separated this
Speaker 2: is like, well, this is a mental health problem. But
Speaker 2: what's interesting is we know that most of the communication
Speaker 2: of the nervous system, particular when we're experiencing anxiety or
Speaker 2: when we're really depressed, it is better if we're working
Speaker 2: with that information that the brain is receiving from the body.
Speaker 2: We see that language and mindset work falls short. You know,
Speaker 2: we can't positively think our way out of those really
Speaker 2: strong loops of rumination. That's a really challenging thing to do.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a piece where people are recognizing
Speaker 2: we need a new way of supporting ourselves or supporting
Speaker 2: others who are disregulated. And yes, there's a place for
Speaker 2: mindset work, there's a place for being positive, but that's
Speaker 2: after we've come to a more regulated place. And so
Speaker 2: I think, you know, having a bit more of a
Speaker 2: sophisticated approach to whether it's the nervous system or how
Speaker 2: we integrate the way that we work as like coaches, clinicians,
Speaker 2: practitioners is important. And then to be able to educate
Speaker 2: our clients or our patients on that too so that
Speaker 2: they can continue to support themselves. And what I think
Speaker 2: is the most interesting piece is when we look at
Speaker 2: the science of how the body and brain operate, so
Speaker 2: much of it is done through prediction. So I've actually
Speaker 2: just come to San Diego here in the US, and
Speaker 2: I've been learning to drive on the right hand side,
Speaker 2: and I'm in the car on the right hand side now.
Speaker 2: It was so challenging and so uncomfortable to do that. Initially,
Speaker 2: it took so much focus and I'd be walking around
Speaker 2: to the wrong side of the car having to you know,
Speaker 2: try and get in the car, and I'm on the
Speaker 2: wrong side anyway. But beside all that, eventually it became
Speaker 2: automatic and I didn't have to think about it. It
Speaker 2: was then my brain and body would predict, oh, this
Speaker 2: is what's going to happen. And that's really the way
Speaker 2: that we can support people who are experiencing, you know,
Speaker 2: heightened levels of dysregulation or getting stuck in repeating these
Speaker 2: same patterns throughout their life, whether that's in relationships, you know,
Speaker 2: how they attach, whether it's holding themselves back from work opportunities.
Speaker 2: You know. Even like for me, that ability to put
Speaker 2: myself out there, I found that a real challenge. I'm
Speaker 2: not the person who likes to, you know, really tell
Speaker 2: everybody the stories of my life. But I think we
Speaker 2: have the capacity to learn new things, to change ways,
Speaker 2: and that's really where our growth is at, whether that's
Speaker 2: recovering from a traumatic event or it's you know, I
Speaker 2: want to perform at my best. It still operates in
Speaker 2: the same way with the brain and the body, in
Speaker 2: the way that they work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. How long did it take you from
Speaker 1: feeling totally alien, wrong side of the road, wrong side
Speaker 1: of the car, like changing the gears with your left
Speaker 1: hand or no, your right hand, no your left hand,
Speaker 1: or moving the stick shift or whatever. It was right
Speaker 1: between that and somewhat normal. What was that timeframe?
Speaker 2: I'm going to say the first two weeks were really uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: you know, like I couldn't have my daughter in the
Speaker 2: car because if she was yelling, I wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: able to concentrate properly, like no music, just focus. And
Speaker 2: then by the fourth week I was more confident, and
Speaker 2: then I could almost drive with that a little bit
Speaker 2: of a zone out last week, you know, where you
Speaker 2: were just on autopilot. So I think I think if
Speaker 2: I was going to say how long it would be,
Speaker 2: I would give it another week, So that would give
Speaker 2: it six weeks that it would be in that timeframe,
Speaker 2: which kind of aligns right with neuroplasticity and how we
Speaker 2: change as well. So yeah, it was it was a
Speaker 2: really interesting experience to relearn how we do actually change.
Speaker 1: Okay, can we get a little bit semi nerdy for
Speaker 1: a moment. I just want to recap one or two
Speaker 1: things for our listeners. A lot of my listeners take notes.
Speaker 1: So can you just give a a Jessica version definition
Speaker 1: of interoception again.
