My So-Called Yoga Life

Dear Diary,

I was reading some things about the nervous system recently. But before I get into the insights that touch on our perceptions of reality and mental health, I want to trace back a web of connections I’ve been forming over the years, links that began to take shape through my ongoing journey with yoga.

So I’ve noticed that over the last few years, in mainstream medicine, there has been more of a focus on the vagus nerve and regulating the nervous system through vagal toning. It’s sort of a *buzz* topic.  I read Eddie Stern’s One Simple Thing, a few books and articles on quantum theory, and some psychology and neuroscience papers and blogs about vagal tone over the years. 

Being in the dental field, I had some prior knowledge about the 10th cranial nerve known as the vagus nerve and that it innervates many areas of the body from the brain to the abdomen. Most importantly for my entry today, that it is part of the autonomic nervous system and it plays a role in the stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system which is the part that calms us. 

Later, when I did my first Ashtanga based training, there was an immense focus on pranayama, the fourth limb of yoga, which is breath work to control life force energy which in turn can control the mind and our emotional state. There is also a focus in Ashtanga yoga asana and the effects it has on the nervous system. The primary series in Ashtanga is the Yoga Chikitsa, which is designed to purify and detoxify the body to prepare for the second series which is Nadi Shodana or nerve cleansing that focuses on the spine with deep backbends and twisting postures. These practices are meant to prepare the body for moving into the deeper states of meditation and consciousness.

So why am I writing about all of this? 

Well, I was watching a content creator who was wearing a towel on her head and a face mask talk about quantum physics and even though this lady was using a face roller as she was getting ready for bed, she said some things that really resonated with me. What she said was, that in her studies she has learned: When your nervous system believes something, the universe arranges itself to match it. We do not experience the world, we experience our nervous system. This is why two people who have the experience, often have a different version of what happened or their own story.

Personally, I think this is a very interesting way to look at how reality is shaped. That it is not some concrete observation we have, rather it is guided by our emotional state and the condition of our nervous system. The different energies and frequencies that we emit have some sort of influence on the environment and what we notice or pay attention to is sort of filtered by what we can sense at a given moment.  I mean I think most people would agree that they have felt “vibes” or energy from others. Some people might say this is all just a load of garbage, but I heard and felt what she was saying.

All of these pieces of information have been circulating around in my mind, and it seems to be resonating with me because it is an entirely different perspective to help me understand myself, especially times when I have some emotional and anxiety overwhelm. When these things happen, I think it’s pretty natural to think about what could be triggering the “episodes” and also to think about how to manage them, when they come up. 

I began to think about how I view the world when I am feeling down. The way I interact with people and the general feelings I have at those times are the same as the rest of my mind, kinda gross. I am viewing the world through my dysregulated nervous system. One of the tools I have spent the most time developing to manage anxiety has been deep breathing and counted breathing. This is a technique for toning the vagus nerve which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and brings that sense of calm to my pumped up nervous system and slows down the emotional spiral I may be heading towards. By no means am I an expert on how to deal with anxiety but I know that over the years, this has helped me. When I am feeling good, my interactions are lighter, more carefree and feel easy and positive. There are no extra messages I feel compelled to read into and I might even feel “dialed in” to the good energy around me.  

So you see, the perspective this face masked lady shared enlightened my thinking in a way. To see what might be part of the bigger picture in dealing with life and the roller coaster I accidentally get on from time to time makes the whole experience seem a little less solitary and that things may seem worse than they actually are because I need to rebalance myself. What’s more, this is something I can do something about. I find this comforting and while there will likely be times when none of this will matter, if I work on myself with this in mind, I have another valuable way to understand and learn about being a human being. I am grateful for this experience and for this life.

With love,

Lisa