Patterns, not tips.
Essays on sleep, breath and the nervous system: what the body is reporting when nights stop working, and what restores stability.
Alcohol and HRV: What an evening of wine did to my sleep
Most evenings I don't drink. Some evenings I do — a birthday, a dinner with friends, a long table where sharing an organic bottle from one of the local wineries with people I love is part of the pleasure. Recently I compared two nights on my WHOOP — one after an...
People Pleasing Exhaustion: Why Your System Never Comes Off Duty
There is a kind of tiredness that sleep does not touch. You go to bed early. You do everything you are supposed to do. You wake at 3am anyway, or you sleep eight hours and wake feeling as though you have been at work the whole night. If that is familiar, it is worth...
Low-Grade Anxiety and Sleep: The Worry Keeping You Awake
There is a particular kind of worry that does not arrive in a crisis. It does not spike, it does not announce itself, and it does not resolve. It simply exists, a background hum in the system that you have been carrying for so long you have stopped calling it worry....
Why the Practice of Silence Calms the Nervous System
Most people don't run out of things to say. They run out of the energy it takes to keep responding, reading the room, softening what they say, reassuring someone before they've even asked, staying alert to what the moment needs from them. By the end of an ordinary...
Why Your Sleep Won’t Improve Until Your Lifestyle Does
Most people who come to me have already tried a lot of things, the don't realise always the lifestyle and sleep quality are intimately connected. A different pillow. Magnesium. A sleep app. Cutting caffeine after noon. Some of it helped a little. But the sleep never...
How Your Environment Affects Your Nervous System — and Your Sleep
You can walk into a room and feel your shoulders drop. You can walk into another and feel something in you brace. Neither response is imagination, and neither is a personality quirk. Your nervous system reads your surroundings continuously, light, order, texture,...
Why breathing exercises don’t work
When you think to yourself 'why breathing exercises don't work' You cannot see the pattern you're standing in! There's an experiment I keep returning to in my own practice. Put your attention on your breath and do nothing else — don't deepen it, don't slow it, just...
Why Supplements Alone Can’t Regulate Your Nervous System
Nervous system regulation for sleep I was out with a group of women last week and we talked about nervous system regulation for sleep. The conversation often turns to sleep, as it tends to when I'm around, and within a few minutes, everyone was comparing supplements....
How to Breathe Deeply: The Barrier Isn’t Technique
How to Breathe Deeply: The Barrier Isn't Technique Most people who come to me about breath have already tried. They don't know how to breathe deeply. They've followed techniques, counted their inhales, extended their exhales, researched methods. And yet when I watch...
Why Some People Have More Energy Than Others
Some People Have More Energy Than Others - Why the Gap Is Probably Wider Than You Think Why do some people have more energy than others? There's a particular kind of tiredness that comes not just from being depleted, but from watching other people who aren't. The...
How Poor Sleep Affects Your Daily Life, And Why It Belongs at the Top of Your Priority List
How Poor Sleep Affects Your Daily Life There is a lot of information about what sleep does.But how poor sleep affects your daily life? Studies on cortisol, cognition, immunity, inflammation, metabolic function, most of it is accurate, and the picture it paints is...
Nervous System Dysregulation and Sleep: When Life Gets Hard
Nervous System Dysregulation and Sleep: Why Life Challenges Keep You Awake, And What Your System Actually Needs Nervous system dysregulation and sleep. When something happens that threatens your security your livelihood, your health, a relationship, anything that...