Nervous System Science: How We Learn to See Beyond Our Past

As children, we don't get to choose what our environment is or what kind of system we are a part of.

Since we don't get to choose, we must adapt.

That's part of our nature as complex adaptive systems.
Plasticity and adaptability is our nature.

The building blocks we ‘master’

Because we are generally around the same network of people over and over again when we are little, there is a sort of 'mastery'* of the reactions and predictive algorithms that make sense according to what is happening around us.

(*ie., repetition enough times to the point of defaulting to)

By mastering those responses and patterns of behavior, we make our first environment manageable for us to navigate.

Holding onto our past to help us navigate our future helps our brain conserve energy in our earliest environments. In that sense, we can see it as an 'adaptive process'.

But it also poses a risk.

What can be 'adaptive' in one environment is not necessarily adaptive in another.

 Those same default patterns may not be as helpful as we expand out of that system and enter a much more complex world

What makes a system TRULY adaptive is if it updates its algorithms and patterns according to new data, new scenarios, and an ability to do that continuously.

The filter:

The challenge is that - in order to keep being efficient, the brain constantly filters new incoming data through algorithms built from a much older environment.

This means.. a whole world of signals and data are not even perceived or noticed by us.

So we continue to ‘see the world’ through the filters.

And the cycle continues, without a lot of room to explore new types of interpretations, reactions.

Emotions as information

This is where it helps to treat the whole world of 'emotions', our own and the reactions we perceive in others, as data.

From that slightly more observational view, an emotional state can be something we 'read' rather than something that pulls us into our predictions.

Our awareness can then expand to take in signals and patterns we would have otherwise missed while running on past-based algorithms.

To be truly adaptive, we must UPDATE... we must stay open and receptive to emerging, live data.

If you find yourself having similar reactions and similar things happening in your life, the way out of the loop is to become as receptive to present-moment data as often as you can.

How?

By  increasing the number of moments each day we allow ourselves to fully feel our own body, breath, what our facial muscles and hands are doing at various points, how our voice sounds and feels (pace, tone, volume)...

All of these ‘mindful moments’ build brain circuitry that help us pay attention to what is actually occurring NOW, as 'live data'.  This ability  trains our mind-brain-body circuitry to update, update, update.

Wishing you mindful moments of appreciating how adaptive you are…

Stefanie

ps. - Updating is a lot easier with adaptive, multi-dimensional maps.

When you have more precise language and terrain for exploring what internal states are signaling (in yourself and in the people in front of you), you start picking up patterns that were always there but weren't noticed.

Those types of maps and navigational tools are what we build inside Teach the Nervous System.

A question I get asked is:  is the course for helping a person improve their own self-reguation abilities or for practitioners and coaches to teach others how to expand self-reguation abilities?

Teach the Nervous System explores BOTH as parallel journeys and processes.

Our own emanations serve to help others regulate their own.

In case you've already signed up, or are interested, these modules explore this further:

Module 3: Co-Regulation First: your state as an intervention. Before any tool, framework or words, your nervous system state is already transmitting.

Module 8: From One Nervous System to a Regulated Field: One regulated nervous system in a room changes the information available to every other nervous system in that room.

Module 9: Becoming the Signal: Teaching others about anything related to self-regulation is itself a regulation practice. Each time you explain it, embody it, and hold it in a room,  you strengthen the networks available for that in yourself.

$44. 9 Modules. Lifetime access.

→ GRAB IT HERE

pps -  for those of you who have inquired about the upcoming live Super-Regulators Neuroscience Academy, I will send you updates soon!