From Scanning For Danger To Feeling Safe

Your mind can feel like it’s doing too much because your nervous system is trying to keep you alive. When hypervigilance kicks in, the body stays “loaded” with stress, scanning for danger, bracing for the next shoe to drop, and turning everyday moments into threat predictions. We talk about why this isn’t a personality problem to fix but a state your system organizes around and how naming the state changes what’s possible. 

We unpack common hypervigilance patterns like overthinking, over-processing, controlling, over-explaining, and defending yourself, plus the toll of chronic adrenaline and cortisol on your energy and resilience. You’ll hear why focusing only on behavior change often doesn’t stick, and how working with nervous system states can create deeper, more sustainable shifts. We also share a simple “general safety” foundation you can use anytime: feeling support underneath you, letting gravity hold you, finding your feet and sit bones, orienting to your surroundings, and tuning in to the pace and rhythm of your breath. 

Then we move into a guided somatic healing session using tuning forks and sound therapy to help energy travel down the spine through the descending channel, from crown to feet, so the “head-heavy” survival charge can settle into grounded presence. Along the way, we practice labeling thoughts as thoughts and returning to body sensation, breath, and environment for real-time nervous system regulation. If you’ve been stuck in survival mode, come take this reset with us and save it for the next time the sirens flare. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a nervous system calm-down, and leave a review with what you noticed in your body.

Sign up for my free course, Nervous System Embodiment for Real Life. https://leahmcquade.com/resources/

Be a part of the Somatic Self Healers Community https://mailchi.mp/leahmcquade.com/mg2urgzy6d

Want 1:1 support? Book a virtual Sacred Somatic and Intuitive Healing Session here: https://leahmcquade.com/sacred-somatic-intuitive-healing/

Website: https://leahmcquade.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/leahmcquade1/

Transcript

Welcome And Settle In

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Somatic Self-Healers Podcast. This is a space for people who are tired of living in survival mode and are ready to start feeling safe in their body again. I'm your host, Liam McQuaid, and here we don't just talk about nervous system healing, we experience what it actually looks and feels like to come back to yourself in real life. Through somatic practices, breath work, and guided energetic healing sessions using sound. These episodes are designed to support you in shifting out of survival mode and into a deeper sense of presence, connection, and aliveness. So wherever you are, take a moment. Let this be a place you can soften and slow down. Take a nice big deep breath in. Settle in and let's begin. Hello and welcome to Somatic Self-Healers. I'm Leah McQuaid, and I absolutely love helping you feel safe enough to get out of survival mode so you can fully live with abundance and grace and radiance and peace and joy and all of the things because that's your birthright. So

States Over Personality For Change

SPEAKER_01 1:33

in our last somatic self-healer session, we talked about freeze and we went into this concept of functional freeze. So I want to talk a little bit about the states, and then we're gonna talk about hypervigilance, which is one of the states that we can find ourselves in. And then we'll do our tuning. We're gonna use tuning forks once again. So last session we did the ascending from the feet all the way up, the ascending channel, the energy that flows up your spine. And then there's also a channel that runs down your spine. So we're gonna work with that today because hypervigilance, which we'll get into in a moment, tends to be energy that comes up and hangs out in the head. It's a lot of thinking, it's a lot of over-processing, it's a lot of survival energy up in here. Whereas functional freeze or the freeze response can can be energy that gets stuck at the feet. So that's why we worked at the feet and moving up last time. And this time we're gonna be moving from the head down. So I want to talk real quickly about states. So states are how our nervous system is organized. So when we work from this place of states rather than our behavior or our personality, things can really start to shift in our life. Because how many times have you said that you're gonna work out every single day and you put it on the calendar, or you're gonna eat vegetables more often, and you might do that for a moment, you might get motivated to do it for a moment, a minute of your life, maybe, maybe even a few weeks, you know, the new year rolls around and you have all these resolutions, and then it doesn't stick, right? So oftentimes we'll talk about our personality too, like I'm anxious or I just don't have good time management. And so we look at these challenges from our personality, and if we can change that to looking at it a little bit deeper from how the system is organized, we can really begin to go deep enough for that sustainable change. So I like to speak about states a lot because when we can work from the state rather than the behavior or the personality, things really start to shift in our lives. Now, the behaviors are how we identify what state we're in, right? When we're blaming people all the time, right, uh that could be an indication we're in hypervigilance. So, and also when we hear ourselves say things like I am, right, I am depressed, I am triggered, right? So these statements that we make about I am, right, aren't necessarily who you are, right? They're a persona, right, that we've developed out of survival as a pattern to keep us alive in a threatening situation.

