Sensitivity and regulation of the nervous system as a spiritual path ⋆ LonerWolf

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 15 years on the spiritual path, it’s that all the meditation, reading, and healing techniques in the world I don’t mean shit if you ignore the body.

Yes, some of these top-down (aka the mind-to-body) methods create offsets. But many others reinforce dissociation, and some even encourage it ego inflation and spiritual narcissism (non-duality, who?).

What I want to emphasize here is that starting with a bottom-up approach to treatment (aka the body-to-mind) is a smarter, more effective, and more intelligent approach to any form of spirituality or trauma healing path.

why? Because body is your foundation your anchor, your tether to this world. It carries more wisdom and intuitive abilities than you can imagine or believe.

According to trauma specialist Peter Levin, quoting the poet D.H. Lawrence,

“I believe that flesh and blood are wiser than intellect. The unconscious body is where our lives bubble up. It’s how we know we’re alive, alive to the core of our soul and somewhere in touch with the bright expanses of space.”

So where do you start with regulating your nervous system (aka having a calm body and mind), especially if you are a highly sensitive, deep thinking person? Let’s dive into it.

First, I want to talk a little bit about why and how this topic is so important to me:

My experience of being overwhelmed, burned out, and bypassing the wisdom of the body

The irony is that for most of my spiritual healing journey, I ignored the body’s wisdom, bypassing it in favor of a more ethereal and “mental” path. (Religious trauma that makes you see the body as evil as the root causeanyone?)

I wrote about vagus nerve, somatic bodyand value of muscle tension before – but I never pursued it further or delved into it.

I even underwent life changing therapy with a somatic therapist for over a year and trained with a nervous system expert … but it never crossed my mind, “Wait, I need to stop from top to bottom healing approaches and shifting gears to proactively enable it bottom up approach to my life.”

This is an example of how long it can sometimes take to integrate mind and body, especially if you experienced intense dissociation and loss of identity as a child. For me it took approx five years to start shifting gears.

When the wake up call finally rang…

The final push to “wake up” came when I became a father and began to experience chronic fatigue more often – despite following all the usual treatment procedures that “worked before”.

I realized that as a very sensitive person, my nervous system was deeply unregulated, overworked and starting to burn out.

Visiting my parents, doing housework, running a business, 4-10 types of breast pumps for my son, dealing with toxic family members, listening to the news (Deepak Chopra and the Epstein files, I mean what the hell), grieving the endless loss of life in wars, keeping up with household chores, maintaining relationships, and all the other million tasks of daily life were just… becoming too much.

Once I started researching “burnout symptoms” I started connecting the dots. It was then that I came across the words of Dr. Claire Plumbley in her book burn injury where she described burnout, which occurs “when stress is imminent, we’re stretched to the limit for too long, causing our nervous system to get stuck in survival mode.”

Bingo. I found the missing link. And thanks to the active start of regulating my nervous system, I am finally starting to regain my energy, vitality and soul again.

20+ Ways to Start Regulating Your Nervous System as a Sensitive (What I Do)

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your profound philosophy.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra

Burnout, exhaustion, and existential overload are almost inevitable at some point in life, especially for highly sensitive people.

When you process, feel and experience life 10-50 times louder than a neurotypical person, you need to show more care and make it a fundamental part of your daily life.

It’s not a nice to have routine This is an essential-and-irreplaceable part of everyday life for highly sensitive people.

Without learning how to regulate yourself every day, stress factors begin to accumulate to the point of physical and mental illness. Not taking care of your body every day and not bringing it to parasympathetic calmness, as a result, there is a disturbance of the regulation of the nervous system, which looks like this:

• Brain fog
• Lack of concentration
• Lack of motivation
• Forethought and reflection
• Anxiety and nervousness
• A sense of existential dread
• Mood swings
• Emotional numbness
• Fatigue and lethargy
• Muscle tension
• A bad dream
• Problems with digestion
• More diseases

So where? to start regulates your nervous system? Here are some things I’m doing right now (not everyone all the time, but at different times and frequency):

1. Predictable weekdays (not glamorous, but the nervous system likes familiarity)
2. No use of social media at the beginning or end of the day (I try to only use it for work at noon)
3. A lot of water
4. Healthy, homemade and simple dishes
5. Reading before bed in soft lightsuch as a salt lamp or a Turkish mosaic lamp
6. Soft blankets or crocheted with your own hands
7. Cuddle with pets or loved ones if possible during the day (usually beginning and end)
8. Taking a a slow walk in nature
9. Drink hot herbal tea (love adaptogens as St. Basil or digestive like peppermint)
10. A grounding meditation at the beginning of the daybefore housework / work
11. Deep breathing meditation for 5-10 minutes, lying on the ground before going to bed
12. Self-massage or acupressure
13. Simple yoga and stretching
14. Orientation to sources of joy in the environment (bird, flower, cloud, picture)
15. Noise canceling headphones when outside
16. Keeping a diary by candlelight
17. Frankincense or natural oils such as lavender
18. Listen to the sounds of natureTibetan singing bowls, or chants
19. Humming or whistling
20. Walk around the place where human interaction feels pleasantsuch as a park
21. A game with fur or the human family (board games, ball throwing, etc.)
22. Having days without technology
23. Moving more slowly and less multitasking
24. Creation of control sheets reduce mental stress
25. Work in the mirror after showering for a minute saying affirmations
26. Comforting the inner child through what they love
27. Setting boundaries with others by preparing “scenarios”

I wrote an article about Restoration of the soul a couple of weeks ago, and it’s the perfect addition to this post (with tons of other soothing suggestions). Obviously there is so many other things I could write here. But this list is going to be fifty pages, so I’m keeping it short and simple to give you an idea of ​​what’s possible.

Regulation of the nervous system is a spiritual path

Learning to calm, ground, and regulate your nervous system is a spiritual journey in itself because the body is your constant field of wisdom.

Fire in the belly, tightness in the chest, and dullness in the head all indicate what you need to know about a person, situation, or inner shadow.

Your body is a thermometer of truth, a transmitter of wisdom, and an oracle of guidance.

As a sensitive person, you are blessed (and sometimes cursed) to experience these physical sensations in the reinforced the way

This is one of your greatest gifts. Now it’s time to cut him down.