🌹🎶 Reset

A ramble through the wonders of the nervous system

Reset
A homecoming,
A string of moments,
A beating heart.

Reset
Back again to the feet,
The breathing body,
And the listening ear.

Reset
Return to the bass line,
Feel the beats, encoded with love,
Percussing the soles of the soul.

Reset
Switch off, drop the drive,
Let go, parachute into
The endless mystery.

Reset
Reboot, switch back on
A sizzle of sparking synapses -
Life becomes magical again.

The winking eye of the moon offers us cyclical opportunities to press reset and circle back to what matters. Over the transit of last weekend’s New Moon in Earthy Taurus, matters of home, body, family and community occupied my attention. Whilst attending Surprised!, a local festival celebrating Asian Arts, my ears bathed in lyrical reminders of the circling of the old and new in “that universal language we call music.” My body danced back home to the fundamental bass line of humanity, a string of hugs enervating community connections in a beautiful moment of reset.

I find it fascinating to watch concepts circling in the zeitgeist. Currently, there’s a lot of chat about ‘nervous system regulation,’ as a way to soothe the frazzled nerves of an increasingly disembodied, digitised world. Social media is full of influencers claiming that their programme will not only regulate your nerves but also your whole life when you sign up for their time-sensitive offer. Bandwagons and buzz words aside, the quest to jump off the hamster wheel of survival mode is nothing new, as for centuries, yogis, artists and philosophers have mapped pathways to thriving and self-realising through calming, creative, meditative states. As we find our way in our epoch, if nervous system regulation is ‘it’ right now, I’m all for it.

Image: Geralt on Pixabay

A few funky facts about our nervous system:

• As you scroll through this article, 3,000 nerve endings per square inch are activated in your supersensitive fingertips. Every tissue in your body is powered by natural electricity, with a single neuron/ nerve cell sending anywhere from 5 to 200 messages per second.

• If laid out, our complex nervous system would be about 45 miles long.

• Our inner wiring, 7 trillion nerve cells, formed of bundles of fibres, conduct electrical signals at speeds of up to 200mph, to and from the Central Nervous System (CNS), formed of the brain and spinal column.

• 12 cranial nerves travel from the brain across our head and neck, whilst 31 spinal nerves spiral out from our spinal column to the rest of our body.

• Beyond the CNS, the Peripheral Nervous System is a vast network of sensory nerves that send signals from the body to the brain, and motor nerves that carry information from the brain to the body.

• The Peripheral Nervous System regulates voluntary/somatic functions such as movement, chewing, speaking, and involuntary/autonomic functions, including breathing, heart rate and digestion.

• The Autonomic Nervous System is formed of three branches.

  The Enteric Nervous System (ENS), a network of 200-600 million neurons lining the digestive tract, is the independent “brain in our guts.”
  The Sympathetic (SNS) activates fight or flight survival responses, raising heart and breath rate, temperature, perspiration and stress hormones.
  The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) restores a state of rest and digest, returning the body to balance, slowing and conserving energy, reducing heart rate and relaxing digestive processes.

• Nervous System Regulation involves intentionally shifting from survival responses into a relaxed state.

  

  Image: neurons - Wikipedia

Three Ways to Press Reset

1. How do I create a sense of home and safety within myself?
Cultivating a sense of home is an inside job. For many reasons, the external places we call home may not have always felt safe. So it’s a daily healing practice to come home and feel safe within our bodies, hearts and minds. This may involve extracting ourselves from the jaws of our inner critic, whose carping voice pretends to keep us safe in the face of perceived risk, but ultimately keeps us small and afraid. Whilst cuccooning and incubating are a vital part of restoring safety, risk-taking and innovation are essential to spark resilience. So we can balance calming, earthing practices - meditation, time in nature, a hot bath - with adventure, growth and learning to cultivate a sense of being at home wherever we find ourselves.

Image: Geralt Pixabay

2. Where and with whom do I feel safe?
As our nervous system is a constant feedback circuit, we regulate in relationship and seek out the presence of friends, therapists, health professionals and educators with whom we can grow a sense of safety. As human relationships are precarious, continuous discernment about who to allow into our inner lives acknowledges the implicit vulnerability of the dance. Trust is not a destination; it requires an ongoing decision and a tensile elasticity to accommodate life’s challenges. Connections may endure for reasons, seasons or lifetimes, whilst others rupture in hurts, heartbreaks, betrayals and traumas. On the micro-level, over time, sustained daily alienations and disconnections can switch off whole swathes of nervous sensitivity. Building trusting connections helps us stay alive and awake whilst navigating this wildly varied terrain.

Image: Beesmurf Pixabay

3. What lights me up?
Stemming from Latin words meaning rule and straight lines, the word regulate seems a little square when we wonder at the intricate patterns of the nervous system. Nothing like a Roman road, the branches of neurons are called dendrites, after the trees they resemble. Whilst regulating daily practices help anchor safety, spontaneous creative moments can also spark a powerful reset.

Moments of awe and wonder light up brain areas, including the prefrontal cortex, the command centre, whose executive functions include decision-making, attention and behaviour regulation. We feel more embodied, as the insula, which oversees body awareness, is stimulated, and our emotions settle due to the activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Far from just a quick dopamine hit, researchers at UCL found that the positive emotions associated with transcendent experiences of art, meditation and nature alleviate stress-related conditions, giving the brain time to reset.

This week, the plush plumes of a magpie perched on top of a porch interrupted my hunter-gatherer mode as I was mentally writing a shopping list on the walk to Sainsbury’s. Some kind of indescribable wordless bird-human eye-to-eye encounter occurred, bringing a smile to my face and a lift to my spirits. Allowing ourselves to stay awake to the magical details of life can spark our delight and send a cascade of positive messages through our nervous systems.