From Chaos To Calm: 5 Techniques I Use To Regulate My Nervous System

Kinsey Machos: 00:01

I'm Kinsey Machos, your host and founder of the category Queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own league. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary with nothing more than a used MacBook and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized, helping thousands of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing and money, and more importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

Kinsey Machos: 00:56

Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category Queen show. Hello my category queen. So good to be here with you this morning or afternoon? Evening, whichever time you're listening and plugging in. I am actually out of the ordinary with my schedule. I'm actually recording this on a Saturday morning, which I don't normally do. Actually, on Saturdays. We are typically at the courts by now or at a cheer competition. So this is the first weekend in a really long time that we have had nothing going on.

Kinsey Machos: 01:41

But I am also leaving for a trip tomorrow and so I'm just getting ahead and doing a couple of little things this morning as the family is just lounging in the living room and enjoying a really low key Saturday morning. So I'm excited. I am going to hang out with just such incredible people in the next few days and going to places I've never been before and experiencing things I've never experienced before. And I am just. Sometimes I'm just like, is this real life? This is a reminder for you.

Kinsey Machos: 02:18

If you are not surrounding yourself with people who inspire you and activate new versions of you and bring out just the very best version of you, then I highly encourage you to find more circles of people like that, more communities, getting closer to people that are either doing what you're doing or much further ahead. Sometimes the people that I get to spend time with, I'm just like, is this for real? But that is because I set my mind to things and I do them and I think that it's easy to look at other people and think that they have something that you don't. But there's really nothing super special about me other than I just believe that I am worthy of the success I desire, and I go all in on making it happen, and it really just requires that commitment and that discipline.

Kinsey Machos: 03:21

But let's talk about a regulated nervous system. I am really excited to talk about this now. I have been thinking about bringing some more experts around this topic. It's something that is really important to me, and I've been growing my knowledge around this. I really started this journey around just understanding my body at a deeper level. When I was starting to, probably in my late twenty s, I started to notice a lot of changes in my body. I think I've shared before, when were trying to get pregnant with our third baby, I had a couple of miscarriages, and I just did not feel healthy, even though I was doing all the things right, exercising, eating well, and perceivably I was thin. I look at some of those pictures looking back, and I definitely, probably looked too thin.

Kinsey Machos: 04:17

But what I didn't understand at the time is everything happening on the inside, like the stress levels and the cortisol levels, and how my hormones were whacked out, because I really wasn't caring for my body in the way that it needs to. And I think that although I am not an expert by any means, when it comes to this, I have no credentials around this. I'm really going to be speaking from my personal experience, what I do know and what's working for me, because it has been so transformational.

Kinsey Machos: 04:48

And as I continue to learn more about the nervous system, how to regulate it, not just even from a high stress type of situation, but just being able to regulate your emotions in the ebbs and flows of life and business has been really a big focus of mine, because I noticed patterns where I was letting my emotions consume every part of me. And so in order to do that, though, in order to really see clearly, make decisions clearly, show up in a way that you really feel proud of, no matter what is happening around you have to really understand and honor your body and learn how to clear the emotions you don't desire, how to realign yourself so that you do feel calm and you can create that clarity in any situation that might feel muddy or you feel like is maybe crises, right?

Kinsey Machos: 05:54

I think that when we start to become a little bit more mature and we start to see success in our lives, a lot of that comes from just that overachievement. We just get really good at achieving and doing. But there came a time for me that I was way out of balance between the doing and the being. And I wasn't really checking in with myself enough, really wasn't understanding how my emotions and my nervous system were impacting the doing and were impacting really how I was feeling. Because you can create great success working really hard, but your work ethic will only get you so far. And even then, you may not feel as happy as you thought you would when you achieved the success that you went after.

Kinsey Machos: 06:53

And so what I want to share with you is just some tips and things that I have been using that have been working for me and also just some concepts to uncover so you can just evaluate where you are in your journey and where you might be able to leverage some improvement in this, because I think we all need it in a society where we're taught that more is better and that to numb out emotions when they're negative. Right. There's a lot of people sleeping in their life. They're sleeping through life because they don't know how to regulate their emotions. They don't know how to regulate their nervous system. So you'll hear me kind of interchange those things. Regulating emotions versus regulating your nervous system.

Kinsey Machos: 07:44

They are a little bit different, but in this sense, we're going to be talking about them all in sort of the same vein. And again, what I want to. Just a huge disclaimer. I'm not a clinician. I have no credentials around this. It really is just through my own journey of a lot of learning, a lot of reading, seeing a functional practitioner, really understanding how to improve my own peak performance, my productivity, but just feel better all the time and release, really release the habit that I have or the habit that I had built in myself to just work harder and just push through it. Okay. And so let's talk about what a dysregulated nervous system might look or feel like if this is you, okay?

