No Pain, All Gain: Somatic Healing with the Workout Witch Liz Tenuto
Today I'm talking with Liz Tenuto, more widely known as the Workout Witch. Liz is a somatic specialist with a degree in psychology from UCSB, who has spent over a decade helping people release chronic stress through movement. She's also the author of Moving Through Trauma, which hit shelves in January. Liz's work bridges the gap between psychology and physical health, specializing in how trauma and stress manifest as psychological issues like gut problems, insomnia, and chronic pain. In our conversation today, we're diving into the world of somatic exercises, which are slow conscious and gentle movements designed to enhance the mind-body connection and nervous system regulation.
We talk about how traditional no pain, no gain fitness often backfires for the ADHD brain, the nuances of introception, and why your body might feel stuck in a functional freeze without you even realizing it. If you'd like to follow along on the show notes notes page, you can find that at hackingyouradhd.com. All right, keep on listening to find out how to get your body and brain on the same page.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/294
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: I was just looking through everything you sent over. And the one thing that really caught me off guard is, can you tell me a little bit about this name, the Workout Witch? Because that's a little bit not what I was expecting there.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, definitely. I joke with people that I am a witch, but in reality, when I teach these really tiny movements that really stress out of your body and regulate your nervous system, and they're so small, and they look so lazy, and like it kind of looks like you're just rolling around in your pajamas. And the overwhelming response that I get for people is like, what kind of sorcery is this? And so that's why I've called myself the Workout Witch, because the exercises look quite woo-woo, but they're actually based in neuroscience.
William Curb: Awesome. Yeah, so this is a lot about this somatic exercise, right? Yeah, exactly. So tell me a little bit about what the somatic practice is.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, so soma is the Greek word for body. So somatic exercises are tools for body healing. They're really simple and effective tools. They're literally these tiny micro movements that you can do in bed or on the floor that release tension out of your body, release stress out of your body, and regulate your nervous system. Awesome.
William Curb: And yeah, you were saying this is very science-based. It's not just something that someone came up with, right?
Liz Tenuto: It's very science-based. Yeah.
William Curb: So what exactly is going on to help release in here?
Liz Tenuto: So essentially, and I think specifically for neurodivergent people, our bodies tend to run at like a higher baseline of stress, and it's not really our faults. Like, we're more attuned to our environment. We're more sensitive to sensory information, sensory load.
We process sensory information differently. And then we also live in this world that is not set up for neurodivergent people. So inherently, we're running on sympathetic activation of the nervous system, which is just fancy language for like a fight or flight of your nervous system.
And that's kind of our baseline for people with ADHD. So the way when you're, there's kind of like stress physiology, fight-flight physiology, and then there's like shutdown physiology. And then there's like the Goldilocks place in the middle that's called like homeostasis or the ventral vagal state if you want to use nervous system language.
And that's the, this Goldilocks place is the place that feels really good, where you feel at ease and you feel relaxed in your body and you're not tense. Most folks with ADHD are operating on one of the extremes.
William Curb: Yeah, definitely. I just, I'm writing a couple weeks ago about this idea I came up with of like calming up of like bringing your state back up into a, you know, because often we think about like getting amped up, but that's not usually what we need. We need to bring our state up, but not be super excited.
Liz Tenuto: Yes. And folks with ADHD need more, some people need more sensory input to feel more stable than a neurotypical person would.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Like I always think with like fidgets and like weighted blankets and stuff, and how much that helps. And it's not less input, it's more input, but it's not, you know, going crazy with it.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, which feels very counterintuitive because, and I love the term calm up, that's such a clear way of describing it because we think of calming down all the time, you know, maybe as a kid you're told to calm down all the time and that just like feels really bad to hear. So calming up is this great reframe.
William Curb: Yeah, I was always, also something I was like thinking with my kids where I'm like, yeah, they're not going to go asking them a call down here, isn't going to work. What they need is to like get up to the right, because when you're under stimulated, it can also be like you're like out of control.
Liz Tenuto: Absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes for me at least, like sometimes I just have to like slam a pillow a few times to like release some emotion, or I'll pull on my ear. I pull on my ear like all the time in meetings and in line and on the plane to just give my body a little bit of that support, a little bit of that self soothing. They're kind of like, I think of somatic exercises as like really intentional stims.