Speaker 2: Yes, I would love to. So we know our five
Speaker 2: senses of site, sound, touch, smell, and taste, but inter
Speaker 2: reception is another one. So we we some say it's
Speaker 2: our sixth sensory systems, some say it's our eighth. But
Speaker 2: this is the sense of our internal bodily signals. Now,
Speaker 2: some of it is outside of our conscious awareness, like
Speaker 2: this is like our blood pressure changing. We don't feel it.
Speaker 2: It's digesting food, we don't necessarily feel that. But some
Speaker 2: of it will be very aware of, like butterflies in
Speaker 2: our stomach, or that sense of tightness in our chests
Speaker 2: when we're really anxious. So inter reception is the foundation
Speaker 2: of our emotions. Now there's not this one part in
Speaker 2: the brain where we have anger or one part where
Speaker 2: you know we have something else. It's actually the way
Speaker 2: that our two or more bodily signals are sending messages
Speaker 2: to the brain, and then the emotion is a whole
Speaker 2: brain experience. So our ability to accurately interpret those signals
Speaker 2: will govern our ability to self regulate. And this could
Speaker 2: be as simple as oh, my throats drup Oh, I
Speaker 2: feel a bit spacey, I'm dehydrated. I'm going to go
Speaker 2: get a drink. We return to home stasis. But it
Speaker 2: could be something as complex as I'm miserable in my job.
Speaker 2: I'm feeling this sense of dread or I'm feeling this
Speaker 2: sense of the truth is I don't want to do
Speaker 2: this job or whatever that might be, you know, and
Speaker 2: the action I need to take is it's time to change.
Speaker 2: So the more accuracy we can read those inter receptive signals,
Speaker 2: the more agency we have, the more we're empowered to
Speaker 2: know what it is that we want and make those
Speaker 2: decisions that really support our physical needs but also emotionally
Speaker 2: what it is that we need as well.
Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing that our biological, our bodies awareness precedes
Speaker 1: our minds awareness.
Speaker 2: I'd love it, you know. And it's like it's like
Speaker 2: the older I get, the more there's just these signals
Speaker 2: that are like, hey, hey, you've been here before. Don't
Speaker 2: ignore this, and you know, I learn the hard lessons
Speaker 2: when I don't listen to it and try and we
Speaker 2: try and rationalize away sometimes these bodily signals, when there
Speaker 2: is often an accuracy. I think the interesting part is
Speaker 2: on the flip side. When we get triggered, those bodily
Speaker 2: signals feel so loud and so chaotic that sometimes they
Speaker 2: run the show. So this is where it's our ability
Speaker 2: to listen and maybe do something that supports ourselves before
Speaker 2: we act. That's also incredibly helpful when it comes to interception.
Speaker 1: I feel like sometimes we have a feeling or some
Speaker 1: kind of note from our interroceptive capacity. That's the wrong words,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, But that feeling that
Speaker 1: we're getting about, hey, we're like, no, fuck that, that's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Go away, I'm going to watch Netflix, right. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of fearful some people around these
Speaker 1: signs and signals and this call it intuition whatever, and
Speaker 1: so we we want to kind of be more aware
Speaker 1: of what our body is telling us. But sometimes it's
Speaker 1: telling a shit that's terrifying, and that kind of navigating
Speaker 1: that because we don't like being scared. We don't like
Speaker 1: danger or threats, and you know, we don't like hard
Speaker 1: or uncomfortable. I'm generalizing here everybody, but you know, so
Speaker 1: we quite often push that away and do the metaphoric
Speaker 1: la la la, fingers in the ears I'll get to
Speaker 1: that later.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's very true. And I think this is we're
Speaker 2: having some way of connecting to ourselves each day to
Speaker 2: you know, have enough quite to listen accurately is so important.
