Think meditation is the only way to find calm? What if your nervous system actually needs something completely different?

In this episode of Whole Again, Michael O’Brien shares five simple, practical ways to bring more ease into your body without ever sitting in lotus position. From humming to ice cubes to gentle movement, these tools help you shift from stress to steadiness in just a few minutes — no apps, retreats, or fancy techniques required.

• Learn a grounding sensory exercise you can use anywhere to get out of your head and into your body
• Discover how humming can stimulate your vagus nerve and relax your system
• Try quick movement and temperature-based resets that make calm feel accessible anytime

Take a deep breathe and learn five easy, science-backed ways to calm your nervous system and support your healing — without meditating.

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With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Healing, Growth & Resilience after Physical Trauma through Kintsugi Mindfulness, listeners explore resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome PTSD, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on building resilience, resilience building, resilience and fitness, fitness and resilience, stress management, mindfulness practices, and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools like breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress relief. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embraces healing as a process of transformation, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and being overwhelmed to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and holistic approaches to self-care, this podcast empowers listeners to cultivate emotional resilience and live with greater balance and intention.

 In this episode, you'll discover the power of humming and other ways to bring more calm to your life.

Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again, A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kazuki. I'm glad you're here. Today I'd like to share five ways that you can bring more calm to your life in essence. Ways to bring some ease to your nervous system, but they don't require any meditation, which may seem a bit odd coming from me, a meditation teacher, but I do believe that meditation isn't for everyone and it's not for every situation.

But still, there are wonderful ways to bring. Calm to our lives, calm, that can help us become more resilient, calm, that can help us in our healing journey. So I'd like to share those with you today. But before we get into it, I wanna say thank you again for being here. And thank you for being a fellow survivor and if you haven't yet signed up for those free.

Wonderful text messages I send out to help you feel whole again. There's still time. All you have to do is send a text. You can simply say hi, and the number to text to is 8 6 6 6 1 2 4 6 0 4, and I'll put that number in our show notes. Now, let's dive in. If we could be honest, some days it doesn't. Feel right in the body to sit still.

We might have some ants in our pants, as my mom would say. And being mindful doesn't feel all that possible when we feel this way. It's pretty natural though to feel this way. If you've ever felt this way yourself while, congratulations my friend. You are officially human. All it means is that your central nervous system is asking for something else instead of being still.

It might be asking for some movement or some type of rhythm, something different, because our central nervous system, it's almost like it's our body's alarm clock. It's constantly asking, am I safe? Am I good? Am I under threat? What do I need in this given moment? And it makes all these different changes, changes.

Luckily, we don't have to direct it to make, imagine if we had to tell the body each and every time over 20,000 times a day to breathe, I think many of us, myself included, would probably forget to ask the body to do it. When we go through something, some type of physical injury, or we have a surgery or an illness, or even trauma as it was in my case, and without the proper regulation, our nervous system can get stuck there.

It might not be able to get to a place that can say, I'm safe now, but there's hope, as I like to say. There's always hope. There are things that we can do outside of meditation to help our body feel safer. And the first one I'd like to share is movement. Some rhythmic movement. It can be something as simple as putting on some music and swaying in place, or walking slowly.

A mindful walk, if you will, or dancing in the kitchen. And if you're up to it, dance like no one's watching. I like to do something that's called a ragdoll stretch. I just sort of hangover sway my body like a ragdoll. It looks like I'm stretching my hamstrings and I stay in that position for about 30 seconds, and that can feel very therapeutic.

I love doing that one, and I'll do that throughout the day, but you can take a moment, 30 seconds a minute. Allow your body to move in a way that feels natural, in a way that feels possible for you in the given moment. This way of moving helps the body process the gunk that we've been holding onto. It brings some ease to the nervous system.

All right, here's number two. Tapping into our senses. When you think about it, we experience life through our senses. It can help us get out of our head and into our body. It can bring some ease to our nervous system, and there's a wonderful grounding practice I recommend to my clients. And you can also find it on my pause, breathe, reflect app.

