REWILD + FREE - Curiosity as a balm for your nervous system (86)

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

I waited over a month for a date night and when it finally happened, I ended up soooo anxious and crying in the bathtub LOL In this episode, I tell the whole story including how I ended the evening with a potent reminder about the power of curiosity As well as: ✨ Why “doing all the right things” doesn’t always regulate your nervous system ✨ How birth and business both ask for deep trust ✨ What to do when you’re spiraling and your tools aren’t working ✨ The surprising role curiosity plays in soothing your system This one’s tender, personal but I'm confident you'll find threads to resonate with! As always, I want to hear from you, so don't be a stranger and connect with me on IG (@nicolepasveer)..💌 Resources + Links Mentioned in this Episode: → Sign up to be notified of the next Reset Room (a free 15 min drop-in on zoom to nourish your nervous system)→ Pre-Register for the Matrescence + Nervous System class → Book an ALIVE session Mentioned in this episode:All current offers including booking an ALIVE somatic strategy session or joining the HELD community can be found here: Current offers

Hey, this isn't one of those awkward pre-roll sponsorship ads that you tune out. I'm not cool enough to have sponsors. I just wanted to let you know of two powerful spaces that I've created that might be exactly what your system's been craving. The first one is alive. These are my one-on-one sessions where we tune out the noise, the industry standards, the pressure to figure it all out and tune into your body, your brilliance, and your own knowing. If you're craving a business and a life that moves toward your visions without fucking with your nervous system,

this truly is whole body strategy. Your mind, body, spirit, and heart are all invited to the table. We leave together nervous system wisdom, cyclical embodiment, desire mapping, value-led strategy, and a hell of a lot of permission to do it your way. You get a 75-minute session plus 48 hours of voice note integration for $195. If you're someone who holds space for mothers, a coach, a doula, a matrician guide, or educator, Held might be the space you've been waiting for. It's a monthly community that I am co-leading with Lauren of Ness to nourish. It's for mother-serving visionaries who want to grow their impact without bypassing their bodies.

Held includes two live calls a month and a Slack space that you'll actually want to be in. It's not a performance-driven echo chamber. It's a much-needed space that we're all craving, one with nuance, deep witnessing, and real exploration. Held is a place to feel less alone, to meet your edges and to root into your leadership in a way that feels aligned with your values and your capacity. For a limited time, you can join as a founding member and walk in at only $66 a month. So if either of these are stirring something in you, check out the links in the show notes. Don't overthink it, you'll know if it's yours. You're listening to Rewild and Free. This is the go-to podcast for conscious and holistic

entrepreneurs who are ditching society's to-do list for intentional living, freedom, and abundance. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pazvir. I'm an ex-nurse, turn-matrescence guide and business coach, leading women just like you into the new paradigm. Keep listening if you're ready to unsubscribe from patriarchal motherhood, bro marketing, and boss babe culture. Because in this space, we use nature as our framework as we move towards feminine embodied business development, cyclical orientation, and slow living. Together, let's rewild and remember as we break free from survival and reconnect to

what truly matters. Okay friend, steep your tea and take the most loving breath you've given to yourself today and let's go. Hey friends, it's Nicole here. I have been wanting to, I mean, I think I say this all the time that I wanna do more shorter solo episodes and I, you know, I get excited about it. I do them for a while and then I fall off the wagon and oh my God, can we just like

normalize how okay that is? And I also want to name that I have been in an interesting season of my life. Hopefully more to share soon. There's been a lot of pivots and transition and, you know, just a lot of pausing and having to discern what my next step is. And as you probably know, that's uncomfortable. You know, I've been in, for lack of a better word, a messy middle or a liminal space. a messy middle or a liminal space. There's been huge bouts of anxiety and depression, and I think I've been teetering burnout and it sounds like my dog is throwing up behind me, so just excuse whatever sounds you might be hearing in the background. I'm not taking

that out, but I'm not really planning to edit this because... because, anyways, yeah, I want to, I want to press pause on that and have a whole episode related to burnout and my own idea and perspective on it and what I've learned specifically in this low key burnout cycle because a lot came through. And so I'm excited to share that when a little bit more is integrated. But for now, I wanted to bring my voice to an experience I had last night. And after the experience, I tried to put words on paper or I guess more accurately typed into the notes app of my phone and wrote some stuff down. And so I thought about just reading that out loud, but I think that will be kind of clunky. So I'm just going to speak my experience out loud and see what comes through.

