[00:00:00] Welcome to the Still Human Podcast, where we dive deep into the heart of staff wellbeing within the education sector. In each episode, we bring to the table a diverse array of guests, including experienced teachers and leaders, experts in psychology, health and wellbeing, as well as thought leaders in the sector.
[00:00:17] Whether you are looking for practical tips, inspirational stories, or innovative approaches to wellbeing, our podcast aims to [00:00:25] support, inspire, and empower those dedicated to nurturing the next generation. I'm your host Julie Liddell, and today I am chatting to Dr. Nerina Nerina. Nerina is a professional physiologist, sleep expert, author and speaker with over 25 years of experience.
[00:00:42] She spent a decade conducting sleep and wellness programs at the Nightingale Hospital in London, having once herself been a patient at the [00:00:50] same clinic several years previously. Nerina's mission and purpose is to help as many people as possible to sleep deeply and optimize their energy levels. So that they can live more joyful and fulfilling lives.
[00:01:02] Nerina's professional experience includes working with global leaders at Ashford Business School, and she was the original founder of Bupa's Corporate Wellbeing Solutions. She works with individuals as well as large groups of people from [00:01:15] various industries, including education, professional services firms, and the world of sport.
[00:01:21] Her work has been featured in the Times Telegraph and Guardian, and she's appeared on numerous national TV and radio programs. She's the author of four books, tired but Wired, fast Asleep, wide Awake, and The Middle Book of Sleep. The Art of Natural Sleep, and Finding Inner Safety. Nerina is a [00:01:40] master of making the complicated simple and her areas of expertise are so in line with the work that we do here at Still Human With Insomnia in the Rise of Education staff discussing sleep seems a really important thing to do.
[00:01:53] It was an absolute honor, therefore to have this chat with Nerina. We discussed being tired. What Wyatt? How to manage your energy and five practical things you can do to support a good night's sleep. As well as Marina [00:02:05] reminding us that in a day of 1,440 minutes we can allow ourselves a couple of minutes of restfulness, which will reset our nervous system.
[00:02:15] Enjoy.
[00:02:18] Dr. Nerina Nerina, thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. Pleasure, Julie. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, you're very welcome. So Nerina, you are [00:02:30] a physiologist, a sleep expert, an author, a speaker amongst countless other things, and I just love everything that you speak about. I think you are a real master of making the complicated, simple, and you are areas of expertise are so in line with.
[00:02:48] The work that we do here at Still Human and there's so much I wanna talk to you about today that I know our listeners will [00:02:55] wanna hear. So just a complete honor to have you here. Oh, thank you Julie. And I, I love what you say about making the complex simple. It is an important aspect of, of how I work and sometimes I feel a little embarrassed and I think, should I throw in some more sort of big words?
[00:03:10] So should I make it more complicated? But actually. I think, I think people do appreciate, and it's not because people are silly, my audiences, it's not because they're unintelligent, but I just [00:03:20] think there's so much, life is complex, we're all overwhelmed, and so if I can take helpful concepts and break 'em down a bit so that people don't have to use too much brain power.
[00:03:31] To get them in and to embody them. I feel, I feel that I've done a good job if I'm able to do that. Yeah, well you absolutely do. You absolutely too. So I want to, whether an arena, we could kind of start with a little [00:03:45] bit of your background. I know you are, you are really kind of generous in sharing your authenticity and uh, that's one of the things that I really love about you.
[00:03:54] So I wonder, could you just start. By telling us a little bit about your journey and how you got to be doing what you're doing today. Oh, Julie, thank, thank you. Um, yeah, my lived experience is an important aspect of my message. You know, this isn't just academic or professional or based on the [00:04:10] thousands of people I've worked with over the years, um, or based on science.
[00:04:13] It's, it's very much based on my own personal, dare I say, healing journey as well. And, uh, in a, a nutshell, I really want to do this as. Succinctly as as possible because people can, you know, it's in the public domain. People can read my books, they can find out all this stuff, listen to me. Other interviews, they'll find out more detail if they want to.
[00:04:32] But in a nutshell, like many of us, [00:04:35] childhood was pretty tricky. And, um, I ended up in my early thirties with insomnia with, um, in a, in a psychiatric clinic being sectioned where that was given diagnoses of. Complex trauma, bipolar disorder, you know, from, from the time of, uh, being a little baby, I, I had problems sleeping.
[00:04:57] And I think a lot of that was to do [00:05:00] with, um, being brought up in a family. My parents trying their absolute best, but they themselves had come from poverty. Um, and, um, there was a lot of ancestral trauma and there were a lot of unhelpful behaviors that had been carried through generations. When they landed in me, it, it resulted in me not being able to sleep, um, being a very, um, restless and agitated, and stressed human [00:05:25] being actually, until I guess the breaking point or breakthrough point was getting sick.
[00:05:30] A four year journey in and out of hospital medication, on and off medication, in and outta therapy. Four years later, I was 34. Really having some kind of breakthrough experience, personally experiencing some form of, do I call it an awakening or just seeing the light or getting it [00:05:50] clear in myself?
[00:05:51] Understanding why things were the way they were. You know, if I try not to be mystical about it, the simplest way of saying it is that something landed in my nervous system that enabled me to feel safe in myself and to understand why my life had been a certain way, what had got me to that point. I then embarked on almost 30 years worth of.[00:06:15]
[00:06:15] Delving deeper, being a bit of a seeker, you know, trying to understand what had happened to me in a moment and trying to get more of it. And you know, I can't help looking at the titles of the books on your shelves and seeing things like atomic habits and there's also sounds very trying not to be distracted.
[00:06:31] The good life, I see the book there, but trying to understand how I could live a good life. Myself from that moment where I understood [00:06:40] what had got me to this point of deep unhappiness and disequilibrium, if I can use a physiological term, what had resulted in me tipping into something good. Why had that happened and what did I need to do in order to have more and as if by magic?
[00:06:55] From that point I started, it was very magical because I started being given opportunities to speak on stages to large groups, uh, a bit of [00:07:05] tv, radio. The most ironic and magical piece was being headhunted to work at the same clinic where I'd once been, a patient, a psych, you know, a psychiatric clinic working there for 10 years, writing my first book, tired, but wired, and that was.
[00:07:19] Sort of launched me out into the world. I got on TV and radio and then wrote another three books. Um, and the journey continues, you know, but what I do, I'm called a sleep expert, [00:07:30] but I have another hat, which is really about going into organizations, sniffing out the feeling of what's going on there. Does this feel safe?
[00:07:38] Does it not feel safe? How do I help people to live good lives while being employees and being human beings at the same time? Thank you for, for sharing that. There's, there's quite a few things in there that I'd like to pick up on and, um, if it's okay with you, I'd like [00:07:55] to start with The Tired but Wired, um, the book that you wrote, um, I think that's just such a phrase that so many staffing education can identify with.
[00:08:05] It's one that I can identify with. Um, teacher Wellbeing Index Reports that Insomnia is on the rise in education staff. Particularly for those in leadership roles. So I wonder whether you could just share your thoughts around why we're [00:08:20] seeing this increase in sleep issues, and particularly the statement that you use in that book where you say it in ly, it isn't created at night.
[00:08:28] I just think that's a brilliant, a brilliant line. Thank you. Gosh, I could, I'm again trying to keep this succinct, but you know, um, I, over the years have, apart from going into corporate environments, um, professional services firms. Emergency services like the [00:08:45] police, even elite athletes. And then, as I said, 10 years in psychiatry.
[00:08:49] I also, um, work with, uh, people like yourselves and head teachers and teachers, and even students actually in schools in education. Last week I worked in a school. I delivered two sessions to the staff and the, um, the pupils. Yes, I am increasingly seeing in certain sectors of [00:09:10] the world. Certain groups within the world, I am seeing a rise in insomnia and burnout and exhaustion.
[00:09:16] So I would say in education, in health. Emergency services where people are almost like, and these are the hot spots of society, and I'm seeing a lot of heads of schools, leaders in schools, and I include within that head teachers, heads of education, [00:09:35] trusts, teachers, teachers, teaching assistants, because they're all, you know, they're the leaders of the children as well, all of them.
[00:09:43] I'm seeing a lot of exhaustion. And, um, insomnia, burnout. And sadly I see a lot of cynicism as well. You know, at this particular school that I went to last week and I said, you know, I was talking to the pupils and I collected data from them, [00:10:00] and I was comparing the data to the data I'd seen. In, in a similar, uh, sample size of students four years ago, and pupils were more exhausted, more of them had their phones in the room.
[00:10:14] More of them were having difficulty getting to sleep, staying asleep. More of them were exhausted throughout the day. There was a loss and more of them were struggling with anxiety. But when I was asking them num, um, [00:10:25] how many of you are experiencing this? How many of you are experiencing that? Because I was trying to engage the audience.
[00:10:30] You know, I had the data on paper in front of me because they filled in questionnaires before, but when I was asking them these questions just to get them to use their voices in the session and lean into my session. The teachers were putting their hands up, you know, and, and some of them laughingly as if it was funny and, and it worried me because they looked exhausted.
[00:10:48] I could tell that they were, [00:10:50] some of them weren't really health healthy. I have spent a number of years measuring the health of human beings in health screening and laboratories. I know when a human being looks healthy, when they don't, and a lot of those leaders in education. Don't look healthy. I spoke in May in Coventry at the Thrive Education Partnership Trust Conference.
[00:11:11] There are almost a thousand, um, leaders from [00:11:15] education there. It was a real privilege to speak there, and I spoke about the difference between thriving and surviving. But importantly, I also talked about the fact that if you are in a position of leadership, you are lending your nervous system to those who you are needing.
[00:11:31] You are exuding something on, uh, it sounds probably a little esoterical mystical, but on an electromagnetic level, [00:11:40] electrostatic level, subatomic level, we are exuding energy, which impacts the energy of the people around us. So I'd even include, you know, in my own family, I'm lending my nervous system. To my daughter, to my cat, to my dog.
[00:11:56] I have a rescue dog from Cyprus and she lets me know if I'm lending in a way that's unhelpful. She's more anxious, she's more, she follows me [00:12:05] around everywhere. You know, she has, uh, unhelpful toilet habits, which are not great for, for me, and I have to get outta bed in the middle of the night. So she's a direct for me barometer, an indicator of the state of my nervous system.
[00:12:16] But in schools where I think we're particularly seeing crisis more than ever, leaders in education need to be able to thrive. I am not seeing that. I [00:12:30] think you're absolutely. Um, right. I'm sure lots of people listening could relate to that, and I think that's why the work that you do and the, um, books that you have written can be such a great starting point for the reason that it explains it in such a great way, but also has, you know, these power tools and these tips and things that are just really [00:12:55] accessible.
