If there’s anything I’ve learned in my 15 years on the spiritual path, it’s that all the meditating, reading, and healing techniques in the world don’t mean shit if you’re ignoring the body.
Yes, some of these “top-down” (aka, mind-to-body) techniques create shifts. But many others reinforce dissociation, and some even encourage ego inflation and spiritual narcissism (non-duality, anyone?).
What I want to emphasize here is that starting with a “bottom-up” approach to healing (aka, body-to-mind) is a smarter, more effective, and more sane approach to any form of spirituality or trauma healing path.
Why? Because the body is your foundation, your anchor, your tether to this world. It carries more wisdom and intuitive capacity than you may know or give it credit for.
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In the words of trauma specialist Peter Levine, quoting poet D. H. Lawrence,
“My belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos.”
So, where do you start with nervous system regulation (aka, having a calm body and mind), especially if you’re a highly sensitive, deep-thinking person? Let’s dig into that.
First, I want to share a little about why and how this topic is so important to me:
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My Experience With Overwhelm, Burnout, and Bypassing the Body’s Wisdom
The irony is that for most of my healing spiritual path, I’ve overlooked the wisdom of the body, bypassing it to favor more ethereal and ‘mental’ paths. (Religious trauma that conditions you to see the body as evil as the root cause, anyone?)
I have written about the vagus nerve, somatic bodywork, and the meaning of muscle tension before – but it was never something I pursued further or went too deeply into.
I even had life-changing therapy with a somatic therapist for over a year and did training with a nervous system expert … but it never “clicked” in my mind that, “Wait, I need to stop the top-down healing approaches and shift gears to actively incorporate this bottom-up approach into my life.”
This is an example of just how long mind-body integration can sometimes take, especially if you’ve experienced intense dissociation and identity loss as a child. For me, it took about five years to start shifting gears.
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When the Wake Up Call Finally Came …
The final “wake up” push came when I became a parent and started having more chronic fatigue flare-ups – despite doing all the usual healing routines that “worked before.”
I realized that as a highly sensitive person, my nervous system was deeply dysregulated, overwhelmed, and starting to burn out.
Scrambling to parent, do housework, run a business, breastpump 4-10 types a day for my son, deal with toxic family members, listening to the news (Deepak Chopra and the Epstein files, I mean what the f*ck), grieving for the loss of endless lives in the wars, keeping on top of chores, maintaining a relationship, and all the other million tasks of everyday life was just … becoming too much.
Once I started researching “burnout symptoms,” I began connecting the dots. It was then that I stumbled across the words of Dr Claire Plumbly in her book The Trauma of Burnout, where she described burnout happening “when stress is inescapable, then we are stretched to maximum for too long, causing our nervous systems to get stuck in survival mode.”
Bingo. I had found the missing link. And thanks to actively starting to regulate my nervous system, I’m finally starting to recover my energy, vitality, and soul again.
20+ Ways to Start Regulating Your Nervous System as a Sensitive Person (What I Do)
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Burnout, exhaustion, and existential overwhelm are almost inevitable to experience at some point in life, especially as highly sensitive people.
When you process, feel, and experience life 10-50x louder than a neurotypical person, you need to practice more care and make it a fundamental part of your daily life.
This isn’t a nice-to-have routine. This is an essential-and-non-negotiable part of daily life for the highly sensitive person.
Without learning to regulate yourself every day, stressors start piling up to the point of physical and mental illnesses. Without taking care of your body every day and bringing it down to parasympathetic calmness, the result is a dysregulated nervous system that looks like:
- Brain fog
- Lack of concentration
- Lack of motivation
- Overthinking and rumination
- Anxiety and nervousness
- Feelings of existential dread
- Mood swings
- Emotional numbness
- Fatigue and lethargy
- Muscle tension
- Poor sleep
- Digestive problems
- More illness
So, where to start regulating your nervous system? Here are some things that I currently do (not every one all the time, but at different times and frequencies):
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- Predictable routines (not glamorous, but the nervous system loves familiarity)
- No social media usage at the beginning or end of the day (I try to only use it for work midday)
- Lots of water
- Healthy, home-cooked, and simple meals
- Reading before bed with a soft light, such as a salt lamp or Turkish mosaic lamp
- Soft blankets or handmade crochet ones
- Cuddling with pets or loved ones whenever possible during the day (usually beginning and ending)
- Taking a slow walk in nature
- Drinking hot herbal tea (I love adaptogens like Holy Basil or digestives like Peppermint)
- Grounding meditation at the start of the day, before chores/work
- Deep breathing meditation for 5-10 minutes, lying on the ground before bed
- Self-massage or acupressure
- Simple yoga and stretching
- Orienting to sources of joy in the environment (a bird, flower, cloud, painting)
- Noise-cancelling headphones when out
- Journaling by candlelight
- Incense or natural oils like lavender
- Listening to sounds of nature, Tibetan singing bowls, or chanting
- Humming or whistling
- Going to places where human connection feels enjoyable, such as the park
- Playing with fur or human family (board games, throwing the ball, etc.)
