The Curious Collective - Kate Chisholm

18/11/2025

🤔 My curious mind is a play again .... a question I've been sitting with > When was the last time you acknowledged something you did well?

Not the big stuff. Not the promotion or the commendation or the completed tour.

The small stuff.

The morning you chose movement over scrolling.

The day you actually read that book instead of just thinking about it.

The afternoon you sat in the sauna instead of pushing through the tension.

The evening you showed up to connect with people who actually see you.

In service, I feel most didn't celebrate small wins. We moved to the next task. The next call. The next mission. Recognition came from others, not from ourselves - and even then, we deflected it.

But now?

Your nervous system doesn't know you're in a different operating environment. It's still scanning, still preparing, still waiting for the next demand.

What if celebrating these choices isn't indulgent - it's intelligence?

What if acknowledging "I did that for myself" is how we teach our system that we're safe enough to invest in our own capacity?

Your body is paying attention to what you honour....

When you pause to recognise:
- I chose breath work over numbing
- I went to that recovery centre
- I connected with people who get it
- I gave myself permission to rest

You're sending a signal > This matters. I matter. This is worth continuing.

So here's my curious question for you > What small win from this week deserves your acknowledgment?

Not to post about it. Not to prove anything to anyone.

Just to let your system know ~ you're noticing. You're honouring what serves you.

Because that recognition......

Call now to connect with business.

15/11/2025

"The hands of the many must join as one, and together we'll cross the river."

These words landed in my body last week like confirmation - a deep, resonant YES that I'm exactly where I need to be, doing the work that's needed.

For so long, the service-connected community has been conditioned to "brave it alone." To rely on rage and muscle. To conquer through force. To never show the cracks, never ask for help, never admit that the very strategies that kept you alive in service might now be keeping you from truly living.

But here's what I know in my bones ~ we cannot fight our way into healing.

The nervous system doesn't respond to more force, more pushing, more "getting over it." It responds to safety. To connection. To the regulated presence of others who understand. To hands joined together.

This is why I'm building what I'm building. Not another space where you have to perform strength or prove your worth. But a place where the many become one - where your nervous system can finally exhale in the presence of others who've walked through fire and understand what it costs.

You've already conquered mountains. You've already braved the forests and the stone.

Now it's time to open your heart and hands. To let your body's wisdom guide you. To cross this river together, not alone.

The work I do - the breathwork, the somatic practices, the nervous system education - it's all in service of this truth > collective healing is possible when we stop trying to muscle through and start learning to regulate together.

If you've been feeling the pull toward something different, something deeper, something that honours both your strength AND your need for connection - pay attention to that signal. Your body knows.

Together, we cross the river... listen 🎶 to this by Andy Copeman ~ The Humbling River

https://open.spotify.com/track/5gBfvri4FREMVXGVFi4fIx?si=4dm12JO4SMuw5pVeuvdw6g

The Curious Collective - Kate Chisholm

11/11/2025

Myth: Strong emotions mean something's wrong with you.

Reality: Emotions are messengers—energy carrying information about what you're experiencing.

The 90-second rule isn't about "getting over it quickly." It's about understanding when you're feeling vs. when you're re-triggering.

That awareness? That's where your power lives.

Full exploration in the article 👇👇

Here's something that completely shifted how I understand emotional regulation: An emotion lasts 90 seconds. That's it.

10/11/2025

Don't Give the Small Things More Time Than They Deserve!

Marcus Aurelius had it figured out, where we place our attention determines our reality.

The challenge? Our nervous systems were trained in environments where EVERYTHING mattered. Missing a detail could mean mission failure. Threat scanning was survival. Hypervigilance was competence.

So we bring that same intensity to civilian life—and suddenly we're giving inbox management the same cognitive energy we once reserved for life-and-death decisions.

This is where Resilience Shield: Build Your Shield > Mind Layer becomes critical.

It's not about "thinking positive" or forcing gratitude when your system is still running survival protocols. It's about recognising when your attention has been anchored to distractions rather than what actually matters.
The difference between busy and focused isn't productivity hacks. It's nervous system regulation.

