Being the Driver of Your Nervous System with Brittany Lynn Wellness

[00:00:00] Carolyn: Our guest today on Evolve is Britney McCann. Britney is a functional nutritionist as well as a somatic therapist. It’s this latter part of her work that we’re gonna focus on today, this somatic therapy work. Britney trained with an elite program in New Zealand for her emotional body work and somatic therapy coaching, and she continues to train and be in community with these professionals in the somatic.

[00:00:30] Experiencing world. I’m really, really excited to talk to her today about how we as leaders can integrate somatic practices and knowledge so we can be in a more regulated, calm state. I hope you enjoy it.

[00:00:54] All right. Welcome everyone to another episode of. Evolve and I am so excited today to have a guest who unknowingly is in my backyard, well, not my literal backyard, but my geographical backyard. And welcome Brittany McCann to the show. 

[00:01:11] Brittany: Thank you. Thank you, Carolyn. Thank you so much for having me here.

[00:01:14] Carolyn: Yeah, so you’re just down, you know, one of the roads here and I found you on Instagram.

[00:01:21] Brittany: Yes. Good old Instagram. It’s just connecting us all. 

[00:01:25] Carolyn: and, and I have to tell the audience like why, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to have Brittany on. So Brittany is a functional nutritionist and somatic therapist and the piece that really stood out to me. So yes, I know Nutri. Really important. Yeah. And it contributes to our body and the state of our body.

[00:01:45] Totally. The piece that really, really hit me, and there was a specific post that you made that really talked to our body, and I think probably your work is a somatic therapist. So why don’t we just start off, can you just share a little bit about, you know, what your work is and how it can help people be better leaders in our workplaces?

[00:02:09] Brittany: Loaded question. . That’s a big question, but a good one. So I always kind of approach any teaching I do or. Explanation of the type of work we do. I talk about it as in this is like a dual pathway. Hmm. So we’re looking at the body from the physical perspective. Like you had mentioned, food is very important.

[00:02:31] It connects to our state of our energy, right? How we show up if we’re engaging, if we’re not. But then there’s this other very important. Maybe we can say it’s actually driving right. The behaviors and everything in the physical realm, and that is the emotional body. And so the work that I do with clients and with individuals is to bring not only awareness to, oh, there are these kind of two different parts of myself that essentially are one.

[00:02:58] Yeah, but that the emotional is just as important. As that The supplements, yeah, and the meal plans and all of the things. You know, even coming into the new year, we see everything. We see all the New Year’s resolutions, we see the juice cleanses, we see. The physical. The physical. The physical. The physical.

[00:03:18] Yes. It’s so much of the physical body. And again, very important. Yep. But what we’re kind of missing, I think is the piece of we have to look at the emotional. We have to understand the emotional, yeah. And how that’s. Allowing me to show up in my world. Yeah. Whether that’s a workplace, whether that’s as a mother, yeah.

[00:03:39] In a household. This emotional body is really gonna dictate how I show up, how I parent, how I lead, how I. Right. 

[00:03:47] Carolyn: Yeah. And there’s no shortage of emotions going on right now for people . 

[00:03:52] Brittany: Right. But we’re so taught to, you know, feel the happy and feel the joy, and feel the what have you. Yeah. With the guilt and the shame and these kind of like lower, you know?

[00:04:00] Yeah. Lower vibrations, we can call them are lower emotions. My whole piece to people is if we can’t process the lower emotions right, then we actually can’t enjoy or feel the higher spectrum of emotions, the joy, the things we’re missing out. On life. On experiencing life, absolutely. And having that human experience.

[00:04:21] Yeah.

[00:04:21] Carolyn: Now, you said an interesting word there. You referred to them as higher emotions and lower emotions. Yeah. I know that that was very intentional. Yes. Or I’m guessing it was very intentional. Many of us have been socialized to talk about them as positive and negative emotions, and we don’t really wanna do that.

