Podcast - Dr Carrie Rigoni on Wild and Well with Dr Hilary Clare
This blog post is a transcript of the podcast interview between Dr Hilary Clare and Carrie Rigoni. It was created for those of you who prefer to read rather than listen (please forgive any grammar mistakes, it may have come across differently verbally vs in written form).
Welcome to the Wild and Well Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr. Hilary Claire, a clinical psychologist, holistic parenting mentor with a focus on nutrition and environmental medicine, the yogi, author and mom of two wild boys.
Here, we will delve into the big and the little things that move the needle for children's health and mental wellness in a modern world that doesn't always make it easy to do so. Together, we can nurture resilient kids, vibrant mothers and a brighter future for the planet and the next generation. Let's get into it.
In today's episode, I had the honor of talking with the incredible Dr. Carrie Ragoni.
We chatted all about how we can support our nervous system and our children's nervous system to be healthy and regulated. So Dr. Carrie Ragoni is a chiropractor who works with mums and babies to optimise their baby's brain development and set them up for lifelong health.
She loves talking all about the vagus nerve and all the factors that can influence brain development. She has a busy practice in Perth, Western Australia and is passionate about optimising the vagus nerve and setting our next generation up, not only for healthy,thriving bodies, but brains, immune systems and stress resilience too. Dr. Carrie offers a group coaching program for mothers and babies along with a number of other resources that you can get at her website. So enjoy the podcast and I hope that you can take some things away from this to apply to your nervous system to help you be more regulated and flexible.
Welcome, Carrie.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm so excited to talk to you all about the vagus nerve and how we can support our little ones nervous systems and our own so we can just be healthier and happier and calmer. And I think it is such a big part of our health journey that is really, really missing. So very excited to talk to you about this today.
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
So before we begin, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what it is that you
do?
Yes, I am by trade. I'm a chiropractor. I'm quite out of the box chiropractor, you could say. And what I mostly do in practice is work with mums and children on their vagal tone, which we will cover, what that means, if you're not sure yet. So working with parents to help up regulate their child's vagal tone, which can really change the whole dynamic of a family.
And then working with the mum as well as we know that mums and kids are so connected. Working with families to improve their dynamic and their health through vagal tone.
Amazing. I'm just utterly fascinated by the nervous system. And once I heard you speak a few years ago about the vagus nerve and I just thought, this is the missing piece.
And as a psychologist, I do think it is an integral part that we don't necessarily get trained in or think about when we use talk therapy. And in psychology, we do focus on health overall, like sleep hygiene and how the impact of exercise has on mood and various things. But we don't get into the vagus nerve.
So I think it is so important. So can you tell us a little bit about what the vagus nerve is, why it's important and just the basics of our nervous system.
Yes, I completely agree. I feel like it is the missing link. And when I discovered it for my own health, and it made such a big difference, then I was like, okay, I need to know everything I can about the vagus nerve. And so yes, that's how I became to specialise in it. And I'm particularly interested in how it works in kids, because then if they have a healthy nervous system, they, you know, we're optimising a period of rapid growth and development. So, you know, my passion is, I guess my mission is to prevent all of these chronic diseases that are happening in children that are actually stress on nervous system regulation driven at the root of it.
So the vagus nerve is the largest cranial nerve in the body, kind of like at the base of your brain. And it drops down through your neck. So the vagus nerve runs through the front of your neck, under your collarbones, through your chest and your thorax, all the way through your digestive system, all the way down, basically to your pelvic floor. And it's called vagus, which in Latin means the wandering nerve, because it literally has these little projections, like an octopus with many more than eight legs, all through the whole body. And so it kind of is really connected to our entire internal organs.
Now it controls a lot of our automatic processes that we're just not, we don't even have to think about, you know, our breathing, our heart rate, our blood pressure, how quickly food moves through our digestive tracts and how our gut muscles actually contract as it's pushing matter through our bowels. All of these things that happen behind the scenes. And that's sort of like a top down process, you know, the brain through the vagus nerve says, Hey, body, we're going to do this. But then a really big part of the vagus nerve is a bottom up process. So this is where the vagus nerve is sensing what is happening in our organs in our body and actually in our external environment as well. And feeds that up to the brain and says, Hey, brain, you're safe or hey, brain, I feel like there's something threatening happening in your environment.
