Explore your Nervous System – Mindful Tools for Awareness & Regulation

In this first session we will get an overview of our nervous system, how it develops and how it can change through the amazing capacity of neuro-plasticity. We will begin to pay attention to our inner ‘workings’ and also notice our felt sense so that we can gradually come back home to our bodies and ourselves. Our practice will be an intention setting investigation to identify body, heart and mind wishes for this course. Bring paper and pen for this practice!

Curiosity is a beautiful mindfulness tool that activates our ventral vagal, safe and social part of our nervous system. Curiosity also brings us into the present moment where our body lives. Most of us travel back into the past or fast forward to the future, dragging our bodies along for the usually bumpy ride! We can have a more accurate assessment of our safety when we are actually in the present moment. Curiosity can be a beautiful pause practice where we can collect our attention and come back to the present moment in harmony with our body .

Interoception is our ability to perceive sensations inside of our bodies. It is how we become aware of hunger, thirst, exhaustion or high or low energy. If we want to grow a more balanced nervous system, we need to learn to listen to our bodies, and the language of the body is sensation.

Dr. Stephen Porges coined the term ‘neuroception’ as the ability of our nervous system to detect safety, danger or threat. We do this all the time, usually below the level of our conscious awareness. As we practice a deep orienting meditation, we will direct our neuroceptive attention to the assessment of safety in the external environment, our internal environment and between us and others.

All nervous systems need three ingredients to feel safe according to Polyvagal educator Deb Dana. We need context, choice and connection in order to allow our system settle and regulate. I have heard from so many students that they just can’t meditate because they are uncomfortable with focusing on their breath. When they realize there are many choices of anchors to focus their attention on, a whole new world opens up to them. We will bring choice to our nervous system today through exploring a toolbox of anchors you can choose from.

Today we will build our understanding of the nervous system by navigating the structure of our internal operating system. We will delineate the differences between our CNS and Peripheral system and voluntary and involuntary functions. Continuing to dive deep, we will explore the autonomic system – our sympathetic and parasympathetic workings. Our practice will be exploring the felt sense of our whole neural network.

The most primitive circuit of the parasympathetic nervous system is the dorsal vagal system. We will explore the workings of this branch of the autonomic nervous system in safety and under threat. Our practice will explore the different sensations of this system.

Moving up the evolutionary ladder of development, we will explore our sympathetic nervous system in states of both safety and threat. This branch is a counter-balance system to our parasympathetic system. In our mindfulness practice we will reflect on experiences and sensations of this empowering part of our internal operating system.

Our ventral vagal system is the most evolved branch of our nervous system. It is part of the parasympathetic and is our safe and social circuit. We will explore the function and expression of our ventral vagal system in safety and under threat and learn a mindful tool to access this deeply regulating branch of our system.

We’ve covered a lot of information in this course and today we will do a practice of tracking your neural patterns, moving through the dorsal vagal, sympathetic and ventral vagal systems.

Our window of tolerance is our optimum level or energy or capacity at any given moment to manage what is happening in our lives. Another name for this is ‘resilience’. We all have experiences that either push us out of our window (overwhelm) or help us come back into our window (re-establishing balance). In this class we will create a list of these experiences, practice the skill of ‘titration’, doing just a bit at a time.

Following up on our lesson yesterday on the window of tolerance and titration, we will explore our body’s cues for making optimal decisions in our day-to-day life. Listening to our body sensations of approach, avoidance or indecision, we will practice paying attention and following through on our body’s wisdom.

All emotions have bio-individuated body sensations. In this class we will learn skills to listen to our heart through our body and its’ sensations. We will also identify the Polyvagal states of various emotions which can help us understand how these feelings are generated by our neural states. If we can move from the ‘storyline’ of events to the felt sensation of emotions, we create deeper connection and kindness for ourselves. We will learn a somatic practice of being present with emotions.

Just like emotions are connected to our Polyvagal state, so are our thoughts. In this class, we explore the impact of our thoughts on our body and how our neural states can change our mental processes. We will do an inquiry practice, attending to thoughts and sensations and bringing kindness to our experience.

We will touch on Don Hebb’s theory of learning and how this theory helps us understand our habits. We all experience repetitive thought loops and emotional patterns that are not helpful and we want to put effort into create more beneficial neural pathways. The good news is that we have the superpower of mindfulness to shape our neural highways, so that over time, you can create a more fulfilling life. Our practice will give you skills to interrupt looping thought and emotional patterns.

Today I will speak about the concept of neuro-modulation, our body’s ability to move through all our modes of neural functioning. We will practice a mindful skill of modulating internal speed which can help us reset and come back into flow and a breath practice to shift our system.

We all get stuck in our neural default patterns and we can’t “think” our way out of them. Again, our body can come to our rescue! Join me as we do a "pause practice" and learn to come back into more flow through an additional “pendulation” practice.

Today’s material follows up on the concept of neuroplasticity. We have the capacity to shape our nervous system over time to one that has a wider window of tolerance, greater resilience and regulation. We will develop a toolbox of resources that will tend our nervous system.

Our bodies are the sum of our life experiences and that of our ancestors. All families experience trauma and patterns of protection and connection are inherited by later generations. We will do a mindful practice of acknowledging and honoring our inherited legacy and letting go of the patterns that no longer serve us.

We all have a well-developed inner critic! And we often berate our responses to life events when we are actually just reacting from our default neural responses. Self-compassion can change our nervous system over time as it brings us back to our ventral vagal system of regulation. Let’s do a neural compassion practice to offer kindness for how our nervous system is trying to keep us safe.

What a journey we have been on for the last 21 days! I honor your tenacity in sticking with my passion for the nervous system. I hope I have inspired some curiosity in you for your own internal operating system. In our last practice together, we will revisit our intentions from Day 1 (bring your written intentions to practice) and do a mindful nervous system integration meditation.