215 - The Power of Pausing: How Stillness Heals Burnout, Trauma, and the Nervous System

We’re kicking off our Self Care September: Exploration of Stillness series with a powerful conversation you don’t want to miss.

I’m joined by Emma Treharne, Founder of Nuveya Life, who brings over 30 years of experience in the wellness field. Emma blends ancient wisdom with modern-day science (and a sprinkle of humor!) to guide individuals and teams from exhaustion and dysregulation into clarity, joy, and authentic connection.

Her own journey through burnout, anxiety, and nervous system dysregulation inspired her to create transformative programs like Tired to Inspired, The Path to Purpose, and Mindful Leadership. Emma has supported corporate medical companies like Wright Medical, Stryker, and Healx, as well as countless individuals navigating the gap between hectic modern life and the embodied wisdom of ancient practices.

In this episode, we explore: ✨ How internal and external pressures create hidden stressors and cycles of burnout ✨ Why pausing for integration is essential for nervous system repair ✨ Practical tools like guided pause practices and yoga nidra to close the stress circuit ✨ The role of community, belonging, and trauma-informed support in sustainable well-being

This is your invitation to pause, listen, and discover what stillness could mean for you.

👉 Take the Spicy Pepper Burnout Quiz (free) to discover your burnout level: https://energize.whittingtonwellbeing.com/products/courses/view/1155744

🔗 Connect with Emma Treharne: 🌿 Path to Purpose Community → emmatreharne.com/pathtopurpose

🌿 Book a Tired to Inspired 1:1 Connection Call → calendly.com/emmatreharne/connection-call

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to Beyond Chronic Burnout.
Today I'm joined by Emma Trejon,the founder of Nevaeh Life and a
Wellness expert with 30 years ofexperience.
Emma specializes in blending ancient wisdom with modern
science to help people move fromburnout to balance.
In today's conversation, we'll be diving into some powerful

(00:20):
topics. How to release unrecognized
internal pressure, process trauma, and close the stress
circuit. Plus, the incredible practice of
yoga nidra. If you're feeling overwhelmed or
stuck, this episode is for you. Let's get started.
Step. Out of the shadows, feel the

(00:40):
power rise. Catch the spark inside you.
Let your spirit fly beyond the chronic burner.
Carol Jeans, your guy. Find yourself with a much joy on
the tide, So wish forward brightand roll.
Leave the bird up far behind. In this journey hearts unfold.

(01:09):
How is your sea can find? I am thrilled to introduce and
welcome to the show my very special guest, Emma Trayhorn.
She's the creator of powerful programs like Tired to Inspired,

(01:32):
The Path to Purpose, and MindfulLeadership, all aimed at helping
individuals and teams feel better inside and out.
Emma Heads worked with big nameslike Right Medical, Stryker, and
Helix, bringing well-being to the forefront of corporate life.
Today, she's here to share her insights on everything from

(01:52):
navigating internal pressure andunprocessed trauma to the role
of yoga nidra in closing the stress circuit.
Get ready for a powerful and transformative conversation.
Emma, welcome to the show. I am so excited to be here with
you today. Thanks.
Carol Jean I was an amazing intro well done.

(02:12):
Even if it takes 2 takes, we getit.
Two or three who? Cares.
I mean, right, whatever, we're here.
We're here for the fun. We are here for the fun today.
But I'll always love to kick offand start the show because I
think one of the biggest places is that most of us, no matter

(02:32):
our neurotype, dismiss the stress and keep pushing it to
the side thinking, not even considering, oh, this could be
burnout. And by the time we recognize it,
we look back and go, oh wow, that actually was happening for
longer than I realized. I just kept normalizing it in my

(02:57):
life, and I know that from your perspective and your experience
you've had some of those places share with us.
When you've had an experience ofburnout in your life, how long
did it take you to figure it out, first of all?
And what did that feel like? How did it show up for you?
Like what were the things that you were doing or saying to

(03:17):
yourself as you were like normalizing it?
Yeah, God, hindsight is such a powerful thing, isn't it?
And and also what I want to normalise is if anyone is
listening to this and has had anexperience of burnout, which
they now recognise as burnout, chronic fatigue, exhaustion, and

(03:38):
they may have had it a second orthird time as well or
experienced it a second or thirdtime.
That's quite normal. Because so my experience, I
would say I have experienced it significantly or it's come to a
head three times in my life, allat different phases, at
different places, in different ways.

(04:00):
So it manifested and showed itself differently.
So I may have recognised that ifit showed itself the same way as
it had done the first time and the second time, but time 3 was
different again, I was a different person, I was doing
different things, but there weredefinitely threads which linked
it. So for me, there was inability

(04:23):
to sleep and we know that when we don't get proper sleep, we're
going to be very fatigued and our our days are going to be
very difficult and our body is going to be struggling.
I had pain in my body, so I experienced things like muscle
spasms, migraines, chronic pain over months and then years

(04:45):
actually, which again, we adapt to and we think is normal.
I've got an injury, I've worked out really hard, I've been
running, I've been lifting weights.
Of course I'm uncomfortable and in pain.
Irritation, like unnecessary irritation, very quick to anger
or everything seems absolutely fine and then one little thing

(05:07):
can go wrong. And I mean a little thing like I
can't get my leg through my Jeantrousers for example.
And like explosion, frustration you.
Know Oh my gosh, I'm so relatingright now.
So there are many things coming home from work having done.

