Always On Edge? This Ancient Nervous System Wisdom Might Be the Fix | Debra Joy

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral, where we reconnect modern life to ancient wisdom through health, healing, and human connection. So do you ever feel overstimulated, disconnected, or out of sync? In this episode of Everyday Ancestral, I'm joined by Debra Joy for a powerful conversation about nervous system regulation, spiritual alignment, And the importance of honoring natural rhythms. We explore how media and modern noise disrupt our sense of safety and how small intentional shifts can help us reconnect, calm the body, and move through the world with more presence and peace. If your nervous system is craving a reset, this one's for you. Deb, you actually had a personal experience with kind of modern life, your lifestyle taking over, and then your biological system saying, nope, this isn't working. So can you kind of, can you share that story and just your experience with people?

I was always very driven to make a difference in the world. And I wanted to have a big impact. And I knew it came a lot from love for the planet, love for animals, love for places. Love for people, but they were probably third on my list. It was really animals and habitat that came first. So I did a lot of work with different businesses trying to make the world a better place. Started a nonprofit with some friends to try to help business move towards a more socially and environmentally responsible way of operating. What I was conscious of was my love for things, my love to make a difference, and my energy. I had this real passion and energy. I was working with an AIDS organization. I just wanted to help everywhere. What I was less aware of at the time was how much of that was driven by trauma. Trauma from my childhood, feeling not enough, that I actually had to earn my place to exist in the world. So I didn't know that at the time, but what happened was I kept working and working and working. The very short version is I got really ill. I got so ill that I was told I might never work again. I had investments and I I had enough to support myself for a while, but I was only in my 30s. I wasn't really prepared to retire, nor did I want to, but I kept trying every kind of modality to get well and nothing was working. So I finally gave up everything I knew and loved, gave up my work, moved away from my friends and my favorite city in the world, and I moved to a tiny village in Mexico. And there was nothing for me to do really, meditate, do yoga. I lived in a house in the jungle. And I learned to live at the pace of nature. And I can't say, oh, and then I was healed and everything was well. You know, I had to go through a long process of healing from mold toxicity. And, you know, it's been a journey, but living at the pace of nature changed me. And when I was there, I met a man, fell in love, moved to LA to be with him. I'm still married to him 22 years later. But I remember being in LA thinking, oh, I wanna move back to Mexico. I wanna be back there. And I realized, oh no, I want that version of me. Mm-hmm.

Oh, that's interesting. So how did you go about bringing out that version of you in LA?

There were different things. One was the pace that I was living at. So I walked everywhere. We had one car, but I walked everywhere. And it was consciously feeling the ground beneath my feet. I switched to barefoot shoes. Feeling the grass. Even as I say it now, I can kind of feel that feeling goes up my legs, goes into my pelvis. You know, I remember walking with those shoes and thinking, I feel walking in my pelvis. I feel it in my jaw. So I became present to who I was and where I was through my whole body by operating at a different pace. What I noticed in Mexico was eating fruit that was actually Fresh. You know, it hadn't ripened on the vine. So you could have a bite, just go, oh. A fruit called a guanábana was so fresh and sweet and I'd never had it. So you just, oh wow, what is this taste? So having the first bite of food that way, close your eyes, put it in my mouth and just taste it. Like, oh my God, a peach in August. You know, presence can be so pleasurable. It doesn't have to be sitting and being mindful. So that version of me in Mexico, Mexico was very present to the pleasures of life.

Now that's an interesting distinction, is presence and mindfulness being 2 different things, because I think a lot of people think of them as the same thing. I would love to better understand what is mindfulness to you?

Well, it is presence to me. I just think when I hear about mindfulness, they're often thinking of a routine. They're thinking of, I have to start meditating. I have to have a practice of mindfulness. And I'll say mindfulness can be the way you do everything. To me, mindfulness, it's funny that the word is mind because I think it's a feeling. I'm feeling myself in this moment, in this velvet chair. I'm feeling myself look at you and the expression on your face. I'm feeling what that does for me, even though we're virtual, to make eye contact with you, someone I know. I can feel that in my face, what it does.

You know, that's a word though, that is getting thrown around a lot. And I actually share it a lot when I'm on podcasts, you know, when I talk about if I were to create a food pyramid, I say the top of my pyramid would be foods that have flavors that are found in nature. So not natural flavors, not artificial flavors, not added flavors, but foods that have flavor that is found in nature. The middle of the pyramid would be foods that are nutrient-rich. And then the bottom of the pyramid is then mindfully eat the above. But I realized that a lot of people struggle with mindfulness and that it's easy to talk about it, but much harder to do it. So do you have any tips on how someone might start being more mindful or how mindfulness can start showing up in someone's life?

It often shows up in people's lives Because of some kind of event like I had, where you're actually forced to face how you're not being mindful, how you're not being present in your own life. And so I will get to your answer of what to do, but so much of our life is pulling us outta the present moment, and that's actually creating a dysregulated nervous system. Just coming back to this for a minute so people understand not just what to do, but why. So when we think about our ancestors, and we talked about their nervous systems and how it's the same nervous system we have, we exist today because those people who are in our ancestral line were incredibly resilient. They lived in very hard times, but they were resilient. And what that means is their nervous systems could go from calm and peaceful to on alert and ready, back to peaceful. Very easily. That's what resilient means. It also means not only could they act towards a danger appropriately, they could respond to pleasure appropriately. And so a regulated nervous system, we talk about regulate your nervous system, nervous system has to be regulated. Your nervous system knows how to regulate. And regulated just means it goes, ooh, I should be activated. I should be calm. Oh, something exciting is happening. Nothing is needed of me. It's time to sleep. It's just that flow up and down like waves in an ocean. That's a regulated nervous system. And it's important to know that as mammals, we co-regulate. So the state of my being right now is having an effect on you. The state of your being is having an effect on me. A moment ago when there was a technical difficulty, you very calmly said, hey, I think there's a problem. Can we do this? You weren't like, oh my God, we gotta fix this, which would've made me go, oh, Okay, let's do that. I was able to stay very calm and connected to you because you were super calm and connected. So that's an example of co-regulation.

That topic comes up a lot actually with parenting, particularly more modern-day parenting, where they talk about if your child gets hurt, you know, don't go to extreme, you know, craziness around it, but try to like model, it's all going to be okay and use gentler language and, you know, expression.

Now, here's the interesting thing with that. You can only do that if that's in you. 'Cause I could use really calm language with you, but you and I are both made of energy. Everything is energy, right? Everyone listening to this podcast, you are energy. And no matter how someone's voice sounds or what the words they're saying, you are feeling their energy. You are feeling their nervous system and you're gonna respond to it. So you could have someone say all the right things, your body goes, I don't trust 'em. I don't know why. You're picking up on energy. So as a parent, if you're overwhelmed, so we're kind of getting back now to being present. If you're overwhelmed and you're trying to be a good parent, but you gotta deadline to meet and your money's in the stock market and it's going up and down and you have no control over it, and you've just had a car accident and your phone is pinging like crazy, You're already at overwhelm. Your nervous system is responding to each one of those things the way your ancestors would've responded to a lion in the bushes. Oh my God, I gotta do that. I gotta deal with that. I gotta deal with that. I can deal with that. Now your kid falls and you're like, okay, be calm to them. Be calm. Honey, you're okay. You're fine. It's all right. But really your nervous system wants to go, this is too much.

Oh, I'm sure so many people listening or watching this can identify right now. I know I can. So what do we do with that?

We don't have to regulate our nervous systems. Our nervous systems know what to do beautifully. What our nervous system's looking for is, are you safe? Or am I safe? It's always looking for that. So the more you can consciously feel that in this moment you are safe, the more you'll interrupt that sympathetic drive. Just little interruptions. So you think of the way our nervous systems behave is based on our childhood. It's based on our ancestors. It's patterning that's been developed. We're not aware of it, but you think of it as like a superhighway in our brain and body of the way we respond to things. 95% of it is unconscious. So you don't have to be consciously aware of it. But if you can, throughout the day, notice that you're safe, You'll interrupt that superhighway. It's like putting a little tiny detour to safety, and you'll start changing your neural pathways over time.

