What is nervous system regulation, and how can you do it in everyday life?
Nervous system regulation is simply the skill of moving out of stress states like fight or flight, freeze, or withdrawal and back to a calm, connected “home base,” and it doesn’t take an hour of silence or a perfect morning routine. Here’s the surprising part: your body processes about 11 million bits of information every second, but only 40 to 50 of those reach your conscious mind. The rest is handled behind the scenes by a nervous system that keeps asking one question: Am I safe? In this workshop, Lynn Jones, LCPC, LMHC, LPC from Adaptive Wellness explains how to read those signals (racing thoughts, shallow breathing, a tight chest, a short fuse) as helpful data instead of a problem to fix. Using the seven autonomic states from Annie Chen’s book I Want to Connect, she shares five quick tools you can use anywhere: orienting, the physiological sigh, grounding through touch, movement and shaking, and humming. Watch the video or keep reading to learn how each one works, plus simple techniques that shows whether a tool is actually working for your nervous system.
Full Transcript
Welcome, everyone. Thanks for being here. Today, we are talking about the nervous system. Surprise, surprise. My name is Lynn. I'm a holistic mental health therapist in the area, and I like to come and share information with you guys all about the nervous system and just simple tools that we can use to help regulate, to help feel more calm and connected to the people around us.
So today we are focusing on building our regulation toolkit.
So I know this month we've really been focusing on regulation and what that looks like in our bodies through nutrition and chiropractic care and movement.
And today we're going to focus on some strategies that you can include in your personal toolbox to help you notice what triggers you, bring awareness to how your body is responding when things feel stressful, and help your body move back towards that calm and connected place that feels good, especially after we've been in maybe a space where we're feeling like we're in fight or flight or something like that.
But before we get there, I do want to give you just a brief overview of how I like to talk about the nervous system because that really helps us think through specific ways and specific tools that will work best for you and best for your body. We're really trying to tailor these strategies to each of you and your unique nervous systems.
What Is the Nervous System, and How Does It Work?
When we are thinking about the nervous system, the nervous system is made up of our brain, it's made up of our spine, and it's made up of our nerves that communicate back and forth. And so how that works is it gathers data through our senses. So through our sight, our hearing, our touch, our taste, our smell. It also gathers information through our proprioceptive sense, which is where's my body in space? And then also through our interoceptive sense. So what am I feeling inside my body?
Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I tired?
Those kinds of senses.
Our nervous system doesn't speak English. It speaks the language of our senses, okay?
Why Does Your Nervous System Keep Asking “Am I Safe?”
So all this information comes in through our fingers, and our toes, and our eyes, and our ears, and it goes up to our brain, where our nervous system is processing that data, and most of this information is going to be processed subconsciously. So our bodies process 11 million bits of information per second. Does anyone have any guesses about how many bits of information are processed by our conscious brain, where we're consciously thinking about what we're doing?
Any thoughts? That's 40 to 50 bits. So of that 11 million bits, only 40 to 50 bits is information that we're processing consciously. So most of it is happening below the surface. Our body is just responding. And so what is it doing with all this data? Our nervous system has one main question that it's trying to answer.
And that question is, am I safe? Okay. Is this situation safe or not?
And so gathers in all that information, processes it, am I safe or not? And then it makes a decision.
Yes, I am safe. No, I'm not safe.
And it sends that information back down to our body in a sense that we can feel. So your brain is going to signal you if you are not safe, right? If there's a lion and it's running at you, your body sends you that energy that you need to move to get on the run or to fight that lion, right?
And so your brain is sending you those signals to activate those sensations that you can feel as warnings and give you the energy to do what you need to do. So that's a really simple overview of what our nervous system is. But it is really helpful for us to understand as we're thinking about some of these strategies that we're adding to our toolbox together.
So a lot of times we can see those signals, like I just gave that example of like, oh, you're going to run away if there's a lion. But some of these signals can feel like just a bad feeling or it might be just something that you feel in your gut, an uneasy sensation.
It could feel like anxiety. It could feel like physical pain and discomfort.
So your body is really trying to figure out, is this safe or not? And then it's going to give you that information back to do something about the situation.
One tricky thing about our nervous system is that it does tend to take shortcuts because there is so much information that it's processing. And one of the ways that it tends to take shortcuts is it flags different information, different sensory information, based on previous times, whether something was dangerous or not.
