Episode 14 - Foundations of Nervous System Regulation – Building Capacity
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
Release Date: 03/20/2025
Episode 20 - Redefining Purpose: Beyond the Box of “Spiritual Work” with Jia Dafu
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
In this conversation with Akashic Record Reader Jia Dafu, we unpack one of the biggest myths in the spiritual world: that living your purpose has to look a certain way or follow a predetermined trajectory. Jia shares her journey from the corporate world to spiritual entrepreneurship -- and then back to corporate again -- and how her purpose didn’t just persist but activated and expanded at every stage. We explore what it actually means to live your spiritual path in a way that’s full, alive, and true to you, no matter what chapter you’re in. Together, we dive into: the pressure to look...
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Episode 19 - Sacred Resistance: What Your Nervous System Knows About Pushing Back
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
There’s a kind of resistance that rises right at the edge of change — when something big is asking to move through you. We’ve been taught that resistance is something to override. Push through it. Get out of your own way. Do it scared. But what if that pushback you’re feeling — the shutdown, the procrastination, the discomfort, the annoyance — isn’t dysfunction? In this episode, I’m offering a reframe that might change everything: Resistance isn’t always a block. Sometimes, it’s your body saying “no” and pushing back -- where you used to abandon yourself. And when you...
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Episode 18 - Let it Flow: Trusting the Intelligence of the Body — with Dr. Leslie Carr + Julia de'Caneva
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
💡 Episode Description What happens when you stop trying to fix your emotions — and instead feel the raw energy underneath them? In this episode, I’m joined by two brilliant colleagues and dear friends, Dr. Leslie Carr and Julia de'Caneva, for a grounded, powerful conversation about how life force energy moves through the body — and what becomes possible when we stop overriding, bypassing, or spinning in the mind, and instead partner with the nervous system to let it reorganize and transform. We talk about everything from public speaking anxiety to cancer, trauma, and collective grief...
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Episode 17 - Reclaiming Choice: Unhooking Trauma Loops with Somatic Awareness
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
If you’ve ever felt hijacked by your own nervous system — caught in thoughts you don’t believe, feelings you didn’t expect, or patterns you thought you’d already moved through — this episode is for you. This week, after an amazing date that stirred up more than I expected, I found myself right in the middle of an old loop. And I used the exact process I turn to when everything’s firing at once — sensation, thought, emotion, and meaning — and you need to find your way through without overriding anything. We’ll explore: What trauma loops actually are, and how they run under...
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Episode 16 - From Chaos to Coherence: When Things Feel Worse on the Way to Better
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
In today's episode, we're diving into a real (and often hidden) part of the growth process: how things can feel messier, heavier, or more chaotic right before they truly expand. This is the work of capacity building — the nervous system learning how to hold more energy, more change, more life without defaulting back into old patterns of survival stress. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering, "Why do I feel worse even though I'm doing all the right things?" — this episode is for you. We'll explore: Why discomfort often signals true expansion (not failure) How the nervous...
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Episode 15 - Feel First, Then Choose: Tiredness as Integration and Completion
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
What if your tiredness isn’t a problem to fix… but a signal that your body is completing something? In this short, real-time episode, I share a personal moment from my own journey—a day when a wave of full-body tiredness arrived, not as a breakdown, but as a breakthrough. We explore the connection between the recent Neptune-in-Aries shift, post-eclipse energy, and the body’s natural cycles of completion. You'll hear how I moved through the fog by feeling instead of forcing, and what it looks like to return to presence instead of panic. These waves we’re riding? They’re not...
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Episode 14 - Foundations of Nervous System Regulation – Building Capacity
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
In this episode of Nervous System Alchemy, we’re diving into one of the most important yet sometimes overlooked aspects of nervous system regulation: building capacity. What does that actually mean? Why is it foundational to real healing and regulation? And most importantly—how do we do it? I’ll walk you through: ✔️ Why building capacity is essential for completing the stress response cycle ✔️ How stored stress and trauma accumulate when the cycle gets interrupted ✔️ What we can learn from animals about naturally discharging stress ✔️ Practical...
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Episode 13 - The Road Awaits: Embracing Flow and Freedom
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
Welcome to a new chapter of Nervous System Alchemy—a podcast all about unlocking your creative potential and aligning with your most expansive self. In this episode, I’m diving into how my journey of nervous system regulation has led me to the freedom and flow I now experience, traveling the world full-time and navigating life from a place of presence and balance. For most of my life, I lived in a state of chronic survival-- an autoimmune condition, depression, and a dysregulated nervous system. Through years of healing, I rewired my body and mind to create a life of ease, creativity, and...
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Emergent Resilience 12 - Embodied Astrology: Opening the Heart to Abundance and Love with Venus in Retrograde
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
Emergent Resilience 12 - Embodied Astrology: Opening the Heart to Abundance and Love with Venus in Retrograde Retrogrades are a powerful opportunity for re-patterning the deep beliefs, feelings, and energies that unconsciously drive us. Venus rules the heart center, and opening to receive more love. Because money is how we give and receive, Venus also rules our finances and money stories. While Venus is retrograde in the passionate, fiery sign of Leo, you have a unique opportunity to dive into the hidden blocks around money and love... so you can release unconcsious blocks to...
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Emergent Resilience 11 - When the Mind Doesn't Want to Calm - 4 Keys to Connecting to Your Higher Wisdom
Nervous System Alchemy: Unleash Your Magic and Flow
Emergent Resilience 11 - When the Mind Doesn't Want to Calm - 4 Keys to Connecting to Your Higher Wisdom In this episode, I share about a personal healing journey that's happened recently, what I learned through working in my Akashic Records about my over-attachment to the mind, and the key practices that helped me shift out of being driven by the mind and into deeper connection with my spiritual gifts. ___ Ready to move through your Upper Limits by Regulating Your Nervous System? ___ keep in touch! website: FB group: IG: YT: _____ "Grace" written and...
info_outlineIn this episode of Nervous System Alchemy, we’re diving into one of the most important yet sometimes overlooked aspects of nervous system regulation: building capacity.
What does that actually mean? Why is it foundational to real healing and regulation? And most importantly—how do we do it?
I’ll walk you through:
✔️ Why building capacity is essential for completing the stress response cycle
✔️ How stored stress and trauma accumulate when the cycle gets interrupted
✔️ What we can learn from animals about naturally discharging stress
✔️ Practical ways to start building capacity today—in small, do-able ways that won’t overwhelm your system
✔️ Why healing isn’t linear (and how to stay present even when it feels like a lot)
Resources & Next Steps
💬 Let’s Talk: I’d love to hear from you! What landed for you in this episode? What questions came up? What would you love to go deeper into in future episodes? Drop me a note: rachel@rachelhardy.com
🌿 Interested in working with your nervous system at a deeper level?
Start slow and steady with my Nervous System Sanctuary membership— a gentle, accessible way to build real capacity and ease into lasting change.
Or, if you're ready for deep, transformational 1:1 work, explore Heal Your Nervous System and Thrive — my program for soulful leaders and creatives who are ready to clear outdated survival patterns from their body and step into greater ease, freedom, and creative power.
"Grace" written and recorded by Paul Briggs and used by permission. paulbriggs.bandcamp.com/