Do you remember the story of Goldilocks and the three bears? 

One porridge was too hot, one too cold and one just right. 

Well, your Nervous System is the same. 

When it’s just right you have a Regulated Nervous System.

In this optimal window, you can handle stress effectively in a healthy, adaptive way. You move fluidly between different states of energy in response to life and when you encounter a stressful situation you adapt, don’t feel overwhelmed, and fully recover afterward.

Sounds pretty great no? It gets even better….

You’ll also:

  • have great, balanced energy

  • feel relaxed, confident and secure

  • be more present, engaged

  • communicate well

  • feel safe, curious, and generally feel comfortable in your skin

The Good News:

When your Nervous System is regulated you are better able to take on the inevitable ups and downs of life with relative ease.


The Not-So-Good News:

When you’re outside this optimal window it means you’ve reached/surpassed your stress limit.  

(Because, of course, if your Nervous System can be regulated it can also be dysregulated.)

And a dysregulated nervous system makes it much harder to navigate life, control emotions and take the kind of daily actions that align with your values and goals.

Making an educated guess after nearly 20 years in practice, there’s a strong possibility that you may be operating outside your optimal window … unless you’ve made Nervous System regulation a priority, which I will argue you really, really should. 

Why? 

Your Nervous System.

A sophisticated network connecting your brain to the rest of your body, your Nervous System controls & regulates, well, everything:

  • your emotional and mental state

  • immune system

  • hormones

  • digestive system

  • and every other body system

Plus it’s the foundation of your lived experience by:

  • connecting your body and mind

  • and connecting you to everyone in your life and your higher purpose

You literally live your entire life through your Nervous System.

In other words? It’s a pretty big deal. 

Ok so let’s get oriented and then figure out what you can do to get closer/back to your regulated state (aka make sure your Goldilocks porridge is just right).

Specifically, we’ll be talking about a portion of your Central Nervous System called your Autonomic Nervous System or you can use the word automatic because it controls and regulates everything that runs without you giving it any thought.

(Think digesting your food, growing eyelashes and fingernails, and basically all that cool stuff.)

Your Autonomic (Automatic) Nervous System is then further divided into two more branches most easily thought of as your gas pedal and brake pedal. 

Gas Pedal: The Sympathetic Nervous System

When faced with stress your Sympathetic Nervous System activates your fight or flight response. Stress hormones are released to increase your heart rate, breathing speed, and blood pressure to get you out of the situation and to safety.

Brake Pedal: The Parasympathetic Nervous System

Your Parasympathetic Nervous System is responsible for relaxation and recovery, digestion, immune response and tissue repair.

Nerdy Science Aside: your Parasympathetic Nervous System is further divided into Ventral Vagal and Dorsal Vagal (or think your regular brake and your emergency brake). Ventral Vagal is within that optimal window of a regulated Nervous System so when we talk about dysregulation we’re talking Dorsal Vagal which is the freeze or fawn response to stress.


Alright now back to Goldilocks….

The porridge that was too hot?

Your system is stuck in too much gas pedal.

Or what we call Sympathetic Dominant.

Too cold?

You’re living with too much brake pedal. Y

ou are Parasympathetic (Dorsal Vagal) Dominant.


Both are outside your optimal window and mean your Nervous System is dysregulated.

Pretty simple right? 

Important note:

When your Nervous System is Regulated every day things will happen to activate your Sympathetic Nervous System (gas pedal) appropriately and then your Parasympathetic Nervous System (brake pedal) appropriately within your optimal window. 

This is perfectly normal. You wouldn’t want to stay in a content state when a tiger wandered into your garden now would you?


The key to remember ….

Within your optimal window, your Nervous System is regulated and you will flow easily into the energy your life needs at any given moment. 


When you’re in your optimal window and you encounter stress your Sympathetic Nervous System will take control and give you the energy you need to handle a deadline at work, traffic on your drive, exercise etc… then when it passes you will easily return to your calm, balanced state through your Parasympathetic (Ventral Vagal) Nervous System. 

This is the healthy expression of a flexible, Regulated Nervous System. 

Dysregulated Nervous System

So now you know the regular fluctuations in your optimal window are NOT the same as your Nervous System being stuck in a Dysregulated State.

There are 2 stuck states: 

(1) Sympathetic Dominant  

Your Sympathetic Nervous System triggers your body's response to stress and danger.

This response is characterized by increased heart rate, blood pressure, and the release of stress hormones and can lead to some of the following ways you may feel (not an exhaustive list but you’ll get the idea):

  • Anxious

  • Irritable

  • Restless

  • Tense

  • Hypervigilant

  • Easily startled

  • Rapid heartbeat

  • Difficulty concentrating

  • Insomnia

  • Anger

  • Impatience

  • Nervousness

  • Rapid breathing

  • Shortness of breath

  • Sweating

  • Headaches

  • Tremors

  • Nausea

  • Appetite changes

  • Digestive problems

  • Chest pain

  • Irritable bowel Syndrome

  • Neck and shoulder tension

  • Midback tightness

  • Restless Legs

  • Jaw clenching

When you’re Sympathetic Dominant ….

