WTF is Nervous System Capacity? Read and find out.

🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾WTF IS NERVOUS SYSTEM CAPACITY?!?!🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 

💎What you can mentally push yourself to do is not necessarily what your nervous system has the capacity for.

💎And... what your clients can mentally push themselves to do is not necessarily what they have the capacity for.

What did you feel when you read those statements? Did they feel resonant, like an ah-ha moment?

Or did it feel a little disempowering, confusing? Take a moment to check in with how those statements landed for you in your body.

Now, let me elaborate.

***And, by the way you might want to grab a cup of tea for this read or even print this out because it's a little bit long but VERY important if you want to understand this concept of nervous system capacity.

First - what exactly is capacity from a nervous system perspective?

Or - as I said in the title of this post: WTF is nervous system capacity?!?!

Simply put - capacity is the amount of stress that we can hold and stay present to without having to disconnect from our bodies (by shutting down, zoning out or going into an intense high-arousal panic or catharsis).

Capacity is literal in the sense that there is only so much energy our bodies have. And when that energy limit is pushed or exceeded, healthy stress tips the scale to overwhelm (also known as chronic stress and/or trauma) we get symptoms.

Now - here’s where it gets tricky.

As humans, we have the ability to use our rational, higher brains to push ourselves beyond our body’s natural capacity. Many of us are used to using our minds to push past our body’s limits and as a result we can become disconnected from our body’s limits and start to find it hard to know what they are.

🌹🌹This is where many of my clients are when they find me.

This is the zone where symptoms start showing up. The symptoms can be as subtle as needing to zone out completely at the end of the day - or as intense as depression/ anxiety/ chronic illness/ brain inflammation/ relational chaos / insomnia etc.

The symptoms we experience as a result of unconsciously pushing past our limits are the body’s way of communicating with us that something needs to be addressed.

Most of the time, we are unconsciously pushing past limits that we didn't even know were there!

You may have even spent your whole life living outside of your window of tolerance without knowing it!

Now if you are a high-performer you may be asking “WAIT! But how do I know if I simply don’t want to do something or if it’s actually beyond my capacity?”

And you may also be asking “How can I achieve my big dreams in my life without pushing through some difficulty or pushing past feelings of discomfort?”

I HEAR YOU!

And my response to that is first - GET TO KNOW YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM’S CAPACITY!

And second - if you have any of the symptoms that I listed above, that's a pretty good clue that you're living outside your window of tolerance.

This is a huge part of healing from trauma and experiencing general nervous system regulation. Simply finding our body's limits.

It's about getting to know the subtlest of the subtle cues that your body sends you that it is moving out of its window of tolerance so that you can respond and provide support as it is needed.

Life is so much easier and more enjoyable when we work WITH our bodies rather than pushing them too hard. And the irony is that we are so used to it being hard that our body's need support to let it be easy.

So - Can you increase your capacity? YES
Can you support your clients to increase their body’s capacity? YES

There is a sweet spot where you are not pushing too hard past your limits or staying too far under your limits. And when it comes to trauma, Most of the time support is needed to help you process old stress in a way that is not cathartic, or repeating a loop of emotion. We want to support titrated & resourced (slow and steady over time) the RELEASE and RENEGOTIATION of stress and trauma.

And we want to support the same for our clients.

The more we push beyond our capacity, the less capacity we will have in the long-run.

But the opposite is also true - the beautiful thing is that as you start to honour your body’s capacity, your capacity actually begins to INCREASE!

This is where you can actually tolerate more stress and your ability to release and recharge from stress gets quicker. This is nervous system resilience!

The more we learn to attune to, listen to and move with our capacity, the more our capacity grows.

Same is true for our clients. The result you are guiding your clients to as a practitioner will be much longer-lasting and feel a lot better for your clients when you work within their true capacity.

 
Inside The School of Embodied Healing Systems you will go on a powerful journey of getting to know your personal nervous system capacity using practical tools and models. And you will also learn how to help your clients find their real, embodied capacity.

Yes - Inside EHS you will learn how to attune to your own nervous system capacity at a biological and physiological level and as a result you will learn to co-regulate your clients and provide holistic, premium experiences meeting your clients where they are!

And that is worth its weight in gold and MORE.

When we are supporting our clients to make big changes in their lives whether it’s weight loss, relationships, marriage, food & nutrition, spiritual healing, confidence, people-pleasing… the list goes on and on…. But the bottom line is that when we are supporting our clients to get results and make changes in certain areas - nervous system capacity is a big thing. In my humble opinion it is THE determining factor in how effective and lasting the changes and results will be.

Click here to apply: www.shylacash.com/embodiedhealingsystems 

With Love,
Shyla