69. Why Yoga, Meditation, and Breathwork aren’t Regulating Your Nervous System

Welcome to the That Healing Feeling podcast. I'm your host, Faith Ashenden, founder and CEO of That Healing Feeling, where we show you how to become a self-healer of mind, body, and spirit through nervous system regulation. Join me and thousands of my other students as I dive into the world of neuroscience, subconscious programming, energetics, and radical self-love. In this podcast, you will learn that your body and mind are are meant to heal, and that under the right circumstances, we can experience miraculous healing by leveraging our own internal infrastructure. Let me guide you as we challenge preconceived notions and outdated narratives and dive into the empowering world of self-healing. My intention is that you leave this podcast full of hope and actionable tools. So without further ado, let's dive in.

Hello and welcome back to the That Healing Feeling Podcast. I'm your host Faith Ashenden, and I'm coming to you with my first solo episode since my little hiatus that I took, and I'm excited. I feel like I did a lot of solo episodes in a row for a long time, and I need to bring that back because I know that that's what you guys have been requesting. So I'm excited for this topic today because— okay, I'm laughing because I've had this conversation a lot with you guys, and I think that it's just something I didn't realize was an important point of clarification, but I do actually really feel like talking about this might actually instigate some light bulb moments. Also, my hope is that it saves you a lot of freaking time and a lot of freaking energy, because I spent a lot of my life not understanding this and therefore like just wasted a lot of time. So today's episode is basically Here's the premise. I love you, but yoga, meditation, and breathwork aren't going to regulate your nervous system. Jaw drop. Okay. You know that I'm not the kind of person to, like, come on and try to give, like, a controversial opinion for the sake of it. That's like a super trendy thing in social media right now. If you're not a content creator, you might not know this, but in general, people are taught to put out controversial content because it gains traction. I generally am not one of those people. I don't really feel like I want to alienate anyone. I'm very inclusive in my brand and in what I talk about. I also really celebrate differing ideas, and I think that there are so many ways to do a lot of things, including heal. But I think that there are a few exceptions where it's really important to call out what isn't working for people because it's going to save people a lot of time and energy, like I said. And here's the thing, right? A lot of my clients and listeners are people who are doing a lot of regulation techniques. Like right now I'm in my launch for the Health Transformation Accelerator, and I have so many people in my DMs. We're chatting through the program and I'm getting to know a lot of people personally. And they're saying, yeah, you know, like I meditate every day. I'm a yoga teacher trainer, or I'm like, you know, going to yoga. I do this type of breathing, or I have a breathwork coach or whatever. Like they're doing different techniques. And I think because my community really is like your wellness-y girl, kind of takes her supplements, does her movement, has an aspect of mindfulness in her routine. Like it's not new to you. That you have to take care of your nervous system through some sort of modality. And you're not like, what's the nervous system? Like, usually I'm just being honest, by the time you've gotten to me, you do know what the nervous system is and you are actually trying to heal yourself. So I get it. But at the end of the day, here's my thing. Those things alone are not going to be what get you over the edge to healing. And I didn't realize until yesterday when I was having this conversation with a client that people don't actually know this. Like, they actually think that you can be in this position where you're like stuck in fight, flight, freeze, whatever state you're stuck in, and you can just like go do some meditation and you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to regulate my nervous system and bring inner peace. And then you're like, I've been doing this for 6 months and I'm still like really anxious, except for sometimes I have tools to respond to my anxiety or whatever. So here's the thing. Meditation, yoga, breathwork— amazing, amazing tools. I personally engage in all three. Here's how I want you to use them. They are supplements to foundational regulation work. So in the same way that your doctor will tell you vitamins may not, or actually cannot, substitute a healthy, varied diet. So if you're eating McDonald's every day, but you're like, oh, I take a handful of supplements in the morning, your doctor is going to say like, this, this is not worthwhile. Just start by eating a good diet, right? Vary your diet, get your fruits and vegetables, get your protein, eat whole foods, yada yada. And then let's optimize. Let's optimize with proper supplements and let's tweak and feel our best. But you can't replace a healthy, varied diet with a handful of supplements. It's not how it