- Having technology-free days
- Moving more slowly and multi-tasking less
- Creating checklists to reduce mental strain
- Mirror work gazing after a shower for a minute, saying affirmations
- Comforting the inner child through doing things they love
- Setting boundaries with others by having prepared “scripts”
I wrote an article on Soul Recovery a couple of weeks back, and it’s a perfect complement to this post (with many more soothing suggestions). Obviously, there are so many other things I could write here. But this list would be fifty pages long, so I’m keeping it short and simple to give you a taste of what’s possible.
Nervous System Regulation IS a Spiritual Path
Learning to calm, ground, and regulate your nervous system is a spiritual path itself because the body is your ever-present field of wisdom.
The fire in your belly, the contraction in your chest, and the dullness in your head all reveal what you need to know about a person, situation, or inner shadow.
Your body is a thermometer of truth, a transmitter of wisdom, and an oracle of guidance.
As a sensitive person, you have both the blessing (and the curse at times) of feeling these physical sensations in an enhanced way.
That is one of your greatest gifts. Now it’s time to harness it.
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I agree with you that this “regulation” is more of a buddhism approach, which does not resonate with me either. And here is another problematic thing : while certainly there is no reason to “hate” our bodies, but these so-called spiritualists have gone to the other extreme end and over-glofifying the demonic sexual expression and nudity, erotica etc. It is absolutely foolish to have “headless naked body candles”. This sick-minded obsession with sexual expression has gone over the top.
I read “demonic sexual expression” and couldn’t help but simultaneously roll my eyes and feel sad that you perceive a natural part of the body this way. Regulation isn’t a Buddhist approach – it’s actually not religious at all. It’s founded in somatic psychotherapy. Fundamentalist religious ideology has such a horrible way of poisoning the mind with dogma, rigidity, and self-hatred, and I hope that one day you find freedom from that.
i couldn’t help but roll my eyes and feel sad that you hate chastity so much. Regulation IS very much a Buddhist-LIKE approach, in terms of energy (the same “calm down” b.s.). Fundamentalist irreligious ideology has such a horrible way of poisoning the mind with dogma, rigidity, and self-hatred against chastity, and I hope that one day you find freedom from that.
(Have the courage to face the valid feedback from others, instead of running away and deleting comments that trigger you and make you “dysregulated”).
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Just like the comment from Spark, this amazing article and insight has also come at EXACTLY the right time for me as well! Thank you dear Aletheia, our bodies really are our temples in this physical realm. LONERWOLF has been such a part of my life for such a long time now I would feel so lost and can’t imagine life without it!
Wow, thank you so much for this, John. It means the world 🙏
Yes, like anything, nervous system regulation is a personal choice. If it is triggering (whether because it is done incorrectly or correctly), of course stop it immediately. With that said, being retraumatised by nervous system regulation is uncommon because the whole point is to get you out of fight/flight/freeze/fawn and into a state of ease and relaxation. I have personally found it to be an extremely healing and grounding path, as have many (likely at this point) hundreds of thousands of other people. For anyone starting, go slowly, seek out trusted professionals for guidance (whether through books, courses, 1:1).
I truly appreciate how you explain the indeptness of your articles. You’re truly gifted. Thank You so very much !
Thank you Chuck, I appreciate your kind words 💜
Thank you 🫶 This article touches on so many interesting and pertinent themes.
I think the disconnect between mind and body is one of the defining features of our society. Trusting the inner wisdom of the body (or, for that matter, the mind) is a necessary aspiration but comes with so many obstacles. For example, if you’ve been raised on processed food that’s high in sugar and chemical additives, your body (and brain!) may be addicted to and crave what does not bring nourishment, but harm. Obviously the body knows best and will send signals other ways, ie through blood sugar issues, impaired digestion etc. But for someone to get to place where they can trust what their body wants and craves, it’s first necessary to unpack and dismantle what (unhealthy) neural pathways have been cemented. At the same time, the moment someone gives their body what it really wants, that feeling of connection and “rightness” is innately known. I would say the same applies to the mind and the two are so inexplicably linked that we can approach trauma from whichever approach resonates and know that healing will be experienced through our entire system. But the disconnect we experience when, due to societal messaging about the body and health, food, movement, aesthetics (and – for that matter – the Orwellian political sphere spinning philosophical evils into ethically palatable soundbites) we lose trust in our innate embodied knowing requires real discernment to unpack.
