Transcript: Beverly Atkins on the Overcoming Distractions Podcast

Host: Dave Greenwood Guest: Beverly Atkins, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and founder of Pauseture Show: Overcoming Distractions (overcomingdistractions.com)

Why the Nervous System Matters for ADHD

Dave Greenwood: All right, we're back. This is Overcoming Distractions. If you're a busy professional, an entrepreneur, a business owner, anywhere in between, and you feel like you need a little extra support, you're in the right place.

Today we're going to talk about ADHD through the lens of the nervous system and its regulation. We're not just going to talk about to-do lists and productivity, which are super important. Getting stuff done matters, but not feeling like you're going to be eaten by a bear every day is probably more important. I've been there, and some days I still feel like that, so you are not alone.

I know we've talked about this before, but I think it's often left out of the conversation for busy professionals with ADHD. We can talk about lists and calendar blocking, but if we're constantly on edge, it's difficult to play to our strengths. You know I'm a big fan of hitting the pause button, whether it's 10 minutes before you jump into your work or in a more regulated way, like we're going to talk about today.

We have Beverly Atkins, the founder of Pauseture. It's "Pause-ture," literally a pause. It's a play on words, and there's a reason for it that you're going to hear about. It's a mobile app with guided somatic audio lessons that help you move with more ease. Beverly, give us a brief overview of the app, what it does, and the benefits. Then I want to dig into the nervous system and how what you've developed can help people with ADHD who are running a business or in a busy executive position.

Beverly Atkins: Dave, thanks for having me on. After listening to your episodes, I feel you've really laid the groundwork for this conversation. You talk a lot about pausing, about awareness in how we do things, about how important novelty is for our brains, and about pattern interruption. Those are all principles of what I want to talk about today, which is the Feldenkrais Method specifically.

Pauseture is a mobile app with Awareness Through Movement lessons from the Feldenkrais Method. They're verbally guided movement lessons that guide you to move slowly and gently, so that you move with greater ease.

Why Meditation and Breathwork Made Her Anxious

Dave: I like that it's guided. I think a lot of us with ADHD say, "We don't meditate. We can't do that." But over the years I've grabbed a five-minute guided meditation on Spotify, and it centers you. If you're just listening to nice music, your mind can go anywhere.

Beverly: Exactly. I didn't know I had ADHD at the time, but any time I tried meditation, it made me anxious. Same with breathwork. I didn't understand why, but if I ever focused on my breath, I literally felt like I was being attacked by a bear. Those modalities weren't able to calm my nervous system, and I had no tools for calming it.

These lessons are audio guided, so I had to listen very intently. Otherwise I didn't know where I was moving or what was happening. Because I was so focused on the verbal directions for how to move my body, I had to tune out my to-do list and whatever I was ruminating on or upset about. Everything left the room except me listening to the cues. It gave me a real break and calmed my nervous system, and I didn't understand what was happening. I began doing the lessons because I had back pain.

Dave: I think you mentioned that in an email. But did you realize at that point that this could help your ADHD?

Beverly: I didn't know I had ADHD at the time.

Dave: Oh, okay.

Fire Drills, Masking, and a Back Out of Alignment

Beverly: Let me back up. I thought I had character flaws. I thought I had a bad personality. I knew I didn't quite fit in anywhere, and I was quirky. I never masked. I was always just, "This is who I am. I'm brilliant in all these ways, and you'll all love me at work for my insights on patterns, and my chipper attitude."

But if you can't calm down and regulate, it catches up with you. I loved a fire drill. I loved urgency, and I thrived in my career. I worked in corporate, in an industry that wanted that urgency. When something wasn't urgent, I created chaos and urgency, because that was where my nervous system lived and I didn't know how to down-regulate.

Then I was called out on my behavior. Being reactive in the workplace was not okay. I needed to show up more collaboratively, to be less about the fire drill and more strategic. So for the first time in my life, in my late 40s, I began to mask. The tension of masking and the conflicts I was having, along with my posture, I believe led to me putting my back out. You can only mask so long before you can't function.

I began doing these lessons purely for the back pain. I did not want it to come back. Within a few weeks, for the first time in my life, I was sleeping better after being a lifelong insomniac. I noticed my focus improving. I was showing up in conversations and interrupting less. Other people pointed it out to me before I even noticed. People said, "Wow, you seem more curious. You're listening better."

I literally thought it was magic. I didn't know what was happening to me, but I decided I was going to do these lessons before work. Instead of reading an email as a threat, I started reading it as information about a problem I could collaborate on and help solve. Over time I felt profound changes. And again, I had thought I had character flaws and personality issues. When I was called out on my behavior, I had a lot of shame about it. But what I learned is that they were simply patterns, and thanks to neuroplasticity, patterns can change.