works. You're not going to supplement your way out of the fact that your food is void of nutrition, right? That is what meditation, yoga, and breathwork, etc., are. They are supplements to that foundational piece, the equivalent of eating a varied diet of whole foods, etc., etc. So what is that very diet? What is that foundational piece? That is the subconscious reprogramming. Now let me tell you why, because you might be like, duh, I knew Faith was going to say that. She's literally obsessed with the subconscious mind. Well, there's a reason. There's a reason the subconscious mind is your direct line of communication to the nervous system. So your subconscious is what's directing your nervous system. If you're trying to regulate, you're trying to communicate to the nervous system, right? You're trying to tell the nervous system, hey, we're safe. Don't worry, there's no lion coming to attack us. Your subconscious mind is that communication. So if you're struggling to communicate, it makes sense that you're going to utilize the part of you that's always communicating. Here's the mind. The conscious mind is the thinking, analytical mind. It's the neocortex, the evolved part of the mind that human beings have. And that's like 5% of your mind, the subconscious mind. And it makes sense, right? It's underneath your conscious awareness. It's pretty much everything else. The unconscious mind is the body. So I'm going to say that again. So the conscious mind is really 5% of your mind. It's the analytical planning part as well. Your anxiety, it lives there, right? Because anxiety is planning for the future. Not in a way that you want, but it's thinking of the future. So anxiety lives in that front part, that itty-bitty top bit, the evolved human neocortex. Subconscious, below your conscious awareness. Sub giving you that context, right, of where that information lives. It lives under your conscious awareness and it is right above the unconscious mind, which is the body. So I really like to explain it to give you like a visual, like the unconscious mind is the nervous system, right? It is the body. It's the same in all of this, the animals on this planet. We all share that infrastructure. So we're all hardwired from a primitive standpoint to survive. So in the wild, a zebra might be grazing on grass and then a lion comes and it sees the lion, it senses the lion. And its nervous system, which is hardwired the same as ours, is going to quickly snap into, I would imagine, flight from the fight, flight, freeze options. It's not going to try to fight the lion, and unless it thinks there's no other option, it's not going to just freeze and play dead. It's usually going to run, right? So that's the flight. So it's going to switch instantly into flight. And that's just like an automatic from the autonomic nervous system response. And then when the lion is gone and it lives, it's going to switch instantly into rest and digest. So that's back into parasympathetic and where we can heal and procreate and digest, etc., etc., which is the goal of regulating the nervous system. So the unconscious mind is the body. It's that really primitive instinct that I just described with the zebra. And our hardwire is sort of the same. So we have that automatic response in the unconscious mind or the body, the nervous system, and then the subconscious is informing that in, you know, our day to day about whether or not we're safe to be in rest and digest or whether or not we need to be in fight or flight. So this is really important stuff. We need to know like, hey, if something is informing our nervous system, on a day-to-day basis, I think that's probably the lever, right? Like, that's the lever we need to pull for trying to heal the nervous system. Surely communicating with— if you have a relationship with someone and you want to heal that relationship, what's the first thing you're going to— a therapist or, you know, anyone's going to tell you to do to be successful? Communicate. Learn how to communicate. If you want to heal something, you have to communicate in whatever language you can, right, to fix that relationship. And so with your nervous system, if you want to heal it, you've got to communicate. It's not just about finding reactive measures that help you, help you cope with your anxiety or help you cope with your pain. It's about communicating safety so you're proactive, not reactive. This is the key. This is why so many people are like, yeah, I'm doing all this stuff, but like, I'm not healing because I don't want to be like the bearer of bad news. I just want to be your friend, like, because I love you and I want you to know that If you're doing these things every single day and like you're still struggling and you've been doing this for months, if not years, don't you want to ask yourself, like, at what point do you get to the point where you're like, okay, this like isn't working for me? Have you just like accepted that your life, that's as good as it's going to get for your life, basically? Because I think that's where most of my clients are. Like, they're actually accepting that, okay, I, you know, I do yoga every morning and it's helping me a bit with my anxiety. By the way, I'm not dissing yoga. I'm currently being yoga