The Manifesting Latina

Master Self-Regulation to Transform Your Manifestation Journey

• Norma Reyes, PhD. • Season 4 • Episode 131

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Can mastering self-regulation transform your manifestation journey? Join me on this enlightening episode of the Manifesting Latina podcast, where I share my personal experiences with the stresses of modern life, like sending my baby to daycare and juggling family responsibilities. Through practical techniques such as meditation, yoga, and reflection, I demonstrate how maintaining emotional balance can help you rise above survival mode and align with your deepest desires.

Discover the power of tapping to manage emotions like anger. I recount a chaotic day filled with unexpected challenges, where tapping techniques helped me reduce my anger dramatically and stay composed. This wasn’t just about staying calm—it was about achieving a balanced state of mind that is essential for raising your vibration and effectively manifesting your goals. Learn how simple affirmations and strategic tapping can bring you back to your center, no matter how hectic life gets.

We delve into the neurological mechanisms behind self-regulation, focusing on the interplay between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. Techniques like deep breathing, mindful meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, and grounding exercises are explored for their effectiveness in enhancing emotional control. Whether it's through journaling or professional help, integrating these practices into your daily routine can revolutionize your manifestation efforts. Tune in to find out how consistency and personal adaptation can empower you to create the life you desire.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Manifesting Latina podcast, where you'll learn to unlock your incredible power of manifestation and connect deeply with yourself. I'm Dr Norma Reyes, your guide and host, helping you manifest a life filled with purpose, abundance and inner wisdom. Together, we'll dive into the art of manifestation, practical techniques, personal growth and the magic of aligning with your deepest desires. No more feeling stuck or disconnected. It's time to awaken your inner manifester, embrace your spirituality and create a life that truly resonates with your soul, your spirituality and create a life that truly resonates with your soul. Tune in each week to the Manifesting Latina podcast and begin to manifest your dream life. Hey everyone, welcome back. I am here to talk to you all about the power of self-regulation, regulating yourself. Self-regulation sounds funny, but yeah, self-regulating because it is so important for you to learn how to self-regulate, especially if you are in survival mode or if you find yourself yo-yoing from feeling good, feeling great, and then feeling frustrated, feeling triggered, feeling yourself lose control. Before I dive into that, I do want to remind you that I am accepting one-to-one clients to work with me, and I hope you do this. I hope you create a spiritual toolbox that will help you know how to self-regulate and that way you can manifest with more ease and flow, less frustration in your life and more time in joy, growing your capacity to be more joyful. And, of course, I want to give you guys a life update. Baby started daycare this week and let me tell you that I had to do a lot. I was going to say some, but I mean everything that I practice is preventative, meaning that I am meditating, doing yoga, reflection, all of those things to help me stay in a calmer state, and that way I'm not losing my shit like every hour. Right, we all lose our shit every once in a while. Okay, I lose my shit at least once a day, but I try not to. And this is where self-regulation comes in. Without self-regulation, then you cannot face life the way you would like to. There's lots of overwhelm, there's lots of challenges. There's a lot of things that you're juggling on your plate and win another thing, right? Just imagine eight things in the air that you're juggling and someone throws you a curveball to catch something else and you're just like everything feels like it's about to fall. You're trying to grab everything all at once and it's just not working because it's too much. So there are a lot of different ways you can do this.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to talk to y'all a little bit about what's been going on with me this past week and then we'll dive into tools to use. And also, when you are not self-regulated, then you are essentially in survival mode. I know I did an episode on survival mode. I'll link that in the show notes. I don't remember what episode number it was, but it'll be in the show notes if you want to hear about that and how being in survival mode is going to prevent you from manifesting the really great things you want in your life and may keep you stuck in manifesting more of that. Right, that being like frustration, that being challenges, that being the relationship issues that you're having, whether it be at work, at home, with friends, with whomever. If you are not in a good place, if you're not thriving, if you're not your best self and your higher self, then it'll be difficult for you to bring that energy in, because when you are not regulated, you are in a lower vibration and not able to focus, like so many things. Right? If you think about the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems, this is what regulates your body. If that's dysregulated, then you are not in a place where you can manifest what you desire and, of course, you're going to feel exhausted and you're not going to want to do a lot of these different things.

