Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited to introduce a little series that I'm doing just with interviews of people that I really enjoy talking to, who I think have a great message and are just like interesting perspectives, philosophies, stories, tools, all of it. I think it's so useful.
So I'm going to kick this series off with my interview with Heidi. We talk a lot about nervous system regulation, tools, rituals, processes, especially with everything going on in the world. I think this is a really relevant and useful conversation. So I'm excited to introduce you to Heidi. Without further ado, here we go with my interview.
Amber: Okay. Hi, Heidi. Welcome to the podcast.
Heidi: Hi, Amber. So excited to be here.
Amber: So excited to have you. I would love to hear in your own words just who you are, what you're up to, what you do in the world, just to introduce you to my audience.
Heidi: Awesome. Yeah, I am a holistic business coach and I'm multi-passionate. So I do a lot of things. I'm a yoga teacher and I've been a health counselor, director of operations, ecstatic dance DJ.
Amber: Oh my goodness.
Heidi: I love healing modalities. I love learning and I love energetics. So there are threads that tie it all together. And that's really in my work with clients is what I do is like find the threads that tie it all together. Some people, they're more interested in like strategy and the tactical stuff, reaching goals and creating their vision.
Some people are really more on the like healing and nervous system side. And you know, some people kind of want it also. I really like to support sensitive solopreneurs who are scaling. They've been in business for a while. This is me. You know, I support myself and my clients and my journey as a lifelong entrepreneur. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.
Amber: What did you do before coaching? You said lifelong entrepreneur.
Heidi: Yeah, I had a web development and marketing and kind of like tech agency that pretty much all of my businesses have been accidental. And it just kind of started happening to me when I took a web design class in like 2002. I started getting work. And so over the years I had a pretty nomadic lifestyle. It was perfect, right? Because I could work anywhere. And I love all the learning along with it. And I just kind of like followed the different trails that it led to with for a while had a family partnership.
And then I had partnership with a I.T. company and like had a big team and then I narrowed it down and like went through all of this. And really, it was such a learning opportunity because I burned out really hard. And in my recovery from that opened the doors to a lot of the more like healing and that totally like feminine side of being a human and being in business. And that so now today, I kind of figure out continually figuring out how to weave these two together.
Amber: Yeah, I love it. So what would you say, like if someone asked you, like, what do you do with clients for the nervous system? Because I know that that's going to be a big theme that we're going to talk about today. Like when clients come to you, but they're like, I'm so dysregulated or like, I'm sure something along those lines. Like, where do you start your work?
Heidi: You know, for me, I feel like this work is the foundation of any decisions or any strategy. And it's really in just like simple day to day things where, first of all, building awareness, like you're starting your workday, you pause and check in with yourself and see where you're at and start to incorporate tools like it might just be breathing, it might be making some shift in your environment to then in that moment, kind of self-regulate and then building and other practices for self-regulation.
Because looking back at the way that I've ran my business or decisions that I made, my nervous system was like how stressed I was or in a hyper-vigilant mode where I'm really just seeing problems and trying to get away from problems as quickly as I can, led to decisions that just created more of that.
Amber: Give like an example. I bet this will really resonate with people.
Heidi: Well, I think building a team like it's really fueled by that because I was trying to get away from all of the stress of handling most of it myself in web development. You're dealing with people's websites and with their domains and their emails. And like if there's ever anything wrong with those two, people freak out. And I'm a sensitive person. So I'm just like, oh gosh, like it would run me into I got to fix this right now mode.
So my solution, you know, in the long term became finding other people to pass that work on to. Even though I didn't necessarily want that role for myself to be a team manager or to necessarily like build a team consciously from an idea of what my vision was for my business, if that makes sense. I was just reacting and reacting.
Amber: Yeah.
Heidi: And so then I created pressure in new ways on myself that still wasn't aligned with a bigger vision. And in the end, I just kind of like sold off a lot of it. But I feel like I let it dissipate into the ether vitally because it wasn't aligned for me in the big picture.
Amber: Yeah. How did you start? I'm sure there's like little red flags that started to happen where you're like, oh, this isn't what I want. This isn't an alignment for me.
Heidi: Yeah. Oh, that's such a good question because the red flags were definitely not in my awareness. They were in my body.
Amber: Yeah.
Heidi: And looking back, I see them that I was anxious. I was very reactive. If I had an email with any kind of problem, I would go into an anxious response. And part of that was, you know, fear of being judged of all of the fears that come up. And over time, I started to have less energy, less ability to focus. I noticed I had less friends. I had less fun in my life.
