#31: Work with your Nervous System to Improve Your Relationships and Feel Happier, with Adam Hart

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Many people are walking around with dysregulated nervous systems and don't even know it. Any yet, it can impact a person profoundly. When your nervous system is dysregulated, there’s more likely to be tension, conflict, and misunderstandings in your relationships. My guest today, Adam Hart, talks about how to regulate your nervous system with ease so that your relationships flourish and you experience a happier life.

Adam Hart is an International Speaker & best selling author whose mission is to help busy parents transform their quality of life and develop deeply connected relationships with their partners and children. Focusing on nervous system regulation, energetic attraction and natural holistic wellness practices, Adam leads his clients to living the best version of themselves possible.

Visit Adam's website and download the FREE ROADMAP: The 6 "How-To" Steps for Creating a Happier Home and More Deeply Connected Loving Relationships: https://training.clearimpact.io/

Follow Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamhart/

Karin's website: www.drcalde.com

Join Karin's community for women seeking relationship support by sending her an email with the title: "Ready for love" [e-mail]

TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Intro:

[00:00] Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

Episode Intro:

Karin: Hello, everyone. Adam Hart is my guest today, and he is a personal transformation coach and a leading expert in nervous system regulation. Some of you might be thinking now, what is that? What does it have to do with relationships? Well, I'm going to let him explain what nervous system regulation is and why it's so important. But I'll just share with you that I think it is absolutely fundamental to all healthy relationships, including with ourselves. And if you've worked with me, you know how strongly I believe having a strong relationship with ourselves helps us to create healthy connections with others.

Now, I first heard Adam speak on one of my favorite podcasts, ManTalks. So when Adam reached out to me, I asked him, what interests you in being on my little podcast? And he said, because you've done the work. You don't just have an education and work with clients, you've lived this stuff. So I think we can have an interesting conversation. And it's true, my nervous system was pretty jacked up for a long time, and that had a major impact on all my relationships. And it was a combination of things that helped me learn how to regulate myself the biggest and most direct way, being somatic experiencing. And I'm not going to go into that here. But there are different ways to work with a nervous system, and Adam will talk about his approach. He's got an interesting story about how he hit rock bottom, which allowed him to be open to something new. And that's how we started on the road to nervous system regulation in all the areas of his life, including parenthood.

I loved and appreciated our conversation so very much, and I hope that you'll share it with people that you love.

A couple things to note. Adam, at the end of our conversation, talks about the importance of community, and I could not agree more. In fact, I am starting a community of women who want support with their intimate relationships. So in addition to the benefit of having the support of other women, I'll bring in guest experts to talk about the issues that matter most to this group. I'll facilitate group sessions, have Q and A sessions, all so that you can get clarity about what you want in your relationships, grow into your best self, learn valuable relationship tools, and more. So I'm looking for ten foundation members who want to get in on the ground floor. As I get this up and running, they'll get a screaming deal on their monthly membership, and in return, I just ask that they give me some feedback so that I can make this community the best that it can be. So if you're interested, please shoot me an email to [e-mail]. And that's Karin with an “I”. I’ll also put that in the show notes.

And aside from that, starting next week on Love Is US, it's sexy September, so you'll get to listen to episodes all month long about things like Desire Discrepancy, which is when one partner wants sex more than the other one does. I'll talk with guests about menopause and how that impacts sex, connecting with your sexuality, and getting what you really want out of your sexual relationship. And I'll also talk with someone about kink and what that really is and how healing it can be. So these are some really interesting and, I think, very helpful conversations. So I have a lot of great episodes coming up, and I hope you'll join me.

And now on to our current episode. I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

Karin: Adam, welcome. It's nice to see you.

[04:35] Adam: Thanks for having me, Karin, I appreciate it.

[04:38] Karin: So I think I know that you are not in the United States, so can you tell us actually where you're located?

[04:47] Adam: Yeah, I'm on the west coast of Canada in a town called Squamish between Vancouver and Whistler.

[04:52] Karin: Oh, you are on the west coast. I was thinking you were closer to Toronto. For some reason.

[04:57] Adam: I grew up in Toronto, but after my occupational burnout moment and discovery of the power of the mountains, I had to come out west.

[05:08] Karin: The mountains were calling to you?

[05:11] Adam: Yeah, well, I got into rock climbing, and rock climbing is really what saved my life 25 years ago when I was in my rock bottom state and through climbing recognized, wow, there's another way I can experience my life. And I just wanted to go all in on that. And so that's what drove me to come out west.

[05:31] Karin: And is that what keeps you there as well?

[05:34] Adam: Well, now it's more of just the lifestyle, the ability to be in my own regulation of life, being close to nature in this way, having the ocean close by, having the mountains, having the backyard. I have I have some of the best rock climbing in the world right outside my door. I have some of the best mountain biking right outside my door. The ocean is right there. And so for me and my lifestyle and also for my kids, it just makes sense to have this access available.

[06:07] Karin: Yeah, it sounds like a little bit of paradise.

[06:11] Adam: Well, now I wish I maybe don't talk too much about where I am now. I was kidding. It's gotten so busy. I used to do all this corporate wellness training and I would go down to the city and I would do all this training for different organizations and people would be like, oh wow, you came all the way from Squamish. And this was kind of like a hidden gem. And now it's not. And a large part of why there's such an influx of folks who have moved up from the city is because of the lifestyle. So many more people recognize the triggering, revved up state of the corporate world and they recognize that it's just not working for them anymore. And so this is a very sought after destination point because of what it provides. For sure.