Speaker 1:

So for me, this week, baby started daycare and my two boys, the eight-year-old and the four-year-old, are still here, and I have my adult daughter also here. She is going to start her second semester in college. She's decided to stay home and we're dealing with adult nature is what I've been calling up and it can be challenging, and it can be challenging to have adult expectations for a child that's transitioning from being a teenager to being an adult and can be challenging for all of us, and it has been challenging. I will leave that there. But I was looking forward to having the baby go to daycare for a lot of different reasons, one of them being like I'm tired. I'm tired because I'm home all day with the kids.

Speaker 1:

This week didn't bring me the relief that I was wanting and desiring, and I found myself even more at edge because now I had like a whole routine that I have to do and that is like wake up, get the bottles ready, which now, as I say this, like get the bottles ready the night before. Come on, girl. Anyway, get the bottles ready, get him ready and then go and drop him off. And I had been taking the younger boys with me because they were really excited to go with me. Now they're not so much Today they were not and so I let them stay because, like my daughter's here, she's typically asleep in the morning, but you know she's here if they need something. I locked the door. They didn't cry when I got back and told me that they were scared. So I know that they felt good and safe too. And tell me that they were scared, so I know that they felt good and safe too.

Speaker 1:

So baby drop-offs have been fine. He's been great, hasn't really had any issues, and today is Friday as of so but the recording will come out on Tuesday and each day I felt like new challenges outside of baby and the boys were coming up and I was just like my fuse just was getting shorter and shorter. Even though I'm still doing my typical meditate in the morning, journaling in the morning, doing some gentle movement, I was still doing those things and those things, those tools, those spiritual tools, will help you stay regulated up to an extent, as obviously new challenges have come up, instead of bringing new tools to calm me down and then really like you don't know what, you don't know, right, it's our first week. I chose to do it this week. I was going to start him in August and then I was like, let me just do July 15th, because if I wait till August, then I'm going to also be taking the boys to school. I might feel overwhelmed and I'm so glad that I did that, even though financially it would have been nice not to. I am really glad that I did that because it has been just I don't want to say chaotic, but chaotic and I've never had any of my babies go to daycare this early. So you know, prepping bottles, my biggest fear was there was not going to be enough breast milk for him, and then my second biggest fear was that he wasn't going to be eating. Fortunately, he's been doing those things.

Speaker 1:

But then we also had other things going on, like my daughter had a doctor's appointment and then she had new student orientation that she missed Wednesday and I was really upset about that, plus having to navigate who's going to take her, who's going to pick her up, and then also working to give her autonomy and being like, okay, you have to take responsibility for those things that you're doing or not doing and plan them out and make sure that you're taking care of that. So on Wednesday I was very dysregulated and I took an hour. I probably could have took longer, but I only had an hour because I had sessions. So I drop off the baby around nine each day and pick them up about three because I have this. Well, sometimes four it's been four lately but I just felt like I don't want to just leave him in daycare all day. So like these expectations that I've been putting on myself has caused me stress. And so, since I was very dysregulated on Wednesday due to my daughter missing her orientation and not so much the missing part, just kind of the lack of being proactive right, meaning like taking the steps to ensure that she was gonna be able to go and make it and all these things, and so I was very upset. He was very angry and I partly wanted to be angry and you have to also claim your emotions. That is like the message I've been receiving from me for the last like two, three weeks, maybe a little bit longer. It's like claim your emotions, all of them. And Wednesday I really did. I was just like I'm just so angry right now. I came into my office and I was like, okay, I'm going to journal. And I journaled for like five minutes and I was like, okay, I can't journal because I just want to hold on to this anger.

Speaker 1:

I did some yoga to release tension, followed a YouTube video. You know plenty of YouTube videos out there and so I picked one with yoga with bird. I'll tag it in case anyone's interested in the exact same one. It was only like about 12 minutes. Firstly, I like to do that like yoga. That only takes about 12 to 15 minutes.

Speaker 1:

I am busy. I would love to be able to spend like 30 minutes to an hour doing it, but unfortunately I don't have that time yet and I really think I just haven't grown my capacity. It's not the time factor, it's my capacity in transitioning between activities. That it's not where I want to be. Before I didn't have to have such a long transition period. I think, just because of all the little moving bodies I have, plus myself, it's really hard to transition and I'm also wanting to take more breaks in between those transitions, making it a little bit harder for me.

Speaker 1:

So I did the yoga and I was still really angry and I was like, oh my gosh, okay, what else can I do? Right, I know all the different spiritual tools that I've come across. I don't know all of them. There's always new tools out there and I'm always searching for new tools and I'm like, okay, the next one that came to mind was tapping, and that's called emotional freedom technique. If you're unfamiliar with it, I'll put a video link on the show notes so you can see what that is.

