3 Ways to Regulate the Nervous System

Here are insights into the intricate pairing of physiology and well-being

- Marianna Pogosyan

Imagine having a front-row seat to your nervous system.

How would your experience change if you could see, in real time, how the billions of cells and neurons of your brain and body orchestrate your engagement with your environment, how they respond to your thoughts, emotions, and actions, and how they render love, joy, grief, and rage possible?

Such a comprehensive dossier on what it means to be human might not yet be available to us. However, we can do much with the body-mind data that is already within our reach.

Psychologist Inna Khazan is a biofeedback expert. Biofeedback—often conducted through instruments that measure functions such as heart rate and muscle tension—allows us glimpses into the intricate pairing of physiology and well-being. It turns out we can help our nervous systems do what they're designed to do.

“Through simple exercises, we can produce powerful effects that propagate throughout the whole body and mind,” says Dr. Khazan. “This can make the task of regulating ourselves and our emotions a lot easier than it otherwise appears.”

Here are three questions and three tools for self-regulation from Dr. Khazan:

What is self-regulation?

Self-regulation is the nervous system's ability to achieve the sweet spot of activation, which varies depending on the circumstances we are facing. Once the challenge is over, self-regulation helps us to fully recover to a homeostatic state.

No matter what we are doing, the body needs to surf a wave of cognitive, emotional, or physiological activation. Since our activation levels are constantly changing, we are continuously adjusting to our circumstances. Managing through that wave of activation effectively and efficiently tends to produce our best results.

Why is self-regulation important?