So for context, my husband and I have been trying to be more consistent, whatever that word means, with date nights. And we are lucky we have grandparents close by and access to somewhere that Aubrey can go for a couple hours. But it has been a couple weeks since we've actually had a date night and it felt like a long time coming. It literally felt like it had been months and I looked it up, I Googled how long it has been since, and I looked it up, I googled how long it has been since the date of the last time we dropped her off at his parents, at my in-laws, and it's only been 34 days, or 35 days I guess today. And it's just so

funny how time can feel so different, and just like the perception of time can feel so different, because honestly, I feel like I've lived lifetimes in that time, what a month it has been. And like I said, I'm going to do a future episode kind of just talking more about my experience and my process teetering, burnout, and coming out of it. But anyways, we had a date night last night, and classic, we didn't have any plans. We didn't, you know, have dinner and reservations. We weren't even planning to leave the house. And so by the time my husband got home, and also more context, Aubrey doesn't sleep. She never has. I'm sure she will at some point, but this week is not the week. She has not been sleeping well. And my husband

is also working basically 13 hour days consistently this time of year. And so he's tired and he had no desire to really go out or do anything. Really all he wanted to do was, you know, chill and relax. And so I respected that and we had no plans. So we ended up literally just reheating leftover lasagna and eating it at the counter. Nothing exciting. And then spent the rest of our hours together just watching a couple episodes of Ginny and Georgia.

Also, I can shout out to Dylan that he watches those kind of shows with me. I don't know if that's normal. I don't know if everyone's husband watches, you know, like, I don't even know what kind of show you would describe Ginny and Georgia to be, but I'm grateful that he watches that stuff with me. I can't get him on the Love is Blind train though, I've been binging that on my own and I will keep shamelessly really really love Love is Blind. I just finished season six, so I'll be starting season seven too. If there's any other Love is Blind fans out there, please reach out to me because I have nobody to talk about it with.

Anyway, so last night we watched a couple seasons of Ginny and Georgia and I just found myself feeling so anxious. Like my body was restless. I could literally feel like my legs vibrating and like my foot constantly like tapping and I just felt so distracted like I had a really hard time being present with the show and being present with Dylan. I just wanted to be on my phone and I get that like being on my phone is a way to kind of like numb out. It's funny how the show didn't feel like numbing out the show actually felt like something to be present with.

But yeah, I was just feeling really uncomfortable in my body. I was trying to, you know, just be a non-judgmental, compassionate witness to it, like I teach other people to do. And to kind of speed up the story, I, uh, yeah, experienced that discomfort for the couple hours that we were watching the show and, um, was just curious about it. And then after that, when it was time to go pick up Aubrey, I suggested to Dylan that he go pick her up solo and I was going to run myself a bath. And so I drew the bath. I did all the things, you know, I put the Epsom salts in and my favorite

bubble bath and I lit a candle and I was really just trying to down regulate myself and ground and kind of use the water as a opportunity to cleanse and just feel more grounded and clear. And it was interesting because I also was witnessing my mind racing through like all of the different tools that I know I have access to. And I can see so clearly how that running through that kind of mental list, that toolbox that I have, that I've been growing, was a sneaky way of trying to control and fix the situation. It was a sneaky way of me saying like, fix the situation. It was a sneaky way of me saying like, what I'm feeling in my body isn't right, it's wrong, and I want it to

go away. And I caught myself doing that and I kind of like, softened into that and was like, wait a minute here, this isn't what I actually want to do. I want to be with the sensations in my body. And so being in the bath really helped me to anchor into that. I slowed my breath down and I found myself just kind of rocking back and forth. I was using some physical touch to connect to my own skin and just the sensations that I was feeling internally. And I eventually found myself, you know, kind of like head in my arms. How do I want to describe this? Like that position of like, the position that you probably think of, of someone being really sad and grieving, I was in that position, right?

