Navigating from My Nervous System

I was sitting one morning moving my awareness through my body, exploring sensation by sensation. I had finished a couple rounds of breathwork and was using the sensations in my body as the focus of my mediation. As I appreciated the various subtleties, a thought crossed my mind “what would my brain be without my body?”.

I had an impression of myself as a computer, my brain being the cpu, unable to do anything without a keyboard, monitor, printer, etc. My senses, act as those peripherals to inform my brain of what is going on around me. My limbs, hands, and feet operate to move me, care for me and protect me. As an over thinker, over intellectualized being, my sense of how I valued myself shifted in that meditative moment.  

I subsequently learned that 80% of information flows up the nervous system to the brain, only 20% flows from the brain out to the body. My body is constantly informing my brain. That information is part of what is known as the autonomic nervous system. The system designed to motivate us to spring into action to protect ourselves from danger.

Some years ago, I realized my systems have always been on high alert, in a near constant state of believing I was in danger. When my nervous system signals my brain I am in danger, my cognitive skills go off line. My sympathetic nervous system (flight, flight, freeze) kicks in and I tilt over the line of high alert into “I’m losing my sh*t”. I don’t like losing my sh*t.

My ability to recognize when I am getting to the point of losing my shit began several years ago. Prior to that, I was ignorant, or in denial, unaware of how to change the dynamic or take responsibility for it. The more I developed my awareness of these occurrences, the more I realized they had nothing to do with the external events I thought were prompting them. They had everything to do with how I was wired, how my thought patters occurred and how my nervous system operated.

I started taking responsibility for rewiring myself. I read that breath work could actually reduce my startle response and experimented with different techniques. After months of work, I noticed that when startled, I no longer jumped or screamed. I learned a powerful lesson that I could use my breath to hack my nervous system to change my physiological response to nervous system believing it was in danger. I kept experimenting.

I began practicing more breath work, meditation, visualizations and movements to increase my awareness of sensations in my body. The awareness, the practices and the perspective behind them are all about navigating through the day making the state of my nervous system my focal point. My brain wired to keep my nervous system on high alert. That state of being takes a toll on me energetically, it impacts my health and my ability to move through life with ease. It means I am playing strong defence all the time. It is exhausting and over the years led me to isolation, health problems and distorted thinking.

As I learn to navigate the world and different experiences from my nervous system, life is becoming easier. I am becoming more comfortable. I am seeing my sense of confidence and self-trust grow. I have a sense that if I am relying on the signals in my physical body to inform my brain as to what is going on around me and I trust my signals, then even if I read the signals incorrectly, I am still keeping myself safe. And that really is the fundamental purpose of the autonomic nervous system.

I decided that the wiring of my autonomic nervous system was distorted. By keeping me in a heightened state of alert, it was actually harming me. So, I appointed myself the cognitive caretaker of my autonomic nervous system. Each day, I am nurturing my neural pathways to view things in a different way than the old wiring. I am not a computer, but I do have wiring and that wiring connects my brain, body and senses and I am changing the wiring.

That is my Breath. That is my Power.
May you find the power of your breath.