Mastering Nervous System Regulation To Balance Burnout with Amber Humphrey

This is the Willpower Podcast live at the Growth Code Conference. No scripts, no fluff, just real conversations with rehab owners in the room sharing what's working right now. Today I'm joined by Amber Humphreys, no relation, founder of Open Door Pediatric Therapy, and we're diving into nervous system regulation for clinic owners. Guys, this is a can't-miss episode. So we're going to talk about how mastering vagal tone, emotional regulation, and co-regulation can transform your leadership, your culture, and your life. Here we go. Amber, so let's talk about, like, the, uh, remind me again some of the highlights of what we were thinking about for the show.

Okay, so my idea was that it's really important to talk about emotion regulation and nervous system regulation with owners, clinic owners, myself being one included. That's right. And I had to regulate my own nervous system, right? And so I was hoping to talk about how important it is to have tips and tricks for yourself so that when you're feeling dysregulated and overwhelmed through nervous system burnout, through, you know, decision burnout, like too many questions coming your way, that you know that in 1 minute or less you can regulate yourself and get back into a place where you're in the present moment versus being in anxiety or depression and like really overthinking and analyzing everything.

It'll be really cool to talk about that kind of journey and that process of like, because people aren't like conscious to what you just said. Everything you said is like Makes total sense. And that's not necessarily something that I think people are even really present to. Like, they're just like experiencing it and then they're sad and they don't know why, or they're overly anxious, or they're starting to have physiological symptoms.

Yes. So a lot of the reasons why you have disease or dis-ease in the body is because you're in a state of fight or flight and you're in the sympathetic nervous system and you're not in your body, you're not in the present moment, you're not in rest and digest.

Okay.

So when you're not in rest and digest, You can't actually be present. You're just hypervigilant and everything feels like a threat. So whether that be a timeline, the timeline feels like just as big of a threat as a lion. Your nervous system can never downregulate. You're just always way up here. And then when you make decisions out of fear, you can never really be an effective leader.

Well, it sounds like we're getting right into the episode. That's wonderful. So remind me again your practice name.

Okay, so my practice is Open Door Pediatric Therapy.

Open Door Pediatric Therapy. And then how many employees do you have?

We have 14.

14 employees.

That's awesome.

When did you start? When did you start your practice?

Uh, we opened in 2015.

Oh, that's nice.

Yes.

So you've been around for over a decade.

Yes, we just celebrated 10 years and we're partnered with Bob and Lisa.

Oh, that's so cool.

Yes.

Um, I have so many questions about that, but that's like a non-episode thing. So how's it sounding? Are you doing okay?

Yeah, that's good.

Do you feel comfortable?

I feel good.

I am so grateful that you're here, Amber. Thank you so much for, for being on the Willpower Podcast.

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so owners are listening, leaders are listening. They are feeling the stress of all the things that they've got going on. And you are not only an owner and a leader in the same space, but you're an expert in the impact of that stress on the nervous system.

Absolutely. And an occupational therapist. So I regulate little nervous systems all day long. And so I also started regulating the parents. And so that's how I knew I could kind of diversify into the adult population and use my knowledge that I use on my littles on the adults.

So you're— you treated your clients, which are children, and then you started seeing their parents show up with those same issues?

Yes. So I started the Caregiver Healing Program. And in the Caregiver Healing Program, I've been using tuning forks and energy healing. I'm a Reiki practitioner as well.

Okay.

And I also do nervous system regulation, sensory integration, and reflex integration on the adults.

Okay. So for all the listeners who are like, man, I am stressed.

Yeah.

We were talking right before we hit record about this process. Could walk us through what happens to the nervous system for people who are like high performers or high stress owners, leaders, that kind of stuff?

Yeah. So when you are like a Type A personality and you know that you know how to get things done and you want to be an entrepreneur and you're like, I want to create a new way. Yeah, I want to create something that doesn't exist. It's a lot of pressure to build that. And you also don't really know what you're doing. Yeah, you're kind of just putting one foot in front of the other, hoping for the best and learning from your trials and errors. And, you know, in that though, there's a lot of fear because you're afraid you might not make payroll. You might, you know, not be able to, you know, make your team feel happy.

Yeah, someone might quit on a Friday night and then people do actually quit on a Friday night.

They do. Yeah, they really do. And then you don't you're going to do for Monday morning's caseload, or if you only have one SLP or one PT, then you're like, oh, now what do I do? Right? I've been through all of those trials and tribulations as an owner after the last 10 years, and my nervous system got to a point where I was in— I literally lived in panic mode. I lived in a severe state of dysregulation. And so the reason I know this works is because I healed my nervous system doing it myself.

Okay, so dysregulation.

Yes.

What are the symptoms and characteristics of a system in dysregulation?

Let's see, a lot. You might feel your racing heart rate, you might have racing thoughts, you might feel sick, you might have freeze mode where you're just like dissociating or doom scrolling. You know, your body can present in different ways. Fight would be you're really agitated, irritated, right? Flight is you just want to run away from everything.

So people do like kind of fit into those buckets of like, I'm either like fighting, and so that's me. And I get to the point where I'll have heart palpitations where they'll skip. Yes. Beats. And then flight, or is that avoidance behavior where people maybe get quieter or like more isolated?