(05:28):
So one of the times I experienced burnout, I was
running a clinic, I was treatingpeople, I was listening to
challenges and problems and thenphysically treating people as
well. I would take 5 minutes break.
I ended up separating my clientsfor 15 minutes.
I used to see back-to-back clients, patients.
I would take a 5 minute lie downon my treatment couch and I

(05:51):
would literally go into a deep, deep sleep, which I now know as
something, maybe it was the yoganidra, but it was definitely
going into those deep brain wavestates.
I was dropping straight in because I was already a
meditator, so I was treating 8910 people a day, coming home,
falling asleep at the table whilst eating dinner.
I mean, not quite with my face in the food, but that sort of

(06:14):
thing. No energy to speak to my family
at all. Totally lost interest in
conversations, lost interest in life really.
You know, there would be weeks where I felt very, very low and
had no motivation and yet I was still incredibly motivated and

(06:38):
getting up out of bed and doing things.
Yes, there's that, that dichotomy that that difference
that we have and people see like, oh, you're, you're being
so quote, UN quote productive, but they don't.
Then they see us come home and we're just totally crash on the
backside of it. And you know, and I don't know

(07:01):
if this happened to you, but in my relationships, you'd be like,
you go and, you know, work all day and do all this stuff and
you've got all this energy and then you come home and then it's
like somebody just flip the switch.
Yeah, turned off the lights. It was like there was nothing
left to give at all. We'd get chronic migraines.

(07:26):
We'd have to just, oh, we're going to have a family BBQ.
I'd be having a migraine lying down in bed and you know, there
were other, it's never just one thing.
There were other things that were influencing and impacting
how I felt as well. So I think for anyone it can be
so many different symptoms that we typically and this is the the

(07:51):
thread, the common thread, we typically put it down to
something else or think it will be better tomorrow, it will be
better tomorrow. And we think that for day and
we. And it's like I can just make it
till tomorrow. If I just make it till the end
of the week, everything will be fine.
It's like what we tell ourselves, right?
Concluding, yeah, I just have todo this.

(08:11):
And of course, there's another 10/15/20 things to just do,
yeah. They are the dogs, right?
Bark. So Emma, how long did it take
you to finally piece together? Oh, it's not just something

(08:35):
else. It won't just feel better
tomorrow. What was that moment of clarity
or awareness or mean? It was.
Sometimes it's gradual. Sometimes it hits you like a
Mack truck. What was that realization for
you? I think for me, the first couple
of times were gradual and it wasslowly, slowly, gently, gently

(08:55):
recognising that how I was feeling was not getting better,
it was getting worse. I had, you know, my blood sugar
was all over the place. I was shaking uncontrollably.
Whenever I ate something, however small a meal, I would
want to sleep immediately because all my energy was going
into digestion. And so I went to see a doctor.

(09:16):
They just diagnosed me with depression.
And I thought, well, yeah, I do feel pretty low, but I don't
think it that's the root cause. And so I sort of created a plan
for myself. This is in my early 20s and then
in my early 30s and then again in my mid 40s, there was an
experience of it. And so although I was even in

(09:38):
this field, so I also want to normalise the fact that if
somebody is a practitioner or a natural healthcare worker or, or
understands these processes, even if you understand the
nervous system and how the brainworks, how the body works, you
can still find yourself in this place of burnout, of giving too
much and not recognising becausethere is so much external and

(10:00):
internal and societal and cultural pressure.
Thank you for saying that and thank you for sharing because
one of the things that I uncovered in my research is that
for most adults and specificallyneurodivergent and disabled

(10:22):
adults, but this applies across the board more.
I have been also investigating, comparing and contrasting the
burnout experience with neurotypical population versus
neurodivergent population. And that is 3 to 4 cycles of
burnout on average by the time someone is in their mid 40s,

(10:45):
that's the average three to fourtimes.
And now the duration is different and the intensity
varies. And that's one of the things
that we talk about in the unveiling method.
And I love that you brought thisinto the conversation.
Each burnout that we experience is going to be at a different
season and a different stage of our life.

(11:05):
So certain elements are going tobe different within that
burnout. But there is also this common
thread, this common stress response that once you start to
pick up on it and you identifiedin the now, you can then in
retrospect start to see the pattern of how that one
particular element showed up repeatedly through your prior

(11:27):
burnouts. Yeah, yeah, that sounds.
Knowledge is power. It is, it is knowledge is power
and understanding yourself, which is one of the things you
know, I specialize in, is helping women understand
themselves, how they feel reconnecting to their bodies.
Most of us are very much in our,in our heads, in our thinking

(11:47):
minds. And absolutely what you said
that if we experience burnout atdifferent phases and stages in
our lives, external circumstances will then be
different. So for me, I had different jobs,
different roles, different responsibilities.
My daughter was at different ages.
So she was at first very young, then a teenager and then

(12:10):
actually grown up. And so there are different
things that that come into our lives, which also informs how we
experience the burnout. 100% AndI'm so glad that you were here
because one of the things that is a big energy booster is how

(12:31):
we can close the stress circuit.And when we really think about
it, energy is electric and it SoI love that you use the word
circuit. You know, it's kind of like
we're wiring our home, our body,right?
And how do we open and close circuits?
Because electricity has open andclose circuits.
My husband's a contractor. We all know that.
So I'm over here speaking in contractor language.