Speaker 2: And I mean it can be at the gym, it
Speaker 2: can be on a walk, it can be just something
Speaker 2: where we are able to take that time to connect. Now,
Speaker 2: I've you know, I've taught. We've had like twenty thousand
Speaker 2: people go through our programs, so I've seen this again
Speaker 2: again with people changing. But sometimes there's an initial process
Speaker 2: where people have to recognize the truth, you know, of
Speaker 2: this is the reality of my situation because there has
Speaker 2: been a denial and the body, or there's messages or
Speaker 2: the inter receptive signals have been saying this isn't right anymore,
Speaker 2: or this isn't what, this isn't in line with my
Speaker 2: deepest values. And yes, we can deny for sure, but
Speaker 2: in time the problem becomes larger and larger. But I
Speaker 2: think sometimes when we start to connect to bodily signals
Speaker 2: or there's a new awareness and we get deeper insights,
Speaker 2: some things do fall apart and there is a grieving
Speaker 2: process in that, but in time it allows us to
Speaker 2: live our life life that we are, you know, really
Speaker 2: connected to our deeper values and what's important to us.
Speaker 2: So it's not the easy path. And I you know,
Speaker 2: we hear so much about just for your feelings. Oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, if only it was that easy. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of good decisions are made
Speaker 2: when we are able to listen to those uncomfortable signals
Speaker 2: and stay with them. You know, we can listen and
Speaker 2: stay Okay, this is the reality of my situation. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to put my fingers in my ears, but
Speaker 2: I'm also not going to rush off and try and
Speaker 2: do something else to make myself feel better in the
Speaker 2: short term. I'm going to wait until it's clear what
Speaker 2: the decision is. And you know, we said this about
Speaker 2: we've both obviously had times with business for ourselves as
Speaker 2: clinicians or coaches, but I think for me that's been
Speaker 2: an ongoing training ground for this is our comfortable This
Speaker 2: is hard. I don't necessarily know what to do. I'm
Speaker 2: going to sit and listen, and sometimes listening means okay,
Speaker 2: you need to ask someone for help on this. You
Speaker 2: don't know enough. So it's just having that compass that
Speaker 2: shows shows us the next step to take, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the time it's sitting with what's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so many of us know so much, and
Speaker 1: even on a really fundamental level. And I'll put up
Speaker 1: my hand because like when I was a teenager, I
Speaker 1: was morbidly obese, Right, I knew, I knew that what
Speaker 1: a meeting is not good, but fucking it tastes amazing, right,
Speaker 1: And how good is how good is cake Jessica, by
Speaker 1: the way, And how quick is that gratification? How good
Speaker 1: do I feel for about eight minutes? And how good
Speaker 1: is dopamine? And then you wake up and you're the
Speaker 1: fat is skid in the school. But all the while,
Speaker 1: I know this is more complicated because there's emotional stuff
Speaker 1: and social stuff, but like we have the capacity to
Speaker 1: actually know what we're doing is not healthy for us,
Speaker 1: with the underlying storing being I'll start next Monday, and
Speaker 1: that story goes for thirty two years. Right. It's because
Speaker 1: at that point my thoughts is that at that point
Speaker 1: in time, you're doing the thing, but there's no major
Speaker 1: negative impact in the moment, so we just keep soldiering on.
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to be judgmental towards anyone's behavior here.
Speaker 1: But like even with things like cigarettes, every smoke and
Speaker 1: those they cause cancer, right, but they still smoke. And
Speaker 1: I guess there's other stuff involved there with addiction and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, sometimes the knowledge isn't enough for people. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this other Like the amount of people that I've
Speaker 1: spoken to about health, fitness, wellness, lifestyle, ex scize movement, nutrition,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of the big kind of hitters
Speaker 1: in the health space who then will go and do
Speaker 1: essentially nothing, And then other people I will give the
Speaker 1: exact same data information they'll go and transform their life.
Speaker 1: And often people with not as much genetic potential or
Speaker 1: time or resources or money will create an amazing outcome
Speaker 1: because they're ready, they're ready to hear it, they're ready
Speaker 1: to do it. There's this kind of X factor in
Speaker 1: the middle there where you and I can educate, we
Speaker 1: can stand in front of whoever, or write whatever or
Speaker 1: do whatever. But at the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: person reads your book or my book, or they hear
Speaker 1: your lecture or my lecture or whatever it is, but
Speaker 1: then they need to go do some work, do some work.
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't live in the awareness or the knowledge.
