Knowing the nervous system. How it will improve your work and life.

I love to write, yet lately I've found myself uninspired, not knowing quite what to say. There is SO much content out there, isn't there? A constant stream of do this, do that, do the other and know it all. It's exhausting us. Exhausting our nervous systems and I just haven't wanted to add any more to the content overwhelm out there.

But today, I wanted to finally break my writing fast to talk to you about something I feel is very important to understand. It's part of the wonderfully brilliant aspects of a new course I've enrolled in, which is all about the nervous system. Over the past year I've realised just how important it is to get under the hood of this topic - not just because of the work I do - but also as a human being in the midst of the most humongous rapid-fire changes that are taking place in the world right now. I hope this will help you, too.

Never was it so important to navigate, explore and understand ourselves. Understand our reactions to things, how resilient we are, how quickly (or slowly) we recover from them, how our past and present traumas and upsets can affect and control us, our window of tolerance and what pushes us outside of this.

If we're not aware of these triggers, we are constantly controlled by them.

Trees as Mentors and Metaphors

Take your mind for a moment to an image of the beautiful autumnal trees right now, gloriously ablaze with colour and lighting up the British countryside. As I write, I'm watching them sway in the wind. Sometimes almost violently so, the next moment, ever-so-gently, so as you'd hardly notice. They flex, but are anchored. They have deep roots, solid foundations in which to travel along with the breeze, allowing the air to pass through and over their leaves and branches with little resistance. Trees you see, meet the path of least resistance. They let go of what no longer serves them, so in autumn, they know it's time to let go of their leaves and the fruits and nuts that they've been carefully growing. They do so with ease. I like to imagine they are letting go of their precious cargo with care, gentleness, compassion and understanding of their needs and the needs of others in the intricate web of life they exist in.

Human beings however, hold onto what no longer serves them. For decades, for lifetimes. Specifically here, I'm mean our emotions. Our anger, grief, resentment, shame, bitterness, to name just a few. In the Breathwork sessions I run, I describe an analogy of the body being like an old filing cabinet. When we open up the draws, we see they are full of dusty files which represent each of the unresolved upsets and traumas we've had along the way in life that we've not wanted to deal with, that we've clung on to, for fear of what might happen if we just let go. But let go we must, if we want to stay healthy and balanced and lessen our chances of dis-ease in the body, mind and spirit.

Letting go requires us to be brave yes, to go into unknown territory. And to do this in the best possible way demands a healthy, balanced nervous system to navigate the process our baggage as effectively as possible. One where we have the stability and resilience to surf challenging emotions as they come up and one that allows us to lean into life’s complexities and challenges and not get destroyed, or thrown completely off-balance, in the process. If only we'd always had a balanced nervous system, if we'd been taught the life-changing techniques in which to do this at school, then we'd have done the work along the way and the cabinet would have have got so dusty and full in the first place.

So what is the nervous system?

Well, in short, it's a complex network of nerves and cells that are responsible for communicating with all the other systems in our body and tells them how to respond to different situations. So, whatever happens in your day, whatever you are doing - from resting to working, to rushing to sleeping - your nervous system is constantly taking in information from your surrounding environment and communicating with all the other systems in your body.

It's like your main switchboard if you like, the control centre for all your other systems; so the digestive, the circulatory and the respiratory system. And because of this, it really is something we should all be more familiar with, more in tune with. Our nervous system is continually testing how safe we feel within our external environment, as well as how we're doing internally. But what's also fascinating, is that it's continually monitoring the nervous systems of those around us. It's monitoring how others in our vicinity are feeling and doing, which can have a big impact on us. This all happens energetically. But as modern human beings that have lost touch and the ability to consciously notice these sensitivities, we forget/don't realise this is happening. But if you start paying attention to this, and notice how you're breathing, you'll start to become more intune with yourself and your surroundings and notice it's happening.

Polyvagal Theory

Most practitioners talk about the nervous system in simple terms: that we have a branch called the sympathetic (also known as fight, flight and freeze branch), and then one called the parasympathetic (known as the rest, digest and relax branch). But the Polyvagal Theory by Dr Stephen Porges, believes that we actually have three branches. And that we are rarely in just one at a time, but usually a mixture of two.

Try likening these branches to a car, where we have:

The Accelerator This is the sympathetic branch of your nervous system and the one that gives us the energy, focus and ability to get things done on a daily basis. We need this energy to get up and go. But it's only in overwhelming circumstances that this is activated in situations the nervous system considers dangerous to life. When this happens, it shuts down your digestive system, tenses certain muscles to protect your organs and your pupils dilate. All this happens very cleverly to give you the greatest chance of getting yourself quickly out of danger. This state is known as high tone sympathetic arousal and is designed to be in place for short periods of time. But if this happens for longer periods, which is happening to more and more people in the workplace and as a result of constant anxiety about life and world problems, too much 'on' time in this high tone sympathetic arousal state has a very damaging effect on our body and our main systems (respiratory, cardiovascular and digestive), causing them to break down and we can become ill as a result, or dis-ease may manifest in the body.

The other important part of polyvagal theory, is that your vagus nerve, the main pathway of your parasympathetic nervous system, has two sub-branches ~ the ventral vagus?and the dorsal vagus, as described below.

1. The Brake This is known as the ventral vegas branch and is where we want to be for most of the time. Here we feel resourced and resourceful when we hang out here. Our heart rate slows, our immune system functions optimally and we feel connected to ourselves as well as feel drawn towards connecting with others. What's wonderful here is that this state of being supports social connection by allowing us to smile more widely and often and naturally and due to shifts in the muscles of your inner ear, means you're able to listen and connect to the voice(s) in front of you, even when you’re in crowded places.
2. The Handbrake This is known as the dorsal vegas branch. When lightly-activated, the energy of this branch of the nervous system, means you're deeply relaxed and in a state of rest and recovery. However, if you've received too much over-stimulation (see The Accelerator), this branch acts as a fuse to shut you down - literally in the same way a fuse acts with electricity and too much charge. When this happens, known as dorsal shutdown, you want to retreat from the world. You want to hide away, you can't face dealing with anything and you become uncommunicative. You system has shut down to protect you from any further stimulation, which it perceives you cannot handle. This is what burnout is.

Notice and make changes

When your nervous system is healthy, it's able to move effortlessly between states. So notice when you play a game of football or tennis, for example, or are in a healthy work environment, how you move between sympathetic and ventral states. And when you're deeply relaxing, you'll be in both ventral and dorsal.

We're not designed to be continually calm, safe and happy. That's not possible, because life just isn't designed that way. But when our main switchboard - so the branches of our nervous system - react nimbly in response to a situation and bounce back again i.e. you notice when you're pushing too much and too often on the accelerator into a state of high high tone sympathetic arousal, or blowing the fuse too many times and spending too much time in dorsal shutdown - and do something about it, that's when you know you have gained mastery over this vitally important part of circuitry.

The first part is noticing, the second part is using tools and techniques to move you out of these less helpful states when you need help. A major part of your toolbox is Breathwork. That's why there's a breatholution happening, because it's one of the most effective ways to down-regulate and up-regulate your nervous system. If you'd like a 1-1 session with me, or to book a talk or workshop for your team get in touch at [email protected] or go to wonderbreath.co to read more or give the gift of breath to someone you know.