And you need to kind of stay on edge or be hyper vigilant. So the vagus nerve has a really big role to play in, I guess what I call the baseline or the set point of our nervous system where it hovers day by day, because it's subconsciously sending these messages to the threat centers of our brain to tell us whether we should be safe or whether our nervous system does need to stay on edge. So kind of creates that, yeah, that baselinethat we live by and the lens that we see the world in and how we respond to stress.
And then you know, the final part of the vagus nerve is it has the ability to pull us out of the stress response once it's been activated. So a strong healthy vagus nerve will allow stress to happen when it's needed, because stress is actually not the enemy. We need stress and we need our sympathetic nervous system to activate in times of stress. But really, we're designed for us to be able to drop out of that stress response as quickly as we get in and to reregulate our nervous system and get back into that parasympathetic that rest and digest part of our nervous system.
So a strong healthy vagus nerve with high vagal tone will be able to do that really quickly. So say like, you know, you run your late for work or your late for the bus and you can see it up ahead and you're running really fast, you kind of want to activate the stress response. And then once you get on the bus and you sit down, you want to your nervous system should be like, okay, well, that's done, you know, I can pull back out of that stress response, I don't need to be activated anymore.
But if your vagus nerve is not working optimally, then you might actually be stuck in that stress response. So, you know, one of the questions I ask my patients a lot is, well, if you have one stressor in your day, does that then ruin your day? Do you feel like the rest of your day is kind of you're stuck in this like, Oh, why is everything so bad and all of this? And that's because your vagus nerve hasn't been able to pull you out.
So you're kind of stuck in that hyper vigilant state and your nervous system, it's, it's lens of looking at the world is looking for things that can go wrong and be a threat to your well-being, as opposed to coming back into that social engagement. I'm calm, I'm going to be, you know, I'm happy, like water off a duck's back kind of thing.
So why do you think that vagal issues are so common now that we, it seems everybody, kids and adults alike have nervous system dysregulation?
Why is that happening now?
The two biggest things that impact vagal, vagal activation or the ability for your vagus nerve to work are how much inflammation is in your body, no matter where that comes from and how much stress or cortisol stress hormone we have in our body. So I think in this day and age, becoming more and more of an issue because we are bombarded, you know, even from a sensory point of view, we drive down the freeway and there's billboards that are flashing advertisements like our nervous system is just like very much bombarded beyond our control. And if we're not aware of how that makes our nervous system feel, all these things just like put us up just a notch and then something else puts us up just another notch, you know, and it just goes up and up before, and then our baseline has shifted and we've not really been aware of the shift because it's been so subtle over time.
So unfortunately, I think it's really common because it's just the sign of the times. It's just the modern day life, rush, rush, rush, high stress jobs. We're always busy, we're trying to pack everything we can in, like busy moms trying to juggle work and kids and extracurricular activities and, maybe study like you and I would have my well, at least for me, that's something that fills my cup. So I'm always trying to fit that into my schedule.
You know, all of these things. And then on top of that, we're eating a more inflammatory diet. We're going for convenience food where our microbiome may be a little bit more off because we've had a lot more antibiotics in our lifetime. There's internal body inflammation for whatever reason, and there's a myriad of reasons versus external stressful cues.
So there's a lot that we're bombarded by and it seems really challenging to shift that. But if we can at least focus on being intentional with our lifestyles and slowing things down, that can help in one respect.
But then also if we can actively and intentionally work on strengthening our vagal tone and allowing that parasympathetic nervous system to come on board once in a while can really help balancing things out. Is that correct?
So what I find when you're working with a vagus nerve is it is bidirectional. So you can remove all the stresses, as you say, I think there's a real movement towards a slower motherhood and actually like really embracing how hard mums have had it and how this rush culture doesn't suit our nervous system. You know, like slowing that down and allowing our, I guess, permission for us to just activate that parasympathetic.
So we can do it from the external, but then, you know, doing it from the internal also in terms of actually how you stimulate your vagus nerve is going to the stronger your vagus nerve is, the more it's going to tell the threat centres of your brain, hey, you're safe. So it's kind of coming at it from a bottom up point of view and an out at end point of view.
So that'd be the most effective way to deal with it from both ways, I would imagine.
How can we identify our own vagus nerve isn't functioning optimally?
I think for a lot of people, because the vagus nerve connects to so many organs, everyone can present with different symptoms. So it's never very clear cut. But I would say a really big one is how you respond to a stressor. So if you, if you do have a stressful moment, maybe the kids are really, you know, resistant to going to school and the school rush is really getting to you. If that ruins the rest of your day, or you feel your heart's racing and you really feel like you're in that stress response for longer than is warranted, then that is a really surefire sign that your vagus nerve is not kicking in to allow you to regulate.