So, for example, if you ever walk into a kitchen and somebody is baking sugar cookies, right?
That brings back memories for you, hopefully positive memories of what that was like to eat those sugar cookies, right? And there's a sense of maybe safety because we smell the sugar cookies, right? And so, we want to make sure that our nervous system is up-to-date. It has all the correct memos and all the correct danger flags when we are working with it.
Your body is always listening and always responding, okay? So, again, your nervous system is constantly scanning for safety or threat. That anxiety, fatigue, tension, and even physical pain is some of your body's ways of communicating that it senses danger. And when we're thinking, about danger, I gave you that big example of there's a lion that's running at us, but for our nervous system, danger can look a lot smaller, and it cannot always be something that we rationally think of as dangerous. And this could even look like maybe relationship danger too.
What Does Nervous System Regulation Actually Mean?
When we're talking about regulation, we want to just be really clear that it's not about taking away the stress or always being in a calm and connected place. But what we really want to do is we want to build your capacity to be able to move through stressful moments, move through moments that our nervous system considers dangerous or scary, and be able to come back to a place where we do feel like we can connect with others again, where we do feel like we can feel safe again. And we don't want to be stuck up in a place where maybe we're feeling wired and tired.
Feeling dysregulated is actually adaptive. It's a really normal thing, and it's not your body being broken. What we're trying to understand is the data that our body gives us through those sensory feelings to help us know which strategies are going to be the most impactful for us in the moments when we are feeling that stress, when we're feeling that overwhelm, or whatever else it is that our body is signaling to us in those moments.
What Are the Seven Autonomic States?
This is a really great example of different states that our body moves through, and this is also on your handout if you want to take a look at it a little bit closer. There are seven different autonomic states here, and there's a really great book out there by a therapist named Annie Chen. It's called “I Want to Connect”, and she really lays out these different autonomic states in there really clearly, and this is just a summary for you here.
But this is a, these are different states that our body moves through automatically. Again, we're not consciously thinking about this, right?
So we can feel calm and connected. That's where you're feeling safe, you're feeling calm, you're feeling connected to the people around you, and you feel like you can be social in a way that feels good.
Vital stress. This one is kind of a funny way to say this, but this is a positive stress. Here we're feeling energized, we're feeling productive, we're able to tackle those puzzling challenges. This is the place where you can really focus in and get things done. And people really tend to like feeling, being in this vital stress place. There's a lot of good energy here.
When we're moving up this, you can see that this is like a safety to threat continuum. So when we're calm and connected, we're feeling the most safe. And when we're moving this direction, we're starting to feel a little bit more threatened.
When we're agitated, we are starting to feel restless, uneasy, or even anxious. We're not totally sure if there is a threat yet, if the situation is dangerous or not, but we are on the lookout. We're trying to notice, is there something that is going to be not safe for me.
Right after that one, the one I would say most people are familiar with is that fight or flight state. I think that we can all identify moments when we felt this fight or flight. This is where we're maybe feeling panic. We feel like we need to act quickly. Like it says on your hand out there, it says, I need to run or fight now, right? Again, there's a lot of movement there and we feel like we really need to do something fast to keep us safe.
When we continue to feel threatened, especially if we're unable to fight or get out of the place where this danger is, we start to feel a freeze sensation.Here we're starting to feel stuck. We might have a difficult time thinking or making decisions. Sometimes people feel like they're procrastinating when they're in this place or they're just circling the drain. They're trying to get something done, but they're really having a hard time doing the thing that they know that they need to do. So freeze could either be literally paralyzed or could be just feeling stuck knowing that I need to do something and not being able to do it.
And then we have withdrawal here. So here you may feel emotionally numb. You're going to feel more detached. This is actually where our nervous system and our body turns the volume down on the sensations. But remember that information is coming in through our senses. And so if we're in a place where we can't fight our flight and the danger is so extreme to our nervous system, right? This is not necessarily rational. We're going to detach and we're going to turn the volume down. So we are going to feel a lot more numb and the intensity of those sensations is going to be a lot less.