Yeah, you're avoidant, right? You're avoidant to like solutions. You're avoidant to everything. You're like, I'd rather just not look at those emails. Like, I can't— I don't want to be a part of this anymore. You want to run away. And then the freeze is like, I can't make a decision or you're paralyzed. And that's when you're really in a state of what we call dorsal vagal. Like I say, dorsal vagal, dead. Ventral vagal, social and happy. And so when you're working with the vagus nerve, You need vagal tone just like any muscle, but a lot of us don't have high vagal tone.

Wait, so then the— hold on, the vagus nerve has its tone like a muscle?

It's a nerve and it has tone, yeah. So, if you have low vagal tone, then you're not going to have nervous system resilience. You're actually going to be more easily susceptible to being overwhelmed, being dysregulated and anxious and scared and living in fear. Or freeze. And then fawning is the people-pleasing, which we talked about.

That's me.

I'm a recovering people-pleaser.

Yes.

High five.

Thanks.

We're doing a great job.

I feel accepted and seen that you high-fived me as a people-pleaser. I feel pleased.

You feel pleased.

So tell me, go through that. Why is people-pleasing a sign of dysregulation?

Because you're in the state of fawn. I want to feel loved. I want to feel safe. You don't feel safe. The foundational issue is that you do not feel safe in your nervous system. So you have maladaptive behaviors such as fight, flight, freeze or fawn that will try to protect your nervous system. So like, think about when we were cave people, right? You had different strategies that you used so that you could have self-preservation. You'd feel safe in your nervous system, safe in your body. It used to be a lion, but now it might be a timeline or a budget or a P&L or a meeting.

A hard conversation.

A courageous conversation, right? Where you're like, I'm terrified to tell this employee that they're not doing great. That can make you, as the owner, feel very dysregulated and scared to have those conversations. So you might be a flight kind of personality and avoid it. And then it hurts you as a business owner.

I'm guessing because we're overstimulating this response that we're underdeveloping the tone of the vagal nerve too.

Yeah.

Is that fair?

Yeah. The vagus nerve is the powerhouse of the body, right? It's called the wandering nerve. It's your 10th cranial nerve. And it goes in from your brain, down your ears, your neck, your vocal cords, down into your heart, your diaphragm, into your gut. So you might feel digestive issues when you're like, your stomach is in knots.

Yeah. People talk about that all the time. Like, oh, I'm irregular because I'm super scared of something. And they have that. So that's an What is that to the vagal nerve? What's happening there?

So, well, it's just, it's not being able to come online. You're living in your reptilian brain, your primitive brain in the back of the brain, right? You're not living in the prefrontal cortex where decision-making happens. You're in survival mode. You're not in readiness, executive CEO mode. You're a little child who's scared because you just want, and we all are helpers. Every single one of us are helpers. All of us, OTs, PTs, speech therapists, feeding therapists, we're helpers. That's why we do this. I became an OT because I probably needed OT, right? Right.

I became a PT because I fell off a mountain and broke my arms and legs and had to have PT. I think that's a beautiful part of healthcare's journey is usually it's done by people who needed it and loved it because it gave them back something that they lost. And then they want to keep giving because it feels almost therapeutic in a sense selfishly, but it also is a reminder of how they can in a powerhouse way serve those other people.

Absolutely. But then no one taught us really how to be business owners.

Oh, no one at all. Like, in the healthcare space, that's like the biggest flaw is that no one teaches. The only people who have some sort of help is the chiropractors. They're the ones who like really work at it, and they have to. So like in your case, like, yeah, we don't have that training. So it's all like overwhelming and stimulates that reptilian brain.

Yes. And so then you're a less effective leader. You're a less effective leader because you don't have the coping skills. So what I do is I teach my team and I go into schools and I teach emotional regulation for everyone, tips and tricks for teachers in the classroom, because classrooms are also super dysregulated. These are dysregulated. But if I can teach children 30-second strategies, I can teach an OT a 30-second strategy to use when they're going between the bathroom break to go get their next kiddo.

Got it.

To how to do some humming breathing, how to do some butterfly tapping.

Which we're going to get into in a little bit. So, okay, let's get into some of these elements. First, before we start showing like how to regulate, what does someone look like who has a strong vagal nerve? What does that look like?

Okay, so when you have a really strong vagal tone and you're in ventral vagal, you are social, you are happy, you are able to collaborate, you're able to participate in group conversations without being like afraid of speaking up and using your truth. Your voice is clear, your heart is calm, your mind is focused. Really think about the ideal optimal space is ventral vagal.

That's ventral vagal. So those are people who just seem pretty easygoing, happy, focused, present.

But genuinely happy, not fake happy.

Well, yeah, because I mean, that's the thing about people pleasing is you can seem really happy, but that could be your protective mechanism that you're putting on. I think the difference being is that, like, for me, when I'm doing that as a protective mechanism, when I go close the door, I just need to be alone and, like, relax because I don't— I'm not doing that from a place of regulation. I'm doing that as a place of survival.

Absolutely. Because you have to, because you don't feel safe.

Yeah.

If you felt safe, you wouldn't do those maladaptive behaviors.

Interesting.

You wouldn't seek it externally because you'd have it internally, intrinsically.

Amazing. So now let's talk about self-regulation and how to get there. I think there's so many people listening who are are so dysregulated and they don't even know that they are until they're listening to this. How do they, how do they get started? I think, I think what I'd like to know for me, I'm just thinking about this episode more for me personally, is how do I, how do I start regulating? And then what does like an ideal regulation act mean? Was it, I mean, because I mean, I'm guessing the things that we're talking about in between treating kiddos or patients is very different than what you're looking at in terms of an ideal strategy. Those are more like short-term things you can do throughout the day. But let's start with those things.

