*If you’ve purchased my book, PLAY THE PART, and are visiting this page before reading the Science of Transformation chapters, welcome!
Reading this information will help to deepen and more effectively apply the info in the SOT chapters and acting techniques chapters. Apply your nervous system work to the techniques in the book and prepare for magic! You’ve got this!
When I discovered nervous system healing, my entire life blew open.
I was a master in the other fields: mindset, the Law of Attraction, the science of transformation, the power of thoughts, energy work, and all the woo-woo stuff, too. But nothing was truly changing my outer experience like I knew I was capable of.
I knew my power as an energy being and how much my outlook affected my perception of my experience, but no modality had ever addressed the internal struggle I felt with these tools: there was an innate feeling deep down that I couldn’t have what I wanted.
Let me be clear: this “couldn’t” had nothing to do with worthiness or deservedness.
This felt like a physical wall in front of me with all my dreams on the other side. It felt like something tugging at me from behind, saying, “Stop! Don’t do that!” with me tugging back, shouting, “But I WANT it!! Stop pulling!”
Something always felt off about truly having what I said I wanted. And even though my emotions would flood with joy when I thought about my life’s aspirations, there was a physical sensation that I could not allow these things in.
What the hell was that feeling? It had been with me for as long as I could remember. And nothing I had read or studied had addressed it.
When I found nervous system trauma healing, I felt like a big piece of the puzzle lodged itself into place. I felt a peace I had never felt and a confidence that was hard to ignore.
All those years struggling to manifest or reach goals or “let it in” had nothing to do with my lack of skill or my “weak willpower.”
It had to do with my nervous system trying to keep me safe, alive, and with my tribe.
After I started addressing how my nervous system had been programmed, everything that hadn’t worked before made sense.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t good at manifesting techniques, it was because there was an internal alarm that went off whenever I received something and that alarm was ringing at an all-time high.
Everything else I knew about spiritual laws, energy, manifesting, and mindset work took on a new level of comprehension and application after I began conscious healing of my nervous system’s receiving setting.
All the stress, pressure, self-criticism, self-doubt, and confusion melted away when I learned more about this part of myself. I finally understood that the stuff that wasn’t working in my life had nothing to do with any actions I was taking (or not taking!).
It was all being sourced from my nervous system’s blueprint, which had decided that receiving was/is dangerous.
In all my years of spiritual work, I’ve read a lot about the nervous system, but I had never applied the work in this particular way. I had never thought about how much my nervous system plays in role in manifesting and why that internal wall seemed to be getting higher and higher the more I tried to change.
Now, I had an education as to why all the other stuff wasn’t quite getting me where I wanted to go or allowing me to experience the flow of life I knew was available to me.
Having a dysregulated or overstimulated nervous system directly affects manifesting because that becomes your dominant vibration.
When you regulate the nervous system, you naturally relax. The brain and body experience coherence and you surrender to new stimuli. Because the nervous system feels safe, you will organically align with new choices and actions. You’ll also be able to hear your intuition crystal clear.
For the next few minutes, I’ll be giving you some critical information about the nervous system so you can apply it to your other manifesting work. This new knowledge will help you relax and receive and also “brighten” all the other mindset work you may be currently using.
*If you’re here because you’ve purchased my book, PLAY THE PART, thank you for visiting this page and educating yourself on this work. This information will help you apply the techniques in the book more effectively and easily.
Vital Facts to Know About Your Nervous System
Your nervous system is one of the first things to develop during pregnancy.
During the embryonic stages (5th-10th week of pregnancy), your nervous system, brain, spinal cord, and nerves develop and grow.
All incoming information in utero is stored in your nervous system — the basis of your beliefs, thoughts, state of being, and safety settings.
If your mom was in stressful environments or around stressful people during her pregnancy, all that is stored in your nervous system! Woah!
It makes sense then, that everything you experience as you age can be sourced from your nervous system’s settings.
Until you edit those settings, change will feel inconsistent, slow, and frustrating. You’ll find yourself falling back on what your nervous system deems safe.
If you’ve had trouble manifesting consistently, it’s most likely due to a receiving block in your nervous system. More on that later in the blog.
Before we continue, I want to remind you of polyvagal theory.
Polyvagal theory states that 80% of the data we process comes UP from the body to the brain while 20% goes DOWN to the body from the brain.
What does this mean?
