How Your Nervous System Uses the Senses to Regulate Stress and Burnout

What if your body already knows how to regulate stress — and you’ve just been trained to ignore it?

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In this episode of the Weekly Recharge audio series, Renae shares a personal story from a recent Brainspotting training in Pasadena and the unexpected nervous system lesson that followed: how scent, sensory input, and the body’s instinctive cravings may reveal more about emotional regulation than most people realize.

We explore:

• Why smell has a direct connection to the limbic system
• The surprising overlap between Brainspotting and sensory regulation
• How burnout and stress disconnect people from their body’s signals
• Why nervous system healing isn’t always cognitive
• A simple sensory anchor practice you can try this week

Renae also reflects on identity loss, nervous system survival mode, and her conversation with Aaron Tisdale Parker about rebuilding yourself after career disruption and major life change.

If you’re a high achiever, first responder, caregiver, or someone constantly operating in overdrive, this episode will help you reconnect with the signals your body has been trying to send all along.

Subscribe to Hustle Rebels for conversations around burnout recovery, nervous system regulation, identity, leadership, and sustainable performance without glorifying exhaustion.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the audio version of the weekly recharge. If you stumbled over here from the Hustle Rebels podcast, welcome. Feel free to subscribe to the weekly recharge newsletter, and uh you can join the family along with us. Otherwise, we'll just hop right in. Utilize your senses to recharge because your body already knows the way back. You just have to let it lead. So, some of the things that we're going to cover this week are the one sense that goes directly to the limbic system and why this matters, why brain spotting and jasmine have more in common than you'd think, what your body might be trying to tell you when it craves something specific, this week's practice, which is the sensory anchor check-in, on Hustle Rebels Podcast, Aaron Tizale Parker on rebuilding identity after a career transition, and something I'm sitting with behind the scenes, so stay close. So we made it to May. And honestly, can we just sit with that for a second? There is just something about the first week of May that feels like a quiet exhale. The light shifts, the air changes, something loosens if you let it, especially here in Massachusetts. I don't know if it's the season or the symbolism, but every year, May feels like a reset. And after the weekend that I just had, I was very ready for one. So this past weekend, I was in Pasadena for a brain spotting training. Without getting into all of it, it was a lot. It was the kind of weekend where you go in expecting to learn and end up being reminded full body just how much the nervous system holds. I came home with a lot to process. Right before I went to the airport, somewhere between still feeling all of it and needing to function like a human being, I found myself doing something almost instinctively. I wasn't thinking about tools or techniques. I just reached for my senses. Water nearby, the smell of jasmine in the air. That was it. Nothing more complicated than that. And it worked. Not in a fix everything kind of way, but in a come back to my body kind of way, which is sometimes all that you need. Here's something I find genuinely fascinating, and a little weird when you think about it. Of all the five senses, smell is the only one with a direct line to the limbic system, the part of the brain that governs emotion, memory, and survival. Every other sense roots through the thalamus first. So it gets processed, then lands in emotion. But smell skips that line entirely. It arrives in the body before the mind has even had a chance to analyze it. Now here's where it gets interesting because the entire purpose of brain spotting is to access that same limbic system. The whole point of this modality is to bypass the analytical, the talking mind, and to reach the deeper brain where trauma and emotion are actually stored. So that processing can be more effective, more efficient, and longer lasting. That's the goal. That's the whole thing. So it's not lost on me that while I was sitting in a room full of people doing these brain spotting practicals, all of us trying to reach the limbic system through the eyes, that my body was quietly starting to crave the jasmine that was outside. The one sense that goes directly there, no detour, no processing required. My nervous system knew exactly what it needed, even when I didn't. The body is always communicating. That's the part that we keep forgetting. So this week's practice is the sensory anchor check-in. I want you to find a quiet moment this week, even five minutes, and run through the next few steps. One, what scent are you drawn to right now? Don't overthink it. Just what comes up. Two, pair it with something sensory, water, a texture, a sound. Let the combination do its thing. Three, sit with it just for a few minutes and just notice. Don't analyze anything, just notice it. And four, if you're curious, look it up. See if the symbolism or properties connect to something that you're moving through. You don't have to think your way back to yourself. Sometimes you just have to breathe. If you do end up being curious, look up whatever scent, sound, or sensation you find yourself drawn to this week. Whether it's the properties of a plant or the symbolism of an element, or just what that thing has always meant to you, you might be surprised by what you find, and whether it has any significance to what you're actually moving through right now. The body doesn't reach for things randomly. And this week on the Hustle Rebels podcast, my guest Aaron Tisdell Parker has lived through everything that we talk about in this space, and then some. From building a role in the public sector that was literally designed for his skill set to having it stripped away when the administration changed. Aaron gets real about what survival mode actually feels like, what it costs your nervous system and how you find yourself again on the other side of a loss that you just didn't see coming. So this one is for anyone who has ever tied their worth to a title and had to figure out who they were without it. So go ahead and you can click that link that's in the newsletter to be able to see that episode with Aaron Hisdale Parker. It's a really good one. And if you're new here or feeling nostalgic, you can always read the previous newsletters as well. And before I close this one out, I want to stop and actually thank you genuinely from the bottom of my heart, from whatever was left after this weekend. Thank you for being here, for reading, for replying when something lands, for trusting this little space with your time. Building wayward wellness coaching requires believing someone is on the other side and you are. So that means more than just a newsletter format can really hold. May feels like the right time to say it. It's a new month, it's a fresh start, new flowers blooming in the air. And one more thing. I've been sitting with something new behind the scenes, and this weekend kind of reveals that. A new direction, a new modality, so to speak. Something that's been quietly taking shape that I'm really excited for you guys. I'm not ready to talk about it just yet, but I want you to stay close. So, as always, I appreciate you guys, and I'm always here if you have any questions or just want to chat. So share the weekly recharge with friends so they can stay regulated just like you. See you guys next week.