William Curb: Oh, I love that because yeah, I've definitely like specifically for some things like heavy work I've heard about where you like just like need to like really use your body to get in tune with how you're feeling. Exactly.
Liz Tenuto: Exactly. And I think like evolutionarily, you know, our nervous system is quite old, and it hasn't yet caught up to modern life and modern society. And we as preachers and humans are used to movement. We're used to dancing and singing and moving as a way to express our emotions and as a way to heal. But in modern society, we're like so much more sedentary, especially with the tech boom now. And because of that, a lot of that energy kind of just like sits in our bodies, and we don't have the simple tools to like process the emotions and all of the tension and energy that's just kind of stuck.
William Curb: Yeah, definitely. I was the last we had like kind of a sick week where I'm like, and then I'm like, at the end of the day, I'm like, I haven't moved at all today. And I need to do something. Yeah, totally.
Totally. So what kind of movements are so you were saying a little bit like, you know, your tugs and maybe like hitting a pillow and so what are some of the other kind of movements that we're you'd be talking about doing here?
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, so one really effective tool is bilateral stimulation. It's the same type of movement that's used in EMDR with your eyes or what sound, but you can also do it with your body. So for example, you can lay on your bed, on your stomach, with your hands stuck on top of each other and your forehead on top of your hands.
And you can just in the laziest least ambitious way possible, just rock your hips right to left for about a minute. And that gives you this bilateral stimulation, which helps you with emotional regulation. It helps release tension out of your body. It helps release stress and anxiety out of your body. I do that exercise almost every night before I go to bed because I have a history of insomnia. And it just kind of helps me release any extra energy that my body is holding before I go to sleep.
William Curb: Yeah, it sounds pretty good. Because I do love also the emphasis on like how easy it is to get into these movements, because a lot of times people are like, when they're thinking about doing exercise or movement or something, they're like, they're thinking like, I'm going to go to the gym for an hour.
Liz Tenuto: It's so much like, who has time for that? I do not.
William Curb: Yeah, it's like looking at my schedule today, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go for a walk and that's going to be good movement for today, but it's not going to be more than that, definitely.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, exactly. And so one of the things I love about the exercises that I teach, and I've tried like a lot of different peeling modalities. And, you know, I've been in fitness for a long time. So I will try anything. But one of my favorite things about somatic exercises is that you can do them in the hotel room, you can do them on the plane, you can, you know, do them in your car, in your parked car, you can do them in bed, they're just like, you don't need any equipment, it's not a heavy lift to do them, you can do them for like one minute to five minutes and immediately feel better. If you do a longer session, like 10 to 20 minutes, you're going to feel really at ease, really relaxed afterwards.
William Curb: Yeah, that sounds really nice, because I know there's just, it can, yeah, with that intensity of how much you think you need to do, it can be very hard to like even get yourself motivated to do anything, especially if you don't, you're going to get results.
Liz Tenuto: Totally, totally. And I think like, you know, I think historically, the fitness industry has been very like, no pain, no gain, like high intensity exercise. And, you know, after a certain age, like even after like mid 30s, you don't actually don't really want to be doing high intensity exercise.
You do want to be doing strength training, but like low to mid intensity exercise is way better. And it's better for people to be consistent, which is difficult for folks with ADHD, but like to be consistent for like 10 minutes a day. So if you take a 10 minute walk every day, that's way better than you going to one, one hour class at the gym every week. But it's this reframe, because we've always been taught like pump iron and go hard, sweat.
William Curb: Yeah, I can't imagine doing some of the hit, hit, hit workouts I did in my 20s at in my 40s now, it would not work out well.
Liz Tenuto: No. And it's like, it feels like torture.
William Curb: Yeah, I think that's part of like, I would, the amount of resistance I would feel to being like, oh, I'm going to go do this. And I'm just like, I would need a lot of executive function to just make that happen.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, me too. Me too.
William Curb: And I think that's important for people to also remember this is not just this one thing you're doing where you're like using up these resources, is like, yeah, if I'm spending all my energy to make sure I go to this exercise class, and that's gonna, I mean, yeah, it's good for me. I'm not trying to say not do it, but you know, find something that balances. So you can still do other stuff throughout the day. Exactly.
