TGIF | The Key to Health is in Your Nervous System
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Dear Community,
This week, my friend Dr. Aarti Soorya talked to our team about her holistic health and well-being perspectives. As the founder of Reset Brain and Body, most of what she shared was not new to me; instead, she validated everything Reset is built upon. I told the team - this is our why - this is a call to remember why we exist and operate in the mental health field the way we do. It was inspiring and educational and a great way to spend time together. So today, I want to refresh you, too, on why mental health is, in fact, all about nervous system health.
Brain Body - Body Brain Connection Matters
As Dr. Sooyra shared, if we have a strong brain-body connection, we are resilient. Being resilient allows us to expand in every area of our lives. See, our biology is always in response to what your nervous system is sensing. Everything is an inner play; we can train it into resilience so we are not victims. This knowledge is profoundly empowering - a knowing that through embodied safety and regulation, we can change our experience of our lives. Our vagus nerve is like the nervous system highway, connecting our brain and body and stimulates nearly every major organ in our body, so if our vagus nerve is communicating threat or shut down, our physical body is impacted.
Symptoms are Our Messengers
We live in a world that prioritizes hustle. Like we talked about last week, it’s an active practice to be present and mindful in this world. However, symptoms like poor appetite, irregular bowel movements, headaches, fatigue, muscle soreness, weight fluctuations, poor sleep, pain, anxiety, depression, hormonal imbalance, high blood pressure, and immune dysfunction are important indicators that we are not okay. And yet, we’ve normalized these symptoms as consequences of living in a busy world. We think numbing out with our phones, TV, and alcohol is just “decompressing” and not a symptom of our nervous systems being overworked. We think overwhelm is just a constant we must accept. There are severe consequences to these symptoms if left untreated and unaddressed.
Stress Changes Us on a Celluar Level
All of these above symptoms are like an indicator light that our nervous system is imbalanced. If we perceive stress as a threat, our nervous system is going into fight/flight mode. When we exhaust our nervous system from chronic fight/flight, we enter into shut-down mode, depressing our entire system. And the kicker is that our nervous system is connected to our hormones, immune system, and emotional system. If one is impacted, they all are impacted.
Deep breath. This information is not meant to activate you. In fact, let’s pause: take a breath in through your nose and fill your belly. Hold. Now, slowly, breathe out through your nose. If your exhale was longer than your inhale, you moved yourself into the parasympathetic nervous system - the system built for repair, healing, regulation, and rest. See, empowering.
But if we’re not paying attention to slowing down and being mindful of the inputs that impact our nervous system, such as toxic stress, processed foods, substances, media, sleep deprivation, and trauma… then we are missing the key to our overall well-being. It’s all connected and yet all available to you to heal.
You have it all within you.
Thanks, as always, for being here. You’re never alone. Big, virtual, 20-second hug.
This week’s Tools, Gratitude, Innovation, Feels
Tools
I’m so proud of our SUMMT Intensive Reset, as it is a powerful antidote to chronic stress and trauma. The SUMMT (Subconcious Memory Meditation Therapy) invites participants to slow down, embody safety, and heal their nervous system on a cellular level by reprocessing distressing stress and emotions through a lens of wisdom and calm. We are now (after 3 years of careful development!) taking new applicants for our Intensives, and I’m so excited for you all to experience this profound method.
Gratitude
Last week, we talked about glimmers, and I loved seeing this post by one of my one and only psychotherapist influencers, the Holistic Psychologist, who affirmed what we shared. Yes, we can train our nervous system. Isn’t that fantastic? I am grateful for such knowledge and tools. A glimmer for me was when we were informed last week that Reset is officially in the Blue Care Network network! BCN participants, we are so excited to begin working with you.
Innovation
Something essential to this nervous system work is that there is no “hacking your vagus nerve” or quick trick. Nervous system regulation is an ongoing, active practice of rewiring ourselves at a cellular level. Nervous system imbalance alters our gene expression, so we’re also carrying the outcomes of previous generations' nervous system instability. Deep healing, deep repairing, and deep resting are necessary.
Feels
Spending time with the Reset team makes me so happy. During our training this week, seeing everyone expressing such enthusiasm for this science-y information was invigorating to me and empowers me to keep going, keep sharing, and singing in my head, “heal the world…make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race”…