Nervous System Regulation Isn’t the Goal

Our body is an immaculate machine, if you will. It can regenerate, heal through thought (thought!), it self-regulates, self-detoxes, and self-cleans.

Nervous system regulation has become the topic dujour, and I can admit both the lure of the convo and the need for it. My nervous system DOES crave regulation!

Regulation matters. I just don’t think it’s the starting line.

Because I think we’ve lost the plot when it comes to what truly regulates…and that a lack of regulation is a biological safety mechanism. You should feel disregulated at times - it’s how you know the train is off the tracks in some aspect of your life.

Your body, as an immaculate mechanism of life, is working all of the time to keep you regulated, safe, healthy, and whole.

It doesn’t need constant intervention. It needs constant care. Attunement. Optimal inputs, yes. But hyper-vigilance and calming? I’m leaning towards no.

I don’t think that we need to be aiming for a constant baseline, a stasis. Is that really the chief aim of being alive? To be…for lack of a better word…neutral? To feel neutral in our bodies? Calm, above all else?

Or is the ideal situation one in which you feed the machine as much as you can of all that allows it to operate maximally, so it can do what it naturally does. Which includes, disregulate to signal alarm, regulate when things are as they should be, and essentially function as a monitoring system.

Not for how static your baseline is. But for how many of the ideal inputs you’re feeding it.

So rather than focusing on regulation as a core need, I’d argue that what we need to be focusing on is nourishment. Mind, body, soul.

And there’s a million and one inputs that nourish: connection, grounding, real food, laughter, walking slower, staring at the sky, sex, dance, active rest, creativity, telling stories around the campfire, natural sunlight, and on and on…

We are desperate for the things that make us feel good, feel grounded, feel like ourselves, allow our bodies and brains to function at optimal capacity.

But we’re not doing them and in large part, I think it’s because we’re exhausted with trying to “fix” ourselves.

So while you’re not off the hook entirely, I do think this is important to remember:

What you’re calling disregulation is actually a natural response to the systems your body is living within. And you can go as macro or micro with that perspective as you want - because they’re both true.

Our bodies are trying to adapt to a rapidly changed and ever-changing reality - modern society as we know it has not existed for long. And we can only adapt, truly, a generation at a time. You can’t will your current animal body into a different adaptation overnight. Expression, maybe. Adaptation? Sorry, ain’t gonna happen.

But on a cellular level, we do have the opportunity to adapt, to shift, or to regulate. We know thoughts influence physiology. Even gene expression responds to environment and stress, which is wild when you think about it for too long.

So yes, you can probably force yourself into regulation.

But what if the aim was not to override the system or beat it into neutral submission. And instead, was to nourish each part of the system so that it was less likely to sound the alarm?

Because by the time your nervous system is sounding the alarm, you’re not in an optimal state to be making change. I’m not saying NOT to. I’m saying, prevention versus treatment, ya feel?

You don’t calm an alarm system by yelling at it to stop. You check why it keeps going off and adjust accordingly.

You’re chasing regulation, but that’s just a response to a system. Change the system, change the response. Don’t chase regulation. Build nourishment in at every building block of your day. And your system will respond with less alarm bells.

Regulation becomes the default. It’s the outcome.

Nourishment is the pathway.