The Wisdom of Your Nervous System
The body always leads us home if we can simply learn to trust sensation and stay with it long enough to find our way.
PAT OGDEN
Some days you feel grounded, open, and in flow. Other days, everything feels off, your body is tense, your mind is racing, or you feel flat and disconnected.
That’s just your nervous system doing what it knows to do. It’s constantly shaping how we feel in our bodies, how we move through stress, and how we connect with others.
I’ve felt it in myself, those moments of overwhelm or when I can’t quite settle. And I’ve seen again and again in my work that when people start understanding and relating to their nervous system, something shifts. The stress doesn’t magically disappear, but there’s more space. More choice. More breath. The process always starts with awareness and then with time, acceptance, and simple movement, we begin to shift.
We all experience daily stress, and our life history shapes how our particular nervous system responds.
In body-centred approaches to therapy, we see the nervous system as the foundation of how we experience life; not just stress, but emotion, energy, movement, and the way our body holds or processes our experiences. It’s not just about “nerves”. Core Energetics and Body Psychotherapy help us explore how our breathing paterns, posture, and movement affect how we feel and function every day.
Your Nervous System Is Like a House
One way to understand the nervous system is to imagine it like a house.
When you’re feeling calm and connected, it’s like being in the open living area of the house; feeling settled, aware, relaxed, and alive.
When anxiety or worry takes over, it can feel like you’ve moved into the basement; reactive, overthinking, and on alert.
And when you feel low, numb, or drained, it might be like being stuck in a dark bedroom; shut down, frozen, and disconnected.
The aim of working through the body to regulate our nervous system isn’t to stay in the living room all the time, no one does! The aim is to move more freely between these ‘rooms’ as life happens; without getting stuck in one for too long.
What Happening in Your Brain
Your nervous system is a full-body experience. While the brain plays a big role, regulation happens through constant communication between your brain, your gut, your heart, and your body as a whole. Let’s take a look:
The brainstem, the most primal part of the brain, is responsible for survival; heart rate, breathing, and reflexes. It controls your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. If you jump at a loud sound, that’s your brainstem keeping you safe.
This is also the part of the brain that holds early wounding. It’s non-verbal and cannot heal through talk alone, the body needs to be involved.
The Limbic System is your emotional centre, it processes emotions like fear, joy, and sadness. The amygdala scans for danger and the hippocampus stores your emotional memories. its the part of your brain that links past experiences to present reactions
The Prefrontal Cortex is the part of your brain that helps you to pause, reflect, and make conscious choices. It supports rational thinking, emotional regulation, and decision-making. When you stop and take a breath to settle your anxiety, this is the part of your brain that’s kicking in.
When all these parts of our brains are online and working together, we feel safe, connected, and able to respond to our life with clarity. When they’re not, we can get stuck in old patterns, reactivity, shutdown, or burnout. The more we understand our own nervous system, the better we become at finding our way back to equilibrium.
The Brain/Body Connection
If you pay attention, you’ll notice that your body often knows before your mind does. That’s why tracking sensations, breathwork, and gentle movement are such effective tools for regulation. When we engage the nervous system in this way, the brain registers safety in the present moment, and the system can come back “online” and function properly again. Logic alone can’t do this; the body needs to be involved.
The vagus nerve connects the brain, heart, and gut. It plays a big role in regulating your mood, digestion, and energy. When it’s well-regulated, we feel calm, steady, and resilient.
The gut has its own nervous system that communicates with the brain, affecting your digestion, immunity, and mood. It even produces neurotransmitters like serotonin, called the “feel-good” chemical!
The heart has its own rhythm and intelligence that helps process emotion and safety. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) shows how well your system bounces back from stress.
This is why we can’t simply think our way out of stress. Stress is experienced in the whole body, not just the mind. Using our breath, movement, and tracking sensations in the body, we can begin to process what we’re feeling and needing to regulate our nervous system, and shift our state. By engaging with the body, we invite the brain to register safety, helping the whole system come back into balance.
A Simple Practice to Try
Take a few minutes to lie down or sit in a quiet spot.
Place one hand on your chest, the other on your belly.
Notice the rise and fall of your breath.
Don’t try to change it - just feel it.
Let yourself just be there…..
If this article resonates with you and you’d like to know more about your own nervous system, I’d love to work with you.
In my workshops and one-on-one sessions, we explore your personal patterns with care and curiosity, gently helping you reconnect with your body’s wisdom and build emotional resilience from within.