(12:53):
But I love that you're bringing in ancient wisdom for modern
burnout. How do we go back to things that
as humans, as humanity for thousands of years that across
cultures we have known but in modern world we have forgotten?
How do we begin to bring these in to, to really deepen and

(13:16):
accelerate our, our optimum well-being?
So let's, let's dive into these first hidden struggles because I
think that's one of the things that happens so often.
It's, it's what we always talk about.
It's like it was just hidden. I didn't notice it.
I just kept dismissing it. It was everything else in my
life. It was, you know, all the stuff.
It wasn't burnout. It wasn't chronic burnout

(13:39):
related to enduring stress, right?
How does, how do external pressures feel that unseen
internal stress? Because I think one of the
biggest awarenesses for me was learning and discovering that
the world has this set point of expectations.
Here it is. It's it's maybe like a shoulder

(14:01):
level, but my internal pressure.And my mom used to say this to
me. She's like, Caroline, you put so
much pressure on yourself. I'm like, no, I don't, what are
you talking about? But my expectations, my internal
pressure here because of what I believe the outside world
expected and because I believed through a life of experience and

(14:23):
micro traumas and all of the things that the world was
somehow telling me this is who Iwas and my identity.
I then said that's not good enough.
It's not safe for me to hit these expectations.
My expectations have to be up here so that they're perfect and
I'm impeccable and then I'm worthy and I'm safe.
And I didn't recognize the gap that that pressure was creating

(14:48):
externally and internally at all.
And it will be different for everyone, but I think what I see
is a lot of similarities. And I call it the hidden shame,
secret anxiety, those things that we keep to ourselves that
we don't talk about. So people might know it as

(15:12):
keeping up with the Joneses, butyou know, I, I mean, I don't
watch the news at all. And because it's just, it puts
first of all, increases our stress immediately, right?
But also there's so much information that we're taking in

(15:35):
nowadays. So we're in a modern life.
Even when I was growing up, there weren't computers.
Well, there were when I sort of went to senior school, but
unless you were really tech interested, you didn't have a
computer. Everything was handwritten, so
the information we received was much less than what we're
receiving now, even 20-30 years later.

(15:57):
In fact, the average human now will receive the same amount of
information in a day as we wouldhave received in our whole
lifetimes, I think 200 years ago.
I think that's what the researchshows.
And that's going to pause for a second.

(16:17):
Yeah, we need to understand thatwe could also blame ourselves
with internal pressure, but thatinternal pressure comes from
somewhere, whether it was told to us or whether we perceived
that somehow from what we witnessed as young children.

(16:41):
We also have something called genetic or emotional
inheritance. So our nervous systems are
created obviously in Neutro. And we are when we're growing.
And the first few weeks and months and years of a baby, then
a child's life, our nervous system, how we respond to
external and internal stimulus is set and we can't control

(17:04):
that. So what we're also used to then
is going to school. The first thing is, you know, we
go to school and we are compared, we're graded.
It's different in different countries and different
cultures, but we are typically graded on our academics and we
are pitted against our peers. So the people in the same class

(17:25):
as us. What grade did you get?
How many marks did you get right?
Can you spell correctly? Can you read?
Can you do arithmetic? So immediately there's this
internal pressure. I remember my daughter coming
home from school at five years old, sobbing, sobbing because
they were going to have tests and she was so worried that she

(17:45):
was going to fail. And for her that meant what did
it mean? I asked her, what does that?
What would it mean if you didn'tget any of the answers right in
the test? She couldn't answer me, but she
thought it was catastrophic. She thought it was going to be
the end of the world. And I don't even think the
teachers were saying those typesof things.

(18:07):
I think it was just how her brain at five years old was
processing the information that you're going to have a test and
you've got to study and you've got to get it right.
You've got to know how to spell these words or, you know, it's
and if people are listening to this and thinking, oh, I've
never thought about that. It goes back so far and in our

(18:29):
modern world, we never really close the stress circuit.
And by that I mean, stress is good for us, right?
We're meant to have a certain amount of stress in our life.
It's motivating, it makes us take action, it drives us.
It helps us to think and strategise.
But when we don't slow down and process and integrate

(18:50):
experiences, when we don't closethe circuit, we are left in that
high state of alert of awarenessconsistently.
And if people notice this, are you constantly scrolling on your
phone? Do you find it hard to go to
sleep at night? Do you make mistakes often?

(19:12):
Are you multitasking? All of this is somebody whose
nervous system is possibly dysregulated, by which I mean
your stress system, your, your stress circuit is open and
consistently open. And it actually can feel really
uncomfortable to close it and down regulate and going to rest

(19:34):
and digest and stop, which is why meditation and mindfulness
doesn't always feel good for people and actually feels really
unobtainable. And there there can be adverse
effects to mindfulness And there's I can, I can speak to
that research if you want, or wecan pop it in the show notes or
something. But I also want people to know

(19:54):
that one of the things that theyprobably read in how can I
manage stress? Have a mindfulness practice,
relax, soothe yourself. How can I do that when my
nervous system is feeling like in danger?
I'm not going to want to slow down because I'm on high alert.
My nervous system is looking fordanger, so we need to let our

(20:17):
bodies know it is safe to stop. And that can look like different
things for different people because everyone is different.
So there can be different ways to rest.
There are many ways that we can rest and close that nervous
system so that our internal stress can be soothed and
lowered. Talk therapy, self enquiry,

(20:41):
being part of different groups and programs like we both offer
can be really helpful in sharingour experiences and going holy.
I'm not the only one, OK. And going into it with
compassion because there will bethat moment where you go.
I can't believe I'm only just finding this out all those

(21:01):
years. And there can be a frustration,
There can be an anger. There can be internalised anger,
rage, frustration, resentment. We can feel resentful that we've
been so busy all these years andwe've missed out.
We can feel resentful that we say yes all the time because we
don't feel good enough. We feel less than.
We feel afraid and unsafe to sayhow we really feel.

(21:23):
We can feel resentful that we don't know who we really are
because maybe there wasn't ever that time we weren't encouraged
to explore and express ourselvesfreely.
So there are many ways and many paths that we get to this space
of this unseen internalized stress and the external pressure
and demands of the outside worldis so loud.

(21:47):
So loud. It's so loud and not only the
copious volumes of information that we take in everyday talk
about just that. I call it the info storm.
That info storm creates this decision fatigue as well.
And I think one of those external pressures that that you

(22:10):
talked about, it's something that that I uncovered and and
created a space to allow the information to come in.
Once I started doing interviews in my research process and as I
backtracked, where where did theroot or the heart of these
internalized expectations and pressures and stress come from?

(22:34):
And it begins as early as age 4.And the on ramp to burnout
begins around age 4 on average to age 6.
And then the first burnout is usually hit between age 6 and
age 8 and then the outskirts of age 8 to age 10.

(22:55):
But when I, I started to identify that that was the
common space where people started to note or even recall
physical signs or, you know, behavioral actions of stress
showing up in their early life in that 4 to 6 year old window.

(23:17):
Education. This is why I'm, I'm so such a
proponent of disrupting our current education system because
it is truly the causation. It is where we are indoctrinated
into this habituated productivity and performance
model. Yeah.
Like you described your daughter, I had a very similar

(23:38):
experience. And it it is this fear and this
terror that then tells me, I tell myself, because of the way
the world's responding to these performative expectations, that
I'm not worthy, lovable, or goodenough if I don't meet that
metric. Yeah.

(23:58):
Four years old. This begins in preschool.
This begins in Mother's Day out.This begins in those play groups
because parents on the playground are also going well,
is your kid doing this? Is your kid doing so my kid
doing this? Well, your kids over there
eating sand, you know, and somehow that's wrong.
I'm like, well, they're just exploring the texture.

(24:19):
Your kids just weird because they're not eating sand, you
know? But all of those things are
those external pressures that wedon't even recognize as adults.
And we have. Been conditioned and
indoctrinated into this and these internal unseen stressors
that we've been carrying for decades are killing us.

(24:43):
Yeah. And it's what actually, let's
just pause on that a minute because I'm very keen on the
pausing to integrate the information.
And there's a reason for that that I can talk to in a moment.
But it's what is seen as important, isn't it, in life.

(25:07):
And we're told what our values should be, what our lives should
look like, what we should think is important, what we should
strive for. And then we get awards for it
and badges for it. And we feel loved and we feel
supported and we feel like we belong.
And I can't say how I really feel because if I say how I
really feel, I'll get shot down,I'll get shut out, get told I'm

(25:31):
weird. And so the reason for these
pauses as well to integrate information is the way that we
truly learn is by having an experience and activation and
then embedding that information in the different brain wave

(25:55):
state. So not in that in that beta
state, which is there's different beta states, but
typically when we're alert and having a conversation and
learning something or studying or reading or, but down in the
alpha state and even into the Theta state, right.
And to do that, we need to slow down, we need to breathe, we

(26:17):
need to feel our bodies, we needto assimilate.
And this is also why I think a lot of children and young adults
or even adults my age, our age aren't learning things and are
at capacity because their brainsare so full and it's seen as
lazy to stop and slow down. And in one of the programmes I

(26:42):
facilitate in actually part of the learning experience is to,
OK, now you've done, you've done4045 minutes of learning in a
couple of modules, in a couple of videos, you've maybe taken
some notes. Now what you're going to do is
go and rest and assimilate the information with a yoga nidra or
a meditation. And it's part of the programme

(27:03):
to do that. There, and this was a
conversation I had yesterday. So I have just all the happy
tingles. As you said, let's just pause.
There is power in the pause. And I think because we have this
societal norm and conditioning and also I think this very

(27:27):
deeply embedded trauma response of being the shark and always
being in movement because if I stop or slow down, I'm not safe.
And the power in the pause is allowing space for our nervous
system to down regulate and to integrate because we have this

(27:49):
beautiful thing in our brain called the power of the pause is
where it happens in it. And that is not the, well, some
people call it daydreaming, you know, or mind wandering.
But it's in that daydreaming or mind wandering and just taking a
few breaths that our brain does these beautiful things.

(28:12):
You know, it's always working. But it's in that place where
we're daydreaming or we're just staring off into space and
somebody says, well, where do you just stay?
You're wasting time, right? You're burning daylight.
What are you doing? You're being lazy.
Like be productive, be getting to it.
Just like no, that is the most productive place we can be when

(28:33):
we are in that place of allowingthat mind wandering to happen
because that is honestly where our brain is solving the
problems and integrating the information.
Absolutely. Where we can get, I mean that
alpha state and fester, the space of intuition or the space
of super learning. There's so much research now and
science backed information and data that people can explore,

(28:58):
which what I also find that helps people feel safe in doing
the practices that allow that. So it almost gives permission to
oh, OK, as Simon Sinek says, youknow the power of the why.
So This is why I'm doing it for this particular outcome.
So these pauses, and I actually have lots of five minute power

(29:20):
pauses on my YouTube channel because I also do know that
people are busy and their lives are not structured at the moment
to take lots of breaks. And so 5 minutes can be really
all you need to begin. And it can actually be very
manageable as well. Even one or two minutes, 30

(29:41):
seconds, 3 breaths if breathing is OK for you and doesn't elicit
a response that is uncomfortable, which I will
validate that it does for some people.
It absolutely does. And one of the conversations we
had back in self-care September at the end of the month was with

(30:01):
editor in chief of meditation magazine, Kevin Ellerton, where
we went into and talked about trauma sensitive mindfulness,
because there is a very unique approach that needs to happen.
And, and I am an instructor in breathwork and meditation, you
know, very similar to yourself and mindfulness.
And we have to take that into account because if our nervous

(30:24):
system has been up here in the NTH degree running on survival
mode for so long, the slightest shift or change can feel more
threatening and exacerbate and even create, you know, re
traumatizing events for people. So we have to be mindful and
aware of those things. And I think that that in our

(30:46):
current Society of, you know, people looking for quick fixes
has has created some serious problems complete.
Yeah, and and I just want to addwith that if it's OK, but
Willoughby Britain, actually Doctor Willoughby Britain does a
lot of research. You may have heard of her
Cheetah House is her non profit organization does a lot of

(31:07):
research into the adverse effects of mindfulness and, and
also as a a trauma informed mindfulness and meditation
guide. Knowing that, and this links
with something we've just said and something we might move to
knowing that when people do slowdown and the, the, the reason

(31:27):
why people can also or a reason why people can also resist
slowing down and down regulatingtheir nervous system is because
of all those things that we haven't addressed.
We haven't looked at, you know, we've just done the positive
thinking. We've just done that.
Everything's going to be OK. I'm going to keep going.
Don't want to, oh, look at that.That's very good.

(31:51):
Don't want to, you know, some I've, I've heard it called
stinking thinking. If you think negatively negative
things are going to happen and, and actually it's so important
when you can and in a Safeway tointegrate process and address
those things that are happening or have happened in your life

(32:13):
that aren't all rainbows. You know, doing mindfulness
meditation, tuning into your body doesn't mean to say that
you're going to live a life without any challenges or
troubles or traumas. And when we slow down, we might
meet those things that have happened in the past or those
things that are currently happening that we just don't

(32:35):
know how to address. So just to make people aware of
that as well, because when we don't address these experiences,
our nervous system will know, our body will know.
These experiences get stored in various parts of the body at a

(32:56):
cellular level, in the fascia, in the tissues, in the cells.
And we can wonder why when we'rethinking positively all the time
or even taking proactive decisions like, OK, I've started
eating a different diet. Maybe I've reduced sugar, maybe
I'm drinking more water. Maybe I'm seeing my friends

(33:17):
more. Maybe I'm going out in the fresh
air more, or I'm taking a certain type of exercise.
Maybe I have reduced the amount of hours I'm working and I'm
doing all the things that I've been told I should do.
And yet there's still this exhaustion, burnout,
frustration, sense of anxiety, fatigue.
However, it's showing up for people and that can be very

(33:39):
frustrating and I know that I know that for myself and I've
seen it in many of my clients and people I've worked with over
the years and teams. So what I do want to say is the
power of the mind is incredibly strong and the conscious mind,
which can process about 40 or 50bits of information a second,

(34:01):
can actually talk to your subconscious mind, which is
1,000,000 times stronger than your conscious mind.
So it will drive the show. 95% of what we do say, think and act
on is our subconscious. These things that haven't been
healed or addressed, let's say. And yet the conscious mind, when

(34:24):
we can start to become more aware of these things that are
present, we, our conscious mind can let our subconscious know
it's OK to feel. Our subconscious mind will just
do what it's told. But it's OK to have negative

(34:45):
thoughts or speak negatively because I don't even use
personally the words negative and positive.
I just use the word experiences,a range of experiences which we
might receive or integrate or view in a certain way that if

(35:06):
there's something you have had happen in your life but you
haven't had the opportunity to speak about or feel, allow your
body to feel it and move. It's really important that at
some stage in the right environment, being held with a

(35:28):
trauma informed therapist or mindfulness guide or coach, that
you allow yourself to do that and it doesn't have to, you
don't have to relive things can actually happen.
Very, I don't want to use the word easily, but we don't need
to go back into that re traumatized state, but we can go

(35:49):
there if we're not aware of it. So it's always being conscious,
that conscious awareness. I hope I made sense when I was
talking. So much and of course, all the
little Wiz pops are going off inmy brain as you're, you're
sharing all these because this is something I think is so
important to talk about. And it's something that I, that
I talk about in the work that I do as well in the research.

(36:11):
And as we look into this, you know, there's that universal law
of reciprocity. And I love the research work
that Katie Milkman does into choiceology.
And she's a proponent of embracing the range of
experiences, you know, whether you call them positive or
negative, because I, I love whatyou said.
You know, we bypassed the real. And it's like there's this

(36:36):
social context that somehow if we are acknowledging the real
hard stuff that's happening in our life, that somehow we are
complaining or being negative orbeing the Debbie Downer.
And so then people are like, oh,stop it because we're making
them uncomfortable. Well folks, we are not
responsible for how they respondto our real experience.

(36:56):
Number. One and #2 when we feel like we
are being silenced for our real experience and we are silencing
ourselves because it goes from other people silencing us to us
then being the silencer of our own voice and our own
experience. Oh, completely.

(37:16):
And let's take a pause there to let everyone integrate that and
hear that who, listening to this, feels that they're not
heard, that they can't speak their truth, that maybe they
don't even know what their truthis anymore.
That's also a very normal experience to have.

(37:39):
And when we can't express ourselves effectively or when
people shush us, we might fit ourselves to other people.
Oh, they're there. Oh, don't be upset, don't cry.
Oh, it'll get better. Well, it's not that bad.
Or it could be worse. All those things, all those
platitudes we offer to people orhave been offered to us shut us

(37:59):
down. And so then we mask.
We mask how we feel. We mask our experience.
It doesn't feel safe to share. So often when someone shares
something with me, I don't feel the need to offer a solution, or

(38:19):
to say it'll get better, or to say it could be worse.
One of the most helpful things we can do for ourselves and each
other is just to say that soundsreally hard.
Tell me more. Oh, we got to pause on that one.

(38:41):
That sounds really hard. Tell me more.
Let them speak. Yeah, especially with children
as well. You know, we want our children

(39:03):
to be happy and excited and enjoy life.
We want to protect them. Life is life.
And so saying just try this. Actually, if anyone's resonating
with this, try it. If, if your child, however old
they are, whether they're small,small, or whether they're grown,

(39:24):
come to you with something that is not going well or they don't
know how to deal with something,or they're frustrated or anxious
or angry about something, let them speak.
Don't fix it. Don't offer a solution.
Hold that space for them to use all of their words, whether

(39:44):
they've got the words or not. Maybe it's sobbing, maybe it's
silence, and see what unfolds. See what happens.
See how the energy of that interaction happens.
Same at work, if one of your team members comes to you and
normalizing asking people, how are you really so powerful?

