Rebuild Your Inner World: How To (Actually) Regulate Your Nervous System In 30 Minutes/Day

It's not pretty, but it works

I don’t know much. I know a little.

And the little that I know may or may not help you, but here it is:

You don’t regulate your nervous system by dimming the fire.

You regulate your nervous system by allowing the fire.

It’s the only way that actually works (100% of the time).

I’ll explain why and how in a moment, but first: “Regulate Your Nervous System” is a BIG IDEA that time has (finally) caught up to.

And everybody is doing it:

From the stay at home mom to CEOs of $100M+ companies.

(And for good reason: A regulated nervous system allows you to get out of survival, return home to yourself, and lead yourself and others for the greatest good of all.)

But is how they’re doing it actually effective?

It depends, but in most cases the how usually involves the following:

• Positive thinking

• Breathwork

• Meditation

• Visualization

• Cold exposure

• Nature walks

• Exercise

• Spending time with calm/regulated people

• Stabilizing blood sugar

• Getting more sun exposure

• Lowering stress

And so on and so forth

Question is:

Does this actually work to regulate your nervous system?

I don’t think so.

Now don’t get me wrong: All the above is EXTREMELY useful for maintaining a regulated nervous system, but is it enough to actually regulate a nervous system that is currently dysregulated?

I think not.

And here’s why:

Dysregulation means there is currently a fire burning inside you (usually from the unconscious) and the dysregulation you feel (in the form of anxiety, stress, fear, whatever) is the body's internal fire alarm going off.

With that in mind:

Dysregulation is not a bad thing. It’s simply the internal fire alarm sounding off in an attempt to get your attention.

But what the above methods try to do (and where they fall short IMO) is they try to stop the fire alarm (symptoms) instead of addressing the fire (root cause).

This is obviously the wrong approach in the long run.

So if you’re currently experiencing a dysregulated nervous system and it’s affecting your performance and quality of life, don’t blame or judge or feel guilty for the fire alarm that is going off.

Be happy that you actually hear the fire alarm (it’s on your side!).

After all:

It’s only after you hear the fire alarm that you can actually do something about it.

So with that being said:

The question again becomes once you sense and experience dysregulation, how do you actually regulate your nervous system by addressing the fire instead of getting lost in trying to soothe the fire alarm?

To answer this, I’ll ask you a question:

Imagine firefighters are called to the scene of a house on fire.

And inside there is a person stuck and unable to get out.

How would the firefighters help this person?

Would they tell him to think positive?

Would they teach him a meditation technique?

Would they tell him to visualize a house with no fire?

Would they throw cold water on his face and tell him to ignore the heat?

Would they tell him to look out the window and glance at the beauty of nature?

Of course not. All that sounds silly AF.

What they would do is:

Get him out of the house and take out the fire.

Nothing less. Nothing more.

With that being said:

I used that silly example because regulating your nervous system works exactly in the same way.

In other words:

If you want to regulate your nervous system, you first have to get out of the house and allow the fire fighters to take out the fire. Once you do, the natural intelligence of the body takes over and restores you back to factory settings aka what we call a regulated nervous system.

Then at this point:

You can do cold plunges and breath work and drink kombucha (or whatever else lol) to maintain the regulation.

So with that in mind:

You’re probably now thinking to yourself:

What does it actually mean to get out of the house and allow the fire fighters to take out the fire? It’s easy to understand when it comes to a physical house on fire, but how does this apply to a nervous system that is on fire?

And that’s a good question.

Let’s take the analogy step-by-step and break down each component.

Then I’ll share a simple, but extremely powerful 30-minute daily exercise you can do to actually implement this process.

Coolio?

Let’s go…

The house on fire is your nervous system. It’s in an uproar and causing all sorts of dysfunctions that are interfering with your ability to lead a high agency life. (Why this is occurring is outside the scope of this newsletter, but to put it bluntly: You went through experiences early on in life that were too much to handle and the body stored these in the unconscious. Now they’re starting to come up again and wreak havoc. Again, not a bad thing. But it can be limiting to your life.)

The you that needs to get out of the house is your character/ego/personality. Most people unconsciously take themselves to be an image from the past. Everything they go through and everything they experience is filtered through the pixels of this image. With that in mind, it feels like life is constantly happening to this ego/image/identity

As a result, the ego/character/personality is constantly on guard and lives to protect itself. How does it do this? In many ways, but the most common one is it runs away from the Now and chases pleasure and avoids pain.

Consequence of this is the ego is always tinkering and interfering with your experience and not allowing it to be.

Big problem with this?

In order for the firefighters to actually take out the fire that is burning inside you, the ego needs to get the F out of the way. Otherwise, the ego will continuously seek out “feel good” solutions (like the ones mentioned above) that aim to address the fire alarm and not the fire itself.

Furthermore…

If the ego stays in the house, it will continue to exercise control and the way it’s wired will be in direct conflict with the firefighters (and what actually works).

This will only create more suffering and prevent the healing you so desperately seek from taking place (it’s like the man inside the house fighting the firefighters instead of listening to them).

