Rest and Recovery

Okay, welcome back, everybody. Today we are here to talk about the importance of rest, recovery, rest and play with Kate Northrup. You've heard us say on here many times that rest is a revolution. And for us, it's the next horizon. And we hear about how important rest is and how important it is to relax and enjoy the lives that we've built. But often it's a lot easier said than

done. And so today we're diving into why rest is crucial, the barriers to getting it, and practical strategies to improve it. Welcome to Trauma rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace. I'm a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide. And I'm also an educator at the Neurosomatic

Intelligence coaching certification. And I'm your co host, Elizabeth Christoph, founder of Brainbased.com, comma, an online community for nervous system health, rehabilitation and resilience. And I'm also the founder of the neurosomatic intelligence coaching certification. And we are thrilled today to be joined by one of our participants in NSI, the incredible Kate Northrup, author of Do Less and a leading coach who helps ambitious people work less while having less stress

and creating more abundance. So I'd love for you to just tell us a little bit about yourself, Kate, and why this topic is so important to you. Like, why did you write a whole book on doing less and helping people find more ease, more rest? Yeah. You know, it's so funny. Like, in this moment, I'm just really noticing. I'm kind of emotional, which is so interesting and unusual at the beginning of a podcast.

But I think that, like, this is such a full circle moment because when I wrote do less, it came out in 2019. Of course, I had heard of the nervous system. I mean, I'm here on Planet Earth. I really didn't know what I know now. I didn't know about how trauma lives in the body. I didn't know about overworking patterns and trauma. I didn't know about productivity as a trauma response. I didn't know what you

ladies know, what you folks, your whole thing is about. And I remember my coach at the time, ra goddess, in the end of 2019. So my book had been out nine months. I had written it. You know, it takes a long time for books to come out. So I finished it at the end of 2018. No, 2017. Oh, my God, 2017. It's like 100 years ago. And she handed me this book called Patriarchy Stress Disorder by Doctor Valerie

Rain. And as my friend Megan Watterson says, I just read the title of the book, and, like, my heart fell out of my butt. I was just like, oh, my God, this is literally everything. And it was like this

whole. It was like me seeing the matrix all of a sudden and realizing that the reason I wrote do less is because of the deeper trauma patterning in my own lineage and in womankind, but also humankind around productivity and basically running because we have been so programmed to be afraid to be still and to be afraid to feel. And so what's so cool about that is, well, a, I'm working on another

book that actually directly incorporates it. But in retrospect, what I realized is my first book, money a love story, and my second book, do less. The curriculum that I teach in them, so many of the exercises that I teach in them work because they actually do work to heal the nervous

system. I just didn't know that. And so it's such a testament, I think, to the wisdom of our bodies that, like, those came through me as part of my own healing journey, even though no one told me, oh, this is how you heal the nervous system. Productivity can very much be a trauma response, obsession with achievement, you know, all of those things. And so that's kind of the bigger picture

of my own work around that. But I will say, just from a personal perspective, you know, I come from a long line of overworking women, and, you know, I watched my. I watched my granny. Her granny's life motto was don't ask for a lighter pack, ask for a stronger back. And she was the oldest north american woman to ever climb to Mount Everest base camp at the age of 84. My mom spent most of her career just really in go mode, my dad as

well, and all my whole family. And so I wrote do less, sort of as this healing manual for myself and hopefully for my daughters and hopefully to open up a possibility for more lives that are allowed to have people be instead of, do I love that? Or in addition? I'll say, in addition. Yeah, totally. In addition is a great way

to put it. And I love that so much and can relate so much to coming from a lineage of workaholics who really just, it was modeled so much, and it becomes so deeply woven into our neural architecture, into our nervous system, to

only feel safe with that level of productivity. And I do want to talk a little bit about stress physiologically and the importance of rest from a physical and from a nervous system perspective, because I think it helps people to understand and deconstruct some of that when you know, kind of what's going on in the body. And just like you were saying, you know, we used to think of trauma as

this psychological phenomenon. And now we know it's. It's physiological, it's experienced through the body, through the nervous system. And stress is a huge component of that experience. It's a root cause of disease and mental health decline. And when we experienced experience a stressor or a threat, our body's primary goal is our survival. And it's ancient, kind of complicated, and pretty brilliant way to do that is through our stress response system that mobilizes our resources,

it prepares us for action, and it's adaptive. But if it is occurring chronically, that's a problem. And so these responses, these stress responses that happen in our body, they are a necessary part of everyday life. And we're not looking for a life without activation. Nervous system regulation isn't that flat line of being calm or zen all the time, but it's really that ability to modulate between these states, to get activated when it's appropriate, and then to be able to

rest and recover and adapt. But when we're facing that overwhelm all of the time, we can't respond anymore to the stress. There's no escape. We're constantly suppressing and repressing our body's natural stress relief and regulation actions like movement, or vocalization, or crying or shaking, these emotional responses that help us regulate. And then we get stuck in states of hyper vigilance, constantly scanning the environment or our

relationships, looking for threat. And we're having that stress reaction over and over again inside of our body. And it's just not meant to be long term. And I think, too, it's important for people to understand that, like stress is stress, our survival mind doesn't distinguish between social threat or a physical threat, or doing this podcast or having a meeting.

