22 Nervous System Regulation for Women Leaders: 4 Tips to Find (and Keep!) Your Calm

Feeling tense, reactive, or constantly “on” as a leader? You’re not alone. In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, leadership coach and Women Lead Well founder Becky Hamm shares four practical, science-backed ways to regulate your nervous system so you can lead with more calm, clarity, and confidence.

You’ll learn:
✨ Why your nervous system is the hidden foundation of your leadership presence
✨ Four simple ways to shift from stress to stability in the moment
✨ How grounding, breathwork, movement, and connection help you think clearly and lead well
✨ Everyday ways to apply these techniques in your meetings, conversations, and decisions

This episode gives you small, powerful nervous system reset techniques that help you stay steady and authentic in high-pressure moments. Because when you learn how to regulate your nervous system, you lead better.

🎧 Listen now to discover how regulating your nervous system can transform the way you lead, and how you feel doing it.

#leadershipdevelopment #podcastforwomen #womenleadwell #womeninleadership #womenleaders

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Transcript

0:05

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who were ready to lead boldly, live lightly and reclaim their joy. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own. Big, beautiful life. I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Ham leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. After years of high level leadership, I discovered that success doesn't have to come at the cost of your peace, your values, or your wellbeing. Each week we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically. Even in a world that tells you to hustle harder, improve your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Today we're gonna talk about something that doesn't usually make it onto the leadership checklists, but absolutely shapes every single part of how you lead. Your nervous system. We've talked about it a lot here on the podcast before, so I thought today we would do a deep dive. Your nervous system is like the foundation of your leadership presence. If it's dysregulated, if you are stuck in that fight, flight, fawn freeze. Your team feels it. Your decisions show it, and your energy drains fast. But when your nervous system is regulated, you are able to stay calm under pressure, to think clearly, to show up with that steady presence your people need. So today I am sharing four. Very doable, very powerful tips for regulating your nervous system. These are practices you can use in daily leadership moments to shift out of panic mode and into, I got this mode. So here we go. Tip number one, ground through your senses. What does that mean? Well, here's what you do when your stress spikes. I want you to pause. And reconnect with your five senses. So for example, notice five things that you can see, four things that you can touch, three things that you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. You can also just. Literally put your hand on some sort of a textured surface, right? I've got a fuzzy sweater on today'cause it's starting to get chilly out. Feels good to touch it with my hand. You can feel your feet pressing into the floor or your bottom being held supported by the chair if you're sitting. All of that works. Why? Because our senses are a direct line into our body's like safety system. Stress pulls us either into the future because we're worrying about what might happen. Or it sucks us back into the past where we rehash past events that probably didn't go so great for us. But when you ground into your senses using that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 trick, it brings you back to the present moment and this signals to your brain, I am safe. Like I am here. Like literally right here. I'm here in my body in this moment, I'm safe. And I can handle this. Now, here's why this is important. So try this, right? You wanna try this before you walk into a difficult meeting, maybe right after. If you get a, a stressful email or have a difficult conversation, it doesn't take a long time. It's maybe just 30 seconds of that sensory grounding can help you reset. Why should you try this? It sounds silly, right? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. When you are grounded, you project steadiness and calm. Your team picks up on your calm presence instead of your stress, which helps your team to stay focused and secure. Grounding helps you avoid reacting out of anxiety, and instead it helps you to lead from clarity, you make better decisions. And so I'll share from my own experience on this. In a previous role, I led a large team. We had 50 of us, and we went through a period of. Brutal budget cuts. I'm talking, we lost a third of our manpower budget and about a quarter of our operating budget all within a year. It was, it was excruciating and at the same time, not shockingly, there was a lot of external pressure to make some pretty significant changes. I had multiple team members through that period tell me that they didn't know how I stayed positive throughout that time, and that they knew we would figure it out because I wasn't rattled by it. And at the time, I assured them love me some. Marie Forlio, we've talked about it before. I assured them that everything is figureoutable, that every difficult situation carries opportunities, that we just have to stay focused on finding those opportunities and that I was confident that we would right, that I believed in the members of the team and that we would figure this out. All of that was true. Don't ever lie to your people. What I did not say was the unhelpful part, which was also true, and that was it. I was deeply rattled by the changes, by the cuts, but they were what they were, right? And the fact that I was were rattled. It made me super intentional about grounding myself every single time. I started to feel doubt or fear or overwhelm because as the one in charge, I didn't have the luxury of panicking, right? I could freak out behind closed doors or while I was driving alone in my car. But I could not project that on my team. I mean, I could have, but that would've been deeply irresponsible. I needed me and I needed my team to be laser focused on finding the opportunities in the middle of the dumpster fire we were experiencing and making the best decisions possible as we figured out the best way forward. And so grounding through my senses. Was critical to ensuring that I could do that. So five things I can see with my