[06:58] Karin: Yeah. And that makes sense, especially since people are now able to work remotely. A lot more people are able to, yeah.

[07:08] Adam: In the pandemic it just gave organizations an understanding that, well, maybe we can support remote work more. It wasn't just for graphic designers anymore. You can do so much more from home. And there is elements of our human needs that working from home actually does help support that if we have decision makers who are open to having that as part of the equation.

[07:34] Karin: So tell me, happens in the wintertime, are you able to still get out.

[07:38] Adam: And be, you know, we're 2 hours north of Seattle and we get more rain than it is. It's wet, it's dark, it's gloomy. But for those of us who recognize the power of nature and what it provides for our ability to thrive, you do it anyway. And I'm on my mountain bike all year round and it's quite fun. You get out there and it's soaking wet, then you're almost like a kid. You get to ride through every puddle you want because it's okay. It's like, yeah, I'm already wet, might as well just ride through all the puddles.

[08:14] Karin: That's great. I love it.

[08:15] Adam: Yeah, it's great.

[08:17] Karin: So you mentioned that you used to do a lot of corporate wellness work. What are you focusing on now?

[08:23] Adam: Well, the majority of my work is working with parents, busy parents who recognize that they're in a cycle of feeling triggered, emotionally triggered, whether it's through the kids or with their partners. And they also recognize that there's an element of wanting to feel more peace and calm and more loving nurturing connections and wanting to find a way that they can access that that has some ease to it. Not so much around. I came from the nutrition space as well. And as an example around nutrition, where if you're going to change something or get rid of a sugar addiction or you're overweight or whatever the symptoms are of your relationship with food, it's so much about, okay, I have to go on a diet, I have to restrict myself, I have to deprive myself, I have to work extra hard. It's like all this have to, have to, have to. And the same works with our relationships, where our mind sort of gets into these spaces where it's like, I got to figure this out. How am I going to figure this out? How do I make my kids understand more of why don't they behave the way I want them to behave? Or why doesn't my partner do this? And maybe we all need to go to counseling. Maybe we all need therapy. And so I guess my message has been for a long time is there is an easier approach, I think, in terms of being able to work with our own response to all these things in a way where we can have ease and calm lead the way versus reactive, reactive, reactive, and always trying to figure it out.

[10:07] Karin: Yeah, I bet there are a lot of parents listening who think, wow, that sounds like magic.

[10:16] Adam: Yeah, well, and that's the thing. We don't know what we don't know. And so, yeah, it's easy to say to somebody, well, hey, listen, it's all about regulating your stress response in the moment that you're feeling triggered. You come down in the morning and your kids are screaming in the Eleanor and you know that you have an anxiety to that, that's the moment you have the opportunity to shift the energy around it. That's not what we're taught. That's not the access where the dominant methodologies around working with our own symptoms and supporting others is not about cultivating a relationship with presence as the primary place we live from what we're taught is to go after a chase of something. It's like, okay, you want this, so you have to do this to then get here. You have to get on this diet to lose that weight so that you then feel this way. You have to get your kids on medication so they stop bouncing around and manage that ADHD tendencies so that you get them to be where you think you need them to get to. And that's not the solution.

[11:27] Karin: Yeah, it feels like a battle when you come from it, from that position, like it's this fighting against something, or even if it's against yourself, like self control and self management.

[11:42] Adam: Yeah, well, and I didn't know this. This is what I credit my rock bottom, having my own disruptions as a child, not feeling loved from my dad. My parents split when I was 13, being put into this role model or extra responsibilities. At least that's what my mind drove to, is I have to show up now as the man of the house. Then my mom gets remarried, and there's four other kids in the mix. So so much fuel for my brain to lock me into these pattern ways of thinking about myself, knowing my brain was learning, hey, if I think about my self esteem in this way, I'm going to get a fight or flight response. And it wasn't me. It was my brain learning what was triggering my stress response. But I just came so self identified as these thoughts that kept showing up that I started to numb myself to feeling my own emotions because it became so painful. And so what I didn't know then and I know now, and I know it now because of nervous system regulation. When I hit my rock bottom moment and I found rock climbing, rock climbing gave me access to working with the moments that I was feeling stressful. But that's a real fight or flight. If you don't reset yourself when you climb, you could become very much in danger. And when I recognized that I could actually change my own biology in those moments that I was feeling stressful, well, wait a minute. Can't I do this in the other areas? I'm feeling stressful. I'm feeling stressful when I'm in my kitchen thinking about sugar. I'm feeling stressful when I'm with my kids and they're screaming and yelling. I'm feeling stressful when I think about all the work things I have to get through. What if I did the same practices? What if I brought presence in the moment that I was feeling triggered in all those other areas as well? That's when I really understood the concept of quantum physics. The idea that everything is energy and every thought we have and every word we say has a frequency to it. And our self talk is the most damaging contributor to our own emotional frequency. And that's how we're manifesting. We're manifesting from the nervous system frequency of our own emotions. And I didn't know that. And again, I'm not knocking the system, but the modern system is not teaching us how to work with our own frequency in this way. It's teaching us how to fix. Fix? You have a symptom, go solve it by trying another whatever it is fitness routine, meditation practice, yoga practice, medication therapy. Again, it is what it is. But until I learned how to regulate my own response to my own stress in the moments that was happening, I didn't know I had a choice.

