Foster Parent Well
Jump into "Foster Parent Well with Nicole T Barlow," where the adventure of Christian foster and adoptive parenting gets a little easier, a lot more joyful, and deeply fulfilling. Nicole's here with a mission: to guide you in parenting with a heart full of steadfast faith, unshakable endurance, and infectious joy.
This podcast is your cozy nook in the vast world of parenting, blending laughs, learning, and lots of love. It’s where self-care meets faith-filled encouragement, and mindset shifts help you navigate the rollercoaster of fostering and adopting. For every parent out there looking to refill their emotional and spiritual tanks, Nicole's got you covered with stories, tips, and expert advice that speak directly to the soul of a Christian foster or adoptive parent.
With "Foster Parent Well," it's like sitting down with a good friend who gets it—the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Nicole dives into the unique challenges and beautiful moments of parenting children with trauma, all while reminding you that taking time for yourself isn't just nice; it's essential for providing the stable, loving home these kiddos need.
So, why not make this journey together? Join Nicole and a vibrant community of faith-driven parents, all dedicated to transforming their lives and the lives of their foster and adopted children. Tune into "Foster Parent Well with Nicole T Barlow" for your weekly dose of encouragement, laughter, and wisdom. Hit subscribe, and let's start fostering and adopting with faith, endurance, and a joy that lights up the room.
Foster Parent Well
Empowering Parents with Somatic Techniques
What if recognizing when you're living in survival mode could transform your parenting journey? Join us as we welcome Tatiana Szulc, LMHC a licensed trauma and somatic therapist, who shares how the body-oriented approach of somatic experiencing changed her life. Tatiana's personal story of overcoming burnout in 2020 serves as a powerful parallel to the high-stress lives of foster and adoptive parents. Together, we delve into the importance of self-healing to better support our children and the critical need to address an overactive nervous system.
Through our discussion, we explore the profound impact that an unregulated nervous system can have on both physical and emotional well-being. From chronic illness to the fight, flight, and freeze responses, we uncover the hidden costs of living in persistent stress. Tatiana guides us through holistic healing methods that include creating safe environments, fostering healthy relationships, and setting boundaries. We emphasize the significance of somatic practices to not only manage stress but also to maintain strong, nurturing connections with our children.
Instagram: @tatiana.holistic.coach
Freebie: Nervous System Guide - https://tatianaszulclmhc.kartra.com/page/freebie
Work With Tatiana - https://calendly.com/tatiana-szulc-lmhc/90min?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaYu_0bSMvAIgoaE0ZJYS6Jut5-8UX4qqiH5FG5B5EapL4pR1Ruz68kUqXk_aem_nYPzUbprP4FmTZ0DqmTskw&month=2024-07
Connect with me on Instagram: @Fosterparentwell
@nicoletbarlow https://www.instagram.com/nicoletbarlow/
Website: https://nicoletbarlow.com/
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we have real candid, faith-filled conversations about all things foster care, adoption and trauma. I'm your host, nicole T Barlow. I'm a certified parent trainer, a certified health coach and an adoptive parent myself. This is a space where you can find support so that you can care for your kids with a steadfast faith, endurance and joy. I want you host, Nicole T Barlow.
Speaker 1:Last week we talked with Melissa Smallwood all about foster and adoptive parent burnout. We talked about why it's so prevalent amongst foster and adoptive parents, how it affects us and our ability to parent and some ways to work through it, and one of the things that we talked about was doing our body work, or breath work or somatic work, and today my guest is going to walk us through that a little bit more. Today we're going to be talking to Tatiana Schultz, and she is a first-generation Latina. She is a licensed trauma and somatic therapist as well as a holistic coach, and she specializes in helping women heal their trauma and nervous systems through a method called somatic experiencing. Somatic experiencing is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma, where you don't need to talk or even remember your trauma in order to heal from it. She is a wealth of knowledge and I know you guys are going to love this episode. Welcome, tatiana, to the show. We are so excited to have you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got started in this line of work, sure.
Speaker 2:So first, I'm a first-gen Latina. I'm a licensed trauma and somatic therapist, as well as a holistic coach, and I've been a therapist for a little over eight years now. And I entered the world of somatic experiencing about four years ago. And somatic experiencing is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma and rewiring the nervous system, where you don't need to talk about your trauma or even remember your trauma to be able to heal from it. So I got into this, the world of somatic experiencing, in 2020, when I was feeling really burnt out.
