Movement and Meaning: John Wilson's Self-care

“We get a lot of meaning from creating spaces where people can come and connect, and feel like they’re in a place where they’re welcomed, and that some good things can happen.” ~ John Wilson, Co-director, Online Events

It was SUCH a joy to talk to Online Events’ co-director, John Wilson. As well as talking about his own ideal and actual self-care, Self care and collective care practices, he shares some of what he’s learned through co-creating such a nourishing online community for therapists, counsellors and supervisors.

Chapters

0:01–2:26 Introduction, movement and nervous system support

2:26–3:38 Welcoming John Wilson of Online Events

3:38–6:22 John’s work, community building and setting the context

6:22–9:10 The Feel part: movement, walking, and self-regulation

9:10–12:16 Sleep, flexibility, and adapting self-care when plans change

12:16–14:04 Letting go of perfection and allowing partial practices

14:04–16:59 The Love part: nature, presence, and remembering connection

16:59–19:01 The Heal part: community, meaning, and shared purpose at work

19:01–22:38 Leadership, slowing down, and staying connected under pressure

22:38–24:04 Advice to a younger self and sustaining long-term projects

24:04–26:39 Closing reflections, where to find John, and final notes

Links

Where to find Online Events:

Website:

https://OnlinEvents.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Online Eventscpd/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Online Events

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Online Events/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Online Events_saz

Episode 86: Tracy Otsuka on the 43% of ADHDers with Excellent Mental Health

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Definitely movement is helpful for me. I’m not really a stationary person so anything that has movement in it is helpful for me. And that’s both physically and psychologically.

Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham, and you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. You can find out more, and access older episodes, at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com, and you can also access loads of free resources, and find out more about the book 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, the column I write for Platinum every month, other titles I contribute to, my work, loads of free resources I’ve created over the years.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, and if you haven’t already signed up for my free newsletter, it goes out on a Monday, Míle Buíochas Mondays. Míle Buíochas means a thousand thank yous in Irish, which I’m very slowly learning.

It’s polyvagal informed journal prompts, to help you each week. There’s the gratitude practice element, figuring out more of what brings you joy on a daily basis, what helps you feel in that ventral vagal, what I call Purr! when I use the rescue cats, with the Polyvagal Purrs approach and I also share some of my own gratitudes, some of the things that have helped me feel more in the ventral vagal that week. Some of those will be resources that might benefit you.

I also share news about upcoming events, special offers, things like that, but the journal prompts also include encouragement to look at what is creating sympathetic survival responses (that Hiss! with the Polyvagal Purrs approach) and, potentially, the dorsal vagal (Freeze!).

It’s really helping you learn to map your own nervous system, get to know yourself, and get to support yourself, and it’s all free. So if you haven’t already, you can sign up at selfcarecoaching.net, and if you have any questions, again let me know eve@selfcarecoaching.net

I hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome John Wilson, thank you so much for joining me!

Thank you, yes, thank you for having me on the podcast.

My absolute pleasure. I know you through Online Events, I was one of the presenters at the conference last year for neurodivergence around the rescue cats [Polyvagal Purrs – selfcarecoaching.net/feline], and I just think you’ve done so incredibly with what you’ve created, and providing so much support to so many people. And I also, really obviously, I don’t know you very well, but you seem to embody this calm, or you exude this calm, where I imagine your life is anything but, with all you’re dealing with.

I ask my guests about their ideal and actual self-care, but I’ll start by just asking you to introduce yourself, and maybe say a little bit about Online Events, and anything you want to allow people to find, where they can find you online, or anything you want to plug or promote.

Thank you Eve, well, thank you for having me on the podcast, that’s very generous, and it’s lovely to be here, and be in the conversation with you, and the listeners as well. As you say, I’m part of Online Events, I’m one of two directors, a director with my sister Sandra Wilson, so we’re a sibling team. What can I say about Online Events, we started in 2009, so we were really early in the online learning space, particularly in the helping professions, so we’ve had lots of different kinds of adventures, and there was a big increase in the scope of our work over the pandemic as well, because so many more colleagues came online, that allowed us to run a lot more things, and create a lot more experiences for the helping professions community, so I think since the pandemic we’ve run just almost about 3,000 events.

Wow, that’s a short period of time, for an enormous amount.

Yeah, but it took us about the first 10 years to get to maybe, I think we were around 800 events, and then we’ve done, yeah, it’s really exploded, and we do about 700 or 800 events a year now, maybe about 10 to 20 conferences, so yeah, we keep ourselves busy. So although often colleagues are seeing me on the video, I’m just the face of a very very good team.

I mean it’s not, obviously, as a director, as a co-founder, you have set the tone for that team, you have like kind of, don’t sell yourself short, but I will ask you, so where can, there’ll be a link in the show notes, but it’s Online Events.co.uk isn’t it, with just one e in the middle.

Yes, that’s a really important part, I learnt from experience.

Yes, okay, thank you for that. It seemed like a cool idea when we started the company, but I think it’s got a lot of people lost, but yes, Online Events, so you spell it onlinevents.co.uk, but we say Online Events, yeah.

And I’ll ask you about your ideal and actual self-care for the different parts of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework. The Feel bit is that regulatory lowercase, like hyphenated self-care, the things we actively do to help ourselves feel better. Sometimes we have the bandwidth for that, other times we don’t, and it can be easier to move into that kind of Love, self-acceptance, but often that’s harder, but that kind of what helps you remember you’re part of the divine, part of nature, you don’t need to do a thing to improve, and then finally the Heal bit is the co-regulation, the collective care, the community, the how you provide, obviously even more than I’d realised, community space for others, and also you’ve mentioned your team, but what else you use to hold yourself, like how you let yourself be held, so in each area the ideal and the actual.

If we start with feel and the regulatory, what would be your ideal self-care practices?

Definitely movement is helpful for me, so I’m not really a stationary person, so anything that has movement in it is helpful for me, and that’s both physically and psychologically. So of course working at the computer, there can be a lot of stationary times, so definitely having periods in the day where there’s movement, and you can imagine with all those events, and the team to take care of, the day can get really intense.

The ideal thing for me is to be up early, get a little bit of work done, get out and get an hour’s walk in, so that it’s grounded with some nature, and then back into work. Something about breaking, getting a little bit done, then doing something to care for myself, and to sustain myself.

While I’m walking, I’ll also have a meditation practice that I can listen to while I’m walking as well, so sitting and meditating isn’t easy for me, so if I’m in movement, and also having that kind of psychological and emotional experience while I’m on the move, can really help integrate that for me, it sets me up for the day.

Wonderful, what about later in the day? What would be ideal things to fit in?

The important thing for me is getting enough sleep, the temptation for me is just to squeeze the sleep time, and then of course it always catches up with me. If you keep overdrawing the bank, getting in a lot of trouble. So finishing work, having a little bit of downtime, and then making sure I’ve got enough time for sleep is really, really important. It sounds like a very basic thing, but that for me really impacts how my day and my week goes.

I interviewed Tracey Otsuka, who wrote ADHD for Smartass Women, and she said she used to get by on three or four hours sleep, and then she found out that it has huge health implications. She actually started setting a timer to sound like bells, pretended that she was Cinderella to beat the revenge bedtime procrastination and raced around to get to bed by the time she wanted to, to gamify it. I still have the revenge bedtime procrastination, but even remembering