The firefighters are the True Self aka Presence. The objective part of you that is indestructible and free from the fire. No matter how bad the fire gets, this deeper part of you never burns because it’s outside time/space and the fire is inside time/space.

Personally speaking:

I like to call this True Self the Player and the ego the Character. This Player is all knowing, eternal, blissful, attuned, and knows you better than you know yourself.

Even more:

It knows exactly what to do to take out the fire and regulate your nervous system.

Now when people hear this:

It can be difficult to grasp because the ego is usually lost in ego. So for the sake of understanding, let’s not use the words Presence or the True Self or the Player because those are just empty words.

Instead, let’s just say the firefighters are the body's natural intelligence.

Put another way:

The body already knows how to regulate/heal itself. The only reason it cannot do it is because the ego/mind/character keeps interfering with the process and getting in the way.

So with that being said:

If you want to regulate your nervous system, you have to get the ego out of the house and allow the natural intelligence of the body to lead.

It’s this intelligence of the body that takes out the fire.

So continuing on with our analogy:

The water used to take out the fire is the “allowing” mechanism of the body’s natural intelligence. In a physical fire, the firefighters take out the fire with water. But in the inner world, it’s a little different. The water used to take out the fire is the “allowing” mechanism of the body’s natural intelligence.

Put another way:

The body naturally clears things (aka takes out the fire) when it has the space to bring them to the surface and the capacity to allow them to run fully (without judgment) until the charge inside them disappears and leaves your consciousness.

Once this happens, the body is restored and healed/regulated back to factory settings (it doesn’t happen overnight, it happens over time).

But the problem of course is:

Ego doesn’t like this.

Ego wants pleasure. Ego doesn’t want pain.

This, in return, is what prevents most people from actually being able to regulate their nervous system because the only way to do it that works 100% of the time is by creating space and allowing the body to run its natural process.

Until this happens:

The system remains dysregulated because all that shit from the past is still inside you and fucking up your system.

Such is why the earlier step was to take the ego out of the house.

When you do that, then the body's natural “allowing” mechanism is free to allow whatever repressed material exists in the unconscious to come to the forefronts and be released.

This, in return, is what actually takes out the fire.

Not for a day or week or month.

But permanently.

And when it does, it doesn’t just give rise to a regulated nervous system.

But an experience of life that is high as a kite.

–

SO with that all being said:

How can you actually run this process on yourself?

You run it by slowly and gently allowing whatever the body is bringing into awareness to be there so it can arise and pass.

It can be a sensation, emotion, pain, discomfort, whatever.

Through allowing it, it will decrease (over time).

Through avoiding it, it will increase (over time).

This is the biggest mind f*ck of the inner world.

But it takes practice and reorientation.

So to help you practice this new way of life (instead of going along with the ego’s familiar tendencies), I’m going to share with you a daily exercise you can do to engage this FULL process for yourself (but first a quick and dirty disclaimer: allowing is what actually works, but it can bring up a lot for certain people. So please take this for educational purposes only and implement the exercise at your own risk/after consulting health professionals. If you’ve gone through some serious trauma, DO NOT DO THIS without proper supervision/professional help).

This exercise is probably one of the best you’ll find when it comes to this process because it actually addresses the root cause aka the fire and not the symptoms aka the fire alarm.

So take it slow and steady and practice (if it feels right).

Here it is:

(Great YouTube channel as well.)

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Now that you have the daily exercise, here’s a quick blurb on my personal experience with allowing:

I didn’t use the above exercise for my process (because I just stumbled across this video/channel the other day).

But my process was/is pretty much the same.

When I started to allow the natural intelligence of the body to take over (instead of overpowering it with the ego/mind), I went through the fucking ringer.

If you were to see me from the outside, you would think I’m going through an exorcism haha.

My body would shake violently on its own… all sorts of sensations and emotions would come up… the tension inside my fascia would unwind and sometimes it would produce a silent (or even loud) scream.

But at the same time:

Even though it would look like I’m glitching the fuck out from the outside, I would be grounded in the deeper seat of Presence and Presence would only bring up what I was capable of allowing/feeling/being with, so the process was/is perfectly attuned to me.

Even more:

When you’re rooted in Presence, it’s kind of weird. Your body is unwinding itself and allowing all the garbage of yesterday to arise and be released and you’re feeling it all, but it doesn’t really touch or impact you in the same way. When you’re lost in ego, you get burned. But when you’re in Presence, you remain free from the fire.

This allows you to allow whatever is there to arise, run fully, and clear (this is how it works in the inner world. The fire takes itself out when it runs to completion. It’s nothing the ego has to do).

So yeah.

Just sharing that to give some context!

I know this is something the ego would rather avoid, but it’s what actually works to regulate your nervous system.

So if you’ve been seeing all these headlines on social media related to regulating your nervous system and you were wanting to do it for yourself, then this is the road I would take.

Not because it’s pretty or sexy.

But because:

It’s the road that actually works.

So give it a go (if you’d like) and report back?

Cheers and talk soon.

Your friend,

/tej