A good example of this is if you ever find yourself doom scrolling or on your screen and just knowing that you need to get up and go do something, but I really just kind of feel stuck here looking at the next thing on my device. This can often be a signal that my body is in a withdrawal state where I'm feeling maybe disconnected from the world and I'm a little bit numbin- out on whatever is on my device, just looking at the next thing.
There's actually one more here that is off the screen and we're not actually going to talk about it today, but it is something that is available to us.
And that is called full shutdown. So when you think of the opossum, the opossum when it feels threatened. It falls on the ground and looks dead and smells really bad. This opossum is not making the decision. I'm going to act dead and hope that the predator is going to leave. The opossum's nervous system flips the switch and all of a sudden it's on the floor smells bad and hopes that the predator leaves it alone.
This actually can happen to humans as well if we are in such an extreme state of threat and we can't do anything about it. But once you're there, there is not a lot that you can do. So we're not really going to talk about that here.But if you've noticed, if people like pass out when they're feeling really emotional about something, that could be a full shutdown.
I do want to kind of really be clear here that we're supposed to be able to access all of these states. So it's really important actually that we're able to access all of these states. But ultimately we want to be able to come back down to that calm and connected pace, we kind of want to think about that as home base.
So we start at home base, we can move through these other states if we need to, to face whatever it is, but we want to be able to come back to that calm and connected home base, which can sometimes be easier said than done. Which is what we're talking about here today, or what are some of the ways that we can help ourselves come back to that calm and connected home base.
What Are the Signs of a Dysregulated Nervous System?
So, let's take a look at some signs that you might be dysregulated, or you might be feeling dysregulated. What we're doing here is we're practicing tuning into our body, and we're using that information that we're finding there as data to help us know, okay, what next? How do I address this? How do I help myself?
So, some questions that I encourage you to ask yourself are, how do I know? What does that feel like in my body? Do I feel really tense? Do I start to sweat? Do my thoughts go crazy? What are some of those signals that my body is sending me to tell me this is what stress feels like or this is what it feels like when I'm feeling overwhelmed or anxious?
For example, you might have some racing thoughts. It might be difficult to concentrate or focus in on the task that you're supposed to be doing. If you're noticing your breath, our breath tends to be a bit more shallow if we're feeling in those more threatened states. Maybe our chest is feeling a little bit more tight or there's tension in our bodies. Maybe we're feeling wired but tired.
We're maybe feeling numb or disconnected. Maybe we're just feeling checked out, done with the day, if you will, or kind of irritable, having a short fuse, right?
So you can see that there's a lot of different examples here, both like in our body and maybe it's the emotions or how we're expressing it. And we want to remember that these signals are not, they're not signaling that something is broken. They're actually signaling that something is working. And it's data, letting you know that there might be something here in this situation that my body doesn't feel safe around. And so that is, it's data for us to know.
The other thing that is really helpful about this is when we know, oh, when I feel overwhelmed or stressed, maybe my thoughts start to race. Then we can choose the strategy, that I'm going to introduce you to in a minute: tools to help regulate, the strategy that most addresses that, rather than maybe doing some deep breathing, maybe I'm going to do a different strategy that's going to help me focus those racing thoughts instead. So that's also why this is important.
The Tools
So here we are, thinking about developing your own personal toolkit. You don't need an hour in a silent room to help your body regulate. Regulation can and does actually already happen in small little moments throughout your day. And so I do have a lot here on your handout. And so I'm going to highlight some of those as we're going through. And I'd encourage you to mark, take a look at which ones stick out to you so that you can, you can see like, oh, these are the ones that are going to feel the best for me. I'm going to hand this to you guys so you guys can reference it together.
Tool 1: What Is Orienting, and How Can It Shift You From a Defensive to an Exploratory State?
The first tool that I have here, so up on the left hand side of the front there, is orienting.
So this gives us information and it can also be a tool. So I'd encourage you to slowly look around the room and just notice what you see. You can notice colors, shapes, you can let your eyes land on whatever they land on. Notice what they land on. And just be curious about what you're noticing as you're looking around. If you're finding that you're able to feel curious about this, we like to say that you're in an exploratory orientation. You're likely feeling calm and safe.
If you're curious about what you're seeing and you're noticing the lights and the colors and it's something that feels enjoyable to do, we're likely more in a safe autonomic state.