So what are some ways that you can make yourself feel safe?

Okay. One thing I teach my clients, I call it FAB. I'll take you through it now, and anyone listening can do it along with me. So right now, James, I want you to just feel your feet.

No matter where they are?

Wherever they are, just feel them. And sometimes some people have trouble feeling their feet, so just wiggle your toes for a second. And now stop and just notice sensations in your feet. So you're not thinking about it, you're feeling. You might feel warm or tingly or numb or heavy. If they're on the floor, you might feel, oh, they're touching the floor. And now I want you to feel your ass. Your ass is in a chair. I want you to just feel your ass. And as you do, I want you to notice the support of the chair holding you. And I don't know if you even noticed, like your breathing deepened a bit when you felt that chair. Now I just want you to notice your next couple of exhales as you breathe. And with those exhales, just allow yourself to settle into that support that's right there. So I call that FAB. F is for feet. A is for ass.

I knew there had to be something for the ass because you don't normally say ass necessarily. I was like, why is she saying ass right now?

Okay.

But it's fast.

Yeah. And B is for breath, right? And so you're not doing a breathing routine. You're just noticing your next couple of exhales. And I started doing that with clients about 15 or so years ago, 'cause when I would try to teach people to just be present, most people had a breathing technique they used. When I would get into what that gives them, some people say, well, sometimes it works, but sometimes I get really anxious. I don't think I'm doing it right. And I, I take a big breath and I don't feel any calmer. Well, when you're trying to override your breathing, there can be a bit of a performance aspect to it. Also, when you take a big breath, your heart rate naturally speeds up. So if you're already anxious and you're paying attention to an inhale and you notice your heart's beating faster, oh my God, I really am anxious. I better breathe deeper. Let's take a bigger breath. My heart's beating faster. But when you first start by feeling, I'm safe right now, I'm supported, you already became present. Like until I mentioned it, you might not even have noticed that you were sitting in a chair. You couldn't feel it. But when I got you to think about your ass, you could feel it. As soon as you brought your attention down and you became present that way, your breathing naturally slowed down and deepened. I could see it happen. Then I asked you to pay attention to your exhale because when you exhale, your heart rate naturally slows down. I saw that too. Yeah. If you were feeling anxious, then you had a moment of like, oh, I noticed my heart's slower than I thought.

Part of me though was immediately like, well, this is all well and good, but in the moment, just using your child, let's say like your child gets injured or falls or something, you're not necessarily gonna take the time to do this before you react to your child. But then I realized, wait a second, FAB. So feet, ass, breath. You can do that instantaneous. Like it really can be, 'cause I'm even imagining, let's say you go to kneel down to meet your child where they are. Let's just assume they're on the ground somewhere 'cause they fell. Even in that process of going from upright to bending down, you could do that.

Saying you can't use this in an emergency is actually accurate. 'Cause it'd be like saying, James, I'm going to teach you to swim. I'm gonna throw you off a boat. You're like, I should have learned how to swim first.

So you gotta do it before.

Yeah. So I always tell my clients, the quality of your habits determines the quality of your life. And they'll say, well, no, it's the quality of my relationships. Yes, it's the quality of your habits within those relationships that determines the quality of those relationships, which determines the quality of your life. So our habits are always guiding us either towards the life we want and who we wanna be, Or away from it. And what's tricky is habits are habits because they're automatic. And your brain uses a lot of energy and it likes to be efficient. So it will turn anything into a habit to make it more efficient. You know, when something's a habit, we don't think about what foot we step with first or how we put our pants on. It's just a habit. Or where we start brushing our teeth. Your brain has made all of that automatic. So you can consciously change your habits. So if you make FAB a habit and you do it every time you take a sip of water, before you check your phone, every time you sit down, if you're constantly doing it, if you do it dozens of times a day, that's dozens of times you've interrupted that pattern of stress in your nervous system, in your brain, and you've interrupted just a moment of presence, a moment of peace. Because most of the time we are completely safe. No matter what's happening in the stock market, no matter what's happening with a deadline or, you know, in politics, in this moment, most of us are completely safe, but we're not aware of it physically.

Well, and it kind of takes us back to media news because we're also made to feel in many ways, or we're directed towards feeling and thinking that we're not safe because most of At least legacy media is mostly about traumatic events, really.

Social media, even more. It's not even necessarily trauma, but it's not just stealing our time, it's stealing our dopamine, it's stealing our motivation. So if we go back to our ancestors and the way they lived as hunter-gatherers, a really important part of keeping them going was dopamine. So dopamine, we think of it as the pleasure molecule, which it is, you know, makes us enjoy things, but it also is responsible for our attention, our sleep, our hormone balance, and our motivation. So if you think, if you're out hunting or gathering, even the anticipation of getting food raises your dopamine a bit and your dopamine enables you to keep paying attention. Is that something I hear? Am I tracking an animal? What am I doing? I've got the motivation to keep going even when it's hard. And then if I find berries or I actually, you know, capture dinner, I capture an animal and I have dinner, dopamine is part of that reward system. And the hard work has had the dopamine build stably. I have this exciting event and eventually it comes down, but it's a very sustainable process. What happens— and we're designed that same way so we can do hard work. We can go to the gym and we can work out and it feels good and we see our muscles are building, we're getting more tone keeps us motivated to keep going. Or writing a book, whatever it is, dopamine's a big part of that. What happens with social media or any kind of media we're consuming in a big way is it robs our dopamine by spiking it. If you look at social media, it's very colorful. It's very fast. You'll even see some videos say like, wait till you see how this ends, or wait till you see what happens. You're like, the anticipation, what am I gonna see? And then you see it, it was usually fairly disappointing. And then the next thing might happen that would be very enjoyable on its own, but because your dopamine has spiked, you don't get as much pleasure from it. So you wanna see the next thing, 'cause maybe the next thing will do it. And it's okay, but it's not as good. And we keep going for it. Now, we all have a baseline of dopamine and our body likes to keep everything within a certain range of health for us. It's called homeostasis. So it's like when you go outside and you're really cold, your body starts to shiver and you get goosebumps and just the raising of the goosebumps and the shivering warms you up a little bit. And the other thing that happens is your blood leaves your extremities and goes to protect all of your important organs, right? Your body wants to keep you safe. Well, it's the same with dopamine. Everyone has a baseline and our baselines are all different. But when I get a really big spike, it has to go down below the baseline back to find normal. So what people will often find is if they're on social media too much is afterwards they feel kind of flat, kind of draggy. Their motivation is down. They become a lot more passive. People even find they're more anxious or depressed. And nobody wants to feel that way. We will do a lot to avoid feeling uncomfortable. So we'll pick up our phone and do it again because we want that dopamine. We might get the spike and then we get a crash afterwards. So it takes us out of presence, but more than that, it's actually really dysregulating our nervous system and our dopamine balance.

I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts, then how does someone get out of that rat race, but also still be a part of, you know, modern society, like not feel completely disconnected or different from everyone else. I qualify this with the idea that, you know, back in the day when there was water cooler meetings, you know, when people were meeting in person, them talking about the current show, whether it was Seinfeld or whatever it was, was a part of socialization. That was a connection point for people. And so I would argue that was an important piece of them feeling as part of their community. So I think the fear that many people have with disconnecting from any kind of media is that they won't be a part of that community anymore. And if they don't have that community, then what community do they have?

Right. And that's really important. And even thinking about what is community, the way we're designed is to live with a small group of people who we actually rely on for our survival, right? That they know us well. We know that maybe 15 to 50 people, you know, that was what a tribe would be like. Our mirror neurons that we all have means that when I see an expression in your face, I have that feeling within me. When I watch you do something, I can imagine what it takes to do it so I can learn that way. So we're meant to co-create, to collaborate. It's part of our survival. So you're right, we need to feel that sense of belonging. It's an absolute human need. And feeling like if we get off social media, we'll be out of the loop is terrifying.

