Emotions: More Than Just Feelings with Virginie Ferguson
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Episode Summary
I recently had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with Virginie Ferguson, a mental and emotional resilience coach.
Our chat revolved around something we all grapple with daily – our emotions. From understanding why we feel the way we do, to navigating emotional ups and downs with our kids, and even recognizing the wider applications of these insights in our careers, our conversation was enlightening, to say the least. I genuinely hope the nuggets of wisdom we unearthed together help you as much as they've helped me. Dive in and discover the power of truly understanding your emotions!
Topics Discussed:
How the nervous system and our emotional brain interplay
The impact of breathing and its significance in regulating emotions
Strategies for understanding and managing a child's emotional outbursts
Exploring how our feelings are connected to past experiences
Techniques and strategies for choosing and controlling emotions in various situations
The importance of mindfulness for a balanced life
About Virginie:
Virginie Ferguson is the director of Clan Wellness and is a mental and emotional resilience coach, yoga teacher, science lover, and mum of two. She uses techniques that stem from yoga, breathwork, meditation, and heart coherence, all backed by evidence-based science. When working with individuals, she helps the overwhelmed and anxious reduce stress and anxiety so that they can access emotional and mental resilience to be their best selves with those they love and advance their careers. In the workplace, she assists employees and leaders in developing resilience to foster happy, engaged, and successful teams and to attract and retain the best talent.
Episode Resources:
Connect with Virginie:
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Emily Gorrie:
Welcome to today's episode of the Project Mom podcast. Today, I'm chatting with Virginie Ferguson. She is the director of Clan Wellness and is a mental and emotional resilience coach, yoga teacher, science lover, and mom of two. So, Virginie, welcome. Thank you so much. I'm
Virginie:
Hi, Emily. Thanks so much for having me on.
Emily Gorrie:
I told you a little bit prior to starting this recording, but I'm so excited for today. I think there's a lot that I'm going to learn from this conversation. I think it will really resonate with our audience because just from what I know about you at this point, there's a lot that goes into your work around this emotional mental piece of being a business owner and being a mom. And I think so many of us that can relate to... emotions getting the best of us because we have all these hopes and these desires and these goals and being a business owner and being a mom, there's a lot of curveballs at you. So I'm excited for us to dive into this today. And I think that will be a really great place for us to start. Perhaps let's dive in with your journey. What is owning a business look like for you and where did motherhood come into play with that?
Virginie:
Yeah, so I guess motherhood is actually what pushed me into leaving my job
Virginie:
and starting the business, as many of us do, because we want that time freedom around our kids and just being more present. And so, yeah, I think that really is, that was my big why, that was my big drive in getting into business. And In a funny way as well is what drove me into doing what I do is because as I've returned to my old job as a project manager, I was working full time and I was traveling all over Europe at the time after having had my second child, my daughter, so having two kids at home. My husband also runs his own business and then trying to... manage it all, trying to be everywhere at once, be everybody, just being the best at work, being the best at home. And then the walls, stress and everything coming on, that's what really kind of pushed me initially into kind of trying yoga, which was something that I never got into before. And I was just like, no, I'll really hand up, you know, like, it's
Virginie:
a shame saying that, but to me, yoga was just for lazy people who wanted the easy exercise. I'm ashamed to say I didn't see any further than that.
Virginie:
I was like, you know, fitness is about, you know, go running, go this, go do that, you know, who needs this?
Virginie:
You look funny in this position. So that was like my, I guess, my 20 year old self. And then when I came to that point, I was just like, you know, let's just try it, you know, let's just do myself some good, just be gentle on this body, it's had two kids in this diet and you know.
Emily Gorrie:
Totally.
Virginie:
And then as I started to practice, and I was practicing very early in the morning, before the kids were waking up, because that was the only time I could get to myself, you know, like try to go somewhere and go to the gym afterwards, after work it was impossible.
Virginie:
And then I started to realize how much calmer I was, how much calmer I was, like getting things ready in the morning, how much my mind was clearer when I was. getting to work, it wasn't that, oh my God, what am I supposed to do, right? Like I said, emails,
Virginie:
open the inbox, and then just get thrown into it. I was so much more focused and clear. And because I've got this scientific background and I'm always so curious to understand why things work that way, and I'm absolutely obsessed by the human body, I started kind of digging to understand what's going on. Why do I feel that way? Why are those sensations coming up when I'm doing this specific breathing exercise? And so as I started digging, I started to understand a little bit more what was happening with my nervous system. And then a few rabbit holes later, I just decided to qualify as a yoga teacher. And initially, I actually qualified as a kids yoga teacher. And I started doing family yoga classes because
Virginie:
my daughter was at the age where she was starting to get involved. She would just pull yoga mat and she would say she was doing gaga. That's what she called it.