Our nervous system is just taking in all of this information all the time from our sensory systems about our external environment and our internal environment, our balance, our orientation, knowing where our body is in space. And if that information is unclear or blurry or inaccurate, that's already enough to initiate a stress response. Because I might fall, I

might hurt myself. I can't make an accurate prediction. And then these signals all of the time are coming in through our nervous system, making it up to our brain stem, and then to our limbic system, where they're interpreted by many different areas of the brain. The amygdala, working with the hypothalamus to turn our emotions into our physical experience when we start to have that fear response

through the HPA axis. And now we have all of these hormones, adrenaline and cortisol moving through the body. And if this keeps going all of the time, and we're in that dysregulated state. We talked about this in our burnout episode, but just a little bit condensed so that people have this information as we dive into the mindset and the beliefs

and the cultural aspects. When we have too much cortisol all of the time, it keeps us in the state of high alert or a low grade survival response, so it doesn't let the body shift back into a parasympathetic state. And then it becomes really difficult to sleep or to rest that just doesn't feel safe. And it's this chemical or hormonal obstacle to rest. And when we have that,

that's what's called adrenal sensitivity. Too much cortisol all of the time, and then that leads to those health outcomes, like diabetes or muscle weakness, osteoporosis. And then over time, we can also lose our ability to produce cortisol, because our system doesn't have the resources for that. And then we can move into adrenal burnout or fatigue. So that's when the adrenal glands can't keep creating cortisol. We don't have the resources anymore. And then we start to move into an adrenaline

response. So now, instead of having cortisol in our system all the time, we're actually running on adrenaline. And that pushes us into an even higher level of hypervigilance, a heightened level of survival, because adrenaline is our short term survival hormone. And so you get a big inflammatory response that can lead to autoimmune, lots of disease state in the body, and it pushes your system into this strained level, and it's a very high

stress level all of the time. And then eventually, we move into full blown adrenal burnout, where our system can't produce adrenaline either. And that's when it's going to flip us into chronic fatigue, where we don't have the energy to keep going because our metabolism is in a deficit, our cortisol production is in a deficit. Our adrenaline production is in a deficit. Really, nothing left

in our body to create energy on demand. And so you're left in this constant state of fatigue or malaise, like you just can't have the energy to do anything anymore. And that's when we really move into that deep burnout and illness chronic sleep.

Disturbances can be such a big problem for so many reasons, too. Like, there's an importance of rest is what I'm learning is that I need to rest a little bit throughout the day so that at the end of the day, I'm not just looking to totally offline load my entire day and have this big expectation of, like, oh, and now I'm going to go to sleep.

And so what I really think about, too, because from the burnout and functional freeze conversation, one of the things that came up for us was that a lot of times we can engage in activities that we think may be restful or refueling, but actually it depletes us a little

bit more as we go on. And I really think about for rest being my new horizon, I really think about the integration that I lose when I don't get a good night's sleep and, like, how that really has big effects on, like, on my cognitive health and really even my emotional

well being the next day. And, like, when we think about after we work out and we intentionally stress our bodies through, like, weight training or aerobic activity, and then we need rest time on the back end of that so that we don't harm ourselves any further, so we don't, like, we don't get injured. And so it's that same, that's that integration that gives us that positive adaptation and resilience that also happens when we sleep and that slowing down that needs to

happen. And so, like, for some of the cognitive health, when we sleep, part of our brain's integration process is coming up with solutions that. That we might have for some potentially complex problems in our lives. And for anyone who suffered with insomnia or maybe moms that don't sleep for those first couple of years of their children's lives is also who I think

of. And I was diagnosed with insomnia at a pretty early age. And I know how difficult it is after many nights of sleep to not be able to come out of the brain fog, for the emotional piece, to have more rumination on more negative thoughts versus positive experiences that I'm having. Sleep is crucial for memory consolidation, for learning. And the brain also relieves itself of many toxins throughout the night. And I think for the emotional piece that recalling of negative experiences, it also

drives depression. It drives depression and even an increase in mood swings. And I definitely have experienced that. On top of it, can get hard to parse out what's complex trauma, what's insomnia, what's my neurodivergence? And it just becomes this overwhelming piece of, like, wow, this is pretty overwhelming. So I'm interested to know, Kate, from your perspective, what comes up for you when we talk about rest and recovery and what it's been like in your journey and how you came into the place

of rest and recovery serves my business. It serves my relationships well, what happened. Is, I'm glad you brought up new motherhood for me. I was the total achiever type. Academic pressure, early success in business, yada, yada, yada. And then I got pregnant with my first daughter, and I have never been so tired in my life. And people kept saying, oh, just wait until the second trimester. You'll have this huge energy burst. But that never happened. And I was sleeping, like,