[00:04:37] Can you speak a little bit more about that, why you used higher and lower emotions and what that might look like for somebody maybe physically? Mm-hmm. , they have, they might. React in their body with those things. Mm-hmm. . 

[00:04:48] Brittany: So this goes a little bit into the work of, uh, Dr. David Hawkins, and I’m not sure if you’re familiar with his work and how he was able to measure the frequency, if you will, of different emotional states in the human body.

[00:05:01] Right. And how it impacts the cell of the human body. And we have trillions of cells in our body, and ideally we want those cells to be very healthy and doing their job and dying when they need to. And all of the beautiful things that our brilliant bodies. On this spectrum of measurements for all the emotions, the higher emotions were at a higher frequency and the lower emotions.

[00:05:24] So just to be clear, the higher emotions are happiness, joy, love, fulfillments up there, and then the lower emotions are the shame, the guilt, the sadness, the depression, maybe anxiety is, yeah. Yeah. Right. And so he was actually able to measure these emotions. And so when I’m saying lower the way, Feel that word when I say that is that it’s the lower vibration.

[00:05:49] Hmm. Think slower. Yeah. Think even when I say the word shame, fear, disappointment, guilt. If you ask your listeners, you know, what does that feel like? If you were to give descriptive language, this is very much in the somatic work. Now, if you gave descriptive language to those, What do they feel like? Yeah.

[00:06:09] And people will say, heavy. Yep. Sludgy. Yeah. Muddy, right. Gross. And it’s, yeah. And if we look at the frequency in which he was able to measure those emotions, they are very heavy sludgy, what have you. And then just the opposite, right? On the other end, if you ask someone to. Joy and happiness, and I’m obviously changing the intonation of my voice, but yeah, even just that emotion, right?

[00:06:33] People say feels light and bouncy and airy and fast. And so we see that the frequency of these emotions, the human cells move faster, right? They’re healthier, essentially. Healthier cells. So the idea of this higher, lower, you know, is a really getting to know what does it feel like? Okay. Knowing that we can experience all we’re supposed to.

[00:06:54] Mm-hmm. feel an experience of. Yep. Research shows us it takes about 90 seconds to fully process, but I’m, that’s a whole other conversation. Do we even know how to process? Yep. Have we been taught how to process? Right. Chances are most of us have not. But the last piece, I’ll say in the high and the low is essentially that when our cells are working so beautifully in these higher vibrations, it leads to a healthy cell, a healthy state, a healthy body, healthy mind.

[00:07:21] Right? And the opposite is true as well. So E, everything that’s in the sludgy, the slower our immune system is slowed. All of these things, and I mean, Carolyn, you and I can just talk now. Nervous system, we go everywhere with this. Right, right. Depending on, yeah. And this really is the emotional. Manifesting into a physical illness or just ease over time.

[00:07:43] Right?

[00:07:44] Carolyn: Yeah. And and so thank you for that description cuz I think it’s really important for us to continue to give ourselves permission to feel. and to not judge and to just accept our feelings or emotions. Yeah, for what they are, it’s telling us something. And again, like I said, there’s no shortage of things to feel these days cuz there’s just a lot of stuff happening at home, at work, in the world.

[00:08:10] And so I think that that’s why now more than ever understanding how to regulate. Our nervous system because empowering all of this is our nervous system, right? The system that takes in everything around us and then helps to make sense of it in our body. Mm-hmm. . And if our nervous system isn’t working optimally, and we’ll use the word regulated here.

[00:08:35] It kind of makes everything else a lot harder to do. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, I know that you had made a comment earlier just as we were in the, somebody called this, the green room. There wasn’t a green room when we were in the, the zoom room. Um, you mentioned this concept of the driver of your nervous system.

[00:08:53] Mm-hmm. and so, What does that mean? And in connection to what you just shared around the emotion. So kind of let’s, let’s go into that conversation because you and I both know that this is a really important aspect for leaders in our workplaces to understand that their nervous system is a leadership tool.

