Empowered Ease
Welcome to Empowered Ease, hosted by Jenn Ohlinger—a holistic coach,
& founder of The Moonflower Collective. Join us each week as we delve into the transformative stories of healers, health practitioners, and everyday women like you, challenging the patriarchal framework through empowerment and holistic healing. Through engaging storytelling, our podcast highlights each woman's unique journey toward embracing their feminine gifts, trusting their body, and prioritizing their mind, body, and soul. Discover how by empowering ourselves, we can pave the way for stronger relationships and a more balanced world. Women heal in community come find yours.
Empowered Ease
Healing the Healers: Dr. Lorre Laws on Nurse Trauma
Hi!! I would love to hear from you!
What if everything you've been told about nurse burnout is wrong? Dr. Lorre Laws, integrative nursing professor with over 35 years in the healing arts, presents a revolutionary perspective: what healthcare professionals experience isn't mere burnout – it's occupational trauma with profound physiological impacts.
With equal parts scientific authority and spiritual wisdom, Dr. Lorre unveils how chronic workplace stress triggers cell danger response, causing mitochondrial dysfunction that manifests as chronic fatigue, brain fog, autoimmune conditions, and more. This groundbreaking framework explains why traditional "self-care" approaches fail and why we need trauma-informed healing strategies that begin at the cellular level.
The conversation delves into historical nurse trauma and system-induced gaslighting that keeps healthcare professionals marginalized despite being the linchpins of every healthcare system worldwide. Dr. Lorre shares her journey from teenage CNA to founding the Halen Academy, where she helps nurses stabilize their nervous systems through evidence-based, integrative approaches.
Most powerfully, Dr. Lorre offers immediate, practical tools anyone can implement – including her 30-second "Microdoses Matter" practice for nervous system regulation and the "Dr. Lorre Tuck-in Protocol" for clearing absorbed energies before sleep. These simple yet profound techniques help healthcare professionals maintain regulation even amid workplace chaos.
Ready to transform your understanding of healthcare trauma and discover evidence-based healing approaches? This episode provides both validation and actionable pathways toward genuine recovery. Visit drlorrielaws.com for free resources, masterclasses, and information about Dr. Lorre’s book "Nursing Our Healer's Heart."
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I'm so excited to announce our guest today. Dr Lori Laws, affectionately known as Dr Lori, is a gifted healer, a best-selling author and an integrative nursing professor who masterfully blends scientific expertise and intuitive wisdom. You guys, I think she is just. We were just scratching the surface with some of the topics we were able to cover with her, but she has over 35 years of experience in the healing arts. She guides individuals on profound healing journeys, helping them reconnect with their inner light and higher purpose. She has an amazing book called Nursing Our Healer's Heart Trauma and it offers a holistic path to recovery from trauma and burnout, nurturing the soul while presenting groundbreaking research. So, as founder of a nonprofit, the Halean Academy, dr Lori created a sacred space for transformative healing, including her powerful 12-week Healer's Heart Academy. Dr Lori's heart-centered, integrative approaches have helped thousands in their recovery journeys, addressing all aspects of personhood. It was truly a pleasure and an honor to speak with Dr Lori Laws. How are you today?
Speaker 2:I am fabulous and I'm so happy to be here and I'm connecting deeply with all those beautiful plants in your office space.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, I love it. They make me feel at home. So I have them all over my house probably too many, and I'm always giving away the babies. So I have them all over my house probably too many, and I'm always giving away the babies. So well, I love, so happy that you're on came on the show today. I love your mix. Well, I love the level of that you have achieved in your career. So you bring a lot of weight behind these discussions, which is very exciting for me, but also this balance of, like spirituality, the holistic side and then the scientific side. So tell me a little bit about where your focus is these days, because you have been in this field both for a long, long time.
