New Year, New Nervous System!
A Free 10-Day Autonomic Super-Challenge
Day 3: The Butterfly Effect & The Autonomic Nervous System
 

 

Hey Regulators! Mount up!

When I started the Somatic Experiencing Program in 2019, (a trauma resolution professional training developed by world renowned Psychologist, and Author, Dr. Peter Levine), I quickly realized the butterfly effect was in full swing when it came to healing trauma symptoms locked in a body. One thing affects the next. And we all play our part. We just need to know our roles.

Even though our bodies and Nervous Systems are designed to be on autopilot, there are many ways to influence the conditions of these systems. The involuntary system we can directly and consciously impact is the Autonomic Nervous System or ANS, which is a part of the Peripheral Nervous System. This network functions automatically, and is so powerful it can have the butterfly effect on the entire mind-body matrix.

The Autonomic Nervous System regulates the body's automatic physiological processes, like breathing and heart rate. It controls the muscles and functioning of internal organs (such as the heart, blood vessels, lungs, stomach, liver, intestines and pretty much everything else) and also the glandular system (salivating, sweating, pupil size, crying, and secreting hormones.) It's the heartbeat of the Nervous System (literally), and has the somatic clout to direct the other parts of our bodies as well! 

When I imagine this particular system, I envision a hawk with two wings. Both wings are essential for flight, as is the body of the hawk (I'll talk more about this when I get into PolyVagal Theory). One wing of the ANS is the Parasympathetic piece. It helps the body put on the brakes so we can rest, relax, digest, pee and poop, connect, be intimate and more (via the Vagus Nerve– more on this another day). The other wing is the Sympathetic part of the ANS which helps a person mobilize when needed, and to have the capacity to fight or flight in case of emergency. The ASN is our alarm and mobilization system. But it's also our system of recovery and resilience; two wings of the same bird. 

Because the ANS controls the muscles of the lungs and organs, which connects to the muscles of the heart, which has a ripple effect up into the brain, we can influence this system voluntarily through controlled breathing practices, meditation, and other stimulating practices (like singing and humming) and specific influential environments (like ice-baths, and deep, safe connection with loved ones), to directly impact the entire brain-body structure. These practices are the healing salves for the ANS and anyone struggling with trauma symptoms. They help downregulate the sympathetic response and also wake our bodies up out of freeze states. 

You can think of the somatic technology of the ANS similar to a gas pedal or a brake on a car. When you push one, there's a ripple effect on every mechanism within the whole. This influences the conditions of either speeding up or slowing down. But if this system gets over-exploited in either direction, going up (sympathetic), or descending down (parasympathetic), it can potentially get stuck in those gears, and default either direction. It’s like most things that get over-used the same way repetitively. At some point it can malfunction. This system needs balance. Oftentimes that balance needs to come through conscious awareness and conscious action. Otherwise this system is just going to do its thing automatically. For a lot of people, that means repeating what it's done in the past. This taxes our systems and can lock us in gears that don't necessarily correspond to balance and fluidity.

When it comes to the nervous system, what goes up, needs to come back down again to completion. In a nutshell, our survival responses need to go through their full cycle. With a healthy stress response, there's an activation, then an increase in cortisol (primary stress hormone) and other physiological uppers. These are secreted to initiate a response through action so there can ultimately be a discharge of that energy. That discharge and movement of those survival hormones is actually what triggers our ability to come back down to a state of homeostasis. It's essential. We need to move that energy out, (sometimes it can move simply by understanding what its doing) otherwise it can get stuck.

When we get activated or startled, but don't mobilize into action (in some way) to move the chemical cocktail brewing within, there's nowhere for that survival energy to go except deeper inside of us. This is the anatomy of trauma symptoms in a body, causing thwarted responses from overriding what your body is asking of you. These thwarted responses can look like a variety of freeze responses like numbing, dissociation, dread, depression, stiffness, fainting or feigning death. This isn't conscious. It's just a body's self-defense mechanism. If we can't fight or flight when needed, our bodies freeze or immobilize. Think about a possum playing dead. This isn't conscious. It's just the possum's body doing what it needs to do to survive. Unfortunately, when we keep going there again and again, those neural grooves get deep and become easy to fall into.

One of the most important things to understand about healing your nervous system is that our reflexive responses are keeping us sick. And no one can heal your body from the patterns that have been created, but you. For some of us that means we always go up, and have super activated systems, and are prone toward anxiousness or outward anger. For others, we’ve overridden our bodies' responses so many times, we always default into freeze responses. The key is understanding where we go habitually, and then not doing it-- because it's obviously not working! That's not the fun thing to hear– I know. But to re-pattern your Nervous System, your motivation to heal it needs to be stronger than the old physiological programs that have been running you. You have to turn right instead of left. And you can't do that if you aren't paying a hell of a lot of attention.

Here’s what you need to know: all of your responses are okay. Your body is just doing what it instinctively thinks it needs to do to protect you. You body is an animal-- and it's building how your system responds to the world again and again. Your body has done the best it can working for you. Now it's time for you to use what you know so you can start working for your body. We need to learn to finesse our systems back into a state of homeostasis. And we need to do it daily to re-educate our responses, so our defaults can serve us, rather than hurt us.  

Practice Day 3: Stir and Settle Practice: The Nervous System In Action