Yeah. I don't wanna underestimate that for people, 'cause I think it's a real thing.

It's a very real thing. And even one of my clients said, She did social media detox with her boys. And then one of her boys went to hang with the friends and they were all talking about a meme going around. He didn't know about it and he felt stupid. So it is very real. I think one of the things is getting more face-to-face time separate from social media. Like we do have to make a move away from our addiction to it. And what they're finding in schools now that have banned it is the kids are way better focused. They're much happier and they're connecting in other ways. They're actually more social with each other. They're connecting out of class. So even letting go of the belief that we have to connect about or around what's happening on social media is a first step. I think social media detox can be effective, but we need to develop other habits. We don't just break habits. We have to replace habits with other habits because there's always something that's triggering a habit. And when I said, you know, habits are sort of what will get you either to the life you want or the life you don't want, Think of a habit as a CAR. It's another acronym, C-A-R. There's always a cue. Something is cueing you to do that habit. The habit itself is the action, and R stands for reward. You're gonna do that habit again only if you feel a reward for it. So that first spike of dopamine gave you a reward. The action is, you know, watching social media. You're gonna wanna do it again 'cause you got that feeling. If you wanna move away from social media in some way and with your kids, you need to get other habits. It's not just telling them, don't do this. What are you gonna give them that gives the sense of connection that they actually need, that sense of belonging? If they can get more face-to-face time with kids, that's great. Or like, we're looking for connection in social media, but you would appreciate this as a chef. I think of that kind of connection is the equivalent of what junk food is to food.

Yeah.

In connection, we wanna be seen. We wanna be known. We wanna relate to people. We want our mirror neurons to reflect back, right? We get all that and it co— we co-regulate so our nervous system settles. We don't get that from looking at a phone. Now we might see something there that we can use to talk about that creates that real-life connection. But can we find other things to connect around?

You're making me think about the love languages. I should probably mention them here. And if you know them, correct me if I miss anything, but one is gifts, people that like getting gifts. One is words of praise. One is acts of service. One is touch.

And Quality time.

Quality time. Thank you. You're making me think of that though, because I know with our oldest daughter, when we focus on removing the phone, what we did was we focused on, well, what are her love languages? And one is quality time and one is gifts. So we focus on quality time. So what we did was we pulled out a deck of cards and we left them on the dinner table so that way After dinner or anytime we're sitting there, we immediately say, hey, you want to play a game? And then it's quality time. It's nothing else is happening. We're just together. And of course, conversations come out of that, or it's walking the dog together. Hey, do you want to go for a walk with me? You know, and it's really juxtaposing, like, you can be alone or you can be connecting. And I know that she wants to connect, but sometimes she gets in the habit.

And it's easy. There's a little bit of effort to playing cards. You know, like we have to overcome that effort. Like, I gotta think, I gotta do something. I don't have to sit on my phone and just do this. But you're right, she's wanting that connection. And if you guys weren't offering that, which is so lovely, it'd be really easy to go to her phone.

Right. And we can do things like lock her phone in a box, which we do. We have a lockbox for everyone's tech, which is kind of what people do with food. You know, it's kind of all or nothing, right? But I don't know if that's instilling that new habit or that new muscle of really thinking about what is it that we need as individuals, but what is it we need the other people in our household? What do they need?

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, I feel like the, the extreme, the black or white situation is, is really not addressing the gray area of human connection.

Well, I like the idea of locking the phone and offering an alternative. So you think of the phone, think of it as like, as a chef, it's a tool. It's a really sharp knife. So it's super effective. You don't wanna do without it completely 'cause it has a use, but you don't want your kids going to bed with a super sharp knife. You don't want them walking around with them all the time. It's super dangerous, but used in the right way, it's a very effective tool.