Speaker 2:You have a lot of history, so yeah, I well you know, I got my start as a CNA and and so, yeah, so before, before I had my learner's permit to drive a car or my driver's license or was able to vote, I was working in a skilled nursing facility helping people with their end of life transitions, and so that's where my healer's heart got forged was, you know, at a really, really early age, and life had other plans for me than going to nursing school, which is where I was headed as a young woman and I sustained some back injuries and because we didn't have a family, and became very active in the healing arts community as a practitioner, for oh gosh, oh wow, yes, yes. And so I I returned to the profession and you know, interesting because I had, I had. When you enter the profession as a mature woman, any profession, you bring with you your life experience. You also your nonsense meter, your shenanigans meter, is highly tuned, and so you find that you're willing to not be mistreated or minimized or marginalized in the ways that many of us find ourselves being treated in our professional roles. And so I started professional roles and so I started trying.
Speaker 2:I wasn't quite sure why I was returning to nursing, because I was answering a calling. I'm very intuitive and I'm very spiritually aligned and attuned, and so I kept getting this calling and it was heal the healers, heal the healers, heal the healers. And so, you know, know, I wasn't a nurse when I started here. So so it's like, well, certainly, nurses are healers. I remember that from when I was a a young girl and a teenager. So so let me, let me go. You know, start there with what I knew. And then there wasn't much healing as I knew it as a healings arts practitioner, having facilitated healing through a number of modalities. And then I got into practice, at 51, by the time I finished nursing school, and I was dismayed, to be honest. It wasn't what I had hoped for, and the burnout and the compassion, fatigue, narratives had not changed in 50 years. We are still having the same conversations, we are still gaslighting and blaming the victim.
Speaker 2:So, as part of, I graduated from, earned my master's and then subsequently my PhD, and I was teaching at the time for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and this gave me a multidisciplinary view into a different evidence base. And so I had been, you know, as all of us. We got our nursing theory, we got all of the you know all of the things in nursing school. That kind of tells us a little bit about how nurses are in their practice. And then I get over to social behavioral sciences and I learned that from that lens, through that evidence base, nurses are considered a oppressed, marginalized and disenfranchised occupational class. And that landed in ways that inspired my whole program of research, which is focused on avoidable nurse trauma, which is frequently marginalized as just burnout. So that brought me into this whole alchemy of now.
Speaker 2:I'm an integrative nursing professor. I did two integrative post-doctorate fellowships in integrative health and so that's how I was able to bridge, for my own life experience, you know, the science and the integrative and the spirituality I was able to find. You know what resonated with me, but it certainly didn't present itself as I was transitioning into traditional practice, you know, in a hospital setting. So that's kind of like the cliff notes of an old woman's story.
Speaker 1:I love. I love this so much because, even though our stories are not the same, I feel like there's so much consistency and uh and uh like alignment in a lot of ways. I started off in mental health and was very into my personal holistic practices. Hold on one second, my head just walked. I will cut that out. I locked the front door and I accidentally locked him out Oopsies. Okay, no, I love that.
Speaker 1:You said that because I started my career in the mental health field. I was like, fully into psych and nursing is a second career for me. I went at 30 and I was very into holistic practices personally at that time and then, when I got inspired to be a nurse, I've had these like big, beautiful, like bright, shiny ideas about helping people and you know I wanted to be involved in health for the acute care aspect of it and then I got into it and it doesn't really practice. A lot of what we know keeps people mentally healthy. Very shocking for me. I spent my most of my time in critical care, which is a very unhealthy population, then ended up habitual burnout myself having medical problems.
Speaker 2:And now that I look back on it.
Speaker 1:with all this, like mental health, you know, all of this um's been like quite a journey and I wanted to step fully away from the profession until I healed from burnout and realized that the role leadership and healthcare can play in it, and so recently I've stepped back into a leadership role in an ICU setting, trying to be a part of that, like positive change in a broken system. So I'm so interested in all the things you have to say. I feel like you're speaking directly to my career here.
Speaker 2:So you would. You would actually be, you would actually be one of one of my ideal clients. So I founded a nonprofit organization, which a lot of people don't know. I wrote. I wrote the book at a nonprofit organization which a lot of people don't know. I wrote the book Nursing Our Healer's Heart, which really helps nurses such as yourself who have got to the point where they think it's burnout.