Speaker 2:I was living in survival mode. I had been living in survival mode for really my entire life, but I started to really notice it more in 2020, when I no longer had that stimulation. So I was constantly living in this state of fight or flight, and so I needed a lot of stimulation to keep me going. So I was always on the go. I couldn't rest, I couldn't slow down. I needed to work with the highest risk clients. At that time, I was working in community mental health and so 2020 came and I had no choice but to slow down, right and.
Speaker 2:I was feeling. So I didn't know how to rest, I didn't know how to slow down. So when this happens, your nervous system immediately goes into the state of freeze or shutdown, which is where burnout and depression live, which is where dissociation live. And that's where I was living and I was telling my supervisor at the time. I was like you know, I'm feeling really unfulfilled with what I'm doing. I didn't know if I wanted to be a therapist anymore at that time and I was like I need something new. And then she said well, you know, maybe you just need some inspiration, Maybe you just need another training. And I was like, sure, fine, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I started to Google mind-body practices because shortly before this, shortly before we started working from home, I got my certification to be a meditation teacher. So I knew that I wanted to do something related to the body, but I didn't know what. So I Googled mind body practices, mind body trainings, and somatic experiencing came up. I had no idea what somatic experiencing was and it was a three year commitment and again, I was living in survival mode. So I was very impulsive, very like whatever three-year commitment, let's do it. And I just signed up, I applied to the training, I was accepted and now we're here and it was absolutely life-changing. And now I want the entire world to know about somatic experiencing and the important role of the nervous system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. There was something that you said about your own experience that I think that foster and adoptive parents see so much in that we are constantly living in survival mode and we never get that chance to breathe, and then when we do get a chance to breathe, we almost don't know what to do with it and it's kind of uncomfortable. So that's interesting that you brought that up, because I think that the role of a lot of providers trauma providers take on a lot of those same aspects that parents parenting children with trauma take on, where we're constantly in these high emotional situations, where we're taking on other people's burdens right and so that can become very, very heavy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I think that so often we don't even realize that we're living in survival mode, we don't even realize, because maybe it's become so normalized or because we've experienced this for so long that we can't even identify that something is off, that something needs to change, until something happens where you're like oh okay, something does need to shift inside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear that all the time too, that parents will get to a place where, all of a sudden, they just don't know who they are anymore. But it was gradually happening. Those changes were happening in small, incremental changes, but a lot of times we don't see them until there's this drastic shift in what's going on. Well, we know, as foster and adoptive parents, like our kids, have trauma and it affects how their bodies and nervous systems work. But we often forget that parenting kids with trauma can be trauma to us, right. So a lot of times we forget to work on ourselves. Our bodies hold on to those things too. So how do you see trauma affecting adults, or help us understand how trauma impacts the nervous system just as a whole?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And before I get into how it impacts us, I think it's important to clarify what trauma is, because I think that's really going to help us understand what's happening in our nervous systems. Right, Because I think so often we think that trauma is in the event. Trauma is something that happened to us and in reality, the truth is that trauma is not the event. Trauma is not what happens to us. It's not an experience or a situation. Trauma is actually what happens in the body as a result of your nervous system not completing a survival response at the time of the perceived or actual threat.
Speaker 1:And that's important right.
Speaker 2:I'm going to repeat that again right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause that's that's. That's really good, that's really good, that's really good.
Speaker 2:A perceived or actual threat. So an actual threat is when you're truly in danger. But a perceived threat is something that your nervous system feels like it needs to go into survival for. And so the nervous system doesn't use logic. And so we use logic, right, but our nervous system doesn't. So anything could be a perceived threat, and so, immediately, when the nervous system perceives something as dangerous, it will immediately go into a state of fight or flight.
Speaker 2:If the nervous system feels that it can't fight the threat or flee from the threat, immediately this happens within seconds, right, immediately it's going to go into a state of freeze or shutdown. Fight, flight or freeze isn't completed, then that survival energy gets stored in the body. That energy is the trauma, that energy that gets trapped, that's the trauma. And so what happens is, if we can't complete a survival response, that energy is going to continue to impact us in our daily lives, right? And so our nervous system is going to continue to stay in this state of fight, flight or freeze until it feels that it's safe. And so what we do often is that we say to ourselves nothing's going on, I'm safe. Why am I responding in this way? Why am I feeling this way?
