Episode 13: The Basics Of The Nervous System, The Bodies Innate wisdom & How Yoga can Help you Hack it

In this episode I dive into the basics of how the nervous sytsem works in the body. I explain how the fight or flight stress response works and why its there, and how it is an essential part of our bodies innate ancient wisdom and survival system. I look at how when this system is switched on too much, and the body is in a chronic state of stress it can become disastrously detrimental to your health. I also talk about how the opposing parasympathetic or rest and digest sytstem works and how the powerful practices of yoga can help us to hack this system, and relearn how to relax. I hope you enjoy.

If you have any comments, questions or anything you would like to hear about related to this podcast, I'd love to hear from you.

Please feel free to message me on Instagram or email me here: helen@feettoearthyoga.co.uk

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With love and light,

Helen xxx

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Welcome to Be Still and Notice, a yoga podcast. Join me, your host, yoga and meditation instructor Helen Taylor, to dive deeply into the vast ocean of wisdom that is yoga. Explore with me how these ancient practices can help heal and elevate us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually in an ultra-modern world. Together we'll deepen our practice, explore our connection to divinity and our own inner landscapes with the help of special guests, guided meditations, how-tos and oh so much more. Yoga has the incredible power to change your life on every level and it all begins with stillness. Now let's begin. Hi everyone and welcome to episode 13, Be Still and Notice, a yoga podcast. In this episode I am talking biology, I'm talking nervous system and we referenced it a lot in the last few episodes. So today I'm going into the basics of the sympathetic nervous and the parasympathetic nervous system, what they are, what happens in your body when these are activated and how yoga is an incredible tool to literally help you hack your body's nervous system. So I really hope you enjoy this episode and I'll see you on the other side. Hello everyone, hello, welcome, welcome to, I think we're at episode 13, Be Still and Notice, a yoga podcast. And I hope you're really well. I hope you're having a lovely day or evening, morning, whenever you're listening to this, wherever you're listening to this. And I just wanted to say thank you so much. I'm so grateful to... everyone that takes the time to have a listen and i just wanted to re-emphasize the reason behind this podcast is really to explore things together and learn more and have deeper conversations about the absolute wealth of wisdom and healing growth and just holistic everything that yoga can give us. I mean it really is massive and it's as much a learning and exploration journey for me as I hope it is for you. So I just wanted to say a big thank you for being here. I so, so appreciate every single one of you, so thank you. And if you really... enjoy an episode or something sparks your interest and you want to talk about it please do reach out and please do share any episodes with your friends and your family anyone that you think might be interested or that's relevant to and if you have the time and you'd like to leave a review I do this entirely on my own I don't have any help no sponsors or anything so if A review, a comment would be absolutely amazing. So thank you, thank you, that's the best way that you can support me. So today I really wanted to talk about the nervous system because in many previous episodes I've touched on it. and I'm going to be completely honest with you before I started my yoga teacher training I really didn't know much about the nervous system at all and I am a bit of a geek as in if I'm interested in something and I want to I want to know more about it I like to understand how things work particularly when it comes to health and well-being the body nature plants um the living breathing world around us how people make things you know i'm i'm not just that kind of person i love to learn and i like to understand how things work it's part of my human design if you're into human design um and so i do like to geek out and delve deeply into things and um Put my little specs on and do my reading. So on my first yoga teacher training, it was 500 hours, British Wheel of Yoga, three and a half years it took me to do part time. They've changed the course now, but it was incredibly academic. Everything was very... Yeah, academic is the word. Lots of big essays, lots of philosophy. And that's why I chose to do it. Lots of anatomy. And it was hard. It was bloody hard work. But one of the projects that we had to do was all around the nervous system. And I remember delving into it and writing this big essay. I think... 