Cyclical Living with Kate Northrup 2021
Hello everyone, this is Sam and today I am welcoming a lady who has inspired me for a number of years. In fact, not wanting to overly crush on her, her work has literally changed my life. In particular, she has really helped me and my business thrive while working full-time as a registered nurse through the COVID pandemic.
There are so many of my colleagues that have reached or are beyond that point of burnout and I am so grateful that I am not there myself and I honestly have this lady to thank in person today. Kate Northrop. Hi Sam, thanks for having me.
Thank you for joining me. I mean, Kate, I obviously, you know, I've said that I've been inspired by you for many years. You're the founder and CEO of The Origin Company.
You're a best-selling author of my favorite book, Do Less, and you're creator of the Do Less Planner System. This is my business partner and you're the founder of The Origin Membership, which, by the way, is open right now for membership. And yet you're a mom, you're a wife, daughter, friend, and all those other hats that we have to wear as women dealing with more than, you know, our fair share of mountains to climb.
And yet you still manage to dance energetically at the end of your workshops and sing. That was just amazing. I never knew you could sing like that, Kate.
Just so beautiful. I was moved to tears. But now, obviously, I know the secret, you know, because I was one of the original founding members of The Origin Membership.
But today, I would love for you to share with my audience two of the origin principles that they hear me talking about the most. The first is cyclical living and the second, body first, business second. So cyclical living, to me, it is single-handedly crushing the patriarchy.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, cyclical living is really like, it's not really something new. It's a remembrance of how we were made and how we function when left without all the additional brainwashing and enculturation and layers that get added on.
So cyclical living is really noticing that everything in nature has seasons and cycles, and our bodies are also nature. We are part of that same system. We are not separate.
And so we too have phases and seasons and cycles. So even though the world has taught us that everything is linear, especially when it comes to our careers and success, that it's about linear progress and always moving forward and ideally being better than you were the day before and, you know, doing the same thing, showing up the same way, that's not actually our design. And when we look around us, we see that there are four seasons every year.
There are four phases of the moon every month. There are four phases of the menstrual cycle. There are four phases of the harvest growing and planting cycle.
There are four phases of everything when we look around nature. So when this first occurred to me, I realized, well, if that organizing principle is working for all of life on planet earth, perhaps it could also work in my business and in my work life. So whether or not you have a thinking through your work seasonally and cyclically, it changes everything because it's moving with our flow and with the flow of nature as opposed to against it.
I mean, people say to me, you know, are you a morning person or are you an evening person? And I used to say, I didn't know. And now I say it varies with the moon. Love that.
One of the things that I remember when I first joined the membership, I became fascinated with the moon cycles. I mean, I'm of that age where I don't have a cycle. So it was one of the questions that many women ask, you know, if I don't have a cycle, how can this help me? But the moon cycles, I've become quite the moon worshiper.
I love that. You know, it's really like a steady, trusted friend. The world is so unpredictable.
I mean, you said you've been an RN during the COVID-19 pandemic. I mean, so intense. None of us saw any of this coming.
And we all really need these predictable things to lean on in a world that is so profoundly out of control. It always has been. It just, we're more aware of it now.
And that the way that we can always know, okay, so after the moon is dark, it always waxes to full and then it goes back again. And it's like the inhale and the exhale. It's something we can depend on and be in relationship with and notice how our energy levels shift throughout that 28 and a half days.
Notice how our emotions shift. Notice how our mental energy is. Notice how our spiritual energy is and really be in that communion to come back to ourselves and back to our true nature.
And that's, it's such a beautiful tool because it's visually always there and incredibly predictable. Like we can know, you know, 40 years from now, what lunar phase would be on a particular day. And no, no, I find it so grounding.
Yeah. I agree entirely. I mean, I worked, originally I worked as midwife in the UK and we always used to be saying, oh, it's a full moon.
We're going to be busy tonight, girls. Yeah. And it's as sure, you know, as the day dawns, we would be busy.
Women are so in tune with the moon, but we have lost that. We, we appear to have lost that knowing and replaced it with a guilt, you know? And I mean, the guilt is something that I, I even felt initially, you know, on my journey from 2017 was that I don't feel that I'm able to do this today. And I've realized that the moon is void, of course, and it's on my to-do list.
And, you know, and then I would have that guilt, but, you know, I shouldn't just be sitting back. I shouldn't just be reading. I shouldn't be going off and taking a walk.
You know, there's this, this guilt that is enforced upon us to continue to run uphill. Yeah. And I know now that that is patriarchy and with my work as an RN, I realized that everything has set up, you know, for the patriarchy, you know, we're working shifts, where the expectation is that we are the same throughout of our shift.
But one of the things in my leadership role is I've been able to say to people, and it's actually part of my email sign off is to remember body first, business second. So great. Yes.