(40:15):
I've heard a question that a team counselor had shared with
in an article I had read a couple of years ago, and it's so
deeply resonated with me and it the question is not how are you
doing or how was school today orhow was work, but how is your
heart? How does your heart feel today?

(40:41):
How's your heart? Because that really you pause in
that because it #1 it's not the rote response of how is school
all fine, but it makes you checkin and turn in where you go.
Well, how is my heart like physical heart or feeling heart
experience heart? Because I think that it really
comes to the place where where we are most energized and where

(41:07):
we feel the most connection. And in my research,
belongingness is the number 2 isthe #2 biggest energy drainer
after authenticity. And in those culminate in that
number one biggest energy drainer, which is when we do not
have a sense of internal emotional safety and self trust.

(41:30):
And that all comes back to the unprocessed experience and
trouble because we're all seeking to be seen, to be heard,
to be understood. And I think when we're so busy
bypassing the real for our own comfort or feeling like we don't
want other people to be uncomfortable, so we're just
trying to fix the problem instead of just really pausing

(41:54):
and listening and allowing someone to share they're real
true experience. Yeah.
We then come into this unprocessed experience and
trauma. And I'm thinking in the yogic

(42:14):
philosophy, in the Vedic philosophy, in the text, and we
can bring this from ancient to modern.
We would talk about samskaras, little grooves, patterns of
behaviour or belief or tendencies to respond or act or
think in a certain way that get deeper and deeper and deeper

(42:35):
because the body likes patterns,the brain works in patterns.
That's how we learn and behave. And so we might call it neural
patterning in the modern terminology.
And so to re pattern or break the patterns or reform patterns,

(42:56):
it needs consciousness. We need to be aware of
behaviours, we need to be aware of how we feel.
We need to be aware of what's unfolded before or now and then.
This is, and this is where the yoga nidra that I was going to
talk about comes in to help us process the unprocessed

(43:20):
experiences because they are deep within, you know, I said
they're held within the body andthe mind, but they're held in
certain parts of the brain as well.
And when we're in burnout, we often can't access different
parts of the brain, different memories.
So that's why we might, you know, forget words.
So we might not be able to access certain region brokers
region of the brain. So our words don't come out

(43:42):
right or our memories, you know,hippocampus isn't activated.
So it's activated, but we can't access it.
It's disconnected. There's a disconnect, and so
reconnecting all of those parts of us is so vital.
And I love what you said about the belongingness because a lot

(44:03):
of people that I speak to and myself, including, I don't know
if you can relate to this, is that feeling like we don't
belong, like we're not part of something, that we're different.
And I speak a lot about belonging and feeling like being
at home, feeling understood. Many people talk to me and I've

(44:25):
had this experience myself of feeling completely
misunderstood. But could it be also possibly
that I wasn't sharing who I really was with people?
So of course I was misunderstoodbecause they were receiving a
certain part of me. And also maybe there's, you

(44:47):
know, certain people that we don't go deep with because
there's not that safety. So that again, it's
multifaceted, but I, I love to talk about and I've seen the
impact that this has that when we start asking for help or
share how we're feeling or ask people to just listen because
sometimes people need to be shown what we need.

(45:10):
People are quite willing to do it.
The people that are truly going to stay in our lives are quite
willing to do it. And then they get to know us
better. We get to share and express who
we are. They get to do the same.
Our friendships, relationships, whether they're at work or at
home or in a family environment,get deeper and closer.
We understand each other more effectively.

(45:30):
And so we do get that deeper sense of belonging being
accepted and being understood. And that can go a long, long way
to repair. To repair our physical body, our
emotional body, our spiritual and mental body, and there we

(45:51):
go, can really help close that stress circuit in a way that
feels manageable and attainable.How do we begin the process of
closing that stress circuit, Emma?
So if you're going to be doing this by yourself and not

(46:11):
reaching out for any help and support, I typically recommend.
And again, it depends on what somebody has experienced and
what they're coming with, how their mind works, how they
interact with the world. But things like small, I
mentioned this earlier, 5 minutepause practices, something

(46:33):
that's recorded. So they kind of are doing it
with someone. They can just press play.
You can find two or three times in the day, set an alarm on your
phone, put it in your calendar. If you're someone that works in
that way. And you stop for 5 minutes and
you allow yourself to be guided by that pause.
And the pause is really just coming to the body, feeling the

(46:57):
feet on the ground or your back on the chair, beginning to
notice how your body feels. Maybe your body is tense
activated and can we invite a little bit of softening on the
out breath? Can we allow the shoulders to
move slowly away from the ears? Can we allow the breath to move

(47:18):
downwards towards the belly? Perhaps the belly feels tight
and we just notice. We don't try and change it, but
can we invite our belly to soften?
So very simple pause practices. And if people don't like coming
into the body, they could just focus on the breath.
If they don't like the breath, they could focus on sounds.
If they don't like focusing on sounds, you could focus on a

(47:40):
visual. You could look at something.
I have a crystal here. You could just sit and look at
the crystal and become really curious about how it looks.
You could go for a walk, optic flow, allow your your eyes to
move across whether you're in anurban environment or a nature
environment that can help reset the brain and the nervous

(48:00):
system. So there are many simple
practices that can fit into yourday.
So the reason I start with thoseis because it doesn't have to be
disruptive. It doesn't really have to
disrupt your day. And if you're someone that likes
to write things down, you might keep a little journal, whether
it's on your computer, on an Excel file, if that's what you

(48:21):
like, or whether it's written. How did I feel before?
How did I feel afterwards? Did I have even easier
conversations? Did that problem I have suddenly
the solution or the creative idea come into my brain?
What changed? How did my body feel?
And then after that, I, I do recommend working with somebody

(48:46):
because honestly, trying to comeout of burnout yourself, it's
like trying to re, it's trying to give yourself more energy
when you have no energy left to give.
So finding someone that you know, like and trust, whether
it's a one-on-one situation, which can be really helpful for
the first three to six months. And it does take at least three

(49:08):
to six months to change habits. I know people say that habits
change in 21 days. They don't.
It takes a long time for the we've taken a long time to get
to this point, so it takes a long time for our nervous
systems to to realise what's going on and to integrate these
new behaviours. Oh my gosh, yes.