14 hours a day. It was very bizarre to have been such a physically, mentally capable person and suddenly be taken out. And then my daughter was born. I had quite a traumatic experience with her birth, and then she was really sick. So the first year of her life, it just continued. And she had severe eczema, and sometimes would be waking up every night, you know, every ten minutes, screaming and scratching herself, and, like, her sheets were bloody all the time. I mean, it was like, this was

not what was on the literature in terms of motherhood. Like, everyone else was like, oh, it's the best time of my life. And I was like, it's like a horror movie at my house. And I couldn't sleep. I had severe postpartum insomnia. And it was the first time in my life that I had a problem that I couldn't overcome by being smarter or more capable or working harder. None of the usual solutions that I had worked. And yet a year into my daughter's first year of life, so we sat with our accountant and

we looked at our numbers. Despite having worked less than half the amount I had ever worked in my adult life that year, we had made more money than we ever had before, and our income source was our business. So it wasn't like there was some other. This was like, if I wasn't working, you know, there wasn't me and my husband running together. And it was such a light bulb moment for me because while I would not go through that year again if you paid me, it was awful. I thought,

huh, that's so interesting. I have been working my entire adult life as though the number of hours and the amount of effort is the most important thing. And actually what ended up happening. And there's so many changes that happen in the maternal brain and obviously nervous system all connected, but I had become instantly focused on only what mattered because the survival of my child depended on it. And I had zero fucks to give and zero energy for

anything extraneous, nothing. And as a result, that ended up being a very good business strategy. And I thought, wow, okay, so if I could make more money than ever before working less than half the amount while completely distracted, you know, not distracted, but while completely devoted to keeping this baby alive and, like, vaguely staying sane, and on some days that was not. That was debatable.

Like, in terms of my mental health really suffered. I thought, well, maybe during less difficult years, there could be some things that I could point to or look back at and research as effective strategies. And, you know, I'm happy to walk through what some of those were, but that was my own experience. Really realizing, oh, more is not necessarily always better. And it was my own body and my daughter's body that brought me home to that

truth. And I'm so grateful because nothing teaches us a lesson like an embodied experience. Wow. Yeah, that is really inspiring for me to hear about as I'm like, in this my own place of navigating, not doing more all of the time, and just allowing the seeds that are planted some space and air to breathe and grow. And what a beautiful example

of that from your experience. And I do think it's really the most powerful experiences we have are those experiential times where that's enough to start to shift the paradigm inside of us and be like, oh, maybe there's something else totally possible. And just total side note, I really tear daughter so much. I was also born with eczema all over, so I feel that it's still how my nervous system communicates to me sometimes when my stress load is too

high. And as you were talking about that beautiful shift in your business, I was thinking too, it is a place where I'm navigating in my own life and how it's a real deconstruction. And it's a challenge coming from a complex trauma background, because so much of the patterning that happens for someone with developmental trauma is to be in this state of hypervigilance all the time.

There's real changes to our brain, our amygdala actually changes in size, and we're perceiving, we're more sensitive, our alarm detector is more sensitive to threat. We have less ability to put on that parasympathetic break, less vagal tone. And there's just this felt sense inside of the body a lot of times that it's not safe. Rest is this really vulnerable state. And there's a letting go of

control and a certain amount of presence. And our brains are just so primed for that threat that there is a huge component of this that's continuously working with my nervous system to create that felt sense of safety inside and. And to starting to work with regulating the HPA axis. Because then, as I'm perceiving threat all the time now, I do have that adrenaline and cortisol, which is gonna keep me in more of a high alert,

keep triggering the f responses in my body. And then inside, it feels like I need to run, I need to fight. And so navigating that, I think it's so important to have the cognitive shifts and then couple it with practical tools, strategies to work directly with the nervous system and start to re pattern that at that

neurological level. Because that deep nervous system pattern, just like you were talking about, about seeing the trauma patterns that had been driving your behavior, it really comes out everywhere, right? It impacts us physically, but also emotionally and cognitively. It changes our relationships, how we show up at work. And so it's such a layered topic to dive into, for sure. When I think of the lack of safety to rest in business, I really think about the podcast, actually. And

Kate, what you were going back to. One of the things that we learned here, as we were experiencing so much growth with trauma rewired, it felt like we needed to deliver and deliver and deliver and deliver and keep delivering and delivering and depleting ourselves. And we learned, I think it was, we learned in season two, we took like a twelve week break and we experienced massive growth. And we were like, oh, my God, we're not really even doing

anything. And it goes back to the seeds being planted. And it was like, oh, now we've learned. And now we actually take two breaks a year because we're like, let's capitalize on the rest and the growth, because there's a matrix there. Like, you're talking about this, like, matrix that you can finally get this measurable experience of, like, when you step out of it and you're like, oh, I've been playing the wrong game. I've been programmed into a game that's not letting me

win. And as soon as you can start to unplug from that a little bit, and then you get into, like, these new awarenesses of like, oh, that's not real. What is real to my success? My growth is resting and pulling away from this. And then it serves our regulation, as we've come to learn, just really serves the podcast. And I think one of the things that happens in our world is a lot of sensory overload, and it's pretty unavoidable once we leave our

homes. And even when we're in our homes, like, there's so many

different types of rest that we need. We need that cognitive and mental rest, which for me, that comes in times of like silence, or maybe some gentle music grounding, being in nature, there's this idea of emotional rest, and I think self care can fall into that, getting into emotional expression and practices being witnessed, feeling heard, feeling seen, because it's the opposite, Elizabeth, of what you were just talking about with the hyper vigilance, that hyper

vigilance is so draining and so taxing on the body and causing so much activation, that then leading also into social rest. People go to social media thinking that like, oh, I'll get social connection, I'll get the rest that I need with social media. So activating and really leads to more deprivation. And, and then of course, we have the physical rest that we all need, and passive and active is our different components of physical

rest. And that could be like napping or stretching. And once again, like we talked about in the burnout, sometimes I engage in things that I think are going to be restful, like nature, but they actually demand a little bit more from me. And what I found so supportive is a consistent regulation practice, because I envision this boat, this little canoe of mine, that's totally full of water, and that water is my sleep debt.

