Yesterday I wrote about how parts and theory vocabulary can pull a person up and out of their body.
Today I want to go into the flip side. What it actually looks like to explain nervous system regulation in a way that re-connects us.
That brings people back into their bodies and the visceral, biological territory underneath all the language.
What does that mean in practice?
It comes down to what the vocabulary points us to.
When the words we use only point back to concepts and theory, we leave people with categories. Maybe a diagnosis-shaped word for what's happening to them, without any way to adjust it in real time.
When the words we use point back into their own physical reality...
into their hands, eyes, breath, voice, listening, body, limbs...
we give them something they can immediately notice and experiment with.
That's the move.
And it gets even more powerful when we get specific about what to notice.
There are three aspects in particular we can point people toward.
Speed.
Power.
Direction.
- How fast they're speaking or reaching, or how fast their eyes are moving around.
- How much intensity is in their voice or their hands.
- Where their eyes are pointed, or where their hands are reaching towards.
These are the things they can immediately feel and experiment with.
They can slow their voice and notice what shifts.
Or rest their eyes on something specific and feel what changes in their body.
This is what gives them agency over their own state.
Something they can adjust in real time, in their own body, while they're in it.
And there's something else that happens when we teach this way.
Embodied awareness activates a different set of brain networks than vocabulary alone.
- The networks that build and update the brain-body map.
- The networks that let a person become more accurate about themselves and have something solid to work from when they want to make adjustments.
The biomechanical micro-movements that we're naming ARE the SOURCE of the vibrations and frequencies that are creating ripples of effects around them.
The speed of someone's eyes.
The power in their hands.
The direction their voice carries.
These are the actual signals that move through the air and into the nervous systems of everyone around them.
They are how an inner state becomes something other people can feel.
So when we explain nervous system regulation in terms of the body's actual mechanics... in terms of what someone can sense and adjust right now... we hand them more than a concept.
We hand them a concrete tool they experiment with and adjust: their own body
Once we start explaining nervous system regulation this way, it can help the the people we're trying to help feel like the agents of their own state.
Wishing you agency, awareness and grace for your movements this week.
These are some of the threads I weave through Teach the Nervous System.
The vocabulary that brings the people you work with back into their own bodies and gives them frameworks they can actually adjust. It's about building an accurate brain-body map instead of a library of categories.
When the science, the language, and the embodied authority are all in you, the people you work with feel it. Even when they can't articulate it. That's where Nervous System Leadership really starts to emerge. A unique voice in a field where most people are working from the same theories.
You can take a look HERE
References
Macrine, S. L., & Fugate, J. M. B. (Eds.). (2022). Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning. MIT Press. https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5306/Movement-MattersHow-Embodied-Cognition-Informs
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093639
Tettamanti, M., Buccino, G., Saccuman, M. C., Gallese, V., Danna, M., Scifo, P., Fazio, F., Rizzolatti, G., Cappa, S. F., & Perani, D. (2005). Listening to action-related sentences activates fronto-parietal motor circuits. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(2), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1162/0898929053124965