Busy looks like:
- Reacting to every notification because your threat detection system is still scanning
- Answering every email immediately because delayed response feels like mission failure
- Saying yes to everything because operational readiness meant always being available
- Feeling exhausted at day's end but unclear what you actually accomplished

Focused looks like:
- Your body in a regulated enough state to discern what's actually important
- Attention directed by values rather than hijacked by activation
- Deep work from a place of presence rather than proving your worth through volume
- Walking away knowing you created something meaningful

Here's what makes this hard for service-connected populations > We developed sophisticated capabilities for sustained attention under pressure. That's a strength. But when that same attention gets captured by inbox distractions and calendar chaos, we're using elite-level focus on surface-level tasks.

The Mind Layer work isn't about eliminating distractions. It's about:
- Recognising when your nervous system is driving your attention vs. your values
- Building capacity to pause before reacting to every stimulus
- Distinguishing between genuine priorities and activation-driven urgency
- Creating space between trigger and response

Cal Newport talks about "deep work"—distraction-free concentration that creates value. But here's what he doesn't address > you can't access deep work states when your nervous system is chronically activated.

This is where body wisdom and mental discipline intersect.

Your hypervigilance isn't the enemy. It's intelligence that needs redirection. Instead of scanning for threats in your environment, what if that same sophisticated awareness tracked internal signals? What if you used that threat detection to notice when distractions are pulling you away from what matters?

The small things aren't inherently unimportant. The question is: are they getting more of your finite attention than they deserve?

Because every moment you spend anchored to distraction is a moment you're not building something that reflects your actual values.

Your attention is the most valuable resource you have. Service taught you to sustain focus under conditions most people can't imagine. That capability doesn't disappear in civilian life.

It just needs conscious direction rather than automatic deployment.

What's currently getting more of your attention than it deserves? And what would shift if you redirected that same focus to what actually matters? Kate Chisholm

07/11/2025

Hello The Curious Collective audience 👋

I'm co-hosting something pretty special during Veterans Health Week and I'd love your help spreading the word (or maybe it's YOU who should come?)....

Why? - if you know anyone who's served (military or their families), they've probably got a body that's really good at being "on". Doing all the time, yes 😉 that's handy... until it's not. Until that system forgets how to properly switch off.

Saturday 13th December, starting at Lake Samsonvale, we're doing a morning hike on the Bullocky Rest Trail (nothing crazy, just movement in nature), then heading to Inside Out Active Recovery in Brendale for what I call the good stuff - breathwork, contrast therapy, sauna, compression. Plus a light lunch 😋

The recovery session isn't about pushing through ~ it's about actually listening to what your body's trying to tell you. Learning to read those signals. Building capacity to move from "always ready" to "actually resting" without feeling like you've lost your edge.

It's fully supported by DVA and Buddy Up Australia, so it's a proper community event with Mark Amiet and myself running it.

I am sharing this because someone in your world might need this and not even realise it yet. Maybe they've been feeling a bit... stuck. Or they're transitioning out of service. Or they just can't seem to properly relax anymore.

This is for them 🙌🙏

Limited spots because we want to keep it intimate enough for everyone to actually connect properly.

Link below 👇

Chat soon, Kate Chisholm ###

P.S. - Feel free to tag anyone this might help.

Sometimes we all need someone to say "hey, this is for you."

https://buddyupaustralia.org/event/?id=1258

07/11/2025

How Breathwork Accesses What Talk Therapy Can't Reach 🫁

Here's what most people don't understand about regulation... (yet)...

Your brain has three distinct regions that evolved at different times:

The Brainstem (Reptilian Brain)
→ Where your autonomic breathing lives
→ Controls vital functions—heart rate, body temperature
→ Houses your survival responses
→ Origin point of the vagus nerve

The Limbic System (Mammalian Brain)
→ Centre of emotions and long-term memory
→ Where unprocessed experiences get stored
→ Processes learning and behaviours

The Neocortex
→ Executive decision-making and rational thought
→ Where your protective stories live
→ Controls your conscious breathing

Why This Matters for Regulation 🤔

When we use conscious connected breathing in therapeutic doses, studies show:

✓ Decreased blood flow to the prefrontal cortex (where protective stories live)
✓ Increased activation in the limbic system (where emotions are stored)
✓ Access to the amygdala—allowing it to process and release held fear

This creates a temporary decrease in your Default Mode Network—that rigid, habitual thinking that kept you operationally effective but may no longer serve your current context.

The Tactical Application...