It means if we are exclusively working with mindset techniques, manifesting affirmations, and anything else that focuses on the brain, we are only working with that 20%! Say what?
80% of the information gets ignored or disregarded if we cut off the body and ignore the function of the nervous system, which is the source of all our thoughts.
This is not to say that working with the 20% is wrong or bad. You must also build new neural connections in your brain and work with your mindset. But it’s imperative that you also include the body, which is the other 80%.
The nervous system is why you can’t manifest consistently. After adjusting its settings, you’ll feel different and experience the flow of abundance you dream of!
Fact #1: Here’s what the nervous system wants.
The nervous system wants you safe, alive, and with your tribe of origin.
The first two are pretty obvious, but why the third?
Because back in the day, we needed to be close to our family of origin or tribe to survive and thrive. We still do this today, but because of technology, we can get away with a lot more by ourselves.
The nervous system hasn’t changed much since it first developed millions of years ago, so it behaves just like it did in the caveman days. Take that in for a moment.
No matter how many cold, hard facts you have about something, it’s your nervous system that determines whether something is safe or unsafe (called “neuroception”) based on what it learned during gestation and your childhood years.
So, if what you received as a child was dominantly negative, violent, abusive, neglectful, critical, or scary, your nervous system learned that receiving is unsafe and you’ll have a hard time manifesting more than what you currently have.
Fact #2: The nervous system doesn’t care about your manifesting or mindset work.
The nervous system doesn’t care about your dreams, desires, affirmations, manifesting techniques, or what you want out of life.
It cares about keeping you safe, alive, and with your tribe of origin.
Until you learn how to drive the nervous system, it will drive YOU.
This is why you can say affirmations until you’re blue in the face and still feel resistance to allowing those things to come to you. Until you address your nervous system’s receiving set point, you won’t experience consistent change.
To be clear, I am not dissing affirmations (they do work!), but you must combine mindset techniques with your nervous system’s settings to experience lasting and consistent change.
Fact #3: The nervous system learns through experiences.
To recalibrate the nervous system, you need new experiences that reinforce what you want.
What you want is emotional, not practical, so start to dig deep into what you want to feel safe receiving. In manifesting, you’re after a feeling, right? This is the same deal.
Some common emotional desires are:
- Belonging/Acceptance
- Love/Affection/Connection
- Recognition/Acknowledgement/Being “seen”/Being “witnessed”
- Inner peace/contentment
- Inner safety/security
- Self-love/self-acceptance/self-approval
- Satisfaction/Wholeness
Because the nervous system learns its settings through experiences, you need different experiences to adjust its settings and show that receiving these good things is SAFE.
The more you can teach the nervous system that receiving feels good and doesn’t put you in harm’s way, the more your manifesting will start to feel automatic.
Fact #4: Your nervous system has a “receptive capacity.”
Your nervous system’s receptive capacity is how much you can let in and hold without feeling threatened. This percentage is based on what the nervous system learned during childhood — it’s not conscious.
How do you know what your receptive capacity is? Look at your current life and what you’ve allowed in. If it’s way less than you desire, your receptive capacity is low and needs to be adjusted.
Let’s say you’re broke right now and want to allow in $100,000. If your nervous system has decided that $100,000 feels dangerous, you’ll have difficulty allowing it to appear. That amount of money will be very dysregulating because it’s way more than your current receptive capacity.
Working with the nervous system requires a lot of self-compassion. Allow yourself to receive more little by little. Big jumps can put the nervous system off kilter and cause more of the same.
Do a little leap and lean into it. Take a small hop and feel proud. Be gentle and easy.
Working with your nervous system is a life-long affair. Remember that we go through all nervous system states during the day and knowing how to recalibrate will be one of your more effective skills to feel better and return to center.
Fact #5: Here’s what the nervous system needs to feel safe.
Knowing the above information is the first step to creating more safety in your nervous system.
Now that you have more education, you’ll gain deeper self-awareness about how your nervous system responds to stimuli and what works for you to experience coherence again.
But you also have to create new experiences for yourself since the nervous system learns through experiences.
How do you do that?
First, you need to identify the emotional experience you want.
(For my PLAY THE PART readers, the 30-day program will help you with this process!).
What you want is emotional, not practical, so ask yourself what you want to feel more of during the day.
The desire for a relationship is the need for belonging, love, and acceptance.
The desire for more money is the need to feel safe, secure, and recognized.