[00:12:55] So there's a couple of things around kind of the sleep issues that I'd like to pick up on. Um, the first one is, and it's again, line from the book and, and you say, we need to stop trying so hard in relation to trying to get to sleep. 'cause I think that's what lots of people do, isn't it? They have a difficult time, then they buy the sleep sprees and the memory form mattresses.
[00:13:15] I've done it myself, you know? Um, yeah. So could you elaborate a little bit? [00:13:20] On that. What, what do you mean by we need to stop trying so hard? I dunno if I answered your question about tired but wired, but, um, bring it back in. What are you just getting? Let me answer that and then I love that because, uh, I started using the label tired but wired back in the nineties.
[00:13:36] I mean, I really am showing not just my age, but I think hopefully the breadth of my experience, the years, decades of experience. And I first started using the word words, [00:13:45] tired, but wired because I was talking to people in the corporate sector who were coming to my clinic to have their health assessed.
[00:13:51] And if I asked them how they were feeling, they would not say anything. But if I said, how are you sleeping? They would open up or if I said, you know, is your sleep great or is it tired but wired? And they would just look at me and I started using that expression, tired but wired because my own sleep was tired, but wired.[00:14:10]
[00:14:10] And then I had the realization that, um, it was a safe way of describing something that was applicable to a number of people. So when I met my first publisher. At Souvenir Press and I said, I wanna write this book. Tired but Wired. He jumped on the title. He loved it as well. So it's in, it's a lovely catchy, it's my favorite title of all my books.
[00:14:30] Um, so there that, there's that part and I start talking as well [00:14:35] about effort, you know, overing. Trying too hard to sleep and, and it's very understandable because, you know, I now sleep really well. Having worked on myself for so long, I, you know, there's been a lot of healing on my journey. I don't consider myself, I don't.
[00:14:52] Define myself by any psychiatric labels. I am not medicated other than herbal supplements, um, for [00:15:00] this time of life that I'm in right now. Um, but nothing necessarily to help me like a sleeping tablet or anything like that, or uh, or mental health pill or anything like that. But I realized that people, when we are desperate to sleep, when we are desperate to sleep, we start trying really hard.
[00:15:18] And the interesting paradox is that many of the people who struggle to sleep, and I would include myself in that category, we try so [00:15:25] hard often because we are quite perfectionistic in our own lives. We're very controlling. We dunno how to say no, we wanna be. We want things to be just right. We wanna write lists.
[00:15:36] We want the perfect bedroom set up. You know, the sleep industry is worth billions of pounds. Julie, as you've said, it's, it's a huge industry. So we have every piece of kit going and we are measuring our sleep to the nth degree. So she wearing one [00:15:50] of these lovely rings, you know, I'm not on commission to them, but I was sent this because of a project I, I was doing four years ago.
[00:15:56] I was gifted this by the client, but. So lucky me, but we don't really, I mean, we've come such a long way since the hunter gatherer live woman and mat of leaves. We've lost the art of knowing when to let go and surrender. Now the hunter gatherer, the days of the Cayman, the hunter gatherer, if they sense there was [00:16:15] danger, if their nervous system sent a signal, they, I'm in danger.
[00:16:17] You are in danger. My younger in danger, it is not safe for me to sleep, then they wouldn't sleep. They would be sleepless and they would be vigilant, entirely appropriate. But in today's world, we've lost the ability to listen to the nervous system. We cannot all hear the signals because we're surrounded by so much noise and demand and information, and we're drowning in stress anyway.[00:16:40]
[00:16:40] And we've lost the ability to discern between. What is the stress of, you know, a project that needs to be completed, a piece of work that needs to be completed for this afternoon or, um, for, or, or for next month or, I'm walking across the road and, um, there's a bus coming towards me. Switch all my fight or flight entirely appropriate because it's too close to me, but we've lost.
[00:17:02] A bit of the ability to discern in our [00:17:05] nervous system between what is appropriate response to stress or what is inappropriate. So often we go to bed in a state of hypervigilance as if we are waiting for the arrival of the cyber tooth saber tooth tiger, when in fact we're actually safe in this now moment.
[00:17:23] We are safe. Sure there may not be enough work coming in. Sure, we might be worried about the teenager or the elderly [00:17:30] parents or their, our relationship or whatever. We have those worries. But in this now moment, I am safe. I can surrender in the imperfection of everything going on. But we've lost the ability to do that because we carry these chronic levels of stress that we've become habituated to.
[00:17:49] We don't actually even realize until we go on holiday and get sick. And then even then, we don't realize it was the, the chronic [00:17:55] stress. We just think, oh, well, I always get sick on holiday. It's just what I expect. Why that's not thriving. That's survival mode. So we habituate to survival, it becomes the norm.
[00:18:06] And I think that's true with so many people in education. They kind of get to the summer holidays and they crawl over the finish line and um, then they get ill. And, you know, that, that's just plays a huge part in that. And, you know, I [00:18:20] imagine then compounded by sleep issues and the, the lack of that restoration.
[00:18:26] Um, and then obviously immune systems just give up. But I love what you said in there. You know, our ancestors just, they're just curled upon a bed of leaves, you know, um, many of us lift listening. You know, think about what you've got your, um, your linen bedspreads and your, you know, your 10 to duvets and, and your Egyptian cotton and your [00:18:45] 1 million thread count.
[00:18:47] Oh, the candles and the blackout blinds and the this and the, and trust me, I've got a hell of a lot of that stuff as well. Some of it bought. Some of it gifted. Yeah. And some things can work, aren't there? There's cues and Yeah. Um, you know, but I think it is about, as you say, we maybe need to stop trying so hard.
[00:19:06] So in terms of, you know, stopping, trying [00:19:10] so hard, then I know in your book Tired but Wired, um, and in your other sleep books, there's um, there's kind of tools and suggestions. I think one section's called power Tools, isn't it? Which I love of things that people can do. So I want to. If you could just share a couple of those things with those of, of, of, sort of things that people could do that could be helpful.
[00:19:31] So, um, let's start with the first step of, [00:19:35] uh, step of my sleep methodology. I label this as resetting the nervous system. So there are five simple ish ish, um, not simple for everyone, but it's five. Very practical things that you wanna be doing for the next 10 to 14 days to reset your nervous system from being in the stressed, sympathetic nervous system into the, uh, rest it, rest for rest and digest, sleep, [00:20:00] parasympathetic nervous system.
[00:20:01] So the five things you wanna do for the next 10 to 14 days, and that is eat breakfast within half an hour of rising. A lot of teachers don't do that. Too many students don't. This school I was working in last week, over half of the sixth formulas weren't eating breakfast. Number two, don't use caffeine as a substitute for food.
[00:20:20] Most of the teachers were having tea or coffee instead of eating. Many of the students were having [00:20:25] energy, caffeine, eating energy drinks. So don't use caffeine as a substitute for. Drink more water, hydrate about two liters of water a day. Number four, get to bed earlier. So ideally you would be in bed between nine 30 and 10.
[00:20:39] You don't have to be asleep, but you're resting. You're reading a book, or you're journaling. Or you're meditating, or you are just contemplating your day or listening to music or doing some [00:20:50] gentle stretching or. Thinking, grateful thoughts or something. But you're in bed earlier between nine 30 and 10, powering down, reading a book that makes you feel good.
[00:20:59] Preferably one on paper, not on a, on a, an electronic device. And the fifth thing is ideally getting your electronic devices outta the bedroom. You start powering down from them and an hour before you get into bed, put them away. If you do have to check your your [00:21:15] phone, leave it on silent and go and look at it.
[00:21:16] Once or twice, but don't have it in your bedroom. Get an old fashioned clock in your bedroom. One that doesn't tick, one that doesn't show the time. So to see the time you have to press it down and you can see the time. But, and that, so those are the five things. Then there are more, then there are even more profound.
[00:21:33] They're more profound things. But after doing those five things for 10 to 14 days, I visibly see a difference in my [00:21:40] clients. They feel better not just in terms of their sleep, but their energy levels are better as well. And then from there we go into things. You know, when you wake up during the night, don't check the time.
[00:21:51] Um, understand how your psychology is stopping you sleeping. You know, people's beliefs about sleep. I shouldn't wake up during the night. I need to be getting X hours of sleep, you know? Um. It doesn't matter if I fall asleep in front of the [00:22:05] television, but then of course you can't sleep when you go to bed or I'll play catch up at the weekends.
[00:22:10] So there's all sorts of unhelpful Ben, um, beliefs that people have, which I try to, I try to, I'm, I'm about to start a six week sleep program called Be Your Own Sleep Coach, where once a week small cohort of people will be working with me. One, you know, in a group, small group. Once a week for six weeks, and we can be going deeper into [00:22:30] these unhelpful beliefs and the psychology behind them, as well as looking at things like stress and trauma and emotions, how that impact on sleep and how you can learn to surrender.
[00:22:40] But one of the things I, I try and teach people to do is first thing in the morning, don't look at your phone. Put your right hand on your Benny. Put your left hand over your heart, and I think we're both doing this now. It's such a lovely opportunity to do this. And just notice your breathing. Don't [00:22:55] try and change it in any way, but just notice where it is.
[00:22:57] And if you were to do this first thing in the morning, now I immediately noticed my breathing was in my chest. 'cause I'm talking a lot. So I shifted it down into my belly and I'm just gonna take a few breaths. And I noticed that my shoulders were up near my ears, and I noticed my belly was tight. I noticed my jaw was tight.
[00:23:18] So all I've done is just relaxed [00:23:20] those areas and dropped the shoulders and relaxed my jaw. And as a result of doing that, my breathing has now entered my belly even more, and I'm actually giving my belly a bit of a rub. So if you open your eyes and come back, um, you know that, that really simple technique by the way of just notice your breath.
[00:23:41] Just notice five breaths can really make a [00:23:45] difference to people's relationship with themselves and their sleep. 'cause like you said, you've reminded from my book, sleep Problems aren't Created when you put your head on the pillow at night. Insomnia isn't created. It's created from the minute you wake up.
[00:24:01] All the choices you make land in your nervous system, and the summation of all of those choices is what creates the biochemical [00:24:10] neurophysiological, psychophysiological status at the end of the day that either enables you to sleep or not sleep. That was gorgeous. I just joined in there and what a lovely way to just connect.
[00:24:21] You know, with your breath and with your body. Um, and yeah, I think just kind of tuning into to what's going on in your nervous system and, and, and then making tweaks and adjustments if needed. And yeah. You know, [00:24:35] that's a super helpful thing to do. At any time of the day, I would imagine, and hopefully, hopefully people joined in, um, as, as you went along there, um, you kind of used some gorgeous praise there that powering down and, and that's so important, isn't it?