Liz Tenuto: Because the whole point of being fit and exercising is so that you can like live a good, healthy long life. So for me, I don't really want to spend like 15 minutes driving somewhere, and then have to like get on a wait list for a class. And like, it's just too, like, it's too much. I will not follow through with that. So for me, like doing exercises at home, it's and taking walks is my go to.
William Curb: Yeah, that and, you know, avoiding injury and all that kind of stuff. It's, which is also making me think. So this is also very like a trauma based kind of stuff as well, right?
Liz Tenuto: Yes. Yes. Very trauma based. So folks who have experienced long term stress, which is considered chronic stress or anything that's over three months or trauma, go into this like fight, flight, freeze physiology as well. And so the exercises that I teach, there is a sequence of exercises that releases trauma out of your body. And the way that that works is essentially after you experience trauma, your body's natural reaction is to like shake a These are called neurogenic tremors. So if you think about a dog, when a dog gets really scared, they shake afterwards. And that shaking is how your body releases the trauma and the stress out of its body and like returns to homeostasis.
As humans, we have this cognitive override, like don't shake, that looks weird. So like, there are certain moments where you can't stop the shaking after trauma. But most, most people don't let themselves shake and they don't really let themselves process their trauma right after it happens. We have this delay where we can try to be functional, keep trying to push through our day to day, we don't give ourselves that time after it happens to heal and to process. So the trauma releasing exercises that I teach, essentially replicate that shaking in a very safe, gentle way so that it physiologically releases out of your body, but then you also get this big emotional release when that happens too. So you cry, like this huge cry. And then afterwards, you feel significantly lighter.
William Curb: So it was funny when you like mentioning the dogs, I have a Chihuahua who's a lot creeping next to me and I'm like, she's like 90% fury and then also just pure tremors when she's like done.
Liz Tenuto: Yes, totally. And dogs are great examples of that. And there's this book called Waking the Tire by Dr. Peter Wavine, who's one of the kind of founding people in somatics. And he has a whole chapter called Why Animals Don't Have PTSD. And it's focused on that shaking that they do after they express stress or trauma.
William Curb: That's really interesting. So can you walk me through a little bit about how this you would induce this shaking? I remember reading articles about this years ago that was, and that was very much focused on like muscle overload, which this does not sound like it's anything quite like that.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, no, I'm not in some muscle overload, because it can be really overwhelming for people and it can like re-traumatize people. So I, in terms of doing the trauma releasing exercises, I don't do it until I'm like about like I've done like 15 to 18 other sessions with people to get their bodies out of like tension and get them a lot more relaxed and at ease in their body before we start to touch on the trauma release, just to be super safe.
And so that no one gets overwhelmed as they're doing it. The exercises are essentially like these exercises where you're laying with your knees bent and your knees touching and you open your knees up to the side. And then you bring, you do some engagement with your stomach, you bring your knees up about halfway and you'll start to feel this shake in your inner thighs. And then there's like a whole sequence, it's like a 12 to 18 minute sequence, depending on how much the person is responding to it, where they're opening and closing their legs at these various degrees and rusting in between to kind of give ourselves that integration time too.
William Curb: And then this is something where like they're focusing on the emotions that they're doing or that just kind of something that comes out on its own.
Liz Tenuto: It kind of comes out on its own. I really cue for like relaxing. So I'll often talk about like how relaxed can your job be, how relaxed can your stomach be, are you tensing in your tongue right now, what's happening with your eyebrows. So I'm really queuing for them to relax their body so that the shaking can just be allowed to happen. And then the emotions just kind of naturally come through.
William Curb: I can see, and yeah, especially with this sounds like it works much better with like someone kind of guiding you through the process.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, it does. So you don't have to, I teach courses. So when I first started doing this, it was because I had experienced a lot of trauma in my childhood.
And so I was working one on one with someone, but this was back in 2008. And somatics was like very niche and very obscure. And now it's having its moment, like it's getting a little bit more well known.
And there's been a lot of research since then as well that has really substantiated it as science based, which I think is also part of its boom right now. But so I teach courses and I have a 30 day trauma releasing stress and trauma releasing course where I guide people through it's like about 10 minutes each day. And I guide people through the day by day of releasing trauma. So you just have to like turn the video on, watch it, follow it, and you're good to go.