[00:09:11] Brittany: Mm-hmm. and something that can be worked like a muscle in a sense. Yes. Right. Something that if we learn resiliency and flexibility within the nervous. We’re not totally kind of tipped off. Becoming the driver or in the driver’s seat of your nervous system. A means we need to learn our nervous system. So we have to learn kind of, and I talk about the nervous system from the perspective of the polyvagal theory.

[00:09:38] Yep. So knowing that we have this top very, you know, where we’re very social connected, all of this kind of stuff. In the ventral we have our sympathetic, and the way I envision it is like a ladder, right? Yeah. Going down the ladder. So we have our social engage. The youngest part of our nervous system. It’s lovely.

[00:09:55] It’s where we feel connected. We feel purpose, we feel all of these things 

[00:09:58] Carolyn: And energized. Right? Like we really feel, yeah. Higher. And that’s where the higher vi, like the higher vibration is. Yes. 

[00:10:04] Brittany: Okay. So this is where the hormone, right women, and I’m gonna stay on topic here cause I can go physical and all that, but this is where we are.

[00:10:11] Yes. In our, for women listening, this is where you are in your optimal hormonal. Okay, so as women, smooth periods, great, right? Skin, great metabolism, like all of this stuff. When we’re able to really stay in this regulated state, and I call that the green. Okay? Then we have the yellow, which is our sympathetic.

[00:10:29] This is known as the fight or flight. This is very great. Well known, right. People know this. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the stress state. And it’s not always a bad thing. Right. It’s not always a bad thing. We need these states for survival. Exactly. It’s just Exactly. We also need to be in the driver’s seat to be able to tell our bodies, it’s okay, we’re okay now.

[00:10:49] There’s no more threat. The threat is gone. Right. And then we have this kind of basement part, which is known as the dorsal, and this is really that kind of like turtle in the shell. This is the oldest part of our nervous system, and this is. , life-threatening. I’m not getting away from this threat. Right?

[00:11:04] Shut it down. Shut me out. Right? Total dissociation, want nothing to do with the world. And so when we’re be in the driver’s seat of our nervous system, we’re able to really recognize where am I right now? Mm-hmm. . So let’s say you’re in the workplace and something happens. Let’s say you get an email from your boss that says, Carolyn, I need to speak with you at two.

[00:11:26] Important. Yeah. Whatever. Sign them off, right? 

[00:11:30] Carolyn: Yeah, exactly. Oh, what did I do wrong? Oh my gosh, what’s gonna happen? Right, right, right. And what state did I go in where? Let’s, if 

[00:11:37] Brittany: you went into the panic, right? Yeah. So if you went into the panic mode, you go into mobilization. Right. This is the mo, this is the yellow, this is the middle, this is

[00:11:46] I gotta do something. Yeah. So there’s a threat, a perceived threat. Yeah. Not completely life-threatening, but there’s something, there’s a threat here, right? And then this ties into, you know, what was our childhood like, all of that kind of stuff. You know? Why? Why was that triggering for you yet? Someone else could get the same email and they’re like, Great.

[00:12:04] Right. Maybe I’m getting an award. Right, exactly. So it’s so much of our, our experience and our perceive, uh, how we perceive things and whatnot. But if you’re in this threat state, if that everything that you’re kind of taking in, right, you’re always scanning for those threats. So when you go into that state, you are now producing your cortisol, your adrenaline, all your stress hormones.

[00:12:23] Your digestion is tanking, right? Right. Because in that moment, your body says, okay, we need to mobilize, but conserve energy. So anything that I don’t need for this threat, I just don’t have time to do digestion. Shut off. Immune system shut off right at logical thinking brain, bye-bye. We just in that reptilian, right?

[00:12:43] And now we’re creating stories around, oh my gosh, why does he wanna talk to me? And all the other stuff, right? Being in the driver’s seat of your nervous system means that we’ll call it a trigger or that event. Let’s say that event happens, you get that email. Your visceral reaction, that automatic reaction is to maybe go into sympathetic.