[14:41] Karin: Yeah, and I want to talk a lot more about that, but I'd love to back up just a little bit because you have more of a story to tell, right, about how you got to this place where you had this AHA moment, right?

[14:56] Adam: Yeah. Well, again, in terms of my experience and understanding of how this works, in terms of being able to live at peace versus living in the chaos, well, it always manifests on itself. And so me as a child, feeling disconnected from feeling loved from my father, I got a lot of love. From my mom, not so much from her co regulation, her nervous system. She was very anxious, still is quite anxious. But her words at least had a frequency of love where I felt nourished, but my dad never had any elements of that. And so there was again the upbringing of not feeling worthy and always wanted to prove and always wanted to do things so that I would get the approval and get the love that I was missing. And that energy, it's a hard one to live through because it's quite exhausting after a while. And the thoughts just keep looping, looping, looping. And for me, again, it got quite dark where I just kept turning the sugar, sugar, sugar, and also the screen. I was addicted to horror movies for much of my teens, just trying to get some feeling of excitement or just the addiction to the adrenaline inducing experience. The ADHD kicked in in terms of being medicated in my teens. And that came from my mom predominantly, but also the other adults around me who just kept looking at me as somebody who was just out of control and so impulsive. And I was. But there was no real discussion around where is this coming? Know what's the real root cause of why Adam might not be able to be settled in his own body? All right? And a lot of it had to do, obviously we know with the way the nervous system and the brain are interacting with one another, but it was also the fact that I lived with a Coca Cola in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other. Okay, so this is all contributing. And then as I gained the weight, then the self esteem and self worth kicked in even more. And here I am being told I'm learning disabled and put on medication and pulled out of one class and put into a separate classroom. And so that's even more fuel for my brain. Now I'm just locked into these really dark thoughts all the time. And all the while all I wanted to do is just please my mom. I just wanted to make her happy. So I put a lot of pressure on myself in that way. And I numbed my emotions and just really just grinded, grinded, grinded, grinded. And I grinded through school. I ended up getting a degree in Sociology. I got a diploma in International business. I don't remember any of it right. It was just like one of those experiences where it was like, I just have to do this so that my mom feels happy. And all the while my mind and my body were continuing to crumble and ended up at 25 years old in that rock bottom moment of pre diabetic and lots of anxiety, depression, all the medications and the surrender moment. The moment where you're just like, okay, I've tried everything. I have no idea what to do now, what do I do? And that's when I guess that surrendering is such a common experience for a lot of folks who do find all of a sudden there's a source of light that shows up, finally letting go of the need to try and figure it out when you've tried everything, it's like, I guess I'm just giving up. And in the giving up, you actually provide an energy for something to spark what could be next because you're not stuck in your mind anymore.

[18:50] Karin: So one of the things you said was that when you got this diagnosis of ADHD, no one was trying to figure out what caused it or what led to it. What kind of theories do you have now about how you or anyone else develops ADHD?

[19:11] Adam: Well, I've had a lot of these discussions and a lot of my clients come to me knowing that there's elements of ADHD that they have been identified and have built these mental constructs about their own self esteem and self worth from that diagnosis. My understanding of it from my own experience and from doing enough research on it now is recognition of the fact that the brain is as much as it's a beautiful organ, and it is, it is a survival organ. And so it's always learning. It's always learning in terms of where it can get consistent sources of energy. And so the brain, we have on average 70,000 thoughts a day. And if the brain is learning from your life, and it's learning in terms of the moments that produce the most energy, it begins to pattern ways of thinking that gets you to continue to be reactive to the things that are happening, that are creating that stress. Because the brain's, after the dominant energy, is adrenaline, the surge of energy, and we know dopamine is another one, the voltage of the brain. And so these become a large part of how my ADHD began to function, was the brain using these moments of stress that produced dopamine, that produced adrenaline, locking me in the pattern ways of thinking about my life that kept me stuck in experiencing that stress over and over and over again. And it wasn't until I was able to start to create some space from some of those triggers that I was able to teach my brain to feel safe and feel loved and to let go of the use of some of those patterns. It wasn't the Ritalin that I was put on that was going to provide that. It was me having the understanding that I can work with my own mind and train my brain through my nervous system to feel loved, to feel safe. If I would have had a parent that knew how to do that, which is co regulation, yeah, my experience may have been different and ADHD would have presented differently or not at all, but it was the fact that I didn't understand how my own brain was functioning and how to use my nervous system to support it. And that, for me, is a large part of why ADHD is so massively diagnosed now.

[21:45] Karin: And so what are some of the bigger forces at play here? Because, yeah, we become I like what you say about our brain is really looking for that energy surge and where it's going to get that energy? Why does that develop in the first place?