So the things that you can do that will have an immediate impact. There's a few. You said you sometimes get your heart racing a little fast.

Well, it was so bad. They used to put a monitor on me and I was having up to 2,000 a day and they wanted to give me a pacemaker.

Oh my God.

And so there was a little bit more than just the fight or flight going on. But it was what I've learned is that through proper dosage of like electrolytes, specifically potassium and magnesium, way— big focus on sleep and hydration. Hydration is so much of a fix for this because most of the time we're dehydrated and we don't even know it, right? And I was throwing kidney stones, which was my biggest sign.

I had those. They're the worst thing in the whole entire world.

Oh man, I've, um, worse than childbirth.

Thought I was gonna die.

So I'm so glad to hear that because I passed 4.

Oh, it's—

one got stuck, which is another story, and they had to go in. But it's one of those where like, okay, oh my gosh. So hydration for, for, for my condition was huge, but like I would still get them. And now it's like when I hydrate, it's like— and I'm just taking these other elements and sleep. I think— I'm guessing part of that is the regulation. Yeah, that's going on there, because sleep has got to be huge for vagal nerve.

Well, sleep is important for your brain to get into the parasympathetic state, right, which is the rest and digest. If you're not getting enough sleep because you're being an insomniac, because you have racing thoughts, because you can't sleep because you're afraid of what decisions you're going to make tomorrow, yeah, then that impacts your ability to have the brain turned off and downregulate to where you can actually feel safe in your body. So like, it's all tied together, and Just a side note, there are physiological body reasons why you have a condition going on, like kidney stones like that. I can't—

there's other elements.

There's other elements, right? You also have emotional, mental, and you also have like spiritual. So there's a whole different, like all the different physical, emotional, spiritual. Yeah. The body, mind, and soul, right? We talk about this a lot, but we focus so much in Western medicine on the body and less so much on the mind and the spirit of the human. But as an occupational therapy and as an occupational therapist, I'm one of the few industries where I have spirituality in my practice framework. Yes. Because that's where we give meaning, the individualized care. Like, you get some— I'm like, maybe you really like to cook. Okay, well, you had a stroke and you don't know how to cook. That gives you meaning. It's not just let's do some reps and some arm exercises. It's how do I get you back in the kitchen to cook, right? So there's all these different parts, and we already think about it, and there's evidence-based practices to support it, but no one's really doing this space, right? And as a society, we're all severely dysregulated. It's not just therapists and owners, like the entire society of the world. It's dysregulated. So when you think about, you know, getting back into the body, you have to be present, which means you need to quiet your mind. And that started for me with meditation, right? Just breathing. So you take a 4-second breath in and then a 6 to 8-second breath out, and you do that a few times because then the body's like, I'm safe because now I'm not running from a predator. The timeline, the deadline, the budget, right? That's the predator, the perceived predator. And you're now back in your body, right? And so there's a whole lot of different strategies that you can use that are 30 seconds or less. Like for you with a racing heart, I would have, if I was your friend at the time, I would have been like, hey, Will, have you tried putting an ice pack on your chest or drinking cold water, ice cold water? You know why? Because it stimulates the diver's reflex and it lowers your heart rate.

Okay.

It's faster than some medications.

You're right. Cold, this is partly, I'm guessing, why cold plunging is becoming so popular.

Yes, because it shocks the nervous system through a temperature change and it has a physiological response response on the heart. So here it is, this is an actual, you know, physiological technique that will then get your body to be like, I'm actually safe to take a breath right now, I'm not in danger.

So the cold really does help.

It really does help. Interesting.

Yeah. So let's talk about the owners and the therapists as they're going from patient to patient. What are those things that they can do? So breathing is obviously one of those.

Yeah, it sounds so simple and like woo-woo. You're like, oh, just take a deep breath, right?

No, I, you know, it's so funny, every time I talk about meditation, I'm such a big believer in it, and when I talk about it, people I think have gone from woo-woo to like, yeah, I've heard this a million times, but they don't do it. I don't think people are— if people were actually doing it, they wouldn't need to hear it again.

I think it's a lot easier in our society to just like go to the physiological thing, which is a medication. I'm going to use this medication, this medication, you know, my doctor told me this. Okay, that's awesome. But then maybe we can also look at the other side of the coin, which is, you know, the Eastern medicine, the holistic healing, using your body, for which, you know, God gave us a body and a nervous system to use. Why not facilitate and use that? It's right there for free.

Go figure.

No money, no insurance, just yourself. And so then when you do ear circles. So, I have headphones on, but I'd be rubbing my ears up and down my earlobes on both sides. Yeah, literally you're just rubbing your ears. You can do peace signs and you go in front of and behind the ear and you're stimulating the vagus nerve in front of the—

Does that do something to the tone?

Yeah, you're actually stimulating the vagus nerve. And so, then you can do— one of the easiest things that I do with my parents is I will have them look to the left for 30 seconds or until a sympathetic yawn happens, like a reflexive yawn. So you literally just look left.

Okay, I'm looking left.

You do it.

And what's the yawn thing about?

When you start yawning.

Well, you look— if you look long enough, it makes you yawn?

Yes.

Okay.

And then same thing for the right side too. But I don't know if we have enough time sometimes.

No, no, no. I'm like, for the audience who's like listening, they don't know this, but like, I'm not looking at you. I'm looking over my left shoulder with my eyes, but I feel something there.

And then when you do that, you can do it on both sides. And so then you'll yawn and then that means you're downregulating. You're actually activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

Oh my gosh.