Now, there's things you can absolutely do after a stressor happens to then be able to do that. But just as a baseline, if that's how your your nervous system is working, that's probably the biggest sign. And then, flowing over from that is, the vagus nerve is the largest anti-inflammatory influencer of the body.
So if you're chronically inflamed for no reason, or you're chronically fatigued, or you just can't seem to figure out why your body is the way it is. Maybe you just feel really depleted, or you snap at your kids too much and you don't want to, and you're trying consciously, not to, but it's an automatic process that just comes out of your mouth before you can even control it. All of these things are just the biggest nerve isn't working optimally.
Right. So what are some of the things that we can do if we notice that we are like ticking some of those boxes?
What can adults do to help support their nervous system and strengthen their vagus nerve?
What I would encourage you to do is take a close look at what could be happening internally.
So a lot of people will start focusing on say meditation and gargling, and you know, we've all read the blog posts about gargling helping vagal tone, or maybe, cold water immersion, cold showers, or just splashing cold water on your face, and all of that stuff does help.
But the thing that I do in practice and the thing that, I guess, sets me apart when I'm working with the vagus nerve is that, my question is always, why is it like this? Is this just a stress problem and a regulation problem? Have you not been ever taught how to regulate your nervous system? Or is there something happening in your gut? Or are you nutritionally depleted because you're growing a couple of babies and breastfed them, and they’ve just stolen every last nutrient that you have, you know, like figuring out what is driving the vagus nerve to shut down, because the nervous system can't tell the difference between an external threat and an internal threat.
By the time that your vagus nerve has gone, there's a threat that goes straight into the threat centres of the brain, and these areas of the brain work much faster than our rational brain can. So it fires up our nervous system before we have the time to think about it.
So we really need to get to the root of why the vagus nerve can't function properly, and why it's detecting a threat in the first place.
Now that could be something inside your body, such as the nutrient depletion or gut inflammation, or as simple as sleep deprivation, or it could be something external in which you can help it regulate more. So I think the biggest missing link that I see when people are working with the vagus nerve is they're not going deep enough to find the root cause of why it's why it's not working.
A lot of mums who come in will say, well I do yoga and I eat perfectly, and I'm doing all the things and it feels like so much hard work just to stay afloat, but the moment you stop doing it, then your nervous system collapses again. There's something in there that, and that's my job to find out if there's something going on in there that is throwing the system off balance, and it doesn't matter what you do around that. You could gargle all day every day, you could go live on a tropical island and be waited on hand and foot and have no stress ever. And your vagus nerve would still be driving this stress response. So I know that's not a specific answer.
And you know, a lot of people will be like, well, I don't know what it is, but you need to get to the root, the like the real trigger of why your vagus nerve is acting the way that it's acting. Yeah, and I think that is so important.
And it would be lovely if it was just like, just gargle every day for a minute and you're set, but realistically, most things aren't like that, are they? Those things can help support it and can help you in those moments, but it's not the cure all is it? We have to dig deeper for most things.
So what about in children?
What does a dysregulated nervous system look like or a child that has poor vagal tone?
The vagus nerve has a lot to do with the functions of a newborn. So you think in terms of how often they cry, how often they release their bowels, whether they can have a good strong latch or whether you've struggled with breastfeeding and the vagus nerve has a role to play in how they, their jaw moves, how they latch, how they suck, how they swallow. So you know, babies who maybe seem to feed okay that they gag and choke at the breast all the time.
And the other really big one in small children is the level of safety cues that they need from their caregiver. So a baby with low vagal tone or I guess like a high need for external safety cues will really have one specific caregiver that they always want. They won't really want anyone else even if they're you know familiar like grandmas or whatever they just really want their one caregiver if they go into a room and there's a lot of people even if they know them they'll cling like sort of the label of koala babies or you know the irritable babies that just really need that mum to give them usually it's mum to give them the external safety because their internal systems are not giving their brain enough input to say how you're actually safe with these people you know or you're safe to fall asleep.
Kids who need to be held to sleep and constantly touched and cuddled and have a specific routine and you can't stray from that change is scary you know these kids that just don't have that I guess flexibility and often have a vagal contributor to their behaviour.