6 000 words or something i can't remember actually now but it was a long one on how what is the nervous system and how stress impacts the body and i just loved it i was like oh my god this is the most fascinating thing we all need to know about this and cut to seven eight years later Now everyone is talking about the nervous system. Back then, no one was really talking about it. And I'm so glad that it's become really quite a mainstream thing to talk about. People reference their fight or flight response daily. I hear people talk about it. Whereas back then, no one was talking about that. Only doctors and therapists and people that work in the kind of healing world or biological, physiological world. So it's fantastic that people are understanding more. So today I wanted to give a little overview. You might already know, so if you do, feel free to skip it. But there might be some stuff, especially to do with how yoga impacts our nervous system in a very, very positive way. You might want to hold on and hear for that because that's what I'm going to be talking about as well. Because in my mind and from my experience that is what makes yoga part of what makes yoga such an amazing holistic practice. We've talked about before on previous episodes the way it can impact our mind with meditation, the way it can really relax us, the way that it can create a sacred space for us to release emotion, for us to feel, the way it can help us strengthen, lengthen and stretch the body but also become more in tune with our bodies so that we can listen to it. There's a myriad of brilliant benefits from yoga. Today we're going to focus on the nervous system. So your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, is what governs the automatic things that happen in your body. So your body Your heart beats without you having to go, oh heart, I need to beat my heart. Yeah, it happens all on its own. And the breath happens without you thinking about it. Your digestive system works all on its own. If you eat properly and you look after yourself, your blood pressure, all of these systems in your body, your lymphatic system, they work together. beautifully in this clockwork rhythm and they're governed by your autonomic nervous system. There are two separate parts to the nervous system beyond that that are utilised when there is a threat that's perceived. So without going really deep into the physiology of it, your autonomic nervous system is just, if you're fine and you feel safe and you're all good, it's just ticking away and you're breathing and your heart is beating a nice gentle level and everything's just tickety-boo, everything is all good in the world. Now our bodies are innately designed to pick up a sense of threat. Now this has happened over tens of thousands of years of our evolution from being out in nature, in the wild, with big predatory animals that can kill us and also other human beings. dangerous situations, very risky weather situations, all sorts of things. So our brain, the oldest part of our brain, which includes the amygdala, is primed for sensing threat. So when this part of your brain, through the senses, so through your hearing, through your sight, through your sense of touch in the body, perceives a threat, something happens to your nervous system and it's a magical, magical thing. And I want to just say that this is a really positive thing, that our body has this ability. Because if we didn't, we would all be dead by now. it's as simple as that so this part of your brain perceives threat through sound sight touch feeling smell is another one and automatically it goes hold on now we might be in danger we are in danger and your body switches into sympathetic nervous system mode Some people call it also known as the fight, flight, fawn, freeze. There are lots of them now in that category. Your fight or flight response. And what happens when this sympathetic nervous system, I know the name of it is a little bit confusing sometimes, Because sympathetic kind of means, oh, you're being really nice and sympathetic. But when your stress response, your sympathetic nervous system is activated in the body, lots of things happen. Basically, it's like your body is literally, imagine there's a load of little soldiers in your mind. And they were just hanging out and having a cup of tea. And then they perceived this threat. What? What's that? Then all the soldiers are immediately on alert and they run around your body, getting your body ready to fight or to flight. So it's to run away. So there's all sorts of things that happen. There's a cascade of hormones that are sent around the body. Testosterone is one of them. Epinephrine is another one that allows... But go to the heart, the muscles in the heart to allow the heart to beat faster, to get blood pumping around the body. You start to breathe quicker and faster. The blood goes into all of the muscles in your body to enable you to react really quickly. Certain muscles also prepare to move like the psoas muscle can kind of tighten and just prepare to run away or fight. For some people this comes into, some people just freeze and the whole body is like frozen rigid and they can't move. It's the same response just slightly different for different people. So all of these hormones are flushing around your body. Your heart rate is faster. Your breathing is shallow and quick. Blood is pumping around your body. The breathing has changed so that you can really oxygenate that blood that's pumping around. Your blood pressure has lifted. Everything is on high alert. This is so incredible to me. It's absolutely fascinating. Even the pupils of your eyes dilate so that you can see more sharply. Your vision is like, whoo, sharper. Your hearing is sharpened, your hearing capability. And quite often, you know, that kind of feeling where all the hairs on the back of your neck stick on end. This is your sense of touch, like literally all of your spidey senses, if you like to think of it like that, are switched on. Now, this is all amazing and really, really helpful when you're faced by a big bear in the forest. You need this response because adrenaline can do incredible things for us. It means that you can run really fast. You could climb that tree. You could fight someone much stronger than you. Be brave, be bold, be courageous in the moment. However, There are some negative things that happen as well. One of those is that the rational mind