[00:24:49] You know, or paring down, you know, we often talk about putting, put yourself to bed like you would a toddler, you know? Yes. Don't just chuck yourself in there, you know, do all of that. Um. You know, [00:25:00] reading or stories or dim lights and, um, and it's, what it's great to hear, I think, is that your work in your kind of clinical setting and, and all the people that you work with, that you can see a shift within a couple of weeks.
[00:25:14] Yeah. If people do these regularly. And I think that's just. Really empowering to hear that. Absolutely. I mean, 'cause if I speak to your listeners right now as if they're here [00:25:25] with me in my little garden office and I just ask you, what are your energy levels like right now outta 10, if you had to give me a score outta 10, let's not go to zero.
[00:25:35] 'cause zero's dead, but you know, from one to 10, 10 is amazing energy. Atomic energy, you know, incredible energy and one is really exhausted and burnt out and just trained and exhausted. If you had to give [00:25:50] yourself a score from one to 10, what, what is your energy right now? And often when people come to see me, their energy will be anything between one and two to five outta 10.
[00:26:01] But the second ti time I see them having, they, they having gone away. If they've, if they really wanted and really applied those five non-negotiables for 10 to 14 days, they'll come back [00:26:15] and they'll go, well, the sleep's not perfect. Gosh, it's a lot better, but my energy levels are so much better, you know, my energy levels.
[00:26:24] And I, I will, I can see that they're about a seven or eight and they're only about a seven or eight outta 10. So years of working with people and as a, for me, as a very sensitive human being, I'm used to reading people's energy, picking it up all the [00:26:40] time. I know when somebody's energized. I know when it's a fake manic energy.
[00:26:45] I know when it's good, sustained energy. I know when they're exhausted, but trying to cover it up. I can hear it, I can feel it. I can see it in the eyes. I can feel it in the face. I can just feel it, you know, just picking up on that. Nerina. Um, I think I've heard, or, or. Or read you talk about the, the kind of sensitive types, [00:27:05] and I know that's not what we were talking about there, but it, it did remind me that that can affect the way that we sleep, can't it?
[00:27:11] Um, would that be right? Yes. Because I would class myself as, as sensitive, you know? Um, yeah. I wonder, could you just explain that a little bit please? Yeah. So there are many ways of classifying, um, the way people sleep in terms of sleep chronotypes. It's called your chronotype. Krono [00:27:30] coming from the biological clock.
[00:27:31] So, you know, you know your, your sleep type. But I keep it in my years of experience. And again, this plays to that your point, right at the beginning, it speaks to that point of, I like to make complex things simple, but simple but memorable. Can I, can I help you to really remember this? Okay. So what type of sleeper are you from one end of the scale to the other?
[00:27:53] Um, our, [00:27:55] our youth that kind of can sleep on a pinhead, they dunno why you need a sleep expert. We dunno what all the fuss, they dunno what all the fuss is about. Blackout blinds and lavender oil and pillows and blankets and mattresses. So I call them the martini sleeper. And of course the young listeners never know what that's about.
[00:28:13] Can sleep anytime, any place, anywhere. And then at the other end of the scale you have the sensitive sleeper. [00:28:20] Who, you know, that was very much me, um, needed their side of the bed. Their nervous system is reverberating after the day. They feel everything. Um, they can't sleep on an argument, whereas a martini sleeper does.
[00:28:34] They need their pillows. They travel on holiday. They might even take their own blanket or duvet or pillow. They need a set of rituals and routines and practices in order to feel [00:28:45] safe enough to sleep. Because their nervous system is more nervous and it's more sensitive, and that can be related to trauma.
[00:28:52] Childhood trauma life, big, big life events. Or it could be related to more recent traumas and stress so that they might have once been a martini sleeper, but they've become sensitive as a result of, I don't know, working in a bullying environment, or they've lost their job [00:29:10] or they've committed a traffic offense and they've waiting to go to court, or their marriage has ended or what.
[00:29:15] They've just overloaded with stress. They've become more of a sensitive, their nervous system. Has become more hypervigilant. It's seeing saber-tooth tigers everywhere. So when people are sensitive sleepers, I, for them, those five non-negotiables are very important. But I also like to tell the martini sleepers, it doesn't necessarily mean they're good sleepers 'cause [00:29:35] martini sleepers can become sensitive, as I said, or they have a tendency to oversleep their stress and trauma can lead them into sleeping too much.
[00:29:43] As an escape from life. It's that kind of almost like flea response, isn't it? That kind of escape? Yeah. Or the freeze type, the freeze response. Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, you are talking about that, you know, some people. Do sleep quite well and, [00:30:00] and all, all for sleep. Um, and I know in your book staying with kind of the Tired but Wired, um, book, you talk about sleep being only part of the issue around ENG energy management and that it's super important that we manage that energy as well as.
[00:30:17] Just focusing on our sleep. Um, I think that's really relevant in the education sector. And you've alluded to this already, but we're [00:30:25] expending a lot of energy that isn't just physical. It's emotional energy, it's mental energy. It's, you know, being bombarded our senses, being bombarded every single day by people and noise.
[00:30:36] Um, could you tell me a little bit then about what managing energy could look like, you know, particularly in, in the middle of a really busy day or busy term? That's a really good question. So I would say for teach, should we talk about [00:30:50] your teachers, for example? Because an important part, part of managing the energy of students is gonna be to manage your energy.
[00:30:57] 'cause like I said, you are lending your energy, you are lending your nervous system, so you've gotta put your oxygen mask on first. So. You, um, you start. So the, uh, a big thing, and I have, um, one of my best friends is a teaching assistant, and another one of my best friends, her son is a teacher. He's the head of [00:31:15] a department.
[00:31:15] So I, I, I look at it in my, in these, these two human beings. And, um, my friend who's a teaching assistant and she puts in so much extra work, um, to make more. To make more money, but she also loves what she does. She believes in it. She's passionate about the work she does, but I watch how she can get so overloaded.
[00:31:32] But she has some atomic habits for sure, and she looks after herself. So things like, you know, not reaching for your phone first thing [00:31:40] in the morning because you are already gonna be dealing with a lot of mental overload. They'll already be a lot of mental drain on your energy by virtue of the work that you do and the human beings that you, you work with.
[00:31:52] So don't start your day leaned in already. Take those moments to check your breathing. Take those minutes to eat your breakfast. Take those moments to listen to your speed of thoughts first thing [00:32:05] in the morning and go, oh my goodness, I am so leaned into my day. There's a lot of, I have to do this. I must do this.
[00:32:10] I should do this. So there we go. That means just back off the caffeine today. I'm, you know, I just, I don't need any, any more stimulants to send me down the sympathetic nervous system pathway. So stay off the caffeine today. Um, so make sure I eat something really healthy on [00:32:30] the way to school, whether I'm walking or getting public transport or driving.
[00:32:33] Notice my breathing. Focus on my breathing. Don't overload my brain with yet more information. Make sure I have snacks with me if they won't be available in my workplace so I can eat health at least throughout the day. And ideally, whenever you have breaks, drinking water or drinking water during the day if you can.
[00:32:51] I'm seeing a lot more with students with their [00:32:55] water bottles. Are the, are, are the teachers doing it as well? Are they, are they being the change? Are they mirroring the behaviors? So, and are they eating the, the kinds of foods? So a a lot of the, the teachers who I've worked with who are exhausted living on caffeine throughout the day, very dehydrated eating, but eating late in the evening, and by then it's almost irrelevant what you eat.
[00:33:19] What you want to be [00:33:20] doing is eating in the morning, eating throughout the day, healthy foods, not relying on biscuits and tea and coffee throughout the day or cakes. Or chocolate to get you through your day, but eating healthily during the day. My friend, I mean, she's incredible. This teaching assistant, I mean, she's, she's a different kind.
[00:33:36] She's an extraordinary human being, and she actually cooks batches of food on a Sunday. She spends a lot of her Sunday cooking up batches of food, which she [00:33:45] freezes and takes it out. Takes 'em to school and she says, you know, I'm not excited about the food that I'm eating, but I know it's gonna give me the energy.
[00:33:53] And she's also, she's almost 60 and she still runs marathons, you know, and to look at her, you wouldn't think she's an exceptional human being, you know, an athlete. She knows she walks a lot of it. But she has, she has this energy that she takes not just into her, her [00:34:10] professional life and for her students.
[00:34:12] But also for her home. She has two sons who are on the auto autism spectrum. So there's a loss of giving of energy in her life, but she fuels herself with the right energy and we're, we're good at doing that with our cars, aren't we? 'cause we know that if, you know, if we're driving to Scotland and we don't fill the car up with petrol, it's gonna stop.
[00:34:33] You're gonna, you are gonna be in pro [00:34:35] in trouble at some point in your journey, but as human beings, we're not very good at doing this for ourselves. And that's because we do have this backup energy system and we have coffee machines and snack machines. So we run on survival energy and, and then wa wonder why we get sick or why we become disenchanted and exhausted and, and tired, but wired.
[00:34:56] By the time you put the head on the pillow, you haven't got enough of the [00:35:00] biochemical. Set up including melatonin, all of the hormones that will make you feel safe so you can sleep. At the end of the day, you haven't done the things that will enable you to create that biochemical setup that's necessary for sleep.
[00:35:14] And that can't just be done in the holidays, can it? It can't just be done. No. When you've got two weeks off and you decide to book into a spa, I think it's about taking that different [00:35:25] approach. Exactly. As you are saying and, and kind of we advocate it as well that you put, you restore the energy. As it's draining out, so throughout the day.
[00:35:35] Um, and finding those periods for little bits of rest or restoration of those energy supplies, which, which is exactly what you've just so beautifully explained there. Um, and that's kind of taken me onto you, [00:35:50] you, you, um, your book, uh, finding Inner Safety. 'cause there was a couple of things that you mentioned in there about nervous systems and.
[00:36:00] Being set in this survival mode. I loved finding inner safety. I felt like it articulated. So much of what I believed in, um, but [00:36:15] just so beautifully. Um, and I know we've already alluded to it, you know, we can sleep when we feel safe. We, we know that safety's part of sleep. Um, but I think it's so true to say there's so many people running around in a survival mode, isn't there?
[00:36:30] And, and I would admit to have been one of them 10 years ago. Yeah. I mean, I literally used to have like in this kind of fight position, ready shoulders or. [00:36:40] Fists clenched. You know that. And, and it's so true, isn't it? It's so common. And we we're seeing more and more of it. And, and there was a beautiful quote in the book, which I think, um, you attributed to, uh, Stephen pos and, and he said, if you want to approve the world, start by making people feel safe.
[00:36:58] And I thought, yes. Yes. So I wonder whether, could you just explain what, what you mean, [00:37:05] or, or what it's meant by this concept of inner safety? Gosh, I love that you love this book because it's the book where sometimes I feel a little embarrassed about it because I, there's so, there is a bit of my story in there and there's some really uncomfortable stuff in there, and I wrote.