I don't know if you know this, but when we were both in LA, I abstained from media for an entire year and it was a really fascinating experiment. So I didn't let myself read any newspapers, magazines, any online news. I didn't do any social media. I mean, this was over 10 years ago, so there was a lot less than, of course, too. But what was so fascinating was the people's responses. Like, there were a couple people when they heard I was doing that, they saw it as selfish. They were like, how could you? You don't know what's going on in the world. You know, politically, you need to know what's going on. And there's a lot of people that think like that right now. So I know that this mindset has not changed. And then the other thing that was surprising was how much I did know what was going on without watching any media. And that's because other people filtered it for me because it would come up in conversations. And so I learned things just because people were doing it themselves and they started just sharing what they believed or thought of.

And then you could, if you were interested, I know you were banning it completely, but if you were interested, if you wanted to live that way, you could go research for yourself in the way that's comfortable for you, what you want to find out. Because also that's, there's so much misinformation going around right now on social media. If you hear something, what paths do you know to go research what the truth might be?

Yeah. So very fascinating. Well, I'm really enjoying this conversation and I'm curious when you got sick, something that comes up a lot on this show is, you know, the 4 pillars of health. So we have our sleep, we have what we eat, we have, you know, how we move our body, and then we have how we deal with stress. If you were to kind of like number what you had to focus on first to help get out of that desperation of sickness? Because I know it kind of has waves, right? Obviously when it happened, it was at its extreme. You had to do something kind of extreme to get out of it. Like if you were to number in terms of importance, in terms of supporting people with their natural rhythms, with finding kind of like a nervous system homeostasis, Where should they start is kind of where I'm going.

I don't think I had that much of conscious choice. Sleep was my number one. I was bedridden for quite a long time and I had chronic fatigue and was sleeping a lot. I had denied myself sleep for decades. I was always on the go. So, you know, body's seeking homeostasis, girlfriend, we're gonna bring you back and you're gonna sleep for years. So, Sleep was my number one. I can't say I know what everyone's number one is, but I know that unless you're well rested, unless you've slept, nothing else is gonna perform well. I'll talk to clients sometimes who are so ready to leave their spouse. They have had it. They're done. It's over. I talk to them the next time, they go, oh no, I slept well and it's fine. Okay. Clearly it wasn't them or the marriage. You know, I'm ready to kill my kids. We'll talk about their kids for an hour. And the next day I check in, they're like, oh no, I got a good sleep. The kids are fine. Did the kids change? For me, sleep's a foundation for everything. You know, you would've looked at my diet and go, it's pretty good. I was moving a lot, but I wasn't sleeping. So I don't know if that's it for everybody, but for me, and a lot of my experience with clients is sleep. And even if not sleep, rest. Like we think of resilience as being ready. I'm ready for the next thing. I'm strong. I think of resilience as a combination of rested and ready, because if you're not rested, you actually can't be fully ready. If you go to the gym over and over again and you're tired, you're not going to see gains. But if you're rested and go to the gym, you're going to see the gains you want to see. So, I think rest is critical. A lot of people think that going to their tech is restful. I just need to chill and just grab my phone. Well, you're not doing anything, but your nervous system is having a response to all of it. And you're just sitting there. Energy is getting kind of built up and your kids interrupt and you're like, what? That nervous system energy, it wants to move.

That is such a good point. 'Cause I know that my brother and I both, I think he's, he still historically does this. I do it a little less so, but we were definitely trained To do that with TV or movies or something like where I need to decompress. So I'm going to go watch TV. And now it's of course watching some show on your phone. But back in the day, it was like, I'm going to go do TV. And my parents, we want, you know, they modeled it back in the day. So I, I see what you mean though, because on a certain level, I think my brain is telling me, oh yeah, this is like rest, but nervous system-wise, it's not. Because if you're watching, let's say, a movie that has a lot of violence or is aggressive in any way, Your brain doesn't know that it's not real, right?

Right.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Just how our brains connect with what it sees and how that plays out in our bodies?

