Your Nervous System

The foundation for your whole health, resilience to adversity and disease, and overall quality of your relationships, work, play, and life, in general, is your nervous system.

In essence, at the foundation of all your experiences is your nervous system.

All your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, cravings, attitudes, and habits are downstream from the source that resides in your nervous system.

That source is your current physiological state - the state of your autonomic nervous system.

It is determined by your nervous system's ability to detect cues of safety, danger, or life threat beneath the level of your conscious awareness. This is called neuroception.

When your neuroception detects more cues of safety than risk, this cultivates a physiological state of safety and connection.

When your neuroception detects more cues of danger than safety, this cultivates a physiological state of defense and protection.

When you are in a state of safety and connection, you see the opportunities in life. 

• You are engaged, contented, at peace, creative, organized, joyful and free, anchored in the ventral vagal complex of your parasympathetic nervous system.
• Physiologically, your body is in a state of homeostasis, and your respiratory sinus arrhythmia and heart rate variability are at optimal levels.

When you are in a state of defense or protection, you see the environment and the people around you as threats.

• You are either mobilized to fight or flee via your sympathetic nervous system.
• Or, you are immobilized to shut down or dissociate via the dorsal vagal complex of your parasympathetic nervous system. 
• Physiologically, your body is out of balance, your heart rate variability decreases, and the neural regulation of your immune, inflammatory, and digestive systems are compromised.

Your story follows your state. 

• Your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, desires, cravings, moods, and attitudes are the result of your underlying physiological state. 

Your body sends information through your brainstem to your brain.

Your brain sends information back into the body.

This pathway of information is called your vagus nerve.

If you think of the vagus nerve as a highway with 5 lanes, 4 of those lanes come from your body to your brain, while 1 lane comes from your brain to your body. 

That's why gaining an embodied sense of your bodily feelings (your physiological state) is such a powerful resource for mapping, tracking, resourcing, regulating, and toning your state to anchor in safety and connection.

In essence, you are tuning into your breathing to bring perception to your neuroception.