The Basics of Nervous System Regulation: Embracing Your Unique Path.
Your nervous system is the core of how you experience life. It shapes how you respond to stress, connect with others, and find your way through challenges. Learning the basics of nervous system regulation isn’t about fixing yourself or striving for perfect balance—it's about increasing awareness and understanding of the unique shape of your system, and how to best support it with intention and care.
What is Nervous System Regulation?
Your nervous system is a dynamic system in your body that strives for balance. We can refer to our nervous systems as feeling:
Regulated: This is when you feel grounded, connected, and present. You can face challenges without ‘falling off your horse’, find joy in everyday moments, make thoughtful decisions, and enjoy moments of curiosity and connection.
Dysregulated: This happens when your system is overwhelmed or under-engaged. You might feel anxious, agitated, frozen, or disconnected, as your body tries to protect itself from perceived threats. It likely feels harder to focus, feel grounded, connect with others, or play in this state.
We all shift between regulated and dysregulated states, and there’s no such thing as a perfectly regulated nervous system. Dysregulation is part of being human. The goal isn’t to avoid dysregulation but to learn how to recognize when it’s happening, understand that this is a part of your body’s functioning, and develop tools to support yourself when you’re feeling dysregulated, if you so choose.
Understanding Your Window of Capacity
Your Window of Capacity (a phrase I learned from Jane Clapp - most nervous system educators often use the term "Window of Tolerance" - however, I’m not interested in aspiring for tolerance!) is the range in which you can handle stress, stay present, and engage with life without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. Within this window, your nervous system feels responsive, regulated, and supple.
When something challenges your capacity—whether it’s a stressor or a trigger—you might move outside this window into one of two zones of dysregulation:
Hyper-arousal: Feeling anxious, panicked, angry, or hypervigilant. This is when your system goes into “fight or flight” mode.
Hypo-arousal: Feeling numb, disconnected, or shut down. This is your system in a “freeze” or “collapse” state.
Your window of capacity isn’t fixed; it can expand and contract based on your circumstances, past experiences, health, hormonal shifts and more. Also, there are practices you can do to help widen your window of capacity over time. The takeaway here is to understand that you have a window where you’ll feel resilient and regulated - and that you will enter and exit this window. As you pay attention your body’s responses, you can begin to develop awareness of when you’re in your window, and when you’re outside of it.
There's No "One Right Way" to Have a Nervous System
One of the most important things to remember is this: there’s no one-size-fits-all nervous system. Your body’s responses to stress, triggers, and challenges are shaped by your unique life experiences, biology, and environment.
It's normal to experience dysregulation—it doesn’t mean something is “wrong” with you. It’s just your nervous system doing what it does to protect you. The work isn’t about trying to eliminate dysregulation but about building awareness of how your system works, and through this expanding your choice in how you relate to your nervous system.
Often once you start watching the patterns of your nervous system, it can become clear what kinds of protective responses your system has figured out to help you get by in the past. Because, after all, the nervous system is very interested in keeping you safe, and has a variety of clever ways to secure that safety. From your nervous system’s point of view, ensuring you’re safe far surpasses ensuring you’re having a pleasurable day-to-day experience. However, given that often we may end up with patterns of numbing out, being very reactive, or other habits that get in the way of having a grounded and connected relationship with ourselves or others, learning how to regulate the nervous system can be a powerful tool to help us get more of what we want out of our lives.
If it feels like it’d be fun or interesting, perhaps try tracking your system for a day, or a week. This can look like keeping a journal and making regular notes about what kinds of sensations you’re feeling in your body, what kinds of thoughts you’re thinking, what kinds of emotions you’re feeling, and what kinds of actions you’re engaging in. When tracking, I encourage you to not try to change your experience - simply watch, and gather information about what it’s like to be you over the course of the day or week.
Tools for Supporting Regulation
Once you’ve built awareness of your nervous system’s patterns, you can experiment with tools and practices to support regulation. There’s no universal approach, so it’s about finding what works for you. Here are some ideas:
Grounding and Soothing Practices
These tools are especially useful when you’re wanting a mindfulness-based practice that will focus on down-regulating the nervous system. This style of down regulating practice is heavily used in nervous system work HOWEVER it is not always the right or best choice! Sometimes we need mindfulness-based activities that will match our energy when we are feeling activated!:
Breathwork: Practices like breathing into your pelvis - using your mind’s eye to encourage your breath deep into your body. However, you don’t need to suck in an ocean of air! What does it feel like to let your body breathe for you, and see what amount of breath your body wants to take? Alternatively, sometimes extending the exhale, and maybe humming at the same time can feel really pleasurable and grounding for some people.
Grounding Exercises: There are a myriad of ways of focusing on your senses, from pressing your feet into the ground, or holding a warm cup of tea and tuning into the sensations, or looking around your space choosing to notice and pay attention to the details of five different things you see.
Restorative Rest: Cozying up with a blanket, taking a bath, having a sauna, or listening to calming music. Try to avoid screen time or multi-tasking, instead tuning into and paying attention to your experience of rest.
Energizing and Engaging Practices
For some people, activation is sometimes best addressed by engaging with challenge, excitement, or novelty. These activities when done mindfully can meet the energy in your body or mind while also supporting you in strengthening your mind/body connection and encouraging presence, which helps regulate the nervous system:
Play and Adventure: Try something slightly out of your comfort zone, like a new type of kinky play, intense sport, or other physical challenge that is novel and challenging.
High-Energy Movement: Go for a run, lift weights, take a cold plunge, or do something physically challenging that gets your heart rate up and body moving.
Engaging Your Brain: Solve a complex puzzle, try a new creative project, or start learning something that excites you, like a language or skill.
Balancing Connection and Solitude
Learning about the shape of our nervous systems and how we regulate is a rewarding process. One important dynamic to keep an eye on is what role being solitary and what role being in connection plays. We’re each different when it comes to what leaves us feeling regulated or dysregulated.
Co-Regulation: Sometimes the best way to regulate is by connecting with someone else. This could be having a heartfelt conversation, playing games, cuddling a loved one, or sharing a laugh or a cry with a friend. Co-regulating through volunteering or otherwise being of service is another powerful practice to try - there’s a lot of compelling research that indicates that being of service to something we find important deeply supports our nervous systems and sense of belonging. Alternatively, sometimes being around others might leave us feeling dysregulated.
Intentional Solitude: At other times, taking the time to come back to ourselves and spending intentional time alone to reflect, journal, or practice mindfulness can be a powerful way to process and recalibrate to life. However! Sometimes being in solitude might exasperate feelings of dysregulation. It’s about learning what works for each of us.
Tapping into Pleasure and Joy
Small moments of joy signal safety to your nervous system and can help create a foundation of regulation. More on this here - as a somatic sex educator I’m a big believer in the role of pleasure in supporting the nervous system. This could look like:
Slowly eating and savouring a favorite meal or dessert.
Spending time in nature, whether it’s hiking a challenging trail or lying in the grass.
Giving yourself permission to play, laugh, and explore what feels good.
Cultivating purpose & meaning and giving space to what you find important.
Moving Forward with Compassion
The journey of nervous system regulation is about practicing getting curious and present with your different states in a curious and non-judgemental way. As you learn more about how your system operates, you learn more about how to work with your system, which increases choice and freedom in your life. By learning about your nervous system, you can support yourself in ways that feel deeply aligned with your unique needs and path in life. Curious to learn more about this? Check out my article on playing with your nervous system states.