Bottom Up Strategies
🧠 What is a “Flipped Lid”?
Most of us have heard the phrase “flipped lid”—and it’s a great way to describe what happens when our limbic system gets fully activated.
The limbic system, which includes the brain stem and amygdala (our emotional control center), is designed to keep us safe.
Its key function?
➡️ Survival.
When it senses danger—real or perceived—it kicks into gear by triggering our fight, flight, or freeze response. This “fight, flight, or freeze” mode is a fast, automatic neurobiological response to perceived threat, bypassing the thinking part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) to react instantly. It originated when the human brain was first developing—at a time when real danger often meant facing a lion on the savannah.
Only now, in modern life, the threats usually aren’t life-or-death…
Instead, they look more like:
🧾 A stressful deadline or meeting at work
📱 A flood of unanswered messages
🙅♂️ A confrontation with a loved one
📉 Fear of failure or judgment
🚨 Sudden loud noises or unexpected change
Our nervous system still reacts as if these are lions—flooding the body with stress hormones and triggering automatic survival responses, even when the threat isn’t physical or immediate.
🧠 Top-Down Regulation Strategies (When Cortex Is On)
• Top-down strategies are things like making a choice, problem-solving, talking it out, or using a coping skill—anything that involves the cortex (the thinking brain).
• These are effective tools for regulation ONLY when the cortex is at least partially online.
• If a person is partially dysregulated but still responsive, top-down tools can help calm the system
🔥 But When the Lid Is Totally Flipped…
🧠 Bottom Up Strategies
• When the limbic system fully takes over, and the cortex is offline, the person can’t access logic, language, or self-regulation.
This may look like the following presentations:
🔺 Hyperarousal (Fight or Flight): The nervous system is in overdrive — alert, reactive, on edge.
Examples:
😰 Panic or anxiety
👀 Constantly scanning the room
😨 Jumping at sudden noises
😣 Inability to relax or settle
🗣️ Rapid speech or fidgeting
🔻 Hypoarousal (Freeze or Shutdown): The system shuts down to cope with overwhelm — withdrawn or disconnected.
Examples:
😶 Zoned out or "checked out"
🧍♂️ Lack of movement or response
🧊 Feeling numb or emotionally flat
😴 Slumped posture or fatigue
🛑 Difficulty speaking or initiating action
•We can use our body (and our calm brain) to interact with the student’s body in what we call bottom-up strategies, which use movement of the body to communicate with the brain. They’re coined Bottom Up as they target the brain stem and work to calm our limbic system which lives at the bottom of our brain, thus regulation from the “bottom up”.
🧠 Co-regulation
One of the most powerful tools we have to help someone regulate is...
Our own regulated brain.
“Big brains will ALWAYS lead the little brains”
This is thanks to something called mirror neurons.
🧪 Discovered in Italy in the 1990s during experiments with monkeys, researchers found that certain neurons in the brain would activate not only when the monkey performed an action, but also when it watched another monkey perform the same action.
💡 What does this mean?
When our brain is connected to another person’s brain, and that person is feeling something (calm, joy, fear, etc.), our mirror neurons light up as if we’re experiencing it ourselves.
So when a child or student is dysregulated, and we stay calm and grounded, our calm becomes contagious.
🖐️ Sensorimotor Attunement
If you can lock eyes with the child or student and toss a bean bag, soft ball or other small object and have that student catch it and throw it back.. you’ve got them back online.
👋 Toss-and-catch, high fives, rhythmic movement
Cross body tossing or tapping
🧠 Keeps your own body regulated while signaling safety and rhythm to the student’s brain
🔁 Rhythm & Bilateral Stimulation
These involve alternating movements that help organize the nervous system:
🏀 Bouncing a basketball with alternating hands
🥎 Tossing an object back and forth
🥁 Drumming with alternating hands
👏 High fives, hand claps, or toss-catch games
🧍♂️ Swaying back and forth
🌬️ Deep Breathing
Focus on big inhales and long, slow exhales
No need to tell the student to breathe—just do it yourself.
➡️ Their mirror neurons will naturally start to sync with your breathing rhythm.
This is incredibly effective for older students or those resistant to verbal direction.
🎧 Adjusting Sensory Input
Increase or decrease stimulation depending on the need:
🍋 Sour or spicy taste- war heads can work wonders!
❄️ Temperature changes (cold drink, warm blanket, hot or cold ice pack in hand, cold air)
🤲 Deep pressure or weighted items
🎧 Quiet space, hood up, music, earmuffs
🚶♀️ Walking—solo or side-by-side
🦶 Bare feet
Scrunching toes-hold-release
⚾ Squeezing objects in hands or arm
🏃♀️ Run, swing, balance or climb
💡 Remember:
By doing these activities yourself, you are:
Regulating your own nervous system
Nonverbally co-regulating through mirror neurons
Supporting the student’s brain to come back online—without demand or compliance
“Big Brains will Always Lead Little Brains”
My children's mindfulness book, Eagle Eyes, weaves an embedded mindfulness lesson into the story, making it engaging and accessible for kids.
