Beka Gaskin (00:04.152)
Hello, my name is Beka Gaskin and I am a Trauma Informed Life Coach and I'm so excited to be here with you today on this workshop. Today is all about honoring your body's wisdom. So oftentimes we can spend so much time frustrated with our bodies, stuck in old stories or responses, or we can judge the responses that our nervous system brings to the table. And today is all about gaining some context on how your nervous system is working really, really hard to keep you safe and protected and how much it loves you and how we can work with it instead of against it, how we can have balance and collaboration with our bodies rather than competing energies within. And we're just gonna dive right in because we have a lot to cover today.
But before we do that, I just want to invite you, this might be kind of different, but I just want to invite you to take a moment to arrive in this space. So whatever that looks like for you, whether that is feeling yourself seated in your chair, taking a deep breath, wiggling your toes, remembering that you have a body.
Of course, we are here today to gain context. We are here today to gain more knowledge. And we're also here to remember everything from the neck down. So just wiggle your toes, wiggle your fingers, stretch. Notice the room that you're in. Notice the community that's here with you tuning in.
Beka Gaskin (02:02.926)
And I just want to acknowledge that if you're here, you have probably tried, like me, at one point, everything to manage your stress responses and the way that this affects your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, your purpose.
You have probably gone to every practitioner, used every supplement, every, you know, every tool you can think of in your bag of tricks to try to gain the peace and the ease and the joy that you are so worthy of and that you really desire.
And today is just an introduction into the doorway to get there. And so I wanna ask you, first of all, I want you to put in the chat, how well do you currently manage your stress and anxiety currently on a scale of one to ten?
So put that in the chat, and I'm so sorry, but my dog is barking at the door. And so I'm gonna shut my door while you put in the chat on a scale of one to ten, how well do you feel that you're managing your stress and anxiety?
Beka Gaskin (03:17.486)
That was a stressful moment for me. My dog barking at the door. My nervous system went, oh shoot. That was definitely not a ten moment. So I have ten, five, five, seven, four, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Eight. Amanda says eight. A lot of times when people come into this work,
a lot of times they're at like a four or maybe a six. They're somewhere kind of like, they've done a lot of work already, so they're not, know, they've supported themselves to get to a place and then it's like, okay, I want to go from a six to an eight or I want to go from a, you know, a four to a eight or whatever. And so that's very common, the responses that I'm seeing. So basically from that, I want you to see that you are not alone. And I also want you to see that you are not, or I want you to feel today, that you are not a problem to be solved. Like the things that we're gonna get into today, I don't want you to hear this as like I have to fix myself and add one more thing on my list of things to do onto the pile of the things that I'm already doing. And it's just, you know, it's just more stress on the system.
Today, I want you to think about really set the intention for this workshop in reducing shame around your body's biological responses to stimulus, to outside factors in your environment, in your relationships, internal responses, reducing shame to the responses that your body produces in order to offer more curiosity and compassion for yourself. And I'm gonna give you some real practical ways to do that. And you're also gonna receive a workbook in your email. Everyone who registered for this workshop is also going to receive a workbook once this is over so you can continue to work through the inner world and kind of help you to create the world that you want to live in.
Beka Gaskin (05:29.32)
And so basically it's not about balance. So we're not here to, you're not a problem to be solved. And it's not about, it is about balance, but it's not about naming any of these responses as bad. So if we have a safe and calm nervous system and we move down into an under-resourced place of stress, of fear, of panic, of reacting, of fixing, of managing, and controlling or we move into a freeze, numb, disassociative moment or overwhelm, total overwhelm. None of those, I want to just name up front, that none of those responses are bad.
So I said it's not about balance because it's not about saying, okay, I'm gonna spend 80% of my time in safety, you know, or these have to be about, it's basically just about saying these responses make sense, you make sense, and it's about nervous system flexibility. It's about being able, when we move into an under-resource system, we have the ability to anchor in, validate, and move back.
We have the ability to use our tools to move back into connection. Connection with ourself, connection with our community, connection with our environment, in order to show up as our most relaxed, ease-filled, safe, peaceful selves. Does that sound good? Does that sound like something we all want in here?
So, we wanna have a flexible nervous system. We don't wanna have a rigid nervous system. That means we don't wanna stay in any single state. We wanna be able to move flexibly because if our dog's running out into the road or if my dog's barking at the door, we need to be able to respond appropriately to react or respond rather than react. And so none of these are bad. And I wanna name that.
