The mind-body connection: Nervous system regulation
Lately a lot of have been said about trauma, brain retraining… the mind body connection. The first thing to do is to get back the feeling of innate safety. That frequency that runs life itself. When we are in it, we feel safe despite uncertainty, there is that trust that life is for us. We need to remember that we are supported by life. WHY is it so important to create that feeling of innate SAFETY?
Your overall wellbeing depends on the answer to the question: “AM I OK”?
Your limbic system is continuously scanning the environment and asking the question: “Am I ok”? It interprets images, sounds and… even our internal biochemistry. It’s deciding: “am I safe… or not? Is this a a threat from the past or is this ok?”
• If you answer: “I am ok” – EVEN if you are feeling, experiencing X,Y, Z, this illness, I feel this pain, or have this relationship issue but… “I am ok” what happens is that the body, discharges inflammation – you go into a parasympathetic state: it is ok to heal. We can resolve this irritation and come back into health. This happens when you develop a trust in your body that has innate intelligence. When you find and inherit sense of OKEY-NESS , the parasympathetic nervous system or SELF-HEALING mechanisms can act so you go back to a state of health.
• If you answer…: “No, I am in threat, this is not safe” — that leads to fear and suppress the ability to discharge inflammation. Over time this suppression, this leads to chronic inflammation and chronic illness. This is the result of not having trust in this experience. Often, that trust is broken when we are younger, this is why emotional issues and trauma have a huge impact in the ability we have to heal from chronic illness.
As you know, we have a strong mind-body connection which truly influences the ability to heal. When we have this internal … “I am ok even when I don’t feel perfect”, the brain will release those healing hormones (D O S E) and many other electromagnetic signals who can travel all the body and then the body is able to discharge inflammation, detoxify and self-heal. This state of mind, also regulates your immune system, is about being open to life even when life is not giving you exactly what you want. This is not easy to do, I know you will be offended: how? I feel terrible and there are horrible things happening in my life… How am I going to be ok??
What do you think happens when you are perpetually…: “I am not ok, im unsafe” and yet you are doing all these things to help your body feel better.
The ability to discharge inflammation is suppressed because the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight response is active . Your body is producing CAN hormones (Cortisol Adrenaline, Norepinephrine).
Toxins, infections, environmental stressors. Trauma. Adverse childhood events. But there is one personality type that tends to dominate this fell: Type A, perfectionist, workaholic, over achiever… it is a type of personality in which people are in sympathetic dominance and it might look very functional, and the world gives you lost of praise for being that type so it is reinforced to be in this functionally deregulated state, where we have actually lost contact with our body. We are not in contact with our body signals and hearing when we need to rest, to take it slower, hearing when we need not to be researching but instead just looking at the clouds so… we have lost that. That is a classic set up, combined with the perfect storm of a pathogen or toxin or massive life change that sets up to trigger that cell danger response and then we can get stuck with this chronic symptoms.
Chronic Lyme, mould, MCAS, POTS, dysautonomia…CFS, EMF sensitivity, Long COVID … are there any conditions that responds better than others? Other Autoimmune conditions.
When you think about it, it makes sense because our Autonomic Nervous System runs the show for our health in general so… targeting the ANS regardless of what is going on, it seems like most people do have a significant improvement. So… regardless of what you have been diagnosed with, most likely your ANS has some influence on that organ, cell, situation… and you can improve that.
EDS – supper common: do people with this condition see improvement? Is it primary or secondary EDS as a response to COVID, mix with past infections which was dormant creating MCAS, even too much screen time affecting our collagen. It is multifactorial… it has risen so dramatically. Is it true EDS or is it a functional EDS presentation… because so many people have improved and reverse their diagnosis.
A lot of people are suffering at the moment from gastrointestinal issues: SIBO, SIFO… and it seems like SIBO is not about killing a bug, the overgrowth is the result and not the cause, we need to look upstream to bile flow, nervous system, migrating motor complex… to really bring long term resolution to these issues. We know the vagus nerve plays a role. How does supporting the NS help in the resolution or improvement of various GI issues: so many people are trying to heal their gut being stressed out… it wont work, there are people testimonials of SIBO going away targeting the NS and specifically the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is regulating that motility. Once motility is more regulated, the body comes back to balance. You get your vagus nerve online, you get that brain body communication online.
Why some people have resistance to this type of approach/therapy? What can limit positive outcomes?
- Some people feel this kind of job would invalidate their medical diagnosis. They have a hard time getting on board with all this which is why I think is important to understand the science behind it , as in… learning about Cell Danger Response: that is what validates doing NS work and.. it is not invalidating in any way… Robert Naviux… Research validates why targeting the ANS doesn’t mean it is all in your head, it is a very physiological process.
- If they are still in an environment that it is still incredibly toxic for them, they are living in toxic mould or their relationships are so toxic that they cant get regulation in them. Getting into an environment that brings some sort of safety, whereas it means you need to clean up the mould, because you cant move or… you have to work in those relationships in some way so that you are not being constantly triggered.