Think of breathwork as creating a window where your psyche's protective armouring softens. Not permanently. Not dangerously. Just enough to allow suppressed responses from high-demand periods to surface, be processed, and complete their cycle.

Your hypervigilance, body tension, and alert responses are intelligent adaptations. Breathwork helps you access the wisdom behind these patterns and expand your response options.

Two Distinct Approaches:

Functional Breathing (Daily Maintenance)
→ Nasal breathing
→ Downregulates nervous system
→ Optimises CO2 tolerance
→ Builds diaphragm strength
→ Creates sustainable baseline regulation

Therapeutic Breathing (Intentional Doses)
→ Releases unresolved activation
→ Completes interrupted arousal cycles
→ Expands your window of tolerance
→ Accesses altered states for integration

The key distinction ~ Functional breathing maintains your system. Therapeutic breathing transforms stored patterns.

For the Service-Connected Community:

Your body holds intelligence that talk therapy alone often can't access. Breathwork creates a bridge between your conscious awareness and the protective patterns stored in your limbic system.

Not because something is wrong with you. Because your system adapted perfectly to extreme circumstances—and now deserves tactical tools for sustainable regulation in your current context.

What's your experience with breath-based regulation? Have you noticed different effects from different breathing approaches?

06/11/2025

Just spent the most incredible few days at Mt Tamborine completing my Resilience Mentor certification with Resilience Shield: Build Your Shield 🛡️

Super aligned few days ♡ surrounded by people doing the real inner work, conversations that go deep, and leaving feeling both completely full and somehow lighter at the same time.

Morning walks through rainforest, swims beneath Cedar Creek waterfall, learning spaces opening onto pure nature.

The kind of place where your nervous system can actually drop into presence without trying.

Absolute honour learning from Dr Dan Pronk, Ben Pronk & Tim Curtis - three humans who don't just teach resilience, they embody it. Plus incredible facilitators Ian Prior (movement), Lizzie Yorkston (nutrition), Erin Hoey (meditation) & Rob Redenbach (communication & speaker skills).

The cohort were like-minded souls who understand that real transformation isn't about "fixing" yourself - it's about understanding yourself more deeply and working WITH your system, not against it 🙌 I'm now a Certified Resilience Mentor 🎓

Trained in The Resilience Shield Model - a framework across six layers:
🧬 Innate - baseline blueprint
🧠 Mind - psychological & spiritual capacity
💪 Body - movement, nutrition, sleep
👥 Social - connections & relationships
💼 Professional - meaning & purpose
🔄 Adaptation - integrating it all

This fits SO perfectly with the nervous system and body wisdom work I do with veterans and first responders.

The Resilience Shield gives structure. My somatic work gives depth. Together = Magic ✨

Time in circle, shared meals, laughter until our faces hurt, challenging thinking, holding space for new knowledge 🙏 That's the connection that fills your cup.

Grateful to Dr Dan, Ben, Tim & the entire team. To my cohort - what a gift to do this work alongside you. To everyone supporting this work with the veteran & first responder community - this is another tool to serve better

Back to reality with a full heart & new knowledge 🙌

02/11/2025

Feel to Heal ✨️🙏

What if the body remembers what the mind has long forgotten?

For years, perhaps decades, you've been the reliable one. The strong one. The one who shows up for everyone else. You've learned to push through, to keep going, to put your needs on hold "just for now" (which somehow became forever).

Your nervous system learned early ~ Don't feel too much. It's not safe. Keep it together. They need you.

So you did what you had to do. You compressed it all down—the anger, the grief, the exhaustion, the longing for something different. You became masterful at managing everyone else's comfort while your own emotional landscape went unexplored.

But here's what we're discovering...

The body keeps the score. Those unfelt feelings don't disappear. They wait. They press against your ribcage. They show up as tension in your jaw, tightness in your chest, that exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix.

Sometimes they erupt in ways that surprise us—patterns of extreme highs and lows, sudden overwhelm, complete shutdown. The pendulum swings wildly because it was held so tightly for so long.

An invitation to pause and consider...

- What emotions have you been taught are "too much"?
- Where in your life have you made yourself smaller to accommodate others?
- What would it mean to allow yourself to 'feel' without immediately needing to fix, explain, or push through?
- What if your body's signals—the exhaustion, the restlessness, the shutdown, the surge—are actually wisdom trying to get your attention?

The truth about healing ~ You can't think your way through what you need to feel your way through !!

