The Calming Ground Podcast

What happens when you love life so much that you want to do all of it? Even joy can wear out your nervous system when there's no off season.

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun gets personal. She shares her (very long) list of loves, from angora rabbits and beekeeping to sourdough, jam, and the banjo, and what happens in her body when zest for life tips into overcommitment.

Elizabeth introduces the water element from Chinese medicine's Five Elements: the energy of rest, depth, and restoring our reserves. Winter shows us the water element most clearly, but this energy isn't limited to one season. It lives in sleep, in the quiet in-between moments, and at the bottom of every breath. This episode is for anyone who is overextended, overstimulated, or simply loves too many things, and wants a gentler rhythm going into the darker months.

Key takeaways

• Your nervous system doesn't always know the difference between stress from things you dread and stress from things you love. Too much is still too much.
• In the Five Elements, Water is the energy of rest, stillness, and restoring your deep reserves.
• Winter isn't just a season. It's an energy you can find in every day: in sleep, in transitions, and in the pause at the end of an exhale.
• A simple practice: notice the pause at the bottom of your breath. That's a small winter you carry everywhere.

Resources

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Website: https://thecalmingground.com/

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook & Instagram

If this episode offered you a moment of ease, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use some space for slowing down. 

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for clinical care.

What if caring for yourself is one of the ways you keep showing up for the world?

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun sits down with Michelle C. Johnson, an author, activist, spiritual teacher and director, racial equity educator, and intuitive healer. Michelle leads retreats, workshops, and healing work nationwide centered on healing individual and collective trauma and returning to wholeness. 

In this conversation, Elizabeth talks with Michelle about what it means to regulate the nervous system in a world that feels untethered. They explore why rest can feel like collapse at first, and how to work with the guilt of caring for yourself while others suffer. Michelle describes leading a week-long healing retreat for frontline community leaders, who reminded her that “our people are dying.” She shares how that same truth can become the reason to pause, rather than the reason to skip it. 

This conversation is for activists, caregivers, healers, and anyone feeling the exhaustion of this moment who is looking for practices that sustain them.

Key Takeaways

• Self-care and collective care are linked. Tending yourself isn’t separate from caring for the community; it’s how you stay present for the people who rely on you.
• Exhaustion may show up when you finally rest. When you’re given space to down-regulate, deep fatigue can surface. That’s a normal part of the process, not a sign something is wrong.
• Protection isn’t about walls. Practices like a circle of protection or imagining yourself as a “transparency” let you receive others without absorbing everything. 

Resources

• Michelle’s website (books, workshops, retreats, and her weekly Thursday newsletter): michellecjohnson.com
• Instagram: @skillinaction

Connect with The Calming Ground

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://thecalmingground.com
• Facebook & Instagram: @thecalmingground

If this episode spoke to you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a reminder to rest. 🌿

Have you ever stood under a beautiful autumn tree and felt your stomach knot up because all you could think about was the coming winter?

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun explores the anticipatory dread so many of us feel as the light shortens. Drawing on nervous system science and the Five Elements of ancient Chinese medicine, she reframes winter dread as the body’s protective forecast, and invites us into a gentler, more seasonal way of living through the darker months. 

Elizabeth explains how the nervous system works as a prediction machine that remembers last winter, and how autumn’s Metal element (grief and letting go) leads into winter’s Water element (stillness, depth, and conserving our reserves). She also looks at why the holidays sometimes sharpen winter dread. The episode closes with a guided qigong practice. 

Key Takeaways:

• Anticipatory winter dread is your nervous system bracing. 
• According to Five Element theory, autumn (metal) asks us to grieve and let go, and winter (water) invites us inward to rest and conserve. 
• The nervous system is a prediction machine, primarily using evidence from the past. 

Resources

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Website: https://thecalmingground.com/

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook & Instagram

If this episode offered you a moment of ease, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use some space for slowing down. 

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for clinical care.

After a deer escapes danger, she shakes her whole body before she goes back to grazing. We humans, poet Wendy Videlock says, tend to “build a monument” to our fear instead. What could we learn if we paid closer attention to the wild? 

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun sits down with Wendy, a poet, painter, and teacher. She lives on Colorado’s Western Slope, where she serves as poet laureate of Western Colorado and writes the syndicated column The Barefoot Laureate. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and O Magazine, among others. In this conversation, she reads from her newest book Desert kin.  

Wendy talks about the landscape as “the first temple,” how grief holds mixed emotions, the value of releasing fear, and the writing prompts she gives her creative aging students. This episode is for anyone who wants to meet the world with a little more curiosity and a little less fear. 

