May 2026
Last year, I completed my yoga teacher training in Costa Rica, and when it ended, I remember thinking that every person on earth should experience a YTT at least once in their life. If every person completed a YTT, I truly believe the world would be much more self-aware and a genuinely better and kinder place. Beyond learning about physical yoga, it taught me how to cultivate a deeper sense of self-awareness.
One of the most life-changing lessons was learning about nervous system regulation and how our internal state influences our external reality. Yoga trains the capacity for mental and physical self-awareness, helping us regulate our nervous system and move through life with greater presence and grace.
Our bodies are incredibly intelligent systems that have evolved over centuries to protect us from predators and threats in our environment. Before our conscious mind has time to fully process a situation, our nervous system reacts instinctively to keep us safe. For that reason, you should see your nervous system as your friend. It is your partner. It is your guardian. Its primary purpose is to protect you.
The nervous system is constantly moving between two primary states: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system, commonly known as the "fight-or-flight" response, prepares the body to respond to stress, challenges, and perceived threats. The parasympathetic nervous system, often called "rest and digest," allows the body to recover, conserve energy, and restore balance. Both systems serve important purposes. The goal is not to remain permanently calm or permanently activated. A healthy nervous system is flexible. It can pendulate between activation and relaxation depending on what the moment requires.
Yoga made these concepts feel tangible for me.
If you've ever practiced yoga, you're probably familiar with body scans. Through body scans, you learn how to recognize sensations manifest in your body. Take a moment right now and be still, become rooted into the present. Bring awareness to your physical body and just notice what sensations arise. You may feel tightness in your chest, your breath feeling shallow or stuck, an elevated heart rate, racing thoughts, clenching of your jaw, tension between your eyebrows.
These subtle feelings signal your body may be holding tension, feeling pressure or activation. Noting the “stuck” spots in your body, we can begin to soften those areas, deepen our breath, and send signals of safety back to the nervous system. Body scans are tools you can use to feel the deeper layers of sensations within ourselves - emotional holding patterns, heat, heaviness, pain, discomfort - then try to soften the edges.
Asana practice is another level to body scans. To me, asanas is a form of moving meditation. As you transition from pose to pose, even the smallest adjustment can completely transform how a posture feels in your body. Over time, you develop a heightened awareness of your body in space. Yoga becomes second nature, you can learn to register sensations in real time, strength, softness, stretch, what feels right and self-adjust accordingly. Take downward facing dog as an example. You spread your fingers wide, press firmly into the mat, lift through the hips, lengthen the spine, and root your heels toward the earth. When the pose clicks, you can feel its full expression: strength through the arms, engagement through the core, length through the hamstrings, and spaciousness throughout the body.
As your practice develops, you strengthen your mind-body connection muscles. You begin noticing when you're anxious, activated, calm, energized, or grounded throughout your day. You learn to recognize these sensations as they arise, from moment to moment, and can regulate your response with awareness instead of reacting on autopilot.
Before my YTT, I had always assumed that being in flight and flight was inherently bad - associated with elevated cortisol and stress. However, our nervous system is our partner. It is intelligently designed to protect us. Our fight-or-flight response supplies our body with adrenaline, a super juice, to help us rise to challenges, perform under pressure, and navigate difficult situations. Looking back, there were countless moments when my sympathetic nervous system was working in my favor. It helped me push through demanding university semesters, meet challenging deadlines, solve urgent problems, and complete multi-day hikes in Nepal when my body felt exhausted and ready to quit. In those moments, the sympathetic system was running in the background carrying me through.
The parasympathetic nervous system serves an equally important role. Through the vagus nerve, which connects the brain to many of the body's major organs, the parasympathetic system helps regulate heart rate, breathing, digestion, recovery, and healing. It creates the conditions for restoration and homeostasis. When we stimulate and strengthen this pathway through practices such as slow breathing, meditation, yoga, and relaxation, we become better able to shift out of stress and return to a state of regulation.