I often say that I used to take a day off and it was so hard and I would be like crying in the car coming back. And those for me, those were signs that something was wrong. But I didn't mentally like know what it was.
Amber: Yeah. Yeah. You probably just kept carrying on. You probably tried to push through and keep doing what you were doing. For a long time. Yeah.
Heidi: I'll say that about me. I'll give it a shot for maybe a little too long.
Amber: So then when did you start finding information about the nervous system and even the word alignment?
Heidi: Yeah. It was yoga teacher training that I sometimes in my life, I'm a splenic authority in design, which I have just a real quick sense of like, oh, this is something right. And then I would go do it when I was young. I had a lot of ability to do that. And I did a lot of traveling, living internationally. And so I was used to this idea of like okay, if I thought of a yoga teacher training and I felt like, yes, I just go do it, even though I didn't know why.
And so once I got into that, that just completely shifted my perspective of how I could feel because I would have the Friday afternoon classes. It was four hours long. I would text my team like okay, I'm going offline. You're on your own. It was the biggest thing ever. And then I would go into that yoga space and it was just like, oh, my gosh, this feels so good.
And even though I didn't want to become a teacher, there was a lot of learning and work involved, too. But just being in that different space and paying attention to how my body felt and we would do legs up the wall, which is a classic restorative pose that I love now. At the beginning of every session, I could like start to get that.
This is what I do with my clients, too, is like that down regulation at the beginning of something like a chunk of time where you're dedicated to showing up with presence. So, yeah, that opened the door and then I just kind of got addicted to it.
Amber: Yeah, it probably was such like it sounds like it was like relief almost.
Heidi: Yeah. Yeah.
Amber: Yeah. Because I was talking to someone about the nervous system just yesterday. She's like, I've been thinking about studying it or getting into it. I'm like, yeah, because she's like super high achieving, very similar to I think a lot of people listening to this podcast where it's like you've learned how to achieve and get stuff done and then you don't know how to slow down and access like a completely different way of being.
Heidi: Yeah. And I was a super high achiever in school. I was always like the top of the class and valedictorian. And that is how I got my validation. Right. And so stopping that. And in entrepreneurship, it's hard to get validation.
Amber: Yes.
Heidi: And so I think in my first business, I was really seeking that. And so over-efforting and then the thought of like creating space where I'm not receiving that is also very scary. So, you know, I think it took a long time for me to settle into that work as feeling like calm, like there was a sense of relief initially. But my relationship to the work now is like it's not just pause in the busyness, right? It's actually where I want to be and where I get a resource to then expand into the work in a much more focused and intentional way.
Amber: Yeah. So it sounds like more integrated. I'm going to go take a break and regulate. It's like how do we approach our whole business for a regulated state?
Heidi: Yeah. So how do you do that work with clients? So it's all about meeting them where they're at because people's level of understanding in their bodies is different and what they have going on is different. So, you know, some people might tend to like my pattern. Well, I have both, but my pattern can be really to like hide and shut down sometimes. You know, then there's the people who are like overwork. They try to just work through. So identifying their patterns so they can start to build awareness.
Amber: Yeah. Maybe tell me about those two patterns just for like the person listening who's like, oh, I kind of have both. Like how do you start to identify patterns that aren't serving you anymore as far as like your nervous system goes?
Heidi: Yeah. I like to start in the beginning of a conversation of doing a check-in and like, okay, well, how are you feeling? What's coming up? Like what's happening with your work? And then we do a meditation where we drop into the body and start to feel what that's creating for them. So are they noticing more fidgetiness in their body, in their thoughts?
Do they have a hard time kind of coming back to focus or do they feel just exhausted? Like not totally available further, like out of ideas for the work. And so that can be a good place to start to see like, okay, is this a pattern that you experience more often in your business and in what ways? And then looking at what they're working on, say if they're working on like a particular marketing strategy, how is this showing up in that strategy? And what is that creating for them?
Kind of look at that. And then if we have a vision set or they have a feeling vision set of how they want to feel like, okay, well, what could shift here to align that more? And this can get kind of deeper work into like bringing in human design or their personality to really just find ways to make whatever it is they're doing be based on their natural talents and energy and troubleshoot all of the sticking points as you go.
Amber: Yeah. I think underlying everything you said, like you have to have awareness of your body because I remember before I was exposed to anything like this, it was like, I was so out of touch. Like it was just like, yeah, like I just keep working or like I just keep going. And then I remember I got mono. Let's see, 2021, I think. And I know that was like my body being like, enough is enough. You missed some of the cues that we were giving you.
