Nervous System Regulation Is Not Relaxation
A Next Level Human Manifesto for Real Autonomic Capacity
**Note: This piece draws from my original ideas, research, hooks, and metaphors. For editing and some wording, I’ve used AI tools trained on my own books and style, always blending technology with my hands-on curation and oversight. Thank you for being here—Jade.
In the wilderness, there is no meditation cushion.
There is no “just calm down.”
There is only the roar of the lion and the charge of your own body.
A true warrior doesn’t lie down and just breathe softly.
He learns to hold focus inside the storm, and then settle after.
Somewhere along the way, the wellness world decided that nervous system regulation meant soft music and slow breathing.
That’s recovery.
That’s relaxation.
That’s not regulation.
Most people aren’t being chased by an actual lion.
They’re being chased by an imagined lion, which is still experienced as real inside the body.
A story about safety.
A story about acceptance.
A story about belonging.
A story about, “If I don’t perform, I’m done.”
So when the body surges… heart rate up, breath up, adrenaline up… it isn’t because the world is objectively dangerous. It’s because your internal model is predicting danger.
That’s why “just relax” often fails.
You’re trying to soothe the dashboard light while the engine keeps revving.
And the engine keeps revving because the story keeps firing the threat circuitry.
The Big Idea
Healing the nervous system is not synonymous with relaxation.
Relaxation is a tool… a recovery strategy.
Regulation is a capacity… a skill you learn to harness.
And true regulation demands three things:
Training under load
Intentional meaning shift
Repetitive experience of flexibility
Relaxation without training doesn’t build capacity. It does a lot of other wonderful things, but if you are looking to reprogram a reactive physiology it is not going to do what you have been told.
Let’s use the example of an athlete… say an American football player. This athlete has multiple jobs:
He needs to perform under stress.
He needs to recover after stress.
He needs to relax between stressors.
He needs to repair between games.
If he only learns to relax, he becomes fragile.
If he only trains without recovery, he breaks.
If he only “repairs” with nutrition and sleep but never trains the mind under activation, he panics the moment pressure hits.
This is the mistake the wellness world keeps making.
They teach calm as if calm is the skill.
Calm is useful. Relaxation is powerful and beneficial.
But calm is not the same thing as range, building capacity or learning regulation.
The Breakdown
Four Human Processes We’ve Conflated
Regulation is the ability to function inside activation.
Recovery is the ability to come down after activation.
Relaxation is deliberate low-demand downshifting.
Repair is biological rebuilding over time.
All of these are necessary and have their role. But the one most misunderstood in wellness is regulation capacity. It is also arguably the most important given the high demand, fast paced, striving culture many subject themselves to.
Most nervous system advice today is relaxation advice dressed up as regulation.
That won’t change baseline tone. That wont do much to help someone regulate when activated.
Identity, Story, and Autonomic Tone
Our baseline nervous system set-point isn’t random.
It is shaped by the subconscious narrative we live inside… what I call MUD:
Misguided Unconscious Decisions.
Stories like:
“I must overwork to belong.”
“I’m not safe unless I’m perfect.”
“I’m not accepted unless I prove myself.”
These narratives bias our autonomic responses through appraisal → limbic activation → hypothalamic signaling → endocrine cascades.
We internalize threat as habit.
Relaxation can soothe the moment.
It does not change the baseline architecture.
When people cite PTSD and ACE research, the most important takeaway is this:
Dysregulation is not just “too stressed.”
It is loss of flexibility.
Some people get stuck high… hypervigilant, reactive, wired, easily triggered.
Some people get stuck low… numb, collapsed, avoidant, chronically fatigued.
Both can be learned adaptations to threat.
And in many cases, the threat is identity-coded:
“A person like me in a world like this.”
That becomes the template the nervous system keeps obeying.
The Physiology of Regulation
Before we go any further into recovery tools, we need to clarify something fundamental. Most nervous system conversations jump straight to calming techniques.
Slow breathing.
Soft music.
Grounding exercises.
Those are useful. But before we talk about how to come down, we need to understand what is happening when you go up.
Because activation is not the malfunction. Activation is the system doing its job.
If we mislabel activation as the problem, we will try to eliminate it.
If we understand activation as energy, we will learn to work with it.
So before we talk about recovery, relaxation or repair we need to talk about true regulation under stress…
We need to understand why sympathetic arousal must be trained, not suppressed.
Why Activation Comes First
When the sympathetic nervous system activates, it is not malfunctioning. It is mobilizing.
Heart rate rises. Breath accelerates. Glucose is released. Blood shifts to large muscle groups. Attention narrows.
This is preparation. It is a survival instinct. It has a purpose... a purpose we need to work with.
