We tend to think of our bodies, minds, and feelings as three separate things that only loosely connect to each other. And if anything, our body’s needs often comes in dead last for what we prioritize day to day.

But what if I told you that your body’s level of regulation is actually the key to addressing a massive amount of mental and emotional challenges you might be facing?

Yeah, yeah, you might say. Exercise, good diet, etc etc.

In truth, while we can’t deny that exercise and diet are hard hitters for body health, that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about how when your thoughts or emotions are out of whack, there’s usually a measurable experience happening in the body, and we can use that to reverse-engineer healing chronic stress, complex trauma, and other experiences we usually try to fix (with limited success) to heal with our brain alone.

Sound intriguing? Keep reading, ‘cuz we’ll break it down for you piece by piece.

And to help us make it easy to understand, we would like to introduce our friend the Human Machine. Please give them a warm welcome!

The Human Machine was born from the idea that deep down on the inside, each one of us is just a squishy and sensitive pile of moosh. That’s why at birth, we’re each given a unique human suit to navigate the world.

Most of us already get that our body suit shields and protects us. But we weren’t exactly taught in school the practical side of how our body machine works, or how to take care of it properly.

(This guide is the owner’s manual you always wish you had.)

See, as complicated as our bodies may seem, just like in a video game the Human Machine’s regulation—and therefore your health as a human—come down to basically only 3 things:

1. Stamina (the bank of fuel you pull from daily)

2. Core HP (energy reserved for your core function)

3. Gear (your resistance or sensitivity to the world’s inputs

Let’s unpack those a little further.

This is the bank of energy you use to fuel your gear and expend energy over the course of the day. Normally it regenerates every day, but if your system is not getting enough rest or you’re pushing your capacity regularly, your overall stamina starts to go down.

When your stamina runs out for the day, your system usually shuts down to rest until you’ve regenerated enough to go on. If you push through without rest, more energy spent has nowhere to come from but your Core HP.

It can be tempting to think of this as interchangeable with Stamina, but in reality your Core HP is Squishy Sensitive You’s vital life essence… and it doesn’t regenerate nearly as fast. Sadly, many of us go out every day with only a few measly blinky hearts left from pushing too hard for too long.

Except that in real life, you don’t get to start at your last save point when your HP runs out—you get sick. The kind of sick that isn’t so easy to fix, like autoimmune disorders or cancer.

Before you get to that point, you might start to notice other issues, like chronic fatigue, digestive problems, or persistent sleep problems.

Feeling nervous yet? Don’t worry, we’ll teach you how to rebuild your Core HP over time. But first, one last aspect of regulation…

Gear starts to get a bit more complex, because you don’t just have one. Instead, you have 5 types of gear:

1. Mental Gear (processes clear thinking, processing, and problem solving)

2. Emotional Gear (processes emotional turmoil & big feelings)

3. People and Energy Gear (processes social interactions and shared spaces)

4. Terrain Gear (processes your environment, including light and sound)

5. Body State Gear (processes your body functions like being hungry or tired)

Input (aka “stimulation) comes in from the world, and we process it through one of these gears. Some of us have extra resistance or extra sensitivity in one or more of those gears, so getting to know your unique gear and its strengths is essential.

Most of us know what it’s like to wear down or burn out a type of gear. What you may not know is that as soon as one of your gears is out of whack, you start consuming stamina at a massively increased rate to compensate. Likewise, if you’re out of stamina the wear on your gear day to day gets a lot heavier.

The good news is, when you’re burnt out you’re rarely burnt out on every type of gear. More likely, you’ve burned out one by overusing it, so you can always lean a little more intentionally into other gear instead of hopefully whipping the dead horse of whichever gear is burnt out.

If Stamina is your fuel tank, Core HP is your vital life essence, and Gears are your protection from the world, how do we know where we’re at in any given moment?

The answer is our State of Regulation, which is like a little sensor that tells you what to expect from your Human Machine in any given moment.

Sadly this sensor faces outwards, so it’s often easier for others to see and understand whether we’re regulated or not.