Speaker 1:

And so I did tapping and I did tapping around anger and all I said was, if you are familiar with tapping, you start off with tapping on what's called the karate chop and you just think like karate chop on your hand and you'll get it. But that part and all I said was even though I'm angry, I love and accept myself. Even though I'm angry, I love and accept myself. And I touched the different tapping points and first round I did it. And when you do tapping, you write down your number of where you're at. So I was at a seven prior to doing one round.

Speaker 1:

I did one round, I got down to like a five and I was like, am I really at a five? I'm still angry. And then I did the second round. After the second round I got it down, I think, to a four and I was okay, I was starting to feel relief, I'm feeling, not feeling angry. And then finally did another round, and these rounds take max about two to three minutes, they don't take very long to do and I'm like am I angry? I mean, I don't know, is it gone or not. So I put 0.5 because I was like I feel like I'm not. But then I said really real, is it really gone? And that was Wednesday. I share this because I'm going to talk about how, on Thursday, on top of my usual routine that I do Wednesday, I did these extra things.

Speaker 1:

And then Thursday, we were running around taking my daughter to an appointment, dropping off my son, like doing all these different things, coming back from all that and really just navigating different changes. Like I ended up arriving like an hour early to her appointment because we were driving into town and I wasn't sure how long it would take. And since we were an hour early, I kind of changed in my mind how I was going to do things. I was originally going to go do a return to Target after her appointment. Since we were early, we went ahead and did it early, appointment finished, and I'm like, okay, well, let's head back home. And I had not planned on going to have lunch anywhere, but I'm like let's go have brunch.

Speaker 1:

And partly like there was some anxiousness I'm not going to say I didn't have any anxiousness, but the anxiousness was around that I packed everything I needed in regards to, like, pumping while on the road, but my plan was just to pump somewhere in a parking lot and then come home. But since I didn't have the pump, I forgot it. Packed everything else but the pump. I didn't have that on the back of my mind. So, even though all of that was going on, because I had done all of this extra self-regulation or self-regulating in these different tools that I used, when a car cut me off on Thursday when we're on our way to go get something to eat, I really surprised myself when I said this and I was like wow, myself when I said this and I was like wow, wow, look at that guy. And it was just funny.

Speaker 1:

And usually I know that when I'm in a calm state of mind and I'm driving and people cutting me off, people driving crazy people just peopling doesn't really bother me. But if I'm not in a really calm state of mind and I could just be having an ordinary day, nothing out of the ordinary. But I'm not in a calm state of mind, meaning like my frequency is not at a high frequency, meaning like maybe even getting up to joy, but let's just say it's not calm. And just because you're not having any actual emotions at that moment in time doesn't necessarily mean that you're calm. And so if I find myself getting annoyed or calling people trash that's my guilty pleasure is calling people trash, since I'm not upset, it's just funny and silly Like why would I call someone trash? That's so mean.

Speaker 1:

But when I'm driving and somebody cuts me off and I'm not self-regulated, I will be like, oh, that trash, or I'll call it. You know, maybe I'll say a jerk, jerk face or something, but trash. There's something about the word trash and as I say it I just want to laugh so much because it's so funny, but I am so angry that I will say, oh, my God, that trash. I might say that piece of trash. I think that's more of what I say.

Speaker 1:

But anyway, I just share that for you to be able to identify. Like what is your reaction, right? When are you being reactive? And when you are being reactive, that can mean that you are not currently regulated. And if you have children, you can kind of see this with your kids, like where everything bothers them. It doesn't even matter what it is. It can be a good thing and it'll bother them and transitions will be harder. So you can then notice what is it that you are doing? How are you being reactive?

Speaker 1:

So now let me get back to teaching you about self-regulation. So if you have never heard it, it's just really calming you down into a calm state, and it's so important for you to be in a calm state so that you can raise your vibration and manifest what you are desiring. So self-regulation is the ability to manage and cope and control your emotions, thoughts and behaviors in different situations. It's about maintaining a balanced state of mind, regardless of what is going on on the outside. This skill is crucial because our emotional state directly impacts our energy, our vibration, and, in turn, affects your ability to manifest. When you are calm and centered and grounded, you're going to be more closely aligned with your intentions and the flow of the universe, versus if you are angry, even if you and I'm saying angry because that's the most recent emotion that I've had. But even if you're sad like every, all of those lower vibration emotions make you want to curl up right Like you just want to like protect your energy. But when you are calm, your arms are open, your heart is open and you're just really seeing right things in a whole different light. So I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about the science behind it, because this is not just woo-woo. This is actually everything that I talk to my counseling clients this way, I talk to my manifesting clients this way about regulating and it's so important, but it's a practice. First you have to start practicing different things and then, when you get dysregulated, you can be like okay, now I got to add more tools. When you get dysregulated, you can be like, okay, now I got to add more tools.