eyes. Four things I can hear, three things I can feel, two things I can smell, one thing I can taste, it does not take long. You can absolutely do this in public and ain't nobody gonna know you doing it, but you ground into your senses. That's tip one, tip two. Breathe with intention. You guys know I love me, some breath work. We talk about it a lot on the podcast. And so here is what you wanna do. Practice intentional breathing patterns that have you exhale longer than you inhale. And so that might be like a four, seven, breathing, 4, 7, 8. So you inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. It could be box breathing where you inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Wait for four. Inhale for four, hold for four. Exhale for four. Wait for four. Right. It just creates the box of your inhale and your exhale. Now, why is this important? Because your breath is one of the fastest ways to regulate your nervous system. Those long, slow exhales where you exhale longer than you inhale, that activates the parasympathetic branch. That's that rest and restore part of the nervous system, which helps to reduce your anxiety. It lowers your heart rate, it brings you back into the state of calm, and you might notice you might yawn while you're practicing breath work. Amazing perfection. Yawns are part of your body releasing stress, so if you start yawning while you're doing your breath work, you know it's working. I love it. Here's how you implement. You just start building small little moments of breath work into your day before you send that high stakes email, you might wanna pause for a minute and do some intentional breathing. Before you step onto stage, or before you stand up to deliver a big presentation, try a round of box breathing. Even while you wait in line for coffee, right? You can do that. Inhale, hold, exhale. I used to do this during my commute. Our daycare was about 10 minutes from our house, and so I would practice box breathing. I do a seven count, like I love to breathe in so much like my lungs are about to explode and then hold it, so I would breathe in hold, exhale the entire drive to the daycare. And it was a really good way to kind of ground myself after the chaos of getting two toddlers ready and out of the house by six 30 in the morning on my way to work, So that 10 minute drive brought me back to myself. Here's why I think you should try it. Intentional breathing expands your capacity to respond. Instead of just react. So you're not stuck in that reactivity. You move into intentional acting. Why? Because intentional breathing signals deep safety to your body. You remember, we've talked before about how your body's one job is to keep you alive, and sometimes that, doesn't actually serve your highest self, That the biological needs come in conflict with the, like deeper purpose of your meaning of your life, Well, with these intentional breathing exercises. You are breathing, you are alive, and you're breathing more deeply than normal. Our normal breathing is pretty shallow. That right, that unreflective. If you're not thinking about breathing, you don't breathe so deep while you're just sitting there. And so when you intentionally take those deep breaths and you exhale longer than you inhale, when you put that structure and that intention around your breathing. It floods your body, not just with the oxygen, which is good, but it floods your body with that sense of safety. That helps you keep your voice steady so you can communicate with confidence. It keeps your thoughts clearer so you can make better decisions, and again, it helps your leadership presence to be more centered even when the stakes are high. Teams, trust leaders who stay calm under pressure and breath work helps you embody that steadiness, not in a fake it to you, make it kind of way. But in a true, I actually am safe. I feel safe. I acknowledge that safety, you embody the safety. All right, so that's tip number two. Tip number three, move your body. Here's what I mean. Every time we move that simple physical movement discharges stress. have you ever been in a meeting with that person who's foot is banging that hole? It's because they got a lot of stress they're trying to discharge, or that person who clicks their pen, oh, I hate it. that's them trying to metabolize or process stress. That tick It can be tied to some other things too, but it is a, Unintentional way that people are signaling stress. Now, when I say physical movement discharges stress, you know, bobbing your leg or clicking in your pen, that's not a workout. I mean, it could be go workout. Have a good, healthy workout regimen that is brilliant for you and your body and your health. When I'm talking about metabolizing stress and regulating your nervous system, that could be like rolling your shoulders. Right. Like that doesn't have to be a big deal. I'm sitting here doing it at my chair right now. It could be standing up and stretching or even sitting at your desk, stretching your neck, It could be taking a walk around your building. It could be shaking your arms out for a few seconds. Two of the ones that I love, I love literally if you're watching me on YouTube, you see me. I'm just like shaking my hands like I'm trying to fling water off my hands. Do it all the time. The kids love it, or a big one for me, like my favorite one. If I really am worked up or nervous or anxious about something, it's hard to do while I'm sitting here, but I'll try to show you. I like swing my arms. They're usually straight. I just don't wanna hit my desk. Swing my arms as as hard as I possibly can. Up and down for 30 seconds, a minute, something right, until I start to feel the change in my body. And you'll feel it when you do this. It is like flips a switch and I just come back to calm. It's amazing. So why is this important? It's important. Because stress, we, we can feel stress in our head, right? In our thoughts and the, the inner critic that comes out or that just like knot of a headache, kind of oof, right? We feel stress in our head, but stress doesn't just live in our head, it lives in the entire body. Adrenaline, cortisol, when those hormones flood your system. Movement helps to metabolize them and reset your nervous system. And if you don't get that movement, if you just push down the stress and kind of like bottle it up, that tension gets stored and it just carries with you into your next meeting, your next interaction. Now how do you do it? Well, I mean, you just take short breaks between your meetings. Walk to go refill your water bottle, take a stretch before you log onto Zoom, or you're logging on