Speaker 2:I'm ready to leave the profession. I cannot do this in this manner anymore because I'm being ground out like into hamburger. It feels like you know when you get there, but it's really occupational. It's no specific trauma, which is a whole, a whole different way of healing Once you realize what the root cause is. And and so I thought writing the book.
Speaker 2:I did the research and wrote the book and I thought that that would be my contribution to the profession. Right Cause here's, here's something that any nurse anywhere on the planet for under $20 can get in their living room, as though they are in a conversation, in a coaching sessions with me as we go through this whole healing journey. And then I quickly realized that healing needs to be facilitated. You know, we get information and there's a limited amount of healing that you can facilitate through the written medium. So I don't want to discount that. As you know, it's a great place to start, but the nurses I was working with, they wanted more and you know hospitals were like how can we attract and retain a healthy new graduate nurse intern workforce Because we're burning them out?
Speaker 1:I was going to say the burnout rates are the highest in our new nurses.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and they're the greatest at risk.
Speaker 2:And so that led me to found the Halen Academy, where I offer 12-week programs that you can take up to a year to really, and for hospitals, so they can partner and bring in their new graduates so we can really stabilize the nurse's nervous system, because what we have now it's occupational trauma.
Speaker 2:So Dr Karen Foley, who works at, is a professor at Purdue University. She brought forth the nurse middle range theory for nurse psychological trauma and it's a gift to our profession and it's what my book is grounded in, because it gives us as nurse leaders, as nurse advocates, as nurse practitioners, clinicians and scientists, it gives us a common, evidence-based language now that we can really call what is happening to us what it is. So it's not burnout, it's not compassion fatigue. When you start doing a symptom cluster analysis amongst nurse-specific trauma, ptsd, the SAMHSA's immediate and delayed responses to trauma, and you start, as I did, doing all of the symptom cluster analysis, what you find is there's tremendous, tremendous overlap. And so, while we use the terms burnout kind of casually and it's sort of this universally accepted phenomenon when you start looking at the evidence Health Organization defines it which gaslighting alert, it's occupational stress that is not being effectively met.
Speaker 1:I know the definition is so silly and it's just that it's occupational. I'm like what a joke Our lives. We wear so many hats these days. It's such a joke.
Speaker 2:I love that you put that out, though.
Speaker 1:Thank you Well thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like we have two bodies and it's that mechanistic, you know, it's that reductionistic sort of oh, you have one nervous system and one brain when you go to work, and then you have another one Right, and so, by I mean, if you really start leaning into that, then really what the World Health Organization sorry, not sorry is saying, is that, well, please dissociate as soon as you get to work.
Speaker 1:Which a lot of us do. That's why we were good at it sometimes, which this is something I was going to ask you about, because so two things I found in speaking with people that work specifically with nurses through this podcast and then myself and working with people is that nurses sometimes are a very hard population to treat because they are just one of the last populations I feel like to help themselves. I feel like that's inherent in the kind of people that choose to be nurses, and I also know that you're talking about trauma, healthcare trauma. Like for me personally, part of my burnout was also healing some trauma that I had prior to becoming a nurse that made being a nurse easier for me than it would maybe someone who came from a healthier background.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, we all self-select into this for very personal reasons and a lot of times it's because we do have trauma or we have witnessed or been a part of a loved one's traumatic experience, and so we feel drawn to the profession. I also think it's important that we recognize and bring light to the fact that, historically speaking, we have been conditioned to, to feel subordinate less than secondary to, and that we should just suck it up, buttercup and while you should just, you know, pick up the extra shift and oh, it's your work, family, and oh, it's your calling, and all of this, you know, empathy, manipulation, that happens and I feel well it's not even if I mean I do feel it, but also my research suggests is that this is what's known as historical nurse trauma, right Of which nurses eating their own is sort of a subcategory of the last several centuries that you know we have been in, these patriarchal, colonial systems and paradigms, that nurses have been historically conditioned to think that we need to be subordinate to the AMA or whatever you know, or providers, or physicians or the organization, and this is reflected so glaringly in the fact that physicians and providers and nurse practitioners you know they have reimbursement models. Nurses are part of the room, charge like the fan in the corner, like the pillow on the bed. How much more egregious can you be in subordinating and minimizing the healers that are on the front line? So you know, we have these huge social structures that I think are contributing to keep nurses, because I find this too.
