Before I introduce myself
Let’s do a Five Senses Check-In.
Scan the QR code, put your name and email, and answer honestly. Go fast, with your gut. You have two minutes.
Your results
Tell me what came out.
Now, who I am
I am Nadia.
- 🧠ADHD coach. Diagnosed at 26, travelling full time.
- 📱40K followers on Instagram, @nadiaminds.
- 🔬Independent neuroscience researcher. The studies behind my book.
- 📖Author of The Five Senses Formula: over 1,500 copies sold.
What the Check-In measured
Five senses, one system.
Every score you gave was a reading of the same thing: how loud your nervous system is running right now. The senses are the way in, so they are also the way to read it.
I use one picture: a song and a radio.
The picture to remember
Your nervous system is the radio.
Your Check-In scored the radio. The song is the brain you were born with, and the radio decides how that song reaches you. As an ADHD coach, this is where I always start.
What the check-in showed you
When the radio drifts off the station, the song turns to static.
How the radio works
A tuned radio moves between two modes.
Alert, fast, ready to act: for threat, deadlines, anything new.
Slow, safe, ready to repair: for rest, digestion, sleep, connection.
You need both. Trouble starts when one gets stuck.
Mode 1 · the gas pedal
Constantly in sympathetic? Ask yourself.
Yes to two or more? Your heart speeds up, your breathing gets shallow, your digestion slows and your planning brain dims.
The amygdala triggers the sympathetic system: adrenaline and noradrenaline within seconds, cortisol within minutes. High levels weaken the prefrontal cortex, the planning brain.
LeDoux, The Emotional Brain (1996) · Sapolsky 2004 · Arnsten 2009, Nat Rev Neurosci 10:410-422It starts to feel like your personality.
Mode 2 · the brake pedal
Parasympathetic: when did you last feel…
That is the brake pedal working: your heart slows, your breathing deepens, your digestion switches on, and your planning brain is back.
The vagus nerve releases acetylcholine at the heart and slows it. Heart-rate variability, a marker of vagal tone, is higher in people who regulate their emotions well and is linked to better control of the amygdala by the prefrontal cortex.
Thayer & Lane 2000, J Affect Disord 61:201-216 · Berthoud & Neuhuber 2000, Auton Neurosci 85:1-17Patience, creativity, and clear decisions.
Both modes together
A tuned radio moves along the dial.
Both extremes are signs of a nervous system stuck on one station. Shutdown and freeze are described as parasympathetic states too (polyvagal theory, still debated).
Porges 2011, The Polyvagal TheoryTwo characters in your head
The alarm and the planner.
- Where: deep in the brain, an almond-sized cluster
- Job: scans for threat and reacts in milliseconds
- Style: fast, loud, felt in the body
- When it leads: you snap, freeze, rush or go numb
- Where: right behind your forehead
- Job: plans, weighs, reframes and chooses
- Style: slower, quieter, in words
- When it leads: you pause and choose your answer
The amygdala gets sensory input through a fast route via the thalamus, in about 12 milliseconds, before the cortex has finished processing it. The prefrontal cortex answers more slowly, and high levels of stress hormones weaken its networks.
LeDoux, The Emotional Brain (1996) · Arnsten 2009, Nat Rev Neurosci 10:410-422Why this matters
Your state decides which version of you shows up.
“I am not a patient person” often means “I am rarely in a state where patience is available.”
Stress shifts behaviour from goal-directed to habit-driven. About 43% of everyday actions are habits repeated in the same context, and we infer who we are from what we repeatedly do.
Schwabe & Wolf 2009, J Neurosci 29:7191-7198 · Wood, Quinn & Kashy 2002, J Pers Soc Psychol 83:1281-1297 · Bem 1972, Adv Exp Soc Psychol 6:1-62Your body will reject every affirmation that does not match how it feels.
The connection
The vagus nerve is the cable between your body and your brain.
The longest nerve of the autonomic system: from the brainstem through the neck, the heart and the lungs down to the gut. When it is active, the heart slows, breathing deepens and digestion switches on. That is the brake pedal.
And the traffic mostly runs one way: about 80% of its signals go from the body up to the brain.
Roughly 80% of vagal fibres are afferent: they carry information from the organs to the brain. Only about 20% carry commands down.
Berthoud & Neuhuber 2000, Autonomic Neuroscience 85:1-17So how do we tune the radio?
Five doors into the vagus nerve.
Willpower and thinking use the 20% road down. The five senses use the 80% road up, in the language your brain listens to first.
Move first. Then press one point.
In the Five Senses Formula, movement is the loudest volume of touch. Two minutes of shaking, dancing or fast walking discharges the stress charge held in the body.
Then one acupressure point: Pericardium 6, three finger-widths above the wrist crease, between the two tendons. In the book it is the point for the overwhelmed.
Exercise raises dopamine and norepinephrine. PC-6 acupressure is best supported for nausea; the evidence for anxiety is early and mixed.
Meeusen & De Meirleir 1995, Sports Med 20:160-188 · Lee & Fan 2009, Cochrane CD003281Breathe out longer than you breathe in.
Smell is the only sense wired straight to the amygdala and the hippocampus, and your breath is the one automatic function you can steer by hand. One long exhale tells the vagus nerve to slow the heart.
A long exhale increases vagal activity and slows the heart (respiratory sinus arrhythmia). Olfactory input reaches the amygdala and hippocampus without the usual thalamic relay.
Russo et al. 2017, Breathe 13:298-309 · Herz 2004, Chem Senses 29:217-224Eat in this order: fibre, protein, then carbs.
In Morocco: start with the salads, then the tagine, and keep the bread and the pastries for last. Taste the first three bites slowly.
In small crossover trials, eating vegetables and protein before carbohydrate lowered the after-meal glucose and insulin rise compared with the reverse order. Smaller spikes mean smaller crashes, and the gut reports to the brain through the vagus nerve.
Shukla et al. 2015, Diabetes Care 38:e98-e99 · Shukla et al. 2017, BMJ Open Diabetes Res Care 5:e000440The trials are small and were done in people with type 2 diabetes. The link to focus and mood is the practical application.
Choose a slow sound, then leave a silence.
Sound reaches your alarm before it reaches your thoughts. Slow, steady music, around 60 beats a minute, slows breathing and heart rate. And the silence between tracks relaxes you too.
Auditory input reaches the amygdala through a fast brainstem route, so tempo and volume set your alarm before you decide anything. Slow musical tempi lowered breathing and heart rate, and pauses of silence were relaxing.
Bernardi, Porta & Sleight 2006, Heart 92:445-452 · LeDoux, The Emotional Brain (1996)Ten minutes of daylight, before the phone.
Special cells in your eyes read daylight and set your master clock. Morning light anchors your sleep, your energy and your mood for the next 24 hours. Then, when your eyes are tired, look at the farthest point you can see.
Retinal ganglion cells containing melanopsin signal the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the master clock. A week of natural light exposure shifted people’s melatonin timing earlier, aligning the body clock to the solar day.
Berson, Dunn & Takao 2002, Science 295:1070-1073 · Wright et al. 2013, Curr Biol 23:1554-1558Five doors, one radio
Your tuning kit.
One sense regulates. Two shift your state. Three change your baseline.
The key takeaway
Regulation comes first. It starts in the body, in the only language your nervous system understands: sensation.
The order
Then build.
Continue the work
Finish your Check-In. Come and find me.
I am here all week. Tell me which sense was your red one.