Cultivating resilience, mental and emotional well-being workshops for businesses.
“You don’t have a nervous system.
You are a nervous system”.
Our autonomic nervous system state is the foundation for our mindset and influences our physiology and every system in our body.
Understanding the impact our autonomic nervous system has on our physical, emotional and mental health and also our energy creates a foundation for self-understanding, compassion, well-being and supports us to mindfully cultivate resilience.
The mind narrates what the nervous system thinks it knows.
Throughout your life your nervous system has been learning about your world, being toned towards habits of connection or protection.
Imagine your nervous system as internal risk surveillance software.
Its primary role is to keep you safe.
You might have been guided to believe that it was your thoughts and mood that created your physiological state - how you feel in your body.
We now know that your nervous system state defines your internal narrative and thoughts about who you are, your abilities and the world around you.
As you move through the three key nervous system states the beliefs you hold about yourself and your environment change.
Your mindset and thoughts are based on your nervous system state. To master your mindset you must honour your nervous system.
Our autonomic nervous system and work
Our nervous system will continue to scan for cues of safety and threat in the workplace. This can naturally influence how we perceive the behaviour of others and how comfortable we feel to share our opinion and contribute in a meeting. Likewise how we communicate in a 1-2-1 meeting, how we might react to receiving feedback from a colleague rather than responding.
Similarly our system will also influence our decision-making and how we contemplate potential solutions. Three different states can be the foundation of three very different decisions. That's why it is so important that we understand how our behaviour and thoughts are affected by our nervous system and how to recognise the signs and signals that show us which state we're in. Once we understand this we are able to develop self-strategies which move us into a resourceful state which supports us to contribute and collaborate authentically and without energetically depleting ourselves.
Why society's model of work is setting us up to fail
The societal model of work attributed to success is to commit for long and continuous hours in front of a computer or in meetings, answer emails late into the night and work till our eyelids begin to droop.
As human beings we desire more than anything to belong, in order to belong, we may unconsciously change our habits and ways of being that are natural to us in order to fit in. We learn that to fit in we might need to initiate ourselves in to both the workplace culture and societal expectations that attribute productivity, busyness and long hours to personal worth and gain.
Yet this comes at a great cost, not only to an individual’s emotional, mental and physical health, but also to the business. This is because as people feel the pressure to continue striving and push forward, they begin to rely on stress hormones as a source of energy. Many of us to do not realise that we have been in a perpetual state of fight or flight (survival state) until we experience periods of fluctuating anxiety, depressive periods, fatigue or long-term burnout.
In survival state, our brain (the pre-frontal cortex) begins to shut down in service of survival. In this reactionary state we are less capable of thinking clearly, reflectively or collaboratively. Tasks take longer, mistakes are more likely to be made and there is no space available for inspiration or creative solutions.
If people are working in a survival state, the business is in survival state because a business is the sum of its parts - it’s people.
Our philosophy
Resilience is a physiological state
It's not a mindset or purely cognitive, it's a physiological state that supports us to remain resourceful and collaborative in times of challenge and pressure.
We share the key to resilience is a regulated and rested nervous system. You need your people to not be in survival, you need them to be resourceful, focused and creative.
Understanding the true cause of stress
What creates stress and burn-out is believing we can continually override our system and beat our biology with no consequence.
We acknowledge that a workplace culture that implies 'round the clock connection' as the key to output and profit can only deliver so much and will eventually burn-out.
Unlocking a new language
When we are honest about our human experience based on our nervous system state we are able to describe how we feel without shaming or blaming.
We help you to cultivate a culture where people feel safe to communicate their needs. Feeling safe is the foundation for efficiency, focus, creativity and collaboration.
Embodiment is the way forward
We can't think ourselves into well-being. We embody it by partnering with our innate intelligence and our biological rhythms.
We illuminate the way the body whispers and the self-regulation and self-kindness strategies that will help your people to maintain the energy they need to thrive in their role and contribute to the success of the business.
Innate is to be 'born with'
It not something you have learned and can learn.
As humans our biological and emotional functionality is highly intelligent. So advanced, that all of our internal systems operate on a subconscious level and without our direct instruction.
Yet, in the modern world we have lost connection with this innate intelligence and often unknowingly work against it, rather than with it.
Modern day expectations have guided us away from listening to the wisdom and signs our body gives us and subsequently our mental health is suffering, burnout is becoming more common, autoimmune and chronic disease is rising.
We share the emotional and physical signs and signals from the body that indicate it's in stress and how to partner with the body, rather than try to override it, causing emotional and physical discomfort.
Hannah's mission
I'm on a mission to share with you and your colleagues how embodying your own nervous system and uncovering the nervous system of your business will create the foundation for you to thrive.
I am passionate about co-creating conscious, emotionally-evolved workplaces which are set-up for success through appreciating the innate intelligence of their people.
I teach what it is to be innately human, blending science with psychology. With a foundation in human resource management I fuse all my tools and resources to guide individuals to connect with their innate intelligence.
I also guide leaders and teams to create their own personal self-regulation tools, self-compassion strategies and connection points that support their health, well-being and emotional evolution to ensure they thrive in a role they relish.
Person-centred and dedicated to supporting individuals to prevent, process and resolve stressful and traumatic experiences related to work, I have also worked with individuals in the fire service, travel industry and frontline National Health Service (NHS) staff.
Alongside supporting my clients with post-traumatic stress, I also have a great deal of experience of supporting individuals with identifying solutions to understand, manage and resolve their anxiety and depression. I support individuals using a range of modalities including psychotherapy, autonomic nervous system mapping, hypnotherapy, movement, yoga and massage.
I am also an accredited mental health first-aider with Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England for adults and the workplace.