(49:28):
But it's possible and it happens.
We just have to be gentle and allow the space for it.
Yeah, allow the space for it. Commit to it.
A a lot of what I find as well is that even committing to
something can be really tricky for people because they don't
feel worthy. So that's why a group programme

(49:52):
can be really helpful because you are surrounded by others
walking this path with you. You know you're not alone.
You feel safe to speak and talk and listen to others.
So you learn the the way of doing that.
There are lots of small things that people can do, and again,

(50:13):
it's very unique to that individual.
I like to see what somebody's life looks like, what their
habits are like at the moment, what their family dynamics are
like, what their work life is like.
But within a group program, you will be taken through stages and
phases. You'll be held in the

(50:35):
repatterning, in the reprogramming, in the gathering
back of your life and your energy.
Yes. One of the most powerful places
that I have found in community and in Group work in particular
has been we can set the intention and we can be agreed

(50:58):
with ourselves that this is whatI'm going to do.
And we have this very linear layout in our mind of this is
how it's going to go. Point A, point B, Point C I'm
going to get to here, I will arrive.
Everything is good and it is an up and down journey.
There are moments in there whereit is hard as heck.
And there were moments for me because I was slow.

(51:20):
Y'all know, I did not pick up onthe fact that I needed other
people. I was just it took me a minute
to get there. And I think it was my nervous
system had to regulate internally to meet to allow
that. But I, I was trying to do it all
by myself. And on the days in the early
days when I was doing this a decade ago, I felt when those
hard places came or the places where I didn't have the

(51:43):
perspective to see a different way to approach a challenge or a
problem or anything I was facingin my life, I would get really
discouraged. I would get frustrated, I would
get angry. I would feel, oh God, there's
one more thing I'm failing at orI'm just not worthy enough.
I'm like good enough, you know, not on a conscious level, but
the feeling of that subconsciously that I'm just not

(52:05):
really good enough to get it. I don't I it's not working for
me. Not working.
And in, in Group and in community, I I have been held
and supported and seen, heard and understood in a collective
pause. And also known I wasn't alone

(52:27):
because somebody else was usually being challenged in a
similar way. And and then there was this
place of we can do this togetherbecause it wasn't just me
focusing on it for myself, it was me holding space and being
with another person in a similarspace to go, let's do this

(52:50):
together. Yeah, completely.
Something else just came to me and I think it's gone out of my
own. No, it's come back into my
brain. Well done, Emma.
I love. How that works?
There was the pour and it and itwas it was allowed to come back
in. There's a model that I use in

(53:13):
one of my courses in a couple ofthe courses actually, which is
the stages of change model. And you know, we talked about
external and internal pressures and societal pressure and you'll
know this, right? But the, you know, society would
have a say, oh, you go from yourcomfort zone to your growth
zone. So you just want to change
something. You just have to do the action

(53:34):
and you go straight into growth and it's new habits.
You're living the new way of life and everything's hunky
Dory. No problem when they forget the
two bits in between or more thatthere's.
Well. In positive psychology they call
it fear zone. I like to call it the space of
the unknown. I think it sounds nicer.
And then then there's also the yeah, the learning zone where

(53:57):
we're integrating. And like you said, it's not
linear again. Then it's like, well, then it's
linear. No, you can be in all of those
places at once, or you can be inone or two or three of them.
Go back into the into the comfort zone.
You can come all the way to the growth zone, go back into the
space of the unknown and a little bit in the learning zone.
We are always in all places at once because our life is

(54:19):
multifaceted. So knowing that I think helps
people a lot as well. Because also there's this
belief, you know, the lies we tell ourselves that well, I
should just choose to do a behaviour and change it.
And then once I've done it, I'llhave the thing and it'll all be
better. And we can't just magic it like

(54:42):
that. Oh damn, really?
I. Know, I know.
Although although yoga music is really quite magic.
Swear I'm going to talk about that now.
Thank you for sharing that inside Emma, because that those

(55:02):
stages of, of growth, experience, integration,
adaptation, adoption and as we move through that process is it
is this fluid place and it's, I always think of it as sort of
the ocean waves at the shorelineand we are constantly pulling

(55:22):
things in, pushing things forward, cycling through, we're
pausing in between the waves. I mean there's, it is everything
all at once and it's OK. That's actually the natural way
and flow of it. Yeah.
When we acknowledge that and allow space for that to be ease

(55:50):
moves it. Yeah, the natural ebb and flow
of life is such it moves in and out like the breath.
Bear with us about Yoga Nidra. This is something I have fallen

(56:15):
in love with over the last year.So do shine and sparkle some
light on what? What is it?
How do we do it? Give us all the goodness.
So yoga nidra is a form of meditation, but it differs from
meditation. It's a very ancient practice

(56:36):
from the the the Yoga Sutras, from the Yogi tradition.
It's seen in other cultures and places and indigenous spaces
around the world. The aboriginal culture also has
a Dreamtime. I believe some of the North
American cultures also have Dreamtime or dream space, but

(56:59):
it's a systematic process of moving through the layers of the
self. It's a guided process, either
guided by a guide or guided by yourself, typically by a guide
in the Western world. And it takes you down through
the different brain wave states from beta to alpha to Theta,

(57:22):
sometimes even into delta where we can get into this experience
of yoga nidra, which is wakefulness whilst we're asleep.
So we're at this level of sleep,the brain is still is sleeping
and resting, but there is a certain level of consciousness.

