Understand how your nervous system works to gain management over your responses and engage with the world with more awareness and intention, allowing you to shape your biology for connection, healthy relationships, and self-care.
Learn to “speak the language” of the autonomic nervous system to understand communication between your own and others’ systems, fostering curiosity and self-compassion instead of immediate judgment.
Focus on regulating your nervous system as a foundational step, as it allows you to interact with the world differently and can reduce or resolve psychological or physical symptoms, including chronic pain.
Actively look for “glimmers”—micro-moments of regulating, ventral energy or “okayness”—and when found, pause, savor, and bring them into explicit awareness to build your capacity for regulation.
After experiencing a glimmer, reflect on it to bring the feeling back to life, as this conscious reflection strengthens the neural pathways associated with regulation, making ventral states more accessible.
Discover specific people, places, objects, or times that reliably evoke moments of “okayness” or regulation for you, then intentionally use these “ventral vagal anchors” to access a regulated state.
Use intentional sighing as a simple breath practice to interrupt dysregulation or enhance contentment, adapting the sigh (despair, frustration, relief) to your current nervous system state.
Engage in breath practices where your exhale is longer than your inhale, as this ratio change directly contacts the nervous system to bring more ventral energy and promote regulation.
Incorporate resistance breathing, such as blowing through a straw or blowing bubbles, which encourages a long, slow exhalation to bring more ventral energy and regulate the nervous system.
Employ movement to transition through nervous system states by first imagining regulating movements, then gradually enacting them to build flexibility and capacity to move through the hierarchy of states.
When experiencing overwhelming sympathetic energy, allow jagged movement to come to life, then slowly guide it towards rhythm and regulation, or channel the energy into physical activity like a walk or run to prevent anxiety or anger.
To shift out of dorsal shutdown or collapse, imagine energy returning, notice your breath or heartbeat, and invite very gentle movements (e.g., rubbing feet on the floor) to bring you back into the present moment.
Recognize that your autonomic state (ventral, sympathetic, dorsal) profoundly influences the stories your brain creates about experiences, helping you understand why situations are interpreted differently based on your internal state.
Reflect on a simple experience and interpret it through the lens of all three nervous system states (ventral, sympathetic, dorsal) to build awareness of how your state creates your story and the different narratives available.
After regulating and reshaping nervous system pathways, explicitly notice, name, and express the new story that emerges from your changed state through writing, art, dance, or other forms of expression.
Enhance the efficiency of your vagal break—the circuit controlling heart rate—through breath practices, play, and varied movement that requires speeding up and slowing down, improving smooth transitions between engagement and calm.
Recognize that your regulated state impacts those around you, and by being as regulated as possible, you send regulating energy to other nervous systems, creating a cozier and more welcoming environment.
Actively seek out and cultivate a “micro community” of people with whom you feel safe, welcomed, and understood in all your nervous system states, including messy moments, as this connection is a biological imperative for well-being.
Be willing to downsize relationships, including friendships or family ties, that consistently dysregulate your nervous system or make you feel unsafe, as this supports your overall well-being.
In relationships, communicate your nervous system’s needs (e.g., “my nervous system can’t do that right now”) rather than dismissing or judging others’ desires, fostering understanding and connection.
When you sense something from another person’s nervous system, approach it with curiosity rather than making assumptions, naming your observation and then asking if something is going on for them.
Curate music that resonates with different nervous system states to find your way to ventral regulation, or to healthily experience and process sympathetic or dorsal states without feeling alone.
Actively look for and return to environments or experiences that evoke everyday moments of awe, as this nervous system-based experience of feeling small yet connected to something larger supports well-being.
Adopt an attitude of befriending your own nervous system, recognizing there’s no “right way” to engage with these practices, and experiment to discover what works best for your unique system.
Develop your own diverse menu of regulation practices, including easy and challenging options, and those requiring varying amounts of time, to ensure you have true choices for reaching for regulation when needed.
Once you achieve a regulated ventral state, actively use that energy in service of healing and benevolence towards others, creating an “upward spiral” that benefits both yourself and the world.