And so then you can do orienting too, because how often are we looking down at our phones? We're looking straight ahead in the car. We're looking at a teacher. We're looking at a computer screen. You're always looking forward. But as humans in the past, we used to have to orient. We used to like looking left and right.

Yeah.

And so just gently looking around left and right and doing the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, like so on and so forth. Smell.

Well, I think you're going through that pretty quick. Say that again.

I'm sorry. So 5 things that you can see, 4 things that you can touch, 3 things that you can smell, 2 things that you can taste, and 1 thing you can see, whatever, all the different senses, right? Yeah. Why we do that is because it literally forces your brain into the present moment.

And does that stimulate or strengthen the tone of the vagal nerve?

It does. It stimulates again. It continues to stimulate this parasympathetic nervous system.

I see.

Right. It's like it's over and over again. There's different touch things that you can do with the vagus nerve. You do humming breathing, humming breathing at the vocal cord level.

Okay. What is that?

So you're going to take a deep breath in through your nose and you're going to hum on the exhale. Hmm.

Yeah.

Beautiful voice. Thank you.

I am now performing ASMR. This is Will. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I'm so grateful that you're here today. Yeah. Is that what that is, by the way? ASMR? Is that like a whole, like, vagal nerve thing?

It probably puts you into a parasympathetic state because it calms you down.

Dude, seriously, a couple of days ago, I was flipping through my Shorts It sounds like I'm talking about clothes. I'm talking about my video shorts. And this ASMR video came up and she's like, I'm so grateful for what you're doing today. She started scratching the microphone like this. And I literally was like, thank you.

I feel better.

I was like, I feel oddly compelled to say thanks. And I flipped my phone up and it does like— so that stuff is all vagal nerve stimulant.

Yeah. And so when you think about like when you do the humming breathing, what that does is it opens up— we have also different energy centers in our body called chakras. Which is the woo-woo that they do in the Reiki world.

Now we're getting into the Reiki stuff.

Yeah, which is not necessarily for everybody, but we have nerve bundles.

Dude, I've never— listen, I've never received Reiki ever. I've had some people be very, very like vocal against it. Most people I've talked to who've experienced it are like, dude, I don't know why it works, but it freaking works. Like, they're just very passionate about their reality around it.

It's just love energy that you're channeling. We all have bioelectric fields. We are bioelectric beings of light, essentially, is what we are. We are on an electromagnetic plane of existence on Earth. We are electromagnetic beings ourselves. We can feel energy, right? You can walk into a room and feel when the energy— you can cut it with a knife.

Totally, right?

Energy is real. We believe in Wi-Fi. You can't see it, but you believe it's going to connect.

That's right.

But you don't believe that you are this magnificent creature that has energy as well.

Yeah.

And so you can sense when energy is good, as we talked about yesterday, about nonverbal cues. Yes, right? You can feel when the energy is off, right? That's all I'm doing is tapping into energy and being like, oh, what's going on? So you can tap into someone's energy field. And clear energy. We have nerve bundles and we call them like the solar plexus is a real medical term, but it's also, it's also one of your chakras is your solar plexus and your self-worth and who you are. And so people, when I work with them, they'll see colors, they'll have visions, they'll feel peace, they'll cry, emotions will release, right? It's beautiful. And the pain relief, pain relief will happen too. And I do Reiki on horses as well, like the therapeutic horses that the autistic kiddos ride on. I go to Joyride Center in Texas and we help heal them. The horses as well. This is so cool.

It's, you know, and I guess that's one of my favorite things about this is that like the more we progress as a civilization and as humanity, the more we're starting to connect the dots between all these different elements that have been around forever. You know, if it wasn't impacting people, it wouldn't have existed for hundreds or thousands of years in the East.

Right.

And like this, this Western element of like research and science isn't a complement to, it is part of these things for me. And as we therapists have worked with patients experienced our own, have our individual wow moments where we're like, that really had some sort of impact. So you're just leaning into it.

I'm just leaning into ancient medicine that's older than Western medicine. It's been around for thousands of years and it's worked. And the Chinese have used it. And which, by the way, they all live longer than us.

Like, if you want data, I was on my main stage presentation yesterday. We're, by the way, at Growth Code as we're talking. And like, I'm on stage talking about the idea of like how Japanese and Chinese people live 60 significantly longer and higher quality of life. And guess what they all do? Like, they are— they're aware of these elements that the Western world doesn't know. And what's sad is, like, what I was talking about is how so many people in the Western world, in the civilized world, commit suicide, overdose, all these things. Those elements are so rare in those countries. They have some of the lowest rates in all developed countries. So I just want to give that some foundational backing for people who are listening, as a reminder that, like, this isn't, like, nice things that help us feel better. This is, like, science that helps us tap into a better quality of life.

Yeah. And MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has Reiki practitioners that come there, right?

Like, boom, there's the mic drop.

