The Practice of the Practice Podcast w Joe Sanok
Better Mental Wellness Series: Improving Your Nervous System with Dr. Lori Desautels | Episode 1182
What is the role of the nervous system in mental wellness? How does understanding neuroplasticity transform mental wellness in education and parenting? What are some tools that you can use to integrate neuroplasticity into everyday activities?
In this podcast episode in the Better Mental Wellness Series, Joe Sanok speaks about improving your nervous system with Dr. Lori Desautels.
LISTEN:
In This Podcast
- Understanding neuroplasticity
- Neuroplasticity’s impact on therapy
- The role of emotional safety in learning
- Therapeutic practices for sessions
- Dr. Lori Desautels’s advice to private practitioners
Understanding neuroplasticity
[Neuroplasticity] is not just about the brain, it’s about the full nervous system. Neuroplasticity is our nervous system’s ability to adapt and to grow and move and shift with all of our experiences. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
These experiences could be relational, our external environments, and how we feel on the inside about our daily activities.
All of these experiences have an impact on our nervous systems, on our neuroplasticity, and on how we can adapt our bodies and minds to the life around us and make it more susceptible to the lives we want to create.
Neuroplasticity, in a simple definition, is how all of our relationships, environments, and experiences begin to change and shape how we perceive, sense, feel, think, and behave in our worlds. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
Neuroplasticity, when we do it right, is a superpower. That sounds cliche, but it is true because once we understand the relationship between our inner world and the outer world, we can intentionally create better lives for ourselves.
Neuroplasticity’s impact on therapy
The benefits that practicing neuroplasticity daily has on people’s lives are huge, and it is a great piece of science that therapists can share with their clients.
[Neuroplasticity] is hopeful, and as a therapist, counselor, or social worker, this is the best news that we can give to our clients and our children and youth. It takes repetition, though. Anything we practice we get good at. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
Through practice and repetition, we develop neural pathways. The more we do something, the more those neural pathways are strengthened, making them easier to do without having to think about doing them.
Focusing on neuralplasticity gives us some control and some autonomy and agency on what we can do and to be intentional about the way we are thinking [and what we are doing] because [those are] choices. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
The role of emotional safety in learning
When we don’t feel emotionally safe in our environments, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to learn new skills, break old habits, and generally change our behaviors.
Our minds and bodies are wired to avoid pain or stress, and when we feel overwhelmed, any more change – even positive change – becomes something that we consciously or subconsciously avoid, which means that we are likely to continue with poor habits.
This affects both children and adults.
We don’t live life very well if we are not integrating that safety and connection, and creating pathways to the [pre-frontal] cortex. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
You can conduct nervous system check-ins with your students if you are a teacher, your clients if you are a therapist, or even with yourself.
It is really important that we teach our children and our youth that there is no good way to be. We all move through nervous system states all day long. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
Therapeutic practices for sessions
Routines, inside and outside of the therapy room or classroom, are important for people to utilize when it comes to taking care of their nervous systems.
A stable and calm nervous system appreciates a routine. Not everything has to be structured, but having – for example – a morning routine and an evening routine are great ways for people to feel calm, collected, connected, and ready for what comes next.
We desire to know what’s coming next, and that is a part of our evolutionary biology. So being predictable, consistent and creating boundaries, structure and routines and rituals [are] so soothing for the nervous system. (Dr. Lori Desautels)
For all children, youth, and adults, these practices are vital to help ourselves create good behavior and healthy, calm lives. They work in schools, in offices, and in society in general.
Some tips that you can use for your sessions;
- Check-ins before and after the session
- Intentional breathing techniques
Dr. Lori Desautels’s advice to private practitioners
It is not about the behavior that we see. It is about where that behavior comes from because a person’s behavior is often an outward symptom of their nervous system.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Dr. Lori Desautels – Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline
Dr. Lori Desautels – Body and Brain Brilliance: A Manual to Cultivate Awareness and Practices for Our Nervous Systems
Dr. Lori Desautels – Intentional Neuroplasticity: Moving Our Nervous Systems and Educational System Toward Post-Traumatic Growth