What Hypervigilance Really Is

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So hypervigilance is one of those states that we can find ourselves in. And it takes up a lot of energy, takes up a whole lot of our life force, a lot like freeze and functional freeze does. Takes a lot of life force to always be scanning and worrying about the next problem. Because that's really what hypervigilance is. It's a listening and scanning for problems. We're always on alert for the next thing to happen, and it's like the sirens are always going off. Not safe, not safe, not safe. And so oftentimes our intuition is geared towards fear, the next shoe to drop. You know, and what's really interesting, I find, about hypervigilance is that one of the ways to work through hypervigilance is what I talk about a lot already in this work. And it's related to letting go of that um energy that lives in the body because it's a it's a it's a lot of energy, right? It's a lot of energy that eats up our life force. So if we can move the body through uh down discharge release practices and down-regulating practices, and if we can really start to listen to the body, we can start to shift this state. So feel free to go to my insight timer. I have a lot of support for you. If you find yourself in this state, right, where you're overmanaging or in control, if you find yourself over-explaining, over-justifying, defending yourself. A really beautiful place to start is with some of the tools I have on my insight timer around discharge release practices, down-regulating the system, and really listening to your body.

unknown 7:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Alright. Yeah. The other thing I want to mention is that our load when we're in hypervigilance is is we're always loaded. We always have a stress load. Because the stimulation that's causing that stress is happening over and over and over and over again. And it most of the time, I'm not gonna say always, right? Because our our survival response is always happening, right? It we're always scanning the environment subconsciously for a threat, right? About the thing with hypervigilance, however, is that a lot of times we perceive a threat that's not a real threat, but our body is interpreting it as a possibility of a threat or a threat in and of itself, right? That email from the boss, we know when we read that email from the boss that we're okay in the moment, but our body might perceive that we're in a threatening situation, and we might project into the future all of the things that could happen. All of a sudden, we're reading an email from the boss, we don't even know what the email says yet, and we're thinking we're gonna get fired. Right? So it's it's an interesting state for us to explore and to be really curious about. And today we're gonna jump right in to

General Safety Before Deep Work

SPEAKER_01 8:57

our session. We're gonna jump right into our healing session because the thing, like I've talked about, the energy rises up. It's a lot of energy up in here. Managing, controlling, scanning, bracing, thinking. And I want to help bring some of that energy through the descending channel, right? That energy that runs uh from the head all the way to the feet, and then expressing out through the feet and around in that what we call the toroidal field. I have a hard time with that word, toroidal. Um, yeah. And we I've talked about that before. So that's the energy that we're gonna work today. And I just invite you to take a minute before we drop in. And even if you're not resonating necessarily with hypervigilance, that's okay because this session is gonna be a really beautiful session for you to just move some of the energy from the head right down to the feet and out your out-of-layer of your field. So take a moment, feel free, settle into your body by moving your body in any way, maybe shoulder rolls, excuse me, hip circles or breaths. Maybe you create some poofing breaths. Will just take about another thirty seconds to settle into your body. Just noticing what you notice about how you're arriving, and creating what we might consider some general safety here. So that's oftentimes where we want to start, especially when we're in a state of hypervigilance. We want to start with finding general safety. So we'll move into our general safety practice now, maybe finding that support underneath you, letting gravity support you and hold you to the earth. Finding your feet, that can be a really nice one. Maybe wiggling your feet since we're going to be working downward. Maybe you do some ankle circles or ankle rolls. If you're sitting, find your sit bones and root down into your pelvis. Notice your surroundings. Coming into a deeper relationship with your breath, just noticing how you're breathing, the rate of your breath, the rhythm of your breath, the pace of your breath. A few more poofing breaths out. Two more inhale deeply. One more inhale deeply.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

And then we'll begin.

