What I Learned from Watching my Nervous System in Real Time
The thing that actually moves the needle is not meditation
I use an Oura ring to track my nervous system. It tells you throughout the day when you’re “stressed”, “engaged”, “relaxed”, or “restored”. Stressed is sympathetic aka fight or flight activated, obvs. Restored correlates to the parasympathetic aka rest and digest state. Engaged and Relaxed are somewhere in the middle or a combination of the two, because it’s not actually just a switch that gets flipped. There’s a spectrum and even times when both systems are activated at the same time.
The goal is not to avoid stress at all costs. Some amount of stress is actually a good thing because it “exercises” the nervous system, which helps build resilience. The goal is also not to be in the parasympathetic state all the time, for the same reason. The nervous system is meant to move from state to state depending on the circumstance. The health of the nervous system is really determined by how quickly it can bounce back to baseline after a stressful event. Your heart variability rate, or HRV, is a fairly good proxy for measuring this (think of it like a BMI score - it doesn’t tell the whole story and there are extenuating circumstances but generally speaking, getting it into a “healthy” range is correlative of a healthy resilience). The Oura ring gives you your HRV along with your “Readiness” score which comprises some mathematic calculation of your HRV, sleep scores, and activity levels. I really don’t know what the calculation is, but if they’re accurate, the Readiness score is literally your true measure of resilience. Because the Readiness score is a measure of how ready you are for shit to hit the fan. The higher the score, the better you’ll able to face illness, injury, or some massive stressful event. In other words, resilience.
In case these numbers all just sound super abstract to your actual life, let’s bring it back to chronic illness. Resilience is the metric that will tell me if I’m closing in on a flare, or already there. My Readiness score is directly correlative to the level of pain and fatigue I’m going to be feeling.
Can you see why I track this number so closely?
Take all of this with a huge grain of salt. Personally, I’m a data person and I find the scores motivating. When I got the ring a few years ago, that was the thing that finally got me to get better sleep. Getting to see in real time what made the numbers go up and what made them decline was powerful. But I’m also a fan of throwing your scale away if it causes mental anguish. If the number on the scale is going to ruin your day, it is not something you need in your life. Same with wearables like this. I’ve found the Oura ring to be encouraging because when you do have a bad day it’s like “we all have bad days, can you try to take a nap today?”. But if it’s going to cause stress to see those numbers, then it’s obviously counterproductive.
My favorite restored causer
What helps is that I look at all of this like an experiment. Since I’m here to gather the info and relay it back to you, I never feel bad about myself if I have a bad streak of numbers. If it’s not obvious, in the world we live in shit hits the fan all the time, and readiness can decline if you’re not taking care of yourself. But it’s even better when I get to tell you when it I get some good numbers, and why.
Because it wasn’t because I’ve been doing a bunch of meditation, I’ll tell you that. The biggest needle mover that I’ve seen is when I’m having a good conversation. Like, not just with loved ones, but with potentially anyone.
It’s one thing to know that loneliness is more harmful to health than cigarettes, but it’s on a whole new level to see for yourself what a quality connection can do.
I don’t just mean a fun girls’ night out or purely social lunch with your best friend.
I mean your friend who is also a business coach hosts a webinar to workshop business strategy.
A session with a client that is an absolute joy to work with.
My literal DENTIST appointment with a new holistic dentist who really took the time to listen. (Y’all, I used to have to take a Valium before every appointment.)
I even have a Restored moment during a BBL facial, which, if you don’t know, is a laser treatment that ages your skin backwards (and helps prevent skin cancer, so it’s not just a vanity exercise in case you were wondering) but it is painful. But you know what? The esthetician is fun to talk to. (The best ones are).
For an introvert (INTJ, if you’re into MBTI) and an HSP with 7 undefined centers, people-ing seems like the least likely activity to be restorative for me.
It’s possible that my 4/6 profile has something to do with it. 4’s are the people for whom relationships make their world go round. But I think of it in the sense of value and investment. Not that other people don’t value their relationships, please don’t get it twisted. But for 4’s, they owe everything (or at least the best things) to their relationships, and they know it (whether consciously or unconsciously). That job they love, that speaking opportunity, that person they’re married to - for a 4, it all got dropped in their lap by a friend of a friend of a friend. Their inner circle is their lifeblood. And they treat their relationships like plants (or rather, like someone who has plants but knows how to keep them alive would treat plants). They intentionally nurture them so that they (the relationships) grow (again, whether it’s conscious or unconscious). (All that and we get the terms “The Networker” or “The Opportunist” thrown at us as archetype descriptors, which is a really gross way to describe a really sincere quality, IMHO).
All that to say, maybe the 4 line in me puts such importance on these moments that it would be naturally restorative. But I don’t really think that’s it. It goes deeper than that. It speaks to a biological need that everyone is born with.
Everyone craves connection. Everyone needs connection.
Connection makes us feel safe.
Safety is a regulated nervous system.
A little about me….
I’m Niki — a holistic health and Human Design coach. Recovering lawyer turned SAHM turned health obsessed turned questioning midlifer. I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I finally connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. I realized the stress about the cookie was worse than the cookie. Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.
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