Speaker 2:I've written the book, I have a non-profit, I have programs like it's all light work for me, so, so I'm not here preying on the suffering of my colleagues. Right, this is, this is all. This is all for for us, for us as a global community, and the reasons that you say is that we have been so beat down in our professional roles and have been, you know, gaslit so many times that we fundamentally, at our core, many of us, not all feel that there is some deficit or defect or flaw within us, as opposed to turning that on the organization and the system and asking the hard question where is your accountability?
Speaker 1:I love that you say this. I love this so much. It's so powerful, and I don't think a lot of nurses see it that way. You know what I mean Until it's too late or until they're like really suffering.
Speaker 2:Right, and then. So I have a good number of nurses just as you described your own beautiful story of here. I was, you know, and my own daughter. My own daughter is a hospice nurse and she's in her third year of practice now and she got burned out within and traumatized within four months. And I was doing this research at the time she was living in my home, getting all the support from one of the world's experts, I say with humility, and I hired an integrative nurse coach for her to have weekly sessions so that she would get the support that she needed in that very rough first year.
Speaker 2:That transition to practice and I'm watching this happen in my own living room and I'm watching it happen to nurses such as yourself and so many is that we get dismayed, we think we're getting burned out, but what is really happening is that these organizational and system factors result in avoidable nurse-specific traumatization, right, and that leads to a whole sequela of health consequences and chronic conditions. And I don't know if anyone on your shows I'm sure people have talked about polyvagal theory, but I don't know if anybody's talked about cell danger response theory to let people know what is happening at the cellular level as a result of the allostatic, chronic stress and trauma exposure load, and that is really the root cause of what is driving people like you, like me, out of the profession, looking to pivot into different ways to be of healing service in our professional roles. That doesn't require us to be subjected to this trauma exposure, because what really is happening at the end of the day, on the most fundamental physiological level, is that our mitochondria we all remember our good friends of mitochondria right the the powerhouse of the cell, that which modulates so many hormones and and our hpa axis and is so involved in so many things. Well, what is happening and this is why it's not burnout and why we need to just really please stop having that conversation and start calling it what it is, which is no specific trauma is that we need a whole approach, different approach, evidence-based approach, which I have written about and others to bring this healing in, because what's happening is that our cells, particularly the mitochondria, they go into their own version of fight or flight, if you will, it's called cell danger response and so the cell wall thickens, it cannot produce the amount of energy that is required to continue to keep up with the inordinate amount of trauma, exposure and stress that we are not built for chronic stress.
Speaker 2:We are built for acute bursts of hyper acute or acute stress, and so this is what is contributing to the brain fog, to the GI distress, the gut-wrenching, chronic fatigue, to the point like on the weekends I can't even go on date night with my partner or to my child's sporting event because I am so exhausted I can't drag myself off the couch and we think that there's something wrong with us. But what we're experiencing is a natural physiological response to the avoidable stress exposure. 86% of nurses report having little to no and you know this from being in mental health little to no resources or support to manage the trauma, and what really happens is that we get another layer of what's called system-induced trauma. So if you, like me, have ever been battered in the line of duty, which has happened to well, recently I spoke at a conference and I had 200 nurses in my audience and I asked them to please raise their hand. How many of you have either?
Speaker 2:Every single one, didn't they All but nine in 200.
Speaker 1:I told my Surprised. There's nine that haven't. Were they brand new?
