For practitioners: early-bird pricing takes $500 off the Mind Body Integration training until Sept. 17.the founding cohort of the Mind Body Integration training starts Oct. 22. Applications close Oct. 2.

Apply Now
Skip to main content

Topic: Tools & Practices

How to Prevent a Nervous System Flare While Traveling

Written by on .

I just got back from three weeks in Namibia, and regulating my nervous system while traveling got tested every single day of that trip.

I'm not going to pretend it was smooth. We changed hotels more nights than not, lost service we'd already paid for, and a few days in, I felt the same warning signs that used to send me into a flare that lasted weeks. This time it lasted three days.

The difference wasn't that nothing went wrong. Things went wrong constantly. The difference was what I did next. I'd already padded my nervous system before I left, so when a flare showed up in the middle of nowhere with no doctor for hours, I had support lined up instead of panic. I got what I needed physically, then I went hard on the mind-body tools I actually teach: breath, visualization, journaling on what the flare might be asking for. It didn't erase the fear in the moment, but it kept the fear from running the show.

I'm also getting honest about the cold I came home with, and why I'm done calling every post-travel symptom "just jet lag" without asking what it's actually pointing to. In the past, coming home from a big trip meant a full week of feeling like I was falling apart. This time it didn't, and I want to walk you through why. If you've ever noticed your body has a pattern around travel, or around any kind of stress, this episode walks through how I'm learning to read that pattern instead of just riding it out.

Healing was never about never getting activated again. It's about widening how much activation you can hold before it takes you down. That's the real lesson this trip handed me, and it's what I'm handing you today.

Resources mentioned:
Episode 137. What I'm Doing to Prep My Nervous System for Travel

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

What I Wish Every Therapist or Coach Knew About the Nervous System

Written by on .

This one's for the therapists, coaches, and practitioners. (And honestly, if you're a listener who's ever sat across from a provider who didn't know how to help you stay. This episode is why I made it.)

Here's the gap I want to name. Most of us were trained beautifully in one half of this work. We learned to hold space, build the therapeutic relationship, sit with hard feelings, work with trauma histories. What we were never taught is that the nervous system is actively generating physical symptoms in a huge portion of our caseloads. Some physicians in this space estimate close to 40% of people walking through a primary care door have symptoms driven this way. Those are the same people landing on our couches, in our rooms, on our Zoom calls. And a lot of us were never taught to even assess for it. I know I wasn't.

So in this episode I'm walking through the difference between regulating a nervous system and rewiring it, and why almost all of us were only trained for one. Regulation is state management. It's the longer exhale, the feet on the floor, the co-regulation. It's foundational and it matters enormously (a nervous system that never gets to feel safe cannot do deeper work). BUT if regulation is all we do, we're managing the danger alarm instead of updating it.

I also get into how the brain learns a symptom in the first place, what neuroplastic symptoms actually are, why "your pain is real AND the signal is coming from the brain" is the most important thing you can say to a client, and what changes on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon when you finally have a map for the client whose GI tests keep coming back normal.

And I'll tell you what this did for me: it didn't just change my clients' outcomes, it changed how it feels to do the work. I stopped doubting whether I could help.

Resources mentioned:

Free neuroplastic symptom assessment tool

Free practitioner masterclass, Tuesday, September 8

MindBody Integration Method practitioner training, launching this fall

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

What I’m Doing to Prep My Nervous System for Travel

Written by on .

You know that feeling when a trip is coming up and your brain starts running a whole side operation at 3am? That's what this episode is about: how to calm your nervous system before a trip, instead of white-knuckling your way through the two weeks beforehand.

Grace is leaving for a three week trip and instead of packing her schedule and trying to get everything done before she goes, she's doing the opposite. She calls it her grounding period. No hard workouts. No last-minute house projects. No pretending the anxiety isn't there. Just noticing it, writing it down, and letting it be there without making it mean something's wrong.

She also tells the story of the time she went straight from an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica to a flight to Europe, no integration time, no rest, and how that taught her more about nervous system regulation than almost anything else has. Plus the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual prep she does now, what she actually does when a flare hits mid-trip, and the realization she just had about jet lag that's going to blow your mind a little.

Resources mentioned:

John Sarno / mind-body pain literature

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

How to Actually Start Regulating Your Nervous System

Written by on .

