A breathwork practice.

And how you can change the world one breath at a time.

Acrylic ink on paper.

Before continuing this tale on the Autonomic Nervous System and why I love rainy days (installments one and two), offering you a breath practice feels prudent. If you feel stuck in any area of life, anxious, depressed, emotionally out of control, like you’re living someone else’s life, low on flow, frequently irritated, not enough, too much, insecure, incapable, overwhelmed, numbed out, or like you don’t know what you want or who you are, or any variation of the above, and want to jump right in, scroll down for a Yoga with Adriene tutorial on Alternate Nostril breathing.

If you want to chat some more, come along with me: Autonomic Nervous System regulation practice is my greatest wish for literally all of humanity. It is how we come to world peace, equality, and equity.

I can’t be sure about this, but I suspect that no one who ever had a regulated ANS severely, senselessly hurt another intentionally or unintentionally. And when I’m crowned Supreme Ruler of the Universe, it’s the first thing I’m implementing.

The truths are that not everyone likes you, not everyone agrees with you, not every partner will stick around, jobs will be lost, and people die, sometimes suddenly and tragically, but with a regulated ANS, the griefs, the sadnesses, the traumas, they don’t get stuck where they shouldn’t be. They move through, maybe not quickly, but they do move through you.

We weren’t made to carry these things with us or numb out from them. It’s why it doesn’t feel good and it’s why some people treat others so horribly.

With a regulated ANS, compassion starts to become big in us; both for ourselves and literally everyone and everything else. Not right away. But little by little, and then all at once.

Elizabeth Gilbert

(who now has a Substack in case you didn’t know!) has said (and I’m paraphrasing) that the most compassionate people she’s ever met aren’t those who don’t have hurts or traumas or are blind to the devastation in the world, they are those who have created so much space inside themselves there’s room for it all.

In my own experience, when I’m practicing, the compassion is so big and so sweet, but not too much or overwhelming. My concerns, petty grievances, pains aren’t gone necessarily, but the expansive compassion holds them, cares for them, they feel seen and heard and therefore a lot less immediate.

We humans, we were born to have emotional experiences; ANS regulation doesn’t stop emotions, but most of us are so trained from an early age that our emotions are inappropriate and we weren’t taught how to manage them in ways that aren’t harmful to others and ourselves, that we spend much of our time working hard to quell them. And they get stuck in our bodies.

Modern psychology has up until recently been operating under a misunderstanding of the human mind-body. Its understanding was that medicating these things or talking them through was the best and limited course of action and that we had to learn to live with things like depression and anxiety.

Thankfully contemporary research into the Autonomic Nervous System, trauma, and a new understanding more in line with longheld Eastern insights, that everything in our bodies is connected, has shifted these misunderstandings and ancient as well as new tools and practices are being utilized to support coming into ANS regulation and point us toward peace.

Mindful practices are coming into therapy sessions; trauma-specific therapies are available (Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT Tapping), Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR therapy, Vagus Nerve activation, and various Somatic (i.e., body-based) therapies are all effective tools to regulate the ANS with the support of a trained professional); and there are so many more people coming to ANS regulating practices on their own (yoga, Tai Chi, Chigong, Breathwork, dance, etc.) and sharing them with others.

It does often seem that there’s a new fix-all, fad tool in the therapy world every year, people insisting you must do this or that, but the truth is, when you look at the big picture, it’s tools that regulate the ANS that contribute to effective healing and things that don’t regulate the ANS are less effective, ineffective, or even sometimes re-traumatizing.

But our ANSs are designed to keep us safe and unfortunately, they sometimes do that by making it difficult for us to utilize effective regulating tools (I’m looking at myself, every time I hit up yoga three or four times, feel super great, and then drop back for a couple of months). They may resist using effective tools (i.e., if you’re struggling to read this or it’s making you angry, that could be your ANS resisting regulation) because when our ANSs are dysregulated, regulation feels unsafe.

