September 17, 2025

Simple Tools to Calm the Nervous System — with Gina Ross

Gina Ross is a psychotherapist and founder of the International Trauma-Healing Institute. In this episode, she shares simple, practical tools anyone can use to calm the nervous system and release trauma energy in daily life — alongside insights from her decades of work in conflict zones and communities worldwide.

Gina has trained thousands of professionals and community leaders in trauma-healing methods that bridge psychotherapy, neuroscience, and cross-cultural awareness. Her mission: to stop cycles of trauma before they spiral into cycles of violence.

In this episode we explore:
Simple, on-the-go tools to regulate the nervous system
How trauma energy gets stuck in the body — and how to safely release it
Ways to use these techniques in moments of overwhelm, reactivity, or stress
The wider picture of collective trauma in Israel, Palestine, and beyond
How trauma is transmitted across generations — and how healing can interrupt that cycle

This conversation is both practical and profound: a chance to learn tools you can use right now, and an invitation to see trauma not only as a wound, but as a pathway toward resilience and repair.

0:19 Gina Ross's Personal Path to Understanding Collective Trauma It's a difference between toxic fear and healthy fear, toxic anger and healthy anger. I don't want my feelings to go away. I want to be in control of them and not them in control of me. That's a very 0:48 Speaker 2 Welcome to RAW, where we explore what it means to stay human in the heart of conflict. I'm a New Glory. Today I'm speaking with Gina Ross, psychotherapist, author, and founder of the International Trauma Healing Institute. 1:05 For decades, Gina has been bringing trauma healing tools into communities and conflict zones across the world, teaching therapists, leaders, and ordinary people how to recognize trauma and how to release it. In our conversation, Gina shares not only her deep understanding of collective and generational trauma, but also something very practical and accessible. 1:28 Simple techniques you can use anywhere in daily life to calm your nervous system and release excess trauma energy from the body. These are tools for moments of overwhelm, stress, or reactivity, ways to come back into balance and resilience on the go. 1:45 We also explore the bigger picture, how trauma shapes societies, how it perpetuates conflict, and how it can be healed, both individually and collectively. This is a conversation about the urgency of trauma healing and the hope that with awareness and practice, we can all carry tools to support ourselves and one another. 2:10 Having lived on 4 continents, speaking 7 languages, she's brought trauma healing methods like Somatic Experiencing and her own method, Emotion Aid, to everyday people, soldiers, and professionals, even in the midst of war zones and national crises. 2:27 This conversation is about trauma, yes, but also about the body's wisdom, resilience, and the possibility of collective healing. Gina, welcome to RAW. 2:40 Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. What a wonderful introduction, Gina, you've. 2:44 Speaker 2 Lived in eight countries and speak 7 languages like I mentioned. What part of your personal experience would you say first made you realize that trauma isn't just individual, it's also collective? 3:02 Speaker 1 It's such an interesting question because as a therapist I was really working with metaphysical problems. Like I wanted to help people with their spiritual journey. I wasn't interested in trauma at all. I had no connection with drama, or I thought I didn't. 3:20 And then I realized that when people are traumatized, they cannot reach the spiritual domain in the same way. And then there was a very important work by Bessel van der COK, a report that he made about the cost of trauma in the world. 3:37 And that was like, oh, and then the other thing that was very fundamental that Peter said when I was working with him, he said trauma is at the root of violence. And I went like, I have to take this to the Middle East. I have to take this to the Israelis and the Palestinians. 3:52 That's how the journey started. It was not at all personal in that way. And only later I realized my mother really went through something very difficult because we left Syria. We we left like we were the last plane to leave before they closed the door on the Jews. 4:09 Speaker 2 What year was that? 4:10 Speaker 1 That was in 47 and my aunt who couldn't join us was left behind and couldn't leave for the next 15 years. So she left her sister and all her family behind. And then I realized, Oh no, no, there's much more trauma in our system than I thought, because we were very helped by the fact that we belong to a very strong Syrian community, Jewish community around the world. 4:36 And we all had a lot of faith. So we felt we had a very strong back. And we also left every time that there was going to be trouble. So we were very lucky. And we left also in a, in a good, like, in a good way. We were not terrified. Well, there was a terror, but for one day before we left Syria, that was when they called for the Palestinian partition, the partition of Palestine. 5:03 So I I thought because we had been so resourced, I didn't think at all of myself as a refugee or as having had problems or having had to deal with trauma. I felt we escaped trauma. 5:18 So I didn't have that consciousness of trauma until I start working with people. 5:24 Speaker 2 And makes me realize how much our self perception really has an impact on how we experience traumatic event. 5:31 Speaker 1 Plus, of course, my Judaism, which is like, you know, hope is our middle name and as as a Jewish people and, and resiliency, whether we like it or not, is part of our background and our legacy. So I was more oriented that way. I wasn't coming from any victimization background, interestingly enough. 5:52 Speaker 2 I'd like to just start at the beginning and distinguish between the trauma. How do we know what is trauma and what is trauma for one person is not necessarily trauma for another. And then what does it mean to actually be too negatively impacted by trauma? And what is normal kind of functioning after trauma? 