You've probably done a lot. The podcasts, the books, the breathwork, the therapy. You might be able to explain how your nervous system works better than most people can. And you're still not where you want to be.

That gap — between knowing and actually healing — is exactly what this episode is about.

Understanding and healing are two completely different skills. Understanding lives in the mind. Healing lives in the body. Your nervous system doesn't respond to insight. It responds to experience. You can have the clearest, most accurate awareness of what's keeping you stuck — and your body can still be sitting there completely unmoved by it.

Grace calls this the map versus the road. Insight is the map. Regulation is the road. And a map, no matter how accurate, no matter how detailed, never moved anyone a single inch.

She also goes into something a lot of people skip: you don't have to trace every trauma back to its origin or have everything figured out before you start. The work doesn't require perfect understanding first. It requires actually doing it. And there is a structure to it — it's not vague. It's sequenced, repeatable, something you can actually follow.

If you've been circling the information for a while and wondering when things are going to actually shift -> this one's for you.

Resources mentioned:

 Free mind-body masterclass training
Practitioner training waitlist

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

How the masks you carry impact your health

Written by on .

Most of us never decided to start performing. It just happened, early, quietly, because we needed to belong. And your body has been carrying the weight of every single mask.

This is a solo episode, and it's one Grace has been sitting with for a while. Not about somatic tools or specific nervous system signals — about the deeper question underneath all of it. What does real healing actually require?

Here's what doesn't get said enough in the mind-body space about people pleasing and chronic symptoms: your body isn't malfunctioning. It's been watching you override yourself for years, and at some point, it stopped whispering and started screaming. That's not a breakdown. That's your nervous system saying she has to come back. What you think of as your personality? A lot of the time, it's just the most successful coping strategy you found before you were old enough to choose differently.

The path forward isn't a massive overhaul. You don't have to quit your job tonight or cut everyone off. It's a thousand tiny moments where you choose truth over performance. Every single one of those is a message to your nervous system -> she's back, it's safe to be her.

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

7 Habits for Successful Nervous System Regulation

Written by on .

If you've been doing the nervous system work but still feel stuck, this episode is for you. 

Grace Secker dives into the seven habits she consistently sees in people who actually heal — and why how you show up to the process matters just as much as what you practice. 

This isn't a checklist or protocol. It's about the mindset, identity, and ways of being that shift everything. 

Grace explores why waiting to feel "ready" keeps you stuck, how over-identifying with being sick reinforces survival mode, the quiet belief that you don't deserve to heal, and what it looks like to build real safety in your daily life. 

She also gets honest about why consuming information without practicing keeps the brain locked in old patterns — and how to stay in the process even when healing isn't linear. 

Whether you're just beginning to explore mind-body healing or you've been on this path for a while, this episode offers a grounded, compassionate reframe on what recovery actually asks of you.

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

The Dark Side of Clean Living

Written by on .

In this episode, Grace explores how the pursuit of “perfect” health can backfire—turning clean eating and non-toxic living into stress, rigidity, and even illness. She shares her personal journey with orthorexia and recovery, reminding us that true health is found in balance, nervous system safety, and freedom, not restriction.

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

How I Moved Through a Flare While Traveling

Written by on .

In this episode, Grace shares what happened when a long-awaited trip to New Zealand brought on a flare—and how fear, pressure, and perfectionism played a role. She opens up about the mindset shifts, nervous system tools, and emotional release practices that helped her move through it in just a day and a half.

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

Food Isn’t the Enemy: Reclaiming How You Eat

Written by on .

In this episode, Grace shares one of her most requested lessons—how to actually heal food sensitivities instead of just managing them.

If you’ve been stuck in a cycle of cutting out gluten, dairy, sugar, histamines, or lectins—and still feel like your body reacts to everything—this one’s for you.

Grace breaks down:

  • Why your food reactions may have more to do with your nervous system than the food itself
  • How chronic stress and fear around food create a feedback loop that keeps you sick
  • What it means to truly feel safe while eating—and why that changes everything
  • Daily practices to rebuild trust with your body and begin expanding your tolerance again

This episode includes a full lesson from The Mind Body Healing Method, giving you a sneak peek at the deeper healing work Grace facilitates in her 3-month program.

How to work with Grace:

Connect with Grace

Calling All PractitionersCalling All Practitioners $500 off until Sept. 17 · Apply by Oct. 2 · starts Oct. 22 Apply →