5 Science-Backed HABITS For Nervous System Regulation (Simple & Free)

If you're ever irritable, have anxiety, tend to overthink, get overwhelmed, and find it hard to relax, or even if you ever feel numbness or brain fog or disconnection from yourself, this could be a sign that your nervous system is unregulated. Nervous system dysregulation is at the crux of so many of our personal life challenges. The nervous system acts as our body's command center to manage stress and maintain internal balance. So in today's video, we're gonna talk about five science-backed habits that will help you regulate your nervous system. I'll talk about why they're important as well as the studies that have been done and how to practice these tools for yourself. So if you want to regulate your nervous system and respond and recover from life's challenges with more resilience, then you are in the right place. So let's get into it. The first habit to help regulate your nervous system, it is to practice gratitude and expressing positive emotions. And I know you're thinking, I've heard this before, but stay with me because I have some really simple ways that you can practice this without having a gratitude journal. Firstly, let's quickly understand why it actually works, because when you understand why it works, you're more likely to actually apply it to your life. Practicing gratitude is like giving your brain a little happy workout. When you actively notice the good things in your life, even small things like a sunny morning, kind words from a stranger, or a really nice hot cup of coffee in winter, when you actively notice these things, your brain starts focusing on more positive things instead of focusing on stress and worry. This can make you feel calmer, happier, and more in control of your emotions. But the problem is, often we don't actively notice these things. We just live our days on autopilot, and these beautiful blessings in our life just slip past our awareness. We know from neuroscience that our brain actually tends to have a negativity bias, which means we naturally automatically tend to focus more on what's not going well, as opposed to what is going well. Our brain just likes to focus more on the negative things. And from an evolutionary standpoint, this is all biologically wired in us for the purpose of safety. You know, if you think about way back when we were living out in the wild and we were in danger every moment, we had to focus on those dangers, or else we might get eaten by some animal or not survive the night because we didn't have shelter. Whatever it is, our brains are wired that way to protect us and keep us safe. But the problem is we get stuck there, and our brains get stuck in that negative bias, which puts us in this constant state of fight or flight, and we do not need to be there. And this creates so much dysregulation for our nervous system. When we focus on negative things, we're telling our nervous system that we're not safe, and this is what leads to a dysregulated nervous system. Now that we understand that our brains tend to automatically focus on the negative things, we have to actively start practicing to focus on the positive. And that's why taking note and expressing the little things that we're grateful for can be so helpful. And of course, scientists have studied this a lot. One really big review looked at 64 different experiments all together and compared them. And in these experiments, they had people practicing gratitude in different ways. They found that people who consistently did these exercises felt happier, felt less anxious, and less depressed than the people who didn't. Even just a few minutes a day of noticing what's good in your life can train your brain to stay more calm and more positive. Once you start practicing this so much, eventually you'll notice that something that would have triggered you in the past actually doesn't affect you as much anymore. Yes, it's still upsetting, but maybe your reaction or your response to it is a lot calmer, and it doesn't really affect you so much anymore because you've helped to regulate your nervous system through gratitude and being grateful and thankful for all the blessings in your life. I saw a reel the other day about how two people can respond to a situation in two different ways. And it is the words that you use and the things that you say to yourself that creates your attitude and your mindset, and which then affects your own suffering levels. So whether you're going to suffer from something or you're not. So say you have a car accident on the way to work. That sucks, that's awful. But you are not injured and you are fine. No one else is injured, everything is fine. Your car just got beat up a little bit. One person can focus on how bad the situation was or the bad of the situation. One person can focus on, wow, my car is beat up. This is awful. Why does this always happen to me? How am I gonna pay for this? Et cetera. The next person can focus on, they can start the sentence with something like, wow, at least I am safe. At least it wasn't worse. It could have been a lot worse. I'm so glad that I'm safe. I'm so glad the other person is not hurt. Yes, it sucks that my car is beat up, but I am so glad that I am safe. You can see the difference and you can see how that will go on to affect the rest of that person's day. So it's not to say that bad things won't happen to you in your life and bad things don't happen, but it's how we respond and how we react to them and how we say, wow, I'm grateful to live another day. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. I am so grateful to be living and get to continue to live my life. It's just a different mindset. It's just a different attitude. And you'll see that once you start practicing gratitude and noticing all the things, all the blessings that you have, the tiny blessings that you have in your life, something will happen to you. Hopefully not a car accident, but something will happen to you and you'll all of a sudden not respond the way that you used to respond and it just won't affect you as much. And it's such a beautiful feeling. It's a really, really beautiful way to live. You are in control of your suffering. Remember that. You are in control of your suffering. So simple ways that I like to practice gratitude is that I basically, every morning when I wake up, the very first thing that I do when I wake up is to state three things that I'm grateful for. I do not write it down anywhere. I do not put it in my phone or put it in a journal. I just say it in my head. It takes two seconds. And the trigger to remind me to do this every morning is when my four-year-old comes and wakes me up at 5.30 on the dot every morning. When he snuggles into me and wakes me up, that is my trigger to say, okay, what am I grateful for this morning? And I actually say the same three things every morning just to make it easier on myself. And if I can think, if in the moment I think of anything else nice to add, then I'll add it. But just to make it even way simpler for me so that I do not skip this habit, I just say the same three things every morning. I say, I'm grateful for my partner, Alex, and everything he does for us. I'm grateful for my soft bedsheets that I get to wake up in every morning. And I'm grateful for the health of my family. That is what I say. And I'm usually, when I say family, I'm usually thinking about my little boy who's just like cuddling me right now. On the days where I remember to practice this, I start the day off on the right foot. I do not start my day angry, even though I could easily start my day off angry getting woken up at 5.30 in the morning when I'm not ready to wake up. I start the day in a really positive way. That affects everything. It affects the rest of my day. It affects my relationship with my son and how he responds to me in the morning. It affects how I go into the rest of the day. It affects my nervous system, as opposed to me waking up and all of a sudden going, oh, I'm so angry for waking up this time of the morning. Oh, I've got so much to do today. I'm so tired. It's gonna be so hard to do. Oh, I've gotta get up. Gotta get everything done. You can see the difference in the energy that those two different responses will make in my life. I'm in control of my response when I wake up in the morning and I start it with gratitude and it starts my day off so much better and that trickles on into the rest of my day as well. So in the morning, try think of three things that you can show appreciation for and gratefulness for and so that you remember to do it, choose your trigger. What will trigger you to remember to do it in the morning? Will it be when you wake up from your alarm? Will it be when you're brushing your teeth, making your morning coffee? Will it be when you go to reach for your phone that in that moment you say, no, I'm not gonna reach for my phone. I'm gonna say what I'm grateful for and then I can go get my phone. But try to make it really soon after you wake up, basically as soon as you wake up and definitely, definitely before you go on your phone because that doesn't help you start your day off right. Let's move on to the next one. So another simple way to calm your nervous system is through sound and breath, like humming or taking an audible sigh. So sighing creates these vibrations and breathing patterns that help to stimulate the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is basically the main communication line between your brain and your body. So it helps you switch from fight or flight to rest and digest. You can kind of think of the vagus nerve as the body's brake pedal. So say you're in a car, the vagus nerve is like the brakes. When you activate it, when you press on it, it slows down the stress response and it tells your system that it's safe to relax. So sighing, so there are studies that have shown that sighing and humming and singing and noise can stimulate the vagus nerve. Research has also shown that even slow breathing techniques that include sighing in the breath technique can significantly improve mood and reduce psychological stress. One study that was measuring nervous system activity found that humming breathing significantly increased heart rate variability, which is a key marker of vagus nerve activation. In more simple terms, basically a gentle vibration from humming, because we hum like here and the vagus nerve kind of goes through here. You're humming. That gently stimulates the vagus nerve and it helps to shift the body out of stress and into a more relaxed state. So this study was done by using a particular yoga breathing technique, which I've actually practiced a lot in my Sunday morning yoga classes. And it's called simple brahamari pranayama. My yoga teacher calls it B breathing. So it's this humming sound that you make on your exhale that sounds like a bumblebee. And it is such a simple thing that you can practice at home. So basically what you do is you block your ears and then you just hum and you make the sound of a bumblebee. So I'll show you an example now. Hmm. So if you're trying this for the first time, it's so relaxing and you can just keep doing over and over and over again when you wanna calm yourself down and calm your nervous system down. If you're trying this for the very first time, just start off by doing a couple of minutes at a time for maybe a few rounds and then move on to hopefully doing like five to 10 minutes. Other sounds that we make in yoga are chanting sounds. So at the end, we might do some breathing where we inhale and we say om at the end. And you've gotta try it to really understand how powerful it can be. But on the exhale, you're saying om. At the end, you're closing your mouth and really feeling that vibration at the back of your throat. And it's not om. It sounds more like A-U-M-N when you're saying it out loud. So you're like om. Try it. It's so good. And then the last breathing thing that I love from yoga is called lion's breath. So you can do this really easily when you're say stretching at home. But basically what you wanna do is you inhale and then you exhale with your tongue out like you're a lion. So you go. And that's just another free, simple tool that we have at our disposal to help bring us into that present moment. Remember, if you watched my video from last week, nervous system regulation is presence. Presence is nervous system regulation. We wanna bring ourselves to the present moment and all those breathing things help to bring us to the present moment. The humming on top of it helps to activate the vagus nerve which has been shown to reduce our stress. So definitely give it a go. That's why singing around your house can be so nice as well. Find a way that you love to do it and that you're gonna do it and just start practicing that to help. When it comes to breathing though, there are so many breathing techniques at our disposal that sometimes I find can be a bit overwhelming knowing