[00:37:19] In a place of great pain. Myself, I was very raw when I wrote that book. Two it, it came out two years ago, and it was during the pandemic. I was desperately lonely. I was grieving [00:37:30] and it, I had a resurgence of unresolved grief from my sister's passing. Um. Then it was two decades before, you know, now it's 22.
[00:37:41] She died in 2002. Very suddenly, very tally. And I'd never fully grieved. I didn't really know how to grieve back then. And people didn't talk about grief, but they do now. It's, it's such a popular subject, you know, to, to, to, to thankfully to help people, to [00:37:55] grieve well. You know, there is such a thing as grieving well, and getting grief right in, in a way, you know?
[00:38:02] Um, but, uh, I didn't, and so that all came up during the pandemic. And then I was, um, commissioned to write this book, finding in a Safety, which really was the book that I wanted to write. It was what I wanted to write. The first ever time I wanted it to be my Facebook, but you know. All those years [00:38:20] ago, um, the world wasn't ready for a book on safety, inner safety.
[00:38:25] Now it's a, a hot topic, but then they were, they wanted books on sleep. But I had this realization that really we sleep when we feel safe. So fundamentally, being able to sleep is about feeling safe. Um, so I want, which is why I wanted to write about book, a book about feeling safe. Well, inner safety, let's talk about inner safety as opposed to outer safety.
[00:38:44] [00:38:45] So. Inner safety is where, well, if you've got it, you'll feel it. You'll know. Hopefully, you know, I, I don't know many human, human beings who have been going around in a state of perpetual inner safety, unless they're enlightened or the, maybe even the Dalai Lama or whatever. I don't know, maybe you feels unsafe sometimes, but it's a feeling of faith.
[00:39:04] It's a feeling of having trust. It is a feeling of being able to lean back even when we have [00:39:10] difficulties going on in our lives and an inbox that's flooded and to-do list through the roof. But we still feel, okay, this is okay. I, I, you know, it's not when we're lying in the flotation tank at the spa that that's not necessarily what inner safety is.
[00:39:27] You know, it's not when we're on holiday in the Caribbean lying on a beach. No, it's, it's a feeling, an embodied [00:39:35] experience of feeling good in oneself, feeling in a rested state, feeling in a state of acceptance or trust, or having faith in the face of imperfection in our lives. And, you know, given the state of our world at the moment, Julie, I don't know many people who could say that outer world, everything is [00:40:00] perfect.
[00:40:00] There are financial crises, there are mental health crises, there are threats of more pandemics. There are global threats, there are war threats, there are terrorism threats. There are all sorts of threats. There are threats on our very doorstep. You know, I live in a lovely area in Surrey, in Kingston, where we have a threat of, of sewage works being built [00:40:25] in our neighborhood.
[00:40:27] You know, and suddenly we're thinking our lovely little haven, you know, is what's gonna happen and therefore what will happen to my financial security? What will happen to my property? You know, there's all sorts of threats, which could be even at our doorstep. And there are people who live in neighborhoods which are not safe.
[00:40:43] So there's threat there is very obvious, but the inner safety is, is a [00:40:50] state that can be cultivated even when there is imperfection. Even when there is extreme discomfort, and I would say that I'm probably in some respects going through a bit of that at the moment, you know, with an elderly parent who has Alzheimer's, who lives thousands of miles away, who's 87, who needs constant.
[00:41:10] Care. Trying to get that organized, managing it for thousands of miles away. [00:41:15] She cannot travel to this country, so I have to go out across time zones twice a year. I have a, a young adult, a young child, my daughter who has struggled with university, who is taking time out to, has her own issues, but is starting to thrive.
[00:41:29] I can see it, but it has called for a lot of lending of my nervous system in order to. Enable her to thrive. There's been a lot, there's a lot going on [00:41:40] and this is the case for people around me, the people I meet on my dog walks, my friends, my clients, you know, just personally, actually there've, there've been four bereavements close to me in the last two months.
[00:41:52] A relative three friends. One was a suicide, and two of those, three of the other three were sudden deaths, people in, in their forties and fifties. So there's a [00:42:05] lot, but can I go to bed and rest in the knowing that there is grief, that there is worry, that there is hardship, that I'll have to get up tomorrow morning and find the enthusiasm to motivate people who work for me, work with me to motivate and inspire people who live with me.
[00:42:26] To take that into the work that I do so I can give hope [00:42:30] to my clients and inspiration and energy. You know, I'm not really paid to show up looking, burnt out and exhausted and depressed. No. So one has to cultivate habits and choose habits that enable one to cultivate an inner sense of inner safety, which isn't something too esoteric or.
[00:42:54] [00:42:55] Just conceptual. It's a real thing because really what feeling safe is, is being in the right part of your nervous system, and when you are in the parasympathetic, you will know it. You feel restored, you feel rested. You feel you're digesting your food well, you're sleeping, but even if you're not sleeping, you're able to create a state of rest.
[00:43:14] This is what I tell my professional athletes and the students. If you've got exams tomorrow and you can't [00:43:20] sleep, just rest really well. And teach them how to rest with breathing techniques and mental techniques and imagery and visualizations. But when we don't feel safe, we're anxious. You know, the breath is up in the throat.
[00:43:33] We feel sick in the belly. There's that knot. The sh, like you described, the tightness, the shoulders, your armored, your fists are clenched. Your joy is cle. You are, you are. You are seeing threat everywhere, [00:43:45] even with the people that you love. You are reading the tone of voice roll. You are misinterpreting other people's motivations and words, and you see the world as a place, and you see and feel the world as an unsafe place.
[00:43:59] You know, Stephen Poer. You know, he, he says that the, the, the quest to feel safe, uh, is actually Deb Donna, actually, she's a leading trauma therapist [00:44:10] who has worked very closely with Steven Porges. Her work is based on Dr. Steven Porges work. He's considered to be the kind of grandfather of safety science.
[00:44:19] And Deb Donna says, because I've got the book right in front of me with our first breath, we embark on a lifelong quest to feel safe in our bodies, in our environments. And in our relationship with others, and then I [00:44:35] say, but why is a sleep expert writing about feeling safe? Well, it's because fundamentally, being able to sleep is about feeling safe, resting despite, despite, in spite of the pain, the worry, the stress, the imperfection, the discomfort, the grief, the loneliness, the shock, all of that.
[00:44:59] That's [00:45:00] what feeling safe is about. And for me, it is an ongoing work in progress. I sleep better at this stage of my life than I did in the previous stage of my life, or the previous decade. And the previous decade. And the previous decade. And then, you know, but I'm constantly having to, to learn more.
[00:45:18] There's so much in there. I'm, I'm conscious that we're kind of coming to the end of our time. Um, Nerina, I feel like I'm gonna have to invite [00:45:25] you back and we'll talk more about ways of cultivating and safety. Um, but of course there are your beautiful books, um, that people can buy and, um, and learn about some of those techniques.
[00:45:36] And, you know, I'll say it again, but, uh, the techniques that you talk about are accessible. They. They are free, aren't they? The techniques are just all about, um, you know, inner [00:45:50] exploration, things you can do, breathing, some yoga positions. There's all sorts of, and really little things. This morning I didn't feel the, the a hundred percent great and on my dog walk, I made a conscious effort to put my phone away and smile.
[00:46:04] With the dog walkers who I know are good at the smiling conversations, you know, not someone who's gonna bring me down. I didn't avoid them, but I didn't spend too much time talking about surviving life and traumas, you know? [00:46:15] And then at one point I found myself under a tree and I found myself stretching under the tree and just doing a little bit of tai chi for about two minutes.
[00:46:23] And I thought, oh, I found my mojo again. I found my, my, I found that place in myself. So now I'm heading back to my office. And that's the place I want to be in. I want to hold that place because that's where my work wants to come from today. [00:46:40] Gorgeous. I'm just gonna finish on one last question. Yeah. We ask all of our guests the same question.
[00:46:44] Um, and I know that compassion and self-compassion is something that, that you do talk about. So in the spirit of compassion. Hmm. If you were to suggest one kind thing that our listeners could do for themselves today, what would it be? [00:47:05] Oh, gosh. Well, that to start with, allow a breath or two or three. Allow that breath to travel into your belly.
[00:47:14] Allow it and accept it
[00:47:22] and lean back with it.
[00:47:27] And then with that leaning back, just [00:47:30] notice that it maybe invites you then to feel your feet on the ground.
[00:47:38] And maybe it invites you to close your eyes if you haven't already.
[00:47:45] And maybe it then invites you to, to allow this to be a restful moment for yourself that you could. Allow to spill into five minutes or [00:47:55] even 10 minutes, and if not, maybe just a minute or two, where you're just allowing compassionately and lovingly, allowing yourself to feel back into your body, out of your head, back into your body, into your breath, and allowing that breath to bring you into this now moment and feeling into your body.
[00:48:19] [00:48:20] Allowing the, the rest that comes when you feel your feet on the ground, you feel yourself leaning back and melting back a little bit,
[00:48:32] and who knows? It might take you into compassionately, allowing some tears to come up, some sadness that you weren't able to meet because you were rushing to get the children [00:48:45] out, you know, or to. Get to school and get the stuff done, or you were rushing, rushing, rushing. So you squashed those feelings down.
[00:48:54] And now in this leaning back and resting, your wise body is just saying your wise breath is saying, oh, there's a little bit of sadness here. What if you loud one or two tears, or maybe a few more?
[00:49:09] [00:49:10] Ah, or even a sigh or two, just allowing.
[00:49:17] And even if we were to now open our eyes, just at this point, I dunno about you, but I feel a bit more restored. Peter revived, I did this with a group of, of corporate leaders back in July and this [00:49:35] one of the, the managing director of the company had some sort of measurement device on his wrist. And he said, before we did that 10 minutes before he had said.
[00:49:44] This tells me that my energy status is something like 51%. And so I said to him, can we check it again? He says, oh, it's going, it's gone down to about 40 threes dropping. And I said, let's just do this. And [00:50:00] we did probably half of what I just did with you, and I kid you not, it jumped back up to 50. It jumped up to 56%.
[00:50:07] So what if you were to punctuate our days with moments? Rest four moments will be allow ourselves to rest in the imperfection of knowing. Yes, there's an inbox. Yes there are. There are demands. Yes, there are. Have to dos, must do, [00:50:25] should dos. But in this day of 1,440 minutes, I can allow myself some seconds.
[00:50:33] Maybe two times 60 seconds worth of restfulness, which will reset my nervous system, which I can take into that meeting with my team or into that meeting with my client, or into that classroom or into that, that conversation with my erent [00:50:50] teenager or frustrating parent with a bit more resource. Thank you so much.