teacher trained. So this is in the same way that I'm not ditching supplements, right? I take a handful of supplements every day, but like, again, I'm just giving you this context. It's a fantastic supplement. I support it. I meditate myself twice a day. I do breathwork myself. I can't emphasize enough that these are important modalities for optimization, but they're not the foundation. Anyways, so at what point are you going to ask yourself, like, You know, I do yoga every day, I do my meditation, but like, I still have all these problems. At which point do you realize that you're just accepting that that's as good as it's going to get? Like, you kind of stop questioning because that's how we are as humans. Like, you kind of stop questioning whether or not it's effective and you're just like doing it. But what you don't realize is you've just accepted that this is the best it's going to get for you instead of questioning, well, why is this actually not working the way I was hoping it would? Instead of questioning, like, why do I still have anxiety? Why do I still have pain? So I just, I just, you know, I just want to come in and say, hey, you should question that because, like, things can always get better and you don't have to accept this is the way it is. Which brings me to my next point, which is why is the subconscious so important besides it being that direct line of communication? Well, here's the thing. In your subconscious mind, it's your beliefs, it's your values, it's your perceptions, it's your habits. So it's really everything that dictates your thoughts and your actions and your reality. Well, which is like huge, right? Because you're thinking, okay, anything that dictates my thoughts, my actions, like that's, that's, that's literally your reality, right? So here's what's happening to your nervous system below your conscious awareness. If you are currently struggling with anxiety or you're currently struggling with chronic illness, you might have an identity that you're just an anxious person, or you might have an identity that you're just a sick person. You cannot heal in opposition to your identity. And I feel like this is a really important point that I always try to say as much as possible. You cannot heal in opposition to your identity. So if you identify like as a sick person or as an anxious person, the subconscious is going to be sending messages to your nervous system that you are in survival. Think about it from a primitive standpoint. If you are essentially what you're saying is kind of broken, right? Like functioning in a not optimal state. If you think that that is who you are as a person, your nervous system is going to be fearful. It's going to think that something's wrong. And I just want— I want to, you know, I've used it. I don't use that word lightly because I know, and I, and I want to get this point across, like nobody is broken. Everyone is whole. Everyone is the same in their essence. They're whole, they're abundant, they're free. But what do you believe is different than what you are? And what you believe is immensely powerful, because if you're subconsciously believing that you are broken, if you're subconsciously believing that you are sick, if you're subconsciously believing that you're anxious on an identity level, which is the second highest level of the mind, then it's consistently informing your nervous system Regardless if you're meditating, regardless if you're doing yoga, even if you're doing the most beautiful diaphragm breaths, okay, maybe in that moment your body is going to feel a bit tingly and fun. But the reality of it is that you're just going to snap back to that baseline of I don't feel safe in my body, however that manifests for you. So this is a part of it. The second part of it is your beliefs. So what do you believe to be true about your reality? I don't think people realize that what you believe is gonna be your reality. People don't think that they like have control over the reality. Like, who cares what I believe? This is just the way it is. That's not true because you're not living in real reality. You're living in your perception of reality, right? You're not like perceiving everything at face value. You're perceiving through your lens. That's why we all have different opinions, right? So if you believe that your symptoms or sensations are your genetic destiny, if you believe that things are getting worse for you, or that, you know, this is always just going to be your life forever, or you're just like a really complicated case, or it's going to take you 10 years to heal, or whatever you believe, I don't know. If you believe that, then your nervous system is going to make darn sure that that's true, because that's the instruction that's being sent. So if you believe that this is your genetic destiny, then the messages your subconscious is sending to the nervous system is, well, genetically, we need to be sick, which of course the nervous system perceives as sick. Oh my gosh, survival, right? Like, because you wouldn't equate sickness with safety, because sickness makes you vulnerable. And the nervous system is very primitive. So if an animal is sick, they go into that mode, right? And so your body is consistently staying in this fight or