Emily Gorrie:
That's great, I love that, yeah?
Virginie:
And I was just like, Oh, can you imagine if I could actually find a way to kind of bring her into that and just bring her up with this, you know, those skills and knowing that yoga is good for you and the things it does to you.
Virginie:
So that's initially what I did. And then as I was teaching those family yoga classes, all the mothers were like, when are you doing the adult yoga? When are you doing the adult
Virginie:
yoga? And so I was like, all right, okay, then you're twisting my arm.
Emily Gorrie:
There was a need there, yeah, definitely.
Virginie:
So then I qualified to teach yoga and then it came to the point, it was 2019 and I was just overworked, overdone with my work and I was just like, you know what, enough is enough. And the actual fact there was a point where I actually lost it one morning with my daughter who must have been about five, five years old. And
Virginie:
you know that way, like kids just can lose it. She didn't wanna get dressed, she didn't want this, she didn't want that. I was stressing out because I needed to be at work because that day I had clients over from France coming over to audit the site and I was holding the meeting and things. I was hosting them. So I was just like, I need to be there on time. There's no way I can be late this morning.
Virginie:
And she started throwing things and she slapped me across the face. threw my glasses, clean off my face. And I just lost it. I just shouted at her. And then, and obviously she just melted into this puddle of tears. And then I remember kind of driving out to nursery and all the way to work that day. I was just, I was just crying. I was just in flood of tears driving my car. And I was just like, what is this woman? I'm turning into like, stress is getting
Virginie:
the best of me. What is this mother? And this is not me. Something's got to change. Something's got. what to give there. And that was kind of the turning point for me. I was just like, this is, no, this can't be happening again. So then I started my own business kind of teaching yoga initially. And then, you know, seeing who is coming to me for what, you know, people come to yoga for loads of different reasons.
Virginie:
Or a lot of them are quite physical, but I just, I was looking at the type of people that are coming and why they were coming to me. And there's a lot of that stress and anxiety and giving yourself a break, especially mothers, you know, like I'll say 98% of my students are mothers. And so, you know, like because I'm such a geek with science, I was just, I remember one time I was looking into gratitude, you know, like gratitude practice and stuff. And I was just like, why is this wolf, you know, what is this whole thing about the gratitude practice? Why do we need to do that? And then I was starting to dig and I was just like, okay, those hormones are getting released, that's fine, I understand that. But then I wanted to know really how this was happening, how you were able to trigger that and how long you needed to kind of sustain that practice or that feeling before you get the benefit. And so again, rabbit holes, rabbit holes. And I came across a blog post from Joe Dispenza. was talking
Virginie:
about it. And he was quite, because he's, you know, he's quite scientifically minded as well. He was just like, right. Research shows, you know, after 18 minutes, this was happening, your immune system, your body starts to release your, those on the antibodies and all that sort of stuff. And then he mentioned asthma. And, and they're like, Ooh, what is that?
Virginie:
Another rabbit hole. And then I went down and had a look and I was just like, oh my God, this is so up my street. I need to do this. So I trained as a part math coach. And so now that I'm bringing everything together basically and my coaching and in my training, whether I'm working with people individually or if I work in corporate setting, I always mix everything, you know, and there is a lot of the yoga breathing exercises, there's postures. to trigger your nervous system to specific states so you can take control of it, so you can get back to that emotional level state, the good level of balance, and then there's the art math. And then so there's a lot of things that kind of become amalgamated into what I do, but it's very, it all started with my journey. And then I guess there's just this discovery of discovering yoga and bringing in the science. and everything together, I guess. And that was
Virginie:
my why was really like, something needs to change, I can't keep doing this. And I won't spend more time with my kids because this wasn't the mother I wanted to be.