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, they might have been students, yeah. So then you go in, you know and follow the chain of command and policy, and then what's the first question you're asked when you're reporting being battered how did you handle the situation? Yeah, how did you handle it? Yeah, what could you have done differently? And so what that is known as is system-induced trauma, and so that's putting workplace violence, trauma and adding a whole nother layer of trauma on top of it, and then we normalize it and think that there's something wrong with us as the nurse. And so that's why it's just so important. I'm so grateful to be here, because you know we are all together, coming together. We know that a lot is wrong and we can't fix the broken system, right? No, it is beyond us, right? You know that would have been done long and it's not in, quite frankly, it's not in the system's interest to fix itself.
Speaker 1:No, it's not. They don't want to fix themselves.
Speaker 2:So what we? So what we do is we? We stop drinking the burnout, compassion, fatigue, Kool-Aid Now that we have new evidence, new science, a new middle range theory surrounding nurse psychological trauma and we start calling it what it is right. And then that opens the gateway so that we can start true healing. We can learn how to insulate our nervous system. So, even though we're carrying that trauma exposure in our workplaces, we aren't affected by it because we have learned the language of our autonomic nervous system, our vagus nerve. We understand how cell danger response works. This is evidence that is not being taught. These are theories that are not being taught in nursing curriculum.
Speaker 1:I'm an integrative nursing professor, I was going to say why don't they teach this in nursing school?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I'm an integrative nursing professor at an R1 university here in the United States. So and so we're doing all of the curriculum redevelopment using the ACN essentials, which is the American Association of College of Nursing ago now, where they asked for public comment on on how the essentials that I and all nurse educators in the country need to use to guide our, our curriculum and how we teach and make sure that every nurse is prepared, right, well prepared, to pass NCLEX. Not necessarily, you know, but that's a whole.
Speaker 1:nother, it's not really about the students either. Exactly, exactly. It's a whole other issue and a whole other episode. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And none of this was in there. So it's still the same burnout gaslighting narrative that nurses need to do better self-care there was no accountability for system or organizational factors and nurses need to do more with less and we need to suck it up buttercup. And nurses need to do more with less and we need to suck it up buttercup. There was no trauma-informed self-care whatsoever and zero, zero strategies surrounding how to get or keep ourselves from going into a permanent state of cell danger response, and and that cell danger response leads to things like migraines, fibromyalgia I was going to say all these um autoimmune diseases that like every, every client I have what?
Speaker 1:so many of them?
Speaker 2:autoimmune diseases, you know, yes, rampant in women in general right now yeah, the anxiety and depression and the brain fog, gut dysbiosis, which you know. You know the axis and those.
Speaker 1:I think so many people are functioning with and not even acknowledging that that is existing in their life. Do you know what I mean? They're so used to it they're not even acknowledging that that's happening. So many people.
Speaker 2:And that's what's keeping them sort of like as you said, you know earlier refractory to seeking the help that we need, because, because this has been going on for so long, and then you know you're you're, in polyvagal theory, the dorsal aspect of the vagus nerve over over prolonged stress, after we burn through, sympathetic overdrive, the hamster wheel phase right, and then we go into the kind of the freeze collapse phase where we're just like, we just can't, we don't have, we don't have any more fumes coming from the tank for us to meet these demands. And so it's really easy for a nurse to feel, as I have been told, and I am sure you have oh, there's nothing we can do. Oh, you have migraines, you have chronic fatigue. All of these I have literally been diagnosed with chronic fatigue. All of these I have literally been diagnosed with Chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, ibs, anxiety, depression and, as it turned out in my case I'm not trying to generalize but, and for a good number of the nurses that I work with that once we unwind and we heal the trauma not only the work-related trauma, because it's often, as you astutely noted, connected to our own personal trauma, which every person on the planet has experienced, trauma right, and so this is a universal phenomenon and so really understanding that and then taking an approach to healing the nervous system first, and the cells, the mitochondria in particular, that will give us some energy.