Because if you are a healer, if you are an RN, if you are in anything and you go down, you can't take care of the people around you. And so, you know, the way medical establishment is set up, it's just so insane, given it's theoretically the place where people go, you know, for, for healing. Sometimes you do get healed by medicine.
And that's wonderful. And sometimes it's not actually that healing and the system itself. I mean, I'm just in awe of people like you who go in there, knowing what you know, and infuse the system with a level of care and knowledge about the body.
Because I just think about how blessed are the people who get to come into contact with you. You know, that healer, heal first, heal thyself idea is really not very present amongst doctors and nurses. And so I appreciate that you're bringing the revolution there.
It's so important. And I think that medical care will improve as that message spreads. Yeah, embracing the holistic, you know, perspective.
One of the things you spoke about in your workshop, by the way, which was phenomenal, was the nervous system. Now, obviously, I'm a science geek, I teach quantum physics. Okay.
I love the science. And that's one of the things that I loved when I first met you was that how you've researched everything. And, you know, you found the evidence, it's evidence based practice that you present.
And you've been researching this. Was it 2017? When you first asked us, you know, to trust? Yes, it was 2017. This material began occurring to me in the fall of 2016.
But I started to reveal it to the public in 2017. Yeah, and I recall that, you know, and but yes, I mean, the the nervous system. I mean, we're hearing in the media at the moment about so many medical professionals and nurses that are burning out.
I'm seeing it all around me. When I listened to you yesterday in your workshop, and you were explaining about the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system, oxidative stress came to mind as well. Could you maybe just explain a little bit from, you know, the way that you did, you did it so well.
So I'm not a scientist, I have an art history degree. But I love researching, and I love learning about the body, especially about the way in which our bodies impact the way we work, because typically, we have this idea, this erroneous idea that our work happens from our mind. Right, that it's all about the mind, it's all about the brain.
Yeah. And what we know, actually, is that there's so much more going on. And one of the things one of the most important things going on is the nervous system.
And the nervous system is a series of a part of our body, it's connected with the brain and the spinal cord, and it's made up of neurons. And these neurons allow us to make internal quick adjustments without having to think about it. So it is a beautiful system that is keeping us in what is the word, you would know what it is, but anyway, keeping us basically alive and relatively balanced, right? And essentially trying, what was that? Keeping us safe.
Keeping us safe. It is doing its best to keep us safe. Yes.
So there are two sort of toggles of the nervous system. There's the sympathetic nervous system we can be in, or the parasympathetic. And the sympathetic is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.
And that is when something happens to us that we then need to respond to, to keep us safe. So something scary happens, we respond with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The thing is, though, that in our modern lives, we are often responding with the sympathetic nervous system to situations that don't actually warrant it because our traumas live in our bodies and our traumas live in our nervous system.
And our nervous system is trying to keep us safe by preventing us from doing things that will throw things out of balance. So for example, going in and having a difficult conversation can set off a full sympathetic nervous system response. For some people doing something that shouldn't even be scary, right? Like might set off a full sympathetic nervous system response.
And that is because we are storing not only the traumas that we've experienced, but also the collective traumas of people who we identify with, who we've witnessed experienced trauma, and then also our ancestral. And so it's multi-layered. And then the parasympathetic nervous system is rest, digest, tend, and befriend.
So when we are in that place, our breathing slows down, our blood pressure is lower, we get more blood flow to our both hemispheres of our brain, our digestion kicks in, we're able to create memories much easier, and we go into repair and regeneration. We also just feel calm, right? So when we're in parasympathetic response, we feel calm. We live in a world, unfortunately, that is basically our collective nervous system is parasympathetic dominant, is definitely jacked up, very hypervigilant, needing to get it done and we've been raised that way.
But we can always train ourselves to get into parasympathetic where true healing happens in that place. So I know you're a healer, I'm sure you have other people who listen in who are healing professionals. So knowing one of the main ways that we can regulate our nervous system is through co-regulation.
So when you, Sam, go in and see a patient or somebody else goes in and sees a patient and you've done the work on your nervous system, your patient can then co-regulate with you and is able to move into a parasympathetic response much more easily because we aren't individual cutoff nervous systems. Our nervous systems communicate and collaborate. And so one of the most effective things you can do as a healer is heal your own nervous system because it helps other people.
How would you tell our listeners, how would you tell them to start healing? What do they need to do? Well, there are just so many tools, so many wonderful tools. And many of them you may already do. Listening in meditation is beautiful.
It can be beautiful. Yoga. I like simple ones though, because I am the kind of person who just needs to get it in.
I have two small children and I don't have a lot of free time. So the vagus nerve is one of the nerves that will most activate the parasympathetic nervous system. And singing is actually a wonderful way to activate the vagus nerve.
I think that's probably why humans have been singing since the dawn of time. It is inherently very calming. So singing, rhythmic movement.