Speaker 2:But again, the nervous system doesn't use logic. And so until the nervous system feels that you're no longer in that perceived or actual threat, it's going to continue to stay in, fight, flight or freeze, and that's going to impact our thoughts, it's going to impact our emotions, our behaviors, our sensations. I want to give like a little nervous system 101. So the nervous system is responsible for our all of our internal organs. So not just our brain, which is one organ, right, it's also responsible for our heart, our liver, our lungs, our stomach, our bladder, right, all of our internal organs, our entire body, really right. And so when we have stored trauma or when we have a dysregulated nervous system, I like to say that a dysregulated nervous system is a traumatized nervous system. It's going to impact the entire body and really everything in our lives.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you talking about what trauma is and the effects of it are different based on how our body reacts to different things, right? So a lot of times, you know, for those of us that have multiple kids, we may have multiple kids that have experienced maybe similar situations, but the way that they've handled those situations or internalized them has been very, very different. And I think for us, as parents, we can see that too. I mean, I know my husband and I can go through the same kind of day, right, but the way that we internalize that day can be very, very different. And as parents, I mean, we may experience some things that we may not be totally physically unsafe, but it may make us feel unsafe.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times we don't have the ability to change our environment or to change the situation. We can't automatically make our kids heal and make them not have meltdowns, right? Sometimes we have kids that are physically aggressive and in those moments our bodies aren't able to. I mean, as adults we're not able to fight back, right, this is a kid. So a lot of that, I think, is why, as parents, it becomes trauma for us and gets stored in our system, because we aren't actually able to do the normal things like run away or fight back. That would help our bodies kind of resolve this event and move on.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, and sometimes our nervous system needs to be in survival right and so when somebody is being verbally or physically aggressive to us, whether it's an adult or a child right, then our nervous system is going to be in that state of survival, and so sometimes, instead of trying to not be in survival, sometimes we just need to create enough safety to support that state that we're in. So let's say we're in a state of fight or flight. Instead of trying to not be in fight or flight, let's try to have some more resources and safety so that being in fight or flight doesn't feel so overwhelming.
Speaker 1:So how does all of that impact our nervous system, right? How does that stored trauma impact the way we go about our every day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it impacts everything, right From the food that we eat to the boundaries that we're setting, to the thoughts that we're having. So it might be helpful to kind of talk a little bit about the different ways fight, flight and freeze shows up in our bodies and in our lives. Would that be helpful? Sure, just to kind of share some signs. So if you're in a state of fight, we might constantly feel angry or irritable. We might always feel annoyed or on the defense, right. We might get defensive easily or reactive, right. We might experience more road rage, right. Maybe not acting on that anger, but maybe just kind of like swearing or having angry thoughts or whatever it is right. We might have more tension throughout the body. So, clenched jaw, clenched fists, tightness throughout the body, those are all signs that we're in the state of fight, even burning sensations. If you experience burning sensations in your stomach or in your chest, that could also be a sign that you're in a state of fight. And so this is if you're experiencing it constantly. So more days than not, that's fight. Flight is when you're experiencing constant racing thoughts. If you're constantly experiencing over, worrying or intellectualizing everything or trying to find the answer to everything. If you feel like you're always on the edge hypervigilance, right, kind of being on the edge or waiting for the next shoe to drop, that's flight right, the heart racing, high blood pressure. So a lot of heart conditions can develop because we're in this constant state of sympathetic activation, which is fight or flight. So over time, if we're in this constant state of sympathetic activation, which is fight or flight, so over time, if we're not healing the nervous system, if we're not releasing that energy, it will naturally start to manifest into chronic illness and disease. And so I like to educate the women that I work with around chronic illness and disease, because they don't show up out of nowhere. This just means that your nervous system has been in a constant state of fight, flight or freeze for a very, very long time. So that's fight and flight.
Speaker 2:Freeze is we talked about this a little bit that burnout, depression, feeling stuck, feeling like you physically can't move, or feeling like you're just you can't move on in life, right, feeling stuck in your personal life, career life, feeling like you can't act on something. So even though you logically know exactly what you need to do, for example, but you can't get yourself to do it, that's a state of freeze. Also dissociation, zoning out feeling disconnected from yourself or from others. So if you have a hard time emotionally connecting with other people, that's a good sign that you're disconnected from your body Feeling. I think we already said burnout. I think those are kind of like the general signs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, those are really good, and I mean all of those impact the way that we relate to our kids right and the way that, because our kids need us to be present, they need us to not be on edge and be in that fight mode. They need us not to be worried and hypervigilant about every little thing and they need us to be able to be present and connect with them and attach to them in the moment. So that's a really big deal, not just for our own physical bodies and I've seen the effects that it can have on a physical body but also it changes the way that we are able to relate and parent our kids 1000% and again the nervous system doesn't use logic.