6:11 Defining Trauma as Undischarged Energy in the Body So it has a lot to do with time. When there's a traumatic event that happens, it's going to impact our nervous system whether we like it or not. But there is a tremendous resiliency. There's a inherent ability to heal in the system that helps us digest an event and eventually have perspective over it and leave it behind us. 6:37 And even better than that, reinforce our strength, reinforce our power, our empowerment, and also help us transform. So that is the traumatic event itself. And so I think that everybody should understand and accept and be OK with, take away the stigma of trauma that our nervous system is going to be disturbed, is going to be impacted by bad events, difficult events. 7:09 Now, in general, if you are able to digest and process this event and your nervous system goes back to functioning, to normal functioning, then you're not, you're not traumatized. You're just, maybe it was acute stress that you went through. 7:30 And there's a normal way of going through that process and we're OK. But when time doesn't heal, then we are going to go into being more traumatized as people. And I'm, I'm going to give you a, a couple of definitions from somatic experiencing that are very helpful. 7:48 So one of them, we talk about trauma when we have a sense of loss of control. And what I mean, the loss of control is really loss of control over our own processes over, over my Physiology. Like my heart is beating fast like crazy all the time. 8:05 I have an anguish in my chest or in my stomach all the time, so there's a exaggerated, very strong and also inappropriate emotional reactions to anything that's happened. 8:21 I'm easily triggered or my thought. My belief system becomes very negative or very polarized. My actions are more impulsive and are not necessarily constructive at all. So that means I lost my ability to have my neocortex run the show. 8:39 Speaker 2 Meaning the higher functioning, the more kind of evolved part of the brain. You're saying it when I'm too traumatized. The kind of primitive brain is running the show. It's on fight flight freeze longer than it should. 8:51 Speaker 1 Right, exactly. So so I want to give the definition of trauma of in somatic experiencing, which I think is extremely helpful because it takes away the stigma. So basically you think about it as a release of stress hormones in the body in order to meet the threat, the fight, flight that we have to execute in order to defend ourselves. 9:19 So there's a release of stress hormones in the body. And if we successfully fight or flee, then we're basically using up that energy, which is very, very powerful, very strong. And we go back to homeostasis, we're fine. We go back to balance to the baseline, but if we don't succeed in fighting or fleeing, which happens with like it's overwhelming circumstances and we cannot, the body will go naturally into a freeze, which is a healthy reaction. 9:50 It's not a bad reaction, but then that very powerful stress hormonal energy is not released, has not been used up and then it remains stuck in the body. So we talked about trauma as excess energy stuck in the system and in completed movements of defence. 10:10 Whatever I needed to do, I started doing. My body was ready, my brain was ready, but I didn't succeed. OK, so it's then then frozen or undischarged freeze, Unreleased freeze is really at the baseline of trauma. 10:29 So then it makes it very simple. OK, so if it's stuck energy, let me release it. If it's in completed movements, let me complete them. And the miracle of it that if I do that afterwards, I can actually release my body, release my nervous system and my mind and my body mind from all of the impact of trauma. 10:51 That's what's so extraordinary and more extraordinary than that. It was like the the discovery that the brain is plastic, which means that we could change our experience and our brain and whatever happened to us through new experiences. 11:09 But it was enough to do it in the imagination level, which was extraordinary. So now I can take you through a corrective experience of what happened to you. I'll help you release. I'll help you complete the movements and that's it. 11:26 Like that was extraordinary, the capacity of somatic experiencing to really discharge the nervous system. Just take it back to baseline. 11:36 Speaker 2 For people who don't know somatic experiencing, it's a concept founded by Doctor Peter Levine. Can you expand a little bit on that? 11:44 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, basically this is what was very interesting that he brought to the field as a novelty, is that trauma was in the body. People thought that we go crazy, it's in the mind, all of that stuff. He said no, it's the encounter between the body, the nervous system of a person, and the traumatic event. 12:07 It's not even the event itself, but how this particular nervous system is encountering this particular event. And that's where you have 10 people going through the same event and they are affected in very different ways because of that. 12:22 So that meant the understanding that the trauma was actually in the reptilian brain and the emotional brain more than the neocortex, and learning how to speak the language of the reptilian brain, which was the language of inner sensations. 12:39 And what is inner sensations is what I was saying before. My heart beating fast. I have constriction in the chest, butterfly in the stomach, tension in my neck, bracing my arms. It's all very physical. 12:55 And that's like the most basic experience that we have. Baby starts life with that. Not with feelings, not with thoughts, but with like, is this pleasant or unpleasant, yummy or yucky? It's basically that's how we're operating. 13:10 So we take it down to this very, very basic level of the internal sensation. 