Becoming You Again
Becoming You Again is the podcast for women who are going through divorce wanting help navigating grief, guilt, and the challenge of rediscovering who they are. Divorce Recovery Coach, Karin Nelson offers compassionate guidance, practical tools, and powerful mindset shifts to help you rebuild self-trust, reconnect with your intuition, and create emotional resilience. Each episode is a safe, supportive space that reminds you: divorce isn’t the end of your story; it’s the doorway to becoming the most authentic, confident version of yourself and creating the best of the rest of your life.
Becoming You Again
Slow Body Swivel: A Grounding Practice for Divorce Recovery
Have you ever noticed how the quiet moments hit hardest after divorce? When the kids go to their dad's house or when night falls and you're left alone with your thoughts, your mind can start spinning with memories, logistics, and the weight of your new reality.
The Slow Body Swivel practice introduced in this episode offers a gentle alternative to the distractions we typically reach for like social media doom scrolling, checking out, or having that extra glass of wine. This powerful grounding technique helps create capacity in your nervous system to handle challenges without feeling overwhelmed.
Creating nervous system capacity isn't about eliminating negative emotions or always being in perfect alignment. It's about developing the ability to handle life's challenges during divorce and beyond without feeling incapable. Through regular practice, you can build this capacity, allowing yourself to stay present with your emotions rather than getting lost in rumination or looking for that easy escape.
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This is Becoming You Again, the podcast that helps you with your mental and emotional needs as you go through your divorce. I am your host, Karin Nelson, and you are listening to episode number 235. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely ladies. This week I'm doing a grounding practice. I haven't done one of these in a little while, so I'm excited to give you a new one to try out and see if it works for you. As I always say with any of these grounding or somatic practices, not everything works for everyone, and that's okay. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It just means some things resonate with us and our bodies more than other things. So try it out, see if this works for you. This one is called the slow body swivel. And the reason that I teach these grounding and somatic practices is to help you feel more in tune with your body, to help you create more capacity in your nervous system as you go through your divorce and as you go through challenges in your life. Because even after you quote unquote heal from your divorce or heal from the things that you experienced in your marriage that were traumatic or terrible or challenging or whatever, you're still going to experience challenges in your life. And being able to create capacity for your nervous system to handle these challenges doesn't mean that you're always going to be in perfect alignment or never feel negative emotion or never feel like your nervous system is heightened. That's not what we're shooting for. What we're shooting for is more capacity to handle the challenges and the experiences without feeling like we are incapable of doing that. So I'm teaching these grounding exercises to you, I'm teaching these somatic practices to you to help you create that capacity for yourself. And I often have women who are saying, like, night times are the worst. Or when the kids go to their dads, that is the worst. And it's those moments where we're just left to our own devices, where we're just left to our own brain just spinning in the story, trying to manage memories and logistics and being alone and all of these things that like kind of get piled on top of everything else. And we often will just sit in the spin of ruminating and the story of all the things, which feels really terrible, right? So you can use this grounding practice or any of the other ones that you know work for you to help you quiet some of that nervous system activation in a gentle way, without abandoning yourself, without distracting yourself, without using these outside things that we have at our disposal, like social media doom scrolling or, you know, um checking out, drinking, like all of those other things. And I'm not saying that you can't ever drink or you can't scroll on social media. I'm just saying we use those as distractions from what is actually happening in our body. And I want to teach you some different tools that might be more useful to keep you present in your life. All right, so let's get started with this one. As always, don't try and do this while you're driving. That's just not gonna work. So go to a quiet spot, do this when you are alone or when you're trying to go to bed at night, when you want to create that capacity to help realign your nervous system in some way, to get present with yourself and what is going on in your body. All right, so stand tall with your feet about hip-width distance apart and just kind of let your arms hang by your sides. I want you to keep your eyes open for this one or just have like a soft gaze. This will help you stay present in the moment because the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna orient to our surroundings. I always want you to orient to where you are. That really helps you get present in the moment. And orient just means look around your room where you are and name some things. What do you see? I see pictures on the wall, I see a fan, I see a window, I see a cat tree, I see French doors, I see a computer screen, I see a carpet, I see stairs. Like just orient yourself, okay? This is teaching your nervous system that you can be in the moment, you can be aware, you can be present, and you are safe right now where you're at. And we're gonna teach our nervous system with this one specifically that we are safe right here where we're at, and we also are safe while we are gently moving with this movement, okay? Because we're gonna be doing a gentle swivel. Okay. So orient yourself and feel your feet supporting you. Feel your feet connected to the floor, soften your knees and imagine that there are roots growing down through your feet into the floor. Imagine that you are secure and safe right here in this moment. And with your arms hanging down at your side, I want you to just start to gently swivel or twist your torso from side to side. This is a very gentle, slow movement. We're gonna look over one shoulder with this gentle swivel, and then over the other shoulder with this gentle swivel, and just let your arms follow naturally. No effort here. Just let them do what they would naturally do as you do this slow swivel and keep the movement very slow. We're not flinging ourselves about. This is slow. And as you move, I want you to breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, keeping your eyes soft, and continue to scan the room left, center, right, center, and as you do this, I want you to continue to notice those roots from your feet into the ground, keeping you firm and steady and supported. And as you continue with this slow, gentle swivel, when it feels good, if it feels good, I want you to gradually expand your range of motion, meaning create a little bit more rotation through your ribs. Add just a little bit more swing through your arms, maybe through your hips, let your knees continue to soften, respond to the movement. We're just gonna let our body show us what feels good, what feels right in this moment. You might catch yourself speeding up, but as I'm doing this with you, I am catching myself speed up. That's okay. It's totally normal. I just want you to notice and slow down if that feels right to you. This slowness gives your body time to recognize I am safe in this moment. That and that message is gonna go up to your brain, reminding your brain and your body in this moment I am safe. So if you notice that speed up like I did, that's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. Just want to slow it back down. Slow it back down. So I want you to do this for as long as feels necessary. A couple of minutes is just great. Play with it. Let your body tell you what feels right and good in the moment. And if you try this again tomorrow, maybe add more of a wider arc or play with the speed. Go a little bit faster than a little bit slower. Make your arcs wider or more elongated or more pronounced. Just play around with it. Let your body be your guide. And when you're finished, I want you to thank yourself for being open to being present in this moment, reconnecting your brain, your body, and your intuition. And then I just want you to remind yourself I can be okay with who I am. I can be safe in this moment. I can move and still feel safe in this moment. There's no right or wrong way to do this. Just keep practicing, keep going, give yourself a little swivel and create that capacity of love and healing that we're looking for. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. As always, I will be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelson Coaching.com. That's www.karin, N-E-L-S-O-N coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.
