Your Nervous System Doesn't Need to Be Calm All the Time

Regulation is really about flexibility

The word regulation gets used constantly in wellness spaces.

It can make it sound as though the goal of nervous-system work is to become permanently calm.

It isn't.

A healthy nervous system moves.

It becomes activated when something requires action.

It gives you energy when you need to respond.

It lets you feel excitement, urgency, focus and motivation.

And when the demand passes, it can settle again.

That ability to move between activation and recovery is what matters.

In other words, nervous-system regulation is really about flexibility.

You want to be able to mobilize when something is happening without remaining stuck in that state long after the situation has passed.

Sleep is one of the major opportunities the body has for recovery. Research examining sleep through the allostatic-load framework has found an association between sleep disturbance and greater allostatic load.

This is part of why poor sleep can create such a frustrating cycle.

Stress interferes with recovery.

Poor recovery makes the next demand harder to absorb.

Then something relatively small happens—a delayed train, a difficult email, a bad night's sleep—and suddenly your system has very little room left.

That does not necessarily mean you have become bad at coping.

You may simply be depleted.

Small periods of recovery count

Recovery does not require a two-hour morning routine.

Sometimes it means walking without simultaneously listening to something.

Eating without answering emails.

Giving yourself ten minutes between work and whatever comes next.

Spending time somewhere green.

Turning down the lights at night.

Noticing whether there is any point in your day where no one—and nothing—is asking you for anything.

Breathing can also be useful because it is one of the few physiological functions that is automatic but can also be intentionally changed.

Research on voluntary slow breathing has found changes in heart-rate variability associated with parasympathetic activity.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to meditate for thirty minutes.

Sometimes a few minutes of deliberately slower breathing simply gives the body another experience:

There is nothing I need to rush toward right now.

Sources

Christensen DS, Zachariae R, Amidi A, Wu LM. Sleep and allostatic load: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2022.

Laborde S, et al. Effects of voluntary slow breathing on heart rate and heart rate variability: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 2022.