13:16 How Focusing on Sensations Heals the Nervous System And there we encounter a miracle that I say was created by Borre Olam and was put into a guideline by Peter Levine, which is that if we focus on the constriction, just that that's all we have to do. 13:33 No analysis, no criticism, nothing. We just focus on it. The body, the healer releases it and there are specific signs of release. Things like, and you would know very much from your work, like a breath that comes by itself. 13:50 We call it the reptilian breath. I'll talk about it later a little bit more. And trembling and shaking, yawning, gurgling of the stomach, heat wave, warm sweat and goosebumps. Any one of those like excellent, your body's actually releasing by itself some of that stuck energy and they were like, wow, if this is built in, if that capacity were is inborn is inherent to us, that means that we can really heal the world. 14:25 We can really work at the collective level because I don't have to bring my knowledge and put it into you. All I have to do is help you bring in your own capacity into action. That's what was so exceptional about it, and that's really once I understood that it really directed my life for the next 30 years, I would say about the healing global trauma and collective trauma and working at the global level. 14:55 Speaker 2 Aside from living through war for the past two years, of course. We had the war between Israel and Iran. When the sirens would go off, I would feel these hormones flooding my system. You know, these stress hormones which allowed me to be as sharp as attack as military commander, grabbing my kids, seeing where is the nearest shelter, speaking with them in a kind of calm and collected manner in order not to traumatize them, while at the same time being very, very fast. 15:30 And so I had that ability to fight or flee, right. And, and I think what I understood from what you said before is that's, that's actually, I think in many ways allowed me to not experience it as too traumatizing because I acted, I fled to the shelter, I fought to grab my kids, you know, very quickly, etcetera. 15:55 And in between, I think fortunately the missiles for me personally were not too terrifying. So in between all these missile attacks, I had the ability to calm my nervous system a little bit. So that's that's about the war. 16:11 Unfortunately a week ago something else happened in my life which was completely unexpected and in a way for me personally, I think more traumatizing, which was that we received recordings from my my little ones, my 2 year olds nursery school, the gun showing and one of the two recordings are with my child showing abusive language. 16:40 And it's the same nursery school where my two older kids went as well with the same caretaker. My two older kids are nine and seven and I took my son out of the nursery school. But I now I'm in a state where I don't really know what happened there on a daily basis. 17:01 I, I know that I spent a lot of time there and it and it seemed fine. I know my older kids seem fine. And yet my mind can create all these either positive or negative scenarios. And so I find myself in a kind of constant low level discomfort, anxiety, fear. 17:25 And first of all, I, I'd love to hear if you have any thoughts about that. But as I was doing research about your work today, I listened to your 15 minute YouTube video where you talk about bringing attention to the sensations in our bodies. 17:42 So not necessarily the thoughts or the emotions, but just the sensation of this kind of butterflies in my stomach, this kind of tingling in my brain. And you said bring attention to the sensation, 1 sensation at a time. And it's actually very counterintuitive for me because what I might normally do is actually want to move away from that sensation by either numbing, taking a Xanax or going out doing something, watching some YouTube videos or Instagram distracting, etcetera. 18:16 And then you said, and this was today. So I thought it was worth the mention, you know, bring your attention to the sensation. And I brought my attention to this kind of like buzzing in my brain. And you said, if you're going to bring your attention to this, it's going to dissipate. And it did actually. 18:33 I was on my bed when I was doing that and I fell into a pretty relaxing sleep. 18:40 Speaker 1 The body does it's magic, the body the healer comes into into play. 18:46 Speaker 2 For me, the the mind went, well, maybe my body shouldn't be healing. Maybe I should be anxious about this. Maybe I should be digging into the past and driving myself crazy. And, you know, maybe I don't want to just be chill about this and fall asleep, you know? 19:03 Speaker 1 I know people, people say that all the time, but but you know what? There's a reason to be angry or there's this. So I say the difference that we're making, we're not cancelling your experience and what you need to do in life. When you become centred because your nervous system is clean, your ability to operate is at its maximum functionality, it's exactly the opposite. 19:28 You'll, you'll be able to circle the situation, notice what it needed, if you need more information, if you need more, what other people can tell you, what are you speaking to? Other mothers, watching your kid, all of that stuff. 19:43 At the opposite, you're going to be able to operate in a much better function. It's a difference between toxic fear and healthy fear, toxic anger and healthy anger. I don't want my feelings to go away. I want to be in control of them and not them in control of me. 20:02 That's a very big difference, basically. 