Emily Gorrie:
Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that whole journey because especially the part where you shared the tidbit of that morning of the chaos that happens regularly with our children, right? They have their own opinions, their own goals, their own desires, and not much of that maturity to regulate themselves to get to that successful part. And then we have our... stress levels are rising because we know what's on our docket. And I think that just resonates so strongly because it happens to us regularly. I mean, we are constantly in that fight mode,
Emily Gorrie:
right, with our children. I mean, they have their own goals and their wants, and they don't know how to compromise or negotiate or do any of that. And then we here have to be strong and calm and... regulate ourselves and not lose our shit. And it's so hard and it's so hard. And I think just for those listening who have been through that experience, to hear you share that is just so validating. We are not the only ones that experience that regularly. And I think the key piece of what you are sharing is the recognition of that's not you as a mom, that
Emily Gorrie:
just your emotions got the best of you, the stress got the best of you, the situation that you were in. got the best of you in that moment. And the recognition of saying, OK, this is not the mom I am or that I want to be, so what has to change is such a remarkable piece of the puzzle that I think some of us miss sometimes. And I want to dive into that a little bit with you in terms of in the time that you had this realization that something has to change. rabbit holes that you're going down in the research
Emily Gorrie:
that you're doing. What was the timeline for you of that pivotal day and when you ultimately decided to, and maybe ultimately did leave that job that you had and decided to pursue yoga full-time? What's the timeline on
Virginie:
so I think it was it was quite fast to be fair. I can't quite remember when that happened, but I would say it was probably about nine months between that moment with that event and really the moment where I was like, right, I am out of here and then close the door behind and then starting something new. I think it was about that. So I guess it is quite a short timeline, you know, kind of getting... all your ducks in a row and stuff. And I'm really fortunate that I've got my husband who's very, very supportive and his whole business has been able to support me while I build my business. So I think that's helped us, we are kind of just move so quickly with it. But yeah, like you say, you know, we can all recognize ourself when things get the better of us. And that was really a pivotal. event for me, but we're all humans and still I want to lose my shit sometimes still now, you know, like even a couple of weeks ago I was just like, wow, I'm getting tested here, really, really tested. But I now have all the tools and the knowledge to be able to deal with that and just recognize that my emotions are addressing a need that...
Virginie:
my body that something needs to be addressed and I welcome them. I'm not anymore, you know, because I think a lot of it as well. And because a lot of my clients come to me, our mothers struggle with the same thing. We feel so guilty. We're like, I shouldnt have been angry. I shouldn't shout. And yes, we shouldn't be shouting at our kids. And it's not a nice thing to do. But the anger and the way that you feel anger, anger is not a bad thing. Anger is about protecting our boundaries. Any emotions
Virginie:
that rise up has got a role to play. And this is why in our language, we often talk about negative emotions or bad emotions and good emotions. No, they are no bad or good emotions. They are just all emotions. They are just messengers. You know, they are telling you that it's something that needs to happen. Emotions are bodily sensations that are supposed to, in the cruise of the name, emotion, they are there to put us in motion towards
Virginie:
something we want, or to move away from something. It's about action, it's about moving us towards action. So when we feel angry, when we feel frustrated, when we feel fear, there are no bad emotions, they're just like, hang on a minute, listen to this. Why are you angry, you know, maybe your child crossed the boundary. Maybe he's done something that you were like, oh, no, you were supposed to stop there, but you went further. That is no good. You know, it's...
Virginie:
So it's about welcoming that and understanding that, right, okay, I'm angry. Why am I angry? Is this anger serving me? And there are situations not yet. I mean, I don't know, like some crazy woman is shouting at your kids in the street, or I had this woman one time, actually,
Emily Gorrie:
Oh gosh.
Virginie:
Getting angry, it was like Christmas time in the supermarket, it was like super busy. And my daughter actually just banged her head in the corner of a shelf or something, so she was crying. And my trolley was in the way because that just stopped everything I was doing, just to attend.
Emily Gorrie:
Right.
Virginie:
And she was getting so angry and shouting because my trolley was in the middle, so I lost it at
Virginie:
that anger had a purpose. and that was okay to feel angry then. But if you're getting angry at your child, the question is to ask yourself, is this anger here really serving me? No, it's probably not. So can I just take control of that? But what is it telling me? You know, it's just,
Virginie:
questions are messengers.
Emily Gorrie:
I really loved something that you said in there, and I got goosebumps thinking about
Emily Gorrie:
it. The part where emotions are meant to move us, to put us in motion, to put us in action, and I've never thought about it that way. And I think when you evaluate our emotions on the day-to-day from that perspective, it really does take away the, like, negative, positive definitions we've
Emily Gorrie:
given to these emotions. And I absolutely love that. And I want to pick your brain a little bit on the emotion of disappointment.
Emily Gorrie:
Because I think when we come into, whether it's motherhood first, entrepreneurship second, or vice versa, there are things out of our control. Even when we're. creating a life that we love, even when we're doing something that really aligns more with the boundaries that make us feel good in our bodies. And I want to talk a little bit about disappointment because I think, for me, disappointment comes up as anger a lot, like frustration around the change in schedule, childcare gets cut, like I'm dealing with that right now. I didn't realize my child's school was closed next Friday and I had like... three things on the calendar that I had to reschedule. So it's like at some point, disappointment is going to become part of our days.
Emily Gorrie:
how, from your perspective, how do we support ourselves and how do you support your clients in those moments of disappointment? And how do we recognize those as just that? And what can we do to just give ourselves some grace in those moments?