Speaker 1:

So your brains have a built-in mechanism for regulating your emotions, primarily in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. Now your prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop to the age of 25. Prior to that, self-regulating can be difficult. If you've had trauma, if you've had challenges, just because your brain has finished growing doesn't mean that you've learned the skills to be able to self-regulate well, and this might lead to different outbursts, and until you start to learn how to can you actually start to manage your emotions better. So the prefrontal cortex is responsible for rational thinking and decision-making, while the amygdala is involved in emotional responses. When we experience stress or anxiety, the amygdala can overpower the prefrontal cortex, leading to a heightened emotion and reaction, right Like when you get triggered. So self-regulation practices help strengthen the prefrontal cortex ability to manage the amygdala's responses, allowing you to stay calm and composed. So some people are naturally going to have a better ability to manage their emotions because maybe they learn practices, maybe they were taught how to manage their emotions, maybe they were allowed to express their emotions as children. Or, on the flip side, maybe they learned how to manage them, but not maybe in positive ways, meaning staying quiet but then later it can show up as something else.

Speaker 1:

So I'm not going to go there, I'm not going to dive into that, but some typical techniques for self-regulation. One of them is deep breathing. So it's so simple to do. You can do it anywhere. You don't need any special tools, you don't need to watch a video. All you have to do is focus on your bra. Deep breathing helps activate your body's relaxation response. And even when you are having an anxious response, you can tell that either you're holding your bra or you're breathing fast. So if you are feeling overwhelmed, you can take it back and ask yourself. You can take it back and ask yourself okay, let me go ahead and just notice my breath going in my nose, coming out my mouth and even just slowing down your talking. If you find yourself talking really really fast, it could be that you are getting to a heightened state where you might actually become reactive because your breathing is not slowed down enough.

Speaker 1:

So try inhaling through your nose for a four count. So that is called. It's different things. But you can do a four count and then you can hold your breath for four and then you can exhale for four. So if four feels too long because I know when I started this, four felt too long so three right, one, two, three. Take a breath in One, two, three. Hold One, two, three, release One, two, three and just repeat that and repeat that. So that's deep breathing. There's also breath work, which is completely different than doing deep breathing. Breath work is its own thing. I highly recommend doing that. Usually that's 30 minutes to an hour that someone guides you. You can watch a YouTube video you can attend live. That is different from deep breathing. It's like, maybe like more advanced skills, regulating.

Speaker 1:

So then, something else you can do is mindful meditation. So practicing mindfulness helps you stay present and aware of your thoughts and emotions without judgment. You can start with a few minutes each day, focusing on your breath and then observing your thoughts as they come and they go. This takes a lot of practice. So if you have a lot of thoughts, if you are an anxious person or you feel a lot of overwhelm you're just like I have too many thoughts in my head I would say first, before going into a mindfulness meditation or practice, write things down Like okay, here are the things that are coming up in my mind, and then taking a moment to just sit and be mindful and you can hear the sounds around you. You can close your eyes, you can, like run your hands on your legs and feel the textures. This is how you become mindful and present in the moment.

Speaker 1:

Again, do this two to three minutes to begin with and then move up to like five to ten minutes. In the beginning, one minute might even feel too long. Two to three minutes, though Push yourself grow that capacity. You can also do progressive muscle relaxation. This is a technique that involves tensing and then relaxing different muscle groups in your body, which can help you reduce physical tension and promote relaxation. So again, you could start with like your hands you start with scrunching up your face, counting up to 10 and then releasing, and then again like scrunching up your hands, scrunching up your face, scrunching up your toes and then release, and that was probably like a three count. So you can just practice those things. You can also look up YouTube videos. You can search this on the internet everywhere. There's all of these different things that you can find.

Speaker 1:

Of course, journaling can help. Writing down your thoughts and feelings can help you process and release emotions and helping you gain clarity and perspective. Now it's important that when you are journaling, you don't become attached to the emotions and the thoughts. Remind yourself. Thoughts are just things that you repeat to yourself. That may or may not be true, and when you start to say that, it opens up the window of like okay, just because I think something doesn't make it right, just because I think something doesn't make it true, just because this is how I'm currently thinking, doesn't mean that I will always think this way and as you open up that door, you can allow an expansion right, allow yourself to grow.