[00:13:03] Okay. 

[00:13:04] Carolyn: And sympathetic for our listeners is,

[00:13:06] Brittany: is the fight or flight, right? So you’re going into that fight or flight. Okay. So you’re threatened, you’re triggered. But when we’re in the driver’s seat of our nervous system, we’re able to. Reregulate come back up into the green. Not even so much talking ourselves out of it, but for a lot of people, we build a list of resources.

[00:13:22] What are my resources? How do I reregulate myself right back up into that social connection, that playfulness, that joyful state of the nervous system. And so we don’t stay there all day. So the person who was not in the driver’s seat of their nervous system would get that email and they are thrown off.

[00:13:39] Right? Yeah. Thank God. The meeting’s that day, imagine they had to wait a whole day to meet with their boss. Yeah. They’d be freaked out the whole night, right? Yeah. In that stressed out state, in that cortisol, you know, adrenaline mess. All the things, all the things, probably not sleeping, all the things, the person that learns how to really navigate the system is able again, to be maybe in that triggered moment.

[00:14:00] And to take a different perspective and then maybe do something somatic to kind of calm the system down and bring them back up. Maybe they have to call a friend, right? You know, maybe they have to do these things, but they’re able to say, I’m here. There’s not a real threat. It’s an email. Yep. And kind of backtrack through it.

[00:14:19] Yeah. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.

[00:14:21] Carolyn: Oh absolutely. Yeah. And I think, I mean, that’s a very realistic, and then you layer on all the threats and the real threats. And when we say threats, you know, back in the early prehistoric days, that was like a physical threat. But now these threats are emotional and psychological.

[00:14:38] But our brain doesn’t know the difference. It just knows, cuz that part of our brain doesn’t analyze what category does this falls in. It’s like, I gotta protect you at all cost, you know? Alert, alert, alert.

[00:14:48] Brittany: What do we have to do? Yeah, right. What do we have to do? Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:14:51] Carolyn: So our bodies are essentially, when we have all these threats or perceived threats, when we’re not able to regulate, we get just in this state of hypervigilance.

[00:15:02] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. . So let’s come back to that example. Email comes in. Old Carolyn would be one of those people, like, oh my gosh, I could feel my heart rate go up. And then I’d try and talk myself out of it. Like, okay, Carolyn, you’re fine. You’re fine. But then cognitively, I was telling myself I was fine, but there was other stuff going on unconscious to me that was saying, nobody, you’re actually not fine.

[00:15:24] Mm-hmm. So. I’m curious, is there like an example or like an exercise, I dunno, maybe you and I can do it in the moment or something you could share with the listeners. Yep. Just like a simple strategy to help you really. Not just tell cuz here’s the thing about, you know, you and I know this, we can’t just tell our brains like, no, we’re fine.

[00:15:43] There has to be something physical to go or something somatic to go along with that. That’s right. Can you walk us through an example or walk me through and we’ll do it an example together? 

[00:15:52] Brittany: Yeah, yeah. And exactly what you just said, like it’s non-verbal, the nervous system. We have to talk to it through touch, uh, through sound, through sensory experience.

[00:16:01] Mm-hmm. and. According to the polyvagal theory, when we’re in the green, the yellow, the red, we have to work in order. Okay. Of how it kind of comes. So if we are in the yellow, we can come right back up into the green. But if we were in the shutdown mode all the way in the basement, the red, yeah. We would actually have to pop into the sympathetic, the fight or flight, get the system kind of aroused a little bit in order to get into that green green.

[00:16:27] for something like this, it could be as easy as shaking off the excess adrenaline. Okay? And maybe in the office space, that’s a little crazy. But if you’re feeling the jitters, if you’re feeling the heart race, if you’re feeling the sweaty palms, if you’re feeling that fight or flight, holy crap, am I in trouble?