flight place. And even though you're like doing all the right things, quote unquote, on the outside, subconsciously you're sending these messages to the nervous system that you need to stay in this place of stress. And here's the thing about stress. No organism in nature can survive under extended periods of stress. We weren't designed to live like that. And if you think about my story of the zebra, I really want you to remember how quickly the zebra went into flight mode. But then as soon as the lion went away, the zebra is back to grazing and back into rest and digest. And because the zebra doesn't have this neocortex, this more conscious planning, thinking part of the mind, the zebra is not thinking about, oh, that memory That was really unfortunate. That sucked. That was really scary. The zebra just kind of shakes it off, releases that energy, and is literally back into rest and digest, chill, relaxing mode. The zebra is designed that way, and we were designed that way. We were designed to snap back into that mode. And if we don't snap back into that mode, we're getting into unhealthy territory because then we're getting exposed to extended periods of stress. So the nervous system is stuck in a way that we were not biologically designed to be in fight or flight. And then we start to see these epigenetic changes. Why? Because the body is going to start to shut down. The body shuts down over extended periods of stress. It just does because we're not designed that way. And any time we are fighting the way that we were designed to thrive, we're going to have side effects. And we're seeing that manifest in anxiety and chronic illness, or, you know, just unexplained chronic symptoms. And so this is why if you change your perceptions and your values— and of course, in this episode, we're not diving into every single part of the subconscious. I'm kind of giving you like an overview, if you will. But if we dive into all these areas of the subconscious mind and we realize what's there that's not in alignment with healing, we can change that, manipulate that information. But the first step is becoming aware of what's even there, because obviously by definition, subconscious means it's not in your conscious awareness. And so you first have to become aware of what the heck is going on there, right? And then you have to know how to change it. There are lots of things you can do to change it. I talk about this a lot. I'm not making this like a 2-hour long episode, so I'm going to like you know, I'll keep diving into this topic, but today is really about the crux of if you're wondering why it isn't working for you, but it's working for some other people. I guess that's the point I want to get across. So if you change that and you change it to the belief of like, I am whole and I am healing, you know, this experience I'm having is just a season because it is, it's just a season and it's not even your whole story. It's just part of your story. And if you change your beliefs to, I can heal, I will heal, even those are two really good places to start, then you're going to be sending messages of safety to the nervous system, right? Because those are just completely— those are flipping the beliefs and identity on its head. And this is oversimplifying, but honestly also very true. And then the nervous system is like, okay, we are safe. Because we know we're healing. That's a belief, that's information that's being sent to us. So we know we can heal. And all of a sudden it goes into rest and digest. And then you're doing the yoga, you're doing the breathwork, and also, you know, you're eating the food, you're taking the supplements and whatever, you're earthing, yada yada. That stuff actually starts to work for you. And it's not just reactive, but like it actually helps you not just try to suppress the sensations, but wake up without the sensations because that's what— like that, that is possible, right? Like, let's let's not like limit what's possible for us by saying, I only hope to have reactive measures. Let's dream bigger than that. Because what's the point? Like, what's the point if you just accept that like, this is as good as it can get? I have this thing with my coach, and I always say to her, like, how much better can it get? And that's kind of like the theme of our weekly sessions. It's like, I have a coach, not because I feel like I have problems, but because I want to know where else in my life have I just accepted that this is as good as it can get instead of asking how much better can it get? And in doing that, I'm uncovering all these limiting beliefs of like, you know, what did I just kind of accept the way that it's been shown to me? And where am I not challenging the status quo and pushing further? And it all comes back to Do you believe that this is the way it should be, or this is as good as it's going to get? Or are you willing to step outside of that and say, hey, I know that there are a million possibilities, a trillion possibilities, endless and infinite possibilities for how my situation could turn out. Because unless it's universally true across all time and all circumstances, it's just a belief. So you can look at your belief and you can say, is this universally true? Forever, always, across, you