Speaker 2:So if you're in this state of fight, flight or freeze, your child is going to feel that, even if they don't logically know what's going on for you internally, their nervous system can feel your energy right. And so if their nervous system is already in the state of fight or flight and their nervous system is feeling your energy and they it feels unsafe right, because your energy, your nervous system, is also in a state of fight or flight, it's just going to create more unsafe feelings in their nervous system, and so it's important that, as the parent, you're feeling settled and connected in your body so that you can. That doesn't happen when our nervous system is out of whack, right.
Speaker 1:I mean, we see it all the time when you see, like a person that picks up a baby and they're super anxious about picking up a baby and their heart is racing or whatever, well, the baby gets agitated, right, because it's co-regulating with this person, it's mirroring this person that is agitated, and so the same is true for our kids as well, when our systems are agitated. Exactly, exactly, yeah. Well, we often hear that we need to work on ourselves first before we can really be present with our kids, and it seems like you're saying the same thing, like we need to make sure that our nervous system is regulated so that we can be better for our kids. But what does it mean to do the work in us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So what does it mean? I mean, I like to really look at healing the nervous system through a holistic lens, right? So it's not just going to therapy once a week right, because that is helpful, and what's really important is what you're doing outside of those sessions. So the foods that you're eating right, making sure that your home environment and your work environment are safe places to be in, because if it's a toxic environment at work, for example, then that's going to really dysregulate your nervous system, and so it's setting boundaries. It's making sure that you're spending time with people and places that help you feel safe and seen and heard right, it's healing your trauma.
Speaker 2:It's maybe connecting with your body a little bit more through somatic practices right. It's having a routine right, because routines really help your nervous system feel safe. So things like that. It's really looking at everything in your life that's impacting your nervous system. There are, I know, that a lot of the time it feels impossible to take care of ourselves when we have a busy schedule or we have busy lives right, and I like to say that every moment is an opportunity to support your nervous system, every moment, and so we have to practice being intentional with our lives. So, if it's okay, I'd love to share some somatic tools to help your audience kind of regulate their nervous systems a little bit more, is that okay?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's great regulate their nervous systems a little bit more. Is that okay? Yes, that's great, yeah. So even when you wake up, the first thing most people do is shower and brush your teeth right. And so after you brush your teeth, what you can do and a lot of people already do this but if you do this a little bit more intentionally and feel the way it shifts your body, it can be really helpful. So gargling for 10 seconds after you brush your teeth Gargling, I mean you're probably already doing it, but it also stimulates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of your nervous system that helps you feel more settled and relaxed and connected to your body. So doing that for 10 seconds every single day can really impact your nervous system, can really shift your nervous system. So that's one daily tool that you can do every day.
Speaker 1:Wow, and that's I mean. That's simple, right Like we can all fit that in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that you can do is just bring awareness to your breath, so it's just dropping down to your body and just noticing your breath and you don't have to change your breath. You just have to notice your breath and see what happens as you notice your breath.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. What does that do? How does that help us regulate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So a lot of what I do in somatic experiencing is I work with the body's natural rhythm. Is I work with the body's natural rhythm? And so, instead of forcing the breath to be deeper, instead of forcing yourself to breathe differently right, a lot of people breathe from their chest and then they start, maybe they learn breath work tools and they try to switch the way that they're breathing, and that can be helpful. But sometimes it's really difficult and it can actually increase that sympathetic state. So when you just work with the body's natural rhythm and just bring awareness to it and notice, it naturally starts to shift. So you naturally begin to take deeper breaths from your belly, just by bringing awareness. And it might not happen right away, right, but as you take your time and bring that awareness to the body, it almost tells the nervous system oh yeah, my breath, I'm here, okay, I can breathe. Right, we're not telling ourselves that. The nervous system just feels it.
