Me & My Nervous System
Your nervous system IS you.
I love the rise of somatic and embodiment practices. I love the attention the nervous system gets these days.
and...
I notice sometimes the language is used just like we've used "the mind," to make distinctions within the body. Saying "my nervous system" instead of saying "me."
My nervous system is me. It is my brain and every nerve in my body. It is what senses, perceives, reacts, and responds. It is what forms thoughts. It is what enacts behaviors. It is what reflects on thoughts and updates belief systems, the way a 3D printer prints its own updated parts--a slightly-less-shitty-version at a time.
My nervous system chooses my thoughts.
I choose my thoughts.
My nervous system experiences and expresses emotion.
I experience and express emotion.
My nervous system is hyperaroused, in fear.
I am hyperaroused, in fear.
My nervous system makes me reactive.
I enact reactive behavior.
My nervous system relaxes around certain people.
I relax around certain people.
Do you see how the I-statements bring these things home? What do we stand to gain from the disassociation, saying "my nervous system" instead of "me?" Is this a shame-avoidance technique, where we might instead reclaim some humility?
I am the system AND the observer, the system is a self-observing system. What I notice about myself is me, and the one who notices is also me. What I condemn, what I wrangle, what I regulate, me, me, me.
When I divide myself and apply the usual binary, good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, right and wrong, I can never be more of a success than I am a failure. I can never be more of a winner than I am a loser. I can never be more of a savior than a convict.
When I am whole, I can be humble. When I am me, I am what I am. I am the system and its natural, guaranteed limits, those known and those I will discover. I am a system serving itself ever more choicefully, ever more exquisitely.
I love this perspective and I do differentiate these *sometimes*. Mostly because I think what we say after “I am” is veryyyy powerful and I actually don’t think I am my body at all. Is my body an incredible universe of sensation and autonomic processes that I don’t control, and some I can collaborate with? I think so. Which is helpful for many who are stuck in a black hole of thinking their body is against them or their body is the only thing worthy of love and attention. I think the distinction often empowers us to walk away from shaming ourselves or not getting caught up in focusing too much on the physical form. Because especially traumatized bodies, the messages being sent sometimes are not anywhere close to “real”. So there is also a distinction of what is actually real and what we are perceiving as real -- and this can be tricky too.
I look at things through the 3 body module, there’s the physical body which speaks via emotions, the mental body speaks through thoughts, and the energy body speaks through presence. When we can become the observer of our own experience, we can see how these bodies are infinitely intertwined and crucial for our experience here on this earth in these flesh suits and how we can care for them, embrace them, allow them to define our experiences and create more experiences, embrace our wild primal urges, and respect the human experience we are having