nervous about your system?
Did you know we have more than one nervous system? One of these systems has a lot of air space in the cultural conversation right now: the autonomic nervous system. Most know it as that “fight, flight” thing. Actually it’s two connected pathways---sympathetic and parasympathetic. This complex insures our basic survival. Sympathetic speeds up our heart rate, tenses our muscles and doses adrenaline so we can respond quickly to danger. And the parasympathetic calms us down.
Unresolved trauma---which probably everyone experiences to a certain extent---can predispose us to hanging out in the extremes: sympathetically generated anxiety and hypervigilance or parasympathetic numbness and dissociation. Once early research identified the mechanism linking our nervous system to our behavior, treatment options began to flourish: talk therapy, EMDR, somatic therapies and self-care practices like exercise, yoga, meditation, nature immersion.
In 1994, way before the word trauma entered the daily lexicon, Stephen Porges came up with Polyvagal Theory, his own take on the link between the autonomic nervous system and social behavior or psychological problems. This was big news back because I had never heard Steven Porges speak. I was surprised when he introduced a new unresolved trauma treatment to add to the list above, the Safe and Sound Protocol.
What really piqued my interest is that it uses music to bring the sympathetic and parasympathetic into balance. Specially chosen tunes signal safety to the nervous system helping folks move into regulation. It’s yet another avenue to teach making the shift from guarded defense into social engagement and calm.
For me, holding space for classes and individual work with a trauma-informed lens has been deep learning over this past decade. Because we’ve all experienced trauma and it might be best to assume some of that trauma is unresolved. In all of us. I ‘ve always felt that music is evocative and can be medicine and I loved hearing this validation. Choosing music takes me in many directions but music for last Sunday was chosen with that cultivating safety sensibility front and center. And I also know that we learn on our edges and too much safety is not always the best choice. Always learning!
An entirely different, but mysteriously related, nervous system has been keeping my curiosity alive the last couple years. I wrote about the central/peripheral nervous system in November last year. This is the two way pathway connecting brain to body (motor) and body to brain (sensory). My own body has been quite the engaging textbook lately. Two weeks ago I woke with left hip pain. No apparent reason. Dang. While doing my self-care thing I discovered that the soreness in my left ankle, which was partly symptomatic because the peroneal nerve was tethered and had been very slowly resolving, had miraculously cleared up. Practically overnight.
Granted, I’m a certifiably geeky physical therapist but I found this hip pain cause for celebration! Why? When there is nerve tethering---nerves caught up in the connective tissue---the body will heal more slowly, the patient will be more prone to re-aggravation and symptoms will improve first in the periphery. Quite often in the healing process, symptoms will ease in the periphery but intensify centrally. More and more I am believing that there is always some nerve tethering when there is an injury.
So I am greeting this left hip pain with a surrendered sigh. And it is slowly clearing because I have been rolling out the back and leg and then been all over flossing the sciatic, femoral and peroneal nerve. Flossing is to stretching like apples are to oranges. Flossing is a different fruit entirely.
So if this conversation intrigues you, consider this invitation. Have fun learning the pleasurable releasing basics with balls and rollers and then feel into essential flossing of the spine and leg (think hip, quad, shin, calf and foot symptoms) and arm (think scapular, shoulder, elbow, wrist and hand symptoms). Just meet me at Yoga Shala Saturday afternoon July 12 from noon to three. I’ll have all props there and you can bring your favorite roller if you have one. You just bring your body in all its unique glory and we’ll have a good time. Promise.
❤️Bella