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by
Aletheia Luna
March 07, 2026
from
LonerWolf Website
If there's anything I've learned in my 15 years on the spiritual
path, it's that all the meditating, reading, and healing techniques
in the world don't mean shit if you're ignoring the body.
Yes, some of these "top-down" (aka, mind-to-body) techniques create
shifts. But many others reinforce dissociation, and some even
encourage ego inflation and spiritual narcissism (non-duality,
anyone?).
What I want to emphasize here is that starting with a "bottom-up"
approach to healing (aka, body-to-mind) is a smarter, more
effective, and more sane approach to any form of spirituality or
trauma healing path.
Why?
Because the body is your foundation, your
anchor, your tether to this world. It carries more wisdom and
intuitive capacity than you may know or give it credit for...
In the words of trauma specialist Peter Levine,
quoting poet D.H. Lawrence,
"My belief is in the blood and flesh as being
wiser than the intellect.
The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up
in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths
of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of
the cosmos."
So, where do you start with nervous system
regulation (aka, having a calm body and mind), especially if you're
a highly sensitive, deep-thinking person?
Let's dig into that.
First, I want to share a little about why and how this
topic is so important to me.
My Experience with Overwhelm,
Burnout, and Bypassing the Body's Wisdom
The irony is that for most of my healing spiritual path, I've
overlooked the wisdom of the body, bypassing it to favor more
ethereal and 'mental' paths. (Religious
trauma that conditions you to see the body as evil as the
root cause, anyone?)
I have written about the vagus nerve, somatic bodywork, and the
meaning of muscle tension before - but it was never something I
pursued further or went too deeply into.
I even had life-changing therapy with a somatic therapist for over a
year and did training with a nervous system expert... but it never
"clicked" in my mind that,
"Wait, I need to stop the top-down healing
approaches and shift gears to actively incorporate this
bottom-up approach into my life."
This is an example of just how long mind-body
integration can sometimes take, especially if you've experienced
intense dissociation and identity loss as a child.
For me, it took about five years to start
shifting gears.
When the Wake Up Call Finally
Came…
The final "wake up" push came when I became a parent and started
having more chronic fatigue flare-ups - despite doing all the usual
healing routines that "worked before."
I realized that as a highly sensitive person, my nervous system was
deeply dysregulated, overwhelmed, and starting to burn out.
Scrambling to parent, do housework, run a
business, breastpump 4-10 types a day for my son, deal with
toxic family members, listening to the news (Deepak Chopra and
the Epstein files, I mean what the f*ck), grieving for the loss
of endless lives in the wars, keeping on top of chores,
maintaining a relationship,
...and all the other million tasks of everyday
life was just... becoming too much.
Once I started researching "burnout symptoms," I began connecting
the dots.
It was then that I stumbled across the words of
Dr Claire Plumbly in her book
The Trauma of Burnout, where
she described burnout happening,
"when stress is inescapable, then we are
stretched to maximum for too long, causing our nervous systems
to get stuck in survival mode."
Bingo. I had found the missing link.
And thanks to actively starting to regulate my
nervous system, I'm finally starting to recover my energy, vitality,
and soul again.
20+ Ways to Start Regulating Your
Nervous System as a Sensitive Person (What I Do)
"There is more wisdom in
your body
than in your deepest
philosophy."
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Burnout, exhaustion, and existential overwhelm are almost inevitable
to experience at some point in life, especially as highly sensitive
people.
When you process, feel, and experience life 10-50x louder than a
neurotypical person, you need to practice more care and make it a
fundamental part of your daily life.
This isn't a nice-to-have routine.
This is an essential-and-non-negotiable part
of daily life for the highly sensitive person.
Without learning to regulate yourself every day,
stressors start piling up to the point of physical and mental
illnesses.
Without taking care of your body every day and
bringing it down to parasympathetic calmness, the result is a
dysregulated nervous system that looks like:
So, where to start regulating your nervous
system?
Here are some things that I currently do (not
every one all the time, but at different times and frequencies):
-
Predictable routines (not glamorous, but
the nervous system loves familiarity)
-
No social media usage at the beginning or
end of the day (I try to only use it for work midday)
-
Lots of water
-
Healthy, home-cooked, and simple meals
-
Reading before bed with a soft light,
such as a salt lamp or Turkish mosaic lamp
-
Soft blankets or handmade crochet ones
-
Cuddling with pets or loved ones whenever
possible during the day (usually beginning and ending)
-
Taking a slow walk in nature
-
Drinking hot herbal tea (I love
adaptogens like Holy Basil or digestives like Peppermint)
-
Grounding meditation at the start of the
day, before chores/work
-
Deep breathing meditation for 5-10
minutes, lying on the ground before bed
-
Self-massage or acupressure
-
Simple yoga and stretching
-
Orienting to sources of joy in the
environment (a bird, flower, cloud, painting)
-
Noise-cancelling headphones when out
-
Journaling by candlelight
-
Incense or natural oils like lavender
-
Listening to sounds of nature, Tibetan
singing bowls, or chanting
-
Humming or whistling
-
Going to places where human connection
feels enjoyable, such as the park
-
Playing with fur or human family (board
games, throwing the ball, etc.)
-
Having technology-free days
-
Moving more slowly and multi-tasking less
-
Creating checklists to reduce mental
strain
-
Mirror work gazing after a shower for a
minute, saying affirmations
-
Comforting the
inner child through doing
things they love
-
Setting boundaries with others by having
prepared "scripts"
I wrote an article on
Soul Recovery a couple of weeks
back, and it's a perfect complement to this post (with many more
soothing suggestions).
Obviously, there are so many other things I could
write here.
But this list would be fifty pages long, so I'm
keeping it short and simple to give you a taste of what's possible.
Nervous System Regulation IS a
Spiritual Path
Learning to calm, ground, and regulate your nervous system is a
spiritual path itself because the body is your ever-present field of
wisdom.
The fire in your belly, the contraction in
your chest, and the dullness in your head all reveal what you
need to know about a person, situation, or
inner shadow.
Your body is a thermometer of truth, a
transmitter of wisdom, and an oracle of guidance.
As a sensitive person, you have both the blessing (and the curse at
times) of feeling these physical sensations in an enhanced way.
That is one of your greatest gifts. Now it's time to harness it.
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