To surrender, regulate your nervous system
Happy Sunday, Soothers. Today we're going to talk about a core and critical component of living a surrendered life, and honestly, one that to me is a cornerstone for anybody who wants to truly grow and heal, that is too rarely talked about in the self-discovery world: regulating your nervous system as a means of surrender.
But first! If you're new, welcome — the past several weeks I've been writing essays for a series on how to live a more intuitive, aligned and surrendered life. You can read past issues here at these links:
Part I: Beginning to live a surrendered, intuitive life
Part II: How you can begin to claim your desires
Part III: Listening to and seeing signs all around us
Part IV: Creating more space in your life for alignment
Part V: Asking for help, and taking action, over and over
Today, what we'll be talking about is nervous system regulation and its critical importance in allowing yourself to surrender to the flow of life that wants to move through you.
This is why:
If we return to the metaphor of navigating a boat down a river of life from my earlier posts, the difference in being able to do that with a grounded, regulated nervous system, vs. a frazzled, dysregulated nervous system, is this:
It's the difference between having solid oars, an in-good-shape, trustworthy boat, and the skills to navigate tricky stretches of the river, versus...
Trying to navigate that entire river with a random broomstick and a hockey stick as your oars, a boat that's shabby, full of leaky holes and threatening to collapse at any moment, and oh yeah, you know literally nothing about how to paddle a canoe.
Which one is going to let you navigate the river more easefully? To trust that you can handle it?
When we submit to the surrendered life, we are asking a powerful force to flow through us: the life force of... the universe? Energy? Intuition, destiny? Whatever it is.
But in order for that life force to be able to flow through us, and for us to settle into trusting both what the life force is asking of us, we must have a steady container through which the life force can flow.
That container, whether it's currently steady or not, is our nervous system.
Very few people talk about how consistent and effective nervous system regulation is a huge component of personal growth and self-discovery. If you want to go into your depths, you need to be steady. If you want to take a leap of faith that the surrendered life is inviting you into, your body needs to be able to handle it. If you want to trust your intuition and act on it, you need to cultivate safety and trust INTERNALLY, first, rather than remaining dependent on external circumstances around you always holding that trust and safety for you, because that's too fragile a structure.
When I started my growth and healing journey and leaning more into my intuition and working to align and surrender to what life was inviting me into, the nervous system discussion was not one I saw many places at first.
But as a highly sensitive person — meaning I have sensory issues, a delicate nervous system, and am easily overwhelmed by stimuli — I quickly caught on to the reality that all the intuition in the world was worth nothing if my nervous system couldn't handle it.
And it couldn't. Lol, it really couldn't.
I was frazzled. I was racing around, then crashing into depression and fog. I was anxious, and full of shame and dark feelings in my belly. I tried to intellect, affirmation my way out of this state, but my body was having none of it.
I realized over time that I was likely in a nervous system crash and burn cycle, caught between states of flight (debilitating anxiety and racing around) and freeze (shame, depression, avoidance, procrastination).
And I probably had been in this dysregulated cycle for decades.
(PS: you may be interested in my podcast on this, 198: The Nervous System Crash Circuit That May Be Running Your Life)
Once I started to consistently and committedly work on regulating and rewiring my nervous system, alignment and surrender came to me more easily. My body and subconscious were realizing that because my nervous system wasn't so fried and overwhelmed, that I could handle more — more love, more opportunities, more capacity, more flow.
And I trusted myself more too, as I came more and more into regulation and safety. Even when things around me were not going well, my container stayed strong. I trusted that I had the skills and internal safety to navigate what was happening externally. And so, I could row and paddle my canoe with the best of them.
That said, as bigger things come into your orbit, as you surrender more and more, you need even MORE nervous system regulation. Because this is the other thing about living in surrender and alignment: as you shift more into that state of being, what's lovely is you often do get more of what you want. The relationship, the career, the self-worth and so on.
And here's what is so totally true and I didn't believe it for a long time:
It is MOTHER EFFING TERRIFYING TO GET THE THINGS YOU WANT.
The times my nervous system has gone the most haywire were 1. When I entered my safe, trusting and loyal romantic relationship nearly 4 years ago and 2. When I was in the process of purchasing the nature witch cottage (my current home) last fall.