William Curb: Yeah, because I was just thinking was like the lack of interception I can have sometimes where I'm like, I don't know how I'm feeling. And someone's like, oh, you should like release your jaw muscles. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I had no idea.
Liz Tenuto: Totally. But I mean, I feel like that's quite common for people. Like, I think a lot of us don't know what our bodies are doing and how much tension we hold in our bodies subconsciously. And I am constantly reminding myself, you know, like, Oh, am I clenching my sphincter right now? Like what's going on? And for me, I kind of start to notice like an emotional shift where I'll be like, why am I all of a sudden anxious? Then I'll check in with my body and I'm like, oh, my shoulders are like up to my ears. Yeah.
William Curb: And I think that's also like a great point for people is that for ADHD, we also have this like very bottom up system where how our body feels is then reflecting in how we're like physically feel or mentally feeling.
Liz Tenuto: Exactly. Yeah, there's no separation. For us. Yeah.
William Curb: Yeah, cause I've definitely had like, yeah, I'm like, oh yeah, my shoulders are really tense and I'm feeling stressed, but I'm not, I'm like, I'm not actually stressed about anything. I just need to relax myself somehow. Yeah.
Liz Tenuto: And it's really cool because sometimes when you relax your shoulders and all of a sudden you have that emotional change that shift as well, where you're like, oh, no, I'm not stressed. All we have to do is like tell myself, how relaxed could my shoulders be?
William Curb: Yeah. But yeah, again, it's the, that lack of interception where I'm like, I don't even realize this or, you know, I've been like sitting in a chair funny all day and I don't realize that I've been doing that.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, totally, totally. A lot of folks with ADHD like sit on their feet or like wrap their feet around the chair leg or, you know, they're just like tense in their toes all the time.
We're good at hiding it. It's like tongue tension, toe tension. But I do think that that's, I think this is my theory and this isn't like backed by science, but this is just my lived experience is that like, we do need more stimulation. We do need more movement to feel at this baseline place for us and, you know, for a lot of people like in school or like at work or whatever, like moving around a lot while you're working was considered distracting and maybe you were punished for. So now we've come up with these really creative ways of like sitting on our feet to get that stimulation or tensing our tongue to get that extra stimulation when we could just be like moving around more. And be way better for us.
William Curb: Yeah, I used to have a standing desk, which I found really helpful for like just being like, oh, I can like, you know, move a little bit more here and it's nice, but had to go away from that when I hurt my back a while back. And it's interesting how it was like, oh yeah, there's different ways of like interacting with having just one set escapades and has never quite worked for me.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah. Yeah, we need a little more movement. So I will like even on podcasts, sometimes I'll be like rocking a little bit and moving a little bit. And I just kind of try to let myself be, my body be a little more dynamic.
William Curb: Yeah, I've ended up getting this like meditation chair where I can like sit cross-legged in it. And so then it gives me a little bit like, I can then also just like move my legs in different ways and have like, oh, this is not quite straight sitting in here because I move around a little bit too much and my chair would be squeaky, squeaky, squeaky, which is not great for podcasting.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, I'm sure. We need, we need like a little more body freedom than other people.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of those things that is really hard to get people to kind of utilize for their ADHD is there, because we do have all this like messaging that like, oh, you need to sit still.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah. And like, like for me, like I love rocking, but that's been kind of like pathologized as like there's something wrong with you if you're rocking. And I'm like, I just think it feels great. We rock babies. There are all these studies that on war veterans with PTSD who get rocking chairs or who are taught these rocking exercises. And it's incredibly soothing, but it's been pathologized as weird.
William Curb: And now thinking to all the rocking chairs my mom had, I'm like, oh yeah, it makes sense. Which is always one of the like more interesting things here is that there are so many coping mechanisms that people have developed to be like culturally acceptable versions of these things where it's like, you know, the people that really need to be get that move, they're like, oh yeah, I'm always at the gym or something. And it's like, yeah, that's the culturally acceptable version for them. Totally. So while I'm thinking about this, so we were talking about trauma and stress, but like who should really be kind of thinking about doing this kind of work?