gets completely switched off. And the older part of your brain takes over. You literally go into survival mode. So you cannot be doing maths equations when you're in this stress response. You won't be making much sense at all. And perhaps you can relate to this when you're feeling super, super stressed and you just cannot think straight. That is because this cognitive part of your brain has literally been, the volume on that part has been turned right down. Another thing that happens is that because there's so much going on in the body, all of the blood supply and everything has been lost. put into your limbs and away. There's still blood there, obviously, but the body is focusing its energy and its reserves into the limbs so that you can run and fight. So it turns off your digestive system. It literally puts it on pause. For some people that are very, very stressed, this can cause you to have to run to the toilet because it's almost like your body is just kind of going, ah! And your digestive system really suffers. I'm going to talk a bit more about this later because it's very personal to me. So your rational mind is gone. Your cognitive thinking is gone. Your digestive system is on pause indefinitely. Now in a normal scenario... This sympathetic system would only be activated for a really short period of time. So you've seen the bear in the woods. Your brain has gone, oh my God, there's a bear. Your sympathetic nervous system has switched into action. All the soldiers in the brain and the body have gone around and gone, right, here we go. Fight or flight. And you've run away from the bear and you've run up a tree. The bear chased you for a bit, sat at the bottom of the tree, then got bored and went away. And you went, oh, okay, now I can relax. And what happens? The adrenaline pulls out of your body. Maybe you have a bit of a shake. Your heart rate slows down. Your breath slows down. Your digestive system switches back on again. And all the little soldiers go back into their hut in the brain and have a cup of tea. Then your rational mind comes back and goes, bloody hell, that was a bit scary. I'm so glad we managed to find this tree and get up it. So glad that the bear got bored and ran away. And back you are in kind of normal autonomic state. mode so all of this is essential for our survival and nowadays in modern life many of us don't come across bears in the woods it still happens of course but because our modern lives are so fast-paced and stressful It's not bears that are setting our nervous systems into fight or flight mode. It's arguments with our partners. It's traffic jams. It's stress at work. It's overstimulation from technology and social media and the news. It's drinking too much coffee. It's all of these things. Very simple everyday things. Now the problem is that when the body is overloaded with this stress response and it becomes chronic, we have all sorts of health problems that happen. And unfortunately, most of us know quite a lot about that these days because it's talked about a lot. So the cortisol that gets released... It's another hormone that gets released when the stress response is switched on. Most people have heard of cortisol. When that is rife in your body and is around a lot, it does all sorts of things to your metabolic health. And causes all sorts of disease, inflammation. And... Mental health issues, digestive issues, all kinds of health problems, blood pressure issues, you name it, there are so many, so many things. And I'm not going to go into all of those today, but I'm sure you are probably aware of all of these things because they're talked about a huge amount. But luckily, we have an opposite... to the sympathetic nervous system response and it's called the parasympathetic. So after you've been up the tree and the threat has gone, the bear has gone and you're like, whoa, you've got rid of the shakes from all that adrenaline and you've calmed down, your parasympathetic nervous system will be switched on. So this system is the total opposite of your fight or flight. It's rest and digest. Because let's face it, if you've just been through that, you're going to be bloody knackered. Your body has been through a massive hormonal, biological, metabolic shift. And now it needs to rest. You'll probably feel absolutely starving and thirsty because your body was like, dude, I really need to replenish now. And you'll probably want to then have a nice big sleep. Our bodies are so innately wise. This is the body's way of saying cool down. We've nailed that, now we need to rest, now we need to restore, replenish our energy reserves because who knows, this might happen again in the next couple of hours. So you climb down the tree, you go back to your tribe, you tell the tale and you have a hearty meal by the fire, you drink some whatever, ale, I don't know, cavemen had ale, probably not, it's a bit Viking. Have a drink, have some really nice food, replenish your body. And now you're in a deep sleep. What's happened when the parasympathetic nervous system is activated is the breath slows down, the heart rate slows down, the blood pressure lowers. All the systems in your body go... And this is actually a really powerfully restorative, restful, healing space for the body as well. Your digestive system switches back on. All sorts of things happen in your microbiome. So I was reading about that the other day. It's absolutely fascinating information. There's a guy called Zach Bush who does incredible, incredible groundbreaking research and work with what happens with the body, with nature. I will put a little link in the bio to his Instagram feed. Check it out. It's incredible. He