The path back to yourself requires slowing down enough to notice what's actually here. To befriend your nervous system instead of overriding it. To learn that feeling your emotions won't destroy you—it's the suppression that creates the destruction.

This isn't about dwelling in pain or making emotions your identity. It's about developing the capacity to be 'with' what is, to let it move through, to reclaim the parts of yourself you set aside.

Your body is not the problem. It's been trying to help you all along.

What if everything you've been experiencing is your system's intelligent attempt to bring you back into balance? Back into authenticity? Back home to yourself?

What comes up for you as you read this? Where do you feel it in your body right now?

There's no right answer. Just your answer.

23/10/2025

Pressure Doesn't Break You—It Activates You 🤔 let's ponder this together...

You know what's inside a glow stick before it glows?
All the same chemicals. Same potential. Same capacity for light.

What's different? The internal barrier has been broken. The separated elements can finally interact.

Maybe your time in the military or as a first responder on the job put you under pressure that most people never experience. It taught you to hold intensity civilians can't imagine. It built capacity for extremes.

And now? Something's cracking the container....

Maybe it's transition. Maybe it's a diagnosis. Maybe it's the moment your body said "no more" to patterns that used to work.

Most people call this breaking down > what if it's actually breaking open?

What Pressure Actually Does...
• In your fascia it creates density that becomes resource when released
• In your nervous system it builds range that becomes regulation when accessed
• In your experience it forms wisdom that becomes guidance when integrated

But none of that activates while it's still contained.

The shoulder tension you're carrying? That's not just pain—it's compressed experience waiting to become available energy.

The hypervigilance you can't turn off? That's not just exhaustion—it's intensity waiting to become presence.

The numbness you've been functioning through? That's not just disconnection—it's protection waiting to become capacity.

They're not mixing yet. But they're ready to....

Activation ~ it can feel like crisis. Like everything's falling apart. Like you're losing control of the container that's kept you functional.

That's accurate. And it's exactly what needs to happen.
Because the container was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to be protective until you had the capacity and conditions for what comes next.

Activation doesn't feel safe. It feels like pressure reaching critical mass.

But on the other side? Range. Response. Resource.

A nervous system that can flex instead of being locked.

A body that signals wisdom instead of just screaming warnings.

Experience that informs instead of haunts.

Start recognising you're being activated.

The discomfort isn't the problem—it's the mechanism.

The breaking open isn't breakdown—it's breakthrough.

Everything you've been through has been building toward this.

The deepest caves hold the greatest treasure.

And you've been trained to go there !!! Reach out if you'd like some guidance Kate Chisholm

19/10/2025

The Power of Releasing What No Longer Serves You !!

In this conversation with Nadine Muller, we explore what it truly means to transition—not just from service, but into the fullest expression of who you are.

Nadine speaks openly about the necessity of releasing past identities that no longer align with who you're becoming. This isn't about abandoning your service background—it's about acknowledging it with reverence while being willing to let go of the parts that keep you tethered to who you were rather than who you're becoming.

This is a grieving process. It can feel like stripping yourself bare. And that's okay. It's supposed to feel significant because it is significant.

On the other side of release lives something extraordinary > Reclamation. This is your invitation to step into personal discovery with curiosity.

To ask yourself > Who am I beyond the uniform? Beyond the role? Beyond the labels others have given me?

Nadine shares how this can be the most liberating time of your life—when you choose to step into the next version and evolution of yourself. Not because you have to, but because you're finally ready to.

You Don't Do This Alone!! Here's what makes this sustainable, a multi-layered approach with a web of support.

You need people in your corner. Mentors, coaches, community members who understand the terrain. And here's the key ~ as you evolve, your web of support needs to evolve too. If you're staying in the same place, it might be time to update your circle.

This isn't about leaving people behind. It's about surrounding yourself with those who can hold you through each phase of your growth.

This conversation goes so much deeper. Nadine and I discuss intergenerational patterns, the courage it takes to be the one who changes the story, and why the obstacle in your way is the way forward.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Nadine's powerful insights on stepping through the gate, even with trembling hands, and discovering the community waiting for you on the other side.

Your evolution is calling. Are you ready to answer?

Share this with someone in the service-connected community who needs to hear it today....... Tag them below or share to DM - Let's get these conversations heard ### Kate Chisholm