Well, when I talked about, you know, as tribes, we had mirror neurons that would— I can watch someone do something and I almost feel it in my body. Like it's pre-learning. Like kids see you walking, they learn how to walk. It's the mirror neurons that would say, oh, I think I could do that. I can almost feel it in my body. Or if I see you smile, like you smile at a baby and a baby smiles back, like that's the mirror neurons responding. But when we watch a show, our nervous system doesn't know it's not real. So see, we see someone being attacked, being killed, being really sad. We kind of go through a part of that ourselves. So we've gone through this whole emotional rollercoaster that we probably never should experience. And we go, okay, I'm gonna go to bed now. Well, you've just put yourself through hell, you know? And I'm not opposed to TV or movies or social media. It probably sounds like I am. I'm really not. There can be great joy from it. There can be learning from it. There can be just entertainment. It can be really fun. But again, think of it like a really sharp knife in your kitchen. You don't wanna overuse it. You don't want your kids to have it all the time. It's really useful and it's also potentially Really dangerous.

It makes me think, 'cause I have been through periods in my life where I actually, I don't remember how long I did this. I don't think it was that long, but I do remember there was a period where I had to go to sleep listening to the TV in the background or something like I needed something. And I don't know how long I did that, but I remember it really helped me at the time. It's making me think that a lot of people might be doing a habit right now that they think they need and that maybe there is some mindfulness that can come with what we're talking about around that habit, meaning that maybe there is a need in the moment, but if it becomes kind of point of no return and now this is becoming a crutch, taxing my nervous system, or it's doing more harm than good, is there any kind of like tool that we can use to assess that?

I think it's hard to know in the moment, honestly. I'm the same. If I'm on my phone, it's hard to know in the moment I'm full unless you've backed off it enough and you're paying attention enough to your body. So I used to drink a lot more than I do. I would drink like beyond probably what my body wanted. I barely drink at all now, but when I drink, I drink slowly and I really enjoy it. So I had a margarita with friends the other night and at the halfway point or something, I thought, I'm done. I don't need to finish it. But it was going slow and paying attention to how I feel. Now, often when we go to something like watching TV, social media, listening to something, what we're actually doing is avoiding feeling some feelings we don't wanna feel. And we may not even be aware of what those feelings are. So it could even be, I'm really tired, But I don't wanna feel tired. I don't wanna go to sleep. I don't wanna go to sleep. Sleep's a waste of time. So you might watch a show. You're really tired, but you're watching a show 'cause you don't wanna just feel the sleepiness and it's keeping you awake. Or you might not wanna feel lonely. And so you go on social media and you feel this junk food version of connection. So sometimes it's letting yourself be with the uncomfortable feelings, But not so much so that you go into a spiral. And that's a really fine dance. So I actually have created a guided meditation called Deep Rest Reset. And if people wanna go to my website, I can send it out to anyone who connects to me. But you could even start with like little meditations instead of social media or instead of a TV show. And what the meditation I do It takes you through feeling your body in very safe ways. And I even say stop at any time because if you have a lot of trauma, and Peter Levine, who I studied with, says everybody has trauma, and society is pretty dysregulating and can be traumatizing, sometimes it doesn't feel safe to feel your body. Like sometimes actually taking a big breath and feeling what's in there is so uncomfortable you'd rather be Looking at social media or watching a show because you don't have to feel what's going on. But when we don't let ourselves feel negative feelings, we cut ourselves off from feeling really positive feelings too, of tenderness and touch and ecstatic feelings. So we wanna ease into befriending our body and befriending our emotions. It can be a bit uncomfortable, but going into it really gently.

This is all so good. And I'm finding my brain going to a place of, can we quantify it? Because I just know that these are practices of being more mindful of your state. There are so many people that don't know how to do it. They don't do it. They can't do it. They're just, it's not in their lexicon. It's not in their experiences. I'm right now in real time trying to process like how to help those people. Like, okay, if you find yourself when you're in those intense feelings of whatever might be coming up, something's hot for you, and you find yourself going to some crutch or social media, let's say by the 3rd time, you have to then do something different, you know? But then as I said that in my mind, I'm like, well, wait a second. That could potentially add even more stress and then make people like continue to default to their norm. So I wonder if it's more just about, you know, you're ready when this message resonates with you and you're ready to just try something different. And it's that simple. How would you kind of support someone with recognizing and taking that first step towards change?

