Alarm or False Alarm?
Life is lived through your nervous system. Daily and over your life you're taking in information through your senses, which includes your sight, smell, taste, touch, sound, and intuition (the gut feeling) is an extension of the nervous system.
This input informs your nervous system so it can adapt, maintain health, and keep you safe:
A healthy flexible nervous system may notice:
"That horrible driver is a threat"
or "that food is definitely moldy, pass"
If the stress of life begins to build on over time, the imprints of small or large stressors of the past can cause an increase in threat signals.
You may be thinking: "this is fine I can handle it" to an embarrassing situation with colleagues.
While your nervous system is saying "emergency, shut down, run away and hide!"
Your perception system can become skewed by life's unprocessed events, signaling a threat due to having less flexibility than your nervous system optimally does.
The beauty is - you can build flexibility, here are three ways I recommend:
Integrate the stressors that have accumulated, clearing the noise and cobwebs in the nervous system, reminding the system it is safe can do wonders! (Body work that addresses the nervous system, like neural integration, or subconscious reprogramming work, like To Be Magnetic, breath work and more can have this effect!)
Practice oscillating between the state of threat and the state of peace, or the state of expansion and contraction. Exercising this muscle helps to build and train flexibility in the nervous system again. Feel each state and move back and forth, informing your nervous system that it is safe to explore these ranges.
For a period of time, reduce the inputs that are outside of your bandwidth and increase those within your bandwidth (watch befriend your bandwidth for more about this)
Have you ever felt worse after scrolling on your phone, versus the vast contrast of how open and hopeful you feel after hiking to see a stretching summit view?
Vision is one way that we practice oscillation daily, if you've been staring at the screen for the last 5 minutes reading this email, take 1 minute to look out into the distance or to the horizon. (watch this video on the connection between your nervous system and vision for more)
In gratitude & good health,
Dr. Jessica