When you move into older children school aged children the the most common one that I see is just complete emotional dysregulation so because the vagus nerve connects with the threat centres very rapidly and then the threat centres of the brain kind of go through this processing and try and quickly and rapidly pattern match so they try and match it with a past thing so they know how to respond so like a past experience and they'll go okay well this is how I've responded in the past to that kind of thing so that's how I'm going to continue because that's kept me safe. They don't have the higher centre yet I mean they they're starting to activate their prefrontal cortex which is where we have our rational thought and our slower processing speed by the time it gets up there it's they're too far gone and the more activated their stress response is the more that logical part of the brain gets inhibited.
So these mums come and say look I I know emotions are normal in my child I'm not trying to stop all the negative emotions but their response is excessive so it's either too big of a response or it's too frequent or it's they can't shut they can't regulate after so they may need a lot of co-regulation after. Again, that's not to say I'm not against co-regulation - it's a really powerful way to support your child's vagal tone is to have a healthy vagal tone yourself and to co-regulate with them but mums know when their child's response is there's potentially something simmering under the surface or maybe they've they've always got this undercurrent of hyper vigilance and it doesn't take much to set them off as opposed to kind of having that more flexibility where they can go.. oh yeah like well that's annoying but I'm not going to you know overreact about that.. these kids haven't got the break anymore in their system they're just like quite explosive.
I think you're right like mums they know right there's that mother's intuition that we can push to the side and always go to experts or Google for answers but I think if we can connect with what our body is telling us about our children we should listen to that and often it does guide us to something that really is meaningful.
So when you talk about the co-regulation can you tell me a little bit about what you suggest to help our children whether they are quite heightened or just in general because like you say it's a really useful skill for all of all of our kids.
We have these neurons in our nervous system called mirror neurons and our vagus nerve is also picking up external cues of safety from things like our facial expression, our tone of voice, our body language, all these things that we probably don't even really think about the tone that we're using or whatever so it just happens under the surface.
So they can really pick up on what our nervous system is doing. So getting the mum able to activate some kind of vagal regulation even if it's just for one minute because it's actually a lot harder than it seems despite the description sounds really easy like the way I guide people's feel it sounds really easy but it can be really hard to sustain, particularly if you've spent your whole life with low vagal tone or with high stress in your body without realising.
I think a lot of us mums have just because of the culture of our generation and the parenting style and the teaching style and all of the things that we were kind of exposed to as normal in our nervous system that's kind of branded us in a certain way so our response is dependent on kind of the lead up to now. So it can be really difficult for a mum to shift that. But what I generally say is just there's two ways to do it.
There's in the moment a shift and a reset so that would be when your child is already really dysregulated and you want to help regulate them so the more you regulate yourself in that moment, the more they mirror neurons and they're very just going to pick up on that and go oh I want some of that that looks good. It's not going to be like a light switch but it's going to guide their nervous system to calm down.
Then on the other hand you've got preparing - so what you do day to day is going to help prepare their nervous system for when they do have a meltdown or a big emotion or whatever. So doing little things. Definitely working on your own regulation for sure but you know finding things to be grateful for or just stopping and smell the roses or you know when you're with a toddler. I just like always picture my son when he was a toddler looking up at the sky when there's an aeroplane it was like the best thing.
It's like actually stopping in that moment with your child and returning and reciprocating that moment of connection that they're looking for because that's going to tell their nervous system hey you know you're safe that's a moment of connection and that's what the vagus nerve is really powerful at doing is creating that social connection. So rather than your toddler pointing at an aeroplane and you're going yeah yeah yeah or not even looking or not even really looking them in the eye maybe you're really sleep deprived and you just really don't even want to be outside and or maybe you're like mindlessly scrolling through your phone, trying to escape because you're so bored or whatever it is - that's what sends the messages subconsciously to your child's vagus nerve.
So taking a moment to connect with them when they're reaching out to that connection. 30 seconds is all it takes but they start to accumulate and when they accumulate then the safer your child feels the stronger their vagus nerve is going to be.
So there's things we can do in the moment but so much of the work is between those heightened emotional moments isn't it?
So what else can we do as parents if you notice that our babies or our children are quite dysregulated?
I love this co-regulation that you talk about. What are some other things that we can do to support our kids? And big things that tell a child in a body that it's safe.
