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Wayward Wellness Coaching

What if your nervous system already knows the answer?

Published 7 days ago • 4 min read

Wayward Wellness Coaching

Utilize Your Senses to Recharge…

…because your body already knows the way back. You just have to let it lead.

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What We’ll Cover This Week:

  • The one sense that goes directly to the limbic system — and why that matters
  • Why Brainspotting and jasmine have more in common than you'd think
  • What your body might be trying to tell you when it craves something specific
  • This week's practice: the sensory anchor check-in
  • On the Hustle Rebels Podcast: Aaron Tisdale-Parker on rebuilding identity after a career transition
  • And something I'm sitting with behind the scenes… stay close

Listen to the AUDIO HERE 🎧 — [Weekly Recharge Newsletter AUDIO]

Hey Reader,

We made it to May. And honestly — can we just sit with that for a second?

There's something about the first week of May that feels like a quiet exhale. The light shifts. The air changes. Something loosens — if you let it.

I don't know if it's the season or the symbolism, but every year May feels like a reset. And after the weekend I just had, I was very ready for one.

This past weekend I was in Pasadena for a Brainspotting training. Without getting into all of it — it was a lot. The kind of weekend where you go in expecting to learn and end up being reminded, full-body, just how much the nervous system holds.

I came home with a lot to process.

Right before I went to the airport — somewhere between still feeling all of it and needing to function like a human being — I found myself doing something almost instinctively.

I wasn't thinking about tools or techniques. I just reached for my senses. Water nearby. The smell of jasmine in the air. That was it. Nothing more complicated than that.

And it worked. Not in a "fixed everything" way — but in a come back to your body way. Which is sometimes all you need.

· · ·

Here's something I find genuinely fascinating — and a little wild when you think about it.

Of all five senses, smell is the only one with a direct line to the limbic system — the part of the brain that governs emotion, memory, and survival. Every other sense routes through the thalamus first. Gets processed. Then lands in emotion. Smell skips the line entirely. It arrives in the body before the mind has even had a chance to analyze it.
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Now here's where it gets interesting — because the entire purpose of Brainspotting is to access that same limbic system. The whole point of the modality is to bypass the analytical, talking mind and reach the deeper brain where trauma and emotion are actually stored, so that processing can be more effective, more efficient, and longer lasting. That's the goal. That's the whole thing.
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So it's not lost on me that while I was sitting in a room full of people doing Brainspotting practicals — all of us trying to reach the limbic system through the eyes — my body quietly started craving the jasmine outside. The one sense that goes directly there. No detour. No processing required. My nervous system knew exactly what it needed, even when I didn't. 😅

The body is always communicating. That's the part we keep forgetting.

· · ·

🛠️ This Week's Practice: The Sensory Anchor Check-In

Find a quiet moment this week — even five minutes — and run through this:

  1. What scent are you drawn to right now? Don't overthink it — what just comes up?
  2. Pair it with something sensory: water, a texture, a sound. Let the combination do its thing.
  3. Sit with it for a few minutes and just notice. Not analyze — notice.
  4. If you're curious, look it up. See if the symbolism or properties connect to something you're moving through.

You don't have to think your way back to yourself. Sometimes you just have to breathe.

If you end up being curious — look up whatever scent, sound, or sensation you find yourself drawn to this week. Whether it's the properties of a plant, the symbolism of an element, or just what that thing has always meant to you — you might be surprised by what you find, and whether it has any significance to what you're actually moving through right now. The body doesn't reach for things randomly.

· · ·

🎧 This Week on the Hustle Rebels Podcast

This week's episode, my guest, Aaron Tisdale-Parker, has lived everything we talk about in this space — and then some. From building a role in the public sector that was literally designed around his skillset, to having it stripped away when the administration changed, Aaron gets real about what survival mode actually feels like, what it costs your nervous system, and how you find yourself again on the other side of a loss you didn't see coming.

This one is for anyone who has ever tied their worth to a title — and had to figure out who they were without it.

​🎧 Listen here: [Burnt Out and Starting Over: How to Rebuild Your Identity After a Career Transition ft. Aaron Tisdale-Parker]​

Before I close this one out — I want to stop and actually say thank you.

Genuinely. From the bottom of whatever was left of me after that weekend. Thank you for being here, for reading, for replying when something lands, for trusting this little space with your time. Building Wayward Wellness requires believing someone is on the other side — and you are. That means more than a newsletter format can really hold.

May feels like the right time to say it. New month. Fresh start. New flowers in bloom.

· · ·

Oh — one more thing. I've been sitting with something behind the scenes and this weekend revealed that for me. A new direction. A new modality. Something that's been quietly taking shape that I'm really excited about for you guys. I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

But stay close.

New here? Or feeling nostalgic?

Want to read previous newsletters?

Check em out here: [Read Previous Editions of The Weekly Recharge]

As always, I appreciate you guys and always here if you have questions or even a chat. Share the Weekly Recharge with a friend so they can be regulated just like you.

- Renae

Wayward Wellness Coaching
Hustle Rebels Podcast

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246

I love sharing the Weekly Recharge with you! Before you hit unsubscribe, if there's something you'd like to see differently in each newsletter, shoot me over a message - I love hearing feedback and growing to help you however I can. But completely understand if it's not in alignment.
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Wayward Wellness Coaching

I talk about the things that keep high-achieving professionals stuck in lives they don’t actually want.

I’m just an average woman who got tired of being a slave to the system. But as an overachiever and people pleaser, I didn’t know what stepping away looked like, so I stayed stuck for way too long — until my body made the decision for me. Three major surgeries and a LOT of reflection time later, I finally made the decision to step away from my career as a firefighter paramedic and start Wayward Wellness Coaching. Now I challenge others to ask the hard questions that keep them stuck in the same loops and cycles I was in. If you’re ready to quit being a slave to the system and Burn the Blueprint, join me and subscribe to my Weekly Recharge.

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