Personally, I do love to work through the body as everything about the “comforts” of modern society, from cars to chair design to sitting for hours at desks to smartphones is all “mind over matter” and ignores the way our bodies are designed to stack and move healthily. I would go absolutely insane without my strong power flow yoga practice, some restorative yoga, my nighttime bath and candles, essential oils and sound tools. It’s amazing how anxiety and the nervous system stress I accumulate looking after two small humans while never sleeping (which is another huge topic, motherhood and the nervous system) transforms when I’m able to move my body and envelop my senses. As our muscles and bones move into alignment we can release the trauma stored in our tissues and come home into our body again.
I know what you mean about going absolutely insane without some kind of grounding, nervous system friendly tool 😆 Massage is one of my favorite therapeutic embodying practices and I have a million different ones sprinkled throughout my house: massage balls, massage guns, massage canes, Chinese massagers … and more!
As someone who sits down a lot of the day and also deal with a young child (toddler years, sigh), these grounding tools are more important than ever. But without access to nature, a park or something wild, my body would truly be unhappy. Thank you for these insightful reflections, Janelle!
Dear Aletheia,
It is so refreshing and reassuring to hear you speak in this way. Like you I was brought up in a Catholic mindset of “the body is the enemy”, inherited sins of the flesh (born sinful), must ignore and repress physical needs, the list is endless. Decades of trying to reprogram achieved little. Every life decision was marred, turned into an inner battleground, I even at times consciously chose to go against the conditioning and took the “the fires of hell” option over living a life that was quite literally hell.
But more recently something very interesting is happening. As my body ages it is taking over the mic, as it were. I managed at last to disengage and disentangle myself from a toxic boss/job relationship, only because …. my legs stopped carrying me, literally. It was a standing up for 8 hours a day job with no seating available and one day I realised the pain in my feet and legs was getting to unbearable levels. When I was off work or on holiday, I was no longer able to walk for miles which I used to enjoy so much. I also started to realise I had crippling tightness in the chest area, a ball of lead at the bottom of my stomach, stabbing pains in my back and a case of dense brain fog. Long episodes of breathlessness started appearing, not to mention endlessly recurring nightmares always unfolding in the setting of the workplace.
So it came to pass, very recently, that I left this job. My symptoms are gradually easing but I get the feeling it’s a long road ahead. My goal is to be well enough to be able to travel again, which at present I know I couldn’t.
Why did it take me so long? I really wish it hadn’t, because I fear I may have shortened my life expectancy by not listening to my body. Luckily for me my body started screaming loud enough for me to hear it, hopefully just in time.
Thank you so much for your wisdom and insights
🙏🫶
“As my body ages it is taking over the mic”
I absolutely love this! And I am experiencing the same. There is a real liberation that comes with age, and the realization that you no longer have to play by society’s rules in order to fit in and make a life. Because you’ve already done it. I know that a lot of women who cared a lot about their physical appearance when they were younger (because we’re all programmed to believe that we have to be beautiful to attract a mate) are now saying to themselves: “F– it! I will wear clothes and shoes that are comfortable, stop dying my hair, wearing makeup or a bra. I will live a life that feels comfortable to ME from now on, not one in which I’m trying to please anyone else.”
After all, there’s a reason why the archetype is that of of the wise OLD man or woman, not the young one.
Hi Nancy, so glad you like my metaphor of “body and mic” 😄👍 and you are so on point with the word LIBERATION !! There is no way I would exchange the present day to revert to the constraints of youth. There was no joy in living a life glued to the bathroom scales every morning, terrified that the latest love interest would leave me for a sexier version. I so enjoy wearing lose clothes and eating what I fancy every day. My greatest joy on waking up this morning was not the bathroom scales but admiring my daffodils in the rare and precious sunshine of England’s early spring. Thank you for your kind words, and by the way I love your “F-it!”, my favourite expression too !! Go well, may great blessings come your way 🙏😇🪽
What you share here , Marie France, is the wisdom of the body in action! It’s not convenient or comfortable. But it’s honest. That’s what I love about this work: the body is an ancient and wild source of self-knowledge and a compass of truth. When we live in an imbalanced way or when we ignore our soul’s deeper needs, the body will make sure we listen! I’m so glad you finally made that leap and are beginning to recover. Wishing you a speedy recovery 💜
Thank you so much for your acknowledgment and encouragement. As many readers have already said, I never felt utterly alone again since I discovered LonerWolf at the beginning of the pandemic. Will keep you updated on health and travel plans 🙏💖
Thank you so much for sharing this, lots of love 💜
This article came to me EXACTLY when I needed it. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Thank you 🙏! By the way, I love your articles. I’ve been silently following you both for years. Your wisdow has helped me and guided me more than you can imagine. Thank you so much for existing, for still keeping the work you do, and for being a guiding light for many of us in our journey of inner exploration, healing and just coping with the world ❤️. I just wanted to tell you this.