These are the 2 things that might limit somebody’s success with nervous system regulation.
Einstein: “You cant solve the problem with the same consciousness that created the problem”.
Most of everybody is following their protocols and having their supplements with that FIX – IT mentality.
When we are trying to get our symptoms to go away or fix our symptoms versus improving our life, improving our reactions, improving the self… when we are trying to fix our symptoms, that is something we don’t have direct control of, but when we are seeking to grow, to expand beyond that protective old version of our self, that was maybe stuck in trauma partnering, to expand our trust, we are using brain retraining to affect things that we can control which is ur consciousness.
Doing certain exercises and practices could be seen as returning to our true nature instead of trying to fix a problem that we cant directly solve. It is super nuanced but it is an attempt to expand and grow versus to get away from what we don’t like.
“WHAT GOT YOU HERE IT IS NOT WHAT IS GOING TO GET YOU THERE”.
It is more important to focus on transformation rather than on fixing!
If our response to our situation is fear… does that fear contribute to the resistance of the chronic illness and does it mean that feeling safer and less fear based then becomes a pre- requisite for healing?
Let see the first reaction and the second reaction:
– The first reaction is the pathogen, the toxin triggering the brain and the NS, causing a symptom –> we can’t control it.
– The second reaction is our response to that symptom, to that experience. And this second reaction is normally the fear and the stress. The reaction is the brain saying… “this is super dangerous” and that put you back in even more CDR. The ANS is now sending even more signals to the cells to hanker down.
If you can really focus your practice on that second reaction, your consciousness, what you can control (you cant control the first reaction of how those toxins might affecting you) but the second… you can biohack that. You can retrain that fear response.
We need both: (Specially Type A person – those type of people need to get back online that insular feedback that happens in body-based practices – brain retraining only does not address that.)
- Top-down: the brain communicating with the body. When we do that through mindfulness, mental rehearsal, practices, create a visualisation, – using your brain to signal safety to the limbic system and dial down that aalrm into your amygdala to access your memory structures, your creative mind, to teach the brain to have new associations with life. In the past life was terrible and in the future, I don’t expect life to be terrible. That is going to calm down the limbic system and start to repattern the signals send into the body.
- Bottom up practices are : body to brain signalling, the vagus nerve sending signals back up to the brain that is sensing safety down here. Signals from all the way down to our felt sense, our conscious interpretation of the body feeling the body, feeling its feels and feeling it is safe to feel this safe, helps the vagus nerve send this signalling back up – it puts us in this nice brain -heart coherence and then you have a two way street of safe to feel safe starting to go on …
It is important to remember that Vagus nerve is 80% afferent fivers which mean, they are fivers moving away from the periphery of the body back up into the brain. In other words, it is signalling from the body to the brain 80%. 20% from the brain to the body so… it makes sense that we would target the body if we were to target the vagus nerve. Best ways is breath work and functional neurology based eyes exercises: the eyes have direct connection to the vagus nerve.
This is why somatic practices can help us feel safer and also come out of the CDR. How do we perceive the feelings, the emotions… our body also has a reaction to the world we are in. Somatic practices is a way to tune in with what is your body doing? This is helpful because… “when needs get met. Baby stops crying”. —> “ when needs get met, alarm sign dial down.”
Neil Nathan says we need to work on both, limbic system and vagus nerve simultaneously to optimase our healing, are there tools who combined both?
The vagus nerve is constantly communicating to the brain, the vagus nerve is sensing cytokines in the body and sending messages back up to the brain: “hey, we need to get the IS going”. And vice versa, the brain is sending messages to the body. You have to do this brain body communication reset, so.. yes it does make sense that with chronic illness, this communication brain/body has to be on board, specially if you are dealing with trauma which most of us are.
Rewiring/rebooting the brain is a conscious retraining to change the memorised responses to stress, trauma and pain which can help to alleviate symptoms and promote healing. How do we turn down the brain stress response?
Dr Cathleen King, recommends using “ABC exercises/practises” that include these 3 elements:
- Awareness – pattern interrupt
- Body – present moment
- Choice, Change
The best way is that you come up with your own visualisation. I can help you do that.
If you become aware of what your brain is triggered by, you pause, come into the present moment, take a breath so that your prefrontal cortex comes back on line and now you have choice —> we loose our choice to unconscious repetitive habits and reactions.
We need to reclaim choice: we do that with this rehearsed algorithm of coming back to the present moment and then carving a new pathway, which is hard, it is hard to think differently and self-generate a positive feeling when we have so many symptoms in the body but what happens is that the brain is a meaning making machine, its a game of association.
As you create new associations with all the triggers, the brain starts to realise: that trigger is not as dangerous as I thought. It might be uncomfortable but is not so dangerous and with that sense of safety, we are signalling to the body, all the way back down to the cell. We can relax even when I get this feeling, even though when this is happening. The aim is to get that generalise feeling of safety despite dealing with all these symptoms.