Key Takeaways:

• Write about what you see and it will tell you what you feel. Describing the outer world often reveals the inner one more honestly than writing about ourselves head-on. 
• Change the pronoun and tell it “slant.” Writing about yourself as “she,” “he,” or “they” creates distance and can make room for more imagination and compassion. 
• Practice and ceremony, not mastery. The joy is in the process of writing and discovering, with curiosity rather than the outcome. 

Resources:

Wendy Videlock’s website: https://wendy-videlock.constantcontactsites.com/

Wendy’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wendy.videlock/

Episode 157 - conversation with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: 

Apple:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calming-ground-podcast/id1704337948?i=1000785952537

Spotify: 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4XO0qgL0m7cRhtnNSaTBKG?si=frCx4tZxSDGpLaOVVV2e2Q

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook and Instagram

Subscribe to The Calming Ground Podcast so you never miss an episode. If you loved this conversation, please share it with a friend! 

if this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a little more calm and curiosity. Thank you for listening.

What if rest is something that we can actually receive from each other, in a way?

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun reflects on leading The Calming Ground’s Retreat in Nature: The Quiet Power of Rest in Hocking Hills with co-facilitator Ami Peacock. Elizabeth shares what unfolded when a circle of women, many of them strangers to one another at first, slowed down together through forest bathing, qigong, sound healing, sharing circles, and silent open time. She reflects on why the women left feeling a sense of sisterhood, and tells the story of her ordinary grocery shopping trip where the whole world suddenly felt kinder. 

Through the lens of nervous system regulation and co-regulation, she explores why rest in community changes not only how we feel, but how we might experience the world around us. 

Key Takeaways:

• A regulated body perceives a kinder world, and becomes a kinder presence in it. 
• Both solitude and community matter, especially when it’s a community within which you feel seen and heard. 
• Co-regulation in community is a powerful way to experience peace and belonging. 

Resources:

Register for the free workshop  From People Pleasing to Self-Trust: Reclaim yourself without Burning Bridges: https://go.thecalmingground.com/people-pleasing-to-self-trust

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Website: https://thecalmingground.com/

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook & Instagram

If this episode offered you a moment of ease, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use some space for slowing down.

Ever finally sit down to rest, only to have your mind hand you a to-do list? 

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun (psychotherapist, certified qigong teacher, and forest bathing guide), introduces the show’s new intro as The Calming Ground podcast approaches its three-year anniversary this October. Along the way, Elizabeth explores why stillness can feel unsafe to a nervous system that’s been moving fast for a long time, and how she has to come to honor her own people-pleasing (fawn) response. She also shares how nervous system science and ancient body wisdom arrive at the same place, and why coming back again and again is the practice itself. You’ll be guided through two short-in-the-moment practices you can use anywhere, anytime. 

Key Takeaways:

• Small doses of slowing down help the nervous system settle and feel safe.
• Disconnecting from the body is often protective, and gentle check-ins with the jaw, shoulders, feet, and hands can invite us back. 
• Qigong and nature archetypes can help us remember our place in the wider, wilder world, even when we can’t get outside. 

Resources:

Register for the free workshop  From People Pleasing to Self-Trust: Reclaim yourself without Burning Bridges: https://go.thecalmingground.com/people-pleasing-to-self-trust

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Website: https://thecalmingground.com/

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook & Instagram

If this episode offered you a moment of ease, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use some space for slowing down.

What if the thing you're struggling to let go of right now is something this season is asking of you?

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun explores the seasonal pull toward letting go that so many people feel each fall through the lens of Five Element theory from Traditional Chinese Medicine. She explains why autumn is governed by the Metal element according to TCM (and what that has to do with your lungs, your grief, and your need to slow down), and connects it to nervous system science. This episode is for anyone who's noticed themselves wanting to slow down, say no more easily, or quietly grieve something as the season turns - and wants to understand a perspective on why.