Kinsey Machos: 08:34

Because I think sometimes even just knowing the signs, if you are out of balance or again, out of sync with your nervous system, a couple of things is that you are always stressed, you're always stressed, or you're always feeling anxious. Now, I am somebody that naturally has just higher anxiety, and I don't know if that could just be a story, right, that I've told myself for so long. But when I become more conscious of how I'm feeling, generally the baseline is just sort of this. Like, it's not always high anxiety, but a natural little bump in anxiousness. It, in the past, had always actually fueled me forward because I was always fearful of not getting the thing that I want or fear, I always fear. And I think this fear will always be in me, and I'm okay with that because it creates good.

Kinsey Machos: 09:32

It can create good results if I'm careful enough, but the fear of not fully stepping into my potential. But if you think about anything out of fear of the unknown or lack, it creates this constant anxiety, and it's putting pressure on your body, right, which then creates. It just becomes chronic stress. And I remember when I would hear people talk about chronic stress or chronic stress, and I would be like, that sounds so beyond me, right? That's like, oh, when you get super old, and I think you might have a vision of somebody that might be chronically stressed where they're totally frazzled, they're not sleeping, they're maybe considered a hot mess. But I think that the majority of humans are walking around chronically stressed.

Kinsey Machos: 10:24

And it may not even look what you think it looks like, but it's just constantly feeling the pressure to do something, be somewhere, perform at a certain level, achieve the certain thing right. Again, this is coming from where we're at as society and the pressures that we really pick up and then put on ourselves. And especially as women who are balancing a lot of different things and trying to be everything to everybody, I think this is even stronger. But I actually also just want to note here that I saw a reel on Instagram about a man, a dad. And it was so revealing because it was really just showing this visual of a man who.

Kinsey Machos: 11:11

A dad, again, a man, a husband, a dad who, in hiding, was actually suffering because of the pressure that he felt to be the caretaker of his family, the financial, emotional, mental caretaker of his family. But men, or this real was really just alluding to the fact that men typically hide it and or aren't comfortable voicing that. And I think that just goes along with this ideal that men need to be stronger, right? And vulnerability is weak. And I think that we all know, I think as women, too, we adopt a little bit more of that vulnerability faster. It's just easier for us to step into. Not all, and I don't mean this to be like a gender comparison, but that reel really just helped me realize that it's not just, yes, we have a lot on our plate, but so do men.

Kinsey Machos: 12:05

And we're all, as humans, collectively overstressed. Okay? And so if this goes unmanaged, there are consequences, which I want to talk about in a little bit. But that is, like, the number one indicator that you have a dysregulated nervous system is that you're always feeling stressed or you're constantly anxious. Another thing that comes up is difficulty concentrating or making decisions. So if you are not able to finish your work or you're sitting down and you feel like your head is just bursting with to dos or thoughts or trying to remember something, that's a couple of days ahead. Right.

Kinsey Machos: 12:44

This is, again, a typical mom brain where it's like I'm here writing a piece of content, and yet I just remembered that I needed to order a yearbook in time so that I don't forget to order a yearbook, because I've done that one year and my kids will never let me forget. Right. And so these thoughts are coming through, and we're thinking all the things, and so what happens? Right. We have difficulty concentrating and focusing and then completing work. Right. I think this, for me, I always saw as just, I kind of connected to my add. But add symptoms are also very similar to a dysregulated nervous system.

Kinsey Machos: 13:23

And I think that, again, I am no credentialed provider here or expert to talk about this, but even just in my reading, I think that in a lot of cases, these two things can be confused for one another. Add and a dysregulated nervous system. But that's all I say. I'll say about that. The other component of a dysregulated, regulated nervous system is sleep. Like 100%. If you're not sleeping well, this is because, again, your hormones are crazy, your cortisol levels are too high throughout the day. Right? So it's almost like when you have. I was explained to this, or my functional practitioner explained this to me, and you'll hear about adrenal fatigue, which really is just like, you're so tired, but then as soon as you lay your head on the pillow, it's like you get the second wind.

Kinsey Machos: 14:21

So again, dysregulated nervous system hormones are out of whack, and so it's really hard for your body and mind to settle in and sleep well. But if you are falling asleep, what happens, right, if your nervous system is out of sync, you're waking up frequently, or you're not getting into REM sleep like you need in order for you to fully recharge. This is why I got my aura ring, which, if you haven't heard about the aura ring, it's obviously a ring that you wear, and it has a lot more insights, more than, like, your apple watch around your sleep patterns and even just, like, little indicators around your heart rate variability and oxygen levels. I mean, there's so many things that it tracks.