[22:05] Adam: Yeah, well, and again, it's because of the fact that it's this evolved organ, such a beautiful organ, right? But it doesn't know what it's doing in terms of cutting us off from our ability to feel our own bodies. There's an element of it. And a lot of my clients, we have these group calls and one on one calls and a lot of the discussion is why does the brain keep doing that though? Why does it do that? And it's an interesting question for sure, but it's also really powerful to be able to ask that question and to separate yourself from your own mind to actually pull back and go, wait a minute. Okay, so if we do on average have 70,000 thoughts a day, okay, let me just start to take stock of these thoughts. Let me start to separate from not all of them, but some of them. And this is part of a six step process that I call the unleash your energy roadmap. And this is the first step in that roadmap is to start to map out where do you notice your mind likes to trigger you most? Is it with sugar? Is it with your kids? Is it with your partner? And thoughts of resentment towards our partner is a massive one that the brain uses as a source of a stress response. It's not your partner, it's your brain using your partner to get you to trigger. And so where does it come from? Well, it comes from the brain having free access to your adrenaline from your fight or flight response. It comes from your brain having free access to the things that you use as a coping habit that create the dopamine. Like social media, like sugar, like alcohol, like drugs, shopping, gambling, pornography, all of these produce what the brain loves from your reactivity to those, which is that dopamine. And so if we don't know that that's what the brain is up to, we just become so engulfed in the thoughts and so self identified as those thoughts that we just don't get a chance to live in our bodies at all. And the body is where the heart activates the main energy source. The heart wants to guide the way which is really dominant in your parasympathetic nervous system. But the fight or flight sympathetic response is so dominant in modern society and in how most of us live that we don't even know we have a choice. We don't even know there's something wrong except for the symptoms that come from there. We know the symptoms, but we don't even know it's coming from this lower high grade continual experience of being in a fight or flight response. Because the brain has us locked there.

[24:49] Karin: Yeah, and it seems like there are a lot of outside forces that contribute to that, right? In the stressed out world that we live in?

[24:58] Adam: Yeah. Well, so there's the way the brain is designed to operate the beautiful organ that it is. There's that. And then you throw a modern society in the mix. And there are countless environmental experiences we're having as human beings right now that further disrupt the nervous system. These are big discussions for sure. I love to work with my clients in terms of getting them to learn about their brain first and learn how to nourish your brain first. Get your brain on your side. Then you can start to mitigate the other ones, because if you try and mitigate the other ones, your brain is just going to use them against you. So let's not look at those other ones until the end. So this is that step six in my process is, okay, now that you got your foundation set, your heart's activated again, you're feeling more focused, more motivated, more excited, your body's feeling better, your brain's not as triggered. Now you can start to look at the other areas of wellness and think about, okay, how can I mitigate processed food? It's not about eliminating it, but it's how do you approach it in a way where your brain won't create stress around it anymore and start looking at ways to add in more vibrant food into your life. How can you look at your sleep? Okay, well, your sleep you have to look at the 24 hours light cycle. You have to if you're not looking at the 24 hours light cycle, you're still working from a diminished capacity. And so that's the circadian rhythm. The number one impactor of the nervous system is the advent of artificial light through electricity. So it's not a matter of, okay, well, we have to live in caves now. No, but there's ways to easily mitigate the impact of artificial light on our nervous system. Same with the invention of rubber sold shoes. Okay, well, we're not going to run around barefoot everywhere, but there should be some time throughout your day that you spend outside grounded 100% reconnecting to the gravity and the electromagnetic field of the Earth. And if you want to truly feel what presence feels like and feel the power of what this moment holds for you, you have to learn what it feels like. And with all the disruptors out there and the disruptors that are locked in based off of how the brain functions, most people have no clue what presence feels like. We're just so locked in those thoughts about our past that are still frequently in the frequency of our nervous system. Still, there self esteem, self worth, shame, guilt, and then the need for the future to be fixed or different in some capacity. Our finances, our relationship with our kids and our partners, and then the career, and then whatever is happening in our health. So where's the space to live in this moment, if we're just 70,000 thoughts stuck in those quadrants, it's hard to feel what presence feels like.

[28:13] Karin: And so it sounds like you really try to help people get in touch with more of our natural state.

[28:21] Adam: Yeah, it's the state we're meant to experience life from, but it's also, from my understanding of what comes from it, the manifestation of working with your nervous system in this way and learning to regulate it throughout the day. Because the relationship between the brain and the nervous system is 24/7, it's always happening. So the meditation practice in the morning is very nice, but what's happening in the afternoon when your blood sugar is dipping down and you're craving whatever that fast food is or whatever that snack is, but yet it's not going to really nourish you and your brain's doing all this crazy stuff in your mind. That's when you need the ability to regulate. And when you do this with some consistency and it's not hard work, it's challenging because your brain doesn't like it. But when you start to nourish your brain in this way, there are some really clear manifestations. Number one is, yeah, you're going to feel more peaceful, more calm, more present. Great. That's important. You have to learn what that feels like. But then you start to manifest the ability to serve others through the co regulation of your nervous system. And I'm curious to hear from you, Karen, on this. For me, that's the ultimate feeling I've ever had is to be in the presence of another human being again, where I can feel them, I can feel where they are energetically, the words they're saying in those moments, the thoughts running through their heads, their physical presence. You can actually feel them in a way where you hold space for them to also, at the same time, feel what it feels like to be regulated by somebody who's in their own self love. And there's a feeling that gets exchanged in that that you're now in service of somebody else, where you're not having to give yourself up to them, which is such a self sabotaging thing that a lot of us do. We just serve everybody else and not worry about ourselves until we crash, and then we have no choice. But this is service in a way where you're just continually being in the presence of somebody. Not with just your words, but it's just your way of being. And you can tell there's something magical happening in this moment that it just feels so unbelievable.

[30:44] Karin: Yes. And it makes me think about when I first started doing somatic, experiencing, which really helped me understand my nervous system and how it was affecting me. I just remember walking away from that first session and even though it was on Zoom, just feeling like I was just wrapped in this warm blanket of love and feeling that was so powerful.

