Healing the nervous system
Healing the nervous system became one thread running through my recent conversation with Caroline Rena on her Awakening Soul Divinity podcast. We began with my own experiences of childhood stress, chronic pain, anxiety, and recovery, but our conversation quickly expanded into something much bigger. We explored what the body remembers, how patterns repeat, why healing cannot be forced, and what becomes possible when we learn to listen to ourselves with greater curiosity and compassion.
One moment in our conversation captured so much of what I have learned through my own healing journey. Caroline said, “The body is the doorway.” I responded with something I have experienced again and again: “The breath is the bridge.”
Those two ideas offer a beautiful place to begin.
Healing the nervous system begins with learning to listen to the body. In my conversation with Caroline Rena on Awakening Soul Divinity, we explore breath, chronic pain, anxiety, recovery, inherited patterns, self-trust, and why healing cannot be forced.
LISTEN HERE.
The Body Is the Doorway
I grew up in an environment where I learned to walk on eggshells. My nervous system learned to stay watchful because it did not always know what might happen next. As I shared with Caroline, when we repeatedly experience life this way, watchfulness can become a familiar stress pattern.
For many years, I also lived with chronic pain and anxiety. Eventually, my healing journey taught me that I could not think my way through everything my body had experienced. I needed to develop a different relationship with my body.
That relationship required me to listen.
For example, I now notice when my body contracts while my mind races toward whatever comes next. Instead of automatically following that urgency, I can recognize the tension as information. Then I have an opportunity to return to the moment I am actually living.
This practice sounds simple, but it represents an important change for someone whose body has become accustomed to stress. Awareness creates a space where another response becomes possible.
The Breath Is the Bridge
During our interview, Caroline and I talked extensively about breath, yoga, meditation, and nervous-system regulation. I shared experiences from my own yoga practice when unfamiliar movements brought strong physical responses into my awareness. Instead of pushing my body, I learned to work with my breath and give my system time.
And that distinction matters.
I have learned that my mind-body-spirit system heals at the rate that it heals. When I try to force the process, I can create more resistance. Therefore, I practice meeting myself with patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-compassion.
The breath can become part of that relationship. A gentle, comfortable breath can help bring our attention back into the body and the present moment. Rather than demanding that the body change immediately, we can give it another experience.
Your Nervous System Loves Repetition
Another important part of our conversation centered on repetition. Our brains and nervous systems learn through repeated experiences. Therefore, the patterns we practice matter.
This understanding has been central to my own recovery.
Years ago, I discovered that I struggled to show up consistently for a morning practice because a deeper belief told me that I was not worth the effort. Once I recognized that pattern, I began showing up on my yoga mat anyway. Each time I kept that commitment, I gave myself another experience of being someone I could trust.
Healing does not always arrive through one dramatic breakthrough. Sometimes we build change through the choices we make again and again.
And repetition can work in our favor.
From Inherited Patterns to Conscious Choice
Caroline and I also explored ancestral patterns and the ways families can repeat behaviors without remembering why those behaviors began. She shared the familiar story of generations of women cutting the ends off a holiday ham because an earlier generation had owned a pan that was too small. The original circumstance disappeared, but the behavior continued.
I love this story because it gives us a simple picture of how patterns can continue after their original context has disappeared.
Our emotional and relational patterns can work in similar ways. Families can repeat beliefs and behaviors around safety, trust, worthiness, emotional expression, control, and survival. Sometimes we consciously recognize those patterns. Other times, we simply know that something feels familiar.
However, inheritance does not have to become destiny.
We can become curious about what we repeat. We can ask whether a pattern still serves us. And we can begin making different choices where choices are available to us.
Healing Requires Safety, Not Force
One of the most important parts of our conversation involved the need for safety during healing work. I shared an experience with an intensive breath practice that activated my already highly stressed nervous system. The practitioner leading the experience did not have the skills I needed in that moment, so I listened to my body and left.
That experience reinforced something I now consider foundational: We do not force healing. We create conditions for healing to naturally take place.
Practices that feel supportive for one person may feel overwhelming for another. Consequently, we need to respect our individual capacity and work with appropriately trained practitioners when deeper trauma responses arise.
Your body does not need to perform healing correctly. Your body needs your attention, your curiosity, and enough safety to experience something different.
Coming Back Into Relationship With Yourself
Healing chronic pain and working with my own stress patterns required me to become friends with my body again. For a long time, living in pain made being present in my body difficult. Gradually, however, I learned to return.
I began noticing contraction instead of immediately reacting to it. I practiced breath and movement. I learned to trust my intuition more deeply. And I began recognizing the difference between the analytical mind racing ahead and the quieter information available when I returned to my body.
This process continues because healing continues.
Sometimes I still catch myself rushing toward the next task instead of experiencing what is directly in front of me. During the interview, I shared a recent example of peeling fresh ginger while worrying about time. I suddenly realized that I was missing the smell of the ginger, the feeling of it in my hands, and the experience of the moment because my mind had already traveled somewhere else.
So I came back.
That return is part of the practice.
The Greatest Healer Lives Within You
Near the end of our conversation, Caroline asked whether I had anything else I wanted to share. My answer brought me back to the message underneath so much of my work:
“The greatest healer in your life lives within you.”
For me, this statement does not mean that we heal without physicians, therapists, practitioners, teachers, community, or support. I believe deeply in skilled help and healing relationships. Instead, this idea reminds me that our bodies participate in healing in ways no outside person can command.
We can learn practices. We can receive support. We can develop awareness. Most importantly, we can build a relationship with ourselves that replaces criticism with curiosity.
Healing asks us to listen.
Listen to My Awakening Soul Divinity Interview
I am deeply grateful to Caroline Rena for inviting me onto Awakening Soul Divinity and creating space for such a wide-ranging conversation. We explored chronic pain, anxiety, nervous-system regulation, yoga, breath, meditation, ancestral patterns, self-trust, intuition, diversity, healing, and what it means to return to greater presence in our lives.
If something inside you has been asking for a different relationship with your body, I hope you will listen to our conversation. As you listen, notice what resonates. Notice what your body tells you. And perhaps begin with one gentle question:
What is my body asking me to notice today?