Beka Gaskin (07:38.558)
This is about increasing our ability to have maybe some more predictability to our responses so we don't feel like we're always shocked and we're always reacting and we're kind of like we're just kind of living and and we're just, life's just happening to us rather than life is happening with us being a participant you know it's not that the script has been written and we're just cast in the story and we're just responding based off old patterns, habits, inherited stuff from generational things. We're actually writing ourselves as a character into the story and how we show up.
And so we want to, obviously, to be able to access more of our prefrontal cortex, which is our decision making, our problem solving, our executive functioning, our strategy, our communication skills, which improves relationships that gives all of these prefrontal cortex attributes give us agency in our lives. And so we wanna be able to access those. And the thing is, is when we spend more time in the harmonious states of our nervous system, safe and social, ventral is the term that Dr. Stephen Porges coined. It's ventral, sympathetic, and dorsal. So ventral is that state of safe social connection, rest and digest. Sympathetic is that fight-flight response, or flee. And that dorsal is our freeze response our response of overwhelm and our response of totally kind of being there but not there.
Beka Gaskin (09:29.698)
I know you understand what that is. And so those are more of our disharmonious survival states that can look like panic, that can look like all different things that we experience. And when we are accessing our harmonious state of safety and connection and rest and digest, that's when we can have our lid is not flipped, right?
That’s when we can access all of our prefrontal cortex, our more sophisticated way of being. When our survival states are online to protect us, are our lid is flipped, our amygdala is running the show, and we're in fear response. And that isn't because we're thinking wrongly. It's not because we're thinking bad thoughts. It's because our nervous system has already interpreted or neurocepted is the word cues from our environments, cues from our relationships or inside our bodies to create the response. The pathways that go up are eight times stronger than the pathways that go down from brain to body. So body responds, has a neural sets based off cues. A lot of that has to do with past data, current, present day moments, threats, cues of safety or danger, how we relate that to past data. And then our state creates a story around that. So if we are running late to work, we feel the cues of it, and then we have a story. Like, well they're gonna be mad at me, and da da da da da. And that story is based off fear. It's the fear of what we hope doesn't happen, or what has happened in the past.
Beka Gaskin (11:24.788)
And so it's very future focused or past focus and it's not present focus. So when we're in safe and social, we are present, we are here. Our feet are on the ground, we are connected, and we know we have options and we can communicate and we can resource ourselves and we can anchor in to safety as much as possible, even in stressful moments.
So, there is no, there is power rather, just even in starting this conversation today. We've only been in here for about 12 minutes. And I hope that you're already getting a sense of kind of, there's a lot to think about, there's a lot to process, there's a lot to take in.
Because maybe it's new. Maybe you're like, well, I've always thought change my thoughts change my life. I've always thought if I just think differently, then I'll feel differently. And this is saying, well, if I experience and create and have a nervous system that is able to access safety, then I can over time build trust with my body, trust with myself, and the story is updated.
And so I hope that even as we're just kind of talking about this stuff, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I hope you begin to feel more power that, okay, rather than judging those responses, if I can put a name to those responses, if I can notice a name, exactly what's happening.
then I can navigate those moments more skillfully. So it's all about noticing and not judging, which is really hard to do. Which is so often why we have to come into containers like this or the work that I do or the work that Thrivelab does, because we need co-regulation to be able to come back to the present moment, access our safety attributes.
Beka Gaskin (13:27.566)
And the way that those things feel and then we're able to feel like, okay, I can breathe a little bit more. There's a little bit space here for me to take action in the direction of what I want rather than the cycle of the stress, the cycle of the illness, the cycle of the issue. Like last night when I took my dog out, my dog immediately started chasing a rabbit and they were just going around in circles and going around the rabbit was running and the dog was running and I thought of y'all. I thought of this call today and I was like how many of us, me included, are just running in circles and we forget to look back like and even see is the dog still there? The dog's not actually gonna eat me. He's gonna play with me, he's gonna be fine, he's gonna be sweet. To be able to access, that's full fight-flight, and to be able to access reasoning, to be able to access that we're okay, and to bring spaciousness to our system, to be able to feel what's happening in the present moment rather than just the response that our body is beautifully doing to protect us.
So when we notice it, we're able to put a name and then oftentimes we can come back. We can come back to presence. And from awareness, from awareness is the doorway to ease. So I know that that sounds maybe too simple. Like okay, this has to be a scam, right? This is too easy. But truly think about it. If I am in fight-flight and I'm feeling the chronic stress that I carry, the chronic stress load that I carry already, and then I'm feeling there's some cues coming at me in a relationship with my daughter, trying to get her ready for school in the morning, or something's happening, and then I'm hungry, so I've got internal cues of danger in my body.
Beka Gaskin (15:42.826)
If I am able to gain awareness, notice I'm in fight-flight. I'm responding from a place of fear, of being under-resourced. And I'm able to get my water, get my breakfast, walk outside, sit in the sun for a second, turn on the cooling seats in my car, take some deep breaths, feel my feet on the floor. My situation may not change, but my accessing to ease, I can see where ease exists and where stress exists. And there's more to you than just stress. And so, kind of just ask yourself this question. Does my mind and my body have more of a future focus on tension, fears, like it kind of feels like a squeeze all the time, like what am I gonna do? I have to do something. I'm only safe when I'm fixing. What happens if I don't? Urgency. Do you notice that you have more of a future focus? Where you're always afraid, where you're always running, where, you know, anxious and reacting. Or do you notice that you have more of a freeze, more kind of a, you're home away from home, which just could be kind of shut down, kind of like, you know, I go to work from nine to five and then I come home and sit on the couch and I just kind of get up and do it all over again and I just don't feel a lot of meaning or purpose. Like, is that you? So which one, where do you fit?
So here, we want, with that awareness, we want to be able to get to know how these states feel. So in your workbook that you're gonna receive after this, you're going to have the polyvagal map.
Beka Gaskin (17:41.982)
And I mentioned that earlier. So polyvagal theory is the science of connection that was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges. It is the science of feeling safe enough with your life and the risks of living. So we wanna make our nervous systems our ally to do this. This gives us this polyvagal theory, this map gives us the ability to bring awareness to what's happening so we can look at, what does a disharmonious state feel like for me? What does it look like when I have a preoccupation on what's not working?
What does it look like when I'm shut down? Maybe if I'm shut down, that's not a good time for me to try to like, get on my computer and send an email. Maybe that's a time for me to go take a bath or maybe that's a time for me to do some grounding practices. You know, rather than forcing ourselves to plow through, to me, plowing through is the like reinforcing of trauma. Trauma is too much, too soon, too fast. And if our nervous system is under resourced, and we can see that we're down our ladder, which you're gonna see in your workbook, there's the three states and the description of those states. If we can see that we're down our ladders, then if we pile something else on, it's too much too soon too fast. It's overwhelming the nervous system's capacity, the energy that's available to overcome the challenge of that task. And so sometimes, like if you're a mom of young children, sometimes we don't have choices. Like our baby is crying and our nervous system is overwhelmed and we're sleep deprived and regardless we have to show up.
Beka Gaskin (19:33.58)
But a lot of the times, that is not the case. A lot of the times we do have options, we do have choices, we do have agency. We just have old patterns of what has helped us survive and belong because your nervous system uses information to get two questions answered in your brain. Am I safe and where do I belong?
And so how to get safety, if safety always looks like fixing everybody else's problems or overworking or if safety looks like checking out and kind of just avoiding things, then that's our nervous systems blueprint for safety. And so that's gonna be a familiar pattern that we're gonna want to with awareness update.
And if we know we're safe, if we know like we're good, we're good, then the next question is how do I belong? How do I fit into the tribe? You know, what is my role?
And that's when we can move into like being victimized, you know, being martyred, like, ugh, I have to take care of my family. You know, like those are our privileges. Those are the things that we've wanted forever. And then we feel just like our privileges have become our problems. And that's not because we're ungrateful. It's because we haven't created space for our nervous system to experience safety in order to belong in a way where we can use our voice and ask for our needs to get met or even connect with where we're at to know what we need to begin with. So I hope that, does that resonate with you guys? I hope that it does.
Beka Gaskin (21:12.596)
So when we're in our disharmonious states, when we're down in fight, flight or freeze, that is when we are gonna have a preoccupation on what is not working in our lives. So we are going to, that's what is coined as the negativity bias. You might have heard of this before. So the negativity bias is where our nervous system is more likely to notice threats and what is not flowing and what is not working to prevent more negative experiences. That is just the way, like in most of, I think I read a stat, y’all I'm totally gonna butcher this, but I think it was like 80 to 95% of our thoughts are negative or something, and 50% of those thoughts are repetitive.
And I'll have to get the exact stat. I should have put that in my notes, but I just remembered reading that on Instagram or something last week from someone that I respect. So I know it wasn't like a bogus number, but the amount, it was alarming. The amount of negative thoughts and then how, and then what got me more than anything was how those are repetitive thoughts. So we feel just we're stuck. And that's the whole point of getting out of stress and moving into ease is getting unstuck.