Speaker 1: Knowledge and awareness are great, but doing stuff creates movement
Speaker 1: and change and outcomes and this is where the good
Speaker 1: stuff happens. But I think, and I'll shut up after this,
Speaker 1: I feel like the work is an inhibiting factor for people.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh God, it's so interesting, isn't it. And
Speaker 2: I think about this a lot in terms of, well,
Speaker 2: what does support change? You know, whether that's people who
Speaker 2: have been through a really difficult time in their lives
Speaker 2: and they've hit rock bottom, like what creates that point
Speaker 2: of change? And you said it like understanding isn't enough.
Speaker 2: And if we look at this from like, okay, what's
Speaker 2: the neurobiology behind it? Insight and understanding, we're looking at
Speaker 2: a cognitive part of the brain. But like me learning
Speaker 2: to drive on the different side of the road, I
Speaker 2: didn't want to do it, Like my body there was dread.
Speaker 2: I didn't actually want to do it, but I had
Speaker 2: to and to live here. And you know, the part
Speaker 2: of it it where change was actually happening was when
Speaker 2: I was uncomfortable. And so if we nerd out just
Speaker 2: a little bit on this, when I talked about prediction,
Speaker 2: and the brain predicts first and then it checks if
Speaker 2: it's right afterwards. And this is actually tied to inter reception. Right,
Speaker 2: So say a smoker has smoked for twenty years and
Speaker 2: they are so used to their nicotine being in the system,
Speaker 2: and the brain and the body adjust and that's the norm, right,
Speaker 2: that's where the baseline of where the system's at. So
Speaker 2: when we quit smoking, there creates an error. So the
Speaker 2: body's sending signals up to the brain that there's not nicotine,
Speaker 2: and the brain's like, hang on, this isn't right. I'm
Speaker 2: supposed to have this nicotine here, so I'm not at
Speaker 2: my baseline homeostasis isn't here, So the brain will make
Speaker 2: us feel uncomfortb It's like no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: go and do something so I can have it. This
Speaker 2: could be alcohol, This could be likes on social media,
Speaker 2: this could be you know, whatever it is that we
Speaker 2: might be using as a form of pseudoregulation, if you like.
Speaker 2: So that prediction error we can think of as this
Speaker 2: is a bad thing. But the prediction error was what
Speaker 2: we was saying to me, hang on, you're on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of the road. This isn't right, and it
Speaker 2: felt uncomfortable. Yes, we won't really have change in patterns,
Speaker 2: in things that we do on autopilot, in the ways
Speaker 2: that we reflexively respond, like storm out of the room
Speaker 2: or tell our husband to do X y Z. It
Speaker 2: is actually in the moment where we have a deeply
Speaker 2: compelling sensory experience that we change. So I had to
Speaker 2: experientially go and drive the car, and it felt uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: but change was happening. And I think it's like the smoker.
Speaker 2: They have to experientially go through what it's like to
Speaker 2: not smoke. You can't read about it, you can't know it.
Speaker 2: It's like if we want to learn a musical instrument,
Speaker 2: we have to do it. And then this, you know I
Speaker 2: mentioned before neuroplasticity is this ability for our neurons to change.
Speaker 2: But I think it goes beyond that to a concept
Speaker 2: called bioplasticity, where as a whole person we change. You know,
Speaker 2: I think moving to another country. I've watched myself change
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways and I think it's great.
Speaker 2: But I also look at, you know, someone we could
Speaker 2: say plays the guitar. Now we know that the areas
Speaker 2: in their brain that represent their fingers are actually larger
Speaker 2: in people who play a musical instrument, but they also
Speaker 2: have the callouses form on their fingers, you know, that
Speaker 2: show that as well. It's not just the brain that changes,
Speaker 2: And so much of our sense of self is formed
Speaker 2: through the patterns of our nervous system carried out by
Speaker 2: inter reception. So it's a lot of like who I am,
Speaker 2: we can get lost in these protective patterns that arise,
Speaker 2: or these reflexive patterns, rather than saying, well, the true
Speaker 2: nature of who I am is actually in those quieter
Speaker 2: moments or when there's balance between the brain and body.