20:05 Speaker 2 That's that's so, so well said and I think it it, it really clarifies it for me. Anger can be healthy, so it can it, it can be a boundary creating emotion where you say enough, I won't allow this to go on or, you know, I need to take action as well as fear, which can be healthy when it means that, like I said with the missiles, yes. 20:30 As opposed to being kind of in a ruminating state, which is what happens, for example, a lot for me at night and not for other people as well, where thoughts are just all over the place and and they're kind of running the show. 20:44 Speaker 1 And that's where you ground them in the body and you can help them digest this way. It's really understanding the power, the healing power of the body. 20:59 Speaker 2 If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to RAW on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review and share it with someone who might find it meaningful. You can also explore more about the show and subscribe to my newsletter at With a nuke.com. 21:19 Navigating Collective Trauma with Israeli Resilience and Unity So going back to the kind of national level, you've been working in this region for so many sort of for decades, working in a field of trauma, and then October 7th happens. I imagined that you could never have imagined something something like this, did it? 21:37 Speaker 1 No, I have been. I have been actually very fearful of this for many years. 21:43 Speaker 2 Would you say it was traumatizing for you as someone who had worked and or who you know dedicated their life to healing? 21:52 Speaker 1 You know, people ask me that question sometimes. It seems that I have a veil that protects me from being overwhelmed most of the time. Maybe the different things that came to the picture. Yeah, First of all, our people have gone through so many different events in our history and we have survived all of them. 22:13 We have been able to manage all of them. So I immediately put myself at the service of all my students. I'm teaching on Zoom all the time. I'm with Israel almost every day, and I'm there 4 * a year anyway for the last 25 years. So basically I just made myself available for a few hours every week where they could talk about what's happening and also how to deal with the people that they were receiving in their practice. 22:39 So I was very, very, very oriented towards bringing the healing vortex out and not letting the this convolution and the chaos and the tremendous pain take over. The pain was there, but we needed to be operative. 22:55 We needed to be extremely functional. I saw that we could not let go of our resiliency. We could not go into self pity. We could not go into Oh my God, into the horror of it and only be in it. We could not let it devastate us. 23:12 We needed to be moving forward and really fighting and really being resilient. So that was my orientation completely the whole time. 23:21 Speaker 2 And looking at the Israeli society, which you know very well and had been treating on some level for so long, has anything surprised you? Do you find more trauma than you would have expected? Less of it? 23:37 How would you define it? And then maybe that's the right time also to talk about collective trauma. 23:42 Speaker 1 Well, first of all, the resiliency of of the Israelis and the resiliency of the Jewish people in general was very much in front of my face. Like that was like, thank God it's there. And when there is a major event that overcomes all the differences and all the animosities, there's a unity that comes into it too. 24:06 That. So I was watching this and I was saying, OK, good. This is what we have. This is who we are. This is what we need to promote. This is what we need to continue feeding. What did surprise me and and that was the difference, I think, between a born Israeli and somebody like me who was a poster child of the wandering Jew. 24:32 My consciousness was that we should never think that things cannot happen. And I kind of wanted to bring my experience as a millenary Jew, you know, and, and Judea left two countries overnight, you know, a lot of traditions and a lot of stuff. 24:54 But, but no, I, I wasn't surprised by the heroism. I wasn't surprised by the courage. I wasn't surprised by how we help each other and take care of each other and the, the incredible level of devotion that exists in the Jewish people. 25:09 I wasn't surprised by that. I was happy to see it and I wanted to clear up the path for it, that's all. 25:17 Applying Trauma Tools for Soldiers and First Responders Can you share about the work that you've been doing since October 7th? What populations have you been working with? 25:25 Speaker 1 It's more my students, what it's like they're going into every single field in every single area, traumatized area, every shocked area, whether it's the Nova people or the evacuated or the soldiers or the reserve soldiers that they're coming out the field. 25:41 So we have done different things at different levels. Right in the beginning of the war, I did free trainings for volunteers who wanted to go into the field but didn't know anything about trauma in the body. 25:57 So we did trainings for them. For example, we had the students from Ben Gurion coming back from Gaza to be students again from their reserve service. So we had a small course for them to do emotion aid, to be able to self regulate themselves and be able to enter normal life. 26:18 So we're designing that. We're designing something right now for the children in school. I train people in the defence ministry people and the police. So the different elements. I exactly know what we need to do for the first responders that really need to be able to have their burnout alleviated and their nervous system really released from everything that they went through because the front line is really our soldiers and our first responders basically. 26:48 After that comes the hospitals and and then the schools. The schools with the children is one of my main concerns. So we're doing something right now. We're organizing something for that field. I'll give you a couple of examples that were very interesting. 27:05 Two weeks after October 7, a young soldier that I had met in New York 5-6 years ago before that, and I spent an hour with him. So he calls me completely excited. 27:20 I have to tell you what happened. I have to tell you what happened. So what happens? And he said, well, I was fighting Hamas in Kibbutzberry for two weeks and we saw terrible, horrible things and it started affecting us. So I took my unit, we went into an empty house. 27:37 I did the tools that you taught me. I taught it to them and we were able to come out of there and not being traumatized and continue our service. And I go like, bless you because that's what I want is every soldier to have that before they go into battle. 