[00:16:42] Am I getting fired? Am blah, blah, blah, right? Am my mind’s going and racing? Try to expel that extra adrenaline. Animals do this in the wild, right, right. Yes. They do 

[00:16:52] Carolyn: this. Yeah. We’re a dog. Like when don’t you? I see this in my dog all the time, right? He gets up every morning and he does the little shakeout, I’m sure in lots of people’s pets.

[00:16:59] So like in the office, literally. So we’re just shaking our hands right now. 

[00:17:03] Brittany: Chest as well. Yep. Shoulders as well. Right. And then if you can get up, if your office allows you to do this, you have the space, get up and like shake your legs if any listeners are Grey’s Anatomy. Do you watch Grey’s Anatomy? Have you ever?

[00:17:15] I do. Okay. Do you remember when Christina and Dr. Gray, after somebody, they’d lose a patient on the table, they’d have a really crappy surgery, whatever it was, they would dance and shake. Yeah. Do you remember these scenes? Okay. Yes. Okay. So this is a really good visual. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And we’d do this to dispel the adrenaline rush, those stress hormones, yep.

[00:17:36] That have been dripping through the body or powering through the body, really af after that experience. So doing something like that to expel the stress hormones and then coming back to a seated position. Yep. Feet on the ground. We really discount this idea of grounding. It’s kind of gotten thrown around as like this trendy term.

[00:17:57] Now, ground yourself. Ground yourself, but there are so many sensory parts of our feet that connect to our vagal break. Mm-hmm. . So putting those feet right on the ground, get really comf. And then there’s two things you can do. One thing is you can literally feel, I’ll say to a client, like, feel the chair supporting you.

[00:18:18] Like really feel it sink into it, right? And we move all the way up the body, like really feeling supported and then I’ll have them squeeze all different parts of their body. So start down by the ankles and like really just get a sense of like, where am I in this time space? Moment. 

[00:18:39] Carolyn: That’s interesting. So we could do that.

[00:18:40] Like I could do that sitting at my desk. Maybe I’m not gonna bend over and grab my ankles. Yeah. But I can squeeze my knees and my thighs.

[00:18:48] Brittany: Oh yeah, your calves. Yeah. 

[00:18:49] Carolyn: And ca Yeah. And like my arms. And that is activating the sense 

[00:18:54] Brittany: bringing us, yeah. And bringing us into the green. So bringing us back into that safety, which.

[00:19:02] I’m sure you know like in your practice. Yeah. It umbrellas. So much of what we’re talking about is this idea of is it safe, is it not? Right. Do I feel safe? Is it not? Yeah. So it’s bringing us back to that layer of safety in the nervous system. 

[00:19:15] Carolyn: Right. Which, you know, our listeners might have some, you know, preconceived notion of.

[00:19:21] Well, we are safe. We’re in an office, we’re fine. But again, our brain is looking for these threats and so that email is like a threat or can be a threat. Just that, that example. Yeah. So that’s such a practical way Yeah. Of bringing us back into that zone. So really, you know, self-awareness of what zone you’re in.

[00:19:43] What are some things about the red. That would be helpful to share just to give us some awareness and then what might be something that pulls us into yellow from red. 

[00:19:53] Brittany: So from the basement up to that mobilization. Yeah, so the basement is the oldest part, so that’s called the dorsal, the red. I color code things cuz I find it’s really easy for people to visualize.

[00:20:03] So I’ll say, where are you right now? I’m in the red. Okay. So when we’re in the red, we’re in that hopeless. I’ve given up, I don’t care, apathy, whatever, man. Right? Yeah. Addictions come here as well. We’ve lost the ability to even care. We’re truly burnt out. Right? Get another post on that, like Yeah, let’s talk about burnout from a different perspective, right?

[00:20:24] Yeah. . And so this is the person that’s just like total energy conservation. Okay. Yeah. So when it comes to digesting their food, maybe they don’t eat anymore cause they simply don’t have an appetite. Like it really is kind of the breakdown of the body. For somebody that is in a state like this, there’s a concept, uh, called titration.