Mic drop. Like, if it, if it didn't help, then you wouldn't see it in certain settings, right? And I'm part of the Texas Reiki Alliance, and we're trying to get into hospitals. We're trying to get out there to where we're like, this is just an alternative. Like, it, it's just something else that can cause you to feel relief. And it might not work for everybody, and there's a sense of belief that you must have that these things work. And the placebo effect is real. It's a measurable thing. Look at Joe Dispenza. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but of course he has a book on the placebo effect. And there was cancer patients who were receiving either— I think they were the cancer patients who were— some were receiving the cancer pill and some were receiving the sugar pill. But 30% of those in or something like that in the placebo group lost their hair, physiologically lost their hair. How do you lose your hair if you don't have it other than your sense of belief that you are receiving it? And so your sense of belief is so powerful. And you said something yesterday, and I was like probably the loudest person. Mm-hmm. Yes. You said your words are spells. That's why they call it spelling. And I was like, yes, it literally is. So like what you speak over yourself is what you see more of. So if you are speaking, I am burnt out, I'm exhausted, I am sick, I am this, I don't have time. Well, you're going to have less time. You're going to feel more burnt out. You're going to feel more sad.

Absolutely.

And as leaders in any industry, if you are stepping into the space of like, I'm going to be bold enough to like try to lead a team, it's the scariest shit you'll ever do in your life. Good luck. I'm praying for you. You're very brave. But when you're, when you're a leader in this space, you do have to know that you are a really, really important part of the team, right? Because your team is borrowing your nervous system. I teach this as co-regulation is what it's called. So with caregivers, I teach them, hey, your child is, is is borrowing your nervous system right now because they don't yet have the ability to have self-regulation. So they're dependent upon co-regulation, and they have something called—

co-regulation—

they have something called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are like, you have a baby, you ever smile at a baby and the baby smiles back?

Yeah.

You ever pout at a baby and the baby pouts back?

Totally.

Yeah, that's mirror neurons. It's science, right? This is real. And so if you realize that we don't necessarily lose this, it's going to continue to grow with you, it's going to evolve. And your boss comes in, your boss is in a bad mood and they're really freaked out about not having enough money for payroll that week.

You're worried about money for your home, for your home.

How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to— you know, I've walked through really hard things, Will, like really hard things that I have firsthand experience of what it was like. And I was a barometer for my team and my team could feel me. Yeah. He now tells me like, I can feel you. And I was like, I'm sorry, let me go find a dark room and breathe.

And you sing so you can get the vagal nerve. Yeah.

Singing does stimulate your vagus nerve. So singing is a good one, easy one, right? But when you walk into a space and you're joyful, when you walk into a space and you're excited, like when you walk into a room, I watched all the mirror neurons of all the people brighten up when I saw Allie Stroker, and I looked around, I was like, oh my God, everybody is smiling because she's joy embodied, because we're borrowing each other's nervous systems.

Interesting. I never thought about that. The owner or the leader is actually like the example nervous of the nervous system, and people literally are going to mirror that. And it makes sense. I mean, if The leader is nervous, everyone— peace the leader, peace the pack is how they say it more in the Western world. But like you're saying, neurologically, there's a reason for it.

There's a reason for it. And it's something that we should lean into because like you said earlier, those other cultures are doing something different. America is very dysregulated. America doesn't have paid time off for everybody. We don't have maternity leave. We don't have balance in our life. Our work goes home with us. In other countries, you don't do that. Like, we are constantly attached to devices. We are constantly attached to work. We feel a sense of value from the how much productivity we can have versus like we're human beings and all we know how to do is be human doings. We don't know how to just be. But these other societies know how to be. They have the dolce vita, right? Like in Italy, like they just, they have the downtime, they have the beautiful life. They go and they, they, they have balance. They go on vacation for a month in August.

Every year.

Every year.

And their sick rates, like just the common cold flu rates are are so much smaller than ours because our bodies are in a state of disease.

So we see more disease. Yeah, because we don't know how to get— our body is constantly in dis-ease.

Like, we're not eased.

No, we don't have ease.

No, we don't.

And so it makes you sick.

Wow.

It makes you really, really sick. And I had autoimmune diseases, you know, all these different, like, lupus and all these different things. And they've gotten substantially better once I started regulating my nervous system.

Now listen, are you saying that the things that you just talked about between the, you know, box breathing type things you described, or the vagal nerve stimulation with the fingers or the eyes and those elements. Are you saying that that's how you do it, or is there more? Like, is that more like coping through the day? Or like, if someone came to you, like if I came to you as a patient, I just said, hey, listen, I'm a business owner, I believe you can help me regulate my nervous system, I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'm sure there's lifestyle changes that you would recommend as primary.

Yeah.

But like, tell me, how would you, how would you go about addressing someone like that?

So I'm not a nutritionist, I'm an OT. So, you know, if nutrition was a big part of it, I would refer you to a nutritionist, right? But then when you have— how do I say this— when you also live in fight or flight, most likely you have a lot of cortisol, stress hormone, coursing through your body.

Absolutely.

And in that, you can have these primitive infant reflexes that are retained. And so I would assess your fear paralysis reflex. I would assess your Moro reflex. These are the fight, flight, freeze reflexes. And so you literally will go into motor patterns. So if you've ever scared somebody and they go, ah, and their arm, they go really big, that's Moro. Oh, they drop and they freeze. That's probably fear paralysis.

So my kids make fun of me because it doesn't take much to startle me.

Yeah, because you live in hypervigilance. Yeah, you have a dysregulated nervous system.

I feel like I have a dysregulated nervous system.

I can go test your reflexes in one of the rooms.

Okay, let's go do that for sure. I want to know because like for me, I feel so much better than I have for a long time. But I— yeah, man, I just— it's so fun to like think about, oh, there's a way to handle this piece because it's always— it's almost like a shame and a guilt associated with being a high performer. You know, I love, I love what I did yesterday more than anything when I'm with a group and facilitating it. And it takes, and it takes energy for me to produce that. It's also where I want to be all the time. But like, for me, it's like, then I'm shaming myself, like, well, I'm not taking care of myself. And what am I going to do if I hurt myself? And in the sense that I'm accidentally getting sick because I'm in disease and then I'm not present for my kids. Like, there's all those like shameful guilt things because those are And that probably is more of that fight or flight kicking in.