A healthy nervous system is not one that stays permanently calm, nor one that is constantly activated. A healthy nervous system is adaptable. It can move fluidly along the spectrum and activate certain responses depending on what the moment requires. The goal is not to keep your foot constantly on the accelerator, living in a state of overdrive, nor to have it constantly on the brakes, feeling stagnant or stuck. The key is learning how to titrate between states, moving up and down the nervous system ladder with awareness and intention. When we become stuck in any one state for too long, it can actually become unhealthy and counterproductive.
Research suggests that roughly 1 in 4 people will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Anxiety has become a global pandemic. In a world where everything seems to be moving a million miles per hour, social media and ads increase comparison, life can begin to feel overwhelming and be emotionally dysregulating, and it is possible to slide into a state of chronic activation. The sympathetic nervous system runs alongside the spine and responds to perceived threats by releasing stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. While this response is helpful in short bursts, the body was never designed to remain in survival mode indefinitely. When activation becomes chronic, the body can remain tense, guarded, and hypervigilant long after the original stressor has passed. We may struggle with anxiety, irritability, emotional dysregulation, difficulty concentrating, and maybe even burnout. Sometimes we live in a state of stress for so long it becomes so familiar that we no longer recognize when we are in a state of stress. Sometimes your body gets used to being under stress and that low grade stress becomes your baseline.
In my case, I realised my body was operating under a constant baseline of low-grade chronic stress. For years, this showed up in my body as chronic muscle guarding, persistent shoulder tension, and tightness through my mid-back. No amount of deep tissue massage or dry needling seemed to provide lasting relief. My body had become so accustomed to being in a state of tension that it became my normal. My body stays prepared for danger even when danger is no longer present. The nervous system was never designed to remain in survival mode indefinitely, and prolonged stress can eventually manifest physically through chronic illnesses or pain.
What’s even more powerful is understanding how our reality and the nervous system are directly connected.The nervous system acts as a filter, determining what gets brought into our awareness. In any given second, your senses take in millions of bits of information, yet your conscious mind can only focus on a tiny fraction, roughly 40 to 120 bits.
When we are anxious or stressed, our brain prioritizes survival. Your nervous system is activated, lighting up your amygdala, and triggers the fight or flight responses. Your brain starts to scan or filter for risks, obstacles, and potential threats. As a result, that is what we tend to notice. We tend to get anxious and tired, because our attention is constantly filtering for what might go wrong. However, when our nervous system is calm and regulated, an entirely different reality becomes available to us. We notice opportunities, creativity, beauty, and connection more easily. A calm regulated nervous system will filter for opportunities, open doors, synchronistic moments, feelings of whimsy and inspiration.
That is why it is absolutely vital to regulate yourself - so you can see the things you actually desire, not the things you fear. I know that sometimes in the height of anxiety, it can be very difficult to downregulate. If you start to feel the physical sensations of stress like muscle guarding or spiraling thoughts, the first step is to shift your attention away from your mind and into your body. Yoga practices such as body scans, asanas, and meditation help develop the awareness needed to recognize these signals early.
Whatever is making you anxious, step away from it. Anxiety often stems from trying to control or contain a situation, overfixating on the problem, and then trying to micromanage the steps to a solution. But not every variable is within our control and sometimes the best response is to temporarily park the anxiety and come back to it later with a different perspective.
It can be helpful to engage in an activity that interrupts the cycle of overthinking and allows your nervous system to settle. Exercise, taking a hot shower, get some work done, do a chore, can all help create enough distance from the problem. You can also co-regulate with nature or someone you feel safe with. Being in nature or spending time with someone you trust helps your body sense safety cues, and it will synchronize with the other person or nature’s rhythms. Once you've returned to a call;lmer and more regulated state, revisit the situation. From that place, you're far more capable of responding strategically rather than emotionally.
Yoga taught me that nervous system regulation isn't about eliminating stress or remaining calm all the time. It's about developing the flexibility to move fluidly between activation and rest depending on what life requires. Mastering your nervous system will change your life.