talks about how forest bathing helps your gut microbiome within moments. But that's a whole other thing. If you're interested, I'll pop it in the show notes. So basically, all of the little soldiers in your body then go... They're having their cup of tea. And it's like the cleaning ladies come out. It's like the masseurs come out. The therapists, the facialists come out and go, Right, here we go. Let's take care of everything. All of those systems in your body... Replenish, restore, heal, repair. So maybe you were injured when you climbed up that tree. Maybe you scratched up your knees or your arms or something. And this is where the body goes, right, we can repair that now. We can sort that out while you have a little snooze, while you rest. And this is a really crucial part of your nervous system. The parasympathetic rest and digest. Also, within this, your cognitive mind is fully operational. It's like it's back. So you can sit and you can go over what you've just experienced and you can talk about it and you can feel your emotions and you can be really quite, that can also be really quite healing in the moment. So where does yoga come into this? Let's go back a little bit. So I was just talking about the sympathetic nervous system and the problem with it in our daily, daily, stressful, busy, busy, busy modern lives is that that stress response is triggered way more than it naturally probably should be if we were living in caves. So a lot of people, a lot of us... end up chronically stressed with all of those soldiers running around the body all the time and it can cause like i mentioned before literally a plethora of really serious health conditions weight gain lack of sleep insomnia metabolic issues you know um heart disease, I mean just you name it, it's just really, really not good for you and it's not good for your mental health either or your emotional well-being. The parasympathetic nervous system is a magical system because, and this is where yoga comes in, we have the ability to To take control of it and switch it on ourselves. I'm not sure if in the animal kingdom this is something that can happen. I don't know. That's something that I would need to research. If you know, please tell me. But as far as I'm aware, humans are unique in the fact that we can take over things. Our parasympathetic nervous system. How do we do that? We do that with the breath. Primarily. We do that with the breath. So something that's just... It continues to blow my mind even after years of yoga practice. It's how powerful the breath can be. So say you're having... really really stressful day and you decide to go to a yoga class and you sit in your yoga class and your teacher asks you to take a slow deep barely breath in and exhale out slowly through the mouth and again slow deep belly breath in Exhale slowly out through the mouth. One more time. Deep belly breath in. And exhale slowly out through the mouth. And then just pause and notice how you feel. What you've just done is actively hacked your nervous system. You've told the body by controlling the breath to switch on your parasympathetic nervous system. You've literally told the body that you are safe, that all is well, and that you can relax. It's absolutely magical. It's bloody brilliant. And you can then go deeper and deeper into this. So I did a lot. I did a training with Carolyn Cowan, which you'll hear me talk about a hell of a lot, her Kundalini Global course. And the nervous system is something that she talks about a hell of a lot, including the vagus nerve. So there are lots of ways to make the body feel safe. And the vagus nerve, they're learning more and more about it daily. I think they're doing so much research on it now. But if you think of it as another part of your nervous system, it's literally a network of nerves from the brain all the way down the body and a huge amount of the vagus nerve tissue. endings are situated in your gut. And the vagus nerve, from my understanding, is all about your sense of well-being, feeling good. And it does lots and lots of things for your body. And to activate the vagus nerve is part of Some people debate that it's not, but you could look at it as part of the parasympathetic nervous system. And when you stretch and open the front of your body, you tell your body that you're safe and you activate this vagus nerve. When you lift the chin and you open through the front of the neck, when you open the arms wide, imagine if you are... confronted by a bear you don't open wide you know it's a gesture of receiving and surrender to open your body you're saying look I'm not threatened I'm at peace you know your body language is literally going I'm I'm at peace I'm peaceful whereas if you're protecting yourself from A lot of us will naturally cover the heart, cower forward, hunch the shoulders around the front of the body. So in yoga, if you open and stretch the body wide... Or when you're feeling stressed, if you open and stretch the body wide, you switch on or activate this vagus nerve and you literally tell your body, I'm safe. Even though in your mind you might still be feeling really quite stressed, your heart might be beating quite fast. But all of these things really help to tell your body that you're safe. So slowing down the breath, taking control of the breath, breathing more slowly and more deeply, really taking the time to do that. And that's why pranayama practices and relaxation and yoga nidra, controlling and using the power of the breath is so powerful and transformative. Because when you slow down the breath, you slow down heart rate and you slow down your blood pressure and everything just goes