Morning Nervous System Reset: Release Worries - Start Fresh

This somatic exercise helps your nervous system discharge nervousness, stress, or overwhelm you may feel in the morning. If you’re feeling a bit sluggish or tired, it can also boost your energy by regulating your nervous system.

We’ll start with a self-locating practice that signals safety to the brain, followed by vagus nerve stimulation to help you feel calm, grounded, and awake.

This practice brings you out of your head and into your body, setting you up for a great day. You can repeat it throughout the day whenever you need a little extra regulation.

Transcript

Hi,

My name is Miriam Amavi and we are gonna do a quick morning nervous system reset to release worries and any anxieties that may come up in the morning so you can start fresh and we're gonna use a few somatic exercises to regulate your nervous system that help you get out of your head and into your body and increase your capacity for all that is gonna happen today so you can feel more settled and grounded in your body but also still feel awake and energized so you can find a place where you can sit down and we are going to start with a self locating practice so you can start with your hands and just pat down your left arm and if you feel like you can also use a washing motion with your hands as if you're washing your arm and if you feel more anxious or stressed or nervous I recommend patting down your arms instead of just washing it or you can even shake your arm and shake your body as we go through this exercise and if you feel more tired or lethargic I recommend doing the washing motion but do whatever feels best in your body right now so we're gonna either pat or wash down the left arm and just notice the sensations on your hand as you're washing down this arm you can also feel the temperature of your arm and see if the temperature changes as you go up and down the arm and then you can come up to your left shoulder and wash or rub around that shoulder or pat that shoulder down and just feel how it feels in your shoulder to be touched patted or washed and then you can use your other arm and pat down your right arm or wash your right arm and just notice how that feels on your hand and just notice how the texture of your skin or if you're wearing a sleeve how the texture of the fabric feels against your hand is it more soft or is it more prickly is it bumpy and then you can come up to your right shoulder and either pat down this shoulder or do this washing motion over your shoulder and just notice how the texture of your skin or the fabric on your skin feels on your hand and then you can come over to your chest and maybe you can even experiment here if you want to tap with your fingertips or with the palm of your hand or if you want to do the washing motion here and notice how that feels in your body to be patted down on your chest then you can come down to your stomach and notice if you want to have more pressure in your washing motion or in your patting motion or less maybe you want to even move your hand or both your hands in a circle on your stomach you can release any tension that is crept up in your stomach and this type of body washing or patting practice helps your brain to come back into the present and feel safe here because it notices oh it's safe I have these neutral or pleasant sensations and when the body feels safe it can release worries and stress because it comes out of the danger mode and into the rest and digest mode now you can bring your hands to your back wherever you can reach and you can either wash your back or pat down your back and notice how it feels from within your body as you're washing down your back or maybe your body maybe your lower back asks for a little massage you can give it that if it wants that and then if you can reach you can shift a little to pat down your right leg or maybe wash down your right leg you can also see if your leg wants to be squeezed with your hands or kind of massaged you can just notice what type of touch your leg wants in this moment and notice how it feels to receive this touch and stay present with the sensations and the important thing in this exercise is to really notice these sensations that you are generating to bring the brain back into the body back into the present moment so it can release the stress you can feel if there is changes in texture as you're washing this leg and then you can come down to your right foot and see if that foot wants to be patted down wants to be tapped or just held washed and then in your own time you can come over to your left leg and tap that down and see if there are any temperature changes in your leg maybe your thighs are a little warmer than your cuffs maybe in the back of your knees it's a little warmer than on top of your leg just notice what you notice if you're yawning if you're swallowing or if you're sighing these are all signs that your nervous system is shifting into rest and digest or is waking up a little bit and then you can pat down your left foot or do the washing motion and notice how that feels for your left foot and then when you're ready you can come up to your face and just lightly tap on the skin of your face and just tap with all your fingertips up and down your face and notice how that feels for your face to wake up that face maybe you want to move your mouth a little maybe you want to pull some faces to just wake up all these muscles and show the nervous system that you are safe in the ventral vagal state so we wake up that social engagement system which also signals the brain that we are safe and then you can give a little massage to your scalp and now you can give your ears a little massage just bring your pointy finger and your thumbs to your ears and just massage the ears maybe pull a little bit on them or just massage them between your fingers and notice if you have any urge to sigh or to yawn because here we are stimulating the vagus nerve because there are so many fibers of the nervous system here in the ear and the vagus nerve helps us regulate our nervous system and come back into a state of safety and ease so we can release the stress and you can also pull your earlobes downwards and outwards and then you can notice if your body wants to do any stretches wants to move if you want to take a big inhale and let it all go and you can repeat this exercise throughout the day to help yourself come back into regulation to release your worries and your stress and if you're interested to learn more about nervous system regulation you can check out my course here on Insight Timer that gives you a lot of practical tools to release stress anxiety and overwhelm and I'm Miriam Amavi and I hope we meet again here on Insight Timer

Reviews

Very good… I didn’t realize I was waking up already stressed and this helped me release a lot of it. Thank you 🙏🏻

This was a lovely practice, I felt my nervous system regulating and a connection with myself I didn’t know I needed

Great!

Very effective 😊

Really good 😊

Loved this ❤️ So helpful.

Really appreciate getting right to it and the quality explanations

This is a very soothing and healing practice. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. I really enjoyed it. It was just what I needed this morning. 🌸

A beautiful way to begin the day - thank you! 💕

Lovely! And surprising. I'd like to share with my sister- I wonder if you have a shortened version?

Interesting - this wasn’t definitely not a meditation but a good morning practice for the nervous system ☺️

😌🙏🏼❤️

Not what I was expecting, but very energizing and relaxing at the same time. It felt very nice.

Ahhhh! So grateful to find this here. Bookmarked and recommended! 💫💫💫💫🙏💜

Thank-you so much, a wonderful way to start my day.

So very helpful to reset!

Excellent, doable morning practice for this time in the world.
Thank you