And so I think that's something we're all on board with. So using our polyvagal theory, using our map that you're gonna get, we can track our system and we can notice this bidirectional communication that's happening. So the brain-body pathways where the body is experiencing and the brain is communicating. So we can look at my, when I'm down in freeze, when I'm all the way down in overwhelm because the cues of danger are,
Beka Gaskin (23:03.158)
you know, my body is perceiving all these cues like this dish is in the sink and this chronic illness plus these kids I have to take care of or the bills that have to be paid or the deadline at work and the boss in my email, like our nervous system is perceiving that as life or death. So we respond with urgency, with fear. And then the stories follow.
So the stories could sound like, I can't do it, it's too much, I'm not enough, you know, we can, so just noticing that bi-directional communication is important. Noticing how our body and our brain work together to flow and efferent data is brain to body. Afferent is body to brain. And those are eight times stronger. So that's why it's so important to remember, like I said at the beginning of this call, you have a body. We're here to learn, but we're also here to connect to our body. So this is why it's so important to cultivate somatic literacy so that we can listen to the story of our nervous system and then we can articulate our body's lived experience, the sensations. Like if you've worked with someone in Thrivelab, you've been able to articulate and bring words to your somatic experience, whether that's physical sensations, emotions, things that, you know, that you know you're holding and then you can bring some literacy and articulate. So the point of this work is, or what I would hope would be our goal for more ease, is that we would be more mindful of this before we get sick.
Beka Gaskin (24:49.004)
Before we have a chronic illness, before we've lived with that ache and that pain for a year before we finally do something because our body is screaming at us. I want us to begin to listen when our body is whispering so that we can attune to ourselves because attunement, you know with children, attunement is a sign of safety to the nervous system. It signals giving and receiving. When a baby cries and someone is curious about why, there's no shame in that.
We check all the needs and then we go into the nurturing. We go into what needs to happen to create a more harmonious moment of ease for the baby. So when your body is disharmonious or dysregulated, just imagine it's speaking to you. It's the signal cry from the crib. It's just speaking to you and it's saying, there's something here that there's some threats that maybe need to be removed. And when you're ready, there's some safety that needs to be brought back in. And so that can look like going on a five senses walk.
Okay, I'm gonna go on a walk and instead of being the rabbit in the backyard that's chasing all my problems, right? I'm going to feel my feet on the ground and I'm gonna look at five things I can see on this walk, four things I can touch on this walk, three things I can smell, two things I can hear, one thing I can taste.
Beka Gaskin (26:28.256)
I'm going to be present as much as I possibly can. And sometimes I wanna just say this, sometimes we can only be present for short moments. Sometimes we can go and allow ourselves to feel more connected to our bodies for like maybe one minute, two minutes, three minutes. And then we notice it creeps back up. That's okay. The win is that you checked in with yourself for one minute.
Mark Wolynn is an author and a therapist who talks about, It Didn't Start With You is the name of the book. And it's all about inherited trauma and stress culturally and in our lineage and generationally and societally. His like number one recommendation to start healing the things that didn't start with you is to check in with yourself six minutes a day. Six minutes a day. He's like set a reminder on your phone to check in, notice where you are, name it and see what you need. Six times a day. And I think no matter, I don't know all of you, I don't know the burdens that you carry, I don't know...
The story, I don't know each one of you. I wish that I did. I wish we were all sitting around a table in a coffee shop and we could share all of these things with each other. Because I think we're missing collaboration and community. But what I do hope and pray is that each one of you has the ability to check in with yourself six minutes a day. Whether it's six minutes in the morning sunshine or six different moments throughout the day, but where you're able to notice a name. Where am I right now?
Am I in a sympathetic flight response? Am I criticizing my responses? My body's response, which is keeping me stuck and sympathetic. Am I frozen? Am I shut down? Where am I right now? And understanding the science reduces the shame because if you know, okay, I'm reacting to something.
Beka Gaskin (28:35.318)
You can validate, like, this response makes sense. It's not out of nowhere. It's not random. It's for a reason. That's what you would tell a girlfriend or your child or your partner or you would tell them, like, you would validate. You would go, my goodness, like, that makes so much sense that you would feel that way.
And so noticing like there is biology in every behavior and it's all for survival. Am I safe and where do I belong? And as children, belonging is survival because we have to belong to the tribe. Like if we lose connection with our adults, there's no survival. And so that book, Adina, is I think it's called, It Didn't Start With You.
And that goes back to like the belonging to the tribe, you know, kind of belonging and the inherited patterns, dysregulation, things like that. So like, you know, if we've, I said on my, on one of my Instagram Lives the other day, like my mom always bubbled her letters. So like, you see freedom is what's written here. So my mom's always bubbled her letters. So I bubble my letters.
