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Tera Sandona

does soreness mean muscle growth

May 12, 2026 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

Does Soreness Mean Muscle Growth (Or Are You Overdoing It)

Muscle soreness is often treated as a sign that a workout was effective, which leads many people to assume that the more sore they feel, the more progress they are…

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how to calm your nervous system quickly

May 5, 2026 · In: Nervous System Regulation

How to Calm Your Nervous System Quickly and Realistically

Trying to figure out how to calm your nervous system quickly can feel overwhelming and daunting, especially when you don’t know where to start. Most advice assumes you have time,…

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why am i always tired all the time

April 28, 2026 · In: Burnout and Fatigue, Holistic Self-Care and Sustainable Healing

Why Am I Always Tired All the Time? What’s Actually Causing It

Feeling tired all the time can be frustrating, especially when you are actively trying to do all the right things to take care of yourself. You might be exercising, eating…

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should you exercise with pain

April 21, 2026 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

Should You Exercise With Pain? How to Know What Your Body Actually Needs

Deciding whether you should exercise with pain can feel unclear, especially when the advice around it seems conflicting. Some sources suggest pushing through discomfort, while others recommend stopping at the…

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effects of sitting all day

April 14, 2026 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

Effects of Sitting All Day: It’s Not Posture, It’s This

The effects of sitting all day are often blamed on posture. Sit up straighter. Adjust your monitor. Get a better chair. And while your setup does matter to some degree,…

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stress and chronic pain connection

April 7, 2026 · In: Nervous System Regulation

The Real Stress and Chronic Pain Connection Most People Overlook

Pain that increases during stressful periods can feel confusing, especially when nothing has changed physically. Many people notice their symptoms become more intense during busy weeks, poor sleep, or times…

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Meet Tera

Meet Tera
hi friends!

I'm a practicing physical therapist based out of sunny SoCal who loves to educate others and share information and knowledge. You can typically find me hard at work trying to manage normal life or cuddled up under a blanket enjoying coffee or desserts I can never seem to get away from!

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Featured Posts

Woman experiencing the freeze response, a dorsal vagal shutdown pattern linked to chronic pain and nervous system dysregulation

The Freeze Response in Chronic Pain: When Your Body Shuts Down Instead of Fighting Back

woman testing a gentle movement baseline during a slow walk

What is Gentle Movement? (And Why Most Advice Gets It Wrong)

woman taking a planned rest break while pacing an activity with chronic pain

Pacing for Chronic Pain: The Skill No One Teaches You (And How to Actually Start)

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I stood in front of my fridge for an hour. Couldn’ I stood in front of my fridge for an hour. Couldn’t decide, not even sure I was hungry. Just stuck. And one decision felt like the hardest thing I’d been asked to do all day, even though I’d made decisions all day long without a second thought.

I kept wondering what was wrong with me. Turns out, nothing was.

Fight, flight, and freeze are all protective responses your nervous system reaches for under threat. Fight and flight speed you up. They give you the energy to push back or get away. Freeze does the opposite. It shuts things down because there’s nothing left to fight with or run from.

That fridge moment wasn’t a discipline problem. It was my nervous system running out before dinner could be decided and made.

Freeze doesn’t get talked about as much as fight or flight, but it’s just as real and it shows up in the most ordinary places…a kitchen, a closed laptop, a decision that shouldn’t be hard and somehow is.

If you’ve had a night like this, you already know exactly what I’m talking about.

If this sounds familiar, tell me in the comments, or tag someone who’d know exactly what I mean.
July ☀️⛳️🌴🌊👙🥩🥦💛💪 Also, can you tell my husband li July ☀️⛳️🌴🌊👙🥩🥦💛💪

Also, can you tell my husband likes taking photos with me
Somewhere along the way, gentle movement became a Somewhere along the way, gentle movement became a genre instead of a description. A category of things, restorative yoga, gentle stretching, slow walks, that you’re supposed to do when you’re not up for a “real” workout. This means most days you either skip movement completely because nothing on that approved list sounds appealing or you push straight past it into something your body wasn’t actually ready for because gentle felt like admitting defeat.

Here’s the part nobody explains. Gentle was never supposed to be a fixed list of activities. It’s a match between whatever movement you’re choosing and where your nervous system actually is that day. On a Green Light day, a hike can be gentle. On a Red Light day, five minutes of walking around your kitchen can be more than enough. Calling it gentle isn’t you being soft, it’s you reading the room your body is actually in.

That’s the piece the standard advice skips. You can’t match movement to capacity if nobody’s taught you how to read your own capacity in the first place. That’s what the Traffic Light System is for. Not a chart to memorize, but a way to actually check where you are before you decide what “gentle” looks like today.

So the next time someone tells you to “just do something gentle,” ask yourself what your system needs today, not what the label says gentle should look like. Some days that’s a walk. Some days that’s getting down onto the floor and back up. Both count.

Comment “red” or “green,” whichever one today actually is. There’s no wrong answer.
It’s been sitting there for months. Maybe it was a It’s been sitting there for months. Maybe it was a gift or maybe you bought it yourself in a burst of “this year I’m going to actually rest.” Then, work picked up or one of the kids got sick, and the book stayed closed...same bookmark, same page, for weeks.

Every productivity hack tells you to schedule yourself in like an appointment. To block the time and treat it as non-negotiable. That misses the real problem. You can put an hour on the calendar and still not open the book because the block was never the missing piece. What’s missing is a nervous system that has to believe stopping is actually safe before any schedule works.

You’ve told yourself it’s because you’re busy. And if you’re honest, it’s quieter than that. Every time you chose between something for yourself and one more thing for someone else, someone else won. Not because you’re weak, but because somewhere along the way, your body learned that stopping wasn’t safe, so it stopped asking to be prioritized at all.

That’s not poor time management. That’s the sign. The women who are just busy find the five minutes. The ones who take care of everyone else first, don’t. Their own needs stopped registering as needs a long time ago and “later” became the answer to everything that was actually about them. And right now, with school starting back up in a few weeks and every calendar about to fill in again, this is exactly the season it gets worse, not better.

You are not broken. You are dysregulated. The order matters and the fix isn’t a better system. It’s teaching your nervous system that it’s allowed to stop before it’s forced to.

Open the book tonight, even for two minutes. Not to finish it, just to prove to your body that stopping doesn’t cost you anything. Then, save this for the next time you need the reminder.
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