Day 2
IN THIS LESSON
Nervous System Nuts + Bolts:
The Nervous System is our command center, communicating brain to body, and body to brain, what’s incoming and outgoing, and how to proceed based on that information. It is our own personal automatic ADT security system– an organized network of nerve tissue in the body. It downloads our internal and external ecosystem, then sends electrical signals that travel between the brain, skin, organs, glands, muscles and pretty much everywhere else. These messages help automatically mobilize a body to do all the things it takes to survive– breathe, think, move, feel sensation, go to the bathroom, respond to inner and outer stimuli, mobilize, rest, digest, be intimate, and so much more.
This system is made up of the brain, spinal cord and nerves (which are basically everything– since we are a bundle of trillions of nerves). It has two main parts: The Central Nervous System (brain and spinal cord) and the Peripheral Nervous System (Somatic NS, and Autonomic NS).
The Nervous System controls everything we do through a vast network of messages carried by individual units of circuitry called neurons. When this system is functioning fluidly, all other systems work together to make sure our bodies stay balanced and healthy. But this system is one big feedback loop. So, if one part of the system malfunctions, the other parts take a hit as well. Because it's designed to protect us, it's quite sensitive, reflexive, and habitual.
This might sound like a lot of jargon we have no control over. But, it's actually the opposite. Once we understand the boomerang-like nature of this system, we can begin to see how we may be perpetuating these responses through our reflexive habits and patterns. This insight allows us some agency in interrupting our own systems from going down the same old physiological rabbit-hole. We just need to know where to look. And that's exactly why we are here!
Somatic work is about the awareness of our own bodies. This attention helps us become better drivers of our physiology, and expert trackers of our symptomatology. The emergent qualities arising from our systems can become clues to our internal mysteries. Our embodied understanding offers us the opportunity to ride our sensory waves back into a state of homeostasis, rather than continuing to interrupt our survival responses from completing. A healthy nervous system is a flexible nervous system. It has the ability to stay present with a wider range of sensations and emotions without being swallowed up by them. That's what we want. And that's also what this work can help us discover-- more physiological and psychological freedom within.
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A little Tara Brach for you!
https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/