Descending Channel Tuning Fork Practice

SPEAKER_01 12:34

From the crown down the spine to the feet, out about two or three feet from your feet, and around five or six feet, and then back to the crown of your head. Yeah, that's it. Just allowing that sound to make its way all the way to your feet and around noticing any numbness, any avoidance. Listening to the fork and allowing the fork to enter through the crown and all the way down to your feet and around. Staying in relationship to your breath, to gravity, to your feet, through your sit bones, keeping that relationship to your body as we continue to move the energy down.

Stress Load And Supporting The Adrenals

SPEAKER_01 14:59

There's a lot of adrenaline and cortisol that gets released in the stress response. And if we're constantly in that loaded stressed state, it's going to really take a toll on our adrenals. So you might bring your hands to your adrenals, right? They're right above the kidneys, right about here on both sides. Bringing in the support through your touch of your body. Yeah, really good job. It's starting to settle. You might start to notice a little bit more energy below the chin. Maybe moving to the heart space. Maybe your shoulders want to roll up and down. Maybe you want to rest your head if it's not already rested on a pillow. Yeah, unloading the system is gonna be really important if you find yourself in this state of hypervigilance. Unloading that system through breath movement and sound. So if you find you need a little bit more unloading before you can settle, feel free, shake out your body, do horsey lips come back to those poofing breaths.

Unloading Tools When You Feel Stuck

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Inviting the energy to descend from the head and the mind and the brain and even the throat. Let it descend down the body from vigilance to a more grounded presence. Doing a great job just being with this experience, staying with the sensations in the body as this energy moves all the way down with each strike of the fork.

Practice Safety Skills More Often

SPEAKER_01 20:08

We can always use practice. Finding our feet, letting gravity hold us, coming into relationship with the breath, noticing our surroundings. And in fact, we want to do these general safety practices more than we think we should. So when we find ourselves in an exceptionally stressful day, we really will can lean on these practices because we have them already fluid in our life, right? So we can always practice these. Continuing up the channel.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, I love this fork to really help get some stuckness moved. Right. I really love this for that, and I'm really feeling that anywhere where there's a little stuck energy. This fork's really helping it move along. I love that. You might use your breath as well. Each strike of the fork brings this sort of wind sound with the breath to help watch the sound through your body. Yeah, really good job.

Label Thoughts And Return To Grounding

SPEAKER_01 24:16

When you notice a thought, label it as a thought, and return back to that safety, that grounded feeling in your feet, your breath, the feeling of your six bones underneath you. So just label it as a thought another five seconds later, ten seconds later, another thought pops in, a second later, and you just thought, let it go. Come back to the safety. You got this. Staying with it. Back to the sound of the fork. Back to your safety experiences, the breath, noticing your surroundings. If you need to open your eyes for some safety, feel free to do that. Noticing what's in your environment. Great.

Closing Session And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Okay, we'll finish up with the one seventy-four now.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Same thing, still moving from the crown down to your feet and around. It's creating some movement, especially from the head, the third eye, the throat, all the way down to the feet. Yeah, great job. Thank you for joining me. And no, you can always come back to this session if you're feeling like you're in that hypervigilant state, sirens are going off, over-explaining, controlling. Yeah, just know that you can always come back and work on bringing that energy down by listening to the session again. It's been my honor in sending you so much love. Bye now. Thank you for being here with me today. And if something in this episode resonated, don't feel like you have to change anything right away. Or at all. Just take a moment, notice what landed, what's alive for you in your body. Let that be enough for right now. And if your body is asking to go deeper, I would love if you checked out my free online program, Nervous System Embodiment for Real Life. You can find that in the show notes. In this course, you'll learn how to regulate the nervous system, at least toward survival energy, build a foundation for embodied living. And if you want one of what support or you want to join my somatic self-healers community, you can find all of that in the show notes as well. Till next time, my friends, take care of yourself gently and gracefully.