I call it five, four, three, two, one. It's not a meditation. More of a grounding practice. You start with your eyes open and you try to name five things you can see and then you move on to four things that you can feel, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell, and then finally one thing you can taste.

You can do that for a couple minutes. Then see how that makes the full body feel most likely. It'll help you again, get out of your head and into your body. And that brings everything down just a bit. Okay. Let's move on to number three, and this is where we use temperature or cold water to help us bring more calm to our lives.

You might already like, or I imagine you probably know someone who is a fan of cold plunging or cold showers, and that's their way to regulate the stress in their body. Something happens in the body as it recognizes how chilly the water is. And the good news here is that you don't have to have a cold plunge bath, and you don't have to necessarily take cold showers.

You can simply splash cold water on your face, or you can hold an ice cube in your hand. Or simply just run cold water over your wrist and that can help bring your nervous system back into balance. Doing this activates something that the scientists call the diving reflux, which slows our heart rate down, which then in, in turn brings some ease to our system.

It's very practical, a very body first way to pause and reset what's happening in the body. I'm a big fan of the Ice Cube one. I do that quite frequently, mainly during the summer, but I've been known to partake in a cold shower here or there. So I love this particular way of bringing more regulation to our lives.

And an easy way to do it is dampen a washcloth and put that in the freezer. And the next time you feel overwhelmed, just try holding something cool for a minute. Or two and notice how your body shifts. Alright, now let's go on to number four and it's all about community. On Friday, I'm Rebroadcasting my interview with Brad Berg.

He talks about the importance of community in helping us establish a solid foundation, an earthquake proof foundation. As humans we're meant to be together. So it makes sense that when we think about regulating our nervous system, there could be value in doing it together. This is one of the reasons why I love hosting our pause, breathe, reflect live meditations.

And I know I said this is a meditation free episode, but sometimes we don't even do the meditation. It's about coming together. Being in a community, and that can be very therapeutic for everyone. As the saying goes together, we go far. So this may look like holding hands with someone you care about. It could be a nice warm hug.

It could be talking to a friend, even if they're not right there in person with you. Even simply thinking of someone. That's why I love the whole loving kindness meditation again. I know I just mentioned meditation. Please forgive me because as a meditation teacher, I keep on coming back to it. So I'll get back on our program here.

But just thinking about someone else can bring a calming effect, especially someone we are grateful for. So you can try this throughout the day. Just think of someone that brings you a moment of relief, a moment of calm, and that can be a beautiful way to self-regulate. So try that one on and now we're up to number five and it's all about humming.

Mm.

That sort of tickled. That was fun. This creates a vibration in the body and it stimulates the vagus nerve, that big nerve that goes from our brains through our heart, down into our tummy. It's so powerful and that plays a huge role in our nervous system. Let's try this one together. Right now it combines number four, community and humming, so take a soft breath in.

Then on your exhale, simply hum. Breathe in and then hum. Mm

and let that vibration move through your chest and your throat, and on your lips. It's gentle, it's grounding. You can do this while you're doing the laundry, while you're fixing a meal, while you're on zoom, just make sure you're on mute. Actually, you know what? Come off a mute and just hum with everyone.

Get everyone else to do it. They probably need their central nervous system to be regulated as well. We're all stressed out and we need to change the dialogue around stress. So there you have it. Five ways to bring more calm to your life. They don't require you to meditate. They don't require you to be in lotus position or be off at some fancy white lotus resort or on a retreat in Costa Rica.

Of course, if you wanna do all those, if am I to stop you? All I'm saying is that you don't need to. There are many ways to bring some ease to your nervous system to help you become more resilient. Help you heal. Heal. My goal here on Whole again and through my app, pause, breathe, reflect, is to either remind you of the tools that you have within you, or perhaps recommend new tools to help you navigate life with more agility and versatility, as well as with more grace.

As always, thanks for being here and thank you for being a fellow survivor. And remember, if you'd like to receive my free text messages, just say hi and text 2 8 6 6 6 1 2 4 6 0 4. I'll set you up

and if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, Michael O'Brien schiff.com. And sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect, and join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.

Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this. And. We've got you.