Episode 161 - Ayurveda : how to rewire your nervous system

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Ayurveda and Psychology podcast. I am Charlotte Scoksberg, psychologist, Ayurvedic practitioner, and yoga teacher. This is a space where we explore the path of self-realization through the physical, mental, and spiritual spectrums. In each episode, I share practical tools from the ancient wisdom of yoga and Ayurveda, as well as the modern approach to the human mind of clinical psychology. In order to help you reconnect with yourself, understand your nature, and live with more awareness. In this episode that focuses on Ayurveda, I want to speak to you about dysregulated nervous systems. It's a term that is being used quite frequently these days and has been maybe for a couple of years, especially on social media, I would like to say. And it's really a rather new way to address mental health in a way that I would say more from bottom-up than top down when it comes to therapeutic tools to deal with mental health issues. What do I mean by bottom-up and top-down? I believe I've spoken about that in an episode actually in the past. It's this idea of basically addressing from the body, from the physical, things that are going on in the mental as opposed to approaching from the mental, dealing from the mental, and actually, therefore, resolving maybe even things in the physical. And so, one way of looking at our behaviors, our addictions, our patterns that are not serving us anymore, is to simply address how the nervous system reacts in situations. Because when we are in survival mode, right, when for whatever reason our nervous system switches on the fight or flight in the sense that it detects a threat in the environment, that's when, of course, like I've said last week, even all our reason kind of goes out the window. So all the parts that belong to the new brain, as we would call it. So our motivation and willpower, and you know, our capacity to be very human in our reasoning, all of that kind of goes out the window, and we fall back on old patterns. And this uh tends to have us react in ways that feels out of control for us, and it tends to, of course, affect us in our emotions as well, and so this dysregulation of the nervous system is often what is addressed when we learn how to regulate our emotions, or when we learn how to soothe ourselves. That's also one of those more, let's say, new things that we learn in how to soothe oneself, because actually there's a lot of people who've never been taught how to soothe themselves when they are upset, anxious, worried, whatever it might be. So one of the most difficult parts in this is the fact that we feel kind of left to our own devices with our nervous system and when it's not regulated in the right way. An extreme, of course, would be the post-traumatic stress disorder, right? When the person who's been at war comes back home and tries to adapt back into society and is triggered through maybe very strong sounds out and about in in the cities, for instance, and experience a return of the trauma in those moments and has the whole body because of the nervous system react as if they're back at war, right? But we don't even have to go that far. We can also mention things that happen to us on a daily basis. For instance, it can be if I'm in a relationship with someone, and every time I have a fight with this person, my partner chooses to remove themselves from the situation. Basically, people two people start to fight, and one decide in a much more avoidant way to just leave the place and go away, slam the door without saying where they're going, or something like that, right? And due to my past experiences, my dregulated nervous system might react very strongly because it is a trigger of a trauma of having been abandoned in childhood, for instance. And so this might have the person who's being left react in all kinds of ways that feels completely out of their control. Right? It could be simple um crying, um, feeling really, really distraught, and calling someone um in order to um to be soothed by someone else. But it can also be um obsessively calling the partner who's left 150 times in one hour, sending 20 messages, right? And it can also be, on the contrary, um the reaction of the partner who has left, right, uh also a trigger, most probably when we do things like that, from a past experience from very long time ago, of going into behaviors to suppress the emotion, right? Going out on a bender, drinking themselves ridiculously um shamelessly drunk, and uh maybe even getting to um riskful behaviors and and and actions, fighting, whatever, right? And so in the situation, which is maybe more relatable to those of you who listen than the soldier coming back from the war, what do I know? Um is going on is actually that in a situation where you feel like you're being threatened in a stressful situation that is so stressful that your nervous system is triggered because it reminds you of something from the past. This dysregulation of the nervous system will have them react in all kinds of ways that they don't want to, but it feels as if it's out of their hands. Very often it can feel as if we're doomed to be like this forever. And actually, unfortunately, our brain is wired in a way that we can easily get so habituated with that that we don't actually unconsciously want to change because it feels familiar. But we can actually, due to our brain's capacity of neuroplasticity, it is actually possible. In the past, it was believed that basically from what we would call adult age and on, which was often counted as around 25, when the body starts to decline, as they say, our brain was wired the way it was, and there was nothing we can do about it. Basically, it means that the way you are when you turn 25, you cannot change. But it also would mean, therefore, that you cannot learn something new, which is not true. We know for sure and have known for a long time that our capacity to change our brain, which means changing, therefore, also our nervous system, is very high and strong in childhood. This is why children can learn three languages without even having an accent of either of the languages when they speak the other, if you see what I mean. They can speak three languages, they can learn three languages as if they were all three of them their native. And there's a whole lot of other things, of course, that children can learn as well and change in their behavior. However, in more recent years, and especially in the last decade, it has shown through research that this is absolutely possible for adults as well, especially if we understand how our brain works. And the reason that I wanted to speak about that today are