Others may describe you as:

a perfectionist, striving, working more and trying harder, a high achiever


You may feel:

anxious, frustrated, unable to switch off or relax, irritable, like you start arguments, hypersensitive and reactive

You may find yourself: 

doing a lot without being productive, disorganized and reactive, not thinking about whether what you are doing aligns with your values and the way you want to live your life, hurrying, multitasking, relying on wine or comfort food to artificially soothe your Nervous System

(2) Parasympathetic (Dorsal Vagal) Dominant 

This is not the same thing as being calm and relaxed (remember that’s the Ventral Vagal optimal window and a regulated state). This is when you have too little energy and alertness in the body. It is characterized by low energy and difficulty becoming energized or motivated.

Here’s what you might notice if you’re stuck here: 

  • Fatigue

  • Low energy levels

  • Sleepiness

  • Dislike of exercise

  • Low motivation

  • Decreased heart rate

  • Low blood pressure

  • Slow respiration rate

  • Decreased muscle tone and tension

  • Low mood or depression

  • Difficulty in concentrating

  • Decreased sexual function

  • Poor wound healing

  • Migraines

  • Chronic pain

  • Low back pain 

  • constipation

When you’re Parasympathetic (Dorsal Vagal) Dominant …

Others may describe you as:

spacey, apathetic, a procrastinator, withdrawn, low energy, unenthusiastic


You may feel:

like you can’t muster the energy to deal with life’s demands, numb, exhausted, feeling hopeless and helpless, flat, sluggish, detached, like you have brain fog and no concentration/focus 


You may find yourself: 

having a hard time thinking clearly about your future, saying things like ‘why bother’ and ‘I give up’, feeling stuck, relying on caffeine and sugar to keep you going, not feeling connected to joy and what used to make you happy 

Here’s a real-life example:

When it comes to Tonal Chiropractic we start with measuring your Nervous System Regulation.

Below you’ll see one of the functional tests we use (for all my practice members we know you’re in your optimal window when your Corescore is over 80 (adults)/85 (kids)).

There’s a lot of information in these scans but let’s focus on the basics, think of a bullseye 🎯:

Green Zone = optimal window for Nervous System Regulation

Left of the line = Sympathetic Dominant (too much gas pedal)

Right of the line = Parasympathetic ( Dorsal Vagal) Dominant (too much brake pedal)

Now that you know what you’re looking at here’s who you’re looking at: 

Do you ever meet someone and instantly think they are maybe the nicest person in the world? That was J. She was having nearly daily headaches to the point of nausea and popping Advil like it was her job. It wasn’t and her worried coworker sent J (somewhat unwillingly) into my office. 

As I got to know J a few more things emerged: 

She was feeling really overwhelmed with work and life. She felt she was grumpy most of the time and short with everyone, as she put it ‘her family got the leftover crappy parts of her’ and she felt like she was ‘failing everywhere’.

She woke up with her mind racing in the middle of the night and worried about getting everything done, her life as she described it was ‘a series of to-do lists’. She did make time every day for a morning meditation and walk, loved her job and had a close-knit family and group of high school girlfriends.

Overall she couldn’t understand why she was ‘always feeling on the edge of losing it’.  


(Incidentally, she also couldn’t understand what all of this had to do with the headaches that she felt were from her ‘terrible posture’ and too much time on her phone.)

So let’s take a look at her initial scan again.

What do you think?

Pretty clearly too much gas right?  

Despite her good habits, she was nowhere near her optimal window. 

The follow-up scan is 5 months later. And you can see she’s right in that bullseye.

Can you guess how J was feeling? 

Well, she actually forgot she’d been having such frequent and intense headaches literally making me show where she’d written that. But beyond that, and I’d argue even more importantly, she felt ‘so much more relaxed and happy, more patient with her kids and shocked at how much better she could feel’. 

That’s the power of a Regulated Nervous System.

So what can you do?

The first step in getting your Nervous System back on track is to figure out where you are in the first place. 

Reading through the lists above you very likely have a sense or gut feel of what sounds most like you. If you want to know definitively I invite you to come get your scans. You can read more about it here. 

Again your goal is not a flatline state. With a regulated system, you will go up and down depending on what’s happening in your day. You get an email that makes you feel worried or you talk to a friend that’s going through something hard or. tiger wanders into your garden and you fluctuate normally within your healthy adaptive window. 

If you feel like you’re in your optimal window or know you want to start moving in one direction or the other here are the two things you’ll need to know to get started:

Up-regulation = Sympathetic (gas pedal) activation 

Down-regulation = Parasympathetic (brake pedal) activation 

In fact, you probably already do this without realizing it. 

