Expand: Mindful Nervous System Regulation Support For Trauma Healing - by Shelby Leigh

COURSE

Expand: Mindful Nervous System Regulation Support For Trauma Healing

With Shelby Leigh

Learn how to gently expand your capacity for steadiness and kindness as you navigate deep healing and growth. Whether you’re in a process of healing trauma or deepening your commitment to embodying self-compassion, this course helps you open to the possibilities of healing that are already innate in you. During these 10 days, you will: 1) Sink into trauma-informed practices to support your nervous system’s capacity to expand so that you can respond to life and all that comes with it instead of react. 2) Discover various types of somatic nervous system regulation and mindful meditation practices that support coming into the body in the present moment with more of a sense of safety and ease. 3) Create a more nourishing relationship to yourself in this fresh moment in time that’s kind, affirming and steady. 4) Deepen your awareness of how you experience stress, reactivity and overwhelm and meet it with understanding, patience and care. 5) Welcome the parts of you that have been hardest to hold. As we open to the full spectrum of life and all that we’ve been through with curiosity, presence and support, so much is possible. Healing and growth isn’t something we need to push for or struggle through. Join me in this experience where we’ll explore various gentle practices - some more still and meditative and others with space for simple movement exploration. Expect to learn new concepts around nervous system regulation and healing, to be guided in 15-25 minute daily practices, meditate, breathe, move, laugh, love it, hate it, and everywhere in between. Take what you love and leave the rest.


Meet your Teacher

Shelby Leigh, LPC is dedicated to supporting trauma healing in a way that is trauma-informed, gentle, simple, welcoming and skilled. For nearly two decades, she has been practicing and sharing meditation and embodiment practices and supporting people worldwide to live life fully with warmth, vitality, empowerment and compassion. In her years sitting supported by fierce compassion with clients who have experienced trauma, Shelby offers a body of work that helps people stop trying to fix and figure themselves out and allow their truest selves to emerge and lead their lives through nervous system regulation work. Shelby is a Somatic Psychotherapist with two coaching certificates and numerous trainings in the somatic treatment of trauma with advanced specializations in complex and developmental trauma focusing on nervous system regulation. Between her own journey of healing complex PTSD and supporting thousands of students and clients impacted by trauma, she is ignited by walking this path beside so many people dedicated to waking up.

read more

10 Days

2.9k students

4.9 stars

29 min / day

Authenticity

English


Lesson 1

Settling In

Today we settle in, get oriented, set intentions, find our resources and then sink into a simple nervous system regulation practice that can be done in any posture. This is FOR YOU. You cannot do this perfectly. Let yourself be messy. Let yourself love it and hate it and check out and check back in as we arrive together. Every time you give yourself this time to practice, your making an impact on yourself and the world. Thank you for being here. Think of your intentions for the next 10-days, or just one word for what's here with you in this present moment.

read more

Lesson 2

Refuge

Today, we continue to arrive together. Of remembering who we are… the essence of our very being. A lifelong practice. Eventually, if it does not already, these practices and ways of being will pull you towards them… effortlessly. There will be more of a need for peace than for all of the noise. These practices teach us to listen and to live differently. To meet ourselves and others with our whole bodies and beings… being WITH what’s here with more gentleness, curiosity and warmth. Today we practice sinking into refuge that is available right here and right now in this moment. We sink into breath, into our bodies and allowing a peaceful place to be here with us calling us home here and now… together.

read more

Lesson 3

Kindness

Today, we sink into a Metta practice that weaves nervous system support through it. Metta means loving-kindness or benevolence or friendliness in the Pali language. When we practice Metta, we practice non-violence towards ourselves and others. Metta is a beautiful foundation to shine our lights even more brightly from so that we can receive our gifts and offer them even more fully to our communities and the world. Today, we meet our precious hearts and all that we carry. When we can be with and in our hearts so fully, we are super powered. It’s not that things don’t hurt but we are wide enough in ourselves and spacious enough to feel everything with care and we stay steady with it all.

read more

Lesson 4

Support

Today, we sink into support. Our bodies are our homes. So many of us have spent so much time in healing work with the best of intentions sweeping the rooms of our homes, rearranging the furniture and redecorating the walls. All of this work adds to our healing. This regulation work helps us shore up the foundation of our homes. It fills in the cracks and restores the fragmented dust so our homes rest upon what is sturdy and solid, unwavering. It helps our bodies by helping our nervous systems that communicate about whether or not we’re safe to our bodies, to rest into support. It helps our nervous system smooth out its signals so that we can jump to action effortlessly and rest effortlessly at appropriate times. When that foundation is solid, we have so much space to just… BE at home in our bodies. We spend most of the session today supported by resting our intention together in various systems of the body to help them feel supported, regulated and settled.

read more

Lesson 5

Compassion

Today, we open to compassion. Compassion is a natural movement of the heart both towards suffering and towards joy - towards it all. We can meet meet pain and happiness with warmth - to really be with it, let it in. Compassion helps us be really WITH ourselves and each other without trying to fix or change or make things different. In our practice today, we get a little creative. We start with a gentle movement practice - compassionately turning our hearts towards our bodies and our bodies towards our hearts. Then we move into a gentle breath work practice with a connected breath.