Speaker 2:We'll get out of that freeze response so that we can start actively engaging in and I don't use the word self-care, but I'm going to use it here, it here so self-caring. I use self-nurturing practices to nourish our nervous system so that we can stay in a state of regulation, even if it's a dumpster fire situation in your workplace. And that is how we can keep ourselves safe, healthy and thriving in our roles, independent of external factors. And then this is kind of the important thing and then, as nurses who are not hemorrhaging from our wounds but instead are healing together, individually and in community, that's when we can start reclaiming our empowerment. We can come together as communities and and advocate and lead the changes that we need to see. But we, but the system. Now I don't know if it's by design or not, I don't want to be all conspiracy theory, but you know.
Speaker 2:But there is. There is a systematic change, oppression of nurses that keeps us unsafe and unwell in our roles. Whether intentional or not, the net effect is the same. Is that? That is why we cannot come together as a global profession, who we are? Literally the linchpins of every health care system on this planet, but we can't seem to get our advocacy together, we can't seem to coalesce into this community that is requiring these changes, and part of it is because we are so unwell that we don't have the bandwidth, physiologically, we don't have the energy, our mitochondria can't take that on. So we have to start there. We start there and then, when we start getting regulated in our own nervous system and we start getting our cells and our mitochondria unstuck from that danger response, well then we can start co-regulating. So if you and I were co-workers and we had done all of this work, then we would be the two people on our unit that people would want to be around, and they wouldn't even know why. It wouldn't be our sparkling personalities, although that might be part.
Speaker 1:It would be our grounded nervous systems that we just I know know those people I've worked with them where I'm just like right, let me talk to you, let me bounce things off you, because I want that I know where they're at and where I'm at buzzing you know right and then below the level of our you know higher brain functions.
Speaker 2:That's how mammals have survived. We co-regulate and so so it's our kind of our reptilian brain, our reptilian nervous system is drawn. So if you're regulated and you're grounded, I call them the people of my life, I call them my buddha incarnates, because no matter what happens, they're just like zen right they're just they just are so grounded and present and nothing really knocks them off their center in the ways that you know.
Speaker 2:that you know, even I, after all of this, you know I still I'm a human too and I'm still a healing work in progress. And so we find ourselves drawn to those in our kind of more reptilian autonomic nervous system, because we are hardwired evolutionary to co-regulate, and so we don't have to fix each other as nurses.
Speaker 2:We don't have to know each other's trauma story. In fact, please know, don't that will further traumatize, as you well know, and so, but what we can do is show up in our window of tolerance, where we're regulated, and then, and let nature's wisdom, the innate wisdom of each of our bodies, knows what to do. But we have to get out of of fight or flight, we have to get out of fawning and freeze and we have to get out of cell danger response before this is possible in the collective. And so then, when the collective heals, anything is possible. When the collective heals, anything is possible, everything is possible.
Speaker 1:So for nurses that are listening right now and are like yes, yes, you're describing me. What would you, what would you tell them, or where would you advise them to start, or where to you know, for people that are really identifying with this conversation and like I need that, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean again with humility. This is, you know, I'm one of the top experts in this topic because I've devoted my whole nursing career to it because it just has to stop. So I would recommend going to my website, which is drlaurielawscom, which I'll spell d-r-l-o-r-r-e-l-a-w-scom, because my mom got real creative and I have lots of resources. Of course there's the book Nursing Our Healer's Heart. I offer free masterclasses every month. I have a deep dive healers. I have a free quiz. A free assessment really is five questions, where you can just sort of like stick your toe in the water, be curious, don't have to pay anything. I'll send you a report and kind of let you know where you're at. On the nurse trauma and it's not just for nurses, it's occupational trauma. So if you're a healer, a healthcare professional or a nurse, this is for all of us.
Speaker 1:In this line of healing work I've heard massage therapists carry a lot of trauma, which really surprised me. But once I listened to them talk I was like this makes sense.
Speaker 2:Right and you know, if you think about it, they're really. You know there's a, there's an energetic transfer that's very physical and very felt that if a massage therapist and I've worked with many if they don't have a really good grounding and clearing before and post session practice and they know how to not sponge that up, they can think it gets transmitted. It's a. You know, everything at the end of the day is an energy frequency.
