I’ve been lucky enough to trial the mobiliser for 3 months, after having a demo in the Bristol Back in Action store and feeling a deep and quick down regulation of my nervous system.
I’m Jenny and I’m a somatic ADHD business coach, and I support heart led neurodivergent wellbeing practitioners break their income ceiling, support more people and build a business that supports their dream life- without sacrificing their health, morals or lifestyle.
A vast majority of the work I do with my clients is about supporting their nervous system to expand its capacity to feel safe, along with rewriting beliefs blocking their success, when being neurodivergent and hypermobile has put the nervous system under threat for a vast majority of peoples lives- but it doesn’t have to stay that way, and that's where I got curious about the role the Mobiliser could play in nervous system regulation.
The first week of having the Mobi at home, I got a little bit obsessed, the first few sessions felt like such an opening, like the most satisfying deep breath you’ve had all year, my shoulders were in their correct position and my arms were naturally hanging at my sides, not rounded forward as they usually were. I could feel my diaphragm opening and my body and muscles repatterining themselves into a more natural and aligned posture, which felt great, but the muscles soon began to fatigue after a while. But I know from the work I do, once we give the body enough physical stimulation or feedback to show how we want to move, it picks it up quickly and starts to make micro adjustments.
Having ADHD and a history of trauma, I can struggle to sit still and to meditate (even when I’m a qualified meditation teacher too!) My mind wanders and the feeling of boredom can quite literally be painful (it lights up pain receptors in neurodivergent brains) so I always need some kind of anchor or guide if I’m meditating. I found following the movement of the mobi was enough, I was tuned into my body and observing how the rollers felt over different muscles, over the different vertebrae in my spine, what felt pleasant and what sometimes felt too much. As I’m focussing on these sensations, I can sense my proprioception (where we sense we are in space) and interoception (how we sense internally) pathways improving and strengthening- these are often things neurodivergent people can struggle with, and definitely hypermobile people too, which is why we are often walking into things and covered in bruises!
About half way through, I could feel my brain waves shifting, the monkey mind naturally quietened down and everything started to feel slower, more spacious and less urgent- it is a very pleasant feeling that is hard to replicate!
A few times I used the Mobi when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and my nervous system shifted from a sympathetic (fight/ flight) to a down regulated dorsal (freeze) response when I came up to sitting. Almost like the sympathetic energy was moving through my body and the hose of my spinal cord got unkinked, so when I sat up I had a head rush and what felt like a bit of sensory overload and disassociation which lasted for about a minute after I sat up. This can also happen when we are releasing stuck energy from the body, so if anybody else has felt similar- it might not be a bad thing, just your nervous system shifting states.
We can talk about good posture all day long, but for a neurodivergent hypermobile person, we often have a forward head posture, and tight muscles around the jaw, head, neck and shoulders. The tightness in the neck in particular can compress the vagus nerve, which is like the brake and accelerator to our big organs like our heart & lungs responsible for speeding up to address a threat (getting ready to run from a tiger chasing us) or slowing down because the threat has passed or doesn’t exist. So if the vagus nerve gets compressed, it’s like having the brake and accelerator in use at the same time as you’re driving- it wastes a lot of energy and confuses the body too. Anything we can do to tone or strengthen the vagus nerve, will create more resilience so the nervous system isn’t as hyper sensitive. I could definitely feel the mobi was helping to realign my head posture and open up the vagus nerve pathway because I was feeling more relaxed more often, I wasn’t so jumpy or reactive to situations too.
In my experience, I needed to go at a slower pace with the Mobi, I could sense I got a bit obsessed with the new and nice feeling to start with, but my body needed a bit longer to integrate those changes. A reason so many hypermobile people are also neurodivergent is due to our hyper sensitive nervous system, and because we can struggle with proprioception and not knowing where we are in space until we push past our limits, it can feel chronically unsafe to exist in the world- so when we start to reorganise the body, joints, open up new neural pathways, if we do too much too soon, our nervous system can fight back by creating new symptoms or we realise we’ve overly mobilised a joint that our muscles haven’t got the strength to support yet. So although Back in Action recommends once a day, and there will be some discomfort, my intuition feels that 2-4 times a week would be a more suitable pace for anybody with a sensitive nervous system, especially neurodivergent and/ or hypermobile people.
I do feel like people who are neurodivergent, especially ADHD, once they have found a pace that suits their body, will get a great benefit from using the mobiliser. Not only for feeling more relaxed day to day, but for building a new sustainable habit that they enjoy and building up trust in their body. This leads to better decision making, releasing trauma, disease prevention, and calmer and happier people!
It has also been extremely supportive and helpful to have somebody at Back in Action to speak to, they don’t just hand you the equipment and leave you to it. Being able to use the diary and speak to Fiona, sharing how I’m feeling and she is giving me advice on what cushions to use, what settings to try, the frequency etc. I’ve felt safe knowing I can ask silly questions and they are answered!
The first week of having the mobi at home, I got a little bit obsessed, the first few sessions felt like such an opening, like the most satisfying deep breath you’ve had all year, my shoulders were in their correct position and my arms were naturally hanging at my sides, not rounded forward as they usually were. I could feel my diaphragm opening and my body and muscles repatterining themselves into a more natural and aligned posture, which felt great, but the muscles soon began to fatigue after a while. But I know from the work I do, once we give the body enough physical stimulation or feedback to show how we want to move, it picks it up quickly and starts to make micro adjustments.