You think you get the things you want and it's all peachy keen. God, no. Those two receivings activated my nervous system like nothing else in my life. And I had to learn to even become MORE regulated so I could hold space for them, so I could trust I deserved them, that I was capable of handling them. (Seriously, for like 3 months of the house buying process AJ and I would eat dinner then I would say, "Welp, see you later" and go into my office and do EFT tapping for like two hours )
So where can you start if you are starting to see the link between a regulated, grounded nervous system, and surrendering to the aligned life?
First is to simply gain some basic nervous system awareness. Get familiar with the standard four Fs, which are the protective, automatic defense mechanisms of the nervous system:
Fight: This looks like guarding yourself, getting defensive, lashing out, having fights in your head, having actual fights, saying things you regret
Flight: Racing around, never being able to slow down and relax, creating 1 million to-do lists, going from racing around doing the laundry to typing 500 emails to googling recipes to creating plans
Freeze: Shame, depression, numbing out on social media live here, as do avoidance, procrastination, feeling in a fog
Fawn: Massive people-pleasing, saying yes to stay safe or liked, acquiescing in order to stay safe or liked, terrified of conflict, setting boundaries, etc.
You may experience all of these at any given time, or a combo of 2-3 too, but likely there is one here that is predominant for you.
Then: forgive yourself, and your body and brain, for having these reactions. They are PROTECTIVE. Meaning, your nervous system senses danger when it goes into these responses. The danger may be perceived from a situation that happened in childhood or an earlier trauma from decades ago. Your nervous system is literally obsessed with you, wants to protect you at all costs, and keep you safe no matter what. We also live in an INCREDIBLY dysregulating society. Too much news, stimulation, sensory overload, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy... y'all it really makes a lot of sense that we would have dysregulated nervous systems. Be gentle with it, and you.
That said, the next step I recommend is choosing a regular and daily, under 5 minute grounding practice you can commit to. You do it rain or shine, on days when you're feeling awful and days when you're flying high. It is the teeth brushing of the nervous system; you must begin to practice preventative nervous system hygiene. We are all in this for the long game.
My favorite practices:
EFT tapping (Brad Yates on YouTube is my fave and here is a playlist of some of my fave EFT videos)
Simply lying down on the floor doing nothing for 5 minutes
Humming/gargling
Being in nature without any devices
Stretching
Yoga (I particularly find this lower back/hips video helpful)
(I actually don't often recommend meditation as a nervous system regulating practice at first because I think it's more grounding to start with the body, meditation can sometimes increase anxiety, but if it works for you go for it!)
And so many more, but those come to mind off the top of my head. You can rotate this list, or combine a few, but it's important, especially if you have a dysregulated nervous system, to not try to do anything that would take you more than 3-5 minutes at first. Your nervous system is at capacity and cannot handle it.
The next thing to do is simply pay attention. Begin to notice when you are dysregulated. What triggers you into it? What are the circumstances around the trigger? What was the 24 hours of your life like before the dysregulation? Where do you feel it most in your body?
And in those moments of dysregulation, if you can — and you won't always be able to and that is okay — see if you can create 3-5 minutes of PAUSE before you take any action from a dysregulated state. Go to the bathroom, put your hands under freezing water, splash your face, walk outside, shake and do some jumping actions, hug yourself, lie down, punch a pillow, whatever. Anything you can do to just take a moment and see if you can shift yourself back into a bit more regulation. Let your body take the lead.
It's between these two approaches — daily, regular nervous system preventative hygiene — and in-the-moment observation, pausing and regulation — that, over time (and I really must stress, this is a months or years-long process, not overnight) that you will find yourself spending more and more time in a regulated state.
Your assignment this week? I'd like you to choose one of the nervous system grounding practices I named above (or choose your own!) and commit to trying it out for three days.
Comment below with which one you will be trying out! Remember, anybody who leaves a comment throughout this series will be entered into a raffle for a free coaching call with me.
And for anybody who has a bit of capacity to do a 10-minute practice, try out this Instagram reel I created for you showing you my 10-minute nervous system routine.
And know, as you continue to practice this grounding and internal safety, the surrender and flow and alignment of life will get stronger, the more capacity your nervous system has to handle it.
You will trust and act from your intuition more often, because your body will trust you.
When surrender comes calling your name and you're required to take those scary leaps of faith that are so critical in the intuitive, aligned and surrendered life, you will be more able to capably make them, because you will have a lot of skilled internal safety and trust.
And the flow will continue.
Happy regulating!