The nervous system

Our nervous system has a challenging job

The amazing nervous system

Our nervous system is a miracle. The amount of information and signals sent for our body and head to work together is indescribable. And sometimes it gets to be a bit much. Especially in modern everyday life, where many have demanding jobs, children to pick up from kindergarten, social media that beeps and notifies, and family and friends to fit in the middle of it all. Then our body speaks up. We may experience headaches, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, or anxiety. The nervous system has its limits. But what not everyone knows is that the nervous system can be trained and relieved.

Fight or flight

We humans have inherited our nervous system from a time when society did not exist in the same form as it does today. There were no calendars, meeting rooms, planning days or cell phones. Day to day, life was about avoiding danger and eating and resting when the opportunity arose. That is why our nervous system has two "settings." We like to call them "fight or flight" and "rest and digest." You can easily guess which one is more comfortable. The problem is that our nervous system cannot distinguish between the stress you feel before an important presentation and the stress our ancestors felt when a lion approached. This means we go into "Fight or flight" mode far more often than necessary. Unless we communicate with our nervous system in the most primitive language there is: our breath.

A language that the nervous system understands

Many of us have tried to talk ourselves into reason when we lie awake at night trying to fall asleep. "It's okay that I'm not that prepared for the meeting tomorrow, just relax completely," we might say to ourselves. But our nervous system does not speak a language that consists of words. It only understands the physical signals. Breath, temperature, and muscle tension are the vocabulary of our nervous system. As soon as we realize that this is the language we need to speak, we can begin to calm the nervous system. What is needed is the right tool.