Dave: So it's almost a happy accident that you're here today. You found something that was a game changer for your nervous system and your mind and body.

Why the Nervous System Needs to Be Regulated

Dave: We're hearing the term "nervous system regulation" more and more, but I don't think people fully understand what it means. Why does the nervous system need to be regulated?

Beverly: Because there's not always a fire drill. When we create more chaos and stay "on" all the time, it leads to burnout, as you know. You wrote a book about burnout. It leads to physical pain. Your body will speak up and say, "I need a break." You can't function in overdrive forever.

I actually found my regulation initially in my 30s. I started running, and running led to triathlon, and I became hyper-focused on pretty extreme exercise. That regulated me. When I went to work, I was easier to get along with because I was fatigued from all the physical fitness. But when you have movement patterns that aren't good for you, eventually that catches up, and what happened to me was putting my back out, which forced the pause.

Pain Is Real, and It Is a Distraction

Dave: I had Dr. David Clark on a few months ago. He's done decades of work and research on how trauma circulates around the body. I said then, and I'll say here, that it's not in your head. The back pain, the headache, the GI issues, they are actually happening. It's just that your brain, because of the trauma or nervous system overload, is sending those signals. Correct?

Beverly: Completely. I love that you brought up how what's happening in the brain can manifest in the body.

When we talk about ADHD, we typically talk about attention and impulsivity. What often gets left out is that many of us, and we're all different, show it in our posture too. I had a very forward head carriage, which is common with ADHD. I had a postural sway, and I had difficulty my whole life walking down stairs. I had no idea that was associated with ADHD. The way our eyes move can be different from neurotypical people. Our emotional regulation is limited, and so is our ability to see the perspectives of other people.

Dave: I used this example on the episode with Dr. Clark. For years I had a cycle. I'd get a headache, then I'd grind my teeth, then my shoulder would go out, then my back would go out, then I'd pull my neck out. It was like my body was saying, "Dave, you're not listening to the headache, so we're going to throw your shoulder out. Okay, now your jaw's going to hurt." He said that's a classic example of the brain sending those signals.

My point is that we think of distractions as an hour on YouTube or too much noise in the office. But if my back hurts, or I have a headache, or I'm hungry, that's a major distraction too. Those things keep us from operating at full capacity.

Beverly: Exactly. People with ADHD, because of our postural differences, can end up with that pain. And it's really difficult to focus, think, and connect with others, which is most important, when you have physical pain.

Dave: My shoulder hurts, so I'm not at 100%. I can't focus on this meeting or the report I need to write for my boss, because all my attention is going to the thing that's hurting. So it's probably smart for the busy professional with ADHD to find some form of regulation before they try to be productive.

Beverly: The best investment anybody can make, especially people with ADHD, is finding the tool that works for you for nervous system regulation, because that nervous system is making every decision in your life. It shows up in conversations with clients and with family members. There are many gateways into regulation: traditional meditation, yoga, breathwork. Why I think this method is the gold standard is that it goes beyond nervous system regulation. The lessons were designed to change your brain, which is why I had so many changes.

Shame, Posture, and Moving With Ease

Beverly: What's different about the Feldenkrais Method, the lessons that live in Pauseture, is that we're not only regulating your nervous system. A lot of Feldenkrais lessons aren't nervous system regulating at all. They're very active. When I created Pauseture, my focus was on nervous system regulation, because your nervous system needs to feel safe.

As you've said on your other podcast, it does show up in the body. The tension from being reprimanded for what we thought was a personality issue, or for behavior attached to ADHD, shows up as shame. It shows up as a sunken chest and a forward head carriage, because we're living in shame. Over time, that posture can lead to physical pain.

What's fascinating is that when you reorganize your movement patterns, it changes how you feel. You think more clearly. You have a superhighway of nerves running through your spine, and when you have a more upright posture, you get more clarity. When you have what we'd call poor posture, you're fighting gravity with every step.

Once you find that freedom and move with greater ease, it's not a cognitive effort anymore. On stairs, I used to think I was going to fall every time. I couldn't think about greeting the person I was passing on the stairs. I wasn't connecting with others, because I was literally fighting gravity.

Reframing "Trauma Is Stored in the Body"

Dave: Trauma is stored in the body. We think, "I'm stressed out, my head's not in the game," but trauma is stored in the body.

Beverly: I would reframe that. While I was still working at Facebook, I became a Feldenkrais practitioner, and I had a private practice before I launched Pauseture. Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote The Body Keeps the Score, recommended Feldenkrais as a way to release trauma. What I saw with my clients who believed trauma was held in the body is that they held onto it longer.