I've watched her do it on the phone. Thank you, Caitlin. I've watched you do it on the phone. I've watched her do it when she writes my name. She didn't teach me how to do that. I just watched her do it, now I do it. So there's so much about how we show up in the world that was just inherited. And that's okay. That's great. It's what kept us safe. It's what kept us connected. It's what allowed us to belong. And now that we're here, we get to just notice, this is something that I do. Does this even belong to me? Where does this come from? You know?
If I'm always afraid, if there's unfamiliarity around traveling, well, my family didn't travel. wasn't, you know, just things like that. Where did this come from? Just considering, is this mine or is this somebody else's? And that kind of is what Mark Wolynn talks about in the book. So, there's biology in every behavior. And, you make sense.
Beka Gaskin (30:48.354)
And the ANS, your autonomic nervous system, is shaped and regulated first and foremost, kind of like we were just talking with that book, is regulated through your interactions with others. So starting as a baby, it's nonverbal, your experiences of safety and belonging impact your ability for connection. So that system, if the system's been shaped by highly stressful traumatic experiences, we could be more highly sensitive or more hypervigilant and that's definitely gonna impact chronic illness or, you know, mental illness or things like that or mental health, I should say. So also it's not just parents, it's not just what we inherited from parents and the imprint of love and connection and safety, it's also school. Like for me, I remember clear as day being in first grade and thinking that I was gonna read a book for a talent show. So it's talent show, first grade talent show. And I'm like, you know what my talent is? Speaking. I'm a great speaker. Really, I was five, six, not a great speaker. I love to talk. One thing about me is I love to talk. So I'm gonna read a book for the first grade talent show. I'm gonna show them how I can talk and how I can read because those are the two things that I love. Well, I didn't know. No one informed me. You don't really read books at talent shows. And the only reason you might be like, well that's fine, Becca, who cares? You're six.
Beka Gaskin (32:32.692)
The reason why I know here that it was not cool to read a book for the talent show is because I felt it here. You know how I felt it here? I'm scanning the room for cues of safety and when I'm reading, I'm scanning the room for reciprocity, for attunement, for feedback. Guess what I see? The teacher's kind of going, making faces or like whispering or like what is she doing? Like why is she, you know, and like I remember the feeling of that.
When you go to a grocery store and the checker, the cashier, sorry. I'm very southern if you can't tell. The cashier is, they've had a bad day and so they have a still face on. They have a still flat face. You might have another word for that. And they're not present, their face is still, the reciprocity in their voices, you know, they don't have the, how are you today? It's so good to see you, I'm so glad you're here. Did you find everything okay? Is there anything I can help you with? What do you have planned this weekend? Automatically, when you hear that, like at Trader Joe's, you're like, I'm coming back to Trader Joe's because these people love me. So, so much of this is just, it's not thought, it's felt.
So I know from first grade, you don't read a book at a talent show and you know, that's fine, that's funny. It's like, okay, I read my book, but I came from my background, my foundation was a foundation of high trauma. So my system was, by five years old, I had already experienced, I don't know if you're aware of the ACE study, ACEs.
Where you can look up ACEs and you can see how many, what's your ACE score? You can look up how many adverse childhood experiences had you had. So you can look and see and kind of tally that up. So I had, I'm not gonna tell you my score, but it was not, it was a big one.
Beka Gaskin (34:36.742)
And so my sensitive was highly, my system rather was highly sensitive. So my body is feeling the nonverbal cues, the interactions, and then I'm searching for cues of safety, cues of danger, and the cues sent from one system to another can either create co-regulation and safety, which allows us to have more movement into our expression, our purpose, our health, our vitality, relationships, or it can cause us to restrict and squeeze. And tense and have chronic issues and increased reactivity and so both the way that those co-regulation experience that I just described whether it's like a shutdown experience from someone or whether it's a Trader Joe's experience and they're just like amazing and they're your bestie by the end of the checkout process.
You are, both of those reinforce habitual patterns, habitual thoughts, habitual reactions, or they increase your ability to create and see new possibilities, like to update what the world is. So here's the deal. We don't wanna just leave it up to other people. Like we don't wanna just leave it up to like this person just so happened to be nice to me, or this person just so happened to validate me, or this person, I earned their approval and so now I feel safe. We want to create disconfirming experiences for ourselves. We want to be agents and have agency in our own lives. And so for me, coming on today and talking to you guys, six-year-old Beka would be like, that's dangerous. Don't do that. You'll be rejected. That's not safe. That's not cool. Like, that's not the way that you fit. That's not the way that you belong.