Kinsey Machos: 15:05

But I specifically got it for sleep just to see what was happening because it felt like I was sleeping but I would wake up. And I'm not perfect. This is still something I'm really trying to dial in. But when you wake up, even after you feel like you've slept for seven or 8 hours and you still feel tired, you're not getting the rest that you need. And then of course through a dysregulated nervous system, you're irritable, you've got mood swings and then also physical symptoms that might come up like headaches and digestive issues. So I'm sharing this because again, this is just indicators that there's opportunities around regulating your nervous system. And I think that when we talk about at the highest level, like feeling better or looking better, it always goes to the surface level. Conversation, right? Exercise, move your body and eat.

Kinsey Machos: 15:57

Well, those are 100% important. But I think there's lacking education around how to regulate the insides to really anchor into calm and peace and how you can create how you can. This is possible. Even just saying this gives me chills. You can create peace and calm in any circumstance. And that's what I really want to offer for this conversation is if you feel like you're in constant chaos, especially if you have a life like mine where it's like three kids, full schedules. My husband and I both running businesses. Whoever said that when kids are young, it's busy, it's like crazy. When kids get older, it is like way busier. And there are so many details in our lives that we have to manage.

Kinsey Machos: 16:45

There are so many different places we have to be in literally one night and we're just constantly on to the next thing. And I think that if you're not careful, you just get swept up into the busyness. And so especially if you resonate with that, this is more important than ever because you will find a constant state of peace. Even when you look around and you're like, oh my gosh, this feels overwhelming. Right? But you get to change that state just through some of the techniques and stuff that we're going to be talking about today. Again, they're not earth shattering, you've probably already heard about them.

Kinsey Machos: 17:19

But I think the purpose of this conversation is to just stress the importance and just sharing my own story in the way that it's been transformative for me to give you a little bit more inspiration to start making this or installing this in your life from a daily practice. Okay, so those are indicators that your nervous system is out of whack and you're likely thinking like, okay, duh, these are all obvious, but again, this is just a check in to say, okay, I definitely have an improvement here, and especially if you haven't been feeling your best or you would love to have more energy or you're just ready to feel in control of your life. I think that was something that I really felt like I lost in different seasons of life. Right.

Kinsey Machos: 18:08

I think about in my corporate career and my past life, that was definitely a time that I felt a little more lost, and then I regained that control just by going on that journey of becoming an entrepreneur, developing more self awareness. But then I got sucked back in to just the achievement of entrepreneurship, and then the kids got older and we got sucked into that busyness of life. And so I don't think this is perfect. You're not going to just learn this, do these things, and then your life is going to be perfect forever. It's a constant ebb and flow and just continuing to re anchor yourself. Okay, so let's talk about what's going to happen if you don't manage this, if you don't start to really do the things you need to do to regulate your nervous system.

Kinsey Machos: 18:59

Also, this is not to scare you, but I think when we start, if you're like me, if I start to envision my life going down a path that I don't want it to go down, it just gives me more of that motivation to do the things I need to do, even if I don't feel like it. And these are just consequences that I also experienced. Right. I had to learn the hard way. So whether you've already experienced these or you haven't yet, again, let's do the best we can to mitigate as much as possible. So we have obviously, like, increased risk of mental health disorders. Okay. So it's no surprise that if you think about being chronically stressed, chronically anxious, what does that lead to? Right. Depression, amongst other things. But I think that this is one that was huge for me.

Kinsey Machos: 19:49

I am just prone to depression, and I'm still really learning the layers within that and really what that means from a mental health diagnosis versus just feeling depressed. Sometimes. I don't know. I can't say one is different than the other or what have you. Again, I'm not a clinician. Again, I'm just sharing from my own personal experience and what I've learned, but I've always been more prone to that. And I have been told it's because it is in my bloodline. I have bipolar in my bloodline. I have, amongst a lot of other things that were passed down, but I've just had to be more aware of it, right? And so if we continue to stay or if I continued to stay in that chronically stressed place, what would happen is I would burn out and then I would feel depressed.

Kinsey Machos v: 20:44

And I couldn't describe why. It was like, well, I got everything I wanted. Why do I feel so sad? Okay, so that was really a huge wake up call for me. And that was what tipped the scale the other way. I was like, I cannot go on this way anymore. And then you have obvious other reasons, just like, again, generally, cardiovascular problems, impaired immune function. If you think about the people that are chronically stressed, they're also getting sick a lot because your immune system is shot, because it's overworking. And then digestive orders and then just quality of life. The consequences of not regulating your emotion is a decreased quality of life. And that shouldn't be earth shattering news, right? If you think about running around in chaos all the time, you don't get to enjoy the now.

