Teaching gentleness to the nervous system: Part I
Integrating support takes time.
I attended my first Craniosacral Therapy class with Ursual Popp, in May of 2011 while my son was three and I was a working-single-mother massage therapist in a divorce. My life changed completely and focusing on what Dr. William G. Sutherland called “the Health (within)” made it possible for me to get through that time…even though I was processing a lot (!) while receiving Craniosacral for the first time on a regular basis and even while being worked on by students whose practice gave me week-long headaches until I could get into see a certified professional (Alison Day).
And to this day I truly enjoy it. I love people. I love being there when they love their bodies again.
Exiting the mouths of clients at the end of a session: “I haven’t been very nice to myself.” This - their moment of receiving and the natural return of self-compassion is an absolute honor to witness. Thank you. I will always honor this about you.
Thank you for receiving the support offered and for being willing to de-escalate. A sympathetic (“jacked-up”) nervous system overload requires patience, learning, integrating support, establishing practices, and it takes time. A practice is a journey. You start where you are, you learn, you develop understanding, capacity grows, and you evolve by staying in it, to a place you could not have foreseen from where you started because that’s what learning is.
Speaking of establishing practices, let me just name that many nervous systems throughout the world are really going through it as you know. It’s universal. It’s not our fault that our nervous systems are "jacked up". It’s the sympathetic nervous system's job to assess and respond to a stressful environment to get us to a safe place. Let’s understand this is not faulty design. It’s serving the purpose of survival and energy preservation.
“The solution must be here and now” is the tone of a sympathetic nervous system “voice.” An inner urge or insistence on immediacy, certainty and speed is a plea of the survival. Just watch, that’s all, be aware of tendencies toward these.
The presence of these behaviors tells us that the sympathetic “fight/flight/freeze” system is currently dominant. When the sympathetic nervous system is dominant, the frontal lobe of our cerebrum is inhibited. In other words, if the frontal lobe where reason, rationalization and long term planning is inhibited, we’re not actually thinking past survival, we’re not in a mode we can actually solve long term problems or thrive.
How does a sympathetic-dominant nervous system bread-crumb its way back to our central nervous system where it can balance and allow the parasympathetic nervous system to engage? So first. There is no figuring it all out right now.
As we begin, we embrace slowness, innocence or "not knowing," and soothing practices and TLC. That's what the vagal system wants, the parasympathetic system. The parasympathetic-dominant nervous system is okay with integrating a little at a time, over time. And de-escalating a chronically “jacked-up” or sympathetic-dominant nervous system is a path, a practice, it takes time.
Body wisdom practices I invite you to: (an incomplete list)
The body scan (builds interoception of the body) you and I can do in session!
Sitting butterfly (re-building the scaffolding of the plumb line of the body to facilitate the spinal cord, the “core”) you and I can do in session!
or just
walking with presence or
sitting with presence or
listening to sounds of nature around you or a loved one with presence
or just what its like when you wind down your own mind and list of have to’s.
Or journalling
reflect, appreciate, seek to understand and align with this chapter of life
harmonizing with what life is serving now
acknowledge gifts coming to you in any form of sustenance, protection, support like oxygen, shelter, food
seeking to understand interdependence of complex systems
seeking to know ourselves, love ourselves
forgiving ourselves and others,
perhaps seeking to serve, perhaps seeking to plant and nurture a heartfelt wish for the well being of loved ones, communities, neighbors, allies, networks, intertwined commercial and social webs
and while we’re at it the Earth
and the one ecological web of all life.
There are friends to be had in multi-dimensional frequencies (veiled and otherwise) that will assist you in these at your request with well being, efficacy and peace if you practice love expansively. Love is drawn to love no matter what dimension you are in so practicing love to the universe will magnetize you to expansive spectrums of love waves, and expansive discoveries of inner and outer joy. We are not alone. “Could you be love?” Says Bob Marley.
Again, let it take time. Let time show you in baby steps.
Meditation, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, Martial Arts, Movement practices, Breathwork, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy are all great additions that will support you along your way. Focal points like these awaken conscious-led access to spectrums of deep resourcefulness embedded in our nervous system and our DNA. Remember how amazing our DNA is. The blueprint is already built for restoration, well being, dynamic equilibrium, harmony, ease, grace in the connection with all of life.
We unlearn how life circumstances triggered us to habitually inhibit those potentials.
And now we learn to unearth those potentials, to let them emerge.
We do that in session too. You drop into mid-tide, a still point, your place of ease. This is already doing that work too.
Every drop of effort counts. With patience and soon enough you’ll feel the benefit of gobs of those drops coming to support you through a difficult moment with breath, with grace, with the gentle vitality inside us that connects all the dots spontaneously - when it is time...when enough seeds have been planted, when enough drops of effort have collected.
“When Spring comes, the grass grows by itself.”
Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu, 5th Century BC foundations of Taoism.
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