which one to use. And I know when something's overwhelming for me, I just tend to not do it at all. So if you're the same and you don't know which breathing technique to try, I want to put this one forward to you. So a 2023 study from researchers at Stanford University asked over a hundred participants to practice five minutes a day of different breathing techniques for a month. This included cyclic breathing, box breathing, and mindfulness meditation. The researchers measured their mood, anxiety, and psychological signals like their breathing rate. They found that all breathing practices improved the mood of these people. However, cyclic sighing improved it the most. Cyclic sighing produced the biggest improvement in positive mood and reduced breathing rate the most, which is all a sign that the nervous system is calming down. So what is cyclic sighing? Simply, it is two inhales followed by a long, slow, gentle exhale. So if you're in last week's video, I spoke about how important it is to focus on your exhale when breathing. The exhale really has to be soft, slow, and gentle. You do not force it out. That exhale, when it's soft and slow and gentle and you let it out really, really slowly and you make it really, really long, that is when you will naturally feel your body relax. This study suggested that just five minutes per day, only five minutes per day of intentional breathing can meaningfully regulate stress and your emotional state. Just five minutes, like that is such good news. So just remember, two big inhales and then a long, slow, gentle exhale. Oh, I already feel calmer. Next up, we're gonna talk about the connection between your gut and your brain and how that affects your nervous system regulation. So your gut and your brain are best friends. They're always talking to each other. Scientists are really in the discovery process of finding out just how much the gut and brain are in constant conversation. So how do they communicate with each other? The gut and brain communicate through tiny bacteria that live inside your gut and they create these little molecules that travel up the vagus nerve to the brain. When your brain receives these messages, it then knows what's going on in your body and that can affect how calm, happy or stressed you feel. So to understand this a little better, you can kind of think of your gut bacteria as sending little text messages up to your brain and the text messages are signals that go up your vagus nerve to the brain and some text messages will be sad or make you angry and others will make you feel happy and calm and reassured. These messages from your gut to your brain influence your mood, your stress and your nervous system regulation. In one study, they used computer models to show exactly how the molecules from gut bacteria can activate the vagus nerve and send signals to the brain. This explains why having a really healthy gut with lots of good bacteria can actually help your mood, your stress levels and help your nervous system feel calmer. So to be clear, this study suggests that there is a connection between the brain and the gut and that the connection may influence your mood, your stress response and your brain function. But personally, I think from experience, I know this to be true. When my gut is happier and healthier, I am happier and healthier. Scientists though are still really trying to understand this pathway more clearly which could lead to a lot more new treatments for mental health and neurological disorders. Definitely something to have in the back of your mind and test out for yourself. How is your gut health? Symptoms of an unhappy gut can be things like bloating, stomach pain, constipation, diarrhea, fatigue, brain fog, skin issues, food sensitivities and even feeling more anxious or emotionally reactive. Simple ways to improve your gut health are introducing pre and probiotic foods like plain yogurts, kimchi, kimchi is so yummy, sauerkraut, kombucha, miso and also slowly increasing fiber rich foods like oats and beans and lentils and berries and vegetables and just generally reducing your sugar and reducing your processed food and increasing your whole foods. I am not a doctor. If you have any of those symptoms that I previously mentioned that have been lingering for a while, please do also consult your doctor and find out what is best for you. But just acknowledging and understanding that there could be a connection between our gut health and our brain health is so important and it shouldn't be ignored. Now, it wouldn't be a nervous system regulation video if I wasn't to talk about moving your body, specifically exercise. Exercise is like pressing a reset button for your body and your brain. When you move, whether it's walking, running, dancing or playing some sort of sport, your body releases special chemicals called endorphins and these make you feel happier and calmer. Exercise also helps your heart and your lungs work better, which then sends more oxygen and energy to your brain. Scientists have found that just 30 minutes of exercise three times a week can lower stress, reduce anxiety and improve your mood. 30 minutes, just a few times a week. It's a really, really doable goal. One really big study combined the results of 61 different experiments and compared people who exercised versus people who didn't. Surprise, surprise, they found that people who moved their bodies regularly had lower anxiety and lower stress levels and even their brains showed signs of better nervous system regulation. This shows that moving isn't just good for your body and your muscles, but it's actually a workout for your brain as well, making it a great way to help regulate your nervous system. So you wanna focus on regular weekly exercise to help keep your nervous system regulated as opposed to just every now and then reaching for exercise as a coping mechanism. Last week, I spoke about the difference between healthy regulation tools and coping mechanisms and why they're so different and why it's important to reach for the healthy regulation tools as opposed to the coping mechanisms. So if you're interested in learning about that, you can watch that in this video here and all of these things that I've shared today are simple and free to use. However, you actually need to be disciplined to do them. So you'll also wanna watch this video here on the screen where I talk about how to be more disciplined with your habits. I'll see you over in one of these videos. Thanks for watching, bye.