Kinsey Machos: 21:34

It's really hard to see all the abundance around you, all the blessings around you, and really be present to it, because it's the constant chase, right? The pressure to do the next thing, the pressure to be somewhere else. And while you cannot change the circumstances, you can absolutely change how you respond to them in alignment to how you want to feel in your life. And this is why I love to talk about this, right? I can't give you the exact cardiovascular diagnoses that have been connected to a dysregulated nervous system. But I think at the core, what this is about is feeling better and controlling your life in a way that you are feeling proud. You want to control how you feel amongst anything else and feel happy, a genuine happiness then nobody can take away from you.

Kinsey Machos: 22:29

Okay, so that's what I'm most excited about because that is truly what I have been experiencing for myself. Okay, so let's talk about some different strategies that I have been using that have helped me do this well. And again, this is not an overnight thing. It's not about implementing everything at once. And it's also not just doing it one time and never again. These are practices that I have been installing in my day to day consistently. And if you would have told me this a couple of years ago, I would have said, hell no, because it's hard. These are harder things. These are more conceptual things that you're like, oh, I've heard that before. That won't work for me, or that doesn't really move the needle.

Kinsey Machos: 23:15

Okay, that was me a couple of years ago, but I promise, promise, promise that these have been so transformational for me. But it didn't just happen by doing it a few times a week or going balls to the wall for a couple of months and then being done. I've built this consistently throughout, and I want to offer that you can take some and leave some, but these are basic enough that you should be wanting to do them every day, and it's going to help you feel better every day. Okay, so the first piece to this is mindfulness. Mindfulness. And this is connected to meditation. And I'm going to connect both of these together, mindfulness and meditation.

Kinsey Machos: 23:58

But I want to speak about mindfulness in maybe a different way than you've heard it and separate from meditation, but mindfulness is really just becoming more present in your now it's really living in a conscious state and becoming more aware. So when you think about it, most of us are operating out of. A lot of what we're doing is coming from autoprogramming. We've done the same thing, we've thought the same thoughts. We've had the feelings for so long that they're just autoprogrammed in us, just like it is when we hop in a car and start driving and we don't even have to think about this now. I could spend probably, like five episodes just talking about this one thing, especially because I've been totally nerding out on subconscious and conscious mind and a lot of Dr. Joe Dispenza's work.

Kinsey Machos: 24:49

I'm going to link up my favorite book from his that helped me just understand this at a deeper level. But when you become more aware and more right, it means that you're more awake to life. If you think about the opposite of this, it means really just rolling through life, becoming completely unaware of what you're thinking, how you're feeling, and how that's impacting your actions. And it's also meaning that you are completely disconnected from where you are right now. And so mindfulness can help you reconnect to that. It can help you become more conscious of what is happening right now and why. I actually have always heard mindfulness, but it didn't resonate with me until my therapist a couple of years ago.

Kinsey Machos: 25:42

When I was in this chronic chaos, I realized I was having, for one, my memory issues again, just constantly it goes back to add similar symptoms. Whereas I would start a task and then I would get distracted. So I'd start another task and then before you know it, I have the milk in the fridge and an unmade bed and a million other projects that I had started and not finished. She had actually introduced this concept to me around just doing one thing at a time. And I think, again, if you think about society, it's like, multitasking is amazing. Multitasking is awarded, right? You even see it in job descriptions. Like, has to be good at multitasking. Multitasking is the worst.

Kinsey Machos: 26:36

But anyway, she had taught me to, even in the mornings when I'm brushing my teeth, to not do something else because I would brush my teeth while I was also putting the dishes away or making my bed. And that's what was causing this constant just one thing to the next and also not really realizing what I was doing. And so I would brush my teeth and I would just sit there and I would just stand there and just say to myself, I'm brushing my teeth. I'm brushing my teeth. And it sounds so crazy, but a, what this does is it's slowing you down, right. And if we think about mindfulness and bringing our full awareness and attention and consciousness to the right now, we can really gain so much from that. So a couple of things.

Kinsey Machos: 27:19

When you think about mindfulness, it's like a little frame. I'm going to give you a little framework here. First of all, attention, right? So when you are focusing attention on the present moment, you can start to become more aware of your bodily sensations and sensory experiences. So you're just tuning in, right. If you think about really turning down the outside noise and then turning up your awareness to your body, it is really powerful. And then the awareness we have gaining attention of the present moment and then bringing more awareness to that. So cultivating an open and non judgmental awareness of whatever is happening in that present moment, including those thoughts and emotions and sensations. So with brushing your teeth, obviously there may not be a lot that comes up or emotions that come up when you're thinking and feeling about brushing your teeth.