(57:43):
And people report to me that it just feels beautiful and
effortless, feel like they're floating.
There isn't time. Or maybe we'll do another
podcast on the whole that experience and the history of
yoga Nidra and the different kosher's, the different layers
of the body of the self. But no, I think what's important

(58:05):
to know is that in yoga nidra, we typically lie down.
You can sit up, but you're typically in a very comfortable
prone position. You can line aside whatever the
aim is to stay awake. But often if we're in sleep
deficit, you may drop into a deep state of sleep.
And some people say, how was that half an hour?

(58:26):
I thought it was like 3 minutes.But there will be part of your
brain. There will be part of your
unconscious or subconscious or both that are aware, awaken,
aware. And in yoga Nidra, we work with
Asang Kalpa, which is really your heart's desire or we can
call it a positive intent, a positive statement.

(58:46):
So it might be something like ifyou're working with someone who
doesn't feel good enough, we might say as we go into the yoga
nidra, I am enough. And then we're doing that in the
sort of beta alpha state. And as we go down into Theta and

(59:10):
delta, we implant that affirmation, the Sancalpa again.
So the guide will say and repeatyour Sancalpa I am enough three
times again. So what we're doing is we're
speaking to the subconscious andwe are effortlessly re
patterning, reprogramming. What we were talking about
through this podcast. Those patterns of behaviour and

(59:31):
belief that keep us in that active state, that keep us
moving forward, that keep us productive, that keep us
thinking the same things that wealways have done that we have no
control over. Because as you so correctly
said, it began when we were so, so little to be programmed in a
certain way. So one can expect to hear the

(59:52):
guide invite a sense of connection to the body, the
breath, sound, so all the sensesto move through a rotation of
consciousness of the body. People might know it, like a
body scan or a body awareness invitation, and then some
guidance into sensations are starting to connect to certain

(01:00:13):
movements of energies within thebody which feels so blissful or
can feel blissful. It doesn't always, of course.
And then we're gently brought back up and out of that state.
Yoga Nidra is being researched quite a lot at the moment
actually, so it's also known as non sleep deep breaths.
Now yoga nidra isn't just non sleep deep breaths.

(01:00:36):
Non sleep deep breaths might be also hypnosis.
Yoga Nidra is its own form of experience and it is an ancient
practice which we honour. But there's lots of research to
show that 30 minutes of yoga nidra is like having two sleep
cycles. So if someone is in sleep
deficit, they can really repair and heal because we know that

(01:00:58):
the body heals on an emotional and physical level in sleep.
So it can really help to reset the nervous system.
It can help to increase serotonin levels.
It can help to decrease the stress hormones, cortisol,
adrenaline. So it's a beautiful practice.
I suggest that people practice it.
One of the things I suggest thatthat people do is to practice it

(01:01:21):
before they get out of bed in the morning.
So if you are waking up groggy, exhausted, not knowing how
you're going to get through the day, I would pop on maybe a 10
or 15 minute yoga nidra and lie there and absorb it before you
get out of bed in the morning. Or if you are someone that works
from home and you can take 15 minutes, you could do it late

(01:01:42):
morning, early afternoon insteadof that cup of coffee which is
just going to keep the the caffeine levels up and would
maybe impact your sleep later on.
I don't always recommend it justbefore you go to bed.
I would recommend a different type of yoga nidra because it
it. Some people find it very hard to
go to sleep after yoga nidra because they do feel so rested

(01:02:03):
or at least their body feels rested.
But there are different types ofyoga nidra which keep you down
into the bathetta state so you might drift off into sleep, and
you can find some of those on YouTube.
So it's a beautiful ancient practice which we are so lucky
to have and to understand. And I feel so blessed and

(01:02:24):
privileged to be able to teach Yoga Nidra both as a guide and
on a course on the Transformational Sleep Yoga
Nidra Teacher Training, which ispart of the School of Living
Yoga. Oh Emma, I am so thrilled to
have had you on the show today and all of the beautiful wisdom

(01:02:44):
and insights that you have shared with everyone.
Thank you so much. So y'all can go over to Emma
Treharne TREHARNE over on YouTube and discover her
channel. Try those powerful pause
meditations for 5 minutes. Dive in and try a Yoga Nidra

(01:03:05):
instructional section. And if you are looking to
connect with Emma, Emma, where would you like people to find
and connect with you? The best place for people to
connect to me is either on LinkedIn, if you're on LinkedIn,
or send me an e-mail [e-mail] or any of

(01:03:26):
any of the ways that Carol Jean will put underneath this
episode. Whatever's easiest for you, but
LinkedIn and my e-mail is probably the best way to get
hold of me. So good, so good.
Thank you so much for being heretoday and joining us for this
amazing conversation on Beyond Chronic Burnout.

(01:03:46):
I hope you feel energized and ready to take on the challenges
ahead. Remember, you are not alone in
this journey. Let's stay connected.
Follow me on Instagram at Carol Jean Whittington, where you can
join our Beyond Chronic Burnout channel for personal messages
from me each week and subscribe to the podcast for more
conversations and burnout insights.

(01:04:08):
Together, we'll continue to break out of burnout and unlock
our authentic selves. Until next time, this is Carol
Jean signing all. Stay compassionately curious, my
friend. It's been quite all right.
Energy mastery, let's turn the tide.
Top shelf guests dropping wisdombombs.

(01:04:31):
Join us next week, where the energy's strong.
Beyond chronic burnout, we're breaking.
Free. Podcast pumping full of energy
tips and tricks to post your fight.
Fast, space and fun. You'll feel alive.
Energy Mastery. We come along for the ride.

(01:04:53):
We ride beyond Quantico. Now we're on the rise.
Join us as we form our top shelfguests and tapping into energy.
We're at our best.