When I look at change, I always think we have to know why we want it. It's not just the what to do, but why do we want it? So I think the first step is actually figuring out why would you wanna change it? Like maybe social media isn't bothering you. Maybe you think it's good enough. Maybe you think, oh, that sounds like too much work. So if something in this chat sparked an interest, I would ask, what do you want in your life to be different and why? I'm just gonna make something up, but I might say, I'm always feeling kind of oof after social media. I don't wanna feel that way anymore. I wanna feel excited about life. I wanna feel happy. Okay, that's my thing. I wanna feel happy and excited about life. Anytime you have a goal, it's because you wanna feel different than the way you feel now. Whether that goal is, I wanna go get lunch 'cause I'm hungry, or I wanna 10 times my business 'cause I want financial freedom, there is a feeling. It's not just financial freedom. If I think I have financial freedom, I feel safe, I feel secure, I feel generous. There's feelings that go with it. So take a moment to figure out why you'd want to put any work into your life being different. How do you wanna feel that's different from how you feel now? So if you often feel anxious, I would say fab lots throughout the day. Feel your feet, feel your ass in the chair, Feel your exhale, which is your breathing, right? That's gonna interrupt the stress patterns. When we talk about mindfulness, I wanna have more pleasure in my life, but I don't even know what to do. Great. Just like close your eyes and smell your food. And when you take the first bite, just let it linger in your mouth and taste the flavors. One bite, one bite of every meal. You don't have to do it the whole time, but that's gonna give you a moment of pleasure. It's gonna slow you down. Slowing down does bring more pleasure. If you find, okay, I'm going to my phone 'cause I feel stressed or I don't like the way I feel, what if you just took a moment before you get on your phone? Maybe you even FAB before you get on your phone and then you notice how you feel. Do you still need it? Okay, do it. If you still want it, you do it. And then after, maybe you FAB again. So you're giving yourself a bookend of regulating your nervous system on either end of it. And maybe over time, when you fad before you pick up your phone, you go, no, I don't need it. I'm actually hungry instead, or I'm lonely and I want to call somebody.

That was fantastic. That, that is so lovely and so helpful, Deb. Are you seeing clients or like, are you booked out?

I'm seeing clients. Yeah.

Do you have openings? Like if someone's listening to this and they're like, I love her voice, I love what she's about, I want to work with her as a coach. Are you taking in new clients?

I will be shortly. I don't have any openings right now, but by October I will.

Because I'm confident that someone's going to resonate with this because I know I have. Where can people find you? We'll put, definitely put in the show notes, but let's let people know. Via audio. Are you on socials? Like, here we were talking about socials, but gosh, this is just part of like being on a podcast, right? Is letting the guests share what their socials are.

My website is deborahjoy.me. And if people go to it, you can sign up and I send out a newsletter with like tips like this, you know, ideas. But also if you want to email me through there, I'm happy to send you some guided meditations for eating. Also the deep rest reset. I'll happily email those to people. I'm not really on socials. I mean, I kind of have been and, oh, don't go. It's just, it's old embarrassing stuff. So mostly it's just my website and my newsletter that I send out.

Well, Deb, I thought of you for this topic and I'm so glad I did. It's, it's so good to talk with you and just get, you know, this time to chit-chat because it's been a while. You know, I will disclose you've been working with Margaret for a long time now. I know you guys were friends, but you also, she works with you you. And I know she gets so much out of it and I witnessed it. I experienced it. I've gotten so much out of our connection and friendship over the years. I just cherish you and I appreciate all that you did to help transform and nourish yourself so that you could be here to provide all this gold. So thank you.

Oh, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure and you're such a generous, kind host. It's been lovely.

Well, thank you. Thank you, everyone. Look at lots of thanks going on, but thank you all for participating in today's podcast. It really does mean so much to get comments, to just see all the people that are listening and watching the podcast. That is our communication of like, hey, you like what we're doing. So thank you for that and encourage more. But most of all, I hope that you got something from this podcast today that you can carry into your life. To make it a little bit better. And most of all, please stay curious because we need curious people in this life. Take care. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.