[00:20:43] Someone who’s had a lot of traumatic experience. Someone who’s incredibly in this kind of shutdown, like I said, like cloak over, don’t wanna be a part of the world anymore. We have to kind of approach this and this idea of giving them a little bit of stimulation, so moving them up to the yellow. For those of you, again, we’re listening, we wanna kind of stimulate, get a little bit of an arousal of the stress hormone or, or the sympathetic system, and then really pay attention to where they’re at.

[00:21:13] And sometimes this is best done with a practitioner. Yeah. Because if that person is so shut down and numb, part of their thing is I can’t feel, I don. I’m totally outta my body at this point. And so we’re really wanting to kind of activate them. This is where cold therapy can work really well. So for some of my clients who, who tend to kind of live more in that, I don’t care.

[00:21:35] I don’t really Is that the cold shower when you say like cold therapy? Yeah, and I’ll, yeah. Some people will do actual cold therapy. They’ll go to like my facility that does that. Okay. But for a lot of my clients to save money, I’m like The last two minutes of your. Turn it to the cold. Right. You know, it will give you that little bit of st.

[00:21:52] So this is where knowing kind of what to reach for after we understand and know how to map our nervous system is really important, right? Because if someone is super, super stressed, we don’t necessarily need to stimulate that individual, right? But for the person who’s in the red, I like a little bit of cold exposure is really great getting.

[00:22:10] Side. I am the sun, sun, sun. Girl. You’ll hear me talk about this all the time on social media, light exposure. Mm-hmm. , get that sun into the eyes. Take your sunglasses off. I’m not saying gaze . Yes. The sun all day long. Right? Yeah. But allow that exposure. Allow your eyes to see the sun. This so right. Is so important, right?

[00:22:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:22:35] Carolyn: Again, so practical. So. I think really easy to understand the color code, the red, the yellow, the green. And again, is it safe to say, kind of like we were talking about the higher vibrations and lower vibrations we’re gonna oscillate between all of those states. Not good to hang out in the red zone for extended periods of times, I’m guessing.

[00:22:56] Brittany: Yeah, and that’s exactly what happens, Carolyn. It’s like if we’ve never been taught how to process emotion or trauma properly over time, we can only hang out in the yellow for so long, right? I can only be in my sympathetic system that fight or flight that get up and do something that hustle mode, right?

[00:23:16] Cuz we are also celebrated for this a lot in the corporate world. How hard can you hustle and push and work overtime and what have you? We are only designed to live there for a very short period of time. We’re supposed to, or designed to come back into ventral to come back up to green. So what happens, what you’re referring to here is kind of this yellow, red.

[00:23:35] Yellow, red, yellow, red, yellow, red. We kind of get stuck in the bottom two parts of our nervous system and we forget how to get back up to the ventral. Mm. And so this is where we see people say, yep, you know what? I’ve got all the willpower in the world. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna, you know, starting January 1st, I’m gonna do it.

[00:23:54] I’ve been shut down for an entire year before, but I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna whoop, whoop. Right? Yeah. They do their double espresso shot. Force themselves up to the yellow, but then crash. That’s right. They come back down. They come back down. Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s really important to do, to kind of build capacity for people so that we’re not jamming them into the yellow, trying to get them to the green.

[00:24:17] It really is these very, like you’re saying, practical. Right. And it’s. Small calculated titration. Like little, little eyedroppers instead of 

[00:24:25] Carolyn: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I saw what I was thinking. The little eyedrop piece. Yeah. And then also part of that is like just the importance of compassion to recognize it’s okay to be in the red zone.

[00:24:35] Oh, it’s okay if everyone else isn’t in the red zone and we are. And you know, find our way out. Cause I think a lot of people are trying to find their way out of red into green and really being hard on themselves when they’re not able to do. And Yeah, you know, enter self-compassion.

[00:24:52] Brittany: I think self-compassion.

