Regulating our Nervous System

Been sitting on this for a while, so let’s dive in but before we go a quick little story.

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I used to run from fear. I was scared and unsure. I was so caught up and fearful of being inadequate that I tried whatever I could to just fit in and proved I belonged. I chased whatever external achievement I could to just prove that I was worthy and adequate. Never asking what worth and adequacy meant to myself.

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I searched for meaning and belonging in places that didn’t serve me and I ran from one idea to the next thinking that I was benefitting myself when I failed to even ask what I wanted. Fear determined my actions or better put fear determined my inability to take charge and figure out what I wanted. I was so scared and just moved to the next thing without thinking about the consequences or what it truly meant. I chased short term pleasure over long term joy only to gain medium term confusion and abandonment of myself.

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Today I sit with the fear and find ways to process it, acknowledge it, and then let it go. I’ve found beauty in movement, intentionality with slowing down, and connection from my soul.

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And have found ways to express from my soul with love. I’m moving towards what I find adequate and living on my terms. No longer letting fear control or determine my worth. I let the fear of being inadequate chase me to prove that I was adequate. Looking for achievements and accolades for external praise and celebration. Never slowing down to figure out what success looked like for me.

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But for me, now, adequacy is finding belonging to myself. Connection to my soul. Expression of my soul. Living with love and being powerful beyond measure.

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Today I found that in retooling and understanding my nervous system I have created my desired reality and life on my terms.

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In today’s age nervous system regulation is often brought up as a way for us to reset. While this is true nervous system regulation or dysregulation is often better used to understand how we are reacting to a specific scenario.

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The nervous system is the body’s response system to our environment along with involuntary controlling our breathing, heart rate, and other bodily functions. The nervous system does this so our brain can focus on the world around us and allow us not to think about blinking or breathing, it just happens. But the other thing the nervous system does is it tells our body of danger or perceived threats to us or our surroundings. For humanities entire existence the nervous system has acted as an intuition and gut feeling check telling us when a situation, or event, or person feels off.

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If this state becomes more extreme we enter an immobilized or collapsed state. This state is the feeling of being stuck, low energy, and dissociated; someone may just be going through the motions on the day to day basis while in this extreme dorsal state.

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Many of us have heard the terms “fight or flight” or “rest and digest” but how many of us really know what they mean and how they affect our daily lives. As I mentioned in the above story I used to have an extremely deregulated nervous system I was in a constant state of fight or flight. I was always chasing something or trying to keep up. I never took the time to slow down. I call this state a state of fear. We are moving so quickly from one thing to another that we never stop to see what is going on.

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If this fight or flight states becomes more extreme we enter an immobilized or collapsed state. This state is the feeling of being stuck, low energy, and dissociated; someone may just be going through the motions on the day to day basis while in this extreme dorsal state. This can lead to mental health struggles, especially depression or anxiety and lead to other serious issues as well.

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This type of action is seen in many of us today. We are so focused on getting the next promotion or showing that we belong or trying to manage 1309 schedules that we forget to take a second to just slow down and see how we are actually doing. We get so caught up in the to-do list that we just never slow down. We don’t even notice our breath changes as we shift away from nasal breathing to more mouth breathing totally involuntarily because our system is dysregulated and unable to find its natural cadence.

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On the other hand we have our “rest and digest” state. This is our bodies response when we feel safe, we feel a connection to others and self and we are able to perceive and decipher the world around us easier. The body enters its default system, lower heart rate and deep nasal breathing allow us to rest and digest and observe.

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I have referred to this state as a state of Love. Not romantic love or platonic love but Love as a way of being. We are open, we are observative, we are understanding and caring. We are able to approach and decipher things slower with a certain level of deliberateness that allows us elevate lives around us and for us to chase what we truly want rather than chasing things for pleasure or selfish gain as we do in a “fight or flight” response.

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Additionally, maintaining a regulated nervous system increases our health and immune system, the quality of our sleep, and our general well-being. While this state sounds ideal and that it just happens naturally, there are actually things we can do to regulate our system and enter this sacred space with our nervous system. Because we won’t always be in a constant state of “rest or digest,” life happens and we need to know how to deal with it so that we can come back to this state. So we can come back home to ourselves.

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So how do we regulate our nervous system? How can we self-regulate our nervous system beyond what our body already does on a daily basis? I’ve talked about mental skills before (Visualization, Meditation, and Breathwork), and all of these skills can be used to help us regulate our nervous system. Our body usually reacts to fear in unfamiliar situations, so a visualization practice can help us become familiar with the unknown and better prepared to handle one of these situations if they come up. Meditation is a way of slowing down and bringing awareness back into the body, allowing us to become present in the body and away from the racing thoughts of the mind. While breathwork techniques can help slow down the heart rate and focus back to the present moment. These are all very beneficial tools.

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Additionally there are other methods we can use, such as cold showers and cold exposure. Cold showers and exposure are a recent phenomenon but they are very important for recovery and for regulating our nervous system. Cold exposure has numerous health benefits such as increased metabolism, reduced inflammation and sore muscles. Additionally, there are nervous system benefits such as improved sleep, focus, and heightened immune response. Lastly and maybe most importantly cold exposure activates the Vagus Nerve. The Vagus Nerve connects the brainstem to the body and receives all the feedback from our body to our brain. The activation of the Vagus Nerve can trigger that rest and digest activity I mentioned earlier and allow us to calm down and focus on our environment. By bringing awareness to our environment and body we can take ourselves away from the fear or fight or flight response and back to a more grounded state so that we can then properly asses the situation at hand.

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So at the end of the day why does this regulation matter? A regulated nervous system means that you feel safe. And if you feel safe then you can achieve your dreams and understand the energy and effort you can put into things. And if we feel safe we are acting from Love and as I have discussed multiple times before, acting from Love is a real life superpower. If you are in an unregulated state and overwork yourself your body is never going to be able to catch up. But if you are able to find a regulated state and then put in the right amount of energy and effort correlated to your current state you can continue to find your personal edge and achieve your highest self. The regulation of your nervous system allows you to exude and embody everything you want in life and to actually manifest the life you deserve.