And so if I can use regulation practices throughout the day, I'm emptying the water in the boat, whereas like, I really deeply desire a full night's rest. And for people who have adhd or any other type of neurodivergence, the research is showing that the sleep deprivation that occurs in neurodivergent people is even higher than the neurotypical individuals, because there's delays in circadian rhythm and there's changes in melatonin

production. And that's like a crucial chemical that our body needs for healthy sleep. But there's also an increased likelihood of, of someone with a neurodivergence having a medication and medication induced sleep issues. Maybe someone's on a stimulant or a psychotropic medication that's commonly prescribed, and those don't really support the success in non disturbed sleep cycle. And I definitely relate to the lack of feeling safe when I lay in bed at night. And so, Kate, what

about for you? Well, I really want to speak to the seasons and cycles, because what was such a game changer for me was understanding similar, you know, not dissimilar to when I discovered the majesty of the nervous system. I tapped into our innate seasonality and cyclicality as humans around that same time that I discovered that we had made more money, but I had worked less. At that same time, I got my period back after 13 months of postpartum experience, and

I got really obsessed with tracking it. And I got obsessed with, or just like compelled in a beautiful way to start researching everything about the menstrual cycle, lunar cycles, biodynamic farming. I was just fully like, whoa, we're not supposed to be the same all the time. And that felt like this massive awakening, which is ironic, because literally my mom raised me with this information, but I just washed, not available for it until I was 33

postpartum. And that just is what it is, right? We're ready when we're ready. It takes as long as it takes. But what was so fascinating, per, I love this example of you taking this twelve week break and your podcast growing even more. Because what we know is that we, as humans, are animals, which means we are nature. We don't hang out in nature. We don't need to connect with nature. We are nature. And so the same principles that govern trees and flowers and squirrels and grass and

weather patterns, they govern our bodies as well. Which is why grounding practices and all the data around earthing and being out in nature, we are instantly activating a parasympathetic response. Obviously, it's more nuanced than that, but like going home, literally, to accessing the outdoors, even if it's just a little sliver of light through an open window, like that is our true

nature. And so when I started to look at, okay, well, if I had a beautiful rose, I wouldn't be like, bashing it or berating it for not being in bloom all year long. Roses have a season. We know that they have a season. There's a season for planting. There's a season for sprouting. There's a season for being a little blossom. There's a season for being in full bloom. And then there's a season for going back to seed. And there, and there is a season for

the pause. And then I started learning about regenerative agriculture and the metaphors for how we run businesses are so ripe and rich and fertile. And one thing, and you're talking about passive rest versus active rest. For those of us who do have a history of trauma, and quite frankly, like, I don't really know if anybody

doesn't. So for those of us who are human listening to this podcast, one thing that I've noticed is that just as you were talking about Jennifer, just resting is not necessarily immediately available, because being still can actually activate our hyper vigilance and it doesn't necessarily feel safe. And I know I've been through many, many periods of time in my life where that was the case, and I wish I had known

what I know now, but I know it now, so that's good. And the piece that really, like I have brought in is this idea of planting cover crops. So for regenerative farmers, they know that the most important element in the success of their crops, of the fertility of what they're growing, is the quality of the soil, specifically the topsoil, the humus, and the root word of human. And humus is the same, and it means of the ground. And so I just love anything etymology and anything that can really

remind us of the truth. So I think a lot about our nervous system regulation as our own soil, and our ability to access the richness of our lived experience as like an increased fertility in our soil. And what regenerative farmers know is that there's a season to plant cover crops. And cover crops are things that you are planting, that you are not going to sell, but the act of growing them so they're not going to market, they're not cash crops, but the act of growing them actually nutrients

and regenerates the soil. So for me, as an entrepreneur, and what I love to share is for people who have businesses or just really, it's really anybody, it doesn't have to be just entrepreneurs to think about what are the COVID crops

in our life? What are those times when we're doing something that actually does allow our brain to go into a different state, allows our body to go into a different state where we're not trying to monetize it, and it actually is providing the benefits of active rest and re nutrienting our bodies, renutrienting our soil to improve our soil quality. So, you know, I have a friend who does a lot of knitting. She does sell her knitting. Her, she makes money a totally different way,

right? Coloring with my kids, doing different, like stretching techniques. Like what are, I mean, other people call this hobbies. I really, you know, I know so many achievement oriented people who just really don't have any hobbies, and then they get excited about a hobby and then they try to turn it into a business, which is fine, but it really then is no longer a cover crop, then it's activating a whole other part of ourselves. And I love

making money. I think there's so much value in that. It's. I think it could be sacred. And I love to think about COVID crops in our life as a way to bring in active rest that's deeply regulating. That also allows us to wind down so that maybe more passive rest request is more accessible later. I'm so excited to share with people our newest offering. Me too. We get so many requests for in person events,

and here it is. We're doing it. Yes. So if you are ready to join the first ever trauma rewired retreat and escape to the tranquil beauty of North Carolina's appalachian mountains, you are going to love this four day immersive nervous system rewire. Yeah, we, Jen and I are going to both be there guiding everyone through daily nervous system practices, somatic movements, neurosomatic meditations, emotional processing, and then

we'll also have fun and play together, too. We're going to be hiking and swimming in the river and just spending really precious time in community. And we've joined forces with two incredible ladies that run the nature of mind body. And they are experienced nature guides and therapists. They're trauma informed, licensed therapists who have also been through the neurosomatic intelligence coaching