41-year-old Beka has created enough disconfirming experiences to be able to get on here not seeing your faces, which I wish that I could because that is a signal of safety to my system as I'm teaching, but even not seeing your faces and just connecting with you in this moment, I have had enough disconfirming experiences around that initial six-year-old experience to say I am safe.
Beka Gaskin (36:46.234)
I belong, it's okay. You have a seat at the table. You're not gonna get eaten by a tiger and you have something of value to bring to the world. So it allows me to fully activate and move towards. So the nervous system, when it detects cues of danger or it has old stories around cues of danger, I wanna say your nervous system is always accurate. It just may not be accurate in that present moment, to that present moment. So like that, if I was like, I can't get on and speak, what if they think, who am I?
That's an accurate story for a six-year-old me, but it's just not accurate to this present moment. And that's okay, we just get to update those stories and we need 60 disconfirming experiences with awareness to update the story. And so as kids, I will say too, we're generally pretty good about, remember at the beginning of this call I talked about nervous system flexibility?
We're generally pretty good at having, like we had this stressful moment at school, well then we go to grandma's house and go in the creek, or then we go and play and ride our bikes, and then we go and hang out with our friends, and then we go jump on the trampoline. We're really good as kids at creating scenarios, we're pretty decent, I should say, at being able to regulate and move through our activation states.
Hopefully, best case scenario, we had the presence of an empathetic adult witness that we could kind of borrow the regulation of their system from to co-regulate, to come back to presence and come back to safety in our bodies. And it's not the things that happen to us that sometimes are the most hurtful, it's things that we didn't have the presence of the safe witness to process with. So that's why today, being in communities like Thrivelab, like Reclaim, like Reclaim is the work that I do, the Reclaim challenge just coming up starting Monday, actually this coming Monday and I'll give you some information on that at the end.
But basically as adults we sometimes aren't as good as kids. We're not as good at, you know, we wanna be hyper independent. We wanna do it on our own and we wanna, we have deeply developed patterns and so this nervous system healing,
Beka Gaskin (39:07.604)
and somatic awareness is a way to A, define trauma. Like what's too much, too soon, too fast in my life right now? What's the impact of that on my system? Trauma's not a one time event. It's the impact of how that energy is still living in my system. So that's the energy is the response. And so what adaptive survival strategies am I doing right now to overcome.
Beka Gaskin (39:38.252)
And which is also brilliant, they're brilliant adaptive strategies. And then how, once I become aware of that, what is possible for me to replace or update a safe option for co-regulation, for safety and survival, for belonging? Because when we use adaptive strategies, like stress responses, fixing, controlling, micromanaging, hyperfixating, preoccupation on others, or shutdown, freeze, withdrawal. Like our nervous system either moves towards or it moves away. And so if we're running away from the things we want, that's an adaptive strategy that comes into play and replaces social engagement when co-regulation is unavailable or when co-regulation is dangerous. So we can't self-regulate because it's ineffective or inadequate. That's why being in a community is so important. We were not meant to do any of this by ourselves. So we are going to talk more about how, I want you to get a piece of paper if you have access to that. And I want you to write at the top of your paper, and this is what your workbook's gonna have, so you're gonna have a beautiful opportunity to do more homework. I want you to write safe.
Beka Gaskin (41:06.206)
Ventral is the official name of it. Safe, connected, safe and social. And then under that I want you to write, Fight-Flight. And then under that I want you to write, Shutdown. Collapsed, overwhelmed.
Beka Gaskin (41:26.092)
And I want you to just take a second to pick a word, your own personal word that would go with each of these experiences. So I'll start at the bottom because that's the farthest away from safety. So start at the bottom and write maybe what is shutdown look like, sound like, feel like to you. Maybe it's numb.
Beka Gaskin (42:00.95)
Maybe it's self-doubt. Maybe it's burnout. Maybe it's withdrawal. Maybe it's shame.
Beka Gaskin (42:14.796)
Then I want you to move up to your fight-flight. I want you to put something beside that. What does that look like sound like? What's most accurate to your experience? Cause fight flight may not really describe that for you. So does that look like workaholic, being a workaholic? Does it look like feeling obligated? Does it look like… self-censoring yourself, keeping parts of yourself hidden. Does it look like stress? Does it look like conflict? Does it look like performing, perfection? And then last, I want you to move up to safety and I want you to write down the word that is most accurate to your experience of safety.