Speaker 2: But for those of us who might be experiencing difficulties
Speaker 2: and had a challenging time or had adversity in our
Speaker 2: life and learned to identify as those more protective patterns,
Speaker 2: I think that's where a lot of suffering comes. So
Speaker 2: when we can have a new experience, whether that's a
Speaker 2: relationship with somebody who is secure and grounded and solid
Speaker 2: and safe, we learn something new and our whole brain
Speaker 2: body system changes, our whole sense of person changes.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. I think about when some people just
Speaker 1: something happens that they didn't want, didn't expect, didn't know,
Speaker 1: and it shit and they get through it and they
Speaker 1: come out the other side, and they've learned stuff, and
Speaker 1: they're a bit more resilient, and they've got more knowledge,
Speaker 1: and they've got a bit more self understanding, and they
Speaker 1: start to think about their own potential and possibilities and future.
Speaker 1: And you go, oh, I never thought I could do that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a choice. I had to do that.
Speaker 1: And then I did that and I didn't die, And
Speaker 1: in fact, I know more stuff and now I'm less
Speaker 1: terrified of that or things like that. And it's so
Speaker 1: it's almost this accident accidental evolution or development. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about you and driving, right. So the thing about
Speaker 1: you and driving over there is, well, Jessica, if you're
Speaker 1: going to be over here, you and you want to
Speaker 1: be able to get around and take your kids here
Speaker 1: or there and go to meetings and turn up to
Speaker 1: gigs and do well, this is the only way, because
Speaker 1: this is how it works here. You can't drive on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of the road for a few months
Speaker 1: until you acclimatize. Now you have to do this today
Speaker 1: or you're not going anywhere. So like, there's a bit
Speaker 1: there's a lot more mental and emotional leverage when the
Speaker 1: uncomfortable thing that you need to do isn't optional because
Speaker 1: a lot of uncomfortable things that we need to do
Speaker 1: to be a better version of us we can put off.
Speaker 1: But if you want to drive that car from A
Speaker 1: to B, you can't put that off. So that kind
Speaker 1: of puts our mind in a solution focus, aware of
Speaker 1: the problem or aware of the discomfort, but more and
Speaker 1: a well, fuck, I just have to do this. So
Speaker 1: there's no debate, you know, there's like, well, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to get ubers for the next five years, or
Speaker 1: you know whatever. So I think, all right, let me
Speaker 1: put on my actual real deal, grown up interviewer slash
Speaker 1: podcast hat because I realized we've got an out in
Speaker 1: about fifteen and ask you a few things, as short
Speaker 1: or as long as you want. So, what does self
Speaker 1: regulation look like practically like in the real world. We've
Speaker 1: probably coveted a bit. But because we talk about our
Speaker 1: ability to be able to manage ourselves in certain things
Speaker 1: or self regulate around certain challenges or unforeseen whatever's give
Speaker 1: us a bit of an insight into like for the
Speaker 1: person listening who wants to be able to freak out
Speaker 1: less be the calm in the chaos, A bit of equanimity,
Speaker 1: all that cool stuff. How do we self regulate? In practically.
Speaker 2: Brilliant question, and I think it always depends on the situation. Again,
Speaker 2: I think it starts with understanding the states of our
Speaker 2: nervous system, and we need to know where we are first.
Speaker 2: So people will say, what's the number one thing I
Speaker 2: can do to regulate my nervous system, And it really
Speaker 2: depends on what state you're in to start with, right,
Speaker 2: So if we say regulation is like a bandwidth in
Speaker 2: the middle. But let's say we start to feel anxious,
Speaker 2: wound up, agitated, or angry, and there's a sense of urgency,
Speaker 2: we can say that our nervous system is mobilizing or
Speaker 2: it's moving faster. I'm sure people have recognized this before.
Speaker 2: So how we want to bring ourselves back to regulation
Speaker 2: is actually largely and I know the vegas nervous been
Speaker 2: thrown around everywhere. It's not something that we can hack,
Speaker 2: despite what we hear all the time, but it plays
Speaker 2: a role in recovery. Now, there's a few different things
Speaker 2: that help the vagus nerve recover, and one of the
Speaker 2: best ways is through our sensory systems, which I've talked about.
