How to regulate your nervous system

A regulated nervous system is SO important for our health and well-being, and for us to choose thoughts and actions that differ from our habitual ones.

In this post, I’ll be going over tools you can use to help regulate your nervous system. If you want to read more about what nervous system regulation is, check out this post here.

There are two aspects of nervous system regulation:

• getting your body into a parasympathetic state (as many of us hang out in the sympathetic state far too much)

• creating resilience in your nervous system so outside circumstances don’t stress your system to the degree they might currently.

When we have a regulated nervous system, we can go up into a high alert, sympathetic state, and then come back down into a calmer, parasympathetic state fairly easily.  

One way to help us see what our nervous systems are doing is to track our heart rate variability, or HRV

Measuring our HRV can help us see how much we are moving from one state to the other. You want a high HRV. The ideal ranges will look different for everyone, but we want to be on the higher side. The higher the number, the more able you are to flexibly go from one state to the other - which is what we want. You can look at your own trendlines to see what’s going on with your body as well as to get data on how what you’re doing or experiencing is impacting you. For example, a low HRV could indicate overtraining or poor recovery.

You can measure you HRV with tools like an Apple watch, the Oura ring, or the HRV4Training app.

Getting out of fight or flight and into rest and digest

Many of us living in a Western society spend a lot of time in a sympathetic state and need to work on getting into a parasympathetic state more often. Here are some tools to help you do this:

NSDR

Non Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) is getting your body into a deeply relaxed state. This can be done through deep breathing, meditation, and practices like yoga nirda. It’s recommended by neuroscientists that we practice a form of NSDR one to two times a day.

Meaning, take a 10-15 minute break one to two times a day. And this is a true break. No phone, no TV, no podcast. Stare out of the window and breath deeply for 10 minutes. Put on your headphones and go through a 10 minute yoga nrida video on youtube. Or do a 10 minute guided meditation.

This helps our body relax and recharge for better focus and function, and helps keep our nervus systems from reaching really heightened states of stress.

BREATHING

Spending time working on our breathing should be a part of our daily routine as much as brushing our teeth is. Deeply breathing helps us get into a parasympathetic state. There is such a variety of breathing techniques you can try. There’s box breathing, specific second intervals, guided breathing meditations, or you can simply just focus on breathing deeply for a set amount of time. If this doesn’t feel like your jam, I suggest starting with just 5 minutes. You can obviously increase your time to whatever works well for you!

Neruoscientsist like Andrew Huberman and Nicole Vignola also suggest the use of a “physiological sigh” to help you get back into a parasympathetic state after experiencing an event that brought you up into a sympathetic state, such as a workout, someone yelling at you, or almost getting into a car accident. A physiological sigh consists of 2 deep inhales and an extended exhale. Do 5-10 of these consecutively.

SLOWING DOWN

We live in a rather “go-go-go” society, resulting in many of us operating from a place of “go-go-go,” running around like we have to rush for everything we do. Needless to say, this doesn’t help us get into a parasympathetic state.

Notice when you get into “rush” mode and slowwwwww down. Even if you’re moving at the same pace, taking a second to slow our breathing and stop moving from a “rushed” mindset can really help. We also don’t need to do 19393475 things a day. Take a look at what all you’re trying to do in one day. What do you ACTUALLY need to do today? What habits and routines can you change so that is doesn’t feel like you’re always rushing around? Essentialism, my friends.

HAVENING

This is a fun trick I learned within the past year. It’s simple and easy to do. The woman I learned it from mentioned if you happen to be in a public space when you need to help bring your nervous system down, you can just pretend you’re putting hand lotion on (or actually put hand lotion on ;)). Here’s a video example of havening. After experiencing a stressful moment, try a few psychological sighs while havening… a two for one combo!

SPENDING TIME IN NATURE

Being in nature has shown to do wonders for our nervous system and for lowering our stress response. Explore how you can fit being in nature more often into your daily or weekly routines.

USE YOUR BODY, NOT YOUR BRAIN, TO CALM DOWN

Telling yourself to calm down doesn’t work… just like telling your partner to calm down in a heated moment likely doesn’t either. We need to use our bodies to signal to the brain we are okay. That’s why all of the above practices have to do with using our bodies to get into a parasympathetic state.

Building your resilience

HORMESIS

Hormesis essentially is gaining benefit from doing an acute bout of something that would cause harm if done for a longer duration. Really, it’s engaging in an activity for a short period of time that applies a high level of stress to the body as doing so has been found to have beneficial effects on the body. Examples of this include cold exposure (ice baths), heat exposure (suana), HIIT training, Wim Hoff breathing, and fasting.

Engaging in these kinds of activities can help improve your immune system while also helping you become more resilient to stress. Doing these kinds of activities can help you practice keeping your mind calm while your body experiences stress (and we’re big fans of mental resilience around here).

DOING UNCOMFORTABLE THINGS

The more we throw ourselves into the pit of discomfort and do things that make us uncomfortable, the more we’ll increase our tolerance for feeling uncomfortable.

YOUR PERSPECTIVE

The perspective we have impacts our emotional and behavioral responses - including our mental and phsyiological responses to an experience. If I hold the perspective that airports are stressful, I’m going to experience more stress at the airport than if I hold the perspective that airports are a fun adventure. If I hold the perspective that my work is really hard and overwhelming, I’m going to experience more stress than if I choose the perspective that while I may have a lot to do for work, I can choose to believe I am capable of accomplishing everything I need to and I can take things just one step at a time.

Notice the perspectives you hold and if they’re benefiting your thoughts, feelings, and actions or if maybe it’s time to choose a new perspective.

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Don’t read this and think it means you need to go figure out how to implement all of this into your life now. Keep this information in mind, and pick one aspect I talked about to start implementing into your life today. Maybe you set a reminder to spend 10 minutes breathing deeply each day or put a 10 minute block in your calendar to do a daily 10 minute yoga nidra video. Maybe you make concrete plans to be in nature more often or choose to take cold showers on Saturdays. Pick what sounds most beneficial to you at this time and create a specific plan of action to actually DO the thing. Knowing things is great, knowing things is great, but actually doing the things is how we change our life ;).

That being said, I also highly recommend finding a way to keep the notion of doing uncomfortable things and allowing yourself to change your perspective top of mind. Write it on a sticky note, make it your phone background, or turn it into a daily mantra.

Cheers to creating better lives for ourselves.