The One-Stop Guide to Understanding and Healing Your Nervous System

Your nervous system isn’t just a biological system—it’s the energetic gateway between survival and peace, chaos and clarity. Whether you realise it or not, your nervous system is running the show: how you respond to stress, how safe you feel in your body, how deeply you can rest, love, speak, and create. In a world that glorifies hustle, your nervous system is quietly asking you to listen, slow down, and come home to yourself.

Your nervous system is your body’s internal communication network. It’s made up of two key parts:

• The central nervous system (CNS): the brain and spinal cord
• The peripheral nervous system (PNS): the nerves that branch out to the rest of your body

The part we most often refer to in healing and coaching work is the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary functions like heartbeat, digestion, and the stress response. It has two branches:

The parasympathetic nervous system (rest, digest and heal)

The sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze)

When your nervous system is regulated, you feel calm, centred and connected. You can respond to challenges without becoming overwhelmed. Your energy flows in balance, enabling you to move through life with resilience and presence. When it’s dysregulated, you might feel anxious, numb, stuck, reactive, or constantly “on edge.”

Chronic stress, trauma, burnout, heartbreak, or even modern-day overstimulation can keep your nervous system locked in survival mode. The body gets confused: it starts responding to emails or mild conflict the same way it would respond to a bear in the wild.

This is where mindfulness can be a powerful tool, helping to bring awareness and presence to your physical and emotional states, enabling you to regulate your energy and find a return to calm.

Chronic stress can wreak havoc on your nervous system, and by extension, your overall health. When the body is in a prolonged stress state:

• Cortisol levels stay elevated, weakening your immune system
• Digestion slows or shuts down, leading to gut issues
• Sleep becomes disturbed, impacting memory and recovery
• Heart rate and blood pressure rise, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease
• Mental health suffers, contributing to anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation

Essentially, chronic stress teaches your body to live in a constant state of threat—even when you are safe.

When your nervous system is stuck in survival mode, your body starts to speak louder. These signs may seem disconnected at first, but they all trace back to one thing: a system that no longer feels safe:

• Chronic fatigue or insomnia: You either can’t get enough rest, or you can’t fall asleep no matter how tired you are.
• Hypervigilance or numbness: You’re always scanning for danger, or you feel emotionally flat and disconnected.
• Emotional reactivity or emotional shutdown: You either find yourself overreacting to small things or unable to feel anything at all.
• Feeling easily overwhelmed: Even small tasks or decisions feel like too much to handle.
• Digestive issues or tension in the body: Your gut feels off, and your muscles are tight, especially in the neck, jaw, or shoulders.
• Inability to relax or enjoy stillness: Downtime makes you restless. You feel like you always need to be doing something.

Each of these is your body’s way of saying, “Something doesn’t feel safe.” And once you understand the language of your nervous system, you can begin to respond with compassion instead of self-judgement.

This healing work is about safety. And, it starts by slowly telling your body: you are safe now. You don’t have to rush. Here are some gentle practices to begin regulating your system:

• Breathwork: Even one slow, conscious breath signals safety to your body. Try breathing in for 4, holding for 7, and exhaling for 8. Studies show that extended exhalation reduces cortisol and heart rate
• Grounding: Walk barefoot on grass. Hug a tree. Sit with your back against a wall. Let your body connect to something solid and still. Known as earthing, it helps recalibrate your body’s electrical charge and brings you into the present moment.
• Vagus Nerve Toning: Humming, singing, cold exposure, and gargling all stimulate your vagus nerve, which plays a key role in calming the body.
• Body Listening: Tune into what your body needs. Ask: do I need movement, stillness, warmth, water, or support? When you ask your body what it needs, you re-establish trust with your internal cues. Research in somatic psychology shows that interoception (the ability to sense the internal state of your body) is linked to greater emotional clarity and nervous system regulation.
• Reiki and Energy Work: Reiki has been found to shift the body into parasympathetic dominance. It reduces perceived stress and supports heart rate variability, allowing the body to enter a deeply restorative state. Distant Reiki sessions are a gentle, powerful way to clear energetic blockages and reset your nervous system, without having to revisit trauma or talk it all out.
• Nervous System Resets: These one-hour sessions blend somatic coaching, breathwork, and regulation tools that meet your body where it is, and guide you toward safety and stillness.

You are not broken. You are a nervous system doing its best to protect you. The journey home is not about fixing, but about listening, softening, and creating safety within.

When you understand your nervous system, you stop judging yourself for being “too much” or “not enough.” You begin to tend to yourself with presence instead of pressure. And you remember that healing isn’t about doing more—it’s about becoming more present with what already is.

You don’t have to keep pushing through. You can begin again, with one slow breath.

If you’re feeling dysregulated, anxious, stuck, or burnt out, I invite you to begin the return to safety with me. My Nervous System Reset sessions offer a sacred pause—a place to rest, reconnect, and gently rewire your response to stress. Together, we create a new baseline of calm. Let’s connect.