Right. But the biggest key takeaway to take away the shame is to tell yourself, I'm not broken, I'm just out of tune. And even systematically put out of tune from the environmental factors— food, water, and social, social life, like the things, expectations that we do, the pressure that we put on ourselves. And a lot of it stems from our childhood and upbringings, right? Like those are the factors that kind of lead with us and who we become as an adult. You're not broken, you're just out of tune. And my entire purpose is to bring people back into tune. And so you can use— I use tuning forks as well, which are beautiful, which they use tuning forks in therapy, they use them in physical therapy, in chiropractic, see if you have a fracture. Like, it's a thing. But then when I put a tuning fork on the heart chakra, right in the heart space, every single parent, every single kid goes, interesting. They immediately breathe. And I, you know, I put them on throat chakra too. For these kids and these kids will start, hmm. I'm like, oh yeah, you're talking. I had a child go from non-speaking to when he started doing tuning forks and AAC to now he's speaking. I'm not saying I'm curing, you know, anyone who's not speaking, but there are people. There's when you have blockages, like you're a great public speaker now, but did you ever when you're first starting feel like you didn't have your voice? It was kind of like you cough a lot or your voice was like not really clear.

You'd have to go, it would go higher. Like my tone would go higher and Yeah, you wouldn't—

you didn't have a clear throat chakra.

No.

And that's because you didn't feel safe to speak your truth, right? And so there's all these different, like, things that happen in the body when we don't feel safe because we felt like we were going to get in trouble if we spoke our truth. If I spoke up and I said these things, it was not safe for me to do so, which is what my situation was.

I see.

And so you have different physiological things that can happen. But yes, if you were to come to me and I do a reflex assessment on you, I might do a somatic profile on you, which is a questionnaire. Yeah. And I'm creating this right now where it's It tells me like the level of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn you are in, how you respond to stress, how you recover from stress. And then it gives me an idea as an OT what specified individualized treatment plan you would need.

Okay. And what would be elements of a treatment plan?

So I would decide if I'm going to do reflex integration because I would also see if you have active reflexes.

So you'd have to be physically present to do that.

For that part, I can do the physical assessment. The other side would be more of a consultation. And in the consultation, I'd be like, all right, so here's some breathing things that you can do. Here's some physical stimulants that you can do. Butterfly tapping is one. Do you mind if I put my mic down?

Please do. I'll describe what she's doing.

So I'm crossing my arms.

She crosses her arms. So she has her arms like, you know, like she's— her hands are open on her shoulders, her arms are crossed in front of her, and she's just tapping back and forth on her shoulders.

And so while I'm doing the butterfly tapping, I might choose to do deep breathing, or I might choose to do humming breathing. And so now I'm doing a bilateral activity, getting left and right side of my brain working together, which is a big deal.

I did EMDR therapy, which is my favorite type, and it unlocked. And it was all about bilateral stimulation in a way that forced almost this like presence around things I was carrying with me for years. And I mentally just addressed it organically, and those things went away, and I felt this emotional release, and I felt this electrical euphoria. Yes. And so that bilateral piece is what you're talking about there when you're tapping or you're looking left or right.

Yes. So like if you have the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex, that little fencing reflex when the You know, or little like that, right?

Yeah.

And so we do— I'll do looking left and right with a visual tracking. I'll go in diagonals. I'm working on left, right. I'll do crossing midline. I'll do cross crawls with the adults. I'll do cross crawls because you're activating left and right sides of the brain. And then again, you're being physically in that moment, you're being present. So there's a lot of different things that you can work on. Every nervous system is going to be different. I think it's kind of hard to always have evidence-based practice like for sensory integration because there's no two nervous systems that are the same, right? But it doesn't take away the efficacy of it.

No.

Like, give someone deep pressure and see what happens. Right. Put a kid on a swing who needs to get movement, see what happens if you give them linear input, right? Noise-canceling headphones for kids who get overstimulated in loud environments, see what happens. Like, dim the lights and get away from the fluorescent lights, see what happens.

Yeah.

Right? There's a lot of environmental factors that dysregulate our nervous system and then make you seem like a bad parent or a bad leader because you're just dysregulated. Yeah, sensory overwhelm is real. So then I work on the sensory systems, and I do— we can do a sensory profile on you and find out what sensory systems are impacted. Like, you're just a grown-up kid. Yeah, I'm not going to treat you any different than one of my kids. I'm just going to be more like customized to how it's impacting your quality of life as an adult.

Got it.

And so like, we'll do body mapping, somatic body mapping. How are you feeling today? What you— what kind of situations did you encounter today, and how did you feel? Where in your body did you you feel it?

That was a big thing with EMDR. Where do you feel that in your body?

We don't think about that ever. So when you're stressed out, where do you feel in your body?

Stomach.

Your stomach, right? Okay, so then we need to make sure that you were getting into that parasympathetic rest and digest. So I'm going to really today focus on vagus nerve stimulation.

Love that.

Now, if you're saying, I, I, the noise of my household was too much, I just couldn't do it, well then I need to maybe work on some things that will help you or give you coping strategies, like those loop headphones that you can put in, like they're kind of noise canceling. but you can still kind of hear, but it dulls the sounds a little bit. Maybe that's what you need in your home.

