Nervous System 101: Why The Nervous System is Important + Facts and Tools for Healing
Simply put, your nervous system is like the electrical wiring of your body. Composed of your brain, spinal cord and nerves, your nervous system is how your body communicates – processing inputs and outputs, internally and externally. There’s a lot more to your nervous system than just its parts and pieces, but starting with that can help you better understand what you’re dealing with as you dive deeper into healing your nervous system and why that’s so important (for everyone).
Nervous System 101
The main control center of your nervous system is called the Central Nervous System (CNS). Your CNS is composed of your brain and your spinal cord. Your Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) is the collection of all of your body’s nerves outside of your brain and spinal cord. Your PNS can be broken down even more if you start looking at the types of muscle groups it works with – or innervates.
Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) Components
Somatic Nervous System (SNS): This branch works with muscles that are voluntarily controlled with your skeletal system. For example, when you’re exercising and asking your body to go faster or lift something heavier, this is training the motors of your SNS.
Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): This branch works with systems of your body that are controlled without your conscious awareness. For example, breathing with your lungs while you’re going about your day-to-day tasks, your heart beating, and your pupils dilating are all taken care of by your ANS.
To zoom in on your Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) even more, you can take a closer look at your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which can be broken down into two separate systems: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
Autonomic Nervous System Components
Sympathetic: Most people think about the Sympathetic component of their ANS as the “fight or flight” mechanism. When you process something stressful, like a tiger peeking around a tree in the jungle, your sympathetic nervous system does a few things to help your body take on the perceived threat (in this case, a tiger). These things include increasing your body’s blood sugar, increasing your heart rate, and moving more of your blood to your heart and skeletal muscles (so that you can hit harder – fight – or run away faster – flight.)
Parasympathetic: While “fight or flight” is the name of the game for your Sympathetic Nervous System, your Parasympathetic Nervous System is in charge of “rest and digest.” When this branch of your ANS gets turned on, your body conserves energy. It does this by lowering your heart rate, decreasing your blood pressure, and slowing down the rate of your breathing. As this happens, your blood flow is directed to your digestive organs, as well as the organs responsible for reproduction.
Where Is The Nervous System Found In The Body?
Your nervous system is, as you’re beginning to see, complex. It’s also super organized and brilliantly designed. When your sensory organs receive information from your nerves, it gets transmitted through your spinal cord, and then delivered to your brain for processing. Not only does your nervous system respond to the world around you, but it also controls almost all of what goes on inside your body. And it does all of this with lightning-fast signals between cells, some electrical and some chemical.
On a physical level, here’s how you can start better understanding your nervous system:
Your Central Nervous System (CNS) is composed of your brain and spinal cord – they are the control center.
Your Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) is composed of your nerves and sensory organs.
There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves that connect your brain to your eyes, ears, other sensory organs, and the muscles in your head and neck.
There are 31 pairs of spinal nerves branching out from your spinal cord to the tissues found in your thorax, abdomen, and limbs.
The neurons in your nervous tissue are responsible for relaying rapid-fire signals – neurons are charged cells that consist of a cell body, dendrites, and an axon with an axon terminal.
Your brain processes information thanks to 100 billion neurons.
Your nervous system is activated by chemicals known as neurotransmitters that travel across synapses, which are the spaces between neurons and body tissues and cells.
Neurotransmitters allow your nervous system to regulate your muscles and glands, as well as nerve pathways.
Your spinal cord sends signals to the brain and receives signals from it – this commands the reflexes of your body.
When certain incoming signals are received by the spinal cord and demand an immediate response, the spinal cord can take care of the reflex without having to involve the brain at all
Your brain is responsible for connecting what you perceive to more complex thoughts, memories, and emotions.
Your body’s limbic system gets involved with nervous system functions when you process memories and smell something familiar (olfaction) – it also plays a part in your range of emotions.
Tell Me Why The Nervous System Is Important
While your nervous system is perfectly designed, our modern world has some flaws, especially in terms of keeping our nervous systems healthy and happy. Because of the nearly constant inundation of stressors we experience (it’s no longer just a tiger in the jungle or a bear in the woods), almost all of us spend the majority of our time with our body’s Sympathetic Nervous System turned on.
And that’s problematic.
But let’s not focus on that. Instead, let’s take a quick look at all of the benefits that come from spending more time in your body when your Parasympathetic Nervous System is turned on.
You experience improved digestion
Your brain grows and develops properly
You process sensory information in a more accurate, healthy way
Your ability to learn improves along with your memory
Your physical abilities improve, including balance and coordination
Your fertility increases
Your blood pressure moves into a healthy range (and so does your blood sugar)
Your mood stabilizes so that you don’t experience extreme swings in either direction
You enjoy increased energy
You age more slowly
Your body heals more quickly
You sleep better at night
And that’s just the very beginning of that list.