certification. So join us for a rejuvenating retreat to reflect, recharge, rewire and rediscover your inner balance. Reserve your spot. Today we're keeping this intimate so spaces will go fast. So go to rewireretreat.org to book today and really embark on this journey of self discovery through working with your nervous system and being in nature and community. We can't wait to see y'all there. I love that so much. Jennifer and I have been talking

a lot with each other, just about. It's not just about taking things away, but bringing things into that restore and replenish. One of the things that has been really great for me in this season is I've been working a lot with like my voice and singing and doing vocal activation, and it gets to be just for me. It's not like something that I'm going to do to create a course on or it's just this. It has become quite spiritual and has this huge impact on the health of

my nervous system and working with my vocal cords. But finding more things like that that are just for the experience, for the being in it and the creativity, I think it's really, really, really important. And you mentioned a bit ago, too, when you were talking about the time with your daughter, that there were strategies or things that you saw in terms of the business, would you speak to that a little bit about some of

the things that you saw? Well, okay, there's so many things. But first, I want to just say, and I'm sure you've talked about this before on previous episodes, but I want to highlight that there was something you said, jennifer, to really get that when we are dysregulated and overworking and exhausting ourselves as a trauma response, there are specific oppressive systems that really benefit from that. And for some of my people,

it's very activating in a good way. Like, it kind of lights this fire in their belly to feel like, oh, rest is actually revolutionary. So maybe I actually can do this to dismantle within myself these structures and systems that actually do keep people disempowered. So I wanted to say that because it's like a bigger. It's. Yes, it's very personal, but it's also macro. And I believe we can all

really contribute to that on a micro level. And so with that, the two things that I want to point to are, number one, because I had zero time, zero energy, I had no ability to focus on anything that was not absolutely necessary in that first year of parenthood. And that sucked. But it was such a gift because it helped me to, by accident, really apply Pareto's principle. And Pareto's principle says that 20% of our actions will

cause 80% of our results. And I think actually, if you do the math on a lot of businesses or a lot of workplaces, it's actually closer to 5% of what we do, actually creates 95% of the results. So if you think about for you to, you know, these podcast episodes and, like, devoting yourself and pouring your hearts and your presence into them, and the way this show has

taken off. Right. People are connecting to the resonance and the magnetism of presence in you, too, versus, and obviously, the depth of knowledge and incredible research that goes into it. That level of magnetism and depth is available because you are taking those periods of rest, both active and passive. And it allows the podcast to be part of that 20%, or 15%, or ten, five, whatever.

That then leads to all these results. And I'm sure if you broke down the data, you would be able to find that if you look at all the marketing efforts for your various aspects of your business and your various revenue streams, the podcast is actually incredibly high leverage and makes sense to double down on. And then you could do the

assessment and do the analysis and really eliminate. I mean, I know nothing about your two businesses, but for most people I know, including myself, there's a lot we could just literally stop doing. And so after that first year when I kind of, like, could pull my head above the water

and. And things weren't so, like, emergent all the time, I did do an analysis, and I looked at, okay, if I look at all my biggest wins in business, you know, getting my first book published, these various, like, higher income spikes, these moments of increased visibility that allowed our platform to grow, things like that. And I looked at what had directly contributed to those things. It was only two kinds of tasks for me. One was connecting with people, and two was creating

content. And so I was like, if I look at my calendar and I want everyone listening to do this, no matter what your career, if you are a stay at home parent, this still applies. There are 20% of the things that I do that create 80% of the connection with my children. They do not include, like, having perfect birthday parties or, you know, like, we do

so much shit that doesn't matter. And so, for everyone listening, identify an area of your life that you would like to enhance and look at what are all the tasks that I do in this area? What are my biggest wins in this area? And then draw a line from the things that are your biggest wins to the task that directly results in that win. And then take a line and cross out all the other tasks that are not identified, and

you'll find you have a lot more time available. But here's what's so important about the work that's discussed here and the work at NSI and all of the work you do, then it's like, yeah, okay, so, cognitively, I can know that I can eliminate 80% of the task of, but I feel freaking unsafe when I

do that. And so that's where then we do that deeper work of learning to find safety in our bodies, because no amount of items checked off on a to do list is ever going to ultimately make you feel safe, complete, and whole or successful. So that was thing number one. And so 80 20 rule. Most people have heard of it, but the question is, are you using it?

And then the thing number two that made a huge difference for me is beginning to see my month seasonally and cyclically, and my projects in our company seasonally and cyclically. So because we live in a patriarchy and we are, you know, the focus is on that which is visible, is valuable. We forget that actually, in the year. Here on planet Earth, we have a springtime and a summertime, which is the seasons of visible growth

and external expression. So beautiful. That's the solar, that's the masculine, that's the young. We also have the seasons of autumn and winter, which are the times for the invisible, the stuff that you really can't see that is equally as valuable and necessary. In order to have a fertile, vibrant spring and summer, we must have the season where everything's falling off the trees, where it's a little sad, where it's kind of dark, and then we need the season of winter, where it's just still

end gray. And I started to see how in my business, I had hyper focused on spring and summer activities and had not given credence or time to autumn and winter activities. And I created something I call the upward cycle of success, where I named each of those periods of time for a business. So the springtime energy is emergence, time of new beginnings. The summertime energy is visibility, the time of launching, the time of being out there. The autumn energy is the time of