read more

Lesson 6

Holding Steady

Today, we learn to hold steady. The very act of presence = love. When we place our attention here in this moment together, with our bodies, our hearts and all that is calling for our care and curiosity, it lands as love. Here, today and every day, we are learning to be accepting of our humanity, our wholeness and the full spectrum of what it means to be alive. We are tending to the pains that call us awake at night and the whispers of hope that pull us forward into life again. Today we practice becoming bodies as steady as the mountain that have enough space for all of life to move through.

read more

Lesson 7

Letting Be

Today, we welcome the experience of Equinimity. We have to be more dedicated to our own peace than we are to overwhelm and stress. LOVE does this. We’re intending towards the experience of equanimity. Balanced with a sense of calm and peace with a heart that’s wide enough to welcome the joys and sorrows and respond instead of react. When we meet emotions and experiences we wish would go away, it takes effort and energy to try to let go. When we’re ready and when we feel safe enough and full enough and supported enough, these things just go. So allowing ourself to simply Let BE… just as we are, and know we’re enough. This is the practice of equanimity. We’ve already been through enough, let’s make space for the kinds of support that allow us to just BE instead of do. Today we deepen our practice from yesterday and bring in the experience of the Mountain and the nervous system regulation work to deepen the experience of steadiness and calm.

read more

Lesson 8

Gather

Today, we learn to stitch together resourcing experiences through the process of savoring. We can gather all sorts of tiny moments that feel supportive, safe enough, more calm, more clear, easeful, and even pleasurable. When we can take a moment to savor them and receive the goodness that comes along with them. We can be with those moments from a felt sense. Resting into, even for a moment, the support that comes from ease, joy, gratitude, peace & pleasure. We stitch these moments together over time. And eventually - an expansion happens and they’re here and available for longer and become part of the foundation that we rest upon. Today we explore gentle movement for regulation inspired by Qi Gong.

read more

Lesson 9

Truth

Today, we welcome uncertainty and confusion. It’s easy to be lost from our deepest truths and sense of knowing. We spin in the stories trying to dig to the root or figure out but we don’t need to do that to come awake or heal. What needs to come clear will come clear with time and space and enough safety to take refuge in. YOU are the answer. Your body is wise. As we widen, we trust our listening to what our bodies are communicating. We become clear in our understanding. In our practice today we deepen a familiar practice with resting our intention together in a new way with various systems of the body to help them feel supported, regulated and settled.

read more

Lesson 10

Filling Up

Today, we honor this transition, reflect on these past 10 days and expand into our fullness. We’re in a transitional moment. We forget to mark these moments sometimes and I find it can be so helpful to do so so that our minds and our bodies can orient together to what’s happening in a conscious way. Transitions mean so many things for so many of us and they often can bring up emotions in every direction. So we can welcome what’s here…. Knowing that it makes sense. In our practice we welcome all of the sensations of our bodies and rest in our fullness.

read more


4.9 (42)

Recent Reviews

Biggi

June 16, 2025

An unusual course in that it is much more open than most courses on Insight Timer. It focuses so much more on being with myself instead of doing something - be it visualization, breathing or other techniques - that I looked forward to each new episode. Thank You 🙏🏼

Maria

April 10, 2024

Beautiful 💜

Dori

January 10, 2024

Thank you for this most soothing and nourishing course. It was very healing to this empath with past traumas. You have such a soothing voice and the journey you take us on to healing our body and mind is a wonderful and unique approach. With much thanks, love and blessings, Dori 💜🤍💜

Kristin

January 1, 2024

Beautiful grounding and restorative practice. A reset for the nervous system that I needed. ❤️🫶🏽

Lisa

November 7, 2023

Excellent experience of working with our bodies.

Georgia

September 9, 2023

Really enjoyed this calm and healing course

Naomi

August 20, 2023

Transformative experience. I now have the tools to calm my nervous system that I use in my everyday. Thank you so much.

Angela

July 9, 2023

Amazing, plan to listen to again. Your guidance is naturally soothing and calming, thank you?

Michelle

May 20, 2023

I found this, or it found me, at just the time needed. 💜

Sylvie

May 6, 2023

Enjoyed the relaxing sessions. Didn't learn as much as I had hoped based on the title of the course. The structure of different aspects/topics covered could be more emphasised to help remember course content and build new practices.

Halima

April 22, 2023

The exercises helped me tune into and make friends with my body. I found it so helpful to feel my adrenal glands and send them love. Overall this helped me feel my body and be more in it. I am grateful for this class. It is a wonderful one.

Monique

April 11, 2023

Really loved it and wish it were longer. Felt like a soft warm retreat. The slowness of speech helped me embed and I loved the music in the middle. Thank you!

Trusted by 35 million people. It's free.

Insight Timer

Get the app