So swaying to music or just rocking in general. Rhythmic movement is beautiful. Breathing into your back lower ribs is an effective strategy that again, you have to breathe anyway.
So you might as well. Might as well. So just, we can try that right now.
Just breathing into our back lower ribs. Noticing gravity is also a wonderful one. So noticing the weight of gravity, noticing how you're being held by gravity.
Shaking. Shaking is another one that's very effective. So I have my little tool bag and I use these tools all day long.
Tapping, the emotional freedom technique, EFT, also very effective. I mean, have at it, right? So many choices. Isn't it amazing? I mean, one of my chapters, I had a children's daycare nursery and we always used to have the bricks and like shake, shake, shake your sillies out.
And I was just thinking when you were there and I was thinking about, you know, the rhythmic moving, you know, with a baby, rocking a baby and how it automatically brings comfort. The science proves what we've done for years. Yes, our bodies already know.
So anything you would naturally do with a child or with a baby is something you can do with your own body because we are wired the same as children and what calms them, calms us. And what I love that when you were talking about the nervous system and about as a nurse or a going in with your patient. I mean, yes, one of the first things I always do with my clients is I ground and I ground myself as well, but we're empaths as well, you know? So we're feeling what other people are feeling and how important those tools are to shield our nervous system, protect our nervous system from other person's response, their fight or flight, right? It's just, just, I had to share that then.
I love that. You also spoke about, you know, the traumas that we hold within our nervous system. And of course, you know that one of the things that I love to talk about is mother-daughter relationships and all of my coaching that I do, I do holistic and life coaching, but I always begin with looking at the generations.
What was your relationship like with your mom? What was her relationship like with her mom? You know, and you start to get that story. Now my own story, obviously I had no contact with my mother. There's a lot of trauma there, which is why I started to research that.
But it was, it's so refreshing to hear you talking about, the recognition that we store all of these traumas in our nervous system. Could you maybe expand a little bit more on that or? Yeah. I mean, I learned about this through Dr. Valerie Rain, who wrote Patriarchy Stress Disorder and also in the book, The Body Keeps the Score.
There's also other amazing books about the nervous system, but learning that so much of our habitual behavior, so many of the things that we think are mindset blocks are actually trauma responses to me was incredibly helpful. Even productivity, being obsessed with productivity can be a trauma response because ultimately we've had these different experiences in our own lives. You know, you mentioned experiences with your mother.
We, you know, people have been assaulted. I mean, I don't have to tell you the traumas, right? We all know. And then there's the collective trauma.
So if I see something happen to you, Sam, and I identify with you because I'm also a woman, I feel that my nervous system stores that. So even though it didn't happen to me because we have mirror neurons, I feel it too. And I store that away because my body is picking up and looking and being like, oh, keep that in mind.
You're going to want to not do that so that you stay safe. And then the ancestral trauma. So what we know is through the study of epigenetics, that we actually carry the things that happen to our mothers, our grandmothers, our great, our great grandmothers, et cetera, in our bodies.
And we may never have a rational explanation for the fact that something freaks us out. For example, I used to start to panic at sunset in my early twenties. It made no sense.
I didn't know what was going on with that. And I, I mentioned it to my mom one day and she was like, she was like, granny used to have that. Granny used to panic and just say, I just have to go home.
I don't know why. And I don't know what happened to her. I don't know what happened to somebody else in our lineage, but it just made me feel like, oh, okay.
There's nothing wrong with me. And I just need to teach my body to signal itself that it's safe. I don't have to go into the story because there's no way I could find out the story.
It probably didn't even happen to granny. It probably was, you know, who knows, right? And there's so many things like that. And so our, our culture is very mind focused.
So we think like, well, first of all, most people won't even address the problem and just think like, okay, let's not even deal with that. So that's like mainstream. But then when you get into folks who are into mindset work and into personal development, then it's like, okay, great.
Let's talk about it. Let's work on that. Let's change our thoughts.
Right. But for somebody like me who was panicking at sunset, there was no amount of thinking about it or talking about it. That was going to change what was happening in my body.
We can't talk our bodies out of memories, but we can heal our bodies to have a different response. Right. So over time, we can through breathing techniques through you know, through tapping through the different things that I talked about, we can actually shift so that our body gets the message.
Oh, actually we are safe here. There's, there's no reason to panic at sunset. Like we are just, we're safe.
And, and I didn't need to go to therapy to talk about that, even though I love going to therapy to talk about things, but there are certain things that we cannot talk our way out of. We need to embody our way out of that. Just quickly.
So Kate, thank you. Thank you always an absolute pleasure to speak with you. I would have got you to sing and dance.
You can follow me on Instagram for the dancing. Maybe I'll start singing. I don't know.
Absolutely. I will share all of Kate's social media Kate, as always, thank you.
Thank you, Sam. Such a pleasure. Bye.