[00:50:57] What a perfect way to end. Thank you. Thank you for your time, Nerina. Thank you. Take good care. Thank you, Julie, and I look forward to being back. Absolutely. It has been a pleasure.
[00:00:17] Whether you are looking for practical tips, inspirational stories, or innovative approaches to wellbeing, our podcast aims to [00:00:25] support, inspire, and empower those dedicated to nurturing the next generation. I'm your host Julie Liddell, and today I am chatting to Dr. Nerina Nerina. Nerina is a professional physiologist, sleep expert, author and speaker with over 25 years of experience.
[00:00:42] She spent a decade conducting sleep and wellness programs at the Nightingale Hospital in London, having once herself been a patient at the [00:00:50] same clinic several years previously. Nerina's mission and purpose is to help as many people as possible to sleep deeply and optimize their energy levels. So that they can live more joyful and fulfilling lives.
[00:01:02] Nerina's professional experience includes working with global leaders at Ashford Business School, and she was the original founder of Bupa's Corporate Wellbeing Solutions. She works with individuals as well as large groups of people from [00:01:15] various industries, including education, professional services firms, and the world of sport.
[00:01:21] Her work has been featured in the Times Telegraph and Guardian, and she's appeared on numerous national TV and radio programs. She's the author of four books, tired but Wired, fast Asleep, wide Awake, and The Middle Book of Sleep. The Art of Natural Sleep, and Finding Inner Safety. Nerina is a [00:01:40] master of making the complicated simple and her areas of expertise are so in line with the work that we do here at Still Human With Insomnia in the Rise of Education staff discussing sleep seems a really important thing to do.
[00:01:53] It was an absolute honor, therefore to have this chat with Nerina. We discussed being tired. What Wyatt? How to manage your energy and five practical things you can do to support a good night's sleep. As well as Marina [00:02:05] reminding us that in a day of 1,440 minutes we can allow ourselves a couple of minutes of restfulness, which will reset our nervous system.
[00:02:15] Enjoy.
[00:02:18] Dr. Nerina Nerina, thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. Pleasure, Julie. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, you're very welcome. So Nerina, you are [00:02:30] a physiologist, a sleep expert, an author, a speaker amongst countless other things, and I just love everything that you speak about. I think you are a real master of making the complicated, simple, and you are areas of expertise are so in line with.
[00:02:48] The work that we do here at Still Human and there's so much I wanna talk to you about today that I know our listeners will [00:02:55] wanna hear. So just a complete honor to have you here. Oh, thank you Julie. And I, I love what you say about making the complex simple. It is an important aspect of, of how I work and sometimes I feel a little embarrassed and I think, should I throw in some more sort of big words?
[00:03:10] So should I make it more complicated? But actually. I think, I think people do appreciate, and it's not because people are silly, my audiences, it's not because they're unintelligent, but I just [00:03:20] think there's so much, life is complex, we're all overwhelmed, and so if I can take helpful concepts and break 'em down a bit so that people don't have to use too much brain power.
[00:03:31] To get them in and to embody them. I feel, I feel that I've done a good job if I'm able to do that. Yeah, well you absolutely do. You absolutely too. So I want to, whether an arena, we could kind of start with a little [00:03:45] bit of your background. I know you are, you are really kind of generous in sharing your authenticity and uh, that's one of the things that I really love about you.
[00:03:54] So I wonder, could you just start. By telling us a little bit about your journey and how you got to be doing what you're doing today. Oh, Julie, thank, thank you. Um, yeah, my lived experience is an important aspect of my message. You know, this isn't just academic or professional or based on the [00:04:10] thousands of people I've worked with over the years, um, or based on science.
[00:04:13] It's, it's very much based on my own personal, dare I say, healing journey as well. And, uh, in a, a nutshell, I really want to do this as. Succinctly as as possible because people can, you know, it's in the public domain. People can read my books, they can find out all this stuff, listen to me. Other interviews, they'll find out more detail if they want to.
[00:04:32] But in a nutshell, like many of us, [00:04:35] childhood was pretty tricky. And, um, I ended up in my early thirties with insomnia with, um, in a, in a psychiatric clinic being sectioned where that was given diagnoses of. Complex trauma, bipolar disorder, you know, from, from the time of, uh, being a little baby, I, I had problems sleeping.
[00:04:57] And I think a lot of that was to do [00:05:00] with, um, being brought up in a family. My parents trying their absolute best, but they themselves had come from poverty. Um, and, um, there was a lot of ancestral trauma and there were a lot of unhelpful behaviors that had been carried through generations. When they landed in me, it, it resulted in me not being able to sleep, um, being a very, um, restless and agitated, and stressed human [00:05:25] being actually, until I guess the breaking point or breakthrough point was getting sick.
[00:05:30] A four year journey in and out of hospital medication, on and off medication, in and outta therapy. Four years later, I was 34. Really having some kind of breakthrough experience, personally experiencing some form of, do I call it an awakening or just seeing the light or getting it [00:05:50] clear in myself?
[00:05:51] Understanding why things were the way they were. You know, if I try not to be mystical about it, the simplest way of saying it is that something landed in my nervous system that enabled me to feel safe in myself and to understand why my life had been a certain way, what had got me to that point. I then embarked on almost 30 years worth of.[00:06:15]
[00:06:15] Delving deeper, being a bit of a seeker, you know, trying to understand what had happened to me in a moment and trying to get more of it. And you know, I can't help looking at the titles of the books on your shelves and seeing things like atomic habits and there's also sounds very trying not to be distracted.
[00:06:31] The good life, I see the book there, but trying to understand how I could live a good life. Myself from that moment where I understood [00:06:40] what had got me to this point of deep unhappiness and disequilibrium, if I can use a physiological term, what had resulted in me tipping into something good. Why had that happened and what did I need to do in order to have more and as if by magic?
[00:06:55] From that point I started, it was very magical because I started being given opportunities to speak on stages to large groups, uh, a bit of [00:07:05] tv, radio. The most ironic and magical piece was being headhunted to work at the same clinic where I'd once been, a patient, a psych, you know, a psychiatric clinic working there for 10 years, writing my first book, tired, but wired, and that was.
[00:07:19] Sort of launched me out into the world. I got on TV and radio and then wrote another three books. Um, and the journey continues, you know, but what I do, I'm called a sleep expert, [00:07:30] but I have another hat, which is really about going into organizations, sniffing out the feeling of what's going on there. Does this feel safe?
[00:07:38] Does it not feel safe? How do I help people to live good lives while being employees and being human beings at the same time? Thank you for, for sharing that. There's, there's quite a few things in there that I'd like to pick up on and, um, if it's okay with you, I'd like [00:07:55] to start with The Tired but Wired, um, the book that you wrote, um, I think that's just such a phrase that so many staffing education can identify with.
[00:08:05] It's one that I can identify with. Um, teacher Wellbeing Index Reports that Insomnia is on the rise in education staff. Particularly for those in leadership roles. So I wonder whether you could just share your thoughts around why we're [00:08:20] seeing this increase in sleep issues, and particularly the statement that you use in that book where you say it in ly, it isn't created at night.
[00:08:28] I just think that's a brilliant, a brilliant line. Thank you. Gosh, I could, I'm again trying to keep this succinct, but you know, um, I, over the years have, apart from going into corporate environments, um, professional services firms. Emergency services like the [00:08:45] police, even elite athletes. And then, as I said, 10 years in psychiatry.
[00:08:49] I also, um, work with, uh, people like yourselves and head teachers and teachers, and even students actually in schools in education. Last week I worked in a school. I delivered two sessions to the staff and the, um, the pupils. Yes, I am increasingly seeing in certain sectors of [00:09:10] the world. Certain groups within the world, I am seeing a rise in insomnia and burnout and exhaustion.
[00:09:16] So I would say in education, in health. Emergency services where people are almost like, and these are the hot spots of society, and I'm seeing a lot of heads of schools, leaders in schools, and I include within that head teachers, heads of education, [00:09:35] trusts, teachers, teachers, teaching assistants, because they're all, you know, they're the leaders of the children as well, all of them.
[00:09:43] I'm seeing a lot of exhaustion. And, um, insomnia, burnout. And sadly I see a lot of cynicism as well. You know, at this particular school that I went to last week and I said, you know, I was talking to the pupils and I collected data from them, [00:10:00] and I was comparing the data to the data I'd seen. In, in a similar, uh, sample size of students four years ago, and pupils were more exhausted, more of them had their phones in the room.
[00:10:14] More of them were having difficulty getting to sleep, staying asleep. More of them were exhausted throughout the day. There was a loss and more of them were struggling with anxiety. But when I was asking them num, um, [00:10:25] how many of you are experiencing this? How many of you are experiencing that? Because I was trying to engage the audience.
[00:10:30] You know, I had the data on paper in front of me because they filled in questionnaires before, but when I was asking them these questions just to get them to use their voices in the session and lean into my session. The teachers were putting their hands up, you know, and, and some of them laughingly as if it was funny and, and it worried me because they looked exhausted.
[00:10:48] I could tell that they were, [00:10:50] some of them weren't really health healthy. I have spent a number of years measuring the health of human beings in health screening and laboratories. I know when a human being looks healthy, when they don't, and a lot of those leaders in education. Don't look healthy. I spoke in May in Coventry at the Thrive Education Partnership Trust Conference.
[00:11:11] There are almost a thousand, um, leaders from [00:11:15] education there. It was a real privilege to speak there, and I spoke about the difference between thriving and surviving. But importantly, I also talked about the fact that if you are in a position of leadership, you are lending your nervous system to those who you are needing.
[00:11:31] You are exuding something on, uh, it sounds probably a little esoterical mystical, but on an electromagnetic level, [00:11:40] electrostatic level, subatomic level, we are exuding energy, which impacts the energy of the people around us. So I'd even include, you know, in my own family, I'm lending my nervous system. To my daughter, to my cat, to my dog.
[00:11:56] I have a rescue dog from Cyprus and she lets me know if I'm lending in a way that's unhelpful. She's more anxious, she's more, she follows me [00:12:05] around everywhere. You know, she has, uh, unhelpful toilet habits, which are not great for, for me, and I have to get outta bed in the middle of the night. So she's a direct for me barometer, an indicator of the state of my nervous system.
[00:12:16] But in schools where I think we're particularly seeing crisis more than ever, leaders in education need to be able to thrive. I am not seeing that. I [00:12:30] think you're absolutely. Um, right. I'm sure lots of people listening could relate to that, and I think that's why the work that you do and the, um, books that you have written can be such a great starting point for the reason that it explains it in such a great way, but also has, you know, these power tools and these tips and things that are just really [00:12:55] accessible.
[00:12:55] So there's a couple of things around kind of the sleep issues that I'd like to pick up on. Um, the first one is, and it's again, line from the book and, and you say, we need to stop trying so hard in relation to trying to get to sleep. 'cause I think that's what lots of people do, isn't it? They have a difficult time, then they buy the sleep sprees and the memory form mattresses.
