ADHD-Friendly Mindfulness with Beverly Atkins

27 snips

Sep 15, 2025

This week, Beverly Atkins, founder of Pauseture and certified Feldenkrais instructor, shares her journey of managing ADHD through mindful movement. She discusses how the Feldenkrais Method helped her calm her nervous system and improve sleep. Beverly emphasizes the importance of novelty in regulating attention and shares insights on developing an app tailored for neurodivergent needs. With practical mindfulness strategies, she encourages listeners to embrace their individuality in managing ADHD and explore what truly works for them.

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ANECDOTE

How A 45-Minute Class Changed Her Life

Beverly discovered Feldenkrais at a fitness resort after severe back pain left her unable to walk.
After a 45-minute Awareness Through Movement class her back pain vanished and she began daily lessons that changed her life.

ADVICE

Use Novelty To Sustain Practice

Use novelty to keep a daily regulatory practice engaging instead of repetitive and boring.
Seek unpredictability and small challenges to maintain curiosity while practicing consistently.

INSIGHT

Movement Rewires Attention

Feldenkrais rewires attention by guiding focused curiosity across the body rather than teaching fixed movements.
Repeating attended movements strengthens new neural pathways so you gain choice over where attention goes.

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Hey Team!

This week I’m chatting with Beverly Atkins, founder of Pauseture, an audio-based mindful movement platform grounded in the Feldenkrais Method. It’s actually kind of funny, despite Feldenkrais not being particularly well known, this isn’t the first time I’ve discussed it on a podcast, although the last time was on my old ultimate frisbee podcast nearly a decade ago.

Anyway, in our conversation today, we discuss how Beverly spent decades unknowingly managing her ADHD by overachieving at work and ignoring her body. But we all know this story and how we all eventually hit a breaking point. Fortunately for Beverly, she stumbled her way into the Feldenkrais method.

In the podcast, we dive into how these seemingly simple movements helped Beverly calm her nervous system, get better sleep, regulate her sound sensitivity, and develop an entirely new relationship with her attention. We get into how movement can rewire attention, why novelty is so important for ADHD regulation, and how she took her training and built an app that looks to specifically accommodate neurodivergent needs. I loved this episode; there's a lot of wisdom here about self-awareness, regulation, and finding what works for your unique ADHD flavor.

If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/244

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HackingYourADHD

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Novelty can help drive engagement and attention, especially when it comes to something repetitive like a daily practice. It's not about needing something stimulating in the flashy sense, but rather something that’s engaging. Engagement can come in many forms, such as unpredictability, exploration, and just enough challenge to keep us curious.

2. That ability to move your attention on purpose is a skill, one that’s often underdeveloped in ADHD brains. While it’s easy to think of movement-based practices as purely physical, it’s how you’re paying attention during the movements that matters; strengthening your ability to shift and direct your attention.

3. Many mindfulness practices involve some level of stillness that doesn’t always sit right with some ADHD brains. It’s important to listen to what actually works for your body, rather than just what “should” work. If you find the stillness aspect of mindfulness makes you too agitated and restless, try something that has some kind of active aspect to it.