You know we talk about stress from external which would be co-regulation. Talking about stress from internal - really big things that impact the safety of the nervous system are how well your child moves. So you know I'm real advocate for chiropractic because you know well I am one but I can see the power of optimal movement in children and how that alone can shift their nervous system so you know sometimes it can be as simple as having them adjusted a few times and having their body working the way that it's supposed to.
The brain loves symmetry of movement -it feels really safe. So if you've got one side that's not giving the same level of input to the other side then what you end up with is a discrepancy in the brain and the brain's like.. well which side's right which side's safe, I don't really know, this feels a bit unsafe, so I'm just going out you know plonk a red flag on that one.
So the brain - everytime the body moves - then the brain's going hey that doesn't feel really fully safe you know and it might not be really overt but it's just like one of those little layers that add and we want to remove those layers.
The other really big things are you know mostly gut stuff and you know this is why I have a naturopath on my team who focuses on the gut because it's so powerful. But whether it's a lifetime of antibiotic use for whatever reason or poor nutrition, again maybe they've gone through a phase where they have been really picky eating and you know if they're having trouble with textures and swallowing different food, how it feels in their mouth - that can also be a sign of vagal issues.
So they kind of like can feed into each other as well but really getting your child's biochemistry right (so their gut microbiome and their nutrient levels) as much as possible is going to really help the level of inflammation on their vagus nerve. The level of threat that their vagus nerve is picking up because there's so many connections through the gut immune system and it's just going to if there is an issue in there again it's just going to add another layer.
So you'll be able to co-regulate your child to a point but if you don't sort these other things out what you find is that it's just like that constant battle like you can never quiteget them over the hump. You're doing all the right things from an external point of view and you're working on your own regulation and you're like got this down but you still just can't get them over the hump that's when usually yeah there's something biochemical or movement related happening in their body.
Yeah right and what about for babies is it similar or that we check in with what's happening in their gut and allow them to move like nature and tend to them to or is there other other things we can do to help support them?
The other thing that's really powerful for babies is that first that fourth trimester in particular is really powerful for creating a safe space. So they very much need their mother in that time and creating a space where mums feel safe or able to process what happened in the birth if it didn't go to plan and the mums are really taken care of and the only thing the mum has to worry about is the baby really can set a baby up for strong vagal tone because that increases the amount of connection that they're having with their safety caregiver.
Right okay yeah that makes a lot of sense.
I know you may have a skewed vision of how many kids have vagal tone issues because you see the ones that have you know a weaker vagal tone and they're the ones that come to you but what do you think in general like how prevalent is it that kids need support with this?
You know in my clinic I've had two children in my whole career who have not had a problem with their vagus nerve and the reason that these children ended up in my clinic is because I'd been seeing the mums for vagus nerve stuff and they just knew the power of it and they wanted to make sure their child’s vagus nerve worked well.
So in that sense yeah I do have a very biased lens
I would like to touch on research - that there's not much research when it comes to vagal tone in babies. But there is some research and the two that I often flag are …
Number one when they measured pregnant mums’ levels of cortisol and then they measured the babies’ stress responses postpartum up to 12 weeks of age and what they found is that higher levels of cortisol in a pregnant woman leads to higher levels of stress behaviours in a newborn. So I think that given how stressed we are as mums I think a lot of babies do have some form of stress in their nervous system.
Now that may not always be low vagal tone there's you know there's so much gray I know we haven't really talked about the autonomic ladder but it's kind of like a ladder and there are so many rungs to it up and down there's so much gray. Almost like after a little while their nervous system feels safe enough and they're generally okay enough that they regulate themselves and create their new baseline.
But I do think there's a lot of kids out there who kind of have that baseline of just slightly more hypervigilance and maybe not complete dysregulation like I see a lot in my clinic but just like a little bit more on edge than their nervous system could be and it could be so subtle that nobody can even notice it you know, particularly if their environment is also on that same baseline it's just normal and it’s just you know, like father like son or they don't realize that there's something that could really be done about it so that's yeah that's kind of the first study.
The second study is from the Gottman Institute where they looked at relationship stress during pregnancy and how that impacted a baby's vagal tone and what they found is that big relationship stresses particularly in the third trimester of pregnancy what that did was create such a spike in cortisol. If the mum feels unsafe because she's in a vulnerable position where she's going to give birth soon and if her relationship is really tumultuous and they're having big arguments, that's going to create not just a momentary stressor but als ..am I going to be safe during this vulnerable time.. is this person going to be around when I give birth? It can be quite a stressful time for the nervous system.
