Wandering into Wellness

Within all humans, operating just under our conscious awareness, is a highly evolved, complex navigational system, unique to our species. The result of more than 2.8 million years of adaptation, this navigational system controls not only how we feel about any given moment, it also controls how we respond – or react – to that moment. 

This sophisticated system, called (by science and medicine) our Autonomic Nervous System, has two hierarchical directives. First and foremost, it is designed to keep us alive; to move us away from danger and toward opportunity. Yet, in its most recent evolution, the ANS also attends to and enables our thriving. Beyond merely orienting us to our safety, the ANS enables us to seek, move toward, and develop nourishing and complex social, spiritual, and physical connections – ones that encourage and embolden us to risk even deeper vulnerability and trust in and with the world. 

In this deeper relational terrain of trust and risk, we have the opportunity to experience our belonging. In our belonging, we experience ourselves embedded in a web of autonomous yet interconnected beings, whose wellbeing is inextricably tied to ours. Our sense of responsibility weaves us into deeper relationships which feeds our deeper sense of our belonging. This positive feedback loop is possible when a person feels safe(enough) in, and with, the world based on their earliest experiences in life. 

But there is also a negative feedback loop. Particularly in Westernized Cultures, it is commonplace for children to be raised in environments that are neither safe nor consistent. In environments in which the child does not feel cared for, the vulnerable nervous system responds and adapts to create complex narratives singularly focused on keeping the child safe. This nervous system does not seek connection, it protects and defends against rejection and violation. It does not seek nourishment, it shields itself from possible toxicity. These children grow up into adults who do not seek connection or nourishment, and who actively – but unconsciously –  work to avoid both.

Thanks to innovative pioneers in the science of human wellness, like Gabor Maté, we now understand the intricate and direct relationship between the health and resilience of our ANS and the health and resilience of our bodies. Many recent studies identify a direct link between the level of nervous system stress an infant experiences in its environment and the development of childhood asthma and other debilitating chronic illness. Other studies demonstrate a link between nervous system stress in an infant to addiction and learning challenges.

Because the ANS operates just under our conscious awareness, unless we take the time to educate ourselves about its function, clues, and cues, beginning with the early environment within which our ANS developed (including our in-utero, peri and post-natal environments), we are often unaware of its powerful, moment-to-moment influence on our literal every move, feeling and thought. As a result, we often end up feeling confused, betrayed, out of control, and helpless as to why we are feeling and behaving the way we are. 

Despite how dire this may sound, there is a clear path out of this cycle. And it begins by simply bringing consciousness to your nervous system’s perceptions, responses and reactions. 

Wandering Into Wellness: An Embodied Tour of Your ANS and Vagus Nerve, will help you do just this. In it you will receive the support and guidance you ought to have received as a young adult. This 6-video, self-paced course, will introduce you to the design and function of your ANS both in stress, safety and in thriving, with the most up-to-date information on the Vagus Nerve, carefully designed to walk you through your unique embodied experience.

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In these 6 videos we will introduce the structure of the miraculous ANS, and its basic functioning, branch by branch. We offer you specific guidance to understand your nervous system’s adaptive structure and its patterned responses and reactions. 

Do you tend toward a sense of ease and harmony, moving toward the unknown with curiosity and intrigue? Or, do you primarily track for safety, moving with fear away from things that are unfamiliar? 

Do you feel trust in moments of intimacy and vulnerability with a beloved other? Or do you tend to keep yourself at a distance, leaning in only when you can predict the outcome and emotionally hightailing it when you feel scared? 

Do you honor your emotional states by acknowledging and expressing them? Or do you tend to suppress certain emotions and preference others? 

Do you find yourself mysteriously foggy and confused in certain conversations or situations?

Do you get angry, even enraged, toward other motorists while driving on the highway? 

No matter which scenarios you identify with, your experiences are the result of your nervous system’s moment-to-moment subconscious physical and emotional narrative, which create a cascade of response and reactions in your outer world experience.  

Wandering into Wellness will help you not only decode these responses and reactions, it will support you to create new pathways of behavior, ones that will nourish an intimate experience of wellness and belonging with yourself, your relationships, and in the world at large.  

Wandering Into Wellness is for everyone. We all have nervous systems! This course is also well-suited for parents, teachers, counselors, guides, mentors and all others who are in a position to tend to the nervous systems of others. 

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$27 which includes access to the WIW 6-video self-paced course and membership in our Verdant Collective online community.