27:53 First of all, they can help themselves and then they can help each other in the field during battle. 27:58 Speaker 2 So it involves, for example, for that soldier perhaps grounding into the body. It can be feeling your feet on the ground, looking around and seeing objects rather than just, you know, the ruminations and the fear of the mind. 28:12 Speaker 1 Well, let me take you through that because there are a couple of steps. Yeah, Yeah. So if I'm overwhelmed, like I'm really in shock, the first thing to do is to ground myself. But then you go into the body, you track your body and you see what's left in terms of activation, which sensations of constrictions are there, and you discharge each one by themselves. 28:35 Then you go over the event again, what you were thinking, see what's left as energy, release it again, and then go over until there's nothing. And you can have a very different take on it, which is the thinking brain is taking over from the emotion. 28:51 Speaker 2 Of course, I assume you wouldn't advise people to relax their nervous system in the middle of in the middle of battle it it might be afterwards. 28:59 Speaker 1 Actually, actually, no, it's not about relaxing. You see, this is the difference that this is about releasing the excess energy in their body. That's actually going to create some obstacles in there. It's not going to be helpful to have that excess energy and you see it and the mistakes that get made. 29:18 Let me tell you this reserve commander, one of my and this was the second Lebanon war and his unit had to go up a hill and conquer the hill every day. And Hezbollah was hitting on them, but they couldn't see the idea of protecting them. They really got into a lot of rage and he wouldn't connect with their parents anymore. 29:37 So he did a wonderful thing. You know the infinite sign is is refers. 29:44 Speaker 2 To. 29:45 Speaker 1 The age, but a lying age, you know, the infinite sign lying down really refers to the trauma vortex and the healing vortex and the movement that's happening all the time between them. So he drew like with the yarn and the infinite sign between 2 trees and had them walk it. 30:03 And they released their anger this way and they were able to continue doing the work that they had to do. It's very important that talking about collective trauma, very important that we release the nervous system from whatever it was impacted because if we don't release it, it's there. 30:21 We're coping, we're resilient, we're OK. Then another event, more stuff in the nervous system and another, another, and then one little thing and we go into PTSD and this is Kaval. No need for that. If we clean our nervous system from every event that happens and take it to baseline, then it's ready. 30:42 Because when I'm in baseline, actually my instinct of survivals are very awake but very productive in the right way. They do exactly what they need to do. They gather that there's a danger right away and they're doing the right response without the hyper vigilance, without the extra stuff. 31:03 So us being able to discharge that to release all of the impact, it's like we have a bigger container because there's more stuff that we're going to have to handle. You know, it's still not over. So our resiliency, it's already great, but it can be even bigger if we keep discharging and releasing the excess energy, not the one that we need, but the excess energy left from all these events. 31:34 Gina's Commitment to Healing Across Divides and Therapies As someone who works in the trauma field, I assume that you you you have many colleagues, friends who who might not have a connection to Israel or to Judaism. Since you live in the United States, have you been like like many other Jews? 31:51 Have you been surprised or hurt by any of your professional circles? 31:57 Speaker 1 I've been dealing with anti-Semitism in the trauma field for a very long time and having a a solo battlefield with them for a while. I did the I did the presentation to like the all of the faculty of SE around the world on that somatic experiencing, somatic experiencing 4 years ago because I was aware this is the this is the difference. 32:23 I hear it from my colleagues. 32:25 Speaker 2 I'm wondering, you know, I can, I can hear you're, you're, you're very clearly passionate about it and about Israel and its right to exist and defend itself. Have you also had any worry about trauma on the other side or, or is that not something that you allow yourself to take in? 32:44 No. 32:45 Speaker 1 It's not bad. It's not bad at all. First of all, the reason why I brought SC into Israel so much experiencing was to bring peace between the Palestinians and Israel. So that was the intention and as a Jew that grew up in the Arab world, I feel emotionally very connected with them. 33:03 We emotionally were very on the same vibes. And I taught in Ramallah and I had Israeli Arab students, both the journalist group and also I taught therapist in Ramallah. And even after October 7th, there's a friend of mine who has a specific team is working with in in Ramallah and he asked me to do a training for them and I did it. 33:26 That was like 4-5 weeks after October 7th. So I don't have that kind of targeted hatred or rage. I understand. I try to understand the fundamentalists, I try to understand the others. I don't understand the Palestinians. 33:42 I try to understand everybody because it's the only way that you can do conflict resolution. Otherwise you cannot. But I do understand what happens in war, and I make room for that. I am very aware of the enmity that's there and the and the implacable side of it. 34:03 So I'm I'm not confusing myself with where my energies have to go. As I said, anybody that comes to me, I don't care who they are, where they're coming from with the desire to heal or to configure resolution. 34:18 I'm at the service, but I my commitment is to the survival of my people. And now here's what's so interesting For the survival of my people, I have to be committed to the healing of other people, and that's the beauty of it. 34:40 So I'm committed to the healing, but I'm not committed to the guilt. It's two different things. And I think this is the clarity that the Israelis and the Jews all over the world need to have that I feel there's still a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion is there? 