And so it's not just like hustle, hustle, hustle, take a break. Hustle, hustle, hustle, take a break. It's like, how do you work? I love that you brought in human design to like in alignment was like a rhythm. I really like your rhythm or like cadence that is supportive. It's not like sprinting and then dying. It doesn't even mean that you slow down so that you don't get things done. Like you're still productive, but grounded and body aware. And it's just a different pace, I feel like.
Heidi: And it's not necessarily a slow pace either, because there's moments where there's energy to do things. And for some people you can like to a lot and work longer hours, but that's not the baseline.
Amber: Yeah.
Heidi: I work with Ayurveda too, which is the traditional medicine from India. And the philosophy is that we are part of nature and it's reflected in us. And as we see the seasons and that shift in energy outside us, that is also within us in different levels. So that's a really great metaphor also that can be brought into thinking about workflow and planning and energy, because it kind of depersonalizes it. So it's not about me and my worth and being super productive, but actually embracing what's going on around me. And that's there too, right?
Amber: Yeah. Instead of making yourself wrong, it's like, oh, this is almost like seasonal, it feels like. Yeah.
Heidi: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like probably for both of us, the summertime, it's very active. There's a lot of things going and that is the summer energy. And it's not like all year round most of the time for most of us. There's a natural ebb to it.
Amber: Yeah. The example that I keep thinking about while you're talking is like human beings being more like nature where there's cycles and rhythms and seasons and ebbs and flows. It's alive versus like a robot or a machine. Like many of us burn out and start to study more holistic approaches because we try to operate like a machine, right? Like overriding our own resource, lack of resource.
Heidi: Completely. And it's fascinating to me that there's cultural influences that are so strong, so unconscious that we overwrite our internal system as the default. That's the conditioning there. And then we tend to get to a place of crash and burn before we actually look and see what's going on and adjust.
Amber: And I think in entrepreneurship, at least my own journey with this has been, you get rewarded for working hard. Let's say you have an idea, you market it, you sell it, you make money, you kind of get it mistakenly like, oh, if I keep doing those things, I will keep making money, right?
So this is an interesting thing that I kind of wanted you to bring into is like more like systems thinking and like leverage and how that plays with a supportive nervous system so that you're not always working because you got rewarded with money to work hard all the time, building a support system both like internally, but also structuring systems in your business so that you don't have to feel like that all the time. Does that make sense?
Heidi: Mm hmm. Yeah. So like for me, shifting that motivation from that constant reward to figuring out how to do it better, in other words, more easeful, less time. And that is as important as the reward. That's just like my core approach to business is de-busify as much as possible.
Amber: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like that quote, it's like the ends justify the means, right? And especially for like solopreneurs or creators, the means is your body and your energy. Does money justify you wrecking your relationship with your body, your energy, your personal life? Like I would say no.
Heidi: Yeah, because if you don't have that, then you're miserable. I mean, that's what burnout is. Even when you have good things happening, it's harder for you to really appreciate them because you're just so exhausted. And this happens. It's not just entrepreneurs. I have a good friend who I coach too.
She's always like my story of like for someone who works like the 60 hour weeks and has all of the negative consequences of that and the internal struggles. And I know her since she was four. So I know the whole story's behind it and there's a lot to it. You know, there's a lot of like the underlying mindset and trauma responses that lead us to overwork. And then it's just not part of our culture to think about ease as a resource or…
Amber: As a pathway. Yeah. That doesn't mean I like to use the word effortless. It doesn't mean there's no effort. It's just like the way that it feels is more like creative, even like fun and light versus that overriding.
Heidi: Yeah.
Amber: So here's a question for you. If I was like a fly on the wall, what would I observe in someone who is like well resourced and doing the work that I think you think is like useful in a supportive ground way of doing business? Like what would I observe in them? Kind of practices or tools. Does that make sense? Like what would I see them doing?
Heidi: Yeah. I'm going to start with what they would not do.
Amber: Okay, great.
Heidi: The first thing like that in their workday, they wouldn't, you know, open email. They wouldn't look at their phone and their social media. They wouldn't go into consumption mode. They wouldn't work through their lunchtime. They wouldn't skip their exercise or self-care. They wouldn't force themselves to be uncomfortable for too long for someone else.
And not just in physically, but in their presentation of how they communicate and kind of share. So what that would look like is having some space in the morning time for some kind of routine that helps to give them a sense of grounding and spaciousness. In Ayurveda, we've got a thousand things that you can do in the morning.