Speaker 1:

So last one I'm going to talk about is grounding techniques. So grounding techniques are exercises such as walking barefoot on the grass, focusing on sensory details, visualizing roots growing from your feet into the earth, and that can help you just feel more centered and connected. And so why do you want to do this? Why is it so important for manifestation? That's because when you are calm and centered and you are in a higher vibrational state, it aligns you with the frequency of what you are desiring. Stress, anxiety and other negative emotions lower your vibration and they create resistance. Remember that thing I was talking about If you're curling up into a ball because you're angry, anxious, scared, you're not in an open arm position, figuratively speaking, because I'm not saying that you need to be, even though I do have my hands open right now and I'm like okay, I'm open and I'm receiving. If you're not, you are making it harder to attract what you want. A calm state allows you to focus more clearly on your intentions, visualize your goals with greater clarity and remain open to receiving the opportunities and signs from the universe. It also helps you trust in the process and let go of attachment to the outcome. This is why staying calm and regulating yourself is so effective in manifestation.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you have a lot of issues, a lot of challenges and the thought of doing any of these activities just feels like way too much, I definitely would say to think of hiring a professional, and by professional, this can be a therapist, a spiritual healer, anyone that you feel can help you learn how to use these techniques, and someone that you can talk to about what's going on in your life. What is causing the overwhelm? For some, going to a therapist works. For some, going to a therapist doesn't, and maybe you will have been going to a therapist but it's no longer effective for you. Then start looking for another person that can fill a similar type of role. This can, like I said, be an energy healer. This can be a life coach. This can be any type of practitioner that is practicing the techniques that you're looking and desiring to gain skills in.

Speaker 1:

So, as I wrap up, let me talk about how to integrate self-regulation into your daily life to support your manifesting journey. First, just start making time for these practices each day. Decide what you wanna do Pick one, whether it's meditation, deep breathing, journaling, yoga I know I didn't go into yoga or tapping, but I did mention it before and just pay attention to your emotional state and use grounding techniques whenever you feel off balance. Remember, the more consistent that you are, the more you practice self-regulation, the more naturally it will come and the more effective your manifestation efforts will be. Now I do have to say something about consistency. Consistency, yes, we all know it's important. What's more important is persistence. So if you miss one day, that's okay. What's more important is persistence. So if you miss one day, that's okay. What's more important? That you do it the next day, that you persisted even though challenges arose. That you persisted even though you don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Trust me, a lot of these practices I picked up on my own. I didn't have anyone teaching me or guiding me. And now, as I continue to grow in my practice, now, five years later, that I've actively been doing these practices, some of them I had done before kind of haphazardly, here and there, but now, five years into doing this more regularly and I would say five years consistently doing it, but in the last two to three years I've been finding and looking for supports, different coaches and mentors to expand my thinking, expand my knowledge base, and this has been like live coaching. This has been group coaching. This has been modules that I've been part of, as well as like reading books and picking up books and then going on YouTube. For me, youtube, I can follow a yoga thing on there, I can follow a workout routine, but when it comes to learning, I don't know what it is about YouTube, but it just isn't for me, even though I do watch video modules and I share that.

Speaker 1:

Just to remind you that just because I'm mentioning something doesn't mean that it has to work for you. Figure out what works for you. Maybe it's audio. Obviously, if you're listening to the podcast, you like audio, so maybe look for audiobooks or group coaching that maybe offers just an audio option for you, or coaching that can be in that form. Just figure it out what works for you, because what works for you is what's for you and that's it. That's all I have for today. Remember that self-regulation is such a powerful tool that not only helps you achieve a calm state, but also enhances your ability to manifest your dreams. I hope you found these insights and practices helpful.

Speaker 1:

If you enjoyed this episode. Please share it with your friends, leave a review, let me know your thoughts, send me a DM on Instagram you know that's where I like to hang out and if you are ready to have a coach, I'm the coach here for you. Schedule a discovery call with me. Join me next time for another wonderful episode. Until then, stay calm, stay centered and keep manifesting. Thank you for listening to the Manifesting Latina podcast. Did you love today's episode? Please help us grow by leaving a review, sharing with a friend or on your social media. Let's spread the abundance and fun of manifesting.

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Norma Reyes, PhD

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