Live Life Well - with Sarah Trass, Whangarei (2025)

30/05/2025

I still can’t believe how quickly this time has gone, but we are here at 38 weeks and our little girl will be joining us soon. I’m in absolute awe of the human body, and what this journey has taught me so far – how the body changes to support you, how it just knows what to do when we let it, and how incredible the process of growing a human is. She already blows my mind with how in tune she is with herself and her needs.

While I won’t be seeing clients for a little while, I’ll still be sharing gentle reflections, resources, and reminders here and there when I feel drawn to, and will be continuing with my Monthly(ish) Dose of Wellness newsletter – I’m sure parenthood is going to be a great teacher and opportunity to apply all the tools I’ve been honing!

✨ I’m officially on leave from Monday 2nd June and will be coming back in December. I currently have a waitlist for those who are wanting to book in sessions when I’m back, if this is you or if you would love to book in for a consult – reach out at any time and I will put you on the list and touch base closer to time.✨

Until then, thank you for holding this space with me – a small corner of the internet that I hope provides a chance to connect more deeply with yourself and your body, and to learn about the incredible world of mind-body healing. I honestly love what I do, and you all continue to inspire me to keep growing.

With love,
Sarah x

Moment captured by the lovely

04/05/2025

I used to believe that when I was anxious it was purely to do with my mind, and I think a lot of us who experience anxiety feel this way - that it’s all in our heads. When we view anxiety as a mind thing we also believe that in order to ‘master’ it we have to learn how to train our thoughts, to rationalise them, to control them.

However after studying Polyvagal Theory and the role of our nervous system, I learnt that anxiety is not about mind mastery at all, rather it’s a survival response of a hypervigilant nervous system that has shifted you into a state of protection. Thoughts are just one symptom of this survival response, and if you only focus on trying to ‘deal’ with your thoughts without addressing the underlying nervous system imbalance, you’re simply trying to heal a symptom without addressing the root cause. This is why when you feel anxious, solely trying to talk your way out of it never seems to work.

If you stop for a second and think back to the last time you felt anxious you’ll notice that it shows up in the body – tightening around the chest and shoulder area, shallow breathing, fast breathing, heart palpitations, wide eyes, and then yes racing thoughts follow. All of these symptoms are designed to put your body into a state of alertness, because it believes safety comes from always being on the lookout, bracing you for the perceived threat, and always considering future scenarios so you can plan accordingly.

Therefore when it comes to anxiety, it’s not about control and mastery of yourself in these moments, it’s about learning to partner with your body and understanding what your system is needing in order to feel safe so that you can help guide it back into a state of regulation.

👉 For the full article and prompts head on over to the blog, linked in bio, or click below:
https://www.sarahtrass.com/blog/anxiety-isnt-a-mind-thing

Sarah x

20/04/2025

Experiences from our younger years, particularly those that left us feeling shamed, judged, hurt, unseen, unworthy, or unsafe, leave unhealed wounds, and because we often don’t have the capacity or emotional maturity at this age to fully understand what went on, we end up developing coping mechanisms and strong self-beliefs to protect ourselves.

As adults, if these wounds of our younger selves are left unaddressed, we unconsciously carry these self-beliefs forward into our day to day lives which impacts our behaviours, relationships, health, and overall sense of worth.

👉 One of the first steps when working with our younger parts is being able to step back and see the self-beliefs we hold about ourselves in moments where we feel activated, and rather than coming at them from a place of judgement and criticism we start to explore what it feels like to hold space around it.

Do any of these slides resonate with you?

16/04/2025

In this month’s dose of wellness newsletter we discussed the subject of ‘Self’ and how we can deepen our understanding and connection with it more in our day to day lives.

The subject of self spans across multiple fields within psychotherapy, neuroscience, and spiritual origins. In a nut-shell all of these roots of thought refer to the self as your core essence - it’s who you are outside of social conditioning, expectations, cultural norms, trauma, relationships with others, productive output….it’s who YOU are deep down.

When we have a connection with our sense of self it enables us to live our lives with integrity and authenticity. It helps us connect to our personal values and to make decisions that align with our deepest knowing and needs. When we feel connected to our sense of self it also helps us to bring wisdom and clarity to life’s challenges – it is the part of us that helps us to step back and have space from things that activate us, and find ways forward that are rooted in curiosity, calm, compassion, and confidence.

👉 One of the prompts from the newsletter that I invite you to reflect on is - When do you feel most like yourself? How do you know this?

Is it a particular feeling you get, do you know by the way you behave, or by the quality of the thoughts you have? How do you carry yourself in these moments – posture, breath, muscle tone? Is there a particular way you perceive yourself and the world around you?

Sarah x

13/04/2025

Science proves that the states within our nervous system directly change our experience – meaning it changes the feelings we have, how our body feels, how we breath, how we behave, and the thoughts we have. All of the ways your body responds to a protective state of activation is a symptom – therefore the thoughts you have when dysregulated are just that…symptoms of dysregulation.

Now the job of our thoughts when we're dysregulated is actually to keep us in dysregulation, or even further or deepen the dysregulation we are experiencing. And that might sound strange, right? Why would our system want to do that?

Well, if we're in dysregulation, our nervous system has decided that we're not safe - either because we aren’t actually safe in that moment, or it's perceiving danger and is projecting something that was dangerous/threatening/hurtful in the past onto the present moment.

If you’re in an unsafe experience it would be really smart for your nervous system to keep you protected, right? So the job of your thoughts in these moments are to come in and ensure that you stay in that state of dysregulation by looping specific thoughts, stories, self-beliefs that hold you back from doing anything that might put you in further danger. The more we listen to our thoughts, the more dysregulated we become, and the more ‘safe’ our nervous system believes it is keeping us.