Your Autonomic Nervous System influences your life more than you think, and definitely not just physically. A closer look at Deb Dana’s Polyvagal Theory shows you that there’s an “autonomic nervous system ladder,” which means that you move up and down based on how your ANS is engaging.
At the bottom of the ladder is a phase called “dorsal vagal activation.” At this bottom rung, you feel numb and completely shut down, like you and your whole world has collapsed. Feeling buried, trapped, and alone is common here. From your vantage point, the entire world is “empty, dead and dark.”
As you move up to the second rung of the ladder, which Dana describes as “sympathetic activation,” you start to feel more like taking action. However, this “mobilization” is driven by agitation and you approach it from a state of franticness. At this rung, it’s typical to feel overwhelmed and like you can’t keep up – the world is moving too quickly and you’re not capable of handling what it throws at you. Feelings of anxiety and irritability increase. From your vantage point, the whole world seems unusually chaotic and dangerous – everyone is unfriendly and out to get you.
The top of the ladder, or the third rung, is described by Dana as “ventral vagal activation.” It’s here that you finally start to feel safe, which leads to a vibrant social life that allows you to actively (and healthily) engage with the world around you. Whatever the world throws at you, you’re capable of managing with ease. Not only do you feel empowered, but you can see the “big picture” and exactly how you’re designed to connect to it.
When I teach people about becoming “Burnout Proof,” it’s all about getting to this top rung of the ladder. It’s here that our hearts open to the world, where we shift from being shut down to embracing our humanity. And really, “our humanity” is just an incredible capacity for being able to truly feel. When you take active control of your nervous system, you can interact with your life however you choose so that all of your experiences are felt and processed in a way that benefits Y.O.U.
Pressure and Disconnection Vs. Pressure and Connection
All of us experience pressure on a daily basis. Not “peer pressure” per se (although there is that too), but just pressure – as in weight. This pressure happens when you:
Make a decision
Interact with people
Exercise
Dive into your memory bank
Contemplate the future
Process input – hear a conversation, read a post, scroll through images, etc.
The list goes on (and on) as you can imagine.
Taking control of your nervous system doesn’t mean that you don’t feel pressure, or bear weight, in your life – of course you do. It just means that you connect with this pressure in a healthy way rather than disconnect, which is what happens to most of us all too often.
Start thinking about what “pressure” feels like in your life and how you respond to it.
Can Nervous Systems Heal?
Absolutely.
When you start balancing your nervous system, healing begins. And when you start controlling your nervous system, your life truly begins.
Balancing your body’s nervous system means that you’re not just living with your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) turned on all the time. Instead, you live in a healthy balance between your SNS and your PNS – like yin and yang. In this balanced state, your body has an adequate capacity to “rest and digest” while still being able to “fight or flight” when you really need to.
Healing your nervous system is, of course, complex. There’s a lot more to it than just finding time to rest or having that “me-time” everyone goes on and on about. But, it really does start with shifting from being SNS dominant to a balance between SNS and PNS – you never want to not be able to access your SNS when you really need it.
But Who Treats Nervous System Disorders?
The short answer: YOU DO.
Serious injuries to your nervous system aside, issues with your nervous system can (and arguably should) be treated by YOU.
Why?
Because you’re in charge of your life – you call the shots.
That means that when you decide to take your emotions and bury them alive – you have to be the one to dig them up. Sure, you can pay someone to help keep you company while you dig (they might even pick up a shovel from time to time), but the real work needs to be initiated by you.
Emotions buried alive never die. The muck stains your soul. The muck accumulates.
When you’re triggered (and that can be as simple as feeling bored, alone, angry, sad or anxious) as an adult, it’s not an adult that handles the situation – it’s your wounded inner child. And this inner child is who starts calling the shots, using their own tools and strategies in order to stay safe.
When this wounded inner child breaks the surface, you’re no longer in control – and your nervous system goes along for the ride.
2 Tools to Treat and Heal Your Nervous System
Breathwork: Breathing with intention gives you the ability to communicate with your body. It digs up emotions and tends to your inner child without your brain having to get involved (and that’s a really powerful thing). Breathwork opens your body and unlocks your mind. It unsticks what was stuck and washes off the muck.
Cold Water: Jumping into a cold shower (especially while incorporating breathwork), is great for your Autonomic Nervous System. You’ll start to see firsthand just how loud your mind can be. Getting into a cold shower, and learning how to turn off your brain when it starts shouting, is a powerful tool for regaining the command seat of your nervous system. When your brain yells at you to get out of the cold water and you resist by inhabiting your breath, you retrain your nervous system and rewire your brain. Not only does the cold water activate your vagus nerve, which immediately reduces your stress response, it also boosts your immune system.
