The Nervous System Realm is a hypervisual Realm for me. Whereas other Embodied Realms may give more information in knowing or sensation, the nervous system is like going to an electric light show, or watching a city power grid, or a bioluminescent bay.

It’s incredibly detailed because the details matter.

So, if there’s an energetic issue with the myelin sheath on a particular neuron, it’s going to zoom me way in to see if it’s in the adipose tissue itself or if it’s disrupted Nodes of Ranvier and frequencies can’t make that jump to deliver the message.

I can also see when there’s a “power supply issue,” as I like to call them. Sometimes there can be a nervous system “overload,” and your Nervous System Realm will prioritize which areas need the most conductivity or support. So more power and connectivity may be directed to your heart, lungs, and digestive system communication, and less to motor neurons.

And while there are hundreds of thousands of different ways the nervous system could show up because of the detail, I can’t go into all of them in this post. So instead, I’ve broken down the overarching patterns into this Nervous System Realm series.

In this post, you’ll learn the basics of your nervous system, polyvagal theory, and what you experience energetically when your nervous system is in safe-and-social mode.

I encourage reading this post first, followed by this one, which details the energetics of fight, flight, fawn, and freeze. After that, head to the third and final post in this series about functional freeze.

Let’s Start With The Foundations of Your Nervous System

Rather than just throwing terms out like fight or flight, parasympathetic and sympathetic, I wanted to share a foundation that helps simplify the organization of the nervous system. This is for orientation only, you don’t have to memorize it:

Missing from most nervous system graphics (including this one) is the enteric nervous system of your gut, which is the third branch of your autonomic nervous system.

Also note, you may hear people refer to motor neurons as efferent nerves (moving away from the central nervous system) and sensory neurons as afferent nerves (moving towards the central nervous system).

Now within this classification sits polyvagal theory, which helps you to conceptualize and understand how you move between states in the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This theory is based on the polyvagal nerve, the primary branch of the autonomic nervous system, and is often conceptualized as a ladder with nervous system states that you move up and down along* (which is both true and not true in practice, but helpful for a visual).

Notice that the autonomic nervous system controls involuntary responses, because this is also important. If you’re trying to logic your way around your ANS, it’s not going to work.

*You know I’m a non-hierarchical advocate, so instead of a ladder that has a higher and lower state of being, I imagine it more like a slider that goes side-to-side and we’re constantly adjusting where we are on this slider.

Classifications like this can help us understand our anatomy, physiology, and behavior, but when looking at real bodies, they aren’t so neat and tidy. There are continual studies about the nervous system that challenge and change what we think we know, and I’ll also caution you to remember that polyvagal theory is a theory.

What Does Your Nervous System Realm Look Like When You’re Safe and Social?

The safe-and-social, or ventral vagal state of your nervous system is what’s often described (and misunderstood) as “being regulated.” There’s a common misconception when nervous system work gets distilled down on social media that nervous system regulation means always being calm, relaxed, safe, and social.

What’s more true, is that nervous system regulation is the ability for our nervous system to move into and out of different nervous system states and return to ventral vagal when safety is present.

So what does that look like in the body energetically?

Safe and social energetic states looks like the entire “power grid” has equal distribution, there’s a consistent color and frequency of energy moving throughout your body, and there’s no rush in the channel or conduit.

I also like to double check that each nerve terminates with the energy able to reach it’s destination.

Sometimes your nervous system appears to be in a safe and social nervous system state, but other Realms are experiencing a disruption, so the data from the conduit of your nervous system can’t actually communicate with it’s intended recipient. The energy in the motor neurons may not deliver the message, or the sensory neurons may not respond with accurate information.

In this case, the brain and central nervous system are missing critical information from one of the Realms (most often Muscle or Organ), and it can lead to a facade or fragile feeling of safety. This is often the case in functional freeze, but I wanted to mention it here because looks can be deceiving. That’s why detail matters so much in this Realm.

Setting Goals for Your Nervous System Realm

When we work together in the Nervous System Realm, my goal is for you to leave in an authentic state of ventral vagal where you feel safe and social. 

To do this, you release and integrate what’s got your body in fight/flight/fawn/freeze or an extended functional freeze.

Is this a do-it-once and never think about your nervous system again? No. BUT, when you understand how to work with your Nervous System Realm energetically, you have tools to return to a safe and social state much more effectively.Ready to explore what your nervous system is ready to share with you? Schedule an Energy Archaeology Session to discover the unique patterns in your electric light show.