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, if you have like any physical symptoms that you go to the doctor for and they're like, it's stress. And you're like, okay, what do I do with that? Like you can't not have a kid or just like not work or completely change your lifestyle to be less stressed. Right. So people who experience frequent headaches, people who have unexplained gut issues, people who have sleep issues, people who have physical pain that's lasted for longer than three months, whether it's lower back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, jaw pain, and they didn't have like an acute accident, like a car accident, fall. People who feel like they have a hard time with managing their emotions with focus movement helps that a lot too. But I would say like the physical symptoms that I just listed and the kind of like lower grade health conditions that a doctor can't quite help you with yet are really great like indicators that your body is in its stress physiology is in fight, fly, or freeze. And that these exercises would be really soothing and beneficial for you. If you have like an autoimmune condition or cancer or a more serious health condition, the exercises are very relieving and do reduce your symptoms, but it like won't go away. Yeah.
So it's like for me, it's like I had sleep issues for a really long time and so I just do these exercises before I go to bed and it helps me get pretty nicely.
William Curb: Yeah. When you're like going through the list, I'm like, oh yeah, I have all of those things. Yeah. I mean, they are also all very common with ADHD because it's like, oh yeah, we also have sleep issues and gut issues and chronic stress. And so I can see a lot of people being like, oh yeah, this is definitely something that I need in my life.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah. Yeah, because it's really not about like overriding this, the things that we experience having ADHD. It's just about how do we like stimming is great. I'm very pro-stimming, but it doesn't regulate your nervous system long term because it's not as intentional. So if you switch just random rocking, for example, to like bilateral stimulation rock, you're actually regulating your nervous system. And when you practice that long term for like a couple months, you're going to change the baseline of your nervous system. So you just will feel more at ease in yourself, but you won't lose any of the like amazingness of ADHD.
William Curb: And so, yeah, so you were mentioning that you probably would feel something like within like 10 minutes, but this is so like how long, this sounds also like kind of like a maintenance practice kind of thing where you don't just like, I've done two weeks and now I'm cured, which is kind of how a lot of people want things to work, but it doesn't, there's nothing quite like that. Yeah.
Liz Tenuto: Are you asking how long it takes?
William Curb: Yeah, just like kind of what the sense of like what people should expect if they wanted to do this.
Liz Tenuto: You'll feel better in three days with like 10 minutes or less with my courses that I teach. So we do guarantee you'll feel better, you'll feel more relaxed within three days. On day 18 through 25 is the big trauma release. So by the end of the 30 days, the goal is that you feel much lighter at the end. And then I have a 60 day nervous system program.
So generally for people in 30 to 60 days, they feel like significantly more at ease and more relaxed in their body, but you'll start to feel better in just three days.
William Curb: That does sound very nice. Yeah. But I'm also like, man, wish I had time for that.
Liz Tenuto: But yeah, it's only 10 minutes a day and you can do them in bed. So that's like for me, that's like the big kind of hack is being able to do them in bed because I can just be like, cool, this is part of my morning wake up routine or part of my sleep routine, drink to sleep. Yeah.
William Curb: Because it does seem like building in the routine part of it is really important. Yeah.
Liz Tenuto: The consistency is will yield the best results. But at the same point, consistency, for me, I kind of tricked myself into working out by being a fitness instructor because I knew I love movement.
I used to be a dancer, but I knew I probably wasn't going to work out unless I made it in my life. And I do like it a lot. But for me, I do still have to trick myself into doing it. So I just go into the space and I just lay there and I'm like, whatever happens, if I I'll just lay here, whatever happens is good. And then normally after like two minutes of laying around, I'm like, fine, I'll do, I'll do some weights. But like if I were to be like, I'm going to work out, like for me, my brain doesn't like that. Like it's like, but for me to be like, I'm going to go lay down, my brain's like, sure, let's do that. I'm going to lay down, wiggle around a little, my brain's like, okay. And then after like two minutes and I'll be like, okay, fine, I'll like do a few. I'll do some strength stuff.
William Curb: Yeah, I always love the lowering the stakes and then also sticking with that. Like if I'm like, oh, I'm going to go lay down for a little bit. And I'm like, you know what, I really do not want to do anything. I'm being like, okay, I'm not going to. That's fine too.
Liz Tenuto: Yes. And then, and then, but then that's what your body needs in that moment. And that's what's really beneficial for you in that moment. So you're taking really good care of yourself and increasing your inter-reception skills by doing that.