Got it.

Like, there's different, like, adaptations that we can do, and there's also exercises and breathwork that we can do.

It's amazing to think about that. Have you, um, can you treat people remotely, or do you have to have them physically present in your clinic?

So in Texas, I can do telehealth, you know, anywhere in Texas. And then with the inpatient, like, the outpatient center, through insurance, through insurance, but you could take cash pay anywhere? Yeah, I need to be like I think I need to just be careful about how I do OT across state lines. I want to know everything, like how can I be a consultant? Like I'm trying to—

Oh, I can help you with that.

I would really like to talk to you.

It's really easy.

Please, please talk to me.

Because I want all the people who are listening to be able to reach out to you and get this kind of care. And I think that this is a different model, business model, but it's one that's actually very easy to create because we're so confined by the dysregulated insurance companies to where we are so like in this mindset of what we are, what are we allowed to do? The matter is, if we disconnect from all that, we are free financially. So we'll talk. But I think it'd be great for people to know how they can get help and talk to you about it.

Yeah, I'm partnering with my very, very good friend Tony Sposett, and we're both TikTokers.

You have your own podcast, by the way. I need to make sure I mention this.

Oh yeah. So my podcast is Light Beyond the Ashes, and I talk about Light Beyond the Ashes, Light Beyond the Ashes, and like being the phoenix and rising from your own ashes of your own personal hell of healing. It's so painful. But every single person who found the light Found It in the Darkness. And so that's, you know, I have my TikTok, I have Instagram, and I've got my podcast. And then I'm partnering with— his name is the TikTok History Teacher, and he teaches the history of like of America, really, but the world, and how these systems have actually led to our dysregulation. And his name is Tony Spazic. So Tony and I are working on somatic engineering, and so we are creating these somatic profiles so we can help people. And he makes like custom— he's like got One Ancient Earth, and so he has these bracelets and they're custom made for you.

Wow.

And they help. I put this on and I literally like felt like I was in my body. My husband put his on, his arm felt heavy. My— one of my patients, the mom, she put it on, she's like, I haven't been this happy like in weeks. And I'm like, but it's a— it's a— it's a somatic arc bracelet that's customized for your nervous system. And I know it sounds silly and woo-woo, but the ancient Egyptians wore lapis lazuli. Yeah, like they did these things. They believed in frequency. And the— the pyramids are resonance chambers with— with literally rose quartz.

I had a friend who, you know, Joe Rogan right now is really big. I'm like, just diving into the pyramids and how, like, there is no way, you know, it defines laws of physics to have done what they've done in multiple areas. A friend of mine recently, he's an orthopedic surgeon. You couldn't get more left-brain factual. He's so against the woo-woo. He went there on a very interesting retreat where he went into the inner chambers of the pyramids. And I asked him, like, so what do you think after all this? He goes, there were spaceships. Like, it was like he sounded crazy. And I was like, dude, coming from you, that sounds— he's like, I know. He's like, he's like, he goes, I don't know how else to describe it. It's like there was, there was technology and engineering involved that was so much more advanced in some ways. And so for us, we just have to recognize minimally, if we're not prepared and we're not thinking on those levels, that minimally the research that they're doing on these elements that are being used in MD Anderson, all these different things are tools to help us regulate. And if My whole thing is this: if anyone's feeling dysregulated, what are you going to lose? What are you going to lose? Just like you said, see what happens. Do these things. See what happens.

You're already burnt out and tired and stressed and feeling crap. Why not try breathing?

Yeah. How hard is that?

Like, put a tuning fork on your chest and just see how you feel. Yeah. The risk-benefit is like, it's so much more beneficial.

It's such a low barrier of entry. And like that whole, like, what do you call it, butterfly tapping?

Yeah.

Or just the different things we talked about on this show. I think just why not try that? How often do you do it though?

I do mine every day and I do emotional freedom tapping too. So you're tapping on different meridian points of your body. And like, I will say things like, I am safe and I'm safe in my body today. I am safe in my body every day. I am safe. And when I have moms do this, the level of crying that happens because they literally don't feel safe.

And when they say that, it releases that fear.

Remember, words are spells.

Yes.

Right. And you don't feel safe. And so even identifying and saying, I feel safe or I am safe, because there's such power in the I am statement. I want this. I hope for this. I am safe. I am loved. I am supported. I am abundant. I am provided for.

Yes.

Right. The I am is the— that's what the great I am. Like, we are the great I am. We are all one. We're one unified. We're one unified conscious field. The Egyptians knew this, right? Like, these ancient civilizations knew this. We've just gotten away from it and we're like, we know everything. No, we don't. No, we really don't. What is the harm in speaking love over yourself, speaking life into yourself. That's what I do is I speak life into people and I see it transform souls every single day. And you know, there's— I want to work with people across the world. I want to be on stages across the world. I want to be in every single space I can be in to help other souls remember and heal that they are powerful souls. And you've been giving your power away to structures, but just learn how to be and see how you feel. Yes, I've become a better leader now. I was making decisions out of fear. I was making decisions out of panic. I was not in a place where I could actually lead for a period of time when I was going through a really hard season in my life, right? And now I just have faith and trust and surrender that I'm going to be provided for because I continue to be provided for.

Yes.

And so now I lead through love.

Leading through love. By the way, that's literally what I say when I sign off.

Is it really?

