Just as a little one needs moment to moment presence, understanding, care, nourishment, soothing, connection and firm limits (amongst many other things!) to support it’s health and well-being, so do our bodies and nervous systems.
To support, care for and nourish our resilience we can learn to:
- °Identity different nervous system states : start to learn and understand the language of the body and ANS and how it also influences how we both perceive others and project ourselves to them; and the arising reinforcing cycles of either regulation, wellbeing and connection – or dys-regulation, rupture and disconnection.
- °Become familiar with nervous system ‘first aid’ and antidotes that work for us.
- °Identify triggers that contribute to dysregulation : Identify sources that push us out of ‘challenge that creates growth’ and instead into ‘challenge that creates fragmentation and dysregulation’.
- °With the awareness of identified inner and external cues that create and disrupt regulation; set in place both resources and boundaries that preemptively support and align our lives with regulation, growth and well being.
- °Prime the system for connection and well-being through certain practices in the morning.
- °Integrate and increase daily practices (breath, mindfulness, movement, social, nature, etc) throughout the day that enlarge our window of tolerance and anchor us in resilience.
It is important that we get familiar with ourselves, experiment, and find out what is true for us, stripped of judgements of good or bad. We are all unique and need different ‘food’ and conditions in order to bloom.
I find the practice of seeing and tending to one’s Nervous System as a ‘being’ in its own right useful. Sometimes it feels easier to be kind and care for oneself when it is conceptualised as caring for one’s nervous system, like a sweet, adorable (and sometimes wild) little creature. It also helps to give a clear, solid and constructive direction when in overwhelm and pulled on by emotion, content (story), circumstance to go further off balance. Simply :’what would bring my NS into more regulation in this moment?’
Things can get really simple when the next clear right step is to just take a moment, to pause, breathe and feel the sensations in our toes and feet, let the breath connect us to our hearts and regulate this little inner being that happens to go by the rather fancy name of Nervous System.
Rather than an urgency to ‘fix’, change, create, plan or right the wrongs of the world, ourselves, others or our lives ( often just a symptom of dys-regulation) we can instead lower ourselves into the lovely relaxed engaged presence of our inner bubble bath!…. our inner resilience and regulation – and receive and offer to the world from this place.
To find out more about nervous system regulation and identifying dysregulation, please book a free initial consultation to see if regulation focussed coaching would be helpful.
From my little animal to yours with love,
Elise