Virginie:
Yeah. And you know, like you spoke about this, you spoke about this disappointment kind of maybe kind of manifesting as anger or frustration. And these types of emotions are fight or flight emotions,
Virginie:
you know? So if we go back to, you know, different states of the nervous system, And especially if we kind of take the model of the polyvagal ladder, I don't know if you're kind of familiar with Dr. Stephen Sporges work in the polyvagal theory. We've got this state where when we're in the safe and social zone, this is where we can feel all these, what we call those good emotions. I prefer calling them safe and social emotions, you know, like being calm, being at ease, love, compassion, all these of emotions.
Virginie:
Then when we are triggered. And here we're triggered against expectations that we've set. We trigger ourselves into the first stress response into the fight or flight. So this is where we will find emotions such as anger, frustration, what others could be there, you know, like fear, that sort of stuff. And when we think about this, this response. It's also a response for anxiety. And what anxiety is, is just us making up a future that doesn't yet exist. And expectations
Virginie:
are the same. Expectations are just this made up result, future that we've made up, this scenario that we've predicted that we said, yeah, this is what's gonna happen. But it's in the future and it doesn't yet exist. It's not. But because our body and nervous system don't know that. We don't know past, present or future. You know, you can
Virginie:
think of something ahead, feel disappointed, feel scared, or you might think of something that's happened in the past and feel that anger and that frustration coming up again. Do you remember when this person did this? You know, like, it's in.
Virginie:
the past. But you recall this, you tell that story to somebody and you feel those emotions in the present moment again.
Virginie:
Well, I think, you know, when we talk about all these emotions, is thinking, you know, why is that? It's because I've set this expectation of this in the future, but the future doesn't exist yet.
Virginie:
Can you bring yourself back into the present moment? And it goes back again to kind of, you know, feeling connected to yourself, feeling connected to your body, to your breath, to your heart, feeling gratitude for what you have right now, feeling those emotions of compassion and gratitude. and try to stay more in that present moment, I think that this is where a lot of our dis-ease and discomfort comes in most
Virginie:
of our lives. Stress, anxiety, expectations, disappointment, all these things are kind of based on a future that doesn't exist.
Virginie:
So if we can spend more time into the present moment, we can
Virginie:
just let go of that.
Emily Gorrie:
I love that. I love that. I think a big challenge for me and for a lot of moms as well is this, like you said, narrative of expectations that we have, that things should look a certain way or should go a certain way because we've seen them go that way before, or we've had narratives shown to us of our own childhood that this is how we should be as a mom or should be as an employee or a business owner or a mother. should be supporting everybody else in our lives, whatever it may be, how do you help your clients and yourself reset those expectations? How do we actually get grounded enough or calm enough or clear enough to see that those are actually expectations, not realities,I guess, if that makes sense? How do we get there? How do we reframe that?
Virginie:
I know and it's a difficult thing to do and quite often what I say is you know it's like everything it's like any thoughts that come up into our head. Everything is neutral until we give it a meaning
Virginie:
and often you know I give the example because it's often something that comes up where people like oh I can't be late I hate being late I've got to be early and then if I'm not early and my kid is faffing about they're not putting their shoes on and I'm gonna be late and then the stress the stress the stress the stress And then I'm like, this is the expectation that you've given yourself. But on the other side, if you're going to meet somebody, you've got to be at a certain place. Will this person judge you if you're late? Maybe. Maybe they're one of these people who are like, this is a short route. You know why you can't be on time. And then there'll be another person like me who's always late for everything. I don't really care. I'll be like, ah! science life, I know it happens to me all the time. Who cares? So
Virginie:
we don't know and you know what people will think, say or do or feel. You can't control that. So that's why I always remind them also is like control the controllables. What is in your control? What is not in your control? Just let go because there's nothing you can do about that. Nothing works about what people are going to see or do.
