The last few post laid out the particulars of the nervous system.
Today we will look at what happens when the nervous system doesn’t work as designed.
Homeostasis is the end result of a well-tuned nervous system doing its thing. This means that the sympathetic nervous system (excitation) and the parasympathetic nervous system (relaxation) are working well in tandem to both stimulate and inhibit the actions of the physical body.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is a concept that was first developed by a gentleman who runs a trauma center in Brookline, Mass named Bessel van der Kolk.
The essence of PTSD is that certain people, when placed in stressful environments find it impossible to relax out of the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system.
What should be a complimentary engagement of the parasympathetic nervous system fails to happen or has any effect.
Suppose someone thinks or feels, for good reason or not, that the danger they perceive is not only imminent but omnipresent and not going away. In that case, there is no reason why the sympathetic nervous system will ever take the body off of a high state of alert. This can lead to trouble of all kinds—debilitating pain, uncontrollable rage, organ trouble, sleep disorders, and more.
This is what it means to be stuck in the sympathetic nervous system. The world outside is one that presents conflict and danger at every turn and the body lives in a heightened state of readiness for the next assault on the senses.
From my perspective, we are all traumatized to one degree or another and I think most people would be shocked at the extent of traumatic stress disorders and the number of people who are living stuck in their sympathetic nervous system. It is one price to pay for living in the modern world.
In my walking program, I turn people on to the psoas muscle, which I think is both the main muscle we use for walking and the main muscle when it comes to warehousing trauma within the body.
The first exercise that I teach almost everybody is Constructive Rest Position, a true gift to the planet.
Constructive rest position is a gravitational release of the psoas that in and of itself can bring a great deal of ease to an uptight body.