The problem is not activation. The problem is activation without control.
When people feel the surge of adrenaline and immediately try to suppress it, they train avoidance.
The body learns:
“Activation equals danger.”
So it becomes more sensitive to activation.
More reactive. More easily overwhelmed.
Deliberate sympathetic stimulation reverses that pattern.
When you intentionally elevate arousal through breath or movement, you are teaching the nervous system that activation can be entered voluntarily.
You are converting reactivity into agency.
Short bursts of activation followed by recovery mirror how the stress system was designed to function:
Mobilize. Act. Settle. Mobilize. Act. Settle.
Intermittent stress with adequate recovery builds resilience.
Chronic unrelieved stress builds dysfunction.
Activation itself is not the threat.
Loss of flexibility is the threat.
When sympathetic arousal is entered intentionally and paired with meaning shift, the nervous system learns:
“I can tolerate this.”
When You’re Activated, Go With It
This is the part that confuses people.
If someone is already anxious, already elevated, already charged…
Why would you activate further?
Because the stress response is designed for completion, not suppression.
When the sympathetic nervous system activates, it mobilizes energy for action. Heart rate increases. Ventilation increases. Glucose is released. Blood is redirected toward large muscle groups. This is a coordinated survival response mediated through the amygdala, hypothalamus, and downstream HPA axis signaling.
The system expects movement.
It expects discharge.
If activation rises and no action follows, the physiological charge remains unresolved.
When activation is very intense… trying to immediately suppress it through premature calming can reinforce the association that arousal itself is dangerous. From a learning perspective, that becomes avoidance conditioning. The body learns: “This internal state must be escaped.”
Avoidance increases sensitivity.
Exposure with control builds tolerance.
Research on exposure-based therapies shows that fear responses diminish not when arousal is prevented, but when arousal is experienced without the predicted catastrophe. The nervous system updates its threat model when activation occurs and nothing terrible follows.
Short, deliberate bursts of sympathetic activation mimic this principle.
Fast breathing temporarily increases arousal and alters blood gases. Brief intense movement increases catecholamine output.
But when this activation is entered intentionally, under voluntary control, and followed by structured recovery, the brain receives new information:
“I can enter this state and return safely.”
This increases interoceptive tolerance… the ability to experience internal arousal without panic.
Intermittent stress followed by recovery is also a core principle in resilience research. Hormetic stressors, when brief and recoverable, can improve stress tolerance over time. The problem is not activation. The problem is chronic, uncontrollable activation without recovery.
So when activation rises, instead of collapsing into suppression, you lean into it deliberately.
Short. Controlled. Followed by intentional down-regulation.
This allows you to complete the stress cycle.
The nervous system learns that high arousal can be entered and exited.
That is regulation.
Why the Story Must Be Met During Activation
Misguided Unconscious Decisions were not formed in calm states.
They were formed in emotionally charged moments.
Moments of embarrassment. Moments of fear. Moments of rejection. Moments where the nervous system was lit up.
Under activation, the brain encodes experience differently.
Emotionally intense events are more likely to consolidate into long-term memory through limbic engagement and stress hormone signaling.
High arousal states sear the story into the system.
So if the story was cemented under activation, it cannot be fully reshaped in a state of sedation.
You can soothe it. You can comfort it. But you are not accessing the original encoding environment.
When you deliberately elevate sympathetic tone and bring the story forward at the same time, you are recreating the state in which the belief was wired.
But now you are not a child. You are not powerless. You are witnessing. You are reframing. You are pairing activation with new meaning.
When a memory is reactivated under emotional charge and paired with contradictory experience, it becomes more flexible and capable of updating.
You are not fighting the anxiety. You are not drowning in it. You are meeting it at the level it was formed. And then you are guiding it somewhere new.
That is why activation matters.
That is why suppression fails.
That is why calm alone is insufficient.
The nervous system changes because it experienced activation without catastrophe.
Now that we understand why activation must be included…
Now we can talk about recovery.
Because regulation is not just going up.
It is the ability to come down with control.
Vocal humming creates vibration through the vocal cords and upper airway. Research on slow breathing and vocalization has shown associations with increased heart rate variability and parasympathetic bias.
Slow, gentle self-touch… such as crossing your arms and stroking your upper arms… activates C-tactile afferents linked to calming neural circuits. Self-soothing touch and social touch have been shown in controlled studies to reduce cortisol responses and influence affiliative neurochemistry. (obviously having another there to do the holding and hugging is even better… it is just not always possible).
Oxytocin has documented links to modulation of threat circuitry, including evidence that it can attenuate amygdala responses under certain experimental conditions.