Key Takeaways:

• Five Element theory (Traditional Chinese Medicine) links each season to specific organs, emotions, and energies - autumn is governed by Metal
• Shortening daylight and cooling temperatures create real physiological shifts toward parasympathetic (rest and restore) nervous system states
• A simple longer-exhale breathing practice can help the body practice release in real time

Resources:

Previous episodes on autumn and the metal element: 

• Episode 105 - The Metal Element and Fall Self Care: How to Release and Refine
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calming-ground-podcast/id1704337948?i=1000728174111
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5N7TcpFQoMq2AKcrWopz2m?si=da1289b1cb154c8b
• Episode 53 - Breath, Balance, and Release: Aligning with Fall through the Metal Element.
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calming-ground-podcast/id1704337948?i=1000671506561
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3XtQCz4OvVqvOiXxP2Pd3v?si=21fc16dc4d6e4a75

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Website: https://thecalmingground.com/

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook & Instagram

There is a scientific debate that's been quietly unfolding for nearly 20 years: researchers have published findings questioning some of the biological claims behind polyvagal theory, the framework that has shaped how trauma-informed therapists and somatic practitioners - Elizabeth included - talk about the nervous system's response to safety and threat.

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun walks through what polyvagal theory says, what the critique actually challenges, and why the debate remains genuinely unresolved between credentialed researchers on both sides.

But this episode is about a much older question: what do we do when the ground shifts under something we've already built our work, our beliefs, or our sense of trust upon? Elizabeth reflects on why presence (not airtight guarantees) is what actually keeps us safe. This episode is for anyone who has ever had to hold a belief, diagnosis, relationship, or decision a little differently than they once did.

Key Takeaways:

• Polyvagal theory's claims about the vagus nerve's role in shutdown/freeze responses are being actively debated by researchers - and there's no clear resolution yet.
• Certainty held too tightly can close us off from new information and growth; curiosity keeps us in relationship with truth instead of possession of it.
• Presence, not certainty, is what's actually available to us, and typically what actually helps the most. 

Resources:

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Conscious Practitioner Collective - monthly gathering for practitioners in Columbus, Ohio: https://thecalmingground.com/conscious-practitioner-collective

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook and Instagram

Subscribe to The Calming Ground Podcast so you never miss an episode. If you loved this conversation, please share it with a friend and leave a review!

A circle of strangers, no rehearsal, no sheet music…Just voices and a guide named Porangui pulling a room of near-strangers into one shared rhythm. 

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun reflects on three very different gatherings from the same couple of weeks: a sound circle led by Porangui, a monthly meeting of her Conscious Practitioner Collective, and the first live session of her new program, Finding Your Footing When the Ground Shifts. Underneath their differences, she found the same medicine at work in each one - and traces why that medicine took her so long to trust, starting with a hard lesson learned in a middle school hallway.

Elizabeth explores why so many of us learn to fear community rather than trust it, and how belonging can form in real time between total strangers when a group is given just enough structure and permission. This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like they were standing just outside a circle, wondering if there was room with their name on it.

Key Takeaways:

• Community isn't a scarce resource to be chosen for; it's something people can step into together, again and again, the moment they're willing to.
• Co-regulation (settling a nervous system in the presence of other regulated nervous systems) can happen in a drum circle, a practitioner gathering, or a Zoom room alike.
• Real community includes friction, activation, and disappointment. The goal isn't a frictionless group, but a safe enough one to be vulnerable inside.

Resources:

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Conscious Practitioner Collective - monthly gathering for practitioners in Columbus, Ohio: https://thecalmingground.com/conscious-practitioner-collective

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook and Instagram

Subscribe to The Calming Ground Podcast so you never miss an episode. If you loved this conversation, please share it with a friend and leave a review!

Last week, Dolly Parton died. A glacier collapse triggered catastrophic flooding in Nepal. An Ebola outbreak became the deadliest in the Democratic Republic of Congo's history. If you've felt oddly numb to some of the news and unexpectedly gutted by other parts of it, this solo episode is for you.

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun explores why grief tends to land unevenly - why a celebrity we never met can hit harder than a mass tragedy overseas - and what that says about the nervous system. In this exploration, Elizabeth incorporates nervous system science, Five Elements theory of ancient Chinese medicine, and our connection to the natural world. She offers an invitation to choose, on purpose, where your attention and grief go… Instead of letting an algorithm decide for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Why parasocial grief is real grief. The neuroscience behind mourning someone you've never met. 
• Empathy overload and grief numbing. Why your nervous system "dims the switch" on tragedies at scale. 
• The doomscroll loop. How unresolved sympathetic activation from news consumption tends to accumulate in the body as anxiety and numbness simultaneously. 
• Reframing self-care as self-discovery. How to use what hits you hardest as information about what you value, rather than something to just numb or push away. 

Resources:

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at [email protected]

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook and Instagram

Subscribe to The Calming Ground Podcast so you never miss an episode. If you loved this conversation, please share it with a friend!