Maybe you can… but first, approach carefully, like you would a wild animal in the forest.
Having a basic understanding of your nervous system is really important.
However, control or regulate are not my favorite words to describe a beneficial engagement with it. Understanding and engagement are not necessarily regulation or control. The uncontrollable (autonomic) aspect of our nervous system is responsible for so much of your functioning and health.
While the term regulate is well meaning, I think it is likely to give us the illusion of control, the expectation that we can and ought to be in control. I find the word “co-operate” more useful.
Your nervous system is dynamic and complex.
A forest is a system, with visible and invisible parts. It’s so complex that we are still only at the beginning of understanding how it works as a whole. So is our brain and nervous system.
Like all structures within your body, each person’s nervous system has a commonly evolved structure and nature, as well as its unique adaptations, variations, and history. When you wander into that forest, keep your eye out for undiscovered critters. Walk quietly, try not to disturb.
I stumbled on the forest metaphor in this recent podcast conversation with sensualist and embodiment provocateur Candia Raquel. Candia brings out the beast in me! Go to minute 41 for a taste of my Cranial Nerve Sequencing practice, influenced by our conversation.
How somatic practice can help
Somatic practice offers us a framework to discover unique aspects of ourselves that are not in the anatomy books. The books are the only map we have to start our journey. They don’t account for the many variations present in each living being, in each individual member of a particular species. This is why popular courses on trauma and stress may miss some of your unique responses to their content.
Books (basically, science) divide the nervous system into categories like central/peripheral, further subdividing the peripheral into somatic/voluntary and autonomic/involuntary. These divisions and differences help us understand, but the system itself still functions as an indivisible whole. That’s what you get to experience and study in somatic practice.
The voluntary side of the nervous system is not at the top of a hierarchy of control.
It’s just a part of a system that has been busy cooperating with nature for 500 million years.
We can influence this cooperation by how we pay attention (the quality of our attention) and what we pay attention to. That’s not control, though. It’s more like establishing a conversation, a relationship where we both talk and listen.
For example, when directed to “become aware of your breath” at first, many people will initially hold their breath or change its rhythm – just to “feel” their breathing.
That’s voluntary control. You can observe it happening, and then you can use your voluntary nervous system to basically “stop holding” your breath. That’s so sophisticated! In Alexander practice and literature, we use the word “inhibition” to talk about this, but scientifically speaking we don’t really understand it.
We use our brains to choose how and what to pay attention to (to a certain extent!). All I know is that once we enter the forest of awareness, it’s possible to develop a gentle friendship between autonomic and voluntary control.
The risks of misunderstanding
By oversimplifying this system, we risk setting up an expectation that people ought to be able to control themselves and manage their stress. When they can’t, however, they may judge themselves a failure or label themselves in ways that don’t help. All of my somatic colleagues know that there is always a way to establish a more beneficial state of being – but it can be surprisingly different for each person.
We risk separating ourselves from the natural world in which we evolved. Our nervous system is what makes us responsive to internal and external influences; if we start to over-manage our responsiveness, or to over-ride our dissociative states, we will not be creating an integrated state of healthy functioning.
We risk illness when we don’t listen to the early expressions of our distress; we risk hyper-vigilance when we pay attention only to distress and not to pleasure. We can miss our best chance at responding to distress creatively, while we still have a chance to be creative.
The benefits of exploratory practice with the CNS
A state of integration, balance, and creative potential implies a fluid relationship between voluntary and autonomic sides of the nervous system. That’s just one aspect of what happens in the practice I call Cranial Nerve Sequencing.
I have no theory to explain how this fluidity happens, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that they ought to be able to experience it. I do want people to know it’s possible.
I know that it must have something to do with the Alexander Technique lens I bring to the somatic exploration.
If you’ve bottomed out with trying to control yourself, and want to take your beautiful, smart brain on a wilderness outing into your body, please come join us in the upcoming 12 week course that starts September 12.