Dave: Did they really?

Beverly: When we were able to reframe it, things changed. I think the work Gabor Maté and Bessel van der Kolk are doing to bring awareness to this is amazing. But what I see missing in much of the literature, and I think it's also because people don't go into the literature, is that they see the headline, "I have trauma in my body," and they believe it's a fixed asset.

The way we think about it in this method is that the bracing, the holding, and the protection mode you go into when you're feeling shame, or when you don't feel safe, show up as shortened breath, and shortened breath causes tension in the body. When you change your movement patterns, you can release that tension, and then the breath deepens.

I mentioned that breathwork sent me into anxiety. Once I explored this method of opening up my ribs with my breath, it was a sneaky way of getting breath in. I was sending breath to open up my ribs, and once I was able to find that deeper breath, the chronic tension I had all the way through my body slowly released over time.

What the First Lessons Feel Like

Dave: When somebody starts this modality, what should they expect? Is it simple techniques first, and then you work up to something more vigorous? That's the wrong word, but I think you know where I'm going. What does it feel like when you first dip your toe in?

Beverly: It's so counter to what we think it'll be. We think it'll be easy and gentle and then you go to the bigger, tougher lessons. It's actually the opposite. My way in was the bigger, tougher lessons, because I needed that physical strain and movement. The breathwork-style lessons, the super subtle ones we did in my training program, agitated me. I didn't have the nervous system to do anything calm.

So I effectively built Pauseture for brains like ours that need movement. We do not start with super small and subtle. The app has a 21-lesson intro series, and the lessons range from five to eighteen minutes. The first five-minute lesson is lying on the floor, giving your weight to gravity. We all hold so much unnecessary tension, so a cue I like to give is to imagine you're hot candle wax, letting your tissue melt into the floor so you can start to release that tension.

In the first lesson, you put your hand on your forehead and you roll your head. That's it. That's the whole lesson. You can do that without downloading the app and without signing up for the free trial. Just try it and see if it shifts your state.

A lot of people are talking about vagus nerve stimulation now, and people are buying products to stimulate the vagus nerve and shift into rest and digest. I say lie on the floor, give your weight to gravity, roll your head with or without your hand, and see if that activated your vagus nerve and shifted you, without having to buy a product for it.

Dave: There's a guy I stumbled on on Instagram. He's a massage therapist who has gotten into movement to release tension and regulate the nervous system. He shows simple things like the one you just described, and the caption is something like, "Our old Asian grandmothers knew this long before we did." It's a simple 60- or 90-second movement. A lot of these things probably existed for a long time, and somebody like yourself needed to bring them to the forefront.

The Body Has Healing Abilities of Its Own

Beverly: Somewhere along the line, we came to believe that healing and fixing ourselves belongs with somebody else. But we have many years of evolution behind our ability to heal. If you cut your finger, it will probably heal by tomorrow. It's the same with our breath and our posture. If we slow down, pause, and listen to what our body is telling us, that's what these lessons do. They give you the opportunity to listen.

You mentioned your headaches and shoulder pain. I've been listening to a lot of physical therapy podcasts, and I'm hearing physical therapists say that their training segmented the body into parts. In my private practice, I worked with a woman who had hand pain. She had an occupational therapist working only on her hand, but I could see her patterns, and the hand pain was coming from deeper in her torso. Often where you feel pain is not the source of the problem. A lot of tension in the jaw, neck, and shoulders can be addressed by finding greater freedom of movement in your pelvis.

That's what the Feldenkrais lessons do, and I designed Pauseture to guide you through movements that help reorganize your nervous system for better movement support. Better movement support frees up your ability to think. Neuroscience today backs up that curiosity and attention to how you feel, along with the novelty of the movements, is what fires up neuroplasticity and primes the brain for change. Those are the changes I never set out to make. And with consistent practice, deeper changes continued to happen.

When to Practice

Dave: Is there a better time of day to regulate your nervous system, or is it something we work on throughout the day?

Beverly: Great question. Find what works for you and is consistent, because consistency matters. After my four-year training, my Feldenkrais trainer, who has been doing this for more than 50 years, said, "You are the most changed person I have ever trained." And it wasn't my training. I was working full time at Facebook, getting on Zoom calls during my breaks and lunch hours, and I was highly distracted during my training. But I had a daily, consistent practice that many students didn't have, and I believe the consistency is where the deeper changes happen.