[00:24:54] I’ve always had a passion for the science aspect of it, like I’ve always loved the body. Because I, I think it’s the most brilliant thing and the nervous system is that it’s your body. It’s driving this experience, it’s, it’s driving how you’re kind of showing up and experiencing this thing called this world and relationships.

[00:25:12] Yeah, with people and jobs and workplaces and all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:16] Carolyn: It’s the portal to experiencing things.

[00:25:18] Brittany: When people understand the nervous system, they appreciate it more. Yes. And. Piggybacking on compassion. It’s like when you understand your nervous system is doing its absolute best, like it’s there for you.

[00:25:31] Yeah. It’s like, I got you. Yeah, it’s, it’s actually almost like a self-love. Yeah. From a different, right. We’re in a little bit of a different costume, but people have appreciation and they go, wow. I have like this database in my body. Like it’s brilliant. 

[00:25:46] Carolyn: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a beautiful way to put it. Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s given us a hug.

[00:25:51] That’s why it shut us down. Cause it’s trying to protect us.

[00:25:54] Brittany: So it’s like, it’s okay, I’ll take care of you. You know, you don’t have to feel this, you don’t have to feel this pain anymore. Let me, lemme take care of you. So I think just small, you know, perspective pivots for people and they’re like, oh, and then I always talk about curiosity.

[00:26:08] If we just looked. Whole thing from a place of curiosity, it almost allows us to like, you know, zoom out and look at why do I feel like this? Or what’s going on here? Woo. Give it a description. What does it feel like? Right. Heavy, hot, you know? Yep. Really like de play detective. Yeah. 

[00:26:28] Carolyn: Brittany, this has been such a wonderful conversation, and before we end off two things.

[00:26:35] How could people do work with you? Is that something that you do virtually or in person? And how could they find you?

[00:26:42] Brittany: So they can find me. I hang out on Instagram the most, which is where you found me at Brittany Lynn. Wellness is the handle there, and I work privately and I do group work. So I run a group program twice a year called the Food Freedom Project.

[00:26:55] And this is really helping women come more into the body and their relationship to food. And the nervous system definitely plays a huge role there. And then I also have private client and it’s all done. Everything I do is online.

[00:27:07] Carolyn: Fantastic. So, um, we’ll make sure that in the show notes people have a way to get in touch with you if they would like to.

[00:27:14] And before we wrap up, I like to ask all of my guests these three questions. So is it okay if we head there to go for it? The last part to wrap things up, , and these are three questions that revolve around what I call being an evolved leader, these three principles for being an evolved leader. So the first question.

[00:27:34] It’s about self-awareness and so could you share a moment with us where your self-awareness. Really got expanded where it was like, oh my gosh, I did not know that about myself. And it might not have been the most amazing thing to have found out about yourself. Or maybe, uh, high frequency . 

[00:27:55] Brittany: Totally. And you know what?

[00:27:56] Yeah. I usually will take the first thing that drops into my head and this is what I need to share. There was a situation, this was a while. And another woman who was in a very similar, this is way back in the days of just food and nutrition. Her and I were in a brainstorming group together and we had shared each other’s ideas on what we were gonna do and how we were gonna do this new program.

[00:28:18] And she was working on a new program and I was working on a new program, and her program came out and ended up being very similar to my program. Mm. And I thought, I’m going to speak up. I’m going to, I need to share this with her. I need to share my feelings. And I remember getting on the phone with her and thinking what I thought at the time was, um, a mature kind of approach to saying, this is how I feel.

[00:28:39] This is what happened, this is how it made me feel. And whatever. It just became explosive. The, the whole situation became explosive. And what I realized, like the self-awareness I had in that moment, in that time about myself, was the scarcity piece. Like I was really working on the fact that we can all be saying the, the exact same.

[00:29:00] And it will land differently for different people. There is no competition. We are all won. This was the awareness piece was it’s okay, like not always having to call people out for things, not always having to, you know, right. Maybe express and the, and the other piece is not everybody. Can hold it on the other side.