Speaker 2: So to be able to sit and take a moment
Speaker 2: to connect to the sensors can be allowing our eyes
Speaker 2: to turn. The head follows and it's nice and slow
Speaker 2: and we're really focusing on the things in the room
Speaker 2: that are like neutral well, that catch our attention. But
Speaker 2: the head turning is also a large part that will
Speaker 2: bring in vegas nerve stimulation in a way that helps
Speaker 2: that recovery. Yes, for a lot of people, it's connecting
Speaker 2: to right, what can I feel on the contact of
Speaker 2: my body, so appropriate aceptive input from our from our
Speaker 2: hands on our body as well, So there's a lot
Speaker 2: that can bring us down and then we'll feel that
Speaker 2: discharge of mobilization, which can sometimes come as a deep
Speaker 2: breath or a yawn or our body goes, oh okay,
Speaker 2: I'm back here now. So that process typically would be
Speaker 2: like a ten to fifteen minute resource that we can use.
Speaker 2: And it's not necessarily about I don't want to get
Speaker 2: stressed in the first place, because I think this is
Speaker 2: where we're going wrong. Like it's healthy for our nervous
Speaker 2: system to mobilize, it's absolutely it's that we can recover
Speaker 2: from that. And when we do that, it's like a
Speaker 2: bicset curl. You know, we actually get stronger at that.
Speaker 2: So we should try and do things that are challenging
Speaker 2: because it's good for now.
Speaker 1: Like sorry, no, I was going to say, with your
Speaker 1: bicycle curl example. Yeah, like in the gimmie work against resistance.
Speaker 1: In life, you work against resistance like mental emotional it's
Speaker 1: the same. How can we get good at the thing
Speaker 1: that we don't do? And you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: my friends struggle quite a bit with anxiety, and you know,
Speaker 1: in the middle of an episode or something, I go,
Speaker 1: so you're anxious, that's okay, it's okay. You're anxious, it's okay.
Speaker 1: You're stressed, it's okay. You're sad because you're not going
Speaker 1: to be forever. And this is what humans do well.
Speaker 1: We get anxious, we get sad, we get scared, we
Speaker 1: get irrational, we get stupid, we get brilliant, we get amazing,
Speaker 1: we get all the things. You know, and it's like
Speaker 1: the moment you go that I'm anxious and that's okay,
Speaker 1: you get less anxious.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes. A friend of mine rang me recently and
Speaker 2: she's like, oh, I've been invited to give this huge
Speaker 2: talk five thousand people. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was huge,
Speaker 2: and I was like, good, this is your nervous system
Speaker 2: mobilizing your energy to help people form at your best. Now,
Speaker 2: if we keep going, I can't mobilize. I've got to
Speaker 2: stay regulated, which is what I see a little bit
Speaker 2: of the way that self regulation gets misconstrued. You know,
Speaker 2: in social media, we're not going to do anything, you know,
Speaker 2: we want to be resilient people. And resilience isn't the
Speaker 2: soldier on the hill, you know, it's our ability. It's
Speaker 2: really about having more resources and tools to support us.
Speaker 2: So that's some of the best ways, and starting with
Speaker 2: our sensory systems is what allows us to come back
Speaker 2: to regulation in such a It's not about fast but
Speaker 2: in a strong way. I think where people get stuck
Speaker 2: is they get stuck in the rumination of trying to
Speaker 2: outthink it journalist mindset. Well, if it was like this,
Speaker 2: then this should be happening. So yeah, less cognitive and
Speaker 2: more sense. Sorry, is really where that's at.
