Building a Nimble Nervous System (and Why Meditation Alone isn't Enough)
The Four Things Your Nervous System Really Needs to Heal
The nervous system is having an it girl moment. I’m here for it because I’ve been working on my nervous system for the past 15+ years so I’ve collected a lot of tools. I have a history of childhood trauma (and generational trauma), but I really want to skip that for now and take you back about 15 years, when my nervous system finally reached its breaking point. In my early 30s, when our two girls were young, I fell apart. Our oldest got diagnosed with autism just a few weeks before our second was born. At the time, we knew nothing about neurodivergence (and I didn’t know I would wind up being late diagnosed myself). We didn’t have the tools to support her or ourselves. We figured it out pretty quick but the load I took on from that moment had a cost. Everything I had in those early days went into caring for our two girls that I will happily classify as “difficult babies”. Some babies are easy (sleep through the night, cheery disposition, happy to hang out in a pac-n-play or a be held in a Baby Bjorn) and some babies are difficult (allergic to sleep, “colicky”, require being held in your arms while standing for hours on end, dubious disposition). Ours were the latter. (And if you haven’t had the privilege, you really have no idea, which is why I always say take parenting advice with a grain of salt). I say all that with nothing but love in my heart: I am now so grateful because difficult babies can turn into amazing, strong-willed, intelligent, absolute fire young ladies. (Take note Moms with difficult babies: their bodies are just too small for the universe exploding out of them).
But at that season of life I had no such perspective and was just pushing myself closer and closer to the breaking point co-regulating their stressed out nervous systems while mine got fucked. At some point my body just gave up. Within a couple years we had to have my in-laws move in with us to help take care of them because I could barely get out of bed. The constant pain was bad, but the fatigue was debilitating. I saw doctor after doctor and, long story short, finally got diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic health condition marked by an overactive nervous system. Basically, an overactive stress response eventually causes the nervous system to go haywire, and a malfunctioning nervous system leads to severe pain and fatigue. (That was way watered down and I am resisting every urge to explain this in the detail it deserves because the nitty gritty details of fibro are not the point of this post).
What is the point is that I’ve done my research on the nervous system. Fast forward to today and I’m doing pretty good. I still have flares, but I know how to manage and minimize them. I’m not running any marathons, but I’m active. I’m up and out of bed before at least one of my children (the teen, ofc). The difference between now and 10 years ago is night and day.
The single-most needle moving health practice that I implemented? Getting serious about my nervous system.
I think most people know the basics: the sympathetic nervous system state is our stress response, our fight or flight (or freeze or fawn). The parasympathetic nervous system state is back to to calm, our rest and digest response, our restorative mode. Most people have an idea that chronic stress is not good, and they’d like to figure out how to be less stressed.
They have a general idea that nervous system dysregulation is probably an issue and nervous system regulation would have a positive impact on their health.
The thing about nervous system regulation is that there are multiple moving pieces at play. What most people (including me) will often give you is a list of tools for your toolbox. This is great, but it is not the whole picture. What people aren’t explaining is is that nervous system regulation needs multiple things to happen, which ultimately means needing some combination of tools to really stick.
Furthermore, most people don’t really understand the actual goal with nervous system regulation. People have this vague idea that it means being more calm. Not being in constant fight or flight. Not suffering from chronic stress. All of that is true, in a way.
And real nervous system regulation means something beyond that: it means resilience. It means having the capacity for stressful shit and then being able to bounce back to calm after said stressful shit is over.
It’s not a problem that your kids make you want to lose your mind when they wake you up at 5am and immediately choose chaos. The issue is whether this is still affecting you 8 hours later.
Our nervous system is meant to nimbly switch between parasympathetic and sympathetic mode depending on what the situation calls for.
Put it that way, you might begin to see that there are a few different things that need to happen to get a nimble nervous system. Building resilience means both building capacity (how much stress your body can handle without going into burnout) and being able to get back to calm after the stressful shit (strengthening the calm response), and to even get started your nervous system needs to be physically healthy enough to work properly.
How do we do all this? Let’s break it down.
A Framework for Resilience
Your body needs four things to heal the nervous system and build resilience:
Nourishing the Nervous System (Nutrients + Sleep)
First, you need a nervous system that is physically primed to function well. All the physiology of your nervous system has to be well nourished and in working order. This means a whole foods diet with plenty of protein, fats and fiber. B vitamins. It also means balanced blood sugar and a healthy gut. These are all the things that are going to physically nourish your nervous system so that it actually has the ability to work on an optimal level. Now if you’ve read any of my Notes you’ll know I’m not a big fan of restrictive diets or stressing out about food. The stress about the cookie is always worse than the cookie. Joy is a nutrient. And a diet devoid of nutrients just won’t function at full capacity. Getting in as many nutrients in your body (that you truly enjoy) is always a winning foundational strategy.