34:58 Speaker 2 Necessity, room for mainly necessity for other therapies. When you're living through trauma, when you're either a soldier or a family of hostage or just an average Israeli who's gone through so much, so much difficulty, your modality, is that enough? 35:15 Or is there a necessity for talk therapy and the kind of more mainstream psychological therapies that we might know of? 35:26 Speaker 1 So SE is enough in the sense that it actually gets integrated into all kind of therapies. So there is stock therapy in SE. You can combine it with, I have people from every single modality possible that come to the trainings, EMDR people, CBT people, PE people, dialectics, psychiatrists, everybody, physiotherapist, yoga teachers, everybody is coming into SC because it's the integration of the body into it. 36:01 So it can be used everywhere in every modality at the same time. It's a modality that stands by itself. Now I can say for example, that EMDR does with the belief system, very powerful processing. 36:17 It's very good that way. So I recommend my students to take EMDR. I asked the EMDR people to recommend that they take SE because we're talking about the complementarity, bringing every single powerful item. 36:34 So you've got the movement therapist, you've got the the brain therapist like EMDR, you've got the body therapist like SE. So bring all the knowledge together because you know, we have our thoughts and our feelings and our sensations, our five senses and our behaviour, right? 36:51 So different therapies use one of those elements as their tool. It's just as he uses the body as the tool. That's all the sensation as the tool. So I think people that that combine things together are doing a big service to their clients. 37:13 I'm not a guru of anything by itself. I'm a guru of what works. So what works? Let's use it. Something better shows up, Let's change it. We need to transform it. Let's transform it. And there's no, yeah, there's no ideology in terms of the therapy for me. 37:30 Speaker 2 And yet if there were like one or two practices that you could leave our listeners with, you know, people who are not from this field might not know a lot about it. What are maybe one or two practices, exercises that you would recommend either in times of great stress, when the acute stress maybe is happening or afterwards when we're kind of processing is there, is there anything that you believe in more than more than others? 38:00 Practical Techniques for Calming Your Nervous System and Building Resilience It's not more than others, but what would be more available to them at that moment? Yeah, the different moments. First of all, learning the emotion aid the 15 minutes. By the way, it it, it exists in audio form in seven languages on the same web page, including in Arabic, and each one of them has a manuscript that can be downloaded from the audios. 38:23 OK. 38:24 Speaker 2 So. So that's the 15 minutes where you speak and you explain the various practices of emotion aid. Yeah. 38:31 Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm going to go through that. So if people practice that ahead of time, what they're doing, they're exercising their emotional muscles. You know how we exercise our physical muscles? If we exercise our emotional muscles, not only do we release stress, but we are also inoculate ourselves against stress and drunk. 38:54 So it's a preventive tool and not only an effective tool. The two things then you have very big activation, like really overwhelming because it's a big shock. It's a big, you know, missiles are, are falling and as you said, you know, the, the earth is shaking, the ground is shaking and all of that immediate grounding techniques. 39:17 So one of them is actually from EMDR and that's the butterfly hug that you can tap alternatively, or you can tap like this on on your legs 25 times, take a deep breath, tap again until you feel that you're, you have a little bit more control. 39:34 Then you can go into the body and discharge one by one. OK, that's one thing, for example, somebody mentioned about feeling exhausted, feeling very fatigued, which is not being able to sleep for what, 12 nights in a row because you never knew what was happening and people were woken up all over the country. 39:56 And if your place wasn't hit you, you worried about the other place where your kids are that could be hit. I mean, all of that stuff, right, that was going on. So there's something that I did called the power nap. It's a very short exercise where you tense, you start with your feet up to your head, you tense parts of the body, you tense, tense, let go, tense, tense, let go, tense, tense, let go. 40:20 And then you just drop every single cell into gravity. And what that does, it helps the nervous system to go back to its baseline. It's amazing how quickly it can work. Something as simple as that, like it's ridiculous how fast it can work. 40:39 You, you, you're busy, you don't have a lot of time. You put your alarm, you make sure it doesn't pass the time that you want. So 5-10 minutes, 15 minutes. And that gives you much more capacity for energy after. OK, if you want to use it for sleeping purposes, then you just do that and you let yourself go into sleep. 41:01 So you do it more than half an hour, like if you're conscious and then you're going to sleep. So it can be used in both ways, short time as a power energy and longer time as a sleeping instead of all those the other stuff that we can take, right. 41:19 So that's an immediate stuff that can be done. And then there's something about like, OK, what do I do now? Things are OK, so how do I connect back to my life, right? So something that we do that's really wonderful is the use of resources. 