Speaker 1: And there's the thing that's going on situation, circumstance, environment, event,
Speaker 1: and then there's our story about it, and it's our
Speaker 1: story about it that creates the response. Because as you
Speaker 1: I'm not teaching you anything. But you've got ten people
Speaker 1: in the same room, something happens, everyone's in the middle
Speaker 1: of that something, and to freak the fuck out, four
Speaker 1: laugh at it and four don't get bothered. Right, It's
Speaker 1: like they went through the same event, but not the
Speaker 1: same experience, because the experience, the subjective experience, is created
Speaker 1: by a range of things, you know. So it's then
Speaker 1: that you go, oh, well, that's because my response isn't
Speaker 1: about that thing. My response is about how I interpret
Speaker 1: that thing. My story is about that thing, even down
Speaker 1: to a physiological level. What's going on at a cellular
Speaker 1: level is really a byproduct of my data processing, you know,
Speaker 1: and trying to One of the things that I do,
Speaker 1: Jessica is coach speakers, not too many of these days
Speaker 1: because I don't have much time. But seeing someone go
Speaker 1: from being ten out of ten terrified talking to four people,
Speaker 1: and a year or two or three later talking to
Speaker 1: maybe five hundred people with next to no fear, and
Speaker 1: you go, it's the same person doing the same job,
Speaker 1: you know, st not necessarily the same room, but same job,
Speaker 1: same task, same requirements, same person with the same ability,
Speaker 1: probably developed a few skills, but that thing that was
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying for many people become exciting and something they
Speaker 1: really look forward to. And so the thing is not
Speaker 1: so much how do I change the situation, circumstance, environment task,
Speaker 1: but how do I change me around that.
Speaker 2: Exactly? And like that mobilizing energy, if we channel it
Speaker 2: in the right way, it doesn't have to be anxiety.
Speaker 2: It can be excitement, it can be passion, strength, mastery,
Speaker 2: agency power. You know, I think if I squash down
Speaker 2: my mobilization, I wouldn't have the endurance to work the
Speaker 2: way that I do, you know, And I think this
Speaker 2: is for a lot of people who whether that's performance
Speaker 2: or it's you know, they're athletes. They know how to
Speaker 2: channel mobilizing energy into something in a way that's strong.
Speaker 2: So I think the way we appraise things as you know,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't get anxious or there's something wrong with me,
Speaker 2: or I've got this mobile heading energy this is terrible.
Speaker 2: It's actually part of that interceptive experience, and so we
Speaker 2: can train ourselves to not just tolerate what's happening, but
Speaker 2: to recognize when there's healthy mobilization versus Okay, I need
Speaker 2: to take an action now because I'm starting to get
Speaker 2: too heightened. But there's a sweet spot that we can
Speaker 2: come into, and it's actually called a play state where
Speaker 2: we have the mobilizing sympathetic energy combined with our vegus
Speaker 2: nerve keeping that in check with regulation, and that's when
Speaker 2: we can allow that to come in flexibly. We really
Speaker 2: do perform at our best.
Speaker 1: I agree a couple of Rando questions for you as
Speaker 1: we slide towards the finish line. You'll be so glad
Speaker 1: when you get off. I had this conversation with a
Speaker 1: hack and maniac this morning who led him through the door. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is very random. Iber gain iber gain. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of iber gain? Oh, you've got to
Speaker 1: do a deep dive, you'd love it. So it's probably
Speaker 1: just comes. It's a compound. It's a drug that's been
Speaker 1: it's a natural anyway that's being used for trauma, a PTSD,
Speaker 1: you know, deep deep deep deep depression, all those things. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought you might have heard of that, but most
Speaker 1: people haven't, so I wasn't expecting it. But it's spelled
Speaker 1: ibog ai n e and it kind of almost seems
Speaker 1: and I'm very skeptical. I don't use any drugs. I
Speaker 1: don't smoke, I don't drink, so if I'm finding something fascinating,
Speaker 1: I think there's a little bit of something in it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: My next one is my next rando is the benefits
Speaker 1: of mums singing to their unborn babies.
Speaker 2: Ah, a million percent. They can hear, babies can hear.
Speaker 2: But you're also helping bring yourself into that state of regulation,
Speaker 2: you know, with the singing yourself. And there was actually
Speaker 2: a study with newborns and mums who sang, and it
Speaker 2: showed the mothers always specifically lowered the heart rate of
Speaker 2: the baby, so they were so finn tune to know Yep,
Speaker 2: that's my mum's voice. This is so funny because I
Speaker 2: still sing to my daughter to sleep. She's about to
Speaker 2: turn three next month, and every month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's twenty six now, and it's really annoying. Also,
Speaker 1: get out of the house.