parasympathetic rest and digest I'm safe the body is like I'm safe I'm okay everything's good so the breath stretching opening the body you know you wouldn't be doing um A camel pose if you were confronted by a bear. You might, but I suspect you'd get eaten. Your body's natural response would not be to stretch and open. It would be to close, curl up into a little ball or run away. So being aware of this I think is so powerful because it makes you look at your yoga practice in a different way. Perhaps, or for me anyway, it really shifted my perspective on my body as an innately wise, incredible, not machine, I don't want to use the word machine, entity. That is beyond my cognitive thinking mind. It has its own innate wisdom within our senses. Beyond cognitive thinking. This is stuff that we have evolved to have over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. Another thing that's great in our practice is chanting. Chanting is a really amazing practice for activating your vagus nerve. It's something to do with the vibration in your chest. And that's why when you chant or when you sing, you can get really quite euphoric, beautiful feelings of bliss. It really helps to open your heart. So going back to when we're talking about the negative effects of the fight or flight response. So we were talking about losing that cognitive, rational, thinking mind. This is another reason why meditation is really, really powerful. Because although we may have slowed down the breath, slowed down the heart rate... So down the blood pressure, switch back on, rest and digest, parasympathetic mode, mainly using the breath, stretching, opening the body, maybe done some chanting. The mind can still be racing away, although all of these things do also help slow the mind. To begin to really Work on the mind. That's where meditation comes in. And that's where practices that use mantra, awareness techniques, anything that focuses your mind on something real and in the present moment is super, super helpful. Because although the threat may have gone away, the mind can still be in a really fearful, agitated state. So in yoga, when you can, traditionally in a practice, you would start off with some pranayama, do your asana, your movement practice, maybe do a bit more pranayama, some chanting, some meditation, and then a yoga nidra, relax. There's a reason why it's done in that order. And I like to look through the lens of the nervous system is that you're addressing everything. This is why it's so bloody magical and holistic. Because we take care of the breath. We slow everything down. We take care of the body. We tell the body that it's safe. We work on the physical things first. And then, if the mind is still behind... The mind is still fearful, the mind is still irrational, the mind is still agitated. The mind is like, bloody hell. We then turn to meditation and now the body is more relaxed. The nervous system is calmed down, is soothed. Then we can turn to the mind and say, hey, it's okay. Let's carry your thoughts with this mantra. Let's focus the mind. on one point, the breath, the mantra, whatever it might be. And then the mind will follow the body. It takes practice, it takes time, but that is essentially the power of yoga. And there's a huge amount to talk about here in terms of You know, the specifics of how your practice can help you on a healing journey. And I'm hoping to get some more guests to really dive deeper into this. The somatic side of things and the trauma side of things. But hopefully this has given you a bit more of an overview, a simple overview of the really practical ways... that yoga is designed to help you help yourself it's designed to help you overcome stress and become more in your natural state of rest and relax um Aside from many, many other things, this is just a small piece of the pie, but I think it's really helpful in our modern crazy lives to know, hey, there's a toolkit here. And I'm not even going into the emotional, the spiritual, the esoteric, you know, the consciousness. I'm not even going into any of that. I'm just talking about really about biology today, about your physiology, what happens in your body. And that enough is enough to blow my mind. So next time you get on your yoga mat and your teacher asks you to take a nice, slow, deep breath in, bear that in mind, what you're doing to your body. You're telling your body that you're safe. You're telling your body, it's okay. I'm safe. And that's It's a very brave, bold and courageous thing to do. As I talked about in a previous episode, yoga is an act of courage. It's brave to be able to hold yourself in this way and trust the process and the practices of yoga, but also to trust yourself. There's a huge element of trusting that you can hold yourself in this moment. And again, my teacher Carolyn, she used to say, can you bear to be with yourself? Can you bear yourself? Some people can't, and that's okay. But if you can, there is just a wealth, a wealth of healing and a wealth of transformation on the other side. So thank you so much for listening. This is a long one today, but I hope this has given you a bit more insight into the power of yoga and the power of the nervous system. Thank you so much for listening to the Be Still and Notice podcast. I really hope you enjoyed this episode and perhaps it even added something to your life. If you know someone that might benefit, please share this episode with them and of course a review would be so much appreciated. Please find all the information relating to this episode, including relevant links in the show notes and until next time, sending you so much love and light. on your path to yoga.