Speaker 1:I love that you say that, because that's actually something that's new to me. In the last couple months that I've started doing, I felt like I've done a lot of healing work, but someone specifically said to me you need to actively and consciously clear your energy every single day, especially the days you're at the hospital before and after you leave, and I something I've been doing and I've totally noticed a difference, like in my personal life and in my work life well, I have a two and I'll just share this in case it's of help to to you or your.
Speaker 2:Your beautiful community that I, that I now feel like I'm a part of, I'm so happy. So my on my bedside table I have a feather that I found. You can buy feathers, you can find that. They come to me, feathers come to me, feathers come to me, and so you know and again that's part of this my spiritual walk is pretty profound for me and so I have a nice feather.
Speaker 2:So at the end of the day, I do not get into my bed. I will not get into my bed until I use the feather to clear my energy field from anything that is not mine. And then I use a clear crystal you can use anything that feels good for you and then I do a kind of a verbalization where I, you know, I release any and all frequencies, energies, contracts, karmic bonds, any energies that are not mine or in alignment with my divine blueprint, and I take that crystal and I just kind of run it across all my body, just to you know, really just setting the intention that I am not taking this into my sleep with me because that is a really potent time for healing and restoring that we all need.
Speaker 2:And so why would you go to bed carrying I mean even just in the right day to day?
Speaker 2:Because we're out at the grocery store and we're we're in our workplaces or we're at our, our kids school for an event or whatever, wherever life takes us. But we are energetic beings and so we are picking up what's in the energy field, just much like we co-regulate, right, it's how, it's how we survive below the level of our prefrontal and frontal cortex that we are always. Porges calls it a threat detector. It's a process in the midbrain that is 24-7 surveilling for cues of danger internally or externally. And so we pick up all of these cues, right, it's just part of being alive, and so we have to just like you know, you wouldn't go a month without taking a shower, right? Because we have to wash it off of us, and so the same thing is true in our energy field and making sure that we do that every night before bed. And drop me an email and let me know how that works for you, because I'm telling you it's a game changer.
Speaker 2:So I invite you all to join me in the Dr Lori tuck-in protocol. There we just made a name for it.
Speaker 1:I love it. I mean, I've been practicing it just for a few weeks now and I've noticed a complete difference in how I feel like walking and walking into work, so I love that you say that.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much You're so welcome.
Speaker 1:There's one thing I asked all my guests. I don't want to forget to ask you is whenever I always ask everyone what their go-to self-care is. When life is feeling very overwhelming, you know, when you're in a real angsty period like what do you do to get yourself back on track?
Speaker 2:Or I will call it self-nurturing.
Speaker 1:When I ask you what is your go-to self-nurturing?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the key practices in the book that I have. It's called the microdoses matter and microdoses meaning for our nervous system. So microdoses of nurt, meaning for our nervous system. So micro doses of nurturance for our nervous system. And it can be done in as little as 10 seconds and as many as 30 minutes, but usually on average it's 30 seconds. So maybe I can just quickly outline it and then we'll do one together. So the whole idea is that we need to feel safe in our nervous system for it to be regulated. We have to feel safe and we have to be safe and we can accomplish that. Even if the external circumstances suggest we're not, we can partner with our body's wisdom and help it. All right. So the steps there's four steps to the micro doses matters practice. The first one is to be in a safe space. All right.
Speaker 2:So right now I am, I can see that you are. But if you're at work and you're really, you know I mean it's a dumpster, fire, the restroom counts, an empty patient room, an empty office, the stairwell, the garage, any place that you can just dip into for 30 seconds. Now your overworked nervous system is going to tell you you don't have 30 seconds. I don't have 30 seconds. Do it anyway, go find 30. You do have 30 seconds unless you are actively giving compressions during a code. You have 30 seconds because I've even done this. Walking to a coat right takes you that long to walk. So you know, insulate up my nervous system. So the first thing is whatever a safe space, and if there simply isn't one, then put a bubble of protection around you and put just an energetic bubble, so in your mind, yep, pop it in. Okay, so safe, safe. The next thing is to ground and center. Now I almost always have a grounding stone, as I have um here. But if you don't put your feet on the floor, because you always have your feet with you and just feel the connection between your feet and the and the floor below you, oftentimes I will, I will just notice the texture of this grounding stone. I will let Mother Gaia, mother Earth, ground and nurture me, because she's holding me all the time, whether I'm aware of it or not. So we start with a safe space. We're now grounding and centering.