Speaker 2: I do not have a doubt that she will still
Speaker 2: be asking me to sing her to sleep at twenty six.
Speaker 2: She is Her love language is affection and closeness and
Speaker 2: cuddles and all the things, so that would not surprise me.
Speaker 2: But yes, I love that there was a there was
Speaker 2: specific studies done on mums singing because it's the prosody
Speaker 2: in the voice that's part of the social engagement system
Speaker 2: that settles babies.
Speaker 1: And this is a selfish question because I, by the way,
Speaker 1: Jessica's got five zillion followers on Instagram. And if you
Speaker 1: want to just go have a look so you get
Speaker 1: the full effect the video and the audio. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: a look at well, do whatever you want. But if
Speaker 1: you feel so compelled and you want to learn more,
Speaker 1: go to her ig. We're going to pump herple cup
Speaker 1: in a minute, but have a look at her reels.
Speaker 1: They're really brilliant. My question, selfishly is how do you
Speaker 1: decide because there's a real kind of formula right because
Speaker 1: you can't be too long and it can't be too
Speaker 1: super short. It's got to be the right length and
Speaker 1: well produced, which they are. How do you decide what
Speaker 1: you're going to talk about on a reel?
Speaker 2: It's a good question. I don't do a lot of reels.
Speaker 2: I've toured a lot through carousels because I'm a massive nerd,
Speaker 2: as you know, and I can't ever slice things down
Speaker 2: to be short. The reels that I have have usually
Speaker 2: come from longer videos, mainly because and people have said
Speaker 2: to me, for you is why can't you just like
Speaker 2: snip it down to like thirty seconds? And I'm like,
Speaker 2: because there's so much context that's needed around complex topics.
Speaker 2: And the place that I love to teach on is
Speaker 2: the places that are complex shades of gray and need nuance.
Speaker 2: So the fast short teaching style doesn't work for me.
Speaker 2: But my team have cut up longer pieces of content
Speaker 2: into shorter pieces and shared them as reels.
Speaker 1: Well they come up very well. The book, Jessica's internationally
Speaker 1: best selling book, is called The Nervous System Reset. Congratulations
Speaker 1: on that was that exciting?
Speaker 2: It was. It was really funny because I was finishing
Speaker 2: it while I was in the final months of my
Speaker 2: pregnancy and I have this like one puffy ankle that
Speaker 2: would swill up at the end of the day, so
Speaker 2: I was I was in my prime. I would finish
Speaker 2: the day in the pool with my foot elevator, going,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this book, Oh my gosh. It was
Speaker 2: a lot like that was a lot of resilience because
Speaker 2: I was exhausted, but I loved putting it together. It
Speaker 2: was it was years of what I've been teaching in
Speaker 2: random places and I managed to bring it into one place,
Speaker 2: and I still get messages of how much it's helped people,
Speaker 2: so that to me is a real legacy.
Speaker 1: Well that was the funny thing I knew about that
Speaker 1: book because I've heard people speak about that book, and
Speaker 1: then I went, oh, Jessica did that? Oh smarty pants?
Speaker 1: Straight up? Hey, where do you want? Do you want
Speaker 1: to steer our audience to a thing to look at
Speaker 1: or something? What do you want to promote? I know
Speaker 1: you're not a self promoter, but go on.
Speaker 2: Probably the best place to go is my website, so
Speaker 2: jessicamaguire dot com, and that's got lots of resources I
Speaker 2: talk about. I have a lot of workshops that I do,
Speaker 2: you know, like forty five minute workshops on this stuff
Speaker 2: because I like to have the time to nerd out.
Speaker 2: If you're on my mailing list, you'll find out about
Speaker 2: the newest ones that are coming up.
Speaker 1: Easy peasy, Jessica. I appreciate you, thanks for coming to
Speaker 1: play on the new project. Very good at what you do,
Speaker 1: and you are a nerd, but you're a nerd who
Speaker 1: communicates really well.
Speaker 2: So thanks, thank you so much for having me. Craig.
Speaker 2: I've loved it.