Summer is ending. And the question nobody is asking is: how do you re-enter without letting September erase what the break gave you?

In this episode of Alignment by Tuva - the first episode back after my first ever podcast break - I share what two weeks of genuine, unscheduled rest uncovered about who I am when nobody needs anything from me. The specific things I found by a river, in mountains, in slow mornings without an alarm. And the science behind why those things matter so much more than we have been told.

This episode is personal, warm, and full of color. It is also grounded in three pieces of neuroscience that explain what rest actually does to the brain - and why the regulated, creative, alive version of yourself that showed up in summer is not a holiday version. It is the real one.

You will learn:

• What the Default Mode Network is and why unstructured time is when your brain does its best work
• The science of allostatic recovery and why genuine rest cannot be compressed into a weekend
• What awe does to the nervous system - and why mountains and oceans are not just beautiful but biologically regulating
• The 25 Things I Love practice from Julia Cameron's The Prosperous Heart - and why speed is the whole point
• How to read your own list as a nervous system regulation map - not a bucket list
• The four specific practices I am building into my September to protect the summer self I found

Plus: I read my actual 25 Things I Love list - written fast, unedited, completely honest. And invite you to write yours.

Topics: post summer routine, back to routine after holiday, how to stop feeling burnt out, nervous system regulation, default mode network, rest and creativity, slow living, awe and nervous system, allostatic recovery, morning routine September, how to stay regulated, Julia Cameron morning pages, slow living nervous system, how to come back to routines, seasonal reset

Connect with Me

Instagram: @alignmentbytuva

Website: www.alignmentbytuva.com

SCIENCE REFERENCES

Raichle, M.E. et al. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682.

Buckner, R.L., Andrews-Hanna, J.R., & Schacter, D.L. (2008). The brain's default network. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 1–38.

McEwen, B.S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873–904.

Sonnentag, S. & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204–221.

Stellar, J.E. et al. (2015). Positive affect and markers of inflammation: Discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. Emotion, 15(2), 129–133.

Keltner, D. & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition & Emotion, 17(2), 297–314.

Cameron, J. (2011). The Prosperous Heart. Tarcher/Penguin.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Alignment by Tuva, I go somewhere I have never gone publicly before: into the story underneath the science. The night at sixteen that explains, more than anything else, why I understand nervous system dysregulation from the inside - and why the people who are most praised for their capability are often the ones paying the highest physiological price for it.

This is not an episode about trauma. It is an episode about prediction. About what happens when a nervous system builds a strategy around being the only one available to handle things - and then spends the next twenty years mistaking that strategy for a personality.

You will learn:

• What predictive processing is and why your brain built "competence" as a survival forecast rather than a character trait
• How the Polyvagal Theory explains the chronic sympathetic activation underneath high-functioning behavior
• Why compliments about your capability are neurological reinforcement signals - and what they are actually teaching your nervous system
• The somatic truth of why receiving care feels wrong before it feels like relief
• What regulation actually looks like for someone running this pattern - and why it is not about becoming less

If you are the one who never drops the ball, who checks in on everyone, who is praised for being low maintenance - this episode will tell you something nobody else has.

Connect with Me

Instagram: @alignmentbytuva

Website: www.alignmentbytuva.com

Topics: nervous system regulation, predictive processing, polyvagal theory, high functioning anxiety, people pleasing, hypervigilance, emotional labor, childhood trauma nervous system, anxious attachment, somatic healing, competence trauma, high achiever burnout, nervous system rewiring, functional freeze, why I can't receive love

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the anxiety you've been trying to think your way out of isn't coming from your mind at all?

In this episode, I share what I discovered when I began my own gut healing protocol — not from the other side of it, but from inside it. Because the science behind it is too important to wait for a tidy transformation story.

The research is profound: your gut has 500 million neurons. It produces 90-95% of your body's serotonin. It communicates with your brain through the vagus nerve - and 80% of that communication travels upward, from gut to brain. Which means your gut is influencing your emotional life far more than most people realize. And a dysregulated gut may be the biological root of anxiety that has nothing to do with your thoughts.

In this episode you will learn:

• What the enteric nervous system is and why your gut is called the second brain
• Why 90-95% of your serotonin is produced in your gut — not your brain
• How the vagus nerve connects gut health to anxiety, mood, and nervous system regulation
• What the microbiome has to do with GABA, dopamine, and neuroinflammation
• Why blood sugar swings feel like anxiety — and how to stabilize both
• The one somatic eating practice that shifts your nervous system before every meal

You can find my 30-Day Low Histamine Reset Guide here

If you want to take a microbiome test yourself, my discount code ALIGNMENTBYTUVA gives you 10% off at Gutsie

Connect with Me

Instagram: @alignmentbytuva

Website: www.alignmentbytuva.com

Topics: gut brain axis, anxiety and gut health, nervous system regulation, serotonin gut, enteric nervous system, microbiome mental health, vagus nerve digestion, gut health anxiety, how to regulate nervous system, gut healing, leaky gut anxiety, food and mood, psychobiotics, blood sugar anxiety, nervous system food

SCIENCE REFERENCES

Gershon, M.D. (1998). The Second Brain. HarperCollins.

Furness, J.B. (2012). The enteric nervous system and neurogastroenterology. Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 9, 286–294.

Bonaz, B., Bazin, T., & Pellissier, S. (2018). The vagus nerve at the interface of the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 12, 49.

Yano, J.M. et al. (2015). Indigenous bacteria from the gut microbiota regulate host serotonin biosynthesis. Cell, 161(2), 264–276.

Cryan, J.F. & Dinan, T.G. (2012). Mind-altering microorganisms: the impact of the gut microbiota on brain and behaviour. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13, 701–712.

Cryan, J.F. et al. (2019). The microbiota-gut-brain axis. Physiological Reviews, 99(4), 1877–2013.

Dinan, T.G., Stanton, C., & Cryan, J.F. (2013). Psychobiotics: a novel class of psychotropic. Biological Psychiatry, 74(10), 720–726.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.