Today, I am going to share a simple tool for calming your nervous system, mental chatter and body. Dr. Norm Shealy, one of the pioneering holistic physicians of our time, created a practice called Basic Schultz, also known as Autogenic Training. It utilizes visual imagery and bodily sensations to elicit a relaxation response and bring yourself back into parasympathetic mode. Listen in to learn more about how you can bring calm to your mind and body by guiding your thoughts and connecting your whole being with nature.
Today, I am going to share a simple tool for calming your nervous system, mental chatter and body. Dr. Norm Shealy, one of the pioneering holistic physicians of our time, created a practice called Basic Schultz, also known as Autogenic Training. It utilizes visual imagery and bodily sensations to elicit a relaxation response and bring yourself back into parasympathetic mode.
In Western medicine, mental health is separated from physical health, and physical health is further broken down into subcategories. However, what impacts one part impacts the whole, and the mind, body, spirit connection is so often overlooked. I want to offer a reset practice and remind you that you are enough. It’s time to do less and be more. These past two years have really damaged the collective support, and practicing Autogenic Training can help cultivate that support internally.
Listen in to learn more about how you can bring calm to your mind and body by guiding your thoughts and connecting your whole being with nature.
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[00:00:00] Dana Frost: Welcome to Vitally You, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host, Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect: conversations about vitality from the inside out with guests experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality.
[00:00:33] And solo episodes along the way from me, where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger while growing older, this is the place for you.
[00:00:52] Well, shit, how y'all doing? Did you like me and millions of others start following Leslie Jordan on Instagram during the pandemic. He continues to be a daily dose of sunshine and an excellent role model for feeling younger while growing older. Hi everyone. I'm Dana. I'm your host coming to you solo this week in hopes of giving you an opportunity to rest your little nervous system.
[00:01:21] If you can listen to today's episode in a resting pose with no distractions, that would be ideal. After I make a few comments, I'm going to lead you through a process called autogenic training. This uses visual imagery and bodily sensations to elicit a relaxation response. Now before we start, if you have been enjoying the vitally you podcast, please hit subscribe and leave a review.
[00:01:48] Subscribers and reviews are the primary way. Podcasters rise in the podcast, algorithms and gain exposure. And that's what I would like to do each month. I think my listeners and immunity and my reviewers, I give a special giveaway to one reviewer more about that at the end of the show. Okay, everybody let's get going with this week's episode.
[00:02:12] I am going to share a simple tool for calming your nervous system, mental chatter, and the body. Now, when the nervous system is activated or triggered, the body responds. With a cascade of chemicals and oftentimes it's the mental chatter that triggered the nervous system. They all go together. We really just cannot separate them from one another and approach them independently.
[00:02:41] I believe the separate parts approach of the Western healthcare model is why we are having a mental health crisis. During the pandemic, we were really only concerned or focused upon physical transmission. There was really no regard for the impact of social isolation, loss of income, loss of purpose, for many loss of small businesses, which had been nurtured for decades.
[00:03:08] You top isolation off with the constant feet of fear. And here we are today, but I, I digress and I don't wanna do that. But the point is that the Western model looks at mental health, separate from physical health and even physical health is separated into parts in the medical model, those diagnosing the individual parts.
[00:03:33] They don't communicate. Even though the mind body soul system is in constant communication. What impacts one part impacts the whole. We simply cannot move one part in isolation. So let's get on with the tool for calming the mind, body and nervous system. I was introduced to this practice called basic Schultz or autogenic training by Dr.
[00:04:01] Norm Sheely. I'll put his information in the show notes. I found it so helpful that I started sharing it with my clients. This was probably in 2012. I was introduced to this practice. The technique was introduc used or created by a German neurologist. So we know that the body only heals and regenerates itself when our nervous system is in what is considered the parasympathetic mode.
[00:04:31] This is a slowing down of the heart rate. The breath actually slows down in this mode. I refer to it as the rest and heal mode. So under the autogenic nervous system, we have the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system in the parasympathetic mode or the slowing down mode. You can think of it as putting the brakes on, in a car.
[00:04:55] Now appreciating the dual modalities of the autonomic nervous system is essential. If you truly want to feel younger while growing older, and I'm assuming you do because you're here, the first course of action is to discern. If you're operating from sympathetic mode. Which is, if you think about a car you're putting your foot on the gas, you're speeding up your heart rate actually increases.
[00:05:22] Or if you're in parasympathetic mode, which I mentioned that is a slowing down of your system. So the heart rate slows down, your breathing slows down. Now, if you were just to tos all care to the wind, The majority of us do, we're just, we don't even think about the autonomic nervous system because we're taught in school.
[00:05:41] It's automatic. We don't need to think about it, but when we are operating the majority of us, we're not thinking about this. We have, there's no purpose or intention behind it. And we automatically operate from sympathetic mode. It's not by choice, but our modern design and culture operates out of sympathetic mode.
[00:06:04] Everywhere. We turn, we are confronted with fearmongering. Our systems are depleted by overworking. Our homes have become our workplace. We see images of war crying, inflation everywhere. We're bombarded with these images and information that elicit the fear response. And the fear response is in this sympathetic mode, even in our holistic health world, we are continually.