[31:12] Adam: It's like, for many, one thing that. Comes up, it comes across as, oh, you're such a good listener. I hear that from some folks. I'll do certain calls. My clients, they know the deeper connection to this work, but a lot of the times when it's like the first initial interaction say, wow, you're a really good listener.

[31:33] Karin: Okay.

[31:33] Adam: But there's something so much more that was there that they're not quite sure what it was. And as you learn what it is, you recognize oh, it's just presence. So to actually be present, like, really biologically present, not just your words, oh, I'm going to be present with you right now. Go ahead and talk. Let's go. No, it's actually to set yourself up in a way where your nervous system and your heart are there are activated, your brain's not blocking the opportunity for you to be there and engage in the energy that's available. That's that's got something so significant to it in terms of an emotional feeling that if we're so busy, go, go all the time, and our brain has us still locked into these patterns of snuffing, the ability to even feel our own emotions, you'll never get there. And that's the biggest death bed regret is this idea of, oh, I wish I would have stopped for a little while and not work so hard and actually was more present with my life. There's a way to do it.

[32:39] Karin: Yeah. So you talk about how when you were rock climbing, this is how you kind of clued into this and figured this out. So maybe you can tell us what happened, how you got there.

[32:54] Adam: Yeah. So in terms of the six steps of my unlinked energy roadmap, this is step number two. This was the ability to learn how to calm my own mind. And I'd be up hundreds of feet up the side of a cliff and full exposure hundreds of feet all around me. And my brain loves to use control as a stress response. If I can't control a certain scenario, it will do its best to trigger me into a state of anxiety. And so here I am. Do you get that one?

[33:31] Karin: Yeah.

[33:32] Adam: Right? And it's a common one. It's a very common pattern of our own mind. And so you're up in the middle of a huge wall with hundreds of feet all around you. You can't control that. For me, it was like, okay, if I need to be on the ground right now, I can't. It'll take me a couple of hours till I'm down on the ground. So I have to calm down my mind, because one of my patterns was my mind likes to use my breath as a problem. It will say, oh, Adam, you're having trouble breathing. Oh, are you sure you're breathing okay? And would start to loop these patterns, knowing that if I focused on my breath, I will trigger into a panic. So now here I am in the middle of the wall and my brain is trying to do that. But now I'm recognizing my brain more where I used to identify as that like, oh, I'm claustrophobic. When I go into a car wash, I can't breathe. When I go into an airplane, I start to panic. When I go into an elevator, I start to have problems breathing. This was my childhood. But now here I am on the side of the wall. And I can't escape that. I have no choice. I have to work with my own mind. And it started to show me really quick that my mind was just ridiculous, but that I could actually train it to let go in that same moment. So what I was doing is I was doing this continual rotation in my breath. I would find myself, hands on the rock, forehead on the rock, and I was doing this rotation of breath. And then all of a sudden it would be like a minute later I'd open my eyes and I would be back. I'd just be like, whoa, I'm back. I feel grounded. I feel strong, I feel focused. I can see where I got to go next for the next part of the climb. And my mind was on my side again. And it was because I did this very particular practice now as I did the research into it and wanted to understand it more. It's based off of what's known as heart rate variability, HRV, and it's playing with around with the beats of your own heart. And so I created this practice and this is kind of the primary practice I teach all my clients. And it's called heart flow. And it's a 33 2nd breath practice. And we know there's hundreds of breath practices out there. I get it. This is one that I just needed to be able to work with the moments of my life. It's in the moment that I need this working again. It's not the 20 minutes in the morning when I meditate. That's great. You'll learn how to feel present in that. If you do it well, awesome. But I needed it in the moments. The breath practice is a four second in, seven second out, four in, seven out, four in, seven out. As long as we keep the rhythm of that nice and clean, it's going to clean the signal up. The vagus nerve. It teaches the brain to let go, brings you back in the parasympathetic, brings your heart into the equation and your frontal lobe of the executive function back on in 33 seconds. Now, the more you train that, the more you use it throughout your day, the more you're building the muscle toning the vagus nerve. To where at some point, whether that's a week later, two weeks, a month, two months, all of a sudden your heart starts to work stronger in relation to allowing you to feel into your body in a way where most of us have never felt before. And that's what we want. And that's presence, and that's the real you. And it becomes super motivating if you keep practicing, practicing, practicing in the moment you're feeling triggered. So, like I say, I learned that from climbing, but then I realized, okay, I'm going to bring heart flow into my sugar addiction. Every time I go to grab that bag of cookies, I'm going to stop. I'm going to pretend I'm on the side of the wall, and I'm going to breathe. You don't have to be in an extreme fight or flight scenario to do this work. I did that for you. What you want to know is that there's an actual tool that you can bring into those moments to reset your brain's use of that trigger to get yourself to a place of peace and calm and presence. So that you can work with your emotional frequency, the energy of your nervous system in the ways that you want to, not the ways your brain is telling you to. And it's transformed my life. And in the work I've been coaching this for 15 years. It's helped hundreds and hundreds to do the same in a way where you don't have to overhaul your life. It's just a matter of being willing to practice the tools as they're designed and notice how much your brain is trying to sabotage the process, but being willing to stay with it. And the brain will let go if you stay with it, because it's such an efficient organ that if you keep resetting a very particular trigger, it will stop using the trigger because you're not reacting to it anymore. And that's what you want. You want that access.

[38:40] Karin: So I think it might help if you talk a little bit about the different nervous system states that we can find ourselves in and then talk about what our goal is and how we can be in that state where we are present.