William Curb: Yeah. So one of the things I was interested in that you mentioned earlier is you were talking about the places where this wasn't as great was the like acute injury kind of thing. But as I saw the Feldelkrais method there up there and I'm like, oh, that's, I've heard about that for like acute stuff too.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah. Yeah. So with acute stuff, I always suggest that people just start with your doctor, do what your doctor is telling you to do first. If they clear you for movement, like for gentle movement, you can do somatic exercises, but you have to wait until the doctor clears you for that. Interestingly enough, Feldelkrais is that's one of the modalities that I'm trained at.
And he created a lot of these movements while he was stuck in a hospital bit to heal from an acute injury. But I just am very cautious with people. Once you get clear for gentle movement, you can do it.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because a couple years back, I tore my quad and that was something where it's like, yeah, I need to do, I mean, one of those is where I still need to do stuff with it. Because it's just like, oh, this is still tight years later, even though I've done, I'll be like, you know, massaging my leg. I'm like, there's a knot right there still. That's never gone away.
Liz Tenuto: Such a big muscle to heal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you could definitely do somatics at this point.
William Curb: So if people wanted to get started on this, what kind of should they be doing? Like what should they be? Like obviously you have your program, but is there any other like kind of avenues that they should kind of look at?
Liz Tenuto: Yeah, I mean, I think reading about it is really interesting to read about. I have my book, When the Body Speaks. And there are other books like The Body Keeps the Score.
The Body Keeps the Score is quite dense and meaty to get through. There's also Waking the Tire by Dr. Pia Levine. But it's really interesting to read about it a little bit and learn about it at first. But ultimately, the healing really does happen through the movement and through the exercises. So if you were to want to try an exercise, you can just DM me release on any of my Instagram account and I would send you a free one minute video to try out. So you can just like see if you like it, see if it makes sense in your body.
William Curb: Awesome. Yeah. I think there's, for a lot of people, it's just kind of like even the idea of getting better is kind of scary. And so like it's like, it really needs to be these small steps. Totally.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah. And it's interesting because in somatics, we teach titration, which is exactly that where you're taking these small incremental steps, you know, day by day. So you're not overexposing yourself. I never, like I never want people to just jump right into a trauma release. Like some people want to grow and like have this really intense experience with a practitioner that's going to like poke them and make them cry. And I'm like, no, don't do that.
That's like so intense. So yeah, like you're saying these baby steps is the best way to go about it. And I do structure everything in that way because you don't want to overwhelm yourself.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, if it is very classic ADHD is like, let's just go level 10 immediately. Totally.
Liz Tenuto: Let's do this. Yeah. Which is understandable. Like I get that. I used to be like that when I was younger. And yeah, I had to unlearn that.
William Curb: Yeah. I mean, that's why like I used to love doing like the super intense workouts because I was like, oh, I felt like I did something then.
Liz Tenuto: Yeah. Totally. And yeah, it's like I sweat a lot and now I can't walk for four days and I did it.
William Curb: I remember doing something like I'm like, I had to like help my friend move the next day. I'm like, this was the biggest mistake that I'm going up and down these stairs and every step hurts. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we're coming up here on time. So I was wondering if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to leave the audience with.
Liz Tenuto: I think for a lot of folks with ADHD, we feel like it's not possible to like feel less tense. But I just want to share that it as someone who has been through a lot, I want to share that it is possible to be less tense and it is possible to get good sleep again. And it is possible to feel more at ease in your body. And the cool thing about the body and kind of why I'm obsessed with healing the body is because the body does heal quite quickly when you give it the correct input. So it's very responsive. It's really always working for you. It's never trying to hurt you in any way and it's self-healing. So once you kind of activate those systems, those natural repair systems, it just compounds.
William Curb: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm sure a lot of people get a lot out of this.
Liz Tenuto: Thanks so much, William.
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While random stimming may help us cope in the moment, it doesn't necessarily lead to long-term nervous system regulation. By intentionally performing certain somatic exercises, we can actually shift our baseline physiology over time.
When we are in a state of functional freeze or understimulation, the goal isn't to lower our energy levels, but instead to move from a shutdown state up into a regulated and alert state of ease known as the ventral vagal state.
Because ADHD involves a bottom-up nervous system, our mental state is often a direct reflection of our physical tension. By consciously relaxing, we can trigger an immediate emotional shift, even if we don't realize our own stress levels.