It’s a Catch-22.

If you find yourself in this loop, making a gentle, conscious, and intentional choice toward regulation is the way through. And choosing the most natural tool based on where your ANS is at is imperative: if you’re up-regulated, choose a regulation tool that is movement-based; and if you’re down-regulated, choose a regulation tool you can do from bed or the sofa. It doesn’t have to be the same tool every day, it certainly hasn’t been for me.

And if you’re really struggling to utilize any tools, seek a Reiki practitioner. Ahem. Email me.

Because regulation is where compassion lives. Patience. Clarity. Emotional sovereignty. Calm. Unconditional love. And I want those things for you.

We didn’t choose the nervous systems we currently have, at least not with our thinking adult brains, and a lot of things in this world feel out of our control and completely unrelated to where our individual ANS is at any given moment, but very little in the external world can regulate them.

In other words, we have to do the work ourselves. Our bosses may have unreasonable expectations and they may be emailing us at one in the morning or flying off the handle whenever a tiny thing gets off track (I mean, their ANS is dysregulated, as well) and you do not deserve that behavior, it is inappropriate, and it is not your fault, but even if that dude does calm down, your ANS still needs tending to, to release the trauma his behavior caused and he can’t do that for you any more than your getting the work done well and on time can regulate his ANS for him.

We can’t talk or think our way into a regulated ANS, we have to practice.

So whatever we’ve experienced in our lives that was beyond our control and led us to where we are right here and right now in the ANS we currently have, our choices from this point forward are Practice or Pattern. We have the opportunity to, and are truly the only people who can, bring regulation to ourselves and the stuff living inside us won’t go away on its own. If it’s lodged in our ANS, it becomes our responsibility.

As a person with a sensitive ANS, this sucks. That person who yelled at me or treated me violently or the horrific events in the world should have to clean up the mess they created in my body. But they can’t. The only person we are all truly responsible for is ourselves, we are the only people we can be responsible for in the ways that actually matter, even if those around us don’t take responsibility for themselves.

And I don’t mean that we need to just get over the things that have been done to us, the large-scale devastations we witness, or that systemic changes aren’t necessary, but we will never get to peace when we’re navigating from a position of chaos. If we want peace we have to become peace.

So essentially, as they say, we have to be the change we want to see in the world. If you, like me, want peace, whether personal peace or world peace, ANS regulation is where it starts.

So join me in a simple but effective Breath practice: Alternate Nostril Breathing. Excellent for regulating the ANS and balancing the body. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to regulate the ANS, which may feel like a lot.

Try it for three to five minutes if you’ve never practiced breathwork before and increase your time with each practice. (You do not have to cover the nostril at the bottom like she does, you can just press on the side of your nose…)

My yoga teacher training with Raj Yoga., suggests that Alternate Nostril breathing is the place to start with a breathwork practice as it balances the energy in the body, and practicing this for 90 days can bring complete balance to the whole body.

You don’t have to practice clearing your mind, allow things to come forward if they come forward, but don’t spend time analyzing them, dissecting them, ruminating on, or judging/labeling them. Just observe the thoughts, sensations, and emotions that come forward with as little attachment as possible (this gets easier!).

But it’s all just energy in motion. Allow it to move. The less I try to hold onto something the more quickly it moves through.

In my (and others’) experience, the thoughts and emotions that come forward during these practices are being released. There may be deeper or different aspects to a particular topic that might come forward in different practices, the more complicated a particular belief or experience is, the more layers there are to it.

Ahem, the “I’m not enough” belief is extraordinarily sticky for me and comes forward in a myriad of ways in practice, but it also holds me back in a myriad of sneaky little ways as well so bring it on ANS, I’m clearing that out.

I’ll come back to the rain eventually and how ANS regulation has been the key to supporting my writing and creative practices as well. Unless I’ve already said.

Until then happy breathing,