So what they found is that third trimester. Then again they measured at 12 weeks of age I'm pretty sure it was and they found that these babies tend to have higher stress responses - so more activated again. We're just finding a lot of evidence that how the mum experiences life during pregnancy can influence how the baby kind of comes out and sees the world as either threatening or safe in the first place.
So I think if you're pregnant now or you're in preconception just like getting your vagus nerve in order. Life happens, stress happens - we can't avoid it all but learning how you deal with the stress response and being able to regulate yourself is going to do wonders for your baby from the moment they're born and it just means in my opinion that there's going to be less work to do when they're outside.
Yeah I imagine that earlier we start with this type of work and almost in any type of work the easier it is right because you can make those smaller changes earlier on rather than after half a lifetime trying to bring you know the nervous system back into balance that could be a lot harder.
I think if we can start in pregnancy that is so so key and in parenting in general I think there's so much advice out there about how to help our kids, but you just reminded me there yet again that we have to start with ourselves whether it's in pregnancy, work on regulating ourselves, getting ourselves healthy, reducing stresses where we can and the more that we can support ourselves to be healthy and the best versions of ourselves, the easier it is on our children as well right.
We model our behavior to them and they see how we react and respond to our emotions and theirs and it just it just makes it easier if we take care of ourselves.
One of my big messages in my work is that we have to really take care of ourselves first and alongside our family rather than leave ourselves to the bottom of our to-do list because that's just not helpful at all and it's not helpful for the people that we're trying t be there for and care for which most often are our children.
So thank you for reinforcing that point.
What are a few things that parents could do as a takeaway to help themselves and their kids start to just feel a little bit safer, feel a little bit calmer and get their nervous system back in a bit more balance?
I think you know a big thing that I try and work through with patients is just self-awareness just stopping firstly. I think it's important to work out where your baseline is - so can you activate your vagus nerve at all or do you hover in that sympathetic fight or flight majority of the time and the only time you activate your your vagus is when you meditate three hours or after a massage - like you really have to work hard to activate your vagus.
Where your baseline sits really determines how you view the world and how you respond to the world so if you don't know where your baseline is then that is the place to start. The way to do that is just start monitoring how you feel in any moment like you know - I'm having some road rage - rather than it being like something that you embody being like - oh yeah I'm having some road rage and I wonder what's that about is it warranted or not or am I having a large reaction or how am I feeling that in my body?
Just learning how your nervous system is currently experiencing life is really powerful because you don't know what to change if you don't know how you're responding and then you can do the same thing for your kids. This is something that I go through in my group coaching in quite a lot of detail is working out where our baseline is and then working out where each of our children's baselines are. They could be completely different and so you might have to parent in completely different ways to foster co-regulation or connection. If you don't know what you're working with you can't work with it properly so that's probably like my number one takeaway,
I know that it's hard work - it's not as easy as gargling that's for sure but it's where the power is.
I think that's such a key step in so many aspects of our health and well-being is we have to have that self-awareness of where we're starting and what's happening for us before we can then know what the appropriate step is for us or for our child. I think that's so key and then once we start there we can start to learn about what we can implement for our unique situation.
Absolutely so is was there anything that you wanted to share here that I didn't ask you about?
I guess the one thing that I didn't mention which might just help, people particularly mums - if you're looking at how you respond you know say your kids are really grinding your gears and you're getting really frustrated and your automatic response is to snap or maybe you've tried so hard to spend 20 minutes a day in meditation and you just feel like you feel worse after maybe it increases some anxiety or restlessness in your nervous system or you know it feels good in the moment but then afterwards you don't feel good like the moment you leave meditation you kind of go back to your automatic responses.
I think it's really important to know that our nervous system above or else loves familiar so if your baseline is in fight or flight and maybe it's been like that since you're a child then trying to get a fight or flight nervous system to start meditating can feel really unsafe and it can feel awful and your nervous system might be like… hey why are you doing that I'm trying to fight something right now you know I need to be on edge and you're trying to force me to relax like what's going on!
So it can be this internal struggle that can feel really crap and it can aggravate fight or flight because the more you push it the more your nervous system is like …no stop it I'm gonna go back to what I know.
That's the same with how we respond to our kids. Oftentimes when something comes out of our mouth and we’re like… oh my god I sounded like my mother then….and it's like yeah because that's the familiar, that's the automatic response. It is familiar to our nervous system to respond in that way and when you're practicing self-awareness you might start to notice how frequently that occurs and maybe you're acting in a way that you don't want to react.
