Lessons from the Sea: Musings of an Accidental Sea Swimmer (part two of four)
Lesson two: The power of befriending our nervous system
Why was it that I could not convince my body that I was not going to die? I logically knew I was ‘safe’ in the pool but even with my new found gusto I could not get my body to agree with me. I continued to gasp for breath and experience ‘blind panic’.
I happened to have just bought a copy of Peter Levine’s book- ‘Waking the Tiger’. He talks about a strategy to thank our nervous system, to remember it is only trying to keep us safe. So I went to the pool with a float and very slowly swam and instead of getting annoyed at myself for not being to ‘reason with my body’ I thanked my nervous system for trying to keep me safe and tried instead to sooth these part of me, reassuring them. Eventually my body began to come round to swimming with my face in the water and now all these years on, it feels really weird not to. I am always so amazed at our human ability to change and transform and find new ways of being. This is only a tiny example of what is within us all. I so love to witness the process of transformation in others, it is a big reason of why I love to coach.
This experience sparked my curiosity on go on and study our nervous systems at length, in particular Stephen Porges and Deb Dana’s work on Polyvagal theory ( I now work on Deb Dana’s training course). I love what the theory says -that our nervous system is always reading our environment for cues of safety and danger and it does not do ‘appropriate’ it just does what it does. I find this notion to be very liberating and really helps to manage the ‘second arrow’ as Tara Brach calls it of annoyance or shame that can occur after an experience, where our nervous system gets in the way of us showing up as we want to. The times when it reads our environment as unsafe when our logical mind thinks otherwise. For example, when I once stood up to do a talk to MBA students and I could not speak or when we find ourselves getting defensive in a conversation.
The Vagus nerve is known as ‘the wander’. It is a very long nerve that starts in a brain stem, goes across our ears, eyes, jaw, neck, heart, diaphragm and down into our digestive track. It is associated with our nervous system response. Activities that bring tone to our Vagus nerve is very resourcing for our system- cold water swimming, singing, yoga, chanting, connecting with nature, meditation, socially engaging with someone who makes you feel good- are some of the ways we can punctuate our day to bring more ‘vagal tone’ and ultimately have more access to our resources in life. During the pandemic it was regular ‘punctuations’ of sea swimming, being in nature, time with my family, a yoga/qi gong practice and connecting with people through learning that sustained me. I noticed many of us had the innate wisdom to orientated towards these kind of practices during the pandemic. I believe we all know what serves us best and what sustains us. I love what Celtic mythology says sometimes we are just meant to forget and the journey is one of remembering. Reminding ourselves as Toko-pa says how to ‘sing us out of this muddle’.