[38:58] Adam: Yeah. And again, as far as the steps go for anybody who resonates with this, the six steps from the Unleashed Energy Roadmap. You can grab it off my website. It's free. It's a download that's there. I'm sure we'll plug it into the show notes, but yeah, clearimpact IO is where you can grab that. And again, this is something that we're not familiar with, the fact that we have this beautiful system, the nervous system. And it's an automatic system. It's the autonomic nervous system. And there's only two parts to the system in terms of what we're going to be able to connect with and notice is the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. So the fight or flight versus the rest and digest, those are the two states. And everything in life is being filtered through your nervous system and also at the same time, through your own brain. And so if we're not building some presence to that relationship, we're just becoming a very brain dominant. And unfortunately, the brain wants the energy from your fight or flight. So we become a very heavy base, sympathetic life experience.

[40:07] Karin: Just to clarify. So the sympathetic nervous system, when we're in that state, it's that fight or flight, we want to either run away or fight for our lives, for survival. And that's kind of how our bodies have adapted to survive. Right?

[40:22] Adam: Yeah. The fight, flight, flee or freeze and you might not recognize it in yourself so much. One way you can do this is also look at people around you and start to identify in them some of their behavior in certain scenarios in your own life. And you'll notice how, like, my daughter's a fighter, she gets into any moments where you can tell she feels like a caged animal and she's just ready to go where my son is more of the freeze, where he'll just get into the corner and get really quiet. But it's still part of the same mechanism, of that type of a disruption where the rest and digest state, the parasympathetic is a much more calm state, a much more brain activated in a healthy way where you have more focus and you have more clarity on your potential. And the feeling of ease, the feeling of presence, the feeling of motivation those are the parts that will show up in that state more often for you. Again, it's just a tricky one because we don't know what we don't know. And so if most of our experiences right from childhood get us locked in that fight or flight or freeze state and most of what we're being told is elements of how do we fix this, we have to fix this, we have to fix this. Fix, fix. It's a very tricky energy to work from because it's not in the fixing that we're going to get the solution. It's in learning to be present in this moment that does all the healing for us. And it's not an easy place to get to because we don't know it's a place that exists. And it's not a large part of the dialogue out there on our wellness is working with your parasympathetic, training your vagus nerve to be in coherence and healthy and bringing your heart back into the equation. Learning to feel your own emotions in a way where you're not so locked in a disruptive pattern around them. And it doesn't have to be difficult. It just needs the right guidance for sure.

[42:33] Karin: Yeah. And it seems to be something that more people are learning about these days gradually. But yeah, like I think I mentioned to you before, I just think that nervous system regulation is kind of the missing piece for us right now.

[42:53] Adam: Yeah.

[42:55] Karin: And that the world is so collectively in this sympathetic nervous system state, dysregulated state. Right. And so it's hard for us to be calm, present and connect with people because our body says fight.

[43:12] Adam: Yeah, that's a whole discussion in terms of the global experience right now if we think of a global energy, yeah, we're a very dominant fear based, anxiety based frequency. And so it's a tricky one to navigate from when the global energy is one of and so what that does create is it creates a lack of critical thinking. And so then we can ask the question of, well, so what's the solution then? How do we get ourselves out of the mess we're in as a society? Well, it comes from a rise of critical thought. Well, how do you get more critical thought? Well, you have to manage your nervous system regulation because that's where your critical thought comes back online. And so if the societal structures are continually pushing us towards fear and the media is pushing us towards fear, well, then we continue to be mass consumers. And it's not that consuming is bad, it's just we're consuming without consciousness. And so we want to just start to look at this in terms of, okay, if I want to be part of the solution, then I have to learn to regulate my own response to the things that are showing up in my life. I have to learn to bring more critical thought into the things that are showing up in my life. And the only way to do that is to work with your parasympathetic nervous system. That's the answer. And from there you then get to bring your emotions back online. You get to feel your emotions again and again. For most of us, it's the first time we're going to learn and lean into that experience since we've been kids. And so it takes something to navigate that and feel safe to do that because I'm not knocking this. But for me it's not about trauma work, it's about presence work. The more we bring presence into our experience, the more we can be okay with our emotions and learn to play with our emotions in a way where we can shift the frequency of them. We shift the frequency of our emotions through our nervous system and at the same time you have your critical thought back, you become unstoppable. And the things you can create in your own world and the legacy you can have for yourself and your kids, your family, your community, it's magnificent and it's significant, but it all comes from the same place, the nervous system regulation.

[45:35] Karin: So there are a couple of questions I have and I'm thinking about which way I'd love to go. But one of the things that you have mentioned is co regulation. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what that is and why it's so important on our relationships.