Have you ever used deep breathing to calm yourself down when you’re feeling overwhelmed or worried? This is a great example of down-regulating your Nervous System. 


What about a brisk walk to re-energize when you’re feeling tired or blah? This would be up-regulating your Nervous System. 

The goal is always to stay in relative balance within the optimal zone for you. Meaning you will naturally fluctuate within this zone depending on what’s happening. It’s healthy and adaptive to feel mobilized to take action when you’re angry and to need to pause and rest for a moment when you’re sad. 

When it becomes problematic is if your Nervous System is stuck in a dysregulated state. This means you will be working extra hard trying to get any sort of balance back and nothing will seem to work or stick. You may find yourself relying on artificial regulation habits (alcohol, overworking, oversleeping, emotional eating etc) here’s a relatable real-world example assuming you have a smartphone …

 

Too much gas/High Sympathetic Activation and Your Phone

When you are up in a state of hyperarousal, maybe even feeling anxious you might reach for your phone and go on the hunt for more information to help you find a sense of security. Your thinking brain is telling you that you need to research, plan and take control so it feels soothing to your Nervous System to take action. But in your body, scrolling non-stop will actually increase anxiety.

Too much brake/High Parasympathetic Activation and Your Phone
When you feel flat or emotionally numb you will reach for your phone to seek a sense of connection. Your Nervous System wants to feel a sense of connection with yourself, other people, and the world around you. And, of course, endless scrolling is not real connection and ends up making you feel less connected and potentially more alone.

Ok, so what can you do if the answer isn’t scrolling on your phone?

Let’s do a deeper dive into some effective ways to up and down-regulate depending on what you need. 

Note: if nothing seems to be working that’s when you know you are stuck and need some outside help.

Upregulating 

Upregulating is when you're revving up your Nervous System to get more energy and focus - think of it as hitting the gas. This is helpful when you need to be alert, energized, ‘on’,  and focused. 

If you're feeling a little down or sluggish there are a few  upregulating practices to try: 

  • Move your body: Take a brisk walk, work out, or lift weights. When you exercise, your body releases endorphins - these are natural chemicals that make you feel good and give you a boost of energy.

  • Turn on upbeat music: Put on your favourite playlist. Music has the power to change your mood, and listening to upbeat tunes can help boost your energy levels.

  • Breathwork: Breathe in quickly and exhale quickly in short bursts for 3-8 breaths.

  • Stimulate Your Brain: Challenge your brain or stimulate your senses by solving puzzles, playing games, or doing something creative.

  • Power Pose: Putting your arms in a V shape in the air tractions your Vagal Nerve and makes you feel confident and energized.

  • Get some sunlight: Natural light can help regulate your body's natural rhythms and boost your energy levels. In the winter you can use a SAD lamp in the morning and early afternoon. 

  • Drink caffeine: If it agrees with you caffeine can help increase arousal and alertness, but be mindful of your intake - too much and you’ll reach anxiety or jitters and it may interfere with your sleep at night.

Downregulating

Downregulating the Nervous System involves decreasing arousal and anxious/restless energy - think of it as hitting the brakes. This helps you to relax and unwind.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, irritable, or anxious try these downregulating practices:

  • Deep breathing: Focusing on your breath and taking slow, deep breaths can help activate the relaxation response by slowing down the heart rate and reducing stress and tension in the body. Try a 4-7-8 breath where you inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 7, and exhale for a count of 8. This practice is more calming if you actually count.

  • Mindfulness meditation: Mindfulness meditation is a technique that involves focusing on the present moment and letting go of distracting thoughts. Try 5-4-3-2-1 … say out loud 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you feel, 2 things you smell, and 1 thing you taste. This works extremely well if you have panic attacks or feel very anxious. And yes, you really do have to say everything out loud.

  • Visualization/guided imagery: Guided imagery involves using your imagination to visualize a peaceful scene or situation.

  • Progressive muscle relaxation: Progressive muscle relaxation is a technique that involves tensing and relaxing different muscle groups. If you want to try this there are lots of resources online including here

  • Listen to calming music: Put on a playlist of soothing music, it can have a positive effect on your brain by promoting the production of delta waves, which are associated with reducing anxiety and stress.

  • Nature: Spending time in nature can help activate the relaxation response by providing a sense of calm and tranquility.

  • Yoga and Tai Chi: Yoga and Tai Chi are ancient practices that combine physical postures, breathing exercises, and meditation.

By understanding your body’s optimal window of regulation you know when it's time to shift gears. And it is well-researched and proven that a Regulated Nervous System will improve your overall well-being, in fact, it’s impossible to feel your best and show up how you most want to in life if you’re in a dysregulated state so try some of the above suggestions and find what works best for YOU and your Nervous System.

You are so much more than worth it. 🤍