Kinsey Machos: 28:18

But let's say, for instance, you are arguing with your partner or you're having a challenge with your kid or you're feeling frustrated in your business, when we pause a bring our attention to that present moment, clear the clutter, clear the outside noise, and then we become aware of what is happening. Why am I feeling this way? Which also will open you up to say, why am I thinking this way. And you can learn so much about yourself just by becoming aware of what is happening in your body in that moment that is driving those emotions, that is having you act in this way that you don't feel proud of acting and then acceptance, allowing those experiences just to be as they are without trying to change or resist them. So this is so hard.

Kinsey Machos: 29:15

This is so hard for, I think, us as women to do when we just have to accept things as they are. But I think that when we say it like that, it definitely feels disempowering. But when we can just see things through a new lens, see things through a different lens, and we don't create more resistance to other things or other people, then you can really soften those emotions, which then will put you into a more empowered state. So attention, awareness, and acceptance. And again, these levers, you'll have to pull more than the other depending on what situation you're in.

Kinsey Machos: 29:52

But when you think about mindfulness in general, it's just bringing you into the now, whether you need to learn why you're feeling this way or get back into the driver's seat with your emotions, or just calm yourself for a minute, this can be a really powerful technique. So what is the difference between mindfulness and meditation? So I see mindfulness and meditation as bringing you to a similar result. But in my mindfulness is just something you can practice at every moment of your life. And meditation, to me, is an actual technique or practice for you to dedicate just a certain amount of time to training yourself to bring attention and awareness and cultivate that mental clarity and create that calmness and relaxation. So mindfulness, again, is just something that you should be practicing at any moment.

Kinsey Machos: 30:48

I'll say one more thing about mindfulness that I didn't mention, and that is really being able to manage this goes back to managing your emotions. Right? When you're managing your emotions, you're going to do less things out of fear, lack, or negative emotions. Right? When you're feeling mad or angry and you act out of those emotions, nothing ever good comes of it. And so when we can bring that attention to, okay, I'm feeling this way, I'm in this scenario, I'm going to let things be how they are right now, but then we get to change how we actually want to feel and actually want to behave. You will change the results of any, again, argument, relationship, circumstance by just pausing and asking yourself, why are you feeling this way?

Kinsey Machos: 31:39

And knowing that it's not really about anything or anyone else other than you and what you're thinking and feeling about it. And I don't have time to go into a lot about what that is. I'll start a new episode around how thoughts are playing into your result cycles. But at the end of the day, you will give yourself that space and distance from your emotions so you can really observe them and become, again, get control of how you want to think and feel instead. Okay, so back to meditation. I consider this the actual technique and time that you're going to carve out just to create this formal practice, if you will. So, meditation, again, was something that just never resonated with me. I never felt different afterwards. I felt like it was really forced, and it didn't give me anything instantly.

Kinsey Machos: 32:39

And so I just figured probably, like maybe you, that it doesn't work. But here's the important piece about meditation, and this is something that I learned from Dr. Joe Dispenza and his work, and it completely transformed how I think and feel about meditation. So, when you think about just mindfulness, right, and bringing that into your meditation practice, now you have a dedicated time where there is no one else around you. You're not doing anything. So it's a lot easier to bring that mindfulness to you. And also, you are starting to create different wiring with your brain. So when we think about your conscious and your subconscious mind, we talked about the autoprogramming, right. A lot of us, most of what we do is just an autoprogramming from thinking and feeling and doing the same things over the course of years, potentially decades.

Kinsey Machos: 33:39

And so we're not even aware of that, though a lot of you might not even be aware of some of the subconscious beliefs that are happening and creating these memorized emotions and then therefore creating these undesired results that you keep getting over and over again. When we bring in the mindfulness and specifically start to practice meditation, you can quiet the mind and start to bring in more awareness and intentionality with how you want to think and feel instead. But it's not just from the now. So the mindfulness is, yes, bringing you into the now, but what we want to do is also start to just dissolve from our current reality. Okay, this is going to sound a little bit woo. But again, this is something that has been just really impactful and really resonated with me when I started to learn Dr.