[00:29:21] That was huge for me. Mm. Just because you can hold the conversation, the feedback doesn’t mean everybody else can hold it the same way. That was a huge thing for me and shook me up for sure. And I had to really do a lot of work around that.

[00:29:36] Carolyn: So those are the big moments of learning, right? That discomfort.

[00:29:40] Yeah. 

[00:29:40] Brittany: I wish I could just erase. Take a big eraser and just erase it. I wish it never happened. But then on the other hand, I had so much of this self-awareness and growth. Yeah.

[00:29:51] Carolyn: And that’s when the real, like, maybe it needs to be that messy and kind of hard so that we Yeah. Actually awake it.

[00:30:00] Brittany: Since then I’ve thanked her.

[00:30:01] It’s, it was a beautiful kind of ending piece that I think it’s important for the listeners to hear is just thanking her. Cause after I was able to reflect, I thought, wow, that taught me so much about myself. You know? Thank you. You actually were a huge catalyst for me. She had no idea . Right. You know, I, I let her know this was just, yeah.

[00:30:19] This was a huge moment. Wow. Thank you. Mm-hmm. . 

[00:30:21] Carolyn: All right. Question number two, A practice to help keep you in a calm state. And maybe instead of saying the word calm here, given our conversation, I’ll say, uh, maybe a practice to keep you in that green state, that energized place. 

[00:30:34] Brittany: Mm-hmm. , sun, nature water. Hmm.

[00:30:38] Sun Nature, water. I am, I’ve got forest behind me. So even in the middle of a work, If I feel like there’s a little bit of anxiety or something coming up, I’m like, it’s okay. I go out, I ground myself, get out in the sun for times that I don’t have the sun, which we don’t have a lot of sun these days. No . I use a red light.

[00:30:58] I love my red light, and I’ll put on just like a nice piece of music, nature sounds or what have you, and I’ll just have my red light on and it feels like the sun. Mm. And for me, that is cool. Very, very relax. 

[00:31:11] Carolyn: Very good. And the third question, which is really around this feeling of connection with others and belonging.

[00:31:19] And I’m gonna specifically take us to a place of music. So what is a song that makes you feel connected to others and like you really, really, this whole feeling of belonging comes up in you? I have to really think about this one. Just something that just makes you feel in the green. 

[00:31:36] Brittany: I love jazz. Oh, nice.

[00:31:39] Growing up, my dad always listened to jazz, so I know for me it represents that feeling of family. Mm-hmm. and love, and father safety, all of those things for me.

[00:31:50] Carolyn: Is there an artist or like a, a song?

[00:31:54] Brittany: So Kenny G. Mm-hmm. . . So Christmas just passed and so that’s all we play in. Kenny g Christmas, Kenny g Christmas.

[00:32:04] My husband knows, he’s like, it’s December 1st. We’ll get the Kenny J. Christmas on . 

[00:32:09] Carolyn: I have to say I haven’t heard, I’ve heard a lot about Michael Buley Christmas or my Carrie Christmas Kenny now Kenny G’s in there.

[00:32:15] Brittany: Bringing him back. Bringing him back. 

[00:32:17] Carolyn: Yeah. Awesome. Well, Brittany, thank you so much for, uh, for our conversation today and for coming on to the show.

[00:32:25] Our listeners know how to get in touch with you. Any last words to share before we, uh, say, 

[00:32:30] Brittany: It was a pleasure being here and I, yeah, I really enjoyed our time, so thank you. 

[00:32:35] Carolyn: Great. All right. Thanks everybody, and we’ll see you again next time with Evolve. Wow. That was such an insightful conversation with Brittany and it’s really making me realize how much time I have spent.

[00:32:52] In the yellow zone, being really frustrated with myself and not really being kind to myself and trying to force myself up by thinking through it into the green zone, and this conversation with Britney is just such a great reminder that there are somatic techniques that will help us stay regulated and help us be able to think more clearly and manage through the emotion.

[00:33:21] Through all of the, the different things that come up for us as we go through at our days. So yeah, just what a great conversation and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.