The desire for good health is the need to feel safe in the body, whole, and complete.
Tap into those states of being and write them down.
Look for ways you can feel into those desired states of being as you go through your day. When you have an experience that matches your desired state of being, find a trusted friend or family member and tell them about it! (Make sure this is someone you have established trust with and feel safe sharing personal details).
Co-regulation is a prerequisite when re-tuning your nervous system. The other is a ventral anchor or the “safe setting” of the nervous system.
When you have a ventral anchor (a person, place, or object that the nervous system recognizes as safe) combined with co-regulation (the mirroring of someone else’s nervous system with yours), you will feel external safety.
When you feel external safety, you are telling your nervous system that there are no threats and that it’s safe to receive and hold (keep) what you want.
If co-regulation and a ventral anchor create external safety, what creates internal safety for the nervous system?
Let’s break it down.
#1: You need to know your internal limits and desired states of being.
Be honest with yourself about what you truly feel safe receiving now. This does not require taking a huge leap.
If your goal is more money (the desire for recognition and safety), ask yourself what amount you could feel safe receiving but also pushes your comfort zone a few percentage points. You don’t want to throw yourself into dysregulation by making a large jump that would sound the alarm bell in your body.
You want to choose an amount that makes you feel excited, even if you still feel a little scared. Because you know your body, you’ll know what amount that is if you listen to your inner wisdom.
Remember: this is a self-led process. You can take baby steps here. Go at your own pace. (My book, PLAY THE PART, can help you with this!).
#2: Use boundaries.
I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read about boundaries and the nervous system but it makes total sense!
Not having clear (but flexible!) boundaries throws you into dysregulation because you’re doing something you don’t really want to do. This can lead to anger and resentment, causing a stress cycle to start up. Stress cycles do little for your manifesting 🙁
So, you have to decide your boundaries and how you want to feel when you enforce them.
I want to add that it is okay to be flexible with boundaries and still keep your energy field and nervous system regulated. Stuff comes up in life and it’s okay to bend a bit if the situation calls for it. Being too rigid about things can also throw you into dysregulation. You’ll be able to tell the difference by how it feels.
Boundaries will help you feel in control of your inner world. They also help to keep you regulated.
#3: Expand your receptive capacity.
After you decide what your internal limits are and what you want to feel (your desired result), you can now expand your receptive capacity to match the first two.
How do you do that?
Inch by inch!
Practice letting in what you want in small bites. Visualize yourself achieving your desired result and note how this feels in your nervous system.
This is like building a muscle one rep at a time.
Let’s say you want to let in more money because your desired result is recognition.
As you go through your day, notice when you are recognized for something and feel your nervous system receiving it easily.
Maybe someone compliments you or notices a job well done at your workplace. Savor the recognition and teach your body it’s safe to receive it.
Take note of the experience and then use co-regulation and a ventral anchor to solidify the experience in your body and energy field.
Tell someone you trust about the positive experience and ask them to celebrate with you. Physical touch is wonderful for the nervous system, so if you can get a hug from your co-regulator, even better! This teaches your nervous system that receiving brings support, acceptance, and joy (versus what receiving felt like in the past).
Feel your nervous system as a steady stream, receiving recognition with ease and trustworthiness.
Repeat this process until your receiving muscle gets stronger and you do it automatically.
The more you are regulated, the more things flow in.
Phew! That was A LOT!
There is so much more to know about the nervous system, but I’m hoping this blog gave you some valuable information to start receiving safely.
Combine nervous system work with your mindset work, manifesting techniques, and self-awareness practices, and watch your life blossom in new ways!
My new book, PLAY THE PART: Manifest Your Dream Life (& Self!) with These 5 Acting Techniques is now available on Amazon!
This book helps you re-create your self-concept, so your life starts unfolding as a beautiful story (and not a neverending nightmare!).
I teach you five acting techniques so you can hold up a mirror to your deepest self-beliefs and change what doesn’t feel good.
This process is fun, and enlightening, and will have you seeing yourself in a whole new way!
The more information you have, the more you can change what doesn’t feel good.
If you’d like to learn more, please visit the sales page RIGHT HERE.
Or you can grab your copy on Amazon HERE.
This is an INCREDIBLE article that I not only LOVEd and shared, but will keep forever. Brilliant! Thank you for this wisdom.
Thank you SO much for reading and commenting! I loved writing this piece. So glad it was helpful! 🩷