Kinsey Machos: 34:40

Joe Dispenza's work. But we're just constantly operating in the now or, sorry, in our current circumstances. Right. We're just always solving problems from the same consciousness that created them. And so we have to create a new reality. We have to separate ourselves from the current circumstances and just dissolve into nothingness and really quiet ourselves, quiet our body, and really start to bring in more of that spirituality, the relaxation, mental clarity, emotional balance. I mean, there's so many things here. There's a lot of different meditative practices that you can infuse in that are going to involve visioning and a lot of different type of guided meditations around manifestation or learning how to surrender. I love those. But I think the whole purpose here is we have to really disconnect from the chaos around us and just be.

Kinsey Machos: 35:40

This is a really difficult and challenging thing to do, which I think is the reason a. It never worked for me before because I didn't understand at its core what the purpose was. And if I don't understand how it's going to benefit me, it's hard for me to anchor to something consistently, but also it's hard to do that. And we don't want to do hard things all the time, but I promise it's worth it. And as I consistently practice this technique and really starting to disconnect from that and quiet my mind and start to put myself in a new reality, I can start to quickly align, or more quickly align to the version of myself that I want to become, that I feel proud of, and then bring that into the now. Are you following me again?

Kinsey Machos: 36:32

I'm going so a little bit what might feel woo here, but there's so much science around this as well. I will link up to another book that helped me, again, understand the science behind things, because sometimes these things can just feel a little bit abstract. And if you're like me and need to understand the mechanics behind it so that you could buy into it, so that you actually do it, then I got you. Okay, so mindfulness and meditation, again, two different ways of thinking about it, but really the same similar concept. Mindfulness you can do in every moment and should be really just pausing more to hone in on your thinking and your feeling and slowing down.

Kinsey Machos: 37:13

And then that meditation, a dedicated time where you're really practicing this technique to just transcend into a new reality where there's nothing and it's just you and your mind, and you have some of those different practices and techniques that you can build in to really bring more of what you desire into your now. So these are huge. And again, I'll say this in that I was that person that would hear things like this, and I would be like, whatever that doesn't work or that takes too much time. But I promise, promise. After doing this consistently, I can say confidently that it works if you work it. Now, the second technique that I have been using consistently, probably for the last, I don't know, three to four months, is breath work.

Kinsey Machos: 38:09

And I was so gracious, or my dear friend was so gracious in bringing this technique into my life. She got certified in a specific breath work technique. We mentioned it briefly on the previous episode, but this has been a game changer. And although she uses a very specific technique called hypno. Breath work, really, when you think about it, breath work is a critical and vital element to regulating your nervous system, because there are. Well, I could go on and on about the benefits of breath work, but just to name a few. I think the number one for me has been instant stress relief. So if you have an apple watch, you might have that reminder on there that's like, breathe. Like, take a few moments to breathe or whatever.

39:03

And I remember when I was first seeing my functional practitioner, she would remind me to take time to do a little bit of breath, and it was not a certain technique or anything, but just to breathe. And again, I didn't fully understand the science of it. And also the version of me then was, quote unquote, too busy to do it, which is so ironic if you think about it. And I actually heard Dr. Joe Dispenza say that you should be meditating at least 40 minutes a day, but if you think you're too busy to meditate, then you should be meditating for an hour or more, right? Because the busy people need it the most.

Kinsey Machos: 39:37

So when I started to really understand breath work, and then I learned this technique from my girlfriend who got certified, I really saw the most improvement in that instant stress relief. It can immediately calm your nervous system. It can get you into that or out of that fight or flight and into really, that just induces this calm and relaxed state almost instantly. And again, if you're feeling more anxious or there's extra stress happening, you can leverage a breath work type of technique to instantly calm your body. And it is magical how this works, not just short term, but also long term. The other components to this that I really love are that mind body connection. It feels like when I am breathing, when I'm leveraging a certain breath work technique, what's happening is there's this energy flow, right?

Kinsey Machos: 40:43

So when you're meditating and you're a little bit more still, most meditations will have maybe a tiny bit of a breath work pattern. They'll introduce. But most meditations, it's really just following the prompts or really sitting in that silence. And when you leverage a more specific breath work technique that is focused on a certain rhythm or flow to me, I just feel the energy coming in and out of me. Right. So if you need to release energy, like, if there's all this pent up stress and just, like, chronic anxiety just hanging around in your body, the breath just moves it. It's so powerful. And when you start to move that stall, like, that stale energy, you will feel different instantly. I think that I see them when I think of these different techniques.

Kinsey Machos: 41:41

Breath work gives you more of that instant relief, whereas meditation brings in more of that long term stillness and mental clarity. But both of these, hand in hand, are incredible. And in fact, Chelsea, my amazing best friend, who just introduced this technique and now is doing it with our clients, and the transformations have been so incredible. But when this certain breath work technique, it actually blends a little bit of both meditation and breath work. And so infusing these two are actually really powerful. But whatever breath work technique you decide to do, it only has to be even five or ten minutes a day or a couple of times in your day and just pausing and anchoring to your body and moving that energy in and out.