Emily Gorrie:
It's so true, right? We can only embrace, and like you said, control what's in our immediate vicinity at this point. And I think it's so, I'm thinking about just yesterday for me, I picked up my daughter, she went to my mother-in-law's in the morning, and I picked her up after a nap and I... I had said, okay, we have gymnastics at 3.30. I need her to be awake from her nap at 2.45. I don't normally put these things back to back. This was like a makeup gymnastics class. We couldn't go earlier in the week. I was like, oh, it's the only one. Okay, we can make this work. And I remember saying to my mother, okay, wake her up at 2.45. I need to be out of your house by three to make it in traffic back to the. you know, gymnastics place by 3.30. Okay, okay, okay. I get there at 2.45. I think I woke up the whole house by ringing the doorbell. Like everyone was still asleep. I don't know what was happening. I felt awful, but I was like, okay, we gotta go. We were late. We were a whole 15 minutes late. It took me 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes. And I felt my stress levels just going. And I evaluate that scenario with the... kind of recommendations that you just shared of like, what if that was in my control? Parts of it, right? Maybe there's a boundary there and I don't put back to back these things because I know it's rush hour traffic and I just know nobody's gonna feel good and everyone's gonna be peeved we're sitting in the car. So like maybe that, right? Maybe that boundary is in my control at that point for next time. And also like my mother-in-law, that is 100% her. And I'm working on accepting her behavior as just that. So it wasn't surprising to me in the but I could still feel myself being like, why couldn't you be different today? That's no help to anybody. So it's, I think, just recognizing that we cannot control the person on the other end that we're meeting or asking for help from or whatever that might be, that we can only control the situations that we put ourselves in that will make us feel the best. And I think... that reflection for me personally is huge. I'm like, okay, like, let's just not do that again. Let's just not put ourselves in that situation and try. So I learned a lot just now in that reflection from what you shared. So I'm so appreciative. And I want to talk a little bit about this, like, these realities a little bit more of being an entrepreneur and being a, you know, You're a full-time mom. We're all full-time moms, right? Whether or not we're home all the time with our kids, we are always on. We are always thinking. We are always evaluating what has to happen next. And there's no turn-off switch for us. And I think for women, I look at it as a blessing, but we have to be able to, I don't know if it's compartmentalize or give ourselves permission to turn off one part of our lives to really focus and be present in the other. So Can you talk a little bit for you the experience of, okay, so now you're teaching yoga, you're ramping up this practice, you're getting more clients, and you're spending more time with your kids. How are you finding harmony between the two?
Virginie:
Yeah, and I guess it is a difficult thing because you know yourself as an entrepreneur, the brain is always on. If it's not your kids, it's business. Like your always, brain's always somewhere. Unless I take myself somewhere completely different, like change environment,
Virginie:
which again, no wonder because our brain just loves habits, loves repeating patterns and our environments constantly give us cues to repeat patterns. So when we break our environment, we go somewhere different, we kind of break that cue and then we can break those patterns and then that helps us relax and not think so much about you know work or kids. But what's important as well and I think you know we are all guilty of it is well go right next thing next thing next thing you know just make breakfast then you take them to school then you need to do this you know for your client then you've got to walk the dog and there's always one thing at the next there's always something in your mind there's always a job always something to do but they are also and that's what I help a lot my clients see as well let's recognize where they are just little pockets of time that are not utilized, that you can use to press a brake on your nervous system. So if you think about your nervous system, the part that we don't normally control, the autonomous, the autopilot, as I call it, you've got the brake and you've got the accelerator.
When we're stressed, when we are constantly on the go, it's like accelerator, accelerator. But our nervous system wasn't designed to work that way. And that's... the huge issue we have in our modern lives. Why stress is so chronic and why we're seeing so many people with physically ill and mentally ill because of stress is because we don't give enough time for the nervous system to rebalance itself. It's like go, and then maybe I'll go for a massage, and then go, go for weeks, and then maybe I'll go for a little break away, and then maybe I'll go for an hour's yoga class. It's just, it's not balanced enough. So what we need to see is bring a little bit more balance. It's introducing what called micro breaks during the day. And to trigger that in the nervous system, to apply the break, the easiest and quickest way is through the breath, like breathing practice, because the breath has got a very amazing position or function if you wish in our bodies, because it's both part of. what we call the somatic nervous system, which is the part we control. But it's also part of that autopilot because right now you and I are breathing, we're not even thinking about it. But if we want, we can take control, we can change the pattern, we can hold our breaths. So this is how as we can take control of the breath, we can directly impact this autopilot. So when we can do breathing, calming breathing exercise, you know, like rectangle breathing or. mountain breath as I call it, which is the physiological side, but nobody's going to remember that name, so I've given it another name. So when we do that and it doesn't take time, I mean it's always the same way when we know ourselves, when we start to take those deep breaths, it doesn't take long. It's only a few breaths and we start to feel better. And always you know like a minute and a half to three minutes can already make so much of an impact, you know. So reminding ourselves to do that throughout the day is good. And again, going back to this habit and pattern that was talking about having the cue, if we can have a cue in our day-to-day life that say, oh, when I'm doing this, I'm gonna do my breathing again. Because guess what? Boiling the kettle takes about three minutes. Red light here in the UK, roughly, is a minute and a half. So there's loads of little time like this that we're not. utilizing now just that time in our day that we can use as a cue to go, Oh, do you know what? I'm going to do like, I'm sat in the red light there. I'm doing nothing. Let's do my breathing. And then you're applying the break during that time because that is our issue. You know, like you were saying right at the start of the conversation, you know, when that said, you know, I lost it with my daughter and it's just because we're up to here, you know, like we've got so much there's very little capacity left for to deal with any other challenges that may come. So we lose it. We flip the led, you know, because that capacity is not there. We're up, that energy inside because our inner battery feeds into everything that we do in our lives, whether we're challenged physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, that's going to eat away at that. So if there's no capacity left, we're going to flip the led. So it's all about protecting that capacity is right. Okay, well, I've been depleted. Let's apply the brakes so I can bring a little bit more capacity back into that inner battery. So it's about giving ourselves time and it doesn't have to be this whole afternoon at the spa or full weekend away or a full body massage for an hour and a half. These things are great and I always encourage anybody to do that. But it's also very important to give yourself... breaks in between because again as I said the nervous system wasn't designed that way it was designed to flip and come back down not just staying up all the time and then having this little respite every now and then it's got to be that kind of balance that we need to keep.
Emily Gorrie:
Yeah. And I think too, like we don't always get the, as moms, especially the opportunity to take those long breaks, right? We don't always have the opportunity to take an hour long massage
a vacation or any of those things, right? So I love the concept of these mini breaks to give ourselves just a little bit more capacity when we have the opportunity to pause. And I... really encourage just anyone listening, and I'm gonna do this myself when we hop off this call, just think about some of the times in the day that are those dead space, right?
Virginie:
I don't know.
Emily Gorrie:
Is it you're sitting at the traffic lights when you're driving your kids to school, you take as many breaths as that red light is, or what are some of those environmental triggers that we can incorporate into our day, and then eventually it becomes habit and routine that we can support ourselves through the day. more consistently and hopefully feel better at the end of the day. We're not getting as close to that limited capacity as, um, we were in the past.
Virginie:
When you take your shower well in the morning, because that's something that's always there. You never gonna skip that shower. Maybe a bit shorter if you have time, but you always take that shower. You always find the time for it. So why not for that last minute, last two minutes of your shower, just do your breathing practice then.
Emily Gorrie:
Yeah, I love that. Or like when you're shampooing your hair, like forever long you take to shampoo your hair. I feel like that's my favorite part of the shower anyway, because like it gets like really lathery and it's like my favorite. So why not add some breathing to that?
Virginie:
Exactly.
Emily Gorrie:
I love that. Amazing. I wanna talk a little bit about that piece of regulating ourselves, right? Giving ourselves that ability to expand our capacity levels and how we incorporate that with our children. Because I think... When we're at the end of the day and we've worked hard and we've maybe pushed ourselves a little bit too far, our kid comes home from the school day or wake us a little cranky from their nap or whatever, how are we best supposed to show up for them in the sense of, I mean, they feel our emotions, they feel the tensions we have, they know when we're excited, they know when we're scared. As women, we're very in... really connected with our kids and they can really feel that. And I think, how do we best support them in moments when, like, we're maybe not so regulated or like they're really not regulated and we can feel our bodies. Like, what's the first thing that we should do just to help everybody in that situation?
Virginie:
Yeah, I love that you asked that question. And also I love that you mentioned how they pick up on our emotional states, because we do that with every human being. Humans are social animals and we broadcast our state of emotion through our face, especially the top part of our face, our eyes, our expression. Through the intonation of our voice, we might not even just hear it, but a human... will hear the change of intonation in your voice and will know if you're in fight or flight or if you're on safe and social. And through our heart as well and this is so important and this is why I just love so much the work of heart math and heart coherence practices because your heart has got so much influence on your body and your mind way more than we think but also on other So your heart is not just like most people think like this, you know, pump that washes blood around your body. It also has its own brain. So it's got a cluster of over 60,000 neurons that's been proven to be able to make decisions and create memories. It communicates at least five times more with your brain than your brain communicates to your heart. it sets its own heartbeat. And it's also a hormonal gland, it produces oxytocin, which is the hormone that makes us bond as humans, but as we know as mothers, very important as well, because this is the hormone that gets released when we go into labor, when we breastfeed, and that's what helps us connect to our child. It also releases dopamine, which is important for our wellbeing and our creativity and all that. And... It's also a huge source of electromagnetic activity. So we broadcast basically our state of emotion. HeartMath has done like over 30 years of research on this. And again, I'm not gonna go into negative and positive emotions, but you know, when we feel fight or flight emotions or freeze emotions that we feel down or anything, our heart's gonna set. quite a heratic heartbeat pattern. So emotions are fed back through the vagus nerve to the heart. And then the heart just tends to be beaten in very heratic ways all over the place. So we are broadcasting. And this electromagnetic activity is actually with today's instrument, we can actually pick it up to three feet around one person. So it's huge. And as human beings, we are way more sensitive to that. So we pick up on somebody's vibe. That's what we pick up on really. So we feel that, but when we feel safe in social emotions, the heart goes into what's called a coherent pattern. If you are looking at it, you can see how it creates a very kind of harmonious wave because the two sides of your nervous system are harmoniously canceling out each other. You're in that state of harmony within yourself. And that's what we broadcast. So this is how. We can, and because we're social animals, if something scares us or something is threatening, we're broadcasting it to the group because we need to be aware as well. But when everything is done, we can help the group again just to come back down. So this is how it was designed to work. So this is why with our children, it's really, really important to be aware of your own emotional state, and you cannot help them. if you're not in that safe and social state yourself. So like your stress and you can trigger them to go into that fight or flight because they're picking up, they're like, oh my God, there's a threat, something's happening. I
