A calm nervous system?

There was recently a social media post circulating that claimed, “Success is measured by how CALM your nervous system is,” and I have… some thoughts.

Let me first clarify, I don’t know who originally made this claim or anything about their work, so this has nothing to do with that or them.

I also very much appreciate that awareness surrounding the nervous system is much more mainstream these days.

However, our nervous system is not meant to do only ONE thing, i.e. be calm or be hypervigilent. Our nervous system is a collection of systems that is interconnected to virtually every other system of the body. If our nervous system was only ever *calm* we would have no chance at survival. 

I’ll be the first to denounce hustle culture or the “sleep when you’re dead” adage, but let’s not swing the pendulum so far that we neglect the truth to be found somewhere in the middle.

Do we need more true rest in our lives? Absolutely. Could most of us use more unstructured play, more time in nature, less reliance on our screens? 100%.

AND

There is absolute necessity for some degree of stress in our lives. Both physically and mentally speaking, resistance is HOW we grow. Our tissues quite literally adapt only in the presence of adequate resistance. 

My aim is to build my nervous system to be responsive and reflexive - to be able to tolerate the demands of life and have the capacity to switch gears based on my external and internal environment. 

I’d invite you to consider: what might a responsive nervous system feel like for you? Where could you add more nourishing practices? How might you offer more opportunity to build up your capacity to tolerate stress?

I’ll also invite you to question any big claims on the internet that make you feel like you’re doing it all wrong because you’re not always calm. I know I’m certainly not!

xo