several, but more specifically, when you start to delve into this, you realize once again the extreme deep knowledge and understanding of the human experience, I want to call it, that the ancient yogis and Ayurveda has because what you will understand through what I'm telling you about how the nervous system functions, how neuroplasticity functions, and therefore how we change our regulation of our nervous system, all aligns perfectly with the yogic and Ayurvedic lifestyle and the different recommendations that we are given, even, and I'll won't tap too much into that part, but I'll do a whole episode just on that. Even this, what we would call bringing ourselves into a flow state, which is when we're in our most capable focus and absorbation of doing something, which happens absolutely in a regular practice of something that we develop into a skill. And all of that is really powerful for well-being, but also for performance, and all of that we can trace back to well, epics like the Mahabharata or the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient texts from India. So it's just really fascinating, I find. And that stays with us throughout our life very much. So of course, positive experiences of love and safety and connection, the feel-good neuromodulators like dopamine and oxytocin are at work when we feel these things. And those experiences create pathways, neuropathways, associated, therefore, with trust and calm and security. And so they become the foundation of a well-regulated nervous system, which allows us to handle stress effectively. When it comes to negative experiences, traumatic experiences, neglect, prolonged stress, the brain shifts into survival mode. And actually, we become very alert in order to learn what is going on through the release of epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline. But even more so, another neuromodulator, another neurotransmitter that's called acetolcholine, I'm probably not pronouncing that right, is also released together with the epinephrine in order to intensify the focus of the stressful event. So basically, what we could say is that something very stressful happened, we become very alert, very heightened with our adrenaline, and this second neurotransmitter kind of tags the event, so intensifies it so that we will absolutely not forget it. So it's all of this is of course part of survival instinct. So it serves us according to our brain, and then later on in life, unfortunately, might disserve us very much. And of course, over time, repeated negative experiences can hyperactivate the stress response of the autonomic nervous system. So that which we call the sympathetic mode, or more easy to remember, the fight or flight mode. And so that is how the dysregulation of the nervous system actually happens. So the nervous system gets wired to stay on this high alert even when there's no immediate danger. Now, one of the most difficult things in the modern world we live in is that we're so surrounded by stimuli of this fight or flight that even if we have not had very traumatic experiences from the past, we are actually on this heightened state very easily anyway, all the time. And so when we have a dysregulated nervous system, it creates anxiety, restlessness, fatigue, numbness, um, it decreases motivation, it kind of works in the opposite of the dopamine and the oxytocin and so on that would be the regulated version, right? And we find it hard to maintain relationships or just to feel at ease. We don't know how to regulate our emotions. Now, the process of learning from the beginning is our neuroplasticity. And the same process that wires the nervous system in response to life experiences also allows us to rewire it in order to regulate it again and become more resilient. The plasticity in the adult is controlled by the neuromodulators, so the dopamine and serotonin, and they open plasticity, they make that process happen. And therefore, they can map whatever we experience in the moment so that it can happen again. Okay? So just keep that in mind that the neuromodulators, such as dopamine and serotonin, are the ones that trigger the plasticity, which is how we record the experience and learn how to trigger it again. Now, the process of neuroplasticity is triggered by effort, which means that this is why dopamine plays such a big role in it, because dopamine is what motivates us, right? It's what makes us move. So we need to have a certain level of effort to push ourselves a little bit in order for neuroplasticity to happen. But what's very interesting is that once it happens, in order for the rewiring of the neurotransmitter of the brain, we need actually the opposite of the effort, we need complete rest or sleep. So basically, what we discover is that in order to change our nervous system, to change a dysregulated nervous system in order to change our behaviors, we need a Certain alternation between moments of effort and then the complete opposite moments of complete rest and relaxation. If we start to look at how our nervous system is wired when it comes to how we function in the day, we see that we also have this naturally in our body between the wake and the sleep time, that which we will call a circadian rhythm. That basically, when you say to someone that you should sleep on it, it really means that through the sleep you will integrate the things that made you make efforts during the day so that it settles in your brain and rewires the neuropathways. It has even been tested and shown that twenty minutes of deep rest of some kind, just after an effort, will accelerate the neuroplasticity. So I just want to make a pause before I continue here to just mention the yogic practice in itself. When we practice yoga, when we especially when we practice a more, let's say, traditional version of yoga, we are actually rewiring our brains for several reasons. When we therefore go through the classical steps that should be part of a yogic practice, which includes the conditioning when we start, the breathing exercises such as pranayama, the movements themselves, the coordination, the strengthening of muscles at the same time as we create more space through the flexibility of our joints. All of this you go through in a certain level of effort. It is, after all, why we link this to exercise. And that is then ended with complete relaxation, that's which often is just referred to as shavasana corpse pose when we lay down to rest. And classically that would be about 20 minutes. Very often in a classical practice, you would have a class of yoga that lasts about an hour and a half. Starting off with about five minutes of conditioning, which means that you are preparing yourself for what is to come, you're