Speaker 2:Now the third step is the most important, which is signaling safety to our nervous system, and the best, fastest way to do that is to do a round of four by four breathing. So let's inhale two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Exhale two, three, four. Relax, two, three, four. Another thing if breathing isn't your thing because it's not for everybody, then look around the room and notice and name five things. Okay, so I'm noticing the pink flowers behind me. I'm noticing that I have a book. I'm noticing that I have a black shirt on. I'm noticing that I have a necklace. I'm noticing that I have a grounding stone.
Speaker 2:And that's another way, because when we're running from a saber-toothed tiger, we don't notice a name, right? So it's another way for us to signal safety. And then the last step is putting both of your hands over your heart, which of itself is so therapeutic. Notice what happens. You are now self-grounding, and then take a moment, soften or close your eyes and remember and connect with your why? For what matters most, the love that you are and the love, the divine love, that is here for you every waking moment of every waking day. And all we need to do is this to receive Just tune in. All right, so now let's do one of these.
Speaker 2:Let's say we're at a really busy day at work and it's a dumpster fire and my patients or my colleagues are on my last frayed nerve. I've got 2 000 things to do and I've got 10 minutes to get them done, and I'm freaking out a little bit and I'm like, oh my god, I can't, I can't get to, and we're kind of in that anxious kind of state. All right, so let's do it in 30 seconds or less, okay? First, safe place. I'm walking to a safe place. I'm going into the restroom. I'm going to an empty room. I'm putting a bubble around me. If there isn't one, okay, I'm in my safe place. I'm noticing that I'm either reaching in my pocket and pulling out a grounding stone, I'm feeling my feet on the floor, I'm connecting to mother earth, our beautiful mother gaia. She is holding me and grounding me and I'm releasing all that stress at the bottom of my feet and bringing up all this nourishment while I take a round of four by four, breathing, inhale two, three, four. Hold four. Exhale two, three, four. Relax, two, three, four, hands on healer's heart, feeling the love that I am, the love that we are, the unconditional love that is here for me Every waking moment, connecting to my why, what matters most?
Speaker 2:And then you usually find you have more than 30 seconds, so take, take the full minute, and so my recommendation is to do this at least once an hour. You can do it while you're walking down the hall. A lot of times I'll use that's why I use this necklace as my grounding stone. Or sometimes I just have a post earring which I'm allowed to wear at work and I might just touch my earring. You know, there's so many ways to get creative about doing this, and I have a hundred practices like this in my book, but that's one that we can all take with us and no matter where you are, no matter how horrific or challenging the circumstances, microdose some nurturance to your nervous system so it can stabilize. It will then help your mitochondria relax so they can produce more energy. It will get you out of flight or fight or it will elevate you out of that freeze response so you can approach nervous system regulation. And don't you even feel better after doing that? For just 30 seconds, I felt better immediately.
Speaker 1:Honestly, when we did the first time immediately, I loved it. I appreciate that. That's so helpful and so useful. So, and I feel like we're just scratching the surface of what you have to share, dr Laurie, honestly. So this is well you know what?
Speaker 2:I will come back whenever your community is ready for another dose of Dr Laurie. I will be here for y'all because I just I'm feeling you and I'm just, I'm just so grateful for each and every one and all that you are and do, because I see you in your divine light and your radiance. So keep leaning in, keep healing and keep being you in your most authentic expression.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so beautiful. Thank you so much, and I really I we're going to definitely have to have you back to learn all the wonderful things that are in your head, because I can tell you are just a wealth of knowledge. So thank you so much for being here, thank you.