Thank you so much, Spark. I needed to hear this today 🙏
You know, I think this is what the Gnostics were talking about when they identified the serpent with wisdom. The “serpent” is your intestines (don’t they look just like a snake?). Those intestines are part of a 2nd nervous system in your body (apart from the central nervous system), known as the “enteric nervous system” or the “brain in your gut.”
Like a snake slithering on the ground, your intestines can sense extremely subtle shifts in vibration in your environment, and they are constantly sending you messages about what they sense.
The problem is that if you spend too much time ignoring those messages (as most of us have been taught to do), they WILL cause you overwhelm and burnout. (Or, in my case, an actual heart attack. Not wanting to take the drugs I was prescribed for the rest of my life, I researched heart failure carefully and discovered that, yes, stress IS the leading cause. So, I stopped taking the drugs, and did all that I could to reduce stress in my life (getting two kids off to college and my mother into an AL facility helped tremendously—they had been the leading causes of my stress). That was over 10 years ago, and I have had no health problems since then. Except for a bout of covid, that is.😷)
I hadn’t heard about Chopra and Epstein, but my gut is SO sensitive that SOMETHING about Chopra’s name just always triggered a feeling of repulsion in me, so I never read or viewed any of his work. Score one for the wisdom of the gut, eh?
When I read your comment I think about my chronic IBS and wonder if there is a connection here. What a fascinating field of study! I am going to look into this more – this “enteric nervous system.” I’m so glad you listened to your “gut” and reduced your stress levels. And yes, something always felt off about Chopra (and many other “guru” figures). Listening to the wisdom of our body is a powerful skill and gift that can prevent so much of our own suffering, that’s for sure! I appreciate you sharing this.
Hello Luna and Sol
Actually Im able to work with my inner child from a place of groundedness, self love and with relative internal maturity.
I have recalled all the memories that hurt my inner child, but it still feels incomplete bcs i still have to retrieve a part of my inner child and it can only be done by meditation. With bodily issues, meditate is difficult for me to do. Lately, I have found out that i have succeed doing meditation that it turned out it has to be something personal in my thinking process. But recently, i just need to retrieve one more part of my inner child and it’s more difficult this time.
I don’t want to risk disowning my inner child if I force meditation to make it happen. What is the best way to meditate right now?
I’d focus on grounding meditations, Lupin – perhaps metta or heart-centered meditation.
Yes, as a highly sensitive person and someone who believes that the human being is a holistic triad — mind, body, and spirit — I agree that taking care of our body is one of the pillars of our evolution. As rightly noted in the text, many religions overlook the body as a vehicle for our fulfillment as individuals.
Having endured past traumas and grown up in a family that strictly followed social conventions, I was always the kind of person who devoted myself entirely to others at the expense of my own well-being. This gradually gave more power to my inner critic, leading me to demand more and more of myself and to amplify my anxiety to extreme levels. All of this manifested in my body and, due to my perfectionism, eventually developed into social anxiety. It felt as though everything I said or did had to be meticulously calculated — leaving no room for mistakes.
This created a sense of detachment from people and social life, as if the world and life themselves were an unbearable burden I could not carry. Today, I realize how much I missed out on living fully and growing with life — but there is always time to reorient ourselves and return to our path.
Often, we allow ourselves to believe that the world is a terrible place — and yes, there are indeed many adversities and events happening today that we cannot ignore. Yet, to face life’s challenges and uncertainties, our body — the vessel of spiritual refinement — must be cared for and prepared to confront obstacles head-on.
For this reason, practices such as meditation and relaxation, physical activity, reconnecting with nature, and above all, rest, are essential for us to live with wholeness and fulfillment.
“For this reason, practices such as meditation and relaxation, physical activity, reconnecting with nature, and above all, rest, are essential for us to live with wholeness and fulfillment.” – Yes, very well said!
I appreciate you sharing this about yourself and your inner experience, Hans. I can definitely relate to what you share about feeding the inner critic and the consequences of that. <3