And it means good sleep. None of this works without sleep. Sleep is literally where your body repairs itself.
Stress Management (Reduce Overload)
On the flip side of nourishing and repairing your nervous system is reducing your overall stress load so that your nervous system actually has the space to heal. If there are so many sources of stress you can’t breathe, it’s hard to get ahead of it. This is what I would call the oft thrown around term “stress management” and it’s often one of the main things people are talking about when it comes to nervous system regulation. (It IS a critical component - just not the only one.) This is where we talk about time management, outsourcing the mental load, outsourcing in general, boundaries, auditing your lifestyle and work, saying no to things that don’t light you up. What is dragging you down that’s actually possible to get off your plate?
In Human Design, this is where I’m talking about listening to your sacral response for Generators and Manifesting Generators, or waiting for emotional clarity for emotional authority types, or taking downtime when your body is asking for it for Manifestors.
Building Capacity (Strengthen the “Stress Muscle”)
Now to the capacity building. You need capacity, aka, the ability to handle as big a stressful load as possible. You can think of it like training a muscle: intentionally exercising the “stress muscle” can make it stronger. This is where the concept of good stress, or eustress, comes in. Certain types of stress can have a hormetic effect on the body, which means actually increase your body’s capacity for stress. Actual exercise, along with other things like sauna, cold plunge, and intermittent fasting all fall into this category. Now, to be clear, when things are too stressful for the body, especially a woman’s body, they are no longer beneficial and just add to the overall stress load. Intermittent fasting (beyond say 12-14 hours) is generally not a great idea for women. Personally, I actually love cold plunging but I only do it when I know my body is ready to handle it. Exercise is great but an intense 60 minute Peloton ride probably isn’t unless you’re in peak athletic condition (I said what I said).
What constitutes a good stress is unique to the individual and listening to your body is key. And although I’ve listed this as the third element in my framework (because it comes “third” in the order of operations when you think about it conceptually), it’s really best to approach this component only when you have a pretty decent handle on the other three. Don’t go on a run on 5 hours of sleep and nothing but an iced coffee. Makes sense right?
And Bouncing Back to Calm (Strengthen the Relaxation Response)
Finally, the calm response. Other than the “stress management” category, this is where the majority of the tools we’ve come to think of for nervous system regulation are related to. (Again, critical. Again, not the only component). Meditation, deep breathing, guided imagery, etc. All of these things are great, but none of them are actually necessary at all. Also great for eliciting the relaxation response: deep meaningful work in the flow state, social connection, creative pursuits, being in nature, or just laying down and letting your mind wander. Whatever gets you there is unique to you. This category is critical, though probably not for the reason you’re thinking. It’s not only for the period of relaxation you get in the moment you do it (though this is important too). Even more importantly, what you’re actually doing is training your nervous system to become familiar with being in a parasympathetic state. Neurons that fire together wire together. Practicing relaxation strengthens your nervous system’s ability to get back into a parasympathetic state after the stressful event is dunzo.
I could say a lot more on this subject but this was just meant to be an overview of the framework I developed to conceptualize the moving parts. Mainly because I wanted to respond to the frustration that comes with meditating for 30 minutes a day for weeks on end and not noticing any changes. It’s meant to acknowledge that if it feels like you’re doing the work but not seeing any difference, you’re not doing the work wrong. What’s missing are the other elements.
This should also show you exactly why they say healing is never linear. Because you cannot do all of these things at once and nail it right out of the park. Building resilience does require working on all of these on some level for some time. But it will be little by little, building on itself, spiraling up.
Giving you the framework was the easy part. The hard part is implementing it. I can (and will) give you plenty of thoughts on all of it in detail but the truth is that nervous system regulation (like anything in life) is truly bio-individual. While I do suggest auditing each of the 4 pillars to see for yourself what might need attention, the tools you use in each category should be based on what you need, not what some wellness influencer says is the best or only approach. When I work with clients it’s a continuous discussion: what worked? What didn’t? Here’s what your Human Design indicates - how does that resonate and what do you want to try? It’s often trial and error. If meditating feels like bullshit, don’t do it.
At the end of the day, your intuition is the decision-maker and the best nervous system tool you’ve got.
This article was originally posted on nikibowenwellness.com
Disclaimer: This article is solely for informational and inspirational use as a self-help tool and is not intended to be professional medical advice, mental health advice, or medical nutrition therapy of any kind.
For whatever reason this came to me naturally. I'm not saying I was born with a nimble nervous system -- but the ability to hone and develop one came naturally -- and boy has it developed.