can feel it from my mom. But equally, they can trigger you. So if they get triggered, you can get triggered into fight or flight. But you're the adult there, you're the one that's got the more control of that emotional brain. So you can take control of that. And... Again, going back to control the controllables, quite often in most situations, the only thing we can control is our emotional state, is our own nervous system state. But if we can take control of that, then everything else is gonna be a lot better. And I'll give you examples, like my daughter can be, she can go from zero to 10o in 2 seconds, right? And then not so much now, but when she was a little bit younger, she's nearly 10 now, so she's a little bit more controlled. But even like, say, two years ago, she could work herself up into a state that there's no, you know, there's no reasoning, there's no, you can't even touch her or give her a hug or nothing. She doesn't want to see you. So what I used to do when she was in that state is I would just still sit in her room or sit quite near her, not too close. But I'm thinking, you know, you can feel this. this electromagnetic activity from my heart here, and just get myself into that coherent state and just be there and just focus on that, on that breathing, getting myself into that coherent state. And then eventually she will calm down and then she'll move closer and closer and closer. And then she'll get that hug. And then when we get the hug, and then obviously like after when we touch each other, you know, touch therapy and like even the 22nd hug, I think starts to release serotonin and oxytocin and all that, so. So then things start to get better. But in those situations, we've got to know, like we can control the child, you know, like you said earlier, they're their own being, they're just their own state. But maybe the only thing you can control at that point in time is how you feel. But if you can take control of that and you can help them kind of, you will help them regulate and self-regulate because your heart is going to entrain their heart. That's how it works.
Emily Gorrie:
I love that. I think there's like... It takes a lot of the pressure off, because I feel like sometimes as a mom with my daughter, she can go from zero to 100 very quickly. And especially sometimes when we're out in public places and you're worried about what everyone is thinking around you or you want to get her to regulate quickly or you want to solve the problem or create a solution because you're worried about all these external judgments or opinions. I think just. reminding ourselves that this is biological and that if we can just take care of ourselves in that moment, we are actually doing what's best for our child in that moment. And I think there's all this pressure that we have to like give them what they want or fix what's scaring them or whatnot. And I think just taking that pressure off of finding the quote unquote right solution is huge. And really just by getting ourself into a state, our bodies will take care of the rest, or at least the starting point of getting them to recognize, OK, wait, Mom's safe. Mom feels calm. There's not chaos happening over there. She's not worried. Wait, why am I worried? Maybe I don't need to be. So I really love that story, that image in my head, just makes me feel less worried. Like I can do it. Like I was designed to do this. So we will be okay. And every kid ultimately goes through it. I love that.
Virginie:
Exactly. And then, you know, that and then going back as well, when I was saying, you know, about emotions, that these emotions are not bad, and they have got a role to play, they have got message for you. It helps kind of break down the guilt and shame as well that comes with that, because I'm just mothers were riddled with guilt all the time. You know, I should have said this and I should have done this. And, you know, and again, when we catch ourselves saying things like this, we've got to think about, you know. Okay, I was triggered. My nervous system responded, ran a pattern that worked before based on my previous experience to keep me safe. It was doing its job. And then this thinking about next time, what can I do to break that pattern? And that's all we've got to think about really is like, okay, because again, it just takes away that, this is me, I'm such a bad person, I'm such a bad mother, I'm this and I'm that. that we tell ourselves that we are not because we are not being ourselves in that state, you know, that prefrontal cortex, that's where our personality is, that's just, it's not there, there's no top to bottom control in that case. It's just, so we're not us, we're not the real us anyway. So to understand that, to take that and go right, okay, this is a pattern. My body is making me do this because it's trying to keep me safe from a threat. That may look similar to something that's happened to me, maybe in the first seven years of my life and I don't even remember because 95% of what we think, feel and do in our adult life every day comes from this reservoir of the first seven years of our life. And if I ask you, Emily, right now, what do you remember of the first seven years of your life? Not much, not much, we don't, but our bodies remember.