There are four states:

Blue - Rapid Heal Mode

Green - Normal Mode

Yellow - Fight or Flight Mode (Action Needed)

Red - Freeze Mode (Action Needed)

While green means all-systems-go, yellow means that we’re draining our stamina rapidly and a specific type of action is needed to get back to green, and red is the signal that our Human Machine is shutting down entirely and we are depleting our Core HP.

Resilience Care is essentially a process for leveling up your gear over time to get stronger. After all, with overpowered gear you can laugh off basically any challenge.

But how do you actually level up your gear in the real world? (Hint, it’s not by chopping down as many enemies as you can.)

The Stabilize Loop is a solution that helps you start to work with The Human Machine so that you can manage your experience of life. You’ll learn how to create energy and resilience for yourself and your team day-to-day by realigning habits with capacity.

We’ve simplified the process into something we like to call The Stabilize Loop, but it will still require some work on your part. Ready to start your radical Resilence Care journey? Here’s what The Stabilize Loop looks like from a high level:

Sleep isn’t a reward, it’s requirement for basic human function. But we know that getting enough quality sleep can be a challenge. Lucky for us, sleep is not the only form of rest! High achievers lean on lesser-known forms of rest to maximize their productivity without sacrificing their well-being. Learn more about these sneaky forms of rest that you can squeeze into a busy day.

Chronic stress has been normalized, but your brain and body are not in optimal form while they’re under stress. You can use the power of boundaries with yourself and others to reduce the amount of stress that you keep yourself under. Learn how to set and maintain effective boundaries, plus the science of crossing things off your to-do list without generating infinitely more.

Past events, relationships and traumas are holding you back today unless you’ve properly unpacked them. We champion therapy here, but learning how to unpack your baggage to get off the carousel ride from hell doesn’t need to require a laying down couch and hours of your time every week. Learn how to identify the baggage that’s weighing you down, then reframe your story to move beyond the baggage.

The solution to stress, overwhelm and burnout is the Stabilize Loop that you learned above. Learning and applying that loop will help you build resilience to live a better life.

And if you want to go deeper, we’ve got to get to the bottom of what’s causing stress, overwhelm and burnout in the first place. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not you.

There are broken systems that we’ve been caught in.

We’ve been sold a bunch of lies from an oppressive system that is rigged against us. To start doing things differently, we have to learn how to embrace discomfort. The rigged game teaches us to seek comfort always, so it has painted pain and discomfort with the same brush. It has also taught us that we need to be perfect in order to avoid being vulnerable or getting hurt.

In order to make real and lasting changes, we’ve got to learn how to identify the difference between pain and discomfort so that we can choose discomfort where we grow through to another side that is more rewarding and supportive of our well-being.

1. ID’ing what to do first and next. Breaking your journey down into small steps is often a good approach to make everything seem more manageable, but sometimes looking at a list of goals and steps can also be overwhelming. Don’t let that overwhelm get to you. Know that there’s a process for everything and no time limit on how quickly you need to get each step done.

2. Big disruptions or changes in the world. The last few years have seen massive disruptions. Take, for example, the global pandemic that knocked us all on our asses. But COVID isn’t the only major disruptor. Racial tension, elections, natural disasters, and so many other global issues impact our stress and well-being, and it’s okay to take time to process and recover from those external stressors.

3. Small disruptions affect us too! Anything from a breakup, a move, or any other unexpected changes in our lives can throw us for a loop and take some time to adjust.

4. Healing crisis - It can get worse before it gets better. Probably the most jarring barrier is what we call a ‘healing crisis, which is what we referred to earlier: it gets worse before it gets better. Radical change is HARD. it’s time and energy-consuming, and even as your body is processing positive changes, it can take some time to adjust. That means you may actually feel increased anxiety, fatigue, stress, etc. as you’re on your path to healing.

Compassion fatigue. This is a MASSIVE cognitive block and is not talked about enough. Especially as a leader, it’s so easy to take on the burden of feeling what everyone on your team is feeling. When they hurt, you hurt. This also goes for friends, family, and the world at large. Feeling so much compassion for so many people can be overwhelming and lead to exhaustion and overwhelm on its own.