A Daily Pause Podcast

The body is designed to respond & protect itself when it perceives danger or a threat, even before the conscious thinking part of our brain has decided if the threat is real or not. In other episodes, we’ve talked about the sympathetic nervous system, what’s commonly known as the fight or flight response part of your nervous system that activates our body from a state of rest to a state of mobiliz...

This week I wanted to focus on intentionally slowing down. The world can feel fast and overstimulating without leaving us an easy chance to stop amidst the rapid changes that surround us. The demands from work and family and our social life. The notifications from the internet and social media and the news. We are often encouraged to hurry up. Be more productive. Optimize our time. Move faster. Ge...

Today I wanted to start our session a little differently and share some of my personal story with you. After 2 months and nearly 900 downloads, I’m both amazed and so grateful for this growing community working with these practices on the Daily Pause Podcast! BIG NEWS!! We have a NEW free online community where we connect with others around these guided meditations, breathwork practices and journa...

Today I want to come back to the topic we talked about in the very first episode: getting out of the head and into the body. It’s this practice of shifting out of our thinking mind & into more actively focusing on the feelings in our bodies. Like: The quality of our breath, the rhythm of our heart, tension or relaxation in our muscles, discomfort or comfort anywhere in our bodies, noticing our emo...

Today we are going to hum together. Humming creates vibrations throughout the body, helping to physically stimulate something called the vagus nerve. This nerve is not only the longest cranial nerve in the body, but it is also in charge of the involuntarily functions of the body, the things that just happen automatically. This includes your heart rate, your breathing rate, digestion, inflammation...

Today we are going to relax deeply, and maybe even fall asleep if you”d like. You don’t necessarily have to save this audio ONLY for when you are ready to go to sleep. You can also use this when you want to take a moment for a deep relaxation of both the body and mind. I’ll guide us through a relaxing, down regulating counted breathing technique followed by a progressive relaxation visualization....

This week we are going to change things up a little bit. Over these past 5 episodes, we have focused on down-regulating breathing techniques and meditations. These practices can help calm you down and relax your nervous system by deepening and slowing down the breath while lengthening our exhales. This down-regulation has been show to lower heart rate, lower blood pressure, as well as decrease rel...

Today we’ll work with another practice that also down-regulates, but this time with the lens of finding balance. Balance in the body with breath control and balance in the mind with our shift in focus. This practice of mindfulness can help interrupt any anxious or distracting cycles in your mind, help clear mental clutter, and help to better concentration & decision making. Together we’ll do a sho...

This week I’ll share a few tools to help release stress and anxiety from the body. I want this to be something that you can use any time throughout your day when you find that you’d like to relax a little bit more. The first tool I’ll share is called the physiologic sigh: a science backed breathing method that can help quickly reduce stress or anxiety as it arises. This breathing practice helps th...

his week I want us to take this all one step deeper with a practice of activating, or feeling into, our hearts. To become more aware of the regenerative or rejuvenating feelings that arise in our chest when we’re feeling love or joy or gratitude. You might be familiar with the expressions “my heart is bursting with love”, or “that made our heart sing with joy”, “I’m feeling FULL of gratitude”. The...

This week I want to take us to through a practice of grounding. This practice can be used for moments when you feel stuck in anxiety, or stress or are feeling generally distracted. It can be for any time you want to get out of your head and back into the present moment. Back to where you are right here, right now on the Earth. I first want to teach a new type of breath: It’s called oceanic breath...

I wanted to begin this week with the basics. The bare bones of the practices I use every day to ease my mind and connect with my body. Our brains do our thinking but our bodies do our feeling. So much of our perception comes from our bodies, and I think it is important we give ourselves time and space to listen to that wisdom as well. To get out of our heads and into our bodies. I know it’s easy t...