know, all circumstances in our dimension. If the answer is yes, then it's true. If the answer is no, even one person can prove that it's not true, then it's just a belief. So if it's a belief, then ask yourself, how much better can it get? And I think that's the question we need to be asking ourselves as people who have chronic anxiety or people who have chronic illness. How much better could this get? And if I'm taking an honest look at what I'm doing, is this really effective for me? Or actually, should I be using another lens as well? I'm not saying stop what you're doing. I'm saying, is there another lens that you could bring? And have you even considered this lens? Have you considered this idea that your internal world is the power? Because you are like a self-healing machine and you don't need all these other things outside of you in order to do that. Your body was already— your body was designed to do that. That's the whole point. Your body is designed baseline to fight for health, vitality. This is homeostasis and above and more and optimization, right? And that's the kind of work we can do. We can optimize when we get to homeostasis and we've got that baseline covered. And so if this resonates with you and you are like, yes, this is what I'm missing, I encourage you to go to the link below and check out HTA. You know, HTA, the Health Transformation Accelerator, this is my signature program for exactly what I'm teaching you here. It really is such a unique place on the internet. You know, I think there are people coming on talking about nervous system regulation, and I love that. I think it's so important. But nervous system regulation is so much more than these very niche modalities and kind of sticking rigidly to them. It's not— that's not the way that it works. Nervous system regulation is so much an inside job. It's so much personal to you as an individual, and only you can see deep down to what's holding you back. But it's helpful to have a guide, someone to say, this is— these are the questions to ask. These are the ways to clear these beliefs or to set up a new identity or to shift your perception. All of that, it's helpful to have someone, but ultimately you are the means by which you heal. And in HTA, that's what we do. We teach you to heal yourself, to ask the right questions, to bring to light all of what's been hidden that's been holding you back. So you can ask yourself, how much better can it get? Because that's where I want you to be. I don't want you to be like, I'm just like fighting to keep my head above water. I want you to be like, I'm in the position in my life to just continue asking, how much better can it get? And that's your, that's your outlook. Like, how good would life be if that was just always your outlook? Like, you woke up, you're like, Things are good. I'm sending messages of safety to the nervous system. And today I'm wondering, how much better can it get? And that changes your brain like big time. And how much better can it get rests on the assumption that things are good, right? And so that as a foundation is sending the message to the nervous system that you are safe. And if you can get your head to that place, you're regulated. You just are. It's really black and white because The nervous system speaks safety and survival. So if you're asking how much better can it get, you're in a good place. So if this is you, I open the doors to my signature program January 31st. We are open until February 14th or until the seats are taken. This time we, we do have a limited capacity for students, so you can head to the link below to check out the program and learn about how I support my students in doing this subconscious reprogramming. Or you can click on the link to book a call where we can chat through your journey and how HGA could help you get to what's going on in the subconscious mind. But, you know, HGA is a 12-week program and it encompasses everything I know, like the exact blueprint of not only how I healed and did this work after 10 years of being sick, but also how all my students have healed and all these amazing, miraculous testimonies that we have. I've brought in so many modalities in a way that I've not seen anywhere else, this kind of unique combination of neuroscience and energetics and subconscious work. And it really is this like perfect trifecta that just gives you all the levers so that you can do this work and not have to just be so reactive anymore, but actually have that inner peace that you desire for a reason, not just because, like, other people are talking about it. You desire this peace and happiness because it's the way your life is supposed to be, and your desires are meant for you, and they're that kind of tug that pulls you towards what you should have in your life. So make sure to head to the link below, check out the program, or book a free call. It's a 30-minute call to dive into HTA and what we have to offer. I hope that this episode was helpful for you. I hope that you had a lightbulb moment. Make sure to share it on social media, send me a DM, or even better, join me in HTA and we will work face-to-face through 12 weeks with weekly calls, daily Facebook chat, and next-level curriculum to help you transform your life for good.