[00:06:33] Bombarded with information that could tempt us to believe that we are never doing enough, that we are never enough. That even from the holistic framework, there's something that, where we're not performing sufficiently. Therefore we're not enough. This is what I want you to hear today. You are enough it's time to do less and be more.
[00:07:01] You are enough. It is time to do less and be more. I wholeheartedly believe your wise inner teacher knows your way forward. Your wise inner teacher knows the best self care strategy. Your wise inner teacher knows how to satisfy and soothe, whatever needs attention . But this is the deal. We only see here and understand.
[00:07:27] What that is when we are doing less and being more. So let me ask you, are you feeling the collective stress? I want you just to really be with yourself in this moment. We are all living under a cloud of global doom. If that's where we put our attention, the past as we experienced it is no more. And there's no judgment to that because we all experienced it differently.
[00:07:54] What our past was, how we went through the shutdown. And we're not really clear about how we're stepping forward. We don't really know what the new normal is. Maybe some of us have some new normal practices. But what I would say is that culturally, as a collective, we don't have a cradle of support ready to catch the falling.
[00:08:17] We just don't have that cradle of support collectively. So it really is something that has to be cultivated within as an individual. We know that suicide and drug over were dose or at all time high levels. And I wanna say that this week I received a call from a friend who is also a former client asking for an in person week long, intensive coaching session.
[00:08:41] So she can have a full system reset because she knows she can't do it alone. And I have a feeling she's not the only one wanting to hit the reset button. So this is why am coming to you this week to offer a reset practice. This is the basic Schultz auto training. So are you with me? This is the time you need to be in a location with no distractions.
[00:09:07] Are you ready? Let's begin together and let's be together. So remember, this is an imagery practice. I want you to picture yourself outside in nature. Get yourself situated for me. I always picture myself in a hammock. Under a Palm tree, wherever outside of nature is for you. And I want you to visualize the sun beating down upon your right hand.
[00:09:43] My right hand is heavy and warm. The sun is beating down upon my right hand.
[00:09:53] Feel. My right hand is warm and heavy.
[00:09:59] Place your attention on your left hand? My left hand is heavy and warm. My left hand is heavy and warm. The sun is beating down upon my left hand. My arms are heavy and warm. The sun is eating down upon my arms. My arms are heavy and warm.
[00:10:28] I'm in nature. The sun is beating down upon my right foot. My right foot is heavy and warm. The sun is beating down upon my right foot. My left foot is heavy and warm and the sun is beating down warming my left foot. The sun is beating down upon my feet. Both of my feet are heavy and warm. The sun is beating down upon my feet.
[00:11:03] My legs are heavy and warm. The weight of my legs are dropping down into the earth. My left legs are heavy and warm. The sun is beating down upon my legs. My abdomen is calm and heavy. The sun is beating down upon my abdomen and my abdomen is calm and heavy and warm. My heartbeat is calm and steady. The sun is beating down upon my heart, upon my chest and my chest is warm and heavy.
[00:11:50] My heartbeat is calm and steady. The sun is beaming down upon my body and my body is warm and heavy. My body is warm and heavy. My heartbeat is calm and steady. My forehead is cool. My forehead is cool. My heartbeat is calm and steady. My body is heavy and warm. My forehead is cool. My heartbeat is calm and steady.
[00:12:29] My abdomen is calm and heavy.
[00:12:35] When you are ready you can open your eyes. This is a practice that you can come back to regularly. The basic premise is that you are outside in nature. The sun is coming down upon your body and you actually give attention to these different parts of your body, your hands, your arms, your feet, your leg, your abdomen, your heart, your forehead, and you elicit the response of calm, heavy, and warm.
[00:13:10] You can always come back to the podcast and forward to this part and have me guide you through it. And you can also just guide yourself through it. The point is that we have the power to bring calm to our mind by guiding and directing the thoughts. To the body, connecting the mind with the body, connecting the mind and body and sensations with nature and with warm and with a calming down of the body, the mind, the heart rate, this is bringing yourself into parasympathetic mode.
[00:13:50] I'm going to answer my own question. The vitally you podcast question. what does feeling younger while growing older mean to me? Well, it means something different depending upon the day, but today it means I am growing my resilience daily. I am able to bounce back when my energy is depleted. It means I know how to take care of myself when I'm not feeling my best.
[00:14:16] It means that I grow in my capacity to love with grace. And non-judgment. I want to thank you for joining me this week. I hope that you have felt the benefit of resting your nervous system, your body, and your mental chatter. I hope that this practice is available to you on the daily. You can take three minutes to enter this practice.
[00:14:42] It doesn't need to be something that takes a lot of time, but really we need to have the capacity to bring ourselves into parasympathetic mode. If you enjoy this podcast, please hit subscribe and review. I show my appreciation monthly by gifting one reviewer, a sleeve of eon patches. Life waves, eon anti-inflammatory patch moves the nervous system from fight and fight to rest and heal using eon while you're doing the basic Schultz practice is an excellent way to support your body.
[00:15:20] With light therapy, the patch sends the signals. Through your energy channels to bring the nervous system in, to rest and heal. You can experience the power of the patch on your journey of feeling younger while growing older, to be entered, to win. Simply leave a review screenshot review and send it to dana@danafrost.com or PA op it into a direct message on Instagram.
[00:15:47] Dana frost vitally you. Until next time I am streaming love from my heart to yours. Thank you everybody. Bye bye.