Kinsey Machos: 42:33

When you think about even your breath, I imagine it going from my lungs to my brain and out my mouth, right? Because when you increase that breath, it increases the oxygen to your brain. And so if you think about it, even in that lens, I literally feel that connectedness from my mind and my body, and it just feels so anchored. And if you can hear it in my voice, I feel so excited about this because, again, it's been really transformational. Some days, I will do 330 minutes breath work sessions. If I'm a little bit more anxious or feeling a little bit more deflated or frustrated or angry, I'm moving that energy out of my body. I'm focusing on something different that's going to produce new emotions for me. But most importantly, just getting that energy flowing, super important.

Kinsey Machos: 43:23

So you can find a lot of different resources for this, but a free resources insight, which will also have meditations on it, but they have breath work sessions on there that you can do. But either way, whether you use an app or not, you can literally just decide that you're going to have a little alarm on your phone every couple of hours, and you're just going to take five minutes to breathe and close your eyes again. It just disconnects you from the chaos around you gets you anchored right and moves that energy through, it's increasing the brain flow. You're going to feel more energized, and I promise you will instantly feel transformed. Okay.

Kinsey Machos: 44:05

The third technique that I want to share that is so crucial, and I have heard about this technique, and I always had used it from time to time, but I actually heard a podcast episode between Joe Rogan and Gary Brecka. Gary Brecka is the founder of Ten X Health systems. He's a human biologist and biohacker. And I don't listen to all of Joe Rogan's episodes, but my husband is an avid listener, and heard this one. He was like, oh, my gosh, you'll love this. We totally geek out on this stuff. And Gary really just installed the foundations of a better life and a better health. And he goes into depth around, really, the unique intellectual property that they have created is incredible.

Kinsey Machos: 44:52

But at the highest level, he talks about the most important things that you need in the morning that are free sunlight, grounding and breathing. And when I heard it in this context, I was like, yes. It just affirms that we can do these most simple practices every day that are going to help us feel better and regulate our emotions and regulate our mind and really stay the course for the desires that we want. We want to bring more of what we desire into our life. And grounding is something that is, again, it can feel very abstract or conceptual, but it's a technique that you use. You just take off your shoes and your socks and you just stand in the ground in your bare feet.

Kinsey Machos: 45:38

And this is so powerful because if you think about even just being outside and being in nature, there is a lot of natural healing capacities that just come from earth. Now, I'm not going to go into super detail on this, because there's, again, more science around grounding, but it's really simple, because when you are really connecting to the earth, it creates this electrical charge and it also can balance. What it does is it balances your body's electrical charge and again, promotes that health and well being. And so this is what I started doing, actually. I would feel really drained after coaching calls. And if you think about it, you're just like constantly exchanging energy with people. And so you pick up on all these different, especially for someone like me, who is a little bit more sensitive to stimuli. Right.

Kinsey Machos: 46:40

I need to clear a lot of that. And you can get that instant, again, instant gratification or instant relief when you just go stand out in the ground or the grass with your bare feet. And I will link up to that episode that I listened to because it is so good. But also, he gives a little bit more of that detail around grounding. There's a lot of resources out there that talk about this. You can actually now buy these mats that will give you that electrical charge without having to go outside. But the whole point here is that we need to go outside, and you need to be connecting to the earth, right? And when you think about our bodies and our ancestors, our bodies weren't really designed to be in boxes. This is something that I learned from my functional practitioner.

Kinsey Machos: 47:29

We're in a box in our homes. We sleep on a mattress, right? But back in the day, quote unquote, back in the day, our ancestors were walking around in nature. They were sleeping on the ground. They were really letting the earth's resources provide for them. But now we have all these things around us that are actually depleting us in a lot of ways from our energy and our magnetism, and it's leading to these deflated bodies and minds. And so grounding is just such a powerful technique. Again, you don't have to do it for very long. I love to do it first thing in the morning, but anytime throughout the day, you just need a little bit of that recharge. It feels so good. And then this brings me to the fourth piece, which is looking being out in the sun.

Kinsey Machos: 48:15

So a long time ago, when I was working in corporate, I would go from my house to drop off the kids in daycare to commute to work, right, work all day, be in the building, work, or move again from work, transfer transport, drive back to daycare to pick up the kids, then drive home, then work out at home, and then go to bed. I was hardly outside during the week. Even if it was nice out, maybe it would be a little bit outside again. These were the days when I was working so much and were living outside of the city, so my commute was longer and it had a toll on me. When you are not getting that sunlight right, you're going to have the obvious vitamin D deficiency. But it is soothing to your soul. You have to see the sun.

