The holy grail of healing
The transformative effects of a regulated nervous system
There are many different schools of therapy, therefore perhaps many different perspectives on the holy grail of healing. However, twenty-plus years of personal and professional experience in the field keep leading me to one consistent theme – nervous system regulation.
Around 10 years ago, I started taking a deep dive into the practices of restorative yoga and yoga nidra. During one particular weekend retreat, cocooned in dense New Zealand native bush, I experienced a lightbulb moment. Diving deeper and deeper into relaxation over the course of several days, I found myself in a state of being I did not fully recognise in myself. My body soft and open, my mind quiet and spacious, my whole being expansive, worry thoughts and planning thoughts temporarily absent. I’d been battling an auto-immune disease for some years by then, but that weekend there was a marked absence of pain or inflammation anywhere in my system, the internal alarm systems were quiet, and I was sleeping deeply, despite the unfamiliar surroundings. Unbeknown to me at the time, I was being introduced to the ventral vagal branch of my nervous system. I had not realised we were strangers. Looking back, I pinpoint this time as a pivotal landmark in my healing journey.
As I work with clients through the body and the nervous system, many discover the same thing. What they thought of as ‘relaxed’ - their baseline state - is not actually relaxed at all from a nervous system perspective, but is some level of either over-activation or shut down/collapse. This has become so normal and ubiquitous that we don’t even realise something is missing.
The nuances of the central nervous system have been unpacked by Stephen Porges in his work on poly-vagal theory. He outlines three states that our nervous system travels between:
Ventral vagal – calm, connected, grounded, safe
Sympathetic activation – the stress response, also known as ‘fight or flight’
Dorsal vagal – shut down, disconnected, low energy
A regulated nervous system is one which rests predominantly in the ventral vagal branch of the nervous system, moving fluidly and easily into the more activated sympathetic mode when we need to be focused or respond quickly and efficiently, or the shutdown dorsal vagal state when we need to conserve energy, and then returning quickly to baseline when the demands of the moment have passed.
When we are seated in the ventral vagal state, there’s a sense of calm, vitality and expansiveness, and we have access to stories about ourselves and the world that centre on hope and possibility. Conversely, when we’re in sympathetic activation, the stories that dominate tend to be of threat and danger, and when we’re in dorsal vagal mode the stories centre on themes of hopelessness, unworthiness and defeat. This is a major driver of our mood and mental health.
These 3 states also influence our body’s physiology, affecting everything from heart rate and blood pressure, to immunity, digestion and hormone regulation. For example, prolonged sympathetic activation is associated with high blood pressure, whilst dorsal shut down is associated with low blood pressure, and both states suppress our immune, digestive and reproductive functioning.
So many of us – in fact I would argue most of us – do not live in well-balanced nervous systems. When you meet someone truly anchored in their ventral vagal state, it’s tangible and notable because it’s relatively rare. Some of my favourite meditation and yoga teachers embody these qualities. They stand out due to the sense of groundedness and calm they emanate and how settled and safe we tend to feel in their presence.
A dysregulated nervous system can be the result of trauma, both the big-T traumas that drop like bombs along our life path and the small-t traumas that are the battle wounds of ordinary day-to-day living. It can also simply be what we absorbed growing up from our caregivers’ own nervous systems and from the cultural soup we swim in of pressure, overstimulation and disconnection.
Learning to unwind our tired and over-taxed nervous systems is quite an art form, and one we are not very good at in the west.
Many times, when I ask people how they relax, they’ll list activities that are actually pretty activating. Television is a classic example. Now, I love a good series as much as the next person, it can be great distraction and entertainment, maybe bringing laughter, lightness or excitement, but, from a nervous system perspective, it’s not relaxation. Watching a screen brings a lot of sensory stimulation, rapidly flickering lights, images, sounds, tense plots and storylines designed to drive emotion. This is all very stimulating and will most often put us into sympathetic mode. So, whilst we may be lying horizontal on the couch, the body is not deeply resting and, if our energy reserves are low, we can be further depleting our body’s resources.
There’s a robust body of research evidence linking a dysregulated nervous system to a host of physical and mental health struggles. A landmark 2009 study looked at adverse childhood events (ACEs) and found that trauma in childhood was associated with a sharply increased risk of a wide range of serious health outcomes, including heart disease, cancer, auto-immune disease and just about every type of mental health issue.1 More recent studies have identified clear links between nervous system dysregulation, heightened levels of inflammation in the body, and disease outcomes.2 Clearly this is not to be taken lightly.
But there is plenty of hope. We can build our capacity to find more ease in the nervous system. Yoga, meditation and somatic psychology offer a wealth of tools to assist. This is relatively new science in the field of psychology, but it is centuries-old wisdom in the teachings of yoga. In yoga these 3 states are known as the Gunas – Sattva (centred, spacious), Rajas (activated, agitated) and Tamas (dull, low-energy). The practices of yoga, including body work, breathwork and meditation, offer us a technology for balancing these energies, up-regulating or down-regulating as needed and bringing us towards a more balanced sattvic state.
As we cultivate these skills over time, there can be a measurable effect on our physical and mental health.
writes of this in her book ‘Sacred Medicine’. She spent 10 years systematically researching the factors that link cases of spontaneous remission from serious illness and applying a scientific lens to this question. She concluded that trauma healing and nervous system regulation were key.A settled nervous system does not exhaust or deplete the body’s resources. It supports health and healing, reducing levels of inflammation and boosting the body’s innate resilience. A settled nervous system is one with an expanded capacity for ease, joy and contentment. We become less reactive, more able to choose our response in any given situation. The flow on effect of this is that our relationships with others tend to go more smoothly, and it’s easier to set and maintain healthy boundaries. We have a tendency to co-regulate with the people around us, which means settled nervous systems support other people to settle, and conflict tends to reduce. It sets the scene for emotional stability - which doesn’t mean we don’t feel the hard stuff in life, but enhances our capacity to meet and navigate that hard stuff.
A settled nervous system may just be the holy grail in our quest to live well.
I have so much more to say on this subject, so will undoubtedly circle back to it in future posts. If you have specific questions or themes you’d like to hear more on, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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Felitti V.J. and Anda R.F. (2009) The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to adult health, well-being, social function, and healthcare. In: Lanius R. and Vermetten E. The Hidden Epidemic: The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
Baumeister, D. et al (2016) Childhood trauma and adulthood inflammation: a meta-analysis of peripheral C-reactive protein, interleukin-6 and tumour necrosis factor-α. Molecular Psychiatry, 21, 642-649
Rosas-Ballina, M and Tracey, K.J. (2009) The neurology of the immune system: Neural reflexes regulate immunity. Neuron, 64, (1), 28-32
Rosas-Ballina, M et al (2011) Acetylcholine-synthesizing T cells relay neural signals in a vagus nerve circuit. Science, 334, (6052) 98-101
This is so interesting to me and is probably the 4th time in recent days I have come across somatic work, I am always guided to what is useful to me or my clients. I have spent a good deal of time getting to know nervous systems as part of the ascension process and body upgrades can impact them wildly. Ancestral work can also set them off, so it’s been helpful to understand the connections. I am still learning and your explanations here are very helpful. 🙏💫
Your wonderful article has helped me realise what is happening at 3am when I suddenly become wide awake and remain so for several hours. I am in sympathetic activation and unable to drift back to sleep within minutes. I’m guessing I need to practise activating the ventral nervous system at this moment and more broadly have a daily practice to increase my vagal tone so when I wake in future I am not in the alert state, or at least can de-escalate quickly. I would be grateful to learn more about specific exercises for this practice.