[45:54] Adam: Yeah, and I appreciate co regulation so much now. I mean, I used to hear that word and was confused by it and didn't really understand it until I began to honor my own regulation. So in my ability to reset my mind in the moments it wants to trigger me, and I'll use my kids as an example. So my daughter very tricky from day one and had a real hard time falling asleep and was very much what I would label as anxiety. Now, again, I'm mindful of labels, and that's a whole other discussion. But she had a very anxious energy, and so there would be these moments where she just could not settle. And I was getting very anxious in the same energy with her and wanting her to feel at ease and wanting her to feel like, okay, just go to sleep already. Go to sleep. I got so many things to do. Why can't know? So there's this whole bedtime routine that became quite anxious for me, not recognizing that my mind was learning like an algorithm of a computer. It was learning from this. It was recognizing, oh, Adam's feeling stressful about his daughter in these moments, okay, tomorrow, in these moments, I'm going to make sure I put these thoughts in Adam's head about how he wishes he was somewhere else and wishes he was over here. And it wasn't until I was able to regulate my own mind in my desire for the outcome to be different than it was. So my daughter's having this anxiousness about sleep and was having a real hard time falling asleep. I'm contributing to the energy of that because I'm now anxious about it. And so as I started to reset myself in those moments and train my brain to let go of my daughter as a source of a response, all of a sudden I had empathy for her and where she was and what she was going through. And within, I would say, probably about two weeks, the whole experience transformed in a way where all of a sudden I was able to be so present in my own energy and my own brain's desire to trigger me. And I was doing the work, doing heart flow, heart flow, heart flow, over and over. And next thing I knew, there was nowhere else I wanted to be but with her. And I would be sitting by her side, I would lie down, I would rub her back, and I would be in my own regulation. So now I'm in the ability to co regulate her energy. And like I say, within ten days, next thing you know, she starts to calm down, and she starts falling asleep with more ease. Now, it's not perfect. It's not supposed to be perfect, but I became a source of love, a frequency of love, a frequency of safety for her. Wasn't my words. It was just my energy that put her nervous system at ease so that her mind couldn't keep doing what it was doing to keep her locked in her own anxiety that she was going through in that pattern of her sleep routine.

[48:54] Karin: Yeah, that's beautiful. It sounds like her nervous system was initially affecting yours. And then when you decided, oh, I can take control of my own nervous system. Then you were able to regulate your own and then affect or co regulate her.

[49:14] Adam: That's it. Right. The correlating result that we're after is to see a shift in what we might look at as a parent, as the anxiousness of the child, or maybe it's your partner. How are they being responsive to you? Is it coming with resentful communication back? As you learn to regulate your own response to things, you will be able to feel the frequency of their language, you'll be able to feel where they are, and you'll also be able to grow a deeper empathy for where they are because they're coming at it. Also from most likely a childhood experience that has snuffed out their ability to feel their own emotions. They've been locked into these patterns of their own mind and now here you are in these interactions with them and that's not the real them either. So it takes one of you to learn how to regulate, to open up the space for co regulation, to be there for the other, to then transform your relationship in the most beautiful way possible. And for you as a couple to have a household that has regulation and co regulation as the way that you're raising it's. The healthiest home possible.

[50:27] Karin: Yeah. That's been a really big learning curve for me over the past, I don't know, few years or so. Is understanding the people closest to me have the most effect on my nervous system.

[50:40] Adam: Right? The brain loves proximity.

[50:44] Karin: Yes. And being able to realize that I have agency over my own nervous system and I'm getting better at that, it's still work, for sure. I have one kid who has a lot of past trauma and I absorb people's energy so readily and so I've been learning to really work with that. But it's a road.

[51:16] Adam: Yeah. And the ability to absorb definitely comes with our own strength and our own regulation. And it's not about being perfect, for sure, because as we know, every moment in life is being filtered through this relationship between the brain and the nervous system and the heart. And if we're not setting our lives up to where we have a daily routine that honors it, the brain will find its way back in. And it always is. Looking for triggers to get the adrenaline and to get you to reach for the habit that's going to bring in more dopamine. It's just designed to do that. It's not the brain's fault. But again, we're not living in communal society out in nature like we used to hundreds of years ago, where everyone was there, the elders were there, we had our plant medicines, we were all taking care of each other. And you were nourished. From a calmer state. Now everyone's isolated, lots of loneliness. We're all stuck on our phones, the artificial lights everywhere, the bad processed food is everywhere. Well, yeah, you're up against it. And if you're a parent who's got lots of responsibilities and you're trying to take care of kids and trying to get them out the door and trying to get the emails done and trying to get the bills paid right.

[52:35] Karin: Yeah.

[52:36] Adam: And so it's again, not about perfection but it's knowing that the solution comes from working with the moments of your life. Nourishing, your nervous system, the regulation of your nervous system in the moments is your access to everything you're wanting to have and everything that can be possible comes from there. But that's your access is working with.

[53:00] Karin: Your own nervous system and breath work is a way to access it.

[53:07] Adam: Well, it's the number one way because you can reset the response in the same moment it's happening. You can work with the neuroplasticity of your brain and the quantum physics of your nervous system at the same time in the same moment. That's the beauty of using your breath in the moment and the fact that it's done in a matter of time that fits any busy lifestyle. The thing is the brain doesn't like it. So like the first week of working with my clients when I get them into the first steps of working with their breath in these moments the brain does two dominant things which is quite funny and it's actually very helpful because it always says the same two things. One, it says this is not going to work, there's no way this is ever going to work, it can't be this easy, you got to do this and a diet and this and a medication, right? So it loops those. And then the other one is we don't have enough time for this but yet it's a 33 2nd breath practice but it will still try and use time against you as it does in many other areas of our lives. It's one of those patterns that we often don't even recognize is just your brain locking you into reactiveness again and so the breath is the access and then from there, there's so much more you can do but we have to honor the breath to start the training process to be able to do the rest of it.

[54:33] Karin: So I've been doing more breath work with my couples that I work with, especially when we start sessions so that they can be more present and feel more connected. Is that something that you help people with as well?