What matters here is not a single mechanism.
It is the stacking of mechanisms.
Ancient Practice Meets Modern Science
Warrior cultures did not confuse activation with calm.
Across cultures, after battle or intense exertion, humans used rhythm, sound, breath, touch, and communal presence to shift out of combat states.
Imagine a Norse warrior returning from battle.
The threat is gone, but the body isn’t.
Hands still shake.
Jaw still clenches.
Vision still scans the horizon.
He is still charged.
Before there were textbooks, humans used body, breath, and sound.
Pressing hands to chest and ribs.
Vocalizing.
Exhaling with sound.
Creating rhythm to signal, “You’re back here. You’re not alone. You’re safe enough now.”
That pattern… activation followed by vocal, tactile, rhythmic recovery… mirrors what modern physiology now measures through autonomic flexibility.
Stress Breath — Regulation Under Load
Stress Breath is the portable version of our popular BEEP method (breath-enhanced emotional processing).
It follows a simple arc:
20 intense double inhales — Activation
Fast, forceful breaths.
Drive the system upward.
During this phase, bring the story forward.
The anxiety.
The frustration.
The belief that says, “This isn’t safe.”
Watch it under activation.
Not to suppress it.
Not to overpower it.
To witness it under load.
10 seconds — Reframe
Hold the breath.
Imagine the emotion as a protector.
“What are you trying to teach me?”
Introduce cognitive flexibility while the system is activated.
5 breaths — Recovery
Five long, slow exhales with a hum.
Let the vibration travel through the throat and chest.
Cross your arms.
Gently squeeze your shoulders.
Slowly stroke down the upper arms.
During these breaths, generate gratitude.
Appreciation.
Understanding.
You are pairing safety physiology with elevated meaning.
Activation.
Reframe.
Recovery.
This is oscillation training.
After stimulation, the nervous system is primed for rebound.
The long, slow humming exhales bias recovery physiology.
The self-hug with slow stroking reinforces affiliative touch signaling.
Gratitude changes appraisal during the recovery window.
You are teaching the nervous system to associate activation with coherence, and recovery with safety plus meaning.
That is what builds capacity.
Why Relaxation Comes Later
Relaxation is not bad.
It is essential.
But it is recovery… not regulation.
A football player trains under stress.
He recovers afterward.
He relaxes between sessions.
He repairs over time.
If we only teach people how to calm, we may inadvertently be teaching avoidance… not capacity.
Co-regulation deepens this even further.
Voice tone.
Eye contact.
Proximity.
Safe touch.
The nervous system reads those cues before it reads intellectual arguments.
Stress Breath is a powerful solo method... but of course this is better with another human present.
With skilled guidance, it becomes a lever.
Closing Thought
Most people are not being chased by a real lion.
They are being chased by a story.
Until the story changes… until the nervous system learns flexibility, not just soothing… the dimmer stays stuck.
Calm is a state.
Capacity is a skill.
Regulation is the bridge.
PS: If you’re ready to stop trying to calm your way out of a nervous system that was wired under pressure… and become the kind of person who can stay powerful, present, and regulated in the middle of activation, explore my Next Level Human coaching program today. Spots are limited… don’t wait. 👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
References
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton.
Yehuda, R., et al. (2006). Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal alterations in PTSD. Biological Psychiatry, 59(12), 1131–1140.
Dreisoerner, A., Junker, N. M., van Dick, R., & von Zimmermann, J. (2021). Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial. Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology, 7, 100056.
Domes, G., Heinrichs, M., Gläscher, J., Büchel, C., Braus, D. F., & Herpertz, S. C. (2007). Oxytocin attenuates amygdala responses to emotional faces regardless of valence. Biological Psychiatry, 62(10), 1187–1190.
Inbaraj, G., Rao, R. M., Ram, A., Bayari, S. K., Belur, S., & Prathyusha, P. V. (2022). Immediate effects of OM chanting on heart rate variability measures compared between experienced and inexperienced yoga practitioners. International Journal of Yoga, 15(1), 52–58.
Pawling, R., Cannon, P. R., McGlone, F. P., & Walker, S. C. (2017). C-tactile afferent stimulating touch carries a positive affective value. Biological Psychology, 129, 186–193.
Trivedi, G. Y., et al. (2023). Humming as a stress buster: A heart rate variability study. Cureus.
It is so sad to see such a rich content written from top to bottom with AI.
Jade,
You are excellent at spelling it out consicely and clearly. Even though I have heard you speak on multiple platforms, I always enjoy reading these for clarity. People tell me I do engineering in physical medicine, and I feel like you are presenting engineering of the nervous system and behaviors. Thank you.