Beka Gaskin (43:10.582)
Your own personal name for ease. This could feel or look like comfort. Contentment. Trust, joy, authenticity, creativity, spontaneity, intuition. Bliss.
Beka Gaskin (43:55.274)
Now as we look at our state of safety, our state of ease, I want you to imagine what persona, what flair, like okay, what movie character embodies, what animal embodies this version of you.
Had some people say a dolphin or for me it's Elle Woods. And Elle Woods had her fair share of stress, right? Her boyfriend broke up with her, she had to come up with a video to get into Harvard at the last second and then she had to go and everyone was mean to her and then she had to win this case and then her boyfriend was cheating on her, she had so much so many cues of danger coming at her. So your struggle does not define you. We don't want to watch a movie where they have no problems. We want to watch a movie where they have the conflict, they have the anchoring within themselves to be able to move forward and to the things that they want to create in life. And so I want you to think about the attributes of that character.
Beka Gaskin (45:21.752)
What are the qualities of their nervous systems? One of the things about Elle Woods is she collaborated with the community around her. She became besties with the nail girl who helped her, you know, feel safe in that community with the most unlikely friend. She did self-nurturance. She allowed herself to rest when she needed to rest.
She tuned in to the things that she needed to be able to show up in the story as the main character of her life. Yes, Jennifer, your struggle does not define you. And when we spend so much time in our disharmonious survival states, the story, like the story is going to sound like that defines you. But what's so cool about this, Jennifer, and everybody, is that when we just write these down, I hope that you could see, like through that movie character, through that animal, the qualities, what do I do? What do they do? What do I do when I have ease? I talk on the phone more. I take more baths. I'm more available for connection. I take more walks. What do I do when I'm in this place? And when I feel that I don't have any access to even go for a walk, I feel ease when I take a shower. I feel ease when I write a message. I feel ease when I show up to a workshop with Thrivelab. I feel ease when I, you know, make my tea and light my candle.
I feel ease when I hold my dog. And just inviting, like, remember I said co-regulation, which is what we're doing right now? And when that co-regulation is high quality, it opens possibility. And we can co-regulate with people, with our environments, with animals, excuse me, collaborate and co-regulate with the world around us.
Beka Gaskin (47:47.692)
And so I hope when you see that, what you wrote, you can see that yes, there are things in our lives right now, all of our lives that take us down. And there are moments where that experience of it's all too much is accurate, but that's not all there is to you. There is ease. And what we wanna do in nervous system work is entrench ourselves deeper into our body's experience of ease, of safety, of peace, of connection, of vitality, of health, of well-being. And the way we get there is through this doorway of awareness to notice, allow, and hold space for some of the experiences like give, yes, Sundays and self-care days, love it. Give ourselves experiences to create more possibilities to illuminate this in our bodies. And here's the thing, as I wrap up.
Once we become aware of this and we start learning about it, we're like, okay, now I'm gonna control my, I'm down my ladder, so now I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do this protocol to control myself to get back at the ladder. And I like the spirit behind that, but I want you to notice, am I controlling my nervous system's response because I have a sense of judgment around it? Or I have a sense of judgment around myself and that's creating more tension in my system. So you don't have to control your nervous system just like you don't have to control the weather. A storm comes and a storm goes and it just is a storm. It is what it is. The storm will pass. But there's certain things we're going to do on a rainy day that we're not going to do on a sunny day.
Beka Gaskin (49:49.07)
Just like when we're in shutdown mode, we're not gonna force ourselves to go to the gym and lift 100,000 pounds and be, you know, holding ourselves to the standard of looking like a supermodel that day or something like, okay, we're gonna do certain things to attune to our system's shutdown response that we're not gonna do when, you know, we may not naturally, we may not give ourselves permission to just have a comfy day and work under our blanket. But that makes sense. There's certain things you do in a storm that you don't do when it's sunny. There's certain things you do when it's sunny that you don't do when it's storming. And it's just, it's not even about changing anything. It's about noticing it. It's about seeing our responses as an intelligent way to move forward, allowing, noticing, breathing, allowing, validating.
If we can't validate, this makes sense. I can see that you're… afraid.
Beka Gaskin (50:59.862)
I can see that you're afraid that this is never gonna change. If we can't validate it and we're just hearing judgments, well, you should have done this and you didn't do this and da -da -da, then that's just an invitation to say, you know what, I'm gonna ground into my anchors. I'm gonna ground into my safety until I can come back and normalize. This isn't random. This isn't out of nowhere. Anyone in your shoes would feel this way. Giving it permission to say, I'm struggling with this.
