Anna Ferguson

So I had two pieces now.

I started to use movement and I started to look at my gut health.

I changed my diet.

I changed the way I did things.

I started to feel different, right?

So I was starting to piece together a bit of a strategy.

And then once I'd finished my psychology degree, I went on to become a counsellor.

But I also started to look at the things outside of counselling.

I felt like there were so many things out there that they weren't talking to each other.

So I started to look at occupational therapy and how we help kids regulate their emotions.

Now, if you look at how we help kids regulate their emotions...

It's all through movement and all through these sensory inputs.

So like how they feel pressure on their joints or how they sense the world through this auditory sensation.

And I started to get really fascinated about why is there this distinction between how kids do things and how adults do things?

When I was in the rollercoaster accident, my body was flooded with these hormones, adrenaline, cortisol.

It's like, here, you need to take action.

You're in danger.

But I was trapped, so I couldn't take action.

So essentially what happens is when our body becomes overwhelmed by the challenge that's in front of us, it dips into that freeze response or that dissociative state.

And this is actually a function of our parasympathetic nervous system.