setting yourself up, you bring the focus into the here and now, you practice mindfulness, maybe just by sitting cross-legged, focusing on your breath, maybe setting an intention. Then you go through the motion, right? The different movements, and you come towards the end with some breathing exercises, and then you lay down for about 15 to 20 minutes. When you do this on a daily basis, it has a therapeutic effect not only on the blood flow, energy flow, and muscular strength and flexibility and health of your joints, but also of your mental state, because you are constantly, daily practicing the rewiring of your brain in a conscious way, creating more neuroplasticity because you trigger this neuroplasticity just as I have been explaining. Now, we have therefore understood that there needs to be phases of effort, and then there needs to be phases of complete rest, which can be sleep, meditation, yoga nidra, these kind of things, right? In order to regulate again the nervous system in a way that we actively choose for it to be. On top of that, so this is of course very well adjusted with the circadian rhythm that has a 24-hour cycle because it follows the hours of the sun between the awake time and the sleep time. But on top of that, we have other rhythms, for instance, our attention span and focus, which is very short indeed, but it has a rhythm of 90 minutes. We optimize to learn in the beginning of this 90 minutes. We go deeper into our capacity to do so the further we go into it, and then the closer we come towards the end of a 90 minute, we drop out of focus. So, as we also know this, there are moments in the day where we are more inclined to learn, which is why we should take advantage of those moments, remembering that the cycle is about 90 minutes before it switches. And then when we come to the end of the 90 minute, we should do something completely different. This is of course why it's not necessarily very beneficial to sit and study for eight hours, but instead to maybe take a 90-minute study time, then make a break, go for a walk, go do something else, and later on come back. It is also therefore the case when we are practicing something with a little bit of effort in order to regulate how we deal with, for instance, emotions. So when we look into how Ayurveda also suggests that we live our day, this is exactly what is recommended. There are certain things that we should do at certain times of the day, and there are moments of the day where we should do something completely different that is not an effort, for instance, right? So in Ayurveda, one of the first things that we would recommend is to go to bed and to get out of bed every day at the same time. This is very important for this attention span as well. Then when we start our day, obviously, this is where a new cycle kind of begins, which is perfect to have your morning routine at that time as a way to wire your brain, using the neuroplasticity to set yourself up, first of all, for the day in itself, but also when we are dealing with dysregulated nervous systems, which can be linked to depressed states, a difficulty to accept oneself, working on self-love and so on. But it can also be absolutely our sleep patterns. I've said it before and I'll say it again probably, but a good night's sleep starts the morning before. So what have we learned through today's talk? Basically, your nervous system is wired from the beginning through the experiences that you have. This will dictate a lot how you react later on in life, but it is not something that you are doomed to live with forever. You can choose actively to change how your nervous system reacts and regulate it back again to harmony. This is done through effort and effortlessness. So it is done in a way that we actively focus and bring alertness to a task that we are doing, and then almost as a reward, we stop and we completely rest for a while until we can start again. Knowing that, we know therefore that we can choose what it is that we want to do for the rewiring, but also that our focus cycle is one of 90 minutes that keeps repeating throughout the day and the night, which is why also our sleep cycles are 90 minutes actually. And so that we know that when there is something specific we want to work on in terms of regulating our nervous system, we choose to focus on that in the beginning of the cycle. And as we go towards the end of the cycle, we stop and we go and rest instead. Now, in order to notice how our cycles function with these 90 minutes attention span or focus, you can simply pay attention to when in the day you might feel anxious, when you feel the least anxious, when you feel the most alert and fresh, when you feel relaxed. And therefore detect at what times of the day you have moments where you learn better. So I hope that this brought some inspiration to you to take act for yourself as well in order to bring your nervous system into a more harmonious state. I am so grateful that you have chosen to give me some time of your day to listen to this episode. Now, this is all done on my free time. There's no money involved in this podcast. So if you would like to support me somehow, I would love for that to happen. And you could do that by simply rating and reviewing. So what that means is that if you're listening on Apple Podcast, you can simply give me five stars review and you can give me a commentary. Obviously, if you feel that it deserves it. Once again, thank you so much and enjoy the listening. It is incredible how we can change the way our brain is wired through these things, which is one hundred percent what we will be experiencing in the retreat that takes place in January, end of January, in the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where we will be practicing all of this of the circadian rhythm, the dinacharia of Ayurveda, learn about Ayurveda and how to integrate it into our lives, and have active recreational actually moments of rewiring through art therapy. If you are interested in knowing more about this, to participate, sign up, you can simply send me an email. You will find my email address, of course, in the show notes. Thank you for joining me in this episode of Ayurveda and Psychology Podcast. If this content resonated with you and you feel ready to go deeper in your healing journey, you can book a personalized session with me or explore my programs at the website. You find the link in the show notes. You can also follow me on Instagram at iurveda.psychology where I share rituals, tips, and weekly reflections. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who might need it or leave a review. It helps this community to grow. I'll see you next Friday with a new episode. Take care and stay grounded.