If you're finding that you're noticing all the scratches. if you're finding, if you're doing this at home and you're noticing the dents in the sideboard or the mess on your desk, we tend to say that you're more in a defensive orientation then, likely feeling a little bit more threatened.
And so one, this gives us information about where on this continuum are we landing, but then it also gives us a tool because if we do find ourselves in that defensive orientation: I'm really focused in, I'm noticing all the things that are going wrong, either physically or maybe in my relationships with people or whatever. What you can do is you can intentionally move your orientation to a different direction. So if you are in a defensive orientation, you can intentionally move towards an exploratory orientation.What does that look like?
Maybe it looks like going out on your deck and looking out at the trees. Maybe it looks like intentionally noticing the birds. Maybe it looks like intentionally even just looking up. Maybe if you're focused in on your device, looking up and out, even that can make a tremendous impact on your body and your nervous system as you are moving through trying to regulate. So it seems really simple. But actually, as you begin to notice the impact of it, it can be really impactful.
I've noticed this quite a bit as maybe I've been walking my dog and sometimes I'll be walking my dog and I'll be focused on the sidewalk, just like walking along. And I'll notice, oh, I do have some tension, or maybe I'm thinking about something that's happening that day or something that I need to focus on. And if I bring my, literally bring my eyes up, and I'm looking now at the tops of the trees instead of the sidewalk, I do notice a shift in my body.
And so this is something that I do tend to practice as a way of helping my body practice moving back and forth through these different states and regulating back and forth. Again, orienting: where am I? and finding something pleasant to look at.
Tool 2: What Is the Physiological Sigh, and When Should You Use It?
The physiological sigh is our second tool here.
And if you've been to any of my presentations here, you, I'm sure will have heard me talk about the physiological sigh. This is a really awesome breathing strategy that is different than any other breathing strategy that I have practiced before. Its a breath pattern that can bring a sense of vast relief, especially when we're in those frozen or withdrawn parts of the autonomic states. If we need to get up and get moving, this is a really great one to kind of help us do that, make that transition, especially when we're feeling stuck.
So I'm going to have you do it together with me. We're going to do it three times. I'm going to model for you first, and then we'll do it together. So what this is, it is two inhales, and then it's a long exhale. So it looks like this.
I'll have you do it two more times on your own pace. Then just do a check-in with your body and notice, does my body feel the same or different than when I did that, than before I started doing that? For me, there was a little bit of difference.
This is a really interesting breath pattern, too, because actually our bodies do it automatically every five minutes when we're awake and when we're sleeping. And our bodies forget, they don't, the research is still out on this and the impact of it, but our bodies don't do this when we're looking at devices. So that's a really interesting, there's a lot of implications that I'm really curious about, they're continuing the research around this.
But this is a breath pattern, it's really natural to us, and you can do it anywhere, right? You can do it when you're driving, can do it when you're sitting here with me.
Tool 3: How Can Touch Help Signal Safety to Your Nervous System?
Our third tool here is grounding through touch.
And so when we're thinking about our nervous system and it's bringing in that information through our senses, being really intentional about the information that is coming in can be really helpful in helping us to regulate. So I'm just going to have you, there's a couple that you can try.
Cross your arms, maybe give yourself a hug or kind of like you can pat up and down. You could place a hand on your chest and your belly and just notice what that feels like. Take a few deep breaths. Or you can even take your hands and you can move them back and forth. And you can notice there too, that gentle sensation, what that feels like. And then noticing, do I feel calm? Does this feel good?
So with that, those are really regulating strategies there, just to signal to my body, this is calm, this is safe.
How Do You Know If a Regulation Tool Is Working?
There are a few different ways that you can notice without even knowing what it feels like in your body. If my nervous system is moving towards calm and connected, and I'm going to bring this one up right now, because one of them is swallowing. So if you notice that you're doing some of these strategies, and you spontaneously swallow, that is a signal that, oh, maybe my nervous system is moving towards safety. Another one is yawning. So I always tell my clients, if you yawn in my session, I cheer, because that means that our nervous system is moving towards safety. It says that our nervous system is feeling a bit more regulated. So that's a great one, too. The third one that you can really use to help you figure out if this is helping me move towards safety is your range of motion. So your nervous system is going to increase its range of motion when you are moving towards safety and it's going to decrease its range of motion when you are moving towards a threat. So if you test your range of motion before and after you do one of these activities, it'll tell you for your personal nervous system if this strategy is something that will work for you, if it's something that helps your nervous system feel safe.