41:38 And resources is anything that when I think about it, makes me feel calmer and stronger. And it doesn't matter. The only thing, it cannot come at the cost. It should be with no cost, that's all. I don't mean money. I mean of any kind of cost. 41:54 So if I come myself with a cigarette, but then I'm harming my health, that has a cost or I'm using money that I don't have that has a cost, All of that stuff. So everybody can do it. Listening to this, go and write 12 resources that you have internal and external. 42:12 External would be like your pets, your friends, your parents, your faith, prayer, God, anything at all, nature, travelling, cooking. And internal is anything about your own qualities. You're smart, you're loving, you're generous, you're funny. 42:31 You're right now on the piece of paper, each one of them, and you put them aside in the bowl. It changes your hormones. You pick one, you open it and you ground it in the body. Meaning when I think about my grandkids, what do I notice in my body? And so immediately there's a smile, my eyes are, I think there's a big breath that comes in my chest opens up. 42:53 That is what strengthen my healing cortex, my capacity to heal. And then it puts me back into like, OK, here's I am back here and in my action, in my functionality, right? So this transition, how to transition from very bad stuff to like a calmer period, knowing that something else is still going to happen, right? 43:17 So to learn how to track my nervous system and give it what it needs. It's grounding. I give it grounding, it reads release. I give it release. It needs resources, I give it resources. Just track, listen, it'll tell me everything. 43:36 I have one more proviso to say because I was, I was asked to give like a Zoom for 500 people. And then I start offering for more people. And then they said, Oh yeah, but the war stopped and people are not going to show up, which is, which is the Israeli tactic of, you know, coping with it. 43:56 We're resilient. We go back into life and it's very good. However, that's very good if you don't have other tools, if you have other tools like emotion aid to release everything that's in your body while you're actually calm and everything is fine, just do it, get it done. 44:14 And you're much freer from any possibility in the future of having PTSD. So use that time as preventive. Use that time. Not that you need therapy or that you're messed up. It's not about that. It's about your nervous system took a hit. 44:32 Yeah. Like give it a good washing, give it a good cleaning up, take it down to baseline, that's it. 44:40 Speaker 2 Yeah, it makes me think of high performance athletes where, you know, I mean, we, we've this is not a few weeks war like Israel is used to. This has been going on for two years. It comes with all kinds of unexpected surprises and nightmare scenarios thrown at us. 45:01 So it's, it's almost like there is a flexibility of the nervous system that needs to happen for us to be able to perform as people in this country over a long period of time. And so that means perhaps understanding what we need in times of acute stress and then also being able to give ourselves the release that we need, you know, during a ceasefire when one phase of the war ends and, you know, before another one might begin to kind of strengthen ourselves. 45:32 Yes, I I really had that image of of the athlete who really knows and is very conscious about every step, both the the, the action and the recovery. 45:42 Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah. I wanted to go back to a point that we were talking about before, about that what happens with our actions create in the world, right, especially when we are at war. And we are very aversive to this as Jewish people, you know, and we should be. 46:00 So my sense is like making sure that we never get to be brutal in our defence, that we never get to be revengeful in our defence, that we are defending ourselves. That's the action that is necessary and that also if like we have the anger that is normal that they come up, whichever it is, just clean it up. 46:24 You you want to be as functional as possible in defending yourself with the littlest damage that you can ever do for other people. Just because this is who we are as our our basic legacy inheritance as people, as people hood, you know. 46:44 Speaker 2 How to how to live in this world with a nervous system that does the least damage possible to ourselves and to others while being able to set boundaries. 46:53 Speaker 1 From the healing vortex and not from the trauma vortex. That's it. Which is in other ways in our terminology from Itzeratov instead of Itzeraha. Very simple. 47:07 Speaker 2 Yeah, that just reminds me to mention that that nervous systems are really contagious. So whatever we healing ourselves, you know, if if if I react to the missile in a in in a kind of calm, alert way and my children are there, that's probably what their nervous system is going to internalize. 47:28 And if I'm absolutely panicked and terrified that that is contagious, not just with our kids, but with, with all of us. And yes, yes, and, and just to, to come back to my story, but I think, you know, it, it kind of grounds it in reality. But I noticed in the past few days, since that's where I'm at, you know, in the parents group of the gun of the kindergarten, depending on who's writing and, and I don't even have to see their, their eyes or hear their voice. 47:54 But depending on the tone of the anxiety or the fear or, or the on the opposite and the, the confidence that I feel that they have in their children to cope, to be resilient and in themselves. I noticed my nervous system kind of absorbs that. 48:13 And so that's, I think something also may be important to say to people is, you know, be aware of how the environment that you find yourself in affects your nervous system and how you affect the nervous system of others. 48:25 Speaker 1 Exactly. And how we walk in life, how we choose to walk in life with the trauma vortex or from the eating vortex. Yeah. And and we have to have that reminder every day. You know, who are we? Who are we taking out of the door? 48:39 Speaker 2 Gina, thank you for sharing your nervous system with others and your wisdom. 48:45 Speaker 1 Thank you for your initiative.