[00:13:15] I've done it myself, you know? Um, yeah. So could you elaborate a little bit? [00:13:20] On that. What, what do you mean by we need to stop trying so hard? I dunno if I answered your question about tired but wired, but, um, bring it back in. What are you just getting? Let me answer that and then I love that because, uh, I started using the label tired but wired back in the nineties.
[00:13:36] I mean, I really am showing not just my age, but I think hopefully the breadth of my experience, the years, decades of experience. And I first started using the word words, [00:13:45] tired, but wired because I was talking to people in the corporate sector who were coming to my clinic to have their health assessed.
[00:13:51] And if I asked them how they were feeling, they would not say anything. But if I said, how are you sleeping? They would open up or if I said, you know, is your sleep great or is it tired but wired? And they would just look at me and I started using that expression, tired but wired because my own sleep was tired, but wired.[00:14:10]
[00:14:10] And then I had the realization that, um, it was a safe way of describing something that was applicable to a number of people. So when I met my first publisher. At Souvenir Press and I said, I wanna write this book. Tired but Wired. He jumped on the title. He loved it as well. So it's in, it's a lovely catchy, it's my favorite title of all my books.
[00:14:30] Um, so there that, there's that part and I start talking as well [00:14:35] about effort, you know, overing. Trying too hard to sleep and, and it's very understandable because, you know, I now sleep really well. Having worked on myself for so long, I, you know, there's been a lot of healing on my journey. I don't consider myself, I don't.
[00:14:52] Define myself by any psychiatric labels. I am not medicated other than herbal supplements, um, for [00:15:00] this time of life that I'm in right now. Um, but nothing necessarily to help me like a sleeping tablet or anything like that, or uh, or mental health pill or anything like that. But I realized that people, when we are desperate to sleep, when we are desperate to sleep, we start trying really hard.
[00:15:18] And the interesting paradox is that many of the people who struggle to sleep, and I would include myself in that category, we try so [00:15:25] hard often because we are quite perfectionistic in our own lives. We're very controlling. We dunno how to say no, we wanna be. We want things to be just right. We wanna write lists.
[00:15:36] We want the perfect bedroom set up. You know, the sleep industry is worth billions of pounds. Julie, as you've said, it's, it's a huge industry. So we have every piece of kit going and we are measuring our sleep to the nth degree. So she wearing one [00:15:50] of these lovely rings, you know, I'm not on commission to them, but I was sent this because of a project I, I was doing four years ago.
[00:15:56] I was gifted this by the client, but. So lucky me, but we don't really, I mean, we've come such a long way since the hunter gatherer live woman and mat of leaves. We've lost the art of knowing when to let go and surrender. Now the hunter gatherer, the days of the Cayman, the hunter gatherer, if they sense there was [00:16:15] danger, if their nervous system sent a signal, they, I'm in danger.
[00:16:17] You are in danger. My younger in danger, it is not safe for me to sleep, then they wouldn't sleep. They would be sleepless and they would be vigilant, entirely appropriate. But in today's world, we've lost the ability to listen to the nervous system. We cannot all hear the signals because we're surrounded by so much noise and demand and information, and we're drowning in stress anyway.[00:16:40]
[00:16:40] And we've lost the ability to discern between. What is the stress of, you know, a project that needs to be completed, a piece of work that needs to be completed for this afternoon or, um, for, or, or for next month or, I'm walking across the road and, um, there's a bus coming towards me. Switch all my fight or flight entirely appropriate because it's too close to me, but we've lost.
[00:17:02] A bit of the ability to discern in our [00:17:05] nervous system between what is appropriate response to stress or what is inappropriate. So often we go to bed in a state of hypervigilance as if we are waiting for the arrival of the cyber tooth saber tooth tiger, when in fact we're actually safe in this now moment.
[00:17:23] We are safe. Sure there may not be enough work coming in. Sure, we might be worried about the teenager or the elderly [00:17:30] parents or their, our relationship or whatever. We have those worries. But in this now moment, I am safe. I can surrender in the imperfection of everything going on. But we've lost the ability to do that because we carry these chronic levels of stress that we've become habituated to.
[00:17:49] We don't actually even realize until we go on holiday and get sick. And then even then, we don't realize it was the, the chronic [00:17:55] stress. We just think, oh, well, I always get sick on holiday. It's just what I expect. Why that's not thriving. That's survival mode. So we habituate to survival, it becomes the norm.
[00:18:06] And I think that's true with so many people in education. They kind of get to the summer holidays and they crawl over the finish line and um, then they get ill. And, you know, that, that's just plays a huge part in that. And, you know, I [00:18:20] imagine then compounded by sleep issues and the, the lack of that restoration.
[00:18:26] Um, and then obviously immune systems just give up. But I love what you said in there. You know, our ancestors just, they're just curled upon a bed of leaves, you know, um, many of us lift listening. You know, think about what you've got your, um, your linen bedspreads and your, you know, your 10 to duvets and, and your Egyptian cotton and your [00:18:45] 1 million thread count.
[00:18:47] Oh, the candles and the blackout blinds and the this and the, and trust me, I've got a hell of a lot of that stuff as well. Some of it bought. Some of it gifted. Yeah. And some things can work, aren't there? There's cues and Yeah. Um, you know, but I think it is about, as you say, we maybe need to stop trying so hard.
[00:19:06] So in terms of, you know, stopping, trying [00:19:10] so hard, then I know in your book Tired but Wired, um, and in your other sleep books, there's um, there's kind of tools and suggestions. I think one section's called power Tools, isn't it? Which I love of things that people can do. So I want to. If you could just share a couple of those things with those of, of, of, sort of things that people could do that could be helpful.
[00:19:31] So, um, let's start with the first step of, [00:19:35] uh, step of my sleep methodology. I label this as resetting the nervous system. So there are five simple ish ish, um, not simple for everyone, but it's five. Very practical things that you wanna be doing for the next 10 to 14 days to reset your nervous system from being in the stressed, sympathetic nervous system into the, uh, rest it, rest for rest and digest, sleep, [00:20:00] parasympathetic nervous system.
[00:20:01] So the five things you wanna do for the next 10 to 14 days, and that is eat breakfast within half an hour of rising. A lot of teachers don't do that. Too many students don't. This school I was working in last week, over half of the sixth formulas weren't eating breakfast. Number two, don't use caffeine as a substitute for food.
[00:20:20] Most of the teachers were having tea or coffee instead of eating. Many of the students were having [00:20:25] energy, caffeine, eating energy drinks. So don't use caffeine as a substitute for. Drink more water, hydrate about two liters of water a day. Number four, get to bed earlier. So ideally you would be in bed between nine 30 and 10.
[00:20:39] You don't have to be asleep, but you're resting. You're reading a book, or you're journaling. Or you're meditating, or you are just contemplating your day or listening to music or doing some [00:20:50] gentle stretching or. Thinking, grateful thoughts or something. But you're in bed earlier between nine 30 and 10, powering down, reading a book that makes you feel good.
[00:20:59] Preferably one on paper, not on a, on a, an electronic device. And the fifth thing is ideally getting your electronic devices outta the bedroom. You start powering down from them and an hour before you get into bed, put them away. If you do have to check your your [00:21:15] phone, leave it on silent and go and look at it.
[00:21:16] Once or twice, but don't have it in your bedroom. Get an old fashioned clock in your bedroom. One that doesn't tick, one that doesn't show the time. So to see the time you have to press it down and you can see the time. But, and that, so those are the five things. Then there are more, then there are even more profound.
[00:21:33] They're more profound things. But after doing those five things for 10 to 14 days, I visibly see a difference in my [00:21:40] clients. They feel better not just in terms of their sleep, but their energy levels are better as well. And then from there we go into things. You know, when you wake up during the night, don't check the time.
[00:21:51] Um, understand how your psychology is stopping you sleeping. You know, people's beliefs about sleep. I shouldn't wake up during the night. I need to be getting X hours of sleep, you know? Um. It doesn't matter if I fall asleep in front of the [00:22:05] television, but then of course you can't sleep when you go to bed or I'll play catch up at the weekends.
[00:22:10] So there's all sorts of unhelpful Ben, um, beliefs that people have, which I try to, I try to, I'm, I'm about to start a six week sleep program called Be Your Own Sleep Coach, where once a week small cohort of people will be working with me. One, you know, in a group, small group. Once a week for six weeks, and we can be going deeper into [00:22:30] these unhelpful beliefs and the psychology behind them, as well as looking at things like stress and trauma and emotions, how that impact on sleep and how you can learn to surrender.
[00:22:40] But one of the things I, I try and teach people to do is first thing in the morning, don't look at your phone. Put your right hand on your Benny. Put your left hand over your heart, and I think we're both doing this now. It's such a lovely opportunity to do this. And just notice your breathing. Don't [00:22:55] try and change it in any way, but just notice where it is.
[00:22:57] And if you were to do this first thing in the morning, now I immediately noticed my breathing was in my chest. 'cause I'm talking a lot. So I shifted it down into my belly and I'm just gonna take a few breaths. And I noticed that my shoulders were up near my ears, and I noticed my belly was tight. I noticed my jaw was tight.
[00:23:18] So all I've done is just relaxed [00:23:20] those areas and dropped the shoulders and relaxed my jaw. And as a result of doing that, my breathing has now entered my belly even more, and I'm actually giving my belly a bit of a rub. So if you open your eyes and come back, um, you know that, that really simple technique by the way of just notice your breath.
[00:23:41] Just notice five breaths can really make a [00:23:45] difference to people's relationship with themselves and their sleep. 'cause like you said, you've reminded from my book, sleep Problems aren't Created when you put your head on the pillow at night. Insomnia isn't created. It's created from the minute you wake up.
[00:24:01] All the choices you make land in your nervous system, and the summation of all of those choices is what creates the biochemical [00:24:10] neurophysiological, psychophysiological status at the end of the day that either enables you to sleep or not sleep. That was gorgeous. I just joined in there and what a lovely way to just connect.
[00:24:21] You know, with your breath and with your body. Um, and yeah, I think just kind of tuning into to what's going on in your nervous system and, and, and then making tweaks and adjustments if needed. And yeah. You know, [00:24:35] that's a super helpful thing to do. At any time of the day, I would imagine, and hopefully, hopefully people joined in, um, as, as you went along there, um, you kind of used some gorgeous praise there that powering down and, and that's so important, isn't it?
[00:24:49] You know, or paring down, you know, we often talk about putting, put yourself to bed like you would a toddler, you know? Yes. Don't just chuck yourself in there, you know, do all of that. Um. You know, [00:25:00] reading or stories or dim lights and, um, and it's, what it's great to hear, I think, is that your work in your kind of clinical setting and, and all the people that you work with, that you can see a shift within a couple of weeks.