So this can be really helpful, I know that there's a lot of different, like when we go back to the physiological sigh our tool number two. If I do a breath pattern, but it's like four square breathing or breathing for six and out for eight. Both of those strategies actually for my nervous system are strategies that are a little bit stressful. They're not strategies that my nervous system really likes. But the physiological sigh is one that does move me towards safety and I found that out by testing my range of motion.
So that could either be gently moving your neck back and forth, noticing that. Moving your arm up and down. I've even had clients who've like lifted their legs just to see how far they can reach just to let your nervous, to figure out is this something that feels good for my nervous system.
Tool 4: How Can Movement and Shaking Help Complete the Stress Response Cycle?
The fourth tool that we have here is movement and shaking.
So this is particularly good when we've been in more of those upper autonomic states or maybe we're in fight or flight. If you think about dogs or other animals when they've been in a stressful situation or something surprises them and then you see them shake their entire body. That is actually their bodies doing this gentle shaking to shake off some of that extra energy, shake off some of that stress. It helps complete the body's stress response cycle.
So what does this look like? There's a whole variety of things that this could look like, but it could look even as little as moving your fingers tips, right? If you're feeling frozen, kind of feeling paralyzed, I'm here on the couch and I can't get off the couch and I know that I need to go do something. Start by moving your fingers and your toes, letting that gentle movement kind of move into the rest of your body.
This could look like being spaghetti, right? So like kind of letting your body move around. This could look like bouncing up and down on your heels and letting them kind of contact the ground and really just kind of like feeling that. Or it could look like maybe rotating your arms back and forth and letting your arms kind of come in contact.
Those are going to help, again, complete that stress cycle and move whatever energy it is through your body. So if you're thinking about that example I learned, I used before of the lion is running at me, there's a lot of energy that you need to fight or to get out of there. And if there is not an actual lion, right, what do you do with all of that energy? A lot of times we just hold on to it, right? We tense up, we put it somewhere. But if we're able to do this movement, it helps us move it through our body so that we don't have to hold on to it.
Tool 5: How Does Humming or Vocal Toning Activate the Vagus Nerve?
Our last tool here is humming or vocal toning. So this is going to be a really great one. What it's doing is it's activating your vagus nerve and it's going to help, some of those vibrations are just going to help your nervous system relax. Your vagus nerve travels near your vocal cord and so humming or singing can directly stimulate that and it can help you move into safety. If you think about it too, if you've ever sung in a choir or if you've ever been a swimmer and you've trained your breath, there's a lot of breath that happens when you're singing or humming as well, that moves into helping us move towards that calm and connected place.
Any questions about those?
How Do You Build Your Personal Regulation Toolkit?
I have a couple more things to share. Um, what I really want to emphasize here is that there is no one size fits all. So I just shared five different techniques there. Um, but what I really want you to do is I want you to notice which techniques feel most accessible to you. Um, and to your nervous system, you might need some in some moments. And others for other moments, and that's okay, go ahead and take a look at your handout, and I want you to notice, like, what are the top two from that list on the side of the tools to help you regulate, what are the top two that you would be interested in experimenting with? And I just want you to remember that regulation isn't about fixing yourself, it's about learning the language of your body, so that you can really set yourself up for success and respond in those moments that you need that help.
I am going to have you turn your handouts over, too, because I shared five, and there's so many more, there's so many more, So I included also some more tools to experiment here, so you can take a look at those. and you can read through and see which ones I tried to kind of combine them into, like, if I find myself in vital stress or agitated and I want to be more calm and connected, here are some that I could try.
Um if I feel myself in freeze or withdrawal and I want to move towards safety here are some that I could try. So yes, there is a lot here, so experiment, see how your body responds and then you can use the strategies that you need when you need them and that will be your toolbox that works for you, your personalized toolbox. So for some of you this is enough information and I’m so glad that you came today. For others of you, this just scratched the surface and you are unsure of where to go next. Or you would appreciate some help. So you have my information, I’ll be here to answer questions, if you have anything, I’ll be happy to chat with you and support you in whatever ways that I can. Thanks so much for having me.