Over time what ends up happening when we’re dysregulated is that we start to habitually have the same thoughts over and over again, as our brains and body love predictability and creating patterns. The more we practice these patterns of thought the more that they start to feel 100% true. This is why our thoughts start to become extremely powerful and can hold us back from moving toward things we desire, or for making changes in our lives that we know we need deep down.

👉 Invitation for you is to start bringing awareness to the thoughts that pop up when you are in moments of activation or stress. How are they keeping you in this state of dysregulation – what role are they serving in this?

06/04/2025

Energy is one of your most valuable resources, so putting this here as a gentle reminder to check in.

How are your energy levels lately? Is it time to do a wee audit of what’s taking and giving back to your energy resources?

✨ Are the practices, habits, routines in your life serving you and your overall wellbeing, or are they draining you?
✨ What is your capacity to manage life looking like recently? Any changes you’ve noticed?
✨ If needed - What would it look like to make a shift here? What’s one small change you could consider exploring to better serve you and your energy?

Sarah x

02/04/2025

Leaving this here as a gentle check in.

Again there are so many ways in which your body lets you know it's experiencing dysregulation - here are just a few.

What are some of your body's cues that you're heading into dysregulation?

30/03/2025

Recently we talked about regulation, so today I’m doing the flipside and discussing dysregulation.

Your nervous system is designed to manage stressors, as mentioned in the post about regulation it naturally uses both your sympathetic and parasympathetic states to address the stressful situations and then brings your system into a state of rest and repair.

Dysregulation happens when your nervous system gets activated and stays in one of these protective states for an extended period of time, interrupting the body’s natural cycle of completion. The more that this happens and the longer you stay in a state of protection, the natural seesaw relationship between your sympathetic and parasympathetic states stops and the greater the impact on your health and wellness long term – as your system believes that it is still having to stay ‘on’ to keep you safe and protected.

Protecting you requires a massive amount of energy and a systematic shut down of vital organs and bodily functions. Such as your gut, intestines, ovaries and te**es, immune function, cognitive function – when your body believes you are under attack it doesn’t worry about digesting food, making babies, or coming up with the most effective solutions. It’s purely focused on keeping you alive using the most basic of instincts and needs.

As a result, you can start to constantly feel as though you are stressed or burnt out, even when you logically know you are safe and that everything feels ‘fine’.

👉 Are there moments where you feel you may be dysregulated throughout the day/week? What's letting you know this?

26/03/2025

Putting this here as a little check in for your week.

There are many ways our body lets us know that it is in a state of regulation, here are just a few. What are some of your cues?

Sarah x

23/03/2025

The words regulation and dysregulation have become an every day part of my conversations over the past few years as I work with the nervous system, and it’s something that we are all seeing discussed more regularly across different platforms.

So I thought I’d take a moment to talk about regulation in relation to your nervous system 😀

Your nervous system is designed to beautifully respond to stressors in your life. It does this by utlising the two branches of your autonomic nervous system – your sympathetic (mobilisation state) and your parasympathetic (immobilisation state).

When you experience a stressful situation, your nervous system activates your sympathetic branch to bring energy to your body so that you can ‘deal’ to the stressor. Once it has passed it activates the parasympathetic branch to de-escalate and metabolise all of the activation and energy that your body generated. This slowing down brings you into a state of rest, connection, and safety – what we call homeostasis.

This natural seesaw between the two branches of your nervous system, and the maintenance of homeostasis, is called regulation and is vital in you overall sense of health and wellbeing.

When your nervous system is regulated, it allows you to approach and manage situations with more ease and flexibility. You are able to rise to the level of activation required to move through the stressful experience, yet you are able to still have two feet on the ground. It is where you feel present and connected to yourself and others.

Deb Dana uses the metaphor of an anchor, which I really love – being regulated is like having an anchor securely locked in place during a storm: the boat can stay firmly in place, yet still move with the ocean.

👉 Are there moments in your day/week where you feel you are regulated?

19/03/2025

I invite you to reflect for a moment and cast yourself back to the last time you felt really stressed. How did you know you were stressed? How about the last time you felt excited or peaceful?

Mostly likely you would have noticed you experienced these moment differently when it came to your feelings, your body posture and muscle tone, your breath, your heart rate, your behaviours, and thoughts.

That is because everything you think, feel, do, and how you perceive yourself and the world around you, comes down to what state within your nervous system you are operating inside of.

The nervous system is structured around three key states - Ventral Vagal state of connection and safety, activated state of Sympathetic mobilisation, or Dorsal Vagal state of shut down and immobilisation. Each state has its unique flavour and different ways of upregulating or downregulating your entire body, meaning you will experience completely different physiological and psychological ‘symptoms’ that dramatically alter the way you show up in the moment.

So, if you are experiencing stress or symptoms throughout the day that are overwhelming you, or that keep popping up and getting in the way of you living your life the way you desire…the first step to change is becoming more attuned to what state you are sitting in when this is happening and how this is influencing the way you are perceiving the situation.

Sarah x

25/02/2025

Your nervous system is an incredible network of nerves that run from your brain stem, all around your face, your ears, into your throat where it branches out - one branch runs down through your heart, through your arms, you digestive system, into your reproductive system, the other branch runs down your spinal cord into your seat and down your legs.

Its pathway runs literally everywhere.

So...if your nervous system is dysregulated you can see how it influences so many different parts of your body and mind, and in turn your life.

Live Life Well - with Sarah Trass

30/05/2025

04/05/2025

20/04/2025

16/04/2025

13/04/2025

06/04/2025

02/04/2025

30/03/2025

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25/02/2025

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