thursday
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Erica: [00:00:00] Welcome to your raw regulation of the regulated life. The show, where we get underneath the surface of why you feel the way you feel, and give you real body-based tools to change it at the root. I'm Erica, founder of Mind Fusion Transformations, and this is where nervous system we are deep in a toolkit this week, and today I'm showing you how to use your own senses to send your nervous system the one signal it's been waiting for.
Your immune system is waiting for one signal, not a supplement, not a diagnosis, not a resolution to the argument that's been running on loop in your head for three days. Just one signal. The predator is gone. You can stand down.
Today, I'm showing you how to send that signal using nothing but your own senses and the environment around you. No partner needed, no equipment, nothing to download or purchase. This is a 5, [00:01:00] 4, 3, 2, 1 sensory reset, and it works every single time you let it. Let's do it.
I wanna explain something about the nature of the spiral before we get into the practice because this context is what makes this tool make sense.
The spiral, whether it's happening between you and someone else or entirely inside your own nervous system, does not live in the present moment. It lives in time. Specifically it lives in the past or the future. It lives in the memory of what was said last Tuesday. In the anticipation of the conversation, you've been dreading all week in the pattern recognition of your nervous system saying this feels like that time, and responding to a current moment as if it were a previous wound.
Your senses on the other hand, exists only in now. You cannot see yesterday. You cannot touch [00:02:00] tomorrow. You cannot hear next week. Your sensory experience is anchored completely and exclusively in the present moment. In the present moment, for most of us, most of the time is actually safe. This is the foundation of why grounding through the sense works as a nervous system interrupt.
When you deliberately and intentionally engage what you can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste, you are doing something neurologically significant. You are pulling your nervous system's attention out of the threat narrative and back into the reality of right now.
And here's the piece that connects us directly to your immune system, which is what we've been talking about all week.
The moment your nervous system updates its threat assessment from danger present to safe right now. Even temporarily, even just for a few minutes, cortisol begins to drop. The T-cell suppression begins to lift.
[00:03:00] The inflammatory markers begin to cool. The healing mechanisms that were standing by, while your body managed to perceive threat can start coming back online.
You are quite literally sending a biological signal to your immune system. The predator is gone. Stand down. It is safe to heal. Now, Dr. Steven Porges causes neuroception.
Your nervous system's, continuous below, conscious scanning of the environment for cues of safety or danger. When you engage your senses deliberately, you are feeding your nervous system safety cues on purpose. You're hacking the neuroception process in the most elegant, simple way possible.
And you can do it anywhere, in any room, at any hour, regardless of who is or who isn't with you.
Let's walk through it together right now.
I want you to actually do this with me, not just listen wherever you are sitting, lying down, standing, just let your [00:04:00] body settle for a moment.
Take one. Easy breath.
Five things you can see. Look around slowly. Don't rush this. Like really look, not just a quick scan, actually see what's in front of you. The color of the wall, the way the light hitting the surface, the texture of something nearby your own hand. A plant. A window, a shadow on the floor, five things. Name them silently or out loud. Take your time.[00:05:00]
Four things you can touch. You don't need to move much. Feel the surface beneath you, the chair, the floor. The bed, the fabric of your clothing against your skin, the temperature of the air on your arms or your face. '
Press your fingertips together and feel the ridges on your own fingerprints. The weight of your own body being held by something solid. Four sensations. Really feel them. Let them [00:06:00] register.
Three things you can hear.
Close your eyes if that feels comfortable, and listen. Not just to the obvious sounds, but to what's underneath them, beyond the room. A distant sound, outside air, moving through. Vent, your own breath, which is always there. Always available. Always present the hum of something electrical. A bird. Silence itself has a texture. If you listen closely enough, three sounds, let them in [00:07:00] fully.
Two things you can smell.
Take a slow breath through your nose.
The air in the room, your own skin, something nearby. Coffee, fabric, wood, the outside air coming through a crack in the window if nothing is immediately obvious. Think of a scent you love. Really let your body remember it. Your nervous system responds to imagine sensory input almost as readily as real input. 2 [00:08:00] scents.
One thing you can taste.
Just the inside of your mouth. The neutral sensation of your own breath,
maybe lingering coffee or tea. The simple present reality of being in a body right now. One taste.
Now take a full slow breath in
and let it all the way out.[00:09:00]
Where are you right now? Not in the argument, not in the anticipation, not in the memory or the rehearsal here, in this room, in this body, in this moment. Which is right now actually safe.
I wanna give you some specific real life moments to use this because the gap between the tool that sounds good and a tool you actually reach for in the hard moment is everything. Use it when you feel the spiral starting, and you need to buy some time before responding, before the words come out, before the reaction happens.
Five steps, 30 seconds, and you come back to the conversation from a completely different neurological [00:10:00] place.
Use it when you've woken up at 3:00 AM with the argument running on loop. Instead of lying there, rehearsing what you should have said. Move through the five steps.
Let your senses pull you back into the room you're actually in, which is safe, which is quiet, which is not the battlefield. Your nervous system thinks it's still in.
Use it before a hard conversation with a partner, a family member, a colleague. Come in grounded rather than defended.
That is a profound difference in how those conversations land. And here's one I love to suggest. Do it together side by side with your partner or a friend or anyone. You're about to navigate something hard with two regulated nervous systems produce a completely different conversation than two activated ones.
In doing this together, before you begin, since a signal [00:11:00] to both nervous systems, we are safe enough to try. But if it's just you tonight, if there's no one to do it with, this is still cool medicine. Complete. Whole. Enough.
Tomorrow is the last tool of the week, and it's the one I'm most excited to share with you. I'm walking you through a live demo of the Spiral Reset Audio. The free five minute guided experience that weaves everything we've covered this week into a single complete nervous system reset. You won't wanna miss it. And the stop the spiral workshop is now open 60 minutes, $37 for every nervous system that is done paying the health tax. The link is in the show notes. The link is in the show notes, and I'll see you tomorrow.
