Functional freeze and spiritual dissociation - how to heal your nervous system
The popular buzz these days centres around the notion of regulating nervous system dysregulation. However, it's crucial to recognize that there’s an important distinction between calming and healing, and it's the latter that truly unlocks opportunities for personal growth and for expanding healing potential.
Many specialists in the nervous system offer nervous system support focusing primarily on calming techniques. Self-paced courses provide lightly supported learning avenues that lean towards calming practices rather than re-wiring nervous system patterns. The absence of live components and reliance on secondary coaches can impede the transmission of healing energy.
Nervous system re-wiring occurs when the body feels safe and connected. Our early experiences with caregivers shape our ability to access relational safety so we can transition from co-regulation to self-regulation as our nervous system matