Recap of Nervous System Management

Lesson 1: The Operating Manual for your Nervous System

By regulating our nervous system using physiological interventions like controlled breathing, we can change the stories we tell ourselves, often resolving what seem like insurmountable challenges.

Bottom-up methods like controlled breathing can be more quick acting and effective for stress relief than top-down methods like mindfulness, due to the natural orientation of our neural pathways with 80% of them flowing from body to brain and only 2o% flowing from brain to body.

You can follow a 7-minute breath work practice to quickly establish a state of calm. You can turn to it anytime you need.

Lesson 2: How to Nourish Your Nervous System

NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) uses guided body scanning to reach a hypnagogic state - a form of waking sleep. It boosts interoceptive sensitivity, helping you better understand your internal state. NSDR flushes stress hormones, promoting calm.

It can take just a few minutes to calm your nervous system, improving ventral vagal tone, boosting your resilience and well-being. This is essential for nervous system management and there is a large body of literature supporting this.

Lesson 3: The Art and Science of Interoception

The idea that humans only have five total senses is outdated. Recent neuroscience reveals we have additional senses, including interoception. This internal awareness, processed by the brain's insula, helps us understand our emotional and physical state.

Interoception has three key benefits. First, it helps you make more informed decisions by tuning into important internal cues. Second, it safeguards against burnout by breaking the cycle of ignoring bodily stress signals. Third, It enhances productivity and emotional regulation by giving you a better sense of your emotional state, thus aiding in more effective management of your reactions.

You can use A.P.E. exploration to practice developing your interoception.

Lesson 4: Why the Best Decision Making is Emotional

Emotions aren't obstacles to decision-making but essential components of it. Understanding where emotions manifest in the body can help you align choices with true desires, with recent research showing consistent body-based emotional patterns across cultures.

Understanding and embracing bodily sensations tied to emotions can break "emotional loops" and lead to better decision-making. Avoiding these feelings can escalate problems and impair judgement. Beginning with a map of your emotions, you can intervene to break emotional loops and establish new patterns around prior emotional triggers.

Lesson 5: How to Pay Off Your Emotional Debt

Emotional debt refers to unprocessed stress that accumulates over time, affecting our nervous system and overall health. Known in neuroscience as "allostatic overload", it can lead to chronic health issues and mental states like anxiety or disassociation.

Releasing emotional debt involves letting go of control and fully experiencing emotions without judgement. Techniques like "somatic surfing" offer a way to connect with the physical sensations tied to emotions, going beyond traditional Western approaches that focus heavily in intellectualizing feelings.