So find out what habit you're going to replace, because we can't start a new habit without replacing something. For me, when I was working full time, it was mandatory that I did a lesson first thing in the morning before work, because otherwise every email was a bear. I remember walking through those doors with a different posture and a different attitude, and I could make it through an over-stimulating day because that's how I showed up. It's still first thing in the morning for me.

When I notice insomnia creeping up, I do a lesson right before bed, and my sleep tracker shows that it helps my sleep. Neuroscience supports doing it before bed for brain rewiring and locking in movement patterns. Moshe Feldenkrais, who developed the method, also said to do the lessons before bed, because the neuroplastic changes get locked in during sleep.

Dave: I can see that. Once you get into the office and it's chaos, and we're creating chaos on top of chaos, that ship has sailed. There's no time to regulate.

Regulation, Not Hacks

Beverly: People ask me for concrete examples of how this changes you, and why I don't look for a hack. I work for myself now, and believe me, I still create bears in my day. But here's an example. A couple of weeks ago I went for a run, and I was running through a crosswalk when a car turned and almost hit me. The old me would have given them some choice words, maybe a finger, and my run would have been ruined. I would have been angry for the rest of it. The fawning me would have said, "No, it's okay, it's okay that you almost hit me," and then I'd have carried tension because deep down I was mad. Now I can almost get hit, look at the driver, and continue my run, and nothing changes in my run.

So when people look for regulation hacks, for what to do when something urgent happens or somebody yells at you or a client has a conflict with you, you can't think, "What was the hack? Pulling my ear? Rubbing my forehead?" Showing up in that conversation regulated means you can pause, take a breath, and know that you have choices. We don't do hacks here. I'm just not a believer in them.

Dave: I'm in the camp of trying to smooth out our personal and professional lives. Hacks don't last. They're not sustainable. I'm not a big fan of the term either. Though we do love a deadline. At 1:00 in the morning, with a term paper due, urgency is probably a hack.

Beverly: We do love a deadline, not going to lie. The closest thing I have to a hack is this: without a consistent practice, I don't think I could tap into it, but if I feel myself in a heightened conversation and I'm sitting, I'll ask myself, "How is my bum connecting with the chair? How are my feet touching the floor?" I may push a little into my left foot, and it gives me a bit of grounding. That's finding myself supported by gravity.

Dave: The closest I get is throwing cold water on my face between meetings. It shocks you and wakes you up. And something I stumbled on: I had a frozen shoulder, and between meetings I did my physical therapy exercises with the bands. When I sat back down at my desk, I felt pretty good. Two, three, four minutes of quick bursts of energy between meetings. Is that a hack? Maybe it's an energy booster, a shot of dopamine. I don't know, but it worked and it woke my ass up.

Beverly: Movement in any form is great for the nervous system.

Dave: Then it's not a hack. It's a strategy, a constant strategy.

What Every Busy Person With ADHD Should Know About Their Brain

Dave: As we wrap up, what's one thing you wish every busy person, business owner, or entrepreneur with ADHD understood about their brain?

Beverly: That it can change. It's not fixed. In the 1940s, Moshe Feldenkrais said he wasn't after flexible bodies, he was after flexible brains. The word "neuroplasticity" wasn't validated in the neuroscience community until the 1990s. That matters for stroke victims and recovery from brain injuries, but I believe it matters for all of us. I had such profound change in my life that I know my brain changed.

Did I cure my ADHD? Absolutely not. I'm still distractible. I still love a fire drill. But the edges have been softened. The biggest change for me is that I was always going, going, going, and I didn't regulate with other people very well, because I wanted them to go as much as I went. Most people would say, "This is not normal. We need to rest," and I'd say, "No, we don't. We need to get this done." After I found regulation for myself, I was able to regulate with others better. I softened the edges. I didn't change who I am. I still have ADHD, but I fit into the world in more positive ways than I did through the struggles of so many decades.

Dave: That's a great way of putting it.

Where to Learn More

Dave: What's the website where people can get more acquainted with this?

Beverly: Pauseture.com. I have more information about the method there, and a couple of blog posts on ADHD and how I believe this helped.

Interestingly, the Feldenkrais Method doesn't like diagnosis. When I spoke at the Feldenkrais conference, I wasn't allowed to call it ADHD. I had to call it a "busy brain." The method believes people often blame a diagnosis for their patterns, so it simply recognizes the patterns, and we know that patterns can change. For example, I interrupted all the time. That was a pattern, and it's one I've been able to change.

Dave: Very good. Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for what you've built. We'll have the link to the website in the show notes, as we podcasters say. Come back anytime. This is a healthy conversation, and we need to bring more awareness to how we can regulate the nervous system, whatever way we do it. Thank you.

Beverly: Absolutely. Thank you.