culmination, crossing t's, dotting. I's doing analytics, tidying things up, gathering your nuts so you can go into hibernation, which I like to call the fertile void. And that time where my first pregnancy also really taught me. In the first trimester of a pregnancy, you don't really look like you're pregnant. And in our culture, you're not supposed to tell anybody. However, you have made every single organ of a human body

so it looks like nothing is happening. But during that time, I was like, my mind is completely blown. In this period of time, I have, like, made a liver and made a heart, and I didn't have to put it on my to do list or think about it at all. And in fact, if you asked me how to do it, I would have no idea. And that was just this incredible example of how the

wisdom of nature really knows. And we need to follow the lead of the wisdom of nature, of the blueprint of our bodies, as opposed to trying to overlay this false linear idea of constant growth and

constant production. And so I really started to work with, not only on a more micro level, my own menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle, to guide what was going to be the energy I was going to lead with in any given week, then also to really look at the macro of my company and say, okay, we've got spring and summer energy down, we're never going to. We're so programmed for that. Like, we don't need to worry about it. It's the autumn and the winter

energy that we need to build in time for. So we actually really shifted the way we do project management to build in those times. And as a result, it keeps getting better and better. We just keep doing fewer things and making more money. It freaking blows my mind. It is. It's amazing. And I love that you're talking about this seasonal aspect of just the way that we

lived. I mean, it's biological in us that when autumn comes down, we would start slowing down and making the preparations, as you said, dotting the I's and crossing the t's. Like things are about to slow down. Are we prepared for the death? Are we prepared for this total stopping of things? And, like, I really learned so much that you talked about gardening and planting earlier and, like, I just learned about COVID crops for my own garden and

implementing them. And I love growing things and I learned so much. I'm so inspired by watching my plants grow, by how they come into their full self expression only to completely go dormant and we don't really know what is going to happen in the next season. I find that, like, so exciting. And you, God, you just spoke to so many things that I want to speak back

to. So I'm going to try and get through my notes. But like you talked about, you know, in the doing of less, and this is such a big lesson for me right now, is saying no to things that actually sometimes I really enjoy. Because when I think of where is the fuel burning for this thing that I'm doing that I actually really love, but my body is saying no. My body is saying no. I'm continuing to say yes. And though.

So I had to, like, kind of evaluate some things and take some real stock and, like, how do I spend my days and where am I out of alignment that I'm really coming up against? The inability to rest and this doing more that's kind of keeping me out of my lane, out of my genius, actually. Like, and burning out in ways that I could be conserving that fuel for where I really serve in my highest, then for me, I really love communications, I love education.

I really love, you know, art is one of the ways that I'm learning how to rewire my own plays and, like, ceramics and pottery and creating things that are really for no monetization. Like y'all are saying, it's just for me to go in and relax and somehow I'm doing better than ever by engaging in those things. And you said something I think so important that which is visual is

valuable. And I think that speaks so much to, like, mindset and over, well, it really speaks to the pulling away from the soma, from the somatic journey, from embodiment and from listening to our bodies. And, and like I was saying, like, my body was saying no in so many ways, but I couldn't hear it because of the cognitive

mess, the beliefs even that were going on. Like, I had all these core beliefs around the way that I was supposed to show up, either the way that, like, my work was supposed to look, my body was supposed to look, or what it looked like to be successful, were core beliefs that I had developed these neurotags around that were not

even applicable to the life that I live right now. As Jennifer in her 47th year of expression, it was like this old stuff of watching my mom overwork, overtrain over everything in her life and being really programmed in that. And then like, my, my brain's way of interpreting sensory data was so different, is so different from the way that my mom's does. And then like, living in this false reality of the programming. And it really came to me. It hit me pretty hard recently, my mom was in

town and I was sharing with her for the first time in my life. I'm really coming into the understanding that I do have an aDd, ADHD and sensory processing deficits in general, however that wants to be defined. And I went to her and I was like, this is how I'm seeing myself. And she said, oh, I totally relate to all of that as well. And I was like, you do? And she was like, yeah. And I was like a

pause. It really blew my mind that my whole life I had been monitoring my successes, mostly my failures on my mom's neurodivergences and her trauma responses that I was never going to be able to live up to. And I really had to stop and think like, wow, my autonomy has suffered in relation to the way that I've learned how to relate, which is false, false for her. And it relieved me and so much in that moment to say, like, I'm sovereign, I can cut myself away from this and how can I?

Gave me clarity on how my mom's patterns had been set up and it gave me an empathy towards her that I really don't know that I'd had before. And this new desire to support her healing in another way that detached me from her patterns. It was a huge shift for me, for both of us. I think it's been a huge shift for both of us. It really. It's helped us move on in another way, too, to be able to kind of chip away at some of the nuances of our relationship that has kept us in

maladaptive patterns. That's so beautiful, Jen. And also, like, a really queer. I can see almost, like, the wiring and the firing as you're talking, that's passed intergenerationally.

