The connection between nervous system regulation & spiritual development

I get this question a fair bit, so here’s a short video on the connection between increased nervous system regulation and spiritual development.

(And by the way: this is not about religion or practicing a certain faith per se; it is about a stronger and deeper connection to something that is greater than us.)

Check it out!

Irene's Musings

In other news, my team and I took a popular meme that’s been moving around some high level social media channels, and shifted it to be a little more ‘nervous system and polyvagal informed’:

Social Quote Facebook – Beige 1—Calm_Versus_Regulated

The original meme said: The true measure of success is a calm nervous system.

While it might seem petty to correct this, I feel it is important to have clear and accurate information when it comes to life and death stuff.

For example, if we are faced with a big threat that requires us to fight or flee, success would not be to stay calm. We want to fight and flee. Or, if it is not safe to act and protect, we might need to freeze and numb out a bit so we don’t feel the threat as much (but this is very different from being calm!).

Now, in some cases, where we might be with a child who’s in danger, or maybe we are a first responder, and there is a big, stressful situation for the other person, some might say that it is better to “stay calm.” And if we are there to provide safety for the person who is in survival mode, we do need to stay regulated, but still alert and connected.

I purposely underlined ‘alert’ and ‘connected’ because we need a little healthy activation when taking command of a stressful situation, because being too calm or chill won’t put our alert signals on (which are needed to not miss a beat).

So you see, my friends, it’s just too simple to say that a “calm” nervous system is a measure of success. A successful nervous system is not static, it doesn’t stay ‘calm,’ or ‘activated’—it flows between states automatically as appropriate to the situation at hand. That’s regulation.

Comment of the Week

Here’s a comment I needed to share with you all as a reminder that SBSM (aka: SmartBody SmartMind™; see the resources below for more on this) can be useful for many things, including, as in this case, a medical crisis: