Do you ever feel relief when your work day is done? Maybe it’s when the clock hits a specific time or when that last thing on your to do list is crossed off. It is when you can transition from work life to personal time, but that isn’t always an easy transition.

No matter how you commute, work from home or do shift work, here are five strategies you can use to train your brain and body to know it is time to shift out of work mode.

Inventory. One great way to stop thinking about your day is to reflect on how you felt the day went. Identify what you liked, didn’t like, what went well, or didn’t. This can be a clear time for you to shift through all of these thoughts, evaluations, and worries before you get to your front door. If you find these thoughts spiral, try picturing placing them in a cabinet or chest and mentally locking them up. Sometimes it can even be helpful to remind yourself you’re not being paid for your worry time!

Snack. The time from lunch to dinner can be long and t...

As I have been researching more strategies to calm a nervous system, one thing I keep seeing repeated is how routines or regular rituals can really help bring a sense of calm to your days and weeks. I have already written about what building blocks you need to create a supportive routine, but I wanted to come back to this topic because…

…the most common feedback I hear from clients is that these routines feel overwhelming, like another thing to add to your ‘to do list’, and that can have the opposite effect of calming your system.

Below I outline a number of small examples of routines and rituals you can try out and see if they work for you. And remember: you don’t have to be perfect at this! For one person, doing something every day can be helpful because of the frequency, for someone else doing one thing weekly gives them the wiggle room (aka permission!) to show up when they can.

• In the morning, create a routine that takes you from sleepy to energized. This can look like freshe
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I have been doing a deep dive into regulating a nervous system and how it can support myself and my emotional eating clients. But the thing I have found as I researched is that there is a lot of talk about the benefits of a regulated nervous system, but not a lot on the specifics of how to actually do that, so I wanted to break this down with real strategies you can use when you need them!

Your nervous system is a complex and important part of your body, but at base it is a communications highway (your brain, nerves, and spinal cord are all part of it, so it even kind of looks like a highway!). This means it gathers information from our senses, processes all this information, and then has the body react as it thinks appropriate.

It’s an important tool to keep us alive because it turns this information into action—from literally running away to digesting the meal you just had. But it can also jump to conclusions based on past events (like traumatic experiences) and immediately slip in...