[54:47] Adam: Yeah, it's so great. I mean, when you can get a couple doing this at the same time and working with their own triggers through their breath at the same time, it's pretty wild what starts to show up. And also pretty funny how the brain still there's something when all of a sudden you recognize your mind for what it has been doing for as long as it's been doing what it's been doing in a way where you're like, oh, my God. I lived most of my life thinking that that's who I was or that's me when it was never who you really were. I don't work with teens and kids as much as I would like. I definitely put most of this on the parents to really get this regulation work dialed in and then you can start to work with your own kids in this way. But I think the more that we provide this access, the ability to feel co regulation for our kids, our teens and youth, man, that's the future.

[55:52] Karin: Yeah, powerful stuff. I just wanted to ask one follow up question to something that you said that I think might provide some clarification for some people. You talked about the quantum physics of our nervous system. What do you mean by that?

[56:09] Adam: Yeah, well, I think this is the concept of everything is energy.

[56:13] Karin: Okay?

[56:14] Adam: Yeah, it's like okay, so if everything is made up of energy and we know that this is real and we have a field of energy that is measurable, I believe it's up to 6ft around us. And we know that the earth has a magnetic field to it. So everything is energy. And how do we optimize the energy of the quantum field? We can call it the universe, you can call it god, whatever resonates for you. But it's an understanding that there's something so much more than just our mind experience that is here for us. And the quantum physics and the quantum field is a known science based, proven, science based realm of reality that most of us just haven't really learnt how to tune into. And my experience has been that it's the nervous system that is interacting with the quantum field. The emotions that we are holding is being expressed through the nervous system as an energy frequency into the quantum field. And so if you feel very frustrated in your life and uncertain about things and fearful about things, you're manifesting more of that emotions back into your life experiences, whether it's with your health or your relationships or your finances or your career, it's going to have an energetic current that has a similar feeling to it. And so when you learn to regulate your nervous system, you have the ability one to shift the patterns of your own mind. So that's the neuroplasticity. You're teaching your mind to let go of certain triggering patterns and letting go and you have the ability to change the frequency of your own nervous system. The quantum physics, and to me it's been the missing link to all the manifestation talk out there and the law of attraction and the secret and it comes from your nervous system. And the more we can learn to play with it, then it's not about the outcome we're after, it's about the feeling. And we can learn to cultivate a deeper relationship with the emotions we do want and utilize those to manifest more joy and fulfillment and purpose and passion into our lives.

[58:36] Karin: Such interesting stuff and I feel like we could keep going and going.

[58:43] Adam: I appreciate this for sure.

[58:45] Karin: If there's something that you'd really like people who are listening right now to walk away with from this conversation, what would it be?

[58:55] Adam: There's a few. But the number one thing I would say is to get started, I'm mindful of saying don't let your mind do this, but start to think in terms of what can I bring in, what sources of light can I bring in versus what do I have to eliminate? Because the mind loves to go to trying to fix and get rid of and eliminate and restrict and that's just going to produce more opportunities for the brain to feed off of your stress response. Instead, approach it from the angle of what can I add in today that represents a source of light. Now, if it's heart flow, and I highly recommend it, is the breath practice, 33 seconds. Practice, practice, practice, practice. Every day, three times a day, less than two minutes. Awesome. Let that be your source of light and start to learn to feel the power of what that light brings you as the place that you can call home from now on.

[59:51] Karin: Thank you for that. So what does love have to do with the work that you do?

[59:58] Adam: It's everything. It's the self love frequency, right? There is no more powerful act of self love than regulating your own stress response in the moment that it's happening. It's worth repeating. There is no more powerful act of self love than your own regulation. So there's a power to that and it comes across in the ways that you get to feel. And I think we all deserve to feel happier, to feel more fulfilled, to feel more present. And that's the key, is that that feeling only exists in the present moment. There's never a chase that has to be brought into your mind as a way of I have to get there. It is always here. We just have to cultivate a deeper relationship with the feeling of that. And that comes from your parasympathetic nervous system and having the right tools that bring you there and ideally, a community who is doing this with you so that you feel the regulation of others.

[01:01:04] Karin: That's powerful, isn't it?

[01:01:08] Adam: Again, it's part of the modern culture. We don't have communities that know how to self regulate and how to share in the regulation experience. And so we don't know what we don't know. We don't know we're missing out on that. Until you have it and then you're like, oh my God, this is pretty magical. How did we lose touch with this? Well, along the way we did, we lost touch with it. But it's still here. It's always here. And so if anybody resonates with this, the community is here and ready to lift you up.

[01:01:42] Karin: Beautiful. And. You mentioned a little bit earlier, I think, how people could get your six step process. Is there any other way that people can connect with you and learn more about working with you?

[01:01:56] Adam: Yeah, and I appreciate that, Karen. Yeah. So the unleash strategy roadmap is the six steps that you can grab a free download off of Clearimpact IO. Clearimpact IO. And if anybody really resonates with this and wants to jump on a free breakthrough call, I'm happy to do a one on one session with you just to see where you're feeling the most blocked right now and provide you with a real easy path to break free from that. And I'm happy to provide that for a few of your listeners. And you can just email me at adam at clearimpact IO. Be happy to provide, I would say the first three folks who reach out with a solid one on one session together.

[01:02:38] Karin: Awesome. Thank you, Adam. It's really been a pleasure talking with you about this. I've really enjoyed it.

[01:02:45] Adam: Thank you, Karin. Thanks for having me.

Outro:

[01:02:47] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love Is Us. If you liked the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm “the Love and Connection coach.” Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.