Amber: Give us a few.
Heidi: One of my favorites is self-massage, abhyanga. And there's lots of lovely oils. So the oils have herbs in them with different qualities to support your mindset. And it can be as simple as rubbing your hands on your arms or your belly is a really great spot. And this instantly like calms your nervous system, helps you to feel in your body and is really, really great if you're feeling anxious. That's a key practice.
And then before starting work is taking a few breaths to ground into the belly to notice how they feel and just acknowledge without necessarily needing to change it. And then thinking about what's my primary goal today in my business? How do I want to feel doing it? How can I support myself to achieve that vision from a loosely held commitment? And I think taking a lot of breaks to just calm, lay on the floor for two minutes, go for a walk around the block, pet the cat, like just disengaging whenever you feel you're getting in a little too much, like you might be trying to solve something a little too hard.
If you're like starting to try to get that social media post out, that's indicating that your energy has shifted, especially if you're in working in something like healing or in coaching, like your energy is actually what you're giving. Taking a pause to nourish yourself helps you to get back into that of just more valuable than the words that you were going to say.
Amber: I've learned to do what you're mostly about the social media, because like if I feel like I'm forcing it, I like stop. I'm like my best posts come through me and my energy is behind it. And so it's almost like you have to unlearn some of the things about post every day, no matter what, and like show up every, you know, like the kind of the rhetoric that you learn, like you have to actually learn that.
Heidi: Yeah. That's never worked for me. Has that worked for you?
Amber: No. Well, I was like taught, like I'm thinking back to like a course I took early on in my business about showing up every day and doing it even if you're uncomfortable. And I know many of my listeners will resonate with that because that's kind of like the thing that they were taught. It's like an override, like you do it uncomfortable and like it's a new habit.
And what I found, because my business is very energetic, so I want to post in the right energy. And if I don't have it, I go take care of that. If I'm tired, I nap, you know, or like I unplug or I don't post that day and I trust that's actually healthier and better. I think you would probably say that's actually better for my audience, too, of being the most aligned version of me. But I think people have to unlearn some right behaviors, if that makes sense.
Heidi: Yeah, totally. I struggled with this for a while because I understood intellectually the idea of energy alignment before communicating, but I was in a phase of feeling a lot of scarcity or urgency, like a lot of internal pressure that at that time I was still fairly like new to coaching and my training was definitely more masculine. And the marketing training was very, very masculine. Definitely now I see not an alignment with my energy.
And so it was confusing because I'd be like in this like high vibration, good mindset, I thought, but I wasn't actually because there was still this deeper pressure. And so then for a while, I was like, well, none of this works. And it took a while for me to really decondition that and see like, oh okay that's what it feels like to identify the feeling of this is what it feels like when I am actually aligned and open versus I've got this secret pressure.
Amber: Yeah. So how does it feel when you're open and aligned? The sensations?
Heidi: Yeah. I mean, like right now I'm getting some little bit of goosebumps. I feel my heart kind of open and I'm not in my mind. The words just kind of want to come out.
Amber: Yeah. You can't see this in the video, but she's like pointing to her chest like it's coming almost like down her throat and out her chest.
Heidi: Yeah. And of course, like we don't have to be perfectly in alignment.
Amber: No, no.
Heidi: But just aware of that and inviting it in as much as possible.
Amber: Yeah. I love it. What other like practices? You said you have like hundreds. I'm like, what else?
Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing this really fun thing. I actually have two businesses. I have a yoga business as well. And I'm doing monthly mini retreats that are in person and they're all about deep relaxation. So it's three hours of an incredible shift of we do some breath work to get out of the mind into the body.
Some from that place, just some contemplation of, and this could be questions about the business of like, what's my vision? How do I want to feel like and allow that to arise. And then so mantra, singing of any kind that is feel kind of has a spiritual quality to it. The vibration in your body, it vibrates the vagus nerve, which tells the body things are safe. I can relax. It helps. And then your internal organs start to relax all of your muscles, your nervous system.
And then from there, moving into restorative yoga, which is basically laying on the floor for a long time in different poses and being guided with guided meditation or like sound bath. All those tools like you could just do one are incredibly supportive for calming and coming back to yourself.
Amber: Yeah. So what would you say to someone who's like, I don't have time for that?
Heidi: Three deep breaths.
Amber: I love how you're like, I know exactly what to say.
Heidi: And that's really can be all that it takes to make a shift. Like it doesn't have to be the huge drop into deep relaxation, but just enough to shift your nervous system. It's like exercise. It's like doing 10 pushups. Like you do that every day, you're going to get stronger. Your nervous system has learned to relax a little bit more.