And there was something you spoke to, Kate, that I want us to talk a little bit about, because I think it's really important, which is the deconstruction of systems of oppression that are inside of us and that we do perpetuate when we stay in these cycles, and that there is, you know, Adrienne Marie Brown's work on this was a huge inspiration for me and really reframing, looking at rest as an act of rebellion. And I would love to just hear more of your thoughts on that, because I love to talk

about it. Yeah. You know, I, of course, learned about the way beliefs live in our. In our brains and nervous systems from you. And one of the things that I love to have people ask in my programs is when we're looking at limiting beliefs, for example, my productivity determines my worth. Could be a limiting belief. So when we look at that, I really love to have people ask the question, who benefits from me believing this? You know? And it's like, oh, white capitalist, toxic

patriarchy, you know? And just as a reminder, that does not exist outside of us. I mean, it does, and it also exists inside of us. So I think, for me, it's been really helpful to not see the problem as external and instead really work with, or in addition to really work with. Okay, what are the ways that that programming lives in? Me and I have two little girls. They're six and eight. And so it's very present. How I live is modeling and literally ingraining their nervous systems with what is

safe and what is not safe. And, you know, just this one simple, simple example. I have a real, like, my default is to do too much. I wrote do less because I need it. And so I have this little daughter. She's so headstrong. She's amazing. And I was describing to her a week that we're going to have this summer, and I was like, it's gonna be so fun. We're gonna be on this road trip, and we're gonna visit this person and this person, then we're gonna go over here, and then we're gonna do this. And

I was, like, so excited. And I look at her little face. And she just started to cry. And I was like, oh my gosh, what's going on? And she goes, mama, it's too much. It's too much. It sounds like too much. That sounds really tiring. And she's in kindergarten. So I was like, oh my gosh. Okay, great. So out of all those things that I listed, what would you, what sounds like the one you would want to do? And she

told me. And so we're focusing on that because I'm really realizing I don't want to sweep them up in my trauma response doing, I don't want that to be what they as. This is what's required to be a good woman. This is what's required to be a good friend. This is, I have to stay on some kind of treadmill sprinting in order to stay relevant or sit, you know, I mean, it's like, and so I think we can undo the patterning and, and dismantle the systems in, in small, seemingly insignificant

moments, like deciding your summer plan. It doesn't always have to, you know, just lying down on the floor in the middle of your work day for five minutes or doing a neuro tool is a revolutionary act. And just the fact that it gives us space between stimulus and response to be able to choose how am I going to be in this moment? That is, every single time we do that, we are calling our power

back. That is our, I mean, the way I think of it, I don't know what your frameworks are, but I see that as my connection with the divine. I see that as my connection with source, with a capital s. And every time I do it, it's like a little prayer and I just can feel, you know, and I do it too. Like on behalf of my grandmothers who didn't have, have that. They didn't know this stuff. This was not available. This information was

not available. And in very different ways they lived trapped in their own paradigms. It was a different time. And it's like I see very directly the ways that we do heal seven generations forward and seven generations back when we interrupt in ourselves the patterning and when we have the courage to say, like, what might be possible,

is there something else available here? And I'm somebody who loves to put my attention and focus to the degree that I can on building out new possibilities as opposed to railing against the systems that exist. Like, okay, well, the best way for me to dismantle a system is to unravel it in myself and to dream into what else could be birthed. So that's an invitation for all of us

on where we want to put our attention as well. I love that. I really love so much of what you said because I think I'm one of these people, as I've gone along, deprogramming and busting out through some of this matrix, that I'm really someone who love, likes to buck the system. I'm someone who wants to go against what's happening out there. And it's like every time, I can just find this little way to do that. And for me, that was, like, I was so happy.

This is so small, maybe, but, like, I was so happy when gray and silver hair became popular and people started coloring, their hair was like, I'm. And I'm done. I can just be natural now. And, like, that was such a relief for me because. And there's nothing against coloring your hair, like, for full self expression. Everybody out there listening, do whatever you want to do. But for me, I was coloring my hair, like, every couple of weeks. It was just

this something I could not keep up with. And I was like, why am I doing this? Oh, my God. It's just too much. What else could you do with that time? Exactly. And I feel so much freer in my body. I feel so much like it boosted my confidence to be myself in a way that was also going against some beauty standards that I tried living up to for so long. And I love what you said about just laying down in the floor and taking a nap for five minutes out of

the day. Like, you know, we call it visual reset in the NSI world. But, like, I've got a sleep mask right next to my desk right here, because for. If I've got 510, maybe 20 minutes out of the day, I'm just going to lay down with my sleep mask, put on some beats, something soothing, maybe a meditation. I might even, if it's okay, like, depending on the temperature, go outside and lay down on the ground for 20 minutes and, like, do nothing. And that's

one of the ways that I sort of empty my. My bucket out as I move throughout the day. And, like, I love to play little nap roulette if I've got the space in my day, it's like, I've got a few hours here. Like, what could happen? Like, what could happen? Could I fall asleep for hours? And it happened to me yesterday. I fell asleep for two two hour blocks. I literally. I fell asleep for 2 hours. A nap. Rouletted. I heard the

pressure cooker go off. I got up, I turned that off. And I went back to bed for another 2 hours, and it was like I really realized the sleep debt that I'm in for all of the times that I was just churning and burning and keeping up and back to the performance. Like, my worth was how much I was producing, and I was really burned out. I really couldn't. I was getting to a time where I really couldn't produce anymore. And so a couple of the other things that have really helped me is