[00:25:14] Yeah. If people do these regularly. And I think that's just. Really empowering to hear that. Absolutely. I mean, 'cause if I speak to your listeners right now as if they're here [00:25:25] with me in my little garden office and I just ask you, what are your energy levels like right now outta 10, if you had to give me a score outta 10, let's not go to zero.
[00:25:35] 'cause zero's dead, but you know, from one to 10, 10 is amazing energy. Atomic energy, you know, incredible energy and one is really exhausted and burnt out and just trained and exhausted. If you had to give [00:25:50] yourself a score from one to 10, what, what is your energy right now? And often when people come to see me, their energy will be anything between one and two to five outta 10.
[00:26:01] But the second ti time I see them having, they, they having gone away. If they've, if they really wanted and really applied those five non-negotiables for 10 to 14 days, they'll come back [00:26:15] and they'll go, well, the sleep's not perfect. Gosh, it's a lot better, but my energy levels are so much better, you know, my energy levels.
[00:26:24] And I, I will, I can see that they're about a seven or eight and they're only about a seven or eight outta 10. So years of working with people and as a, for me, as a very sensitive human being, I'm used to reading people's energy, picking it up all the [00:26:40] time. I know when somebody's energized. I know when it's a fake manic energy.
[00:26:45] I know when it's good, sustained energy. I know when they're exhausted, but trying to cover it up. I can hear it, I can feel it. I can see it in the eyes. I can feel it in the face. I can just feel it, you know, just picking up on that. Nerina. Um, I think I've heard, or, or. Or read you talk about the, the kind of sensitive types, [00:27:05] and I know that's not what we were talking about there, but it, it did remind me that that can affect the way that we sleep, can't it?
[00:27:11] Um, would that be right? Yes. Because I would class myself as, as sensitive, you know? Um, yeah. I wonder, could you just explain that a little bit please? Yeah. So there are many ways of classifying, um, the way people sleep in terms of sleep chronotypes. It's called your chronotype. Krono [00:27:30] coming from the biological clock.
[00:27:31] So, you know, you know your, your sleep type. But I keep it in my years of experience. And again, this plays to that your point, right at the beginning, it speaks to that point of, I like to make complex things simple, but simple but memorable. Can I, can I help you to really remember this? Okay. So what type of sleeper are you from one end of the scale to the other?
[00:27:53] Um, our, [00:27:55] our youth that kind of can sleep on a pinhead, they dunno why you need a sleep expert. We dunno what all the fuss, they dunno what all the fuss is about. Blackout blinds and lavender oil and pillows and blankets and mattresses. So I call them the martini sleeper. And of course the young listeners never know what that's about.
[00:28:13] Can sleep anytime, any place, anywhere. And then at the other end of the scale you have the sensitive sleeper. [00:28:20] Who, you know, that was very much me, um, needed their side of the bed. Their nervous system is reverberating after the day. They feel everything. Um, they can't sleep on an argument, whereas a martini sleeper does.
[00:28:34] They need their pillows. They travel on holiday. They might even take their own blanket or duvet or pillow. They need a set of rituals and routines and practices in order to feel [00:28:45] safe enough to sleep. Because their nervous system is more nervous and it's more sensitive, and that can be related to trauma.
[00:28:52] Childhood trauma life, big, big life events. Or it could be related to more recent traumas and stress so that they might have once been a martini sleeper, but they've become sensitive as a result of, I don't know, working in a bullying environment, or they've lost their job [00:29:10] or they've committed a traffic offense and they've waiting to go to court, or their marriage has ended or what.
[00:29:15] They've just overloaded with stress. They've become more of a sensitive, their nervous system. Has become more hypervigilant. It's seeing saber-tooth tigers everywhere. So when people are sensitive sleepers, I, for them, those five non-negotiables are very important. But I also like to tell the martini sleepers, it doesn't necessarily mean they're good sleepers 'cause [00:29:35] martini sleepers can become sensitive, as I said, or they have a tendency to oversleep their stress and trauma can lead them into sleeping too much.
[00:29:43] As an escape from life. It's that kind of almost like flea response, isn't it? That kind of escape? Yeah. Or the freeze type, the freeze response. Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, you are talking about that, you know, some people. Do sleep quite well and, [00:30:00] and all, all for sleep. Um, and I know in your book staying with kind of the Tired but Wired, um, book, you talk about sleep being only part of the issue around ENG energy management and that it's super important that we manage that energy as well as.
[00:30:17] Just focusing on our sleep. Um, I think that's really relevant in the education sector. And you've alluded to this already, but we're [00:30:25] expending a lot of energy that isn't just physical. It's emotional energy, it's mental energy. It's, you know, being bombarded our senses, being bombarded every single day by people and noise.
[00:30:36] Um, could you tell me a little bit then about what managing energy could look like, you know, particularly in, in the middle of a really busy day or busy term? That's a really good question. So I would say for teach, should we talk about [00:30:50] your teachers, for example? Because an important part, part of managing the energy of students is gonna be to manage your energy.
[00:30:57] 'cause like I said, you are lending your energy, you are lending your nervous system, so you've gotta put your oxygen mask on first. So. You, um, you start. So the, uh, a big thing, and I have, um, one of my best friends is a teaching assistant, and another one of my best friends, her son is a teacher. He's the head of [00:31:15] a department.
[00:31:15] So I, I, I look at it in my, in these, these two human beings. And, um, my friend who's a teaching assistant and she puts in so much extra work, um, to make more. To make more money, but she also loves what she does. She believes in it. She's passionate about the work she does, but I watch how she can get so overloaded.
[00:31:32] But she has some atomic habits for sure, and she looks after herself. So things like, you know, not reaching for your phone first thing [00:31:40] in the morning because you are already gonna be dealing with a lot of mental overload. They'll already be a lot of mental drain on your energy by virtue of the work that you do and the human beings that you, you work with.
[00:31:52] So don't start your day leaned in already. Take those moments to check your breathing. Take those minutes to eat your breakfast. Take those moments to listen to your speed of thoughts first thing [00:32:05] in the morning and go, oh my goodness, I am so leaned into my day. There's a lot of, I have to do this. I must do this.
[00:32:10] I should do this. So there we go. That means just back off the caffeine today. I'm, you know, I just, I don't need any, any more stimulants to send me down the sympathetic nervous system pathway. So stay off the caffeine today. Um, so make sure I eat something really healthy on [00:32:30] the way to school, whether I'm walking or getting public transport or driving.
[00:32:33] Notice my breathing. Focus on my breathing. Don't overload my brain with yet more information. Make sure I have snacks with me if they won't be available in my workplace so I can eat health at least throughout the day. And ideally, whenever you have breaks, drinking water or drinking water during the day if you can.
[00:32:51] I'm seeing a lot more with students with their [00:32:55] water bottles. Are the, are, are the teachers doing it as well? Are they, are they being the change? Are they mirroring the behaviors? So, and are they eating the, the kinds of foods? So a a lot of the, the teachers who I've worked with who are exhausted living on caffeine throughout the day, very dehydrated eating, but eating late in the evening, and by then it's almost irrelevant what you eat.
[00:33:19] What you want to be [00:33:20] doing is eating in the morning, eating throughout the day, healthy foods, not relying on biscuits and tea and coffee throughout the day or cakes. Or chocolate to get you through your day, but eating healthily during the day. My friend, I mean, she's incredible. This teaching assistant, I mean, she's, she's a different kind.
[00:33:36] She's an extraordinary human being, and she actually cooks batches of food on a Sunday. She spends a lot of her Sunday cooking up batches of food, which she [00:33:45] freezes and takes it out. Takes 'em to school and she says, you know, I'm not excited about the food that I'm eating, but I know it's gonna give me the energy.
[00:33:53] And she's also, she's almost 60 and she still runs marathons, you know, and to look at her, you wouldn't think she's an exceptional human being, you know, an athlete. She knows she walks a lot of it. But she has, she has this energy that she takes not just into her, her [00:34:10] professional life and for her students.
[00:34:12] But also for her home. She has two sons who are on the auto autism spectrum. So there's a loss of giving of energy in her life, but she fuels herself with the right energy and we're, we're good at doing that with our cars, aren't we? 'cause we know that if, you know, if we're driving to Scotland and we don't fill the car up with petrol, it's gonna stop.
[00:34:33] You're gonna, you are gonna be in pro [00:34:35] in trouble at some point in your journey, but as human beings, we're not very good at doing this for ourselves. And that's because we do have this backup energy system and we have coffee machines and snack machines. So we run on survival energy and, and then wa wonder why we get sick or why we become disenchanted and exhausted and, and tired, but wired.
[00:34:56] By the time you put the head on the pillow, you haven't got enough of the [00:35:00] biochemical. Set up including melatonin, all of the hormones that will make you feel safe so you can sleep. At the end of the day, you haven't done the things that will enable you to create that biochemical setup that's necessary for sleep.
[00:35:14] And that can't just be done in the holidays, can it? It can't just be done. No. When you've got two weeks off and you decide to book into a spa, I think it's about taking that different [00:35:25] approach. Exactly. As you are saying and, and kind of we advocate it as well that you put, you restore the energy. As it's draining out, so throughout the day.
[00:35:35] Um, and finding those periods for little bits of rest or restoration of those energy supplies, which, which is exactly what you've just so beautifully explained there. Um, and that's kind of taken me onto you, [00:35:50] you, you, um, your book, uh, finding Inner Safety. 'cause there was a couple of things that you mentioned in there about nervous systems and.
[00:36:00] Being set in this survival mode. I loved finding inner safety. I felt like it articulated. So much of what I believed in, um, but [00:36:15] just so beautifully. Um, and I know we've already alluded to it, you know, we can sleep when we feel safe. We, we know that safety's part of sleep. Um, but I think it's so true to say there's so many people running around in a survival mode, isn't there?
[00:36:30] And, and I would admit to have been one of them 10 years ago. Yeah. I mean, I literally used to have like in this kind of fight position, ready shoulders or. [00:36:40] Fists clenched. You know that. And, and it's so true, isn't it? It's so common. And we we're seeing more and more of it. And, and there was a beautiful quote in the book, which I think, um, you attributed to, uh, Stephen pos and, and he said, if you want to approve the world, start by making people feel safe.
[00:36:58] And I thought, yes. Yes. So I wonder whether, could you just explain what, what you mean, [00:37:05] or, or what it's meant by this concept of inner safety? Gosh, I love that you love this book because it's the book where sometimes I feel a little embarrassed about it because I, there's so, there is a bit of my story in there and there's some really uncomfortable stuff in there, and I wrote.