before the camera turns on, right? Stretch. Roll those shoulders, get the neck moving. If you've got a standing desk, great, you can kind of, you know, kinda walk in place at your standing desk. Just one minute of movement can help change your nervous system. And now here, this is highly personalized. So I am a high energy person. I am the Energizer bunny. So high energy actions like shaking my hands or swinging my arms, like that's what works for me. You might respond better to a gentle shoulder roll, to a neck stretch. Just experiment with different options. See which movements help your body feel better, and then those are the ones you should do right. And here's why I think you should try this, because when you reset your energy through movement, you stop stress from piling up. You show up fresh and more engaged instead of dragging that stress from one meeting to the next. And here's the kicker. I mean, this is just, this is just the truth. Like friend to friend, hi, how you doing? That stress is gonna leave your body at some point. And so you can control how that happens. You can intentionally release your stress with love through that movement, or your body's just gonna vomit it all over everybody else through yelling, through anger, through some other action that you most likely will come to regret. So like a few shoulder rolls, some arm swings, like that's a, that's a whole lot easier way to discharge than yelling at somebody you love. All right. Final tip. Tip number four, anchor with connection. What is that? Well, you can use connection either with yourself or with others to regulate your nervous system. That could be putting one hand on your heart, the other hand on your belly. Why does that work? I don't know. It's some woowoo thing, but I tell you what it really does. Try it. Just put your hand on your heart, hand on your belly. Do your breathing exercises, and you will feel a difference. That could be making meaningful eye contact with someone who you know to be safe. Could be calling a trusted friend. It could just be taking a minute to share gratitude, something that's going well. Share a win with a teammate, and here's why it's important. Because we as humans are inherently social beings, we are wired for co-regulation. That means that our nervous systems calm more easily in a safe, supportive connection. It's why our kids come to us for hugs when they're upset, because Our bodies literally help their bodies to relax, to feel safe. And we can be clear, right friend to friend. The inverse is also true. This is why that anxious leader or that angry coworker infects the whole team so quickly because we feed off each other's energy. and if you're a deeply empathetic person, you do this more than most for everyone. Leadership can feel isolating at times. But connection tells your body, I am not alone, I am safe and I am supported because we all deserve support. So here's how you do it. You can schedule a quick check-in with someone you trust. If you have team meetings, you can start your meeting with people sharing their wins, Like what's working really well, or something they're grateful for for the week. You can take a breath with your team before diving into tough work, right? if you're having that team meeting where you're gonna talk about how do we suck the egg on budget cuts? What are we gonna do to solve this thorny problem? You can take a moment at the beginning of the meeting and intentionally help everyone ground into that safety. It doesn't have to be a big deal, Just quick moments. Just, just an instance of connection can help to reset your nervous system. And here's why I think you should try this. When you anchor in connection, you build a team. That trusts each other and draws strength from each other. You create psychological safety, which helps your team to feel calmer, more engaged, more willing to collaborate. That is the secret sauce that you find in teams that work well, where everyone seems happy and willing to help each other out. It's a culture of collaboration. I mean, with maybe some healthy competition. That's a great thing with with teams too. But they have this connection, right? That connection comes from the intentional connection I'm talking about here. So as we wrap up, let's recap the four tips. One ground through your senses. You literally bring your body back to the present Moment, two, breathe with intention. Focus on that breath and help that breath regulate your nervous system. Three, move your body. Let your body discharge any stress that you're holding. And four. Anchor with connection. Have the others in your life help bring you back to calm? And let your calm centered, grounded energy help regulate the members of your team. None of these practices take a long time. You don't need a day off or a week's retreat. You don't need to go on some like silent meditation retreat to reset your nervous system. You can regulate. Right where you are in the middle of the day. Most of these you can even do in public, and the payoff is that you make clearer decisions, you communicate with more confidence, and you model the kind of calm presence that your team can rely on. That's what sustainable, authentic leadership looks like. So here's your challenge. Choose one of these tips and practice it today. Now, like now, now. Maybe it's grounding before your next meeting, breathing, before sending an email, and just notice the change in how you feel and then share it with me. I would love to know how these tips help you, so you can find me at Women Lead Well on all social platforms. So do it today and then reach out to me and let me know. Now, if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment. Not adrenaline and don't forget to like and subscribe. And you know, I usually mention the mental load reset, the values clarification exercises at the end of each episode. But today I wanna highlight a different resource on the free resources page. At Women Lead well.net, you'll find Leading Through Storms. It's a handbook that I developed earlier this year to help leaders shepherd their teams through challenging times. 2025 has been kind of rough for a lot of people. So if your team is undergoing a restructuring, if it's facing a period of uncertainty, if it's got its own challenges, I invite you to check out Leading Through Storms. It's got a five step framework for communicating tough news tips on how to build team resilience through adversity, guidance on how to handle emotional reactions with empathy, and a whole lot more. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Ham, and this is joyfully unstoppable.