And I was rocking back and forth. My legs were bent, but like wide, and my head was being held by my hands. And I was just rocking back and forth. And my heart was beginning to pound and pound and pound. And it was almost like the quieter I got, the louder my heart was. And I finally just said, I literally said this out loud and I think I put a hand on my heart and I'm like,

this belongs, like I see you, I'm here for you. I know you're feeling scared right now." And as soon as I said those words out loud, it was like an immediate slowdown, like my heart completely softened and relaxed from my own voice, from my own witnessing. And that is just such a potent reminder. And it's very similar to, you know, toddlers, and I've talked about this before, but it's very similar to toddlers when they get hurt or something,

or whatever's going on for them in their little world. All they want is to be seen. And as soon as you see them and tell them, like, I see you, like, oh, I saw you got hurt, like that must hurt. They're usually okay. And they're not like actually hurt, right? They just want to be seen and validated in their experience. And so I recognized the power of doing that

for myself last night. And I know this, right? But it was just a really loud reminder. And then in kind of that same moment, I was still in that position of rocking and I found my eyes lock in gazing down at my womb space and my vulva. And it was like this really, really, really loud,

visceral reminder that I've been here before. I remember when I was pregnant with Aubrey, I spent so much time in the bath and it was truly the only place that I felt like I could connect to her and I could connect to my womb and I could connect to my experience in pregnancy thus far and I spent a lot of times visualizing my birth.

And so in that moment of, you know, legs wide, I'm kind of like hunched over, I'm staring down at my naked body and I'm being reminded of having that exact kind of moment in the tub, I guess, like four years ago. And it was just so impactful because what came through for me in that moment is, like, you don't have to know how something is gonna happen. You just have to keep holding the vision and remain curious and not be attached to the how. Right?

And so for birth, like I, I was preparing for a home birth and I was preparing for an unmedicated birth. And so in my visualizations, I would look down and be like, I don't fucking know how a baby is going to come out of this hole in my body, but I know what's going to happen, right? There was like that, that knowing, but I didn't know how I knew where we were going, but I know what's going to happen, right? There was like that knowing, but I didn't know how. I knew where we were going, but I didn't know how. And last night, when I kind of made that connection, it was this giant wave of, oh my god, oh duh, this is just

like my business. I don't need to know the how, I just need to keep holding the vision. And I'm obviously sharing this out loud with you because I have a feeling this might resonate in some way. I know my experiences are super personal and you might not have like that direct relation, but this idea of, you know, holding the vision and also just this, this concept of curiosity. I want to circle back to that. That's really kind of the point of this story is how impactful curiosity is because to our nervous systems, without getting too nerdy and too sciency, curiosity actually promotes this perfect hormonal cocktail. It's like an elixir for your nervous system because it's bringing you into, you know,

it's activating that safe and social parasympathetic branch of your nervous system where you are just like open and receptive and it's overcoming the fear in a non-bypassy way, right? It's not gaslighting anything. It's just that really innocent, I wonder. And it's that openness to possibility. And I think that was kind of the biggest medicine I received last night, is just how impactful landing in curiosity can be. Because as soon as I went there, as soon as I was reminded of, oh yeah, like that's it. Like you just have to be curious and

open and, you know, I guess like detached from the how. That's where like the magic can happen. And I felt my entire body soften and relax and like find a sense of peace for the first time that night and yeah that's my story. It is just really cool and I love you know learning through metaphors and I love sharing some of these metaphors out loud because I think it really does help land some of these these concepts and I know I could have just kind of like jumped to the point and been like oh you have to like choose curiosity. But also like, it's not that easy, right? And I think being able to anchor to some of those examples and those other pieces of evidence

that we already have in life to remind us that, oh yeah, we don't have to have it all figured out. And oh yeah, we don't have to overcomplicate things. And oh yeah, like obviously a level of preparedness is great, but there's also being overprepared and almost like driving yourself crazy and being so attached to the story and the anxiety around it that you're actually like pulled out of the moment. And so, yeah, that's kind of what I experienced last night. And I just wanted to share that wisdom with whoever is listening to this. What else do I have to say?