[00:37:19] In a place of great pain. Myself, I was very raw when I wrote that book. Two it, it came out two years ago, and it was during the pandemic. I was desperately lonely. I was grieving [00:37:30] and it, I had a resurgence of unresolved grief from my sister's passing. Um. Then it was two decades before, you know, now it's 22.
[00:37:41] She died in 2002. Very suddenly, very tally. And I'd never fully grieved. I didn't really know how to grieve back then. And people didn't talk about grief, but they do now. It's, it's such a popular subject, you know, to, to, to, to thankfully to help people, to [00:37:55] grieve well. You know, there is such a thing as grieving well, and getting grief right in, in a way, you know?
[00:38:02] Um, but, uh, I didn't, and so that all came up during the pandemic. And then I was, um, commissioned to write this book, finding in a Safety, which really was the book that I wanted to write. It was what I wanted to write. The first ever time I wanted it to be my Facebook, but you know. All those years [00:38:20] ago, um, the world wasn't ready for a book on safety, inner safety.
[00:38:25] Now it's a, a hot topic, but then they were, they wanted books on sleep. But I had this realization that really we sleep when we feel safe. So fundamentally, being able to sleep is about feeling safe. Um, so I want, which is why I wanted to write about book, a book about feeling safe. Well, inner safety, let's talk about inner safety as opposed to outer safety.
[00:38:44] [00:38:45] So. Inner safety is where, well, if you've got it, you'll feel it. You'll know. Hopefully, you know, I, I don't know many human, human beings who have been going around in a state of perpetual inner safety, unless they're enlightened or the, maybe even the Dalai Lama or whatever. I don't know, maybe you feels unsafe sometimes, but it's a feeling of faith.
[00:39:04] It's a feeling of having trust. It is a feeling of being able to lean back even when we have [00:39:10] difficulties going on in our lives and an inbox that's flooded and to-do list through the roof. But we still feel, okay, this is okay. I, I, you know, it's not when we're lying in the flotation tank at the spa that that's not necessarily what inner safety is.
[00:39:27] You know, it's not when we're on holiday in the Caribbean lying on a beach. No, it's, it's a feeling, an embodied [00:39:35] experience of feeling good in oneself, feeling in a rested state, feeling in a state of acceptance or trust, or having faith in the face of imperfection in our lives. And, you know, given the state of our world at the moment, Julie, I don't know many people who could say that outer world, everything is [00:40:00] perfect.
[00:40:00] There are financial crises, there are mental health crises, there are threats of more pandemics. There are global threats, there are war threats, there are terrorism threats. There are all sorts of threats. There are threats on our very doorstep. You know, I live in a lovely area in Surrey, in Kingston, where we have a threat of, of sewage works being built [00:40:25] in our neighborhood.
[00:40:27] You know, and suddenly we're thinking our lovely little haven, you know, is what's gonna happen and therefore what will happen to my financial security? What will happen to my property? You know, there's all sorts of threats, which could be even at our doorstep. And there are people who live in neighborhoods which are not safe.
[00:40:43] So there's threat there is very obvious, but the inner safety is, is a [00:40:50] state that can be cultivated even when there is imperfection. Even when there is extreme discomfort, and I would say that I'm probably in some respects going through a bit of that at the moment, you know, with an elderly parent who has Alzheimer's, who lives thousands of miles away, who's 87, who needs constant.
[00:41:10] Care. Trying to get that organized, managing it for thousands of miles away. [00:41:15] She cannot travel to this country, so I have to go out across time zones twice a year. I have a, a young adult, a young child, my daughter who has struggled with university, who is taking time out to, has her own issues, but is starting to thrive.
[00:41:29] I can see it, but it has called for a lot of lending of my nervous system in order to. Enable her to thrive. There's been a lot, there's a lot going on [00:41:40] and this is the case for people around me, the people I meet on my dog walks, my friends, my clients, you know, just personally, actually there've, there've been four bereavements close to me in the last two months.
[00:41:52] A relative three friends. One was a suicide, and two of those, three of the other three were sudden deaths, people in, in their forties and fifties. So there's a [00:42:05] lot, but can I go to bed and rest in the knowing that there is grief, that there is worry, that there is hardship, that I'll have to get up tomorrow morning and find the enthusiasm to motivate people who work for me, work with me to motivate and inspire people who live with me.
[00:42:26] To take that into the work that I do so I can give hope [00:42:30] to my clients and inspiration and energy. You know, I'm not really paid to show up looking, burnt out and exhausted and depressed. No. So one has to cultivate habits and choose habits that enable one to cultivate an inner sense of inner safety, which isn't something too esoteric or.
[00:42:54] [00:42:55] Just conceptual. It's a real thing because really what feeling safe is, is being in the right part of your nervous system, and when you are in the parasympathetic, you will know it. You feel restored, you feel rested. You feel you're digesting your food well, you're sleeping, but even if you're not sleeping, you're able to create a state of rest.
[00:43:14] This is what I tell my professional athletes and the students. If you've got exams tomorrow and you can't [00:43:20] sleep, just rest really well. And teach them how to rest with breathing techniques and mental techniques and imagery and visualizations. But when we don't feel safe, we're anxious. You know, the breath is up in the throat.
[00:43:33] We feel sick in the belly. There's that knot. The sh, like you described, the tightness, the shoulders, your armored, your fists are clenched. Your joy is cle. You are, you are. You are seeing threat everywhere, [00:43:45] even with the people that you love. You are reading the tone of voice roll. You are misinterpreting other people's motivations and words, and you see the world as a place, and you see and feel the world as an unsafe place.
[00:43:59] You know, Stephen Poer. You know, he, he says that the, the, the quest to feel safe, uh, is actually Deb Donna, actually, she's a leading trauma therapist [00:44:10] who has worked very closely with Steven Porges. Her work is based on Dr. Steven Porges work. He's considered to be the kind of grandfather of safety science.
[00:44:19] And Deb Donna says, because I've got the book right in front of me with our first breath, we embark on a lifelong quest to feel safe in our bodies, in our environments. And in our relationship with others, and then I [00:44:35] say, but why is a sleep expert writing about feeling safe? Well, it's because fundamentally, being able to sleep is about feeling safe, resting despite, despite, in spite of the pain, the worry, the stress, the imperfection, the discomfort, the grief, the loneliness, the shock, all of that.
[00:44:59] That's [00:45:00] what feeling safe is about. And for me, it is an ongoing work in progress. I sleep better at this stage of my life than I did in the previous stage of my life, or the previous decade. And the previous decade. And the previous decade. And then, you know, but I'm constantly having to, to learn more.
[00:45:18] There's so much in there. I'm, I'm conscious that we're kind of coming to the end of our time. Um, Nerina, I feel like I'm gonna have to invite [00:45:25] you back and we'll talk more about ways of cultivating and safety. Um, but of course there are your beautiful books, um, that people can buy and, um, and learn about some of those techniques.
[00:45:36] And, you know, I'll say it again, but, uh, the techniques that you talk about are accessible. They. They are free, aren't they? The techniques are just all about, um, you know, inner [00:45:50] exploration, things you can do, breathing, some yoga positions. There's all sorts of, and really little things. This morning I didn't feel the, the a hundred percent great and on my dog walk, I made a conscious effort to put my phone away and smile.
[00:46:04] With the dog walkers who I know are good at the smiling conversations, you know, not someone who's gonna bring me down. I didn't avoid them, but I didn't spend too much time talking about surviving life and traumas, you know? [00:46:15] And then at one point I found myself under a tree and I found myself stretching under the tree and just doing a little bit of tai chi for about two minutes.
[00:46:23] And I thought, oh, I found my mojo again. I found my, my, I found that place in myself. So now I'm heading back to my office. And that's the place I want to be in. I want to hold that place because that's where my work wants to come from today. [00:46:40] Gorgeous. I'm just gonna finish on one last question. Yeah. We ask all of our guests the same question.
[00:46:44] Um, and I know that compassion and self-compassion is something that, that you do talk about. So in the spirit of compassion. Hmm. If you were to suggest one kind thing that our listeners could do for themselves today, what would it be? [00:47:05] Oh, gosh. Well, that to start with, allow a breath or two or three. Allow that breath to travel into your belly.
[00:47:14] Allow it and accept it
[00:47:22] and lean back with it.
[00:47:27] And then with that leaning back, just [00:47:30] notice that it maybe invites you then to feel your feet on the ground.
[00:47:38] And maybe it invites you to close your eyes if you haven't already.
[00:47:45] And maybe it then invites you to, to allow this to be a restful moment for yourself that you could. Allow to spill into five minutes or [00:47:55] even 10 minutes, and if not, maybe just a minute or two, where you're just allowing compassionately and lovingly, allowing yourself to feel back into your body, out of your head, back into your body, into your breath, and allowing that breath to bring you into this now moment and feeling into your body.
[00:48:19] [00:48:20] Allowing the, the rest that comes when you feel your feet on the ground, you feel yourself leaning back and melting back a little bit,
[00:48:32] and who knows? It might take you into compassionately, allowing some tears to come up, some sadness that you weren't able to meet because you were rushing to get the children [00:48:45] out, you know, or to. Get to school and get the stuff done, or you were rushing, rushing, rushing. So you squashed those feelings down.
[00:48:54] And now in this leaning back and resting, your wise body is just saying your wise breath is saying, oh, there's a little bit of sadness here. What if you loud one or two tears, or maybe a few more?
[00:49:09] [00:49:10] Ah, or even a sigh or two, just allowing.
[00:49:17] And even if we were to now open our eyes, just at this point, I dunno about you, but I feel a bit more restored. Peter revived, I did this with a group of, of corporate leaders back in July and this [00:49:35] one of the, the managing director of the company had some sort of measurement device on his wrist. And he said, before we did that 10 minutes before he had said.
[00:49:44] This tells me that my energy status is something like 51%. And so I said to him, can we check it again? He says, oh, it's going, it's gone down to about 40 threes dropping. And I said, let's just do this. And [00:50:00] we did probably half of what I just did with you, and I kid you not, it jumped back up to 50. It jumped up to 56%.
[00:50:07] So what if you were to punctuate our days with moments? Rest four moments will be allow ourselves to rest in the imperfection of knowing. Yes, there's an inbox. Yes there are. There are demands. Yes, there are. Have to dos, must do, [00:50:25] should dos. But in this day of 1,440 minutes, I can allow myself some seconds.
[00:50:33] Maybe two times 60 seconds worth of restfulness, which will reset my nervous system, which I can take into that meeting with my team or into that meeting with my client, or into that classroom or into that, that conversation with my erent [00:50:50] teenager or frustrating parent with a bit more resource. Thank you so much.
[00:50:57] What a perfect way to end. Thank you. Thank you for your time, Nerina. Thank you. Take good care. Thank you, Julie, and I look forward to being back. Absolutely. It has been a pleasure.