Beka Gaskin (51:30.413)
But I also know that I'm on my way to this. And it's so much of our healing journeys. It's not microwave, it's not overnight, it's 60 disconfirming experiences to rebuild our body's trust around showing up and talking on a workshop.
And so the thing that I want you to remember about nervous system awareness, and you're gonna get your workbook where you can work through what are cues of danger and cues of safety in my environments, in my relationships, in my body, and then you can work on, look at your map, and there's different adjectives and descriptions for each of those states you can add to it. And then you can look at how can I resource myself in these different states.
How can I tune into some anchoring? And there's no shame in needing support. It's actually a biological imperative to have support. We have to co-regulate to self-regulate. It's the order. It's how we were meant to live, especially as women in villages collaborating, sharing what we have, tending to each other and the children. Like that's the village. That's how we were meant to live. But we live in our kitchens alone, behind our computers alone, and the modernization of society has really been a detriment to our nervous system. But now we have this, I don't want to dog technology and modernization because look at us here today. Look at us here today. Whether you found this through Instagram or whatever, you know, your on-ramp was to this community Thrivelab. Like you're here and because we have technology, because we can connect. And we don't have to just carry it all alone.
Beka Gaskin (53:23.742)
And so, I want to offer you guys a code. if this, if you're like, okay, I hear you Beka, I get it, I know why it's important, and you're in a place where you're like, I want to feel more connected to my body. I want to feel more connected in relationships. I want to have more purpose in my life. I want to feel safe to move in the direction of my soul. I want to have improved health and vitality. Like, you're preaching to the choir. I get what you're saying.
If that's you, this is exactly what I'm going to be teaching in my Reclaim Challenge that I mentioned that starts on Monday. So we're gonna work on how to allow space for our nervous system to have their experience while updating the meaning that we make of that, while building emotional literacy, building somatic literacy, so we can create the new story and feel safe enough in our bodies to receive what we actually want.
Because if we are so tied to the story that I am my illness, I am this thing, then our nervous system set point is around that as the familiarity. we want, if we want freedom, if we want more abundance, if we want more health, we don't actually have a lot of experience around that. So we've got to make it safe for our nervous system to actually receive what we want, to hold what we want.
Like it's why people who win the lottery, they lose it in like a year. It's their nervous system. They don't have the ability within their system to hold what they want, what they have.
So we want to reclaim our ability to work with our system, to have awareness, to update what needs to be updated. And it is four days of an immersive experience that is not about doing more, but it's about looking at what you're already doing and working with what's already around you to get them road mapped to more peace, joy that you love. And it's all backed by science. And it starts, let's see what day, it starts August the 26th. And we're gonna meet every day from 12 to 1 central, the 26th, the 27th, the 28th, and the 29th. And you're gonna get 25% off. So if you click the link, I think Caitlin's gonna put the link in the chat. And if you click that, you get 25% off code THRIVE. Thank you, Caitlin.
But the biggest thing I want you to take away today is that if you think, okay, I'm gonna go clean up this muddy puddle. This muddy puddle is really stressing me out, right? What happens when you run over and you try to do a bunch of stuff to that muddy puddle? It gets more muddy. It gets more stirred up. So a big part of coming in a community container is to receive, let the mud settle on its own. And then begin to allow what is, then to allow more of what you want. And then over time, that old story, that old set point, isn't even your story anymore. Because you've created all of these embodied disconfirming experiences that more channel and have more of that ventral flavor in the polyvagal theory that I mentioned that we're wanting to live from. From that place, guess what? We have our prefrontal cortex. We give our brain way too much credit, this sophistication, way too much credit. But when we do this work, we get all of that beautiful access to strategy and communication, executive functioning, and all the things that we want.
Beka Gaskin (57:22.21)
That help us heal into a life that we love. So thank you so much. I hope to see you in Reclaim. And you can find me on Instagram, at Beka Gaskin. You're going to, and that's B-E-K-A G-A-S-K-I-N. You're going to get your worksheets and your workbook. You're welcome to email me or DM me and ask me questions about that. I'm happy to support you and help you however I can within the context of email or Instagram. And then if you have questions about the challenge, let me know that link that Caitlin dropped, has a lot of information on that page. So you're gonna find out, get a lot of your questions answered. But that's really where we're gonna, today was just the context. And next week we're really gonna go deep into more practical application and coaching on how to create this. But the context is where we have to start. We have to get context, we have to connect, and then we can show up and we can begin to change. Thank you guys so much for being here. I've loved this and I hope to see you more in Reclaim and collaborating with Thrivelab. Thanks guys.