I feel like I could talk for literally forever. I want this to be short, but I do want to set the intention out loud that I want to, like I said from the beginning, just have more episodes like this that are a little bit more ramble-y. This is what I used to do. I think y'all love a good ramble, right? I was actually talking with a friend earlier today that I want to give myself the challenge to even just drop five minute voice notes in this

space for a week and just see what happens, just see how it feels as an experiment for myself. So maybe I'll do that, maybe I won't. We'll feel into it. Yeah, there's some exciting things happening in my world right now. If you are a birth worker or a mother care provider, Lauren and I are creating a whole class about matressin and the nervous system. Super juicy, super informative.

If you are kind of feeling like both of those things are just buzzwords and it's also an opportunity to really walk away with a different perspective and reframing the intricacies and the nuances of those things, we're really diving into why you can't talk about matressence without looking at the nervous system and how I would say kind of generally speaking the nervous system is kind of an afterthought in some of the motherhood spaces. You know, we all know it's really important, but we're still really obsessing with mindset and how do we

normalize the mother's experience and how wide in her permission field and help her just change the way she's looking at herself. But beneath all that, it's so much deeper than just intellectualizing all of the shifts that going through matricence touches in a woman's life. It's actually like looking at how her nervous system is responding to that experience. And so we want to nerd out on that out loud. That class is on pre-sale right now, so I'll leave the link in the show notes for that.

And then I also have my somatic strategy sessions, my live sessions, those are always available. And I'm also working on some more specific nervous system stuff. I'm really lit up right now just on coming back to the foundations of the nervous system. And obviously that work is being weaved into my co-creations with Lauren, but I also want to bring it into my own work as well. And so I've started offering a drop-in 15-minute nervous system nourishment session on Zoom. This is completely free.

Like I said, it's 15 minutes. I'm calling it the Reset Room because the idea is to come and reset and feel resourced and stop over complicating the way that we are tending to our own nervous systems and really simplify what that can look like. And my whole thing is like micro, micro pause can create macro change. So really beginning to explore what it looks like to have these micro moments of nourishment, these micro moments of resetting, these micro moments of resetting,

these micro moments of rest and whatever else that might look like to you, coming back to yourself, really connecting to your own felt experience and kind of slowing your system down. And like I said, we don't need to overcomplicate it. It doesn't need to be in an hour-long somatic session. It doesn't need to be in a really intense breathwork session. We don't need to keep chasing the next breakthrough. What we really want to do is just soften the system more,

I don't even say more frequently, but maybe it is more frequently, right? It's kind of like the, what's that book called? The Slight Edge, maybe? Or Atomic, no, I don't know. The whole idea of micro actions adding up, the compound effect, right? That's kind of what I'm thinking there. And so yeah, I've been running those almost weekly. Very purposely they are going to be spontaneous and so they're not going to be at the same

date and time every week. So get on my email list if you're not already because that's where, well on Instagram obviously, that's where I'll be sharing the call times for that. And like said it's free, it's just a 15-minute drop-in, cameras on or off. And then I have some other things kind of percolating in my ecosystem right now, but like the whole experience from last night, there's things that are still being gestating and I need to just, you know, trust the process. So I'll take a spoonful of my own medicine right now and resist the urge to start word-vomiting on you, all of the ideas that I'm sitting with. Okay friends, I love you, thank you for listening.

As always, if anything lands or stirs from this episode, don't be a stranger. I love hearing from you in my DMs. I love a rambly voice note or even just a connection that you've made from this. I love hearing from you in my DMs. I love a rambly voice note or even just a connection that you've made from this. I love hearing from you. Okay, bye!