I've invested in block blue light. I love that company. I love their glasses. I've got a full spectrum table lamp that I use at night to read. And that has helped me so much because I have a visual deficit in my nervous system, and that visual deficit is causing threat in my nervous system day just as the day goes on. So between the visual reset and the black blue light,

my eye fatigue has gone down so much. That's helping me rest, and it's helping me stay productive in the ways that I feel good about being productive. Yeah. And, you know, what's really important to know as well is that the data does not actually show that more hours worked equals better results. So I just want to be really clear about, like, taking 4 hours of our day to, you know, fill some of the sleep deficit is actually the best use of our

time. Because what we see in the data is that when we are well rested, as you said, our cognitive abilities, our creativity, our ability to integrate memory and create connections between seemingly disconnected, like we are superheroes, when we are well rested. And 3 hours working when you are well rested could very easily take you, like, 12

hours when you're exhausted. So just to be super clear, this idea that, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead, or it's a good idea to sacrifice sleep or rest in order to get things done is scientifically inaccurate. It doesn't work. I would just love to dip into what you were talking about there. Like, it's not necessarily true that the more we do, the more benefit we get. And we've talked a lot about entrepreneurship, but I also think that applies to our healing

practices. And I think so many people come in with this idea of, like, probably because they're in a lot of pain and experiencing a lot of symptoms that are pretty severe and they want to get better fast. It's very natural to want that. But people will go with that same mindset and that same urgency and dysregulation into their own healing practices, where it's like, doing more, doing more, doing bigger things, and the thing is, the nervous system that's coming into all those healing practices

is not well resourced. And it doesn't have the capacity to positively adapt to that much different stimulus and stress. And so we have people like doing cold plunges and saunas and intermittent fasting. And all of these things can be really beneficial. But you have to have a nervous system that has. Is well resourced enough and has enough capacity to be resilient and adapt to that stress to get the positive

benefit. And so I think something important to talk about with listeners too, is that there is a minimum effective dose for all of the stuff, whether it's cognitive work or work in our business or work in our healing practices. And every nervous system is so unique and different. We really have to be

able to assess and reassess what's working for our nervous system. And to know that so much of the time, especially when we're talking about healing trauma, it's about moving at the pace of our nervous system in a way that it can respond and

adapt. And sometimes these little things, like Jennifer was talking about doing the visual reset or doing some grounding or just these little practical things can start to build up and increase capacity so that then we can do these more, you know, hermetic stressor type things that are exposing ourselves to a little bit of stress for adaptation. But that same principle kind of applies that we. It's not always best to do more and more and more

and we'll still be depleting ourselves. I mean, I never want to say never because obviously black and white thinking is also a trauma response. But it is rarely better to do more and more and more. It's depleting. Self care can be so depleting. Like, totally. I find myself sometimes, like, my self care routine is too much like I'm doing. I like. And I used to go outside of my house for some of my self care. I used to cold plunge and sauna and do all of that. But it was like, it

was not helping me. When I really looked at, like, what I do and what I get back from it, those are not two things that were helping me. In fact, I got myself a sauna blanket from a company. And I get so much more benefits by doing that in my house at night on my own time. Then having to, like, pay a membership, make sure that I do that, make sure I'm active in that. It was like. It was just so depleting. Now I just love a warm bath and, like,

it's so much simpler. And I think with self care, we can make it really complicated. And I think with healing too. Back to the rapid fixes that our culture and society likes and like trauma, healing isn't a rapid process like the nature of trauma. If the nature of trauma is too much too fast and we go into our healing, or into our healing with our same way with the nervous system, that it can't handle too much too fast, then we just, we re traumatize ourselves

with our healing. And I think that that can happen in business, in work, when we're suddenly like, okay, well, you know, I heard this podcast and people say to do less or whatever, and then it can actually really kick up a lot of fear patterning and stress patterning. That's unnecessary, which is why I love cover crops. It's like you can quote unquote, stay busy. Like, you can do active rest, right? It's not busy, but it's active rest.

Like, I remember I had a coach who I adore, and I think this was a great assignment, but she assigned to me. It was many years ago, long before I knew any of this stuff, to sit in a room for an hour and do nothing. It was. It was brutal. It was brutal. And if I knew now what I know, then I would have taken that in smaller doses. Yeah, I know. I mean, I have a lot of clients and myself too, same thing. Like, we hear all this stuff about meditation is so great, and. And

it is. It does have great benefits, and we have to dose it appropriately. And a nervous system that's in a state of dysregulation, having all these intense feelings and stress hormones, it can be really activating to try to sit still, to even to feel the internal sensations of your body too much too fast. All of this can really be

overwhelming. And so it's about calibrating at that right dose or finding other ways, like you said, cover crops or kind of moving meditations, mindfulness while you're doing other things, so that our system has the ability to get some movement, to get some regulation and practice being present in the moment, getting out of those racing thought loops without. I'm gonna sit in this room and have everything that I'm feeling get turned up really loud and try to then shame myself

for not being able to do it. Okay, I would love to know a little more. Like, where can people find you if they want to work with you more? Any closing thoughts? Yeah, so you can come find me on instagram at Northrup is a great place, and if you want sort of like an initial taste of some of the

principles and more description of them. You can just send me a DM that only has the word melt and I'll send you a guide called the pressure relief kit that's free, which just has some of my favorite practices for immediately relieving pressure without anything externally needing to change.

So and then catenorthrope.com is my website. I have a podcast called plenty which is about accessing money and time abundance, and I will say closing thoughts would just be that, you know, our worth is not determined by our productivity and we really are infinitely inherently worthy and we could never do anything to undo that. Amen. Thank you Kate, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice. We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical

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