Yeah, I'm gonna do that in a I didn't show you, but it's so funny because, um, I actually was at a conference last week where experts in, in elements of your talk, what you're talking about, will say that they will say out loud when they're watching their TikToks, I don't accept this. Like, if they see something that's negative or compressive, like, I reject this. Yeah, as they're flipping through it so that their brains don't subconsciously absorb the, the stuff that we're being exposed to. But Amber, you are such a wonderful light.

Thank you.

I am so grateful to have had this show. I know my listeners got a lot, but I got so much out of just learning about this. There's elements I think I had some knowledge on, but never anything to this clarity point. And clarity equals power.

Yeah.

So how can people get a hold of you? How can they— I mean, say your podcast one more time. We'll put all in the show notes, all these things.

So my podcast is Light Beyond the Ashes, and you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, I think on Facebook probably too. But, and then I'm streaming everywhere on Apple, podcast on Spotify, iHeart, and Amazon Music, and YouTube. So I'm everywhere.

Okay.

And then my company is Open Door Pediatric Therapy, and we're so, so excited. We're in Houston, Texas. We're growing. We have 11,000 square feet of fun that my husband and I custom built together, and it looks like a children's museum on steroids with treehouses and clubhouses and swing gyms and villages. And so you can reach us at opendoorpt.com.

That is so awesome. I gotta tell, uh, the Audience, I, they know this. I don't listen to podcasts, even though I do more than one. And it's one of those where with you, I am not only if I'm following it, but I can't wait because I don't think for me at least, there's anything more important to me in my journey right now than self-regulation. If I can't get my nervous system to regulate, I can't tap into the power of what I love to do, which requires me to use that, that power.

Yeah.

You know? So I like to finish with some rapid fire questions.

Okay.

You ready?

Yes.

Okay, so what is your favorite go-to self-regulation activity?

Humming breathing.

Humming breathing?

I was humming on the way here. I was humming down the hallway.

Do you have songs or you just kind of hum like a flat tone, kind of like the meditative?

Yeah, there's VU breathing too. You can do VU, OM. Like, you'll feel it in different parts of your face, your throat, or your chest. So just kind of depending on which chakra I'm wanting to kind of clear.

Okay, that comes to your expertise.

Yes. And then fear paralysis tapping. Can I show it to you real fast?

Please.

Okay, so I'm going to put my hand on my sternum.

Okay.

And I'm going to put my— there's multiple spots. This is the one I do a lot.

She has her hand on her sternum. She has both hands now and she's tapping one hand above the other.

Cha cha cha.

And she's saying cha cha cha cha cha as she's tapping on her chest. Cha cha cha cha cha. So she's tapping on her chest. And what does that do?

So this is going to help release any kind of pent-up stress into your body.

What?

It's really like, there's— you can do tapping kind of anywhere really, but the cha-cha-cha-cha-cha is what, um, there's a, uh, it's called Muscatova Neurosensory Motor Reflex Integration, MNRI. It's a reflex integration course, and that's where I first heard about it. And so Svetlana Muscatova created these different things or identified them. And so it's part of trauma healing is working on the fear paralysis, because it gets you out of freeze mode. And I don't want to freeze when I'm on your show.

No.

So I'm gonna do some hummingbird.

I've never I don't know if I need to do that because my whole thing is fight. Like, I'm going to sprint at the line and just close my eyes and cry. Okay, next question. What is a movie, book, play, song, something that you've heard or read or seen lately that you just loved?

Oh, God. Telepathy Tapes. The Telepathy Tapes podcast and the documentary. I've interviewed a few of those folks from there, and it's in their space. So these autistic non-speakers experiencing telepathy and non-local communication, and that we're one unified conscious field. And they have a documentary that's coming out the spring, and I've interviewed a few of them. They do letter boards. Oh, and so it's total communication, and it's kind of controversial. Okay, because it's, it's controversial.

Yeah.

However, these kids are really doing this, and I have spellers in my clinic that I give them a keyboard on their AAC device, and there I had a 4-year-old who's spelling every single country in the entire world.

Let's go.

Yeah. And so I just believe non-speakers when they tell me things, either in writing, sign, AAC, verbal. I believe non-speakers and I presume competence, and that changed my life.

Oh my gosh. Okay, where's somewhere you've been or excited to go in the world?

Egypt. Okay, I can't wait to go to Egypt and go to the pyramids.

Yeah, man, I bet you're gonna have a whole different connection to that.

Oh, I can't wait. Yeah, I'm a deeply spiritual person and I have, um, very spiritual gifts, and I can't wait to see how they activate even further.

Yeah, get that spaceship off the ground. Um, okay, last question. One of my things that I am aware of is that this recording is going to be out there in the ether for your descendants to see. What would you want them to know about what we talked about today?

That you are more powerful than you've been told and that we are one, and that when you heal, I heal, and when I heal, you heal, and when we all heal, we rise.

I don't know if I've ever listened to an episode that I've done more than once, but this is— this will be it.

Oh, thank you, Amber.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Hey, we share the same last name, so that's right.

She's Amber Humphreys. Humphreys. She's my cousin. I was gonna do like a whole joke at the beginning, but then I know all the people are like, well, was she your cousin or wasn't she? Yes, in God she's my sister, actually.

Yes, I am. We're all one.

We're all one.

We are all brothers and sisters. We should treat each other as such and tap each other's sternums. Yeah, tap and hum and breathe, and you'll be safe.

All right, well, Amber, thanks for being on the show. And rock stars, as always, thank you so much listening to the Willpower Podcast. This is Will reminding you to lead with love, and remember, never give up. Until next time.