Kinsey Machos: 49:12

And when you do this first thing in the morning, it helps set your circadian rhythm. So if you are having problems sleeping and you're off, this can help you stay that way. It kicks off your body. It creates that circadian rhythm. Kick starts that circadian rhythm and gets you constant. But then just having that sunlight in your body through your eyes is so powerful. I've done it so much so that I try not to wear sunglasses outside. I learned that you don't really need sunglasses, and, in fact, not wearing them is better for you. Now, it's kind of hard sometimes, especially you have sensitive eyes, but this is so powerful. So we have the grounding technique, going outside first thing in the morning, but also throughout the day as you need it, just bare feet in the ground.

Kinsey Machos: 50:02

And you can do that while number four, getting more sunlight on your face first thing in the morning. That's going to help set that circadian rhythm. But then how many days really checking in with yourself? How many times per day and how many days per week are you outside? Again, were not designed to just sit in a box all day. This can totally just. You can feel it, right? When you think about a regulated nervous system, it's getting that healthy sunlight, it's getting that fresh air, you're getting that electrical charge through your body, and you're constantly just allowing yourself to let the earth even just nurture you. Right? This just sounds so crazy, but I'm telling you, it will change you. Okay. And so then, lastly, that brings me to number five, which is moving your body. I don't like to say necessarily exercise.

Kinsey Machos: 50:57

Now, I believe that strength training has been transformational in just my body, especially because I want to gain more muscle. I want to feel strong. I don't want to be weak, especially as I get older. I want strong bones, I want strong muscles. But no matter what, if I can't make it into the gym or I'm not strike training that day, I'm always moving my body outside. I'm always walking, even when it's really cold. And that also helps me get outside, get that sunlight if the sun is out, and really just allow that fresh air to move through me, you need to move your body.

Kinsey Machos: 51:33

And I think that if you were like me several years ago, I thought that being healthy meant overly exercising and going so hard that it was actually putting more stress on my body, which was then actually making my nervous system go way out of whack. And so moving your body can be as simple as walking. I don't even like running anymore. It's so powerful. And when you are stagnant all day, imagine what's happening in your heart, in your mind, in your muscles, in your blood. Right? Got to move your body, and you should want that. You should desire that. And that will help you regulate when you're also feeling charged with negative emotions. This is something that you can practice right? You can definitely breathe. You can meditate. Sometimes meditation is harder to do in the day. Dr.

Kinsey Machos: 52:25

Joe Dispenza actually recommends meditating in the morning and the night, when you're still in that alpha state, a little bit more sleepy in the middle of the day, it's really hard or harder. And so moving your body can actually, if you think about even that visual of energy moving through your body, like breathing, moving can do that, too. And so if I'm feeling charged or I just need to release something, I'll go walk. It's that easy, right? So these are the five techniques that you can use instantly and should be using to start to feel better. You can create calm in anywhere you go. And this is not coming from somebody that naturally had calm in her life. I've always had chaos from childhood. I was raised in chaos, in crises, and so I adopted that as my norm.

Kinsey Machos: 53:17

And I thought that was okay. I thought it was normal to live that way. I thought the feelings I was having were normal. None of that is normal. So I have had to practice really hard to bring this in, but it works. And so if it can work for me, I know it can work for you. And I promise the payoff is huge. You have more happiness. You have more joy even when things around you aren't going well. Because, again, you cannot control the things that are happening around you, but you can absolutely control how you show up in a way that you feel proud and brings you that calm and that peace and that happiness.

Kinsey Machos: 53:51

And then, most importantly, you're able to continue to think the things you want, have the feelings that you desire, so you can keep taking the action that is going to move you to your future goals, to those future achievements, while just enjoying the now. I think that's really just the most important piece. So I hope you enjoyed this. This is a little bit longer episode, but I could totally nerd out on this. All day. I have been really loving to learn, just not just take my knowledge deeper into this realm, but also just becoming more of a master of these routines because it truly is transformational. It's just really incredible. So if you love this episode, just shoot me a note on Instagram at Kinsey Mackus. Or you can send me an email as well.

Kinsey Machos: 54:37

I'd love to hear from you, but until then, see you next week. Hey, if you're ready to stand out online and get paying clients consistently without having to fumble your way through tech run ads or create complicated funnels, I want to invite you to join us in the category queen school, where you're going to learn my simple, proven formula for getting clients online. It's risk free. You either make your money back or we'll give you a refund. Just head over to kinseymachos.com/thecqschool and join today to get instant access. We'll see you inside.