Can You Really Rewire Your Nervous System?

Absolutely. I see it happen everyday.

But If we want our nervous system to work the way it was the way it was designed to, it helps to understand it a little better. It’s important to understand the science…the anatomy and the physiology and then we need to understand how it all works together. I’m not going to go fully  into the science because we can get caught up in an intellectual process and that’s not what I'm hoping to convey. It's the big picture that we need to understand, so that we can relate to the nervous system, as a whole, within the whole body, and within ourselves as a whole person. 

To understand this better, let’s look at the nervous system. The nervous system is composed of the brain, spinal cord, and all of the nerves in your body. A good way to envision this is “nose to tail” or “brain to toes”. It expands throughout our entire body, and it works together as one unit made up of many parts. And for the most part, the messages from the brain to the nerves go in both directions: from the brain to the nerves and from the nerves to the brain.

There are two big sections, the “voluntary” which includes the things we do, like moving our arms and legs, and the “involuntary” or Autonomic Nervous System, which includes heart rate, temperature regulation, breathing and other basic functions that keep us alive and well, without us even noticing or doing anything about it. The Autonomic Nervous System is made up of three parts: the Sympathetic Nervous System “fight or flight”, the Parasympathetic Nervous System “rest/digest”, and the Enteric Nervous System (gastrointestinal), which we can discuss at another time. 

In general, the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems do opposite things in the body. The Sympathetic Nervous System is mostly in the trunk of our body, in the sympathetic chain in the thorax, and prepares your body for activity–we’re alert and can run away from a saber-toothed tiger. The Parasympathetic Nervous System includes the Vagus nerve (that so many are talking about these days) which exits out of the base of the skull and connects to all of our organs. It also includes a large area in the pelvis called the Sacral Plexus. It's doing its thing when we’re in a state of rest, digestion is optimized, we feel calm and safe, and are in healing mode. These two parts are really what we need to understand on a basic level to be able to get our nervous system more in balance.

When our nervous system remains primarily in fight or flight mode, we stay in a constant state of stress, our bodies don’t heal themselves as well, and our intuition and creativity are less accessible. This pattern keeps us in a vicious cycle of stress that we can’t escape. When our thoughts spiral out of control, it makes things worse and just feeds into the sympathetic fight or flight cycle. It floods our engine with adrenaline and keeps everything on high alert. Just like coffee does for us, being alert can be useful and help us to get things done. 

But too much can get us in trouble, things get out of balance, and we have a hard time swinging the pendulum back to a calm state. It can induce feelings of distress, disease and dysfunction, prompting us to seek salvation elsewhere. Unfortunately, this often results in self-medication with substances, reliance on prescriptions that fail to address the underlying issues, spending money on ineffective hacks, or opting to evade the problem altogether by escaping our own reality. This keeps us in an unhealthy cycle and we move further away from where the real answers reside: within ourselves.

Our Autonomic Nervous System is designed to maintain a state of balance, but unfortunately cultural and societal influences have taught us that we’re supposed to “lean into it”, push ourselves, think harder, do more, get it done, and meet the demand that’s put on us. These outer influences create a narrative that we need to stay in this mode to succeed and to survive. It can help us to do both of these things, but when we don’t get a break from this mode, things start to feel lousy and it can impact our psychology, our health, our work, and our personal life. We’re caught in the hamster wheel and don’t have a way to get off it. 

There are things that can affect the Autonomic Nervous System such as medications to slow the heart rate or mute overactive thought processes, we can take a vacation or escape to a retreat or monastery, or go to therapy or exercise to “get the stress out”. There are even devices out there now that can stimulate our vagus nerve, but this still keeps us dependent on something else. What I’m talking about here is  giving you the power, moment to moment, to step off the hamster wheel, to learn to catch ourselves and pause, and most importantly, to quickly decrease the fight or flight in any moment we need to, and to do it throughout the day to optimize how we feel. It's about empowering ourselves to have a healthy relationship with our own nervous system. It’s about giving you agency to downshift the machine of the human body you’re living in. It puts you in the driver’s seat, if you are willing to notice where you are and where you want to go and do something about it. 

When we learn how to relate to our bodies in a natural and healthy way, we really can rewire our nervous system and allow it to function in a more relaxed state, stopping the flood of cortisol, decreasing stress and anxiety, and making us feel much more balanced. The remarkable and beautiful aspect of learning this simple approach is that it empowers us to profoundly help ourselves on a daily basis, and more importantly anytime and anywhere when we need it. This innate gift of interconnectedness is wired into our human design, requiring only a few steps to become aware of it. Our internal connection can counteract external stressors that overwhelm our nervous system when left unchecked. With practice, regaining our connection to the good stuff inside us becomes easier, and we feel more normal, more peaceful, and more healthy. This balance enables the Autonomic Nervous System to function optimally and we can experience a real sense of well-being.

So many are stuck in patterns of stories that are untrue. That we need to sacrifice ourselves, push ourselves harder than we should, that we aren't ok or should feel bad about ourselves, that we don’t deserve better, that we don’t have what it takes, or aren't good enough. This can be due to trauma, upbringing, or cultural influences. But we can learn to change the story, choose something better for ourselves, and drop thoughts or habits that no longer serve us. We can learn to find a safe and powerful place within us, and sometimes it isn’t easy, and takes time and work. But I see it happen all the time when someone takes the steps. Because we all deserve to feel good, and it can be so powerful when we learn to do it for ourselves.

The mind-body connection is not a new concept. In fact, humans in ancient and native cultures were connected to their bodies, to their intuition, to nature, and to spirit. They lived in harmony with nature and knew how to sense and  trust the instincts that they were inherently endowed with. They were able to be still and present, without the need to scroll on their phone or look or act a certain way to be ok. Their senses and perceptions were developed and intact, whereas humans today have learned to depend on devices for both information and social connection. Their concept of spirit was accessible and deeply integrated with the natural world. 

Today, many of us are seeking to rediscover our humanness; what our ancestors instinctively knew about wholeness, self-connection, and oneness with nature. In our quest, many of us have experienced modalities whose limited perspective compartmentalizes us, rather than helping us to know the wholeness and interconnectedness of our being. The cure is in the connection, and starts with recognizing and relating to the fundamental wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. This idea transcends the theoretical concept of connection; I’m talking about a tangible, felt experience that is inherent in all of us as human beings. 

What does it feel like? Remember, I’m not asking you to think about your nervous system within the envelope of your body, I’m asking you to drop in and FEEL it. This is you. This is your body and the body is the roadmap to your whole BEING. The point that I’m trying to make here is that we aren't just our brain, or our head. We’re so much more than that. And when we think too much and forget to feel, we compartmentalize– our nervous system is fragmented and goes on the fritz. Our nervous system has been designed and evolved over billions of years since living creatures came to exist on earth. And as human beings, we have a consciousness and we can use it to make the most of our perfect human design. 

So if you think about it, or really what I want you to do is “feel into it”. Where is your nervous system? It goes from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and toes. Can you take a moment and drop in and feel it? Sense your nervous system flowing throughout your whole body as a unit. When you drop in, your nervous system takes a huge sigh of relief. It's just waiting for us to reconnect to it, to use it the way it was designed to be used. Are you starting to understand, or better yet, experience what I’m talking about? 

Let’s try something…for a moment allow yourself to go into thinking mode. Think about something. What happens? We can feel how disconnected it is and you probably have noticed that you feel more agitated and tense when you “think”. Now flip the switch and go into feeling mode. Drop down out of your head and into your whole body all the way down to the tips of your toes. For many of you it may not be easy to stay in feeling mode. It may be a completely new experience and people often feel themselves getting pulled back into their heads. It's a habit, a pattern. And we keep doing it because no one showed us a different way.

So if we really want to rewire our nervous system, it's simpler than you think. And it isn’t about thinking, it’s about feeling. There are a lot of great things out there, but they don’t always help us when we need it. I’m sharing this work because I truly believe that connecting our mind to our body in our daily lives is our human birthright and it's just that no one taught us how to relate to our body in a healthy, loving, and connected way. When we do this we feel whole. When we make simple connections and keep doing it over time, everything starts to work better. It can help our mental and physical health, heal old trauma, have a better sense of self, decision making, and fulfillment in life. I’m not asking you to believe me but instead check it out for yourself. Your nervous system is there waiting for you to connect with it, so check it out and let me know what you think. And if you need more support and guidance there are a ton of resources on my website on how to make the connections.