You do the three deep breaths before you open your email. Instead of going into the fight or flight of like, oh crap, what I got to deal with today. Your nervous system learns that, okay, emails, not so bad. I'm actually safe here. And then do that before a client call. Do that after a hard client call.
Amber: Yeah.
Heidi: Gentle training.
Amber: Yeah. What I've learned too is like something is better than nothing. Like literally three breaths. I think especially for like this person that I'm imagining, like the high achiever, like I want to do it
Heidi: Right.
Amber: I want to get the gold star. Like I don't have time for a three hour reset. Although that would be like exactly why they need it. But anyway, that's the story. There's something that they can do that works. And like the compound effect becomes amazing, I think.
Heidi: Absolutely. And putting your legs higher than your heart. So if you can lay on the floor for a minute and put them on your chair or on a wall, that also is very helpful.
Amber: Interesting. I'm going to try that one. I like it. Maybe another topic that I definitely want to ask you about was when they're closing their workday, like any practices, rituals that come to mind. Because like, I think a lot of my clients at least have a problem like closing the tabs of their mind when it's like time for them. They're going to work and now it's like time to pick up the kids or time to make dinner or time to not work. No more thinking about work.
Heidi: Yeah. It can be nice to have a physical way to close something. So whether that is your laptop, like closing the laptop and putting it into a place like, you know, into your desk or something like that, or your phone, having a version of that where you go into do not disturb. And I mean, it's automatic now that you can set it and, you know, closing all of your tabs, like kind of putting everything away digitally or not tabs, but apps, apps on your phone.
Amber: Yeah.
Heidi: Like that. So those two. And I find that I do the laptop thing and it's very helpful for me. It takes 30 seconds and somehow creates that feeling of almost like coming home from work.
Amber: Yeah. No, I've thought about that. Like, especially if you work at home, which a lot of my listeners do, there's no commute. There's no like physical closure. And so it's just like this open ended. I'm always working feeling. So I love simple practice. Close the laptop. Put it away.
Heidi: Yeah. Put it in a place because I work everywhere in my house. I like to be moving. And so everywhere is my office for better. And this practice has just helped me to energetically reclaim those spaces after the workday is over.
Amber; Yeah, I love that. So good. Probably some three deep breaths too.
Heidi: Definitely. Always, always. Yeah. Yeah.
Amber: So good. Is there anything that I didn't ask that you think we should talk about?
Heidi: Just to reiterate the power of a daily morning practice of checking in with your nervous system. And that might just be it for the day. Like, but just making that part of your workflow and seeing it as fundamental for your business strategy. Self-care is a business strategy. Nervous system regulation is the foundation of your business strategy because it's opposite for most of us.
Amber: Yeah.
Heidi: It comes last, but that sets you up to that. So you have to earn it. You have to work hard and check all the boxes, which you never do in entrepreneurship. Very, very hard. So why do we do this? We do this for peace and freedom. So how about we create that first?
Amber: Yeah. No, I love that.
Heidi: A little bit of rat, three breaths, five minutes, whatever it is. And then we go and do our work.
Amber: I think if more people were trained this way, I think people end up getting sick, like burnout, or they end up resenting the business that was supposed to give them the peace and freedom because they don't make it. That actually is the foundation. They think it's like something to work to. So I love that you articulated that. So good. Very aligned with what I believe. Love it. Well, Heidi, how do people find you and get to know you better or connect with you?
Heidi: Yeah. My website is https://servicewithsoul.co/. My Instagram as well, @servicewithsoul. And you can look me up there, send me a message and I'll have a nervous system daily checklist available.
Amber: Amazing.
Heidi: Yeah. Which will be on my website, https://servicewithsoul.co/gift.
Amber: Okay. I'll make sure at least links that in the show notes because that's awesome. I think people love a checklist, especially, you know, I remember when I went to school for psychology, we talked about, obviously, we talked about the nervous system and it was this very complex system. And what I've learned, it's not the complex system. It's like the simple tools, simple practices that make it work that I think is the most important. So I love that you have a checklist. Cool. Anything that you want to share before we say goodbye?
Heidi: Just thank you so much for having me, Amber. It's been a pleasure.
Amber: Yeah. Thank you for coming. I appreciate everything that you shared and I know it'll be really useful to people who are on the brink of burnout or know that this is like their next step.
So thank you for sharing everything and I appreciate you.
Heidi: Appreciate it. Take care.