They were there from the start. The brain wasn't fully developed. It's not fully developed till we're 27. So it takes a while, but the body, the body knows.
Emily Gorrie:
That's incredible. So would you say, like I'm listening to you share these tidbits and the science behind why our bodies do what they do, would you ultimately say as an action item, let's say our kid is melting down or they're having a really difficult time for some particular reason, would it be accurate to say that maybe the first question we ask ourselves is, what do we need in this moment? Or what do I need in this moment? And if we can... address us personally. That's maybe the best use of our energies at that time.
Virginie:
Absolutely. It's just trying to invite ease and calm and just connect to that and just calm that breath. You know, just take those deep breaths, just feel yourself calming down and just, you know, letting go of it. Because at that point in time, yeah, your child is eventually going to calm down. It might take a while, but you know, it might take a few minutes or but... Like everything is transient anyway, and that's the thing as well. Sometimes when we're so caught in the moment, when we're triggered in fight or flight that we can't think of anything else, but everything is transient and every moment in time nothing is forever. Just we're moving. We're just moving through time all the time. Nothing stops. So this will pass. It will pass.
Emily Gorrie:
Yeah, I mean, thankfully, right? I mean, yeah, this too shall pass. And it's interesting because as you're talking to, I feel like that logic and that support, personal support, can be applicable in so many other areas of our lives. If we look at it from a business perspective, from if you're an employee or you're navigating with coworkers or bosses or you're owning your own business and you're dealing with. clients perhaps, right? Like the recognition of emotions, right? How we're feeling in certain moments. Are we emanating fear? How are we projecting onto potential clients? You know, how do, can we show up differently so that we attract the right clients? And that really stems back to this like heart centered projection, right? Are we actually showing up in a way that feels good for us? And if not, Perhaps everyone around us can feel that. That's remarkable. I think there's just so many ways that we can address emotions and use them to ultimately our advantage and not sabotage ourselves just by thinking about what it is do we need, what it is that we need.
Virginie:
And often we think of emotions as something that happens to us, but in actual fact, we do have a choice. We can actually choose emotions, because again, as I was saying, you'll never system in your body, we don't know the difference between past, present or future. So if you're struggling in the present moment with an emotion that's coming up and you're like, do you know what, it's not serving me right now, I don't wanna feel angry, I would rather feel gratitude or compassion or whatever. just pick up something that's happened in the past, or you can make up a future. You can be like, right, I feel so grateful now that I'm just in the yoga retreat in Sri Lanka and giving this because that was one of my clients, dream. Just like, own onto that, you know, own onto that feeling. Because what happens in here can help just trigger these things. And this doesn't know if it really exists or not, or if it was in the past or not. you're still going to feel this emotion in that present moment. So it's about, you know, thinking, you know, reminding yourself of a beautiful memory, like a great time you had during your holidays, or it could be anything really, or it could be as simple as, you know, if you love nature, like I love just being by a waterfall in the forest, just feeling that you can just choose it. You can.
Emily Gorrie:
Yeah, I love that, that mind-body connection. And I think it's important to remember that they play off of each other. So can we recognize in our minds what our bodies are feeling? And can we leverage how we feel in our bodies to change this narrative or this story in our minds that is perhaps sabotaging us in a way that we don't want to continue? I love that. Well, Virginie, thank you so much for sharing this. I want to give you a little bit of a recap an opportunity just to give the listeners an idea of where they can find you, how can they engage with your work, how can they work with you. I mean, what does that look like for you right now?
Virginie:
Yeah, so I'm present on socials. I'm on Instagram at Clan Wellness. I'm on Facebook, but I'm not very active on Facebook, but I'm still there. So if you send me a message, I'll respond. I'm quite active on LinkedIn as well. So you'll find me at Virginie Ferguson. If you want to find out about my work, coaching and everything, it's on my website. It's resilienceformodernlife.com And, but if you go on social, if you go on Insta or on my website or anything, you will find that I've got little free course as well. So I've got free for the course if people want to take, teaching you the basis of taking control of your nervous system and the different states so you don't kind of let your emotions in mind run away with you. So that's available for people if they want to jump on that. They'll find the link somewhere.
Emily Gorrie:
Perfect. That's incredible. And we'll make sure to link those two in the show notes and on the blog page on the website so people have easy access and they can jump right through to that. And thank you again so much. This was eye-opening for me and I hope for a lot of the people listening as well.
Virginie:
Yeah, wonderful.