Related Episodes

What they’re saying

“So deep, so true, so hopeful.”

“Thank you so much for this wonderful interview — so deep, so true, so hopeful. May you both be blessed!”

@nachamuami

YouTube

“Meaningful in the madness.”

“Thank you for making the effort to have this conversation and create this podcast for us during such madness. I still process the stress we went through, and listening to this conversation was truly meaningful to me.”

@five_green_olives

YouTube

“Thoughtful and eye-opening.”

“An incredible find!”

Avigail80

Apple podcast

“Raises big questions, makes your heart sing.”

“This podcast is remarkable as it delves deep into the emotional journey stirred by the conflict between Hamas and Israel. A must-listen that raises important questions and makes your heart sing. Excited for more!”

5AliBali5

Apple podcast

“A healing beacon.”

“RAW provides a profound journey for the soul, spirit, and mind. In these challenging times, it serves as a therapeutic guide, offering insights that help confront the complexity of the Israel war.”

LuLu6764

Apple podcast

“Food for the soul.”

“I have been searching for a podcast like this, one that speaks to my heart and soul in these challenging times. This was a great episode and I am looking forward to the next one!”

Johnson_768

Apple podcast

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Thoughtful reflections, upcoming events, and gentle resources to support your path toward resilience, clarity, and mindful presence.

By entering your email, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, including receipt of emails and promotions.

Simple Tools to Calm the Nervous System — with Gina Ross

Related Episodes

What they’re saying

Subscribe to the Newsletter

+ 3

PODCAST

SOCIAL

LEARN

About

Contact

SERVICES

Podcasts

Meditations

Speaking Engagements

Books

Blogs

LEGAL

Terms of use

Privacy Policy

Booking Policy

Cookie Policy

© 2025 Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted, the content displayed on this website is the intellectual property of Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All logos, trademarks and work samples are property of their respective owners.

PODCAST

SOCIAL

Business address to be mentioned here

LEARN

About

Contact

LEGAL

Terms of use

Privacy Policy

Booking Policy

Cookie Policy

SERVICES

Podcasts

Meditations

Speaking Engagements

Books

Blogs

© 2025 Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted, the content displayed on this website is the intellectual property of Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All logos, trademarks and work samples are property of their respective owners.

Simple Tools to Calm the Nervous System — with Gina Ross

Related Episodes

What they’re saying

Subscribe to the Newsletter

PODCAST

SOCIAL

LEARN

SERVICES

Books

LEGAL

© 2025 Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted, the content displayed on this website is the intellectual property of Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All logos, trademarks and work samples are property of their respective owners.

PODCAST

SOCIAL

Business address to be mentioned here

LEARN

LEGAL

SERVICES

© 2025 Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted, the content displayed on this website is the intellectual property of Anouk Pvt. Ltd. All logos, trademarks and work samples are property of their respective owners.

Subscribe to my Newsletter