But it's not actually about what's happening in the moment it's about - my nervous system is going back to what I don't know so my nervous system is just following familiar and the harder your nervous system fights you then the deeper, like the more deeply ingrained these automatic behaviours are.
So you need to give yourself that grace time to be like… you know I've just reacted again the way that I didn't want to… just acknowledge it rather than shame yourself or guilt yourself into … I’m such a bad mum, why do I do this all the time, why can't I you know whatever, can I be like the Instagram mum to you know peacefully respond to their children and whatever talk you have about your response.
I just want to highlight that it's all about familiarity and if if things feel really hard- that's because your nervous system feels really safe. If you think of that whole ladder of the autonomic nervous system and how we respond to stress then maybe you only feel safe on one rung of the ladder and the goal is then to help your nervous system feel safe on maybe two rungs or three rungs. Then slowly increase that flexibility without the judgment that comes from - this is just me this is how I am. As I say that inner talk, that inner critic can kind of take over and just makes you more stressed out and feel worse.
I find it can be really helpful if this happens in parenting to voice that to your children and say… oh that's not how I wanted to respond to you there.. and you could say… in this respect my nervous system got high jacked there and this is how I normally respond but I'm working on trying to regulate that more and I'm sorry that I responded that way.
So I find it can be really helpful to not only do that self-talk internally but actually vocalize it and hopefully it helps our kids too in that modelling.
Yeah absolutely. So do you recommend in that case that if people are finding the meditation really, really hard like you said would you suggest that they keep doing that and just bring that self-awareness to it and that self-compassion and that helpful self-talk to that as they go through that or would you suggest like shelving that for a while and working on other things in the meantime?
What do you think is more beneficial?
It's probably a very polarising thing because …I don't know the specific quote but it's like if you're feeling really anxious then you need to do it for even longer you know the whole like philosophy of if it's not working then you need to do more of it.
From a nervous system point of view and a safety point of view if meditation or whatever act you're doing is making you feel worse or you're having a heightened stress response then I would shelve that. I would say that that is too strong for your current nervous system state and I would once again if I'm working with someone in my practice I would be trying to figure out why that is the case.
It can be described as like a nervous system rigidity so if your nervous system doesn't have that flexibility and it's very rigidly staying in one one spot, one state then working out why that is the case and slowly nudging the nervous system towards safety. You can't force it, you really have to be gentle with the nervous system. Sometimes that can take.. in a child it might take five or six sessions. In an adult that can take a lot longer because we've got so many more layers but if something's making you feel worse I would stop.
Yeah well I wish that you weren't over in Perth and you're over near me because I would definitely love to come in and bring my kids in for some sessions. So can you tell us a little bit about um how people can work with you and where they can find you online?
So I work in person so I have a home clinic and I choose to keep my clinic at home because my nervous system only has a certain capacity and I'm very aware of where my capacity stops so I choose to keep my practice I guess somewhat small scale compared to other clinics on purpose.
So I work in Perth WA and I see patients just a couple of days a week for the physical work. That may be work that I do to their body if they've got a movement issue or a gut issue or move through vagal stimulation with particular tools. I am Heart Math certified which means I train people in how to learning how to regulate their own vagus nerve and their own nervous system so there's a lot of things that I can do in person.
Then I also offer coaching online. So at the moment I'm doing one-on-one coaching, as well as a group coaching which is specifically for mothers and children and that's working through all of the things that we've talked about but in more detail and kind of giving you the space to really learn about yourself and your nervous system and your child's nervous system and what works in supporting their vagal tone and their nervous system response to life.
I guess the easiest place to find me is Instagram - my Instagram handle is @drcarrierigoni and my website is the same drcarrierigoni.com.au
Great thank you I think that's something that a lot of the listeners will be very keen to check out. Thank you very much for coming on and talking about this really important topic.
I think I started off saying it is one of those missing links in our health and wellness for ourselves and our kids so thank you for educating us on that and giving us some direction of where we can start to support our nervous system and our vagus nerve.
Thank you so much for having me.
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Disclaimer: the information in this podcast is intended as educational in nature and is for informational purposes only it is not personal health advice or indicative of a therapeutic relationship and it should not be used to prevent diagnose or treat health problems if any of the information in this podcast resonates with you consult a qualified healthcare practitioner to discuss what works best for you in your unique situation.