Speaker 1:We're not telling ourselves that, the nervous system just feels it. Sure, I've seen that, not in paying attention to my breath, but one of the things that we do with one of my kids is we have the pulse ox meters that we put on his finger and he works on lowering his heart rate. I mean, he can't lower his heart rate right, but he lowers his heart rate by paying attention to his heart rate, and so I'll do the same thing. We'll watch it, we'll each watch our heart rate and compare the two, and it brings both of us down. It's very interesting how I mean I'm not making my heart beat faster or slower. I don't know how to do that, but just paying attention to it brings it down a lot of times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that goes with any other sensation or emotion in the body. Sometimes, if we just bring awareness to it and we don't try to change it, if we can just notice oh hey, you're there, okay, acknowledging it, sometimes, most times it starts to shift. So I'll share another um, one of my favorite somatic tools that you can do every single day, and you can do this while you're showering, you can do this while you're driving you, you can do this while you're driving. You can literally do this when, I don't know, one of your children is having a meltdown and I'm sure it would get their attention.
Speaker 2:It's called the Voo sound. The Voo sound is really just a Voo all the way until your breath is out. So we inhale and then we just do and, similar to the gargling, the stimulate the vagus nerve and so the vibrations and really I did it short, right now, but allowing yourself to go for as long as you possibly can until you can't breathe anymore, right? So the vibration of that is really going to support your body, but also the sound of that is going to support your body. So it's the vagus nerve and then it supports through sensation and through auditory.
Speaker 1:Wow, that would definitely like my kids would be like what are you doing? Like it might stop a meltdown on their end. But I love that. It's simple things that take no time at all, that you are giving us to be able to really calm our bodies down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there are so many somatic tools and practices that we can use on a daily basis. Really just making contact with our bodies can make a difference too. Right, like just bringing our hands to our arms or chest, that self contact. It helps the body feel more grounded, more safe. My body's here, I'm here, right. Or just orienting, looking around your space. Orienting is another one of my favorites. The two that I use the most are the Voo, sound and orienting, because when we orient, I know it seems so simple and like really that helps. But when you take in your space, you are showing your nervous system through the eyes that you are safe. So instead of telling yourself, I'm safe, I'm safe, there's nothing going on, stop feeling this way. Yep, we are showing the nervous system oh yeah, I am safe, nice and slow, taking in your entire space.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that. Well, why would somebody choose to focus on this type of work, either in addition to or in place of, like a talk therapy, like why is this so important? Or what does it do that a talk therapy doesn't?
Speaker 2:Like why is this so important? Or what does it do that a talk therapy doesn't? Yeah, so a lot of the women well, I'm going to say every single one of the women that I work with have been in talk therapy for 10, plus, 15, plus years, and talk therapy is very helpful. And talk therapy can only take you so far. And the reason for this is because talk therapy only focuses on the cognitive piece. Right, we really need to work with both the cognitive and the mind. Right, we need to be able to work with the entire body, the entire nervous system.
Speaker 2:The primary language of the nervous system is sensation. So the only way that we can heal the nervous system is through sensation. That's the only language that the nervous system speaks. If we are verbally processing things, it might help in the moment, but it's not going to heal long term because we again, when we're verbally processing, we're only using our cognitive brain. We're not connecting with sensation. Oftentimes, when we are verbally processing through things, we are disconnected from our bodies. So a lot of what I do in my therapy sessions are I maybe hear a sentence or two of what the person wants to talk about or wants to process, and then I pause them and then I connect with their body. Right, I help them connect with their body. What's happening in your body as you say that? So we need to be able to feel connected to our bodies while we're verbally processing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, I mean, that's great, and I think that we see that in our kids too. Right, Like when we process things with our kids, that processing is important. But just processing or logically talking through, you know, something doesn't automatically make our kids feel safe or it doesn't stop the reactions. And so it's crucial for us to kind of turn that lens back on ourselves and to know that if we're storing those things in our bodies, right, just talking about it doesn't necessarily stop the way that we feel or stop our body from reacting a certain way. Yes, exactly, Exactly Right. What does it look like to work with a practitioner like yourself doing somatic work? Like, do you work with people in office? Do you work with people online? What does that look like? And then, what kind of tools do you give people to you know kind of go throughout their day?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I work with both people, online and in my office. I mean, the beauty of somatic experiencing is that it's not therapy. So somatic experiencing is a method of healing and you don't need to be a therapist to be a somatic experiencing practitioner, and because of that, I get to work with so many people throughout the United States and even outside of the United States throughout the United States and even outside of the United States and when I work with clients, I am actually this might seem surprising, but I don't teach them any somatic tools, and the reason for that is because somatic tools, similar to talk therapy, is short-term relief, is short-term relief, right. Somatic experiencing is long-term relief. So I have a free community where I guide people through somatic practices and tools to help them feel more calm, safe and connected. And again, tools are short-term. They're just there to help you cope, but you don't want to cope for the rest of your life, right? So the work in somatic experiencing is about tracking the nervous system, is about creating more safety in the nervous system, it's about building capacity to be with uncomfortable emotions and sensations, but also comfortable sensations and emotions, cause sometimes it's really hard to sit with the calmness or the happiness or the joy right. So we're really building the capacity to be with all sensations and emotions and also helping you move through those survival responses so that you're not living outside, so that you're not living in a state of survival for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:So somatic experiencing can often be really difficult to explain. I have a lot of clients that say like it's nothing, but it's everything. Yes, that's exactly right. Like it feels that way. It's like what did we just do in a session? And the shifts are so subtle in your nervous system and they happen so quickly. It's like wow, one day I was feeling so overwhelmed and activated by my emotions and the next day I have all of this capacity to be with these emotions. How did that happen? And it's really just the work of somatic experiencing. All I do as a somatic experiencing practitioner is what I just shared is track the nervous system and help you move through those survival responses.
Speaker 1:That really is awesome and so needed, so needed for parents. Now, can parents, can they take some of the things that they learn through their own experience right and the tools that you give them, and apply some of those tools to their kids?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 1000%. I mean, I think that the beauty of this work is that, because it's such a deep level of healing, we don't have to consciously think about, okay, I learned this in therapy, and now how am I going to apply it? It just happens so naturally that once you start doing this work, you naturally have more capacity to be with what's happening with your child. And again it's sort of like that magic that we were talking about. It feels like magic of like, oh my gosh, like I. Yesterday I had zero capacity to be with this meltdown, and today I feel like this is okay and I can respond differently. And again, that's what we want to do. We don't want to just cope for the rest of our lives and have to figure out how am I going to handle this? What's the right thing to do? When we heal our nervous systems, this comes naturally. We can say, okay, I have more capacity to think more clearly and I can just respond in a way that makes sense in that moment.
Speaker 1:I think all of us need a little bit of that. Yes, well, how can people get in touch with you or connect with you, and I will leave links for Tatiana in the show notes but where can we find you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. You can find me on Instagram I'm at Tatianaholisticcoach, and on the link in my bio you can find my free resources. I have a free nervous system guide to help you practice more somatic tools to support your nervous system, and that's also where you can book a 90-minute somatic experiencing session if you are interested in this type of work. And also every Tuesday at 7 pm Eastern Standard Time, I have my free community where I think, if you're very new to the somatic world and you want to like dip your toes into learning tools and practices, come to my free community. It's every single Tuesday and it's completely free.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. That is amazing and so helpful for parents and families. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing. This is a big deal. Just as we're leaving, give parents the top three things that they can do to take care of themselves.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, the top, okay. Number one consume more nutrients, because food is medicine and it's going to impact your mood, your energy, sleep, everything right. Yes, consume more nutrients, make sure that you are healthy inside and out. Number two take every moment as an opportunity to support your nervous system. So when you catch yourself, maybe do a voo sound really quick, just one voo sound, maybe just orient right, maybe just bring awareness to your breath. So try to check in with your body. Every moment is an opportunity to regulate your nervous system. And number three is be gentle with yourself. When you're gentle with yourself, you have more capacity to be gentle with others, including your children. With others, including your children, right? And when we have more capacity for ourselves, for being human and experiencing whatever's happening in our own nervous system, we can have more capacity for other people.
Speaker 1:That is so true. It is difficult, I think, for a lot of us, but so so true. Tatiana, I thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and for being a resource for people to be able to go to to learn how to care for themselves. Well, it is truly appreciated.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I had a great time talking to you.
Speaker 1:Again. I will link all of Tatiana's contact information in the show notes so that you can reach out to her. Please be sure to check out her free resources. She is a wealth of knowledge and can really help each of us as we try to handle our own nervous systems so that we are able to help our children with theirs. Let me take a minute to pray for us as we close out today. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for these bodies, these complex systems that you have given us. Lord, thank you for giving people like Tatiana the knowledge to be able to help us steward our bodies well, to care for them with good nutrition, to understand how our breath works, to understand how our nervous system works. Lord, we are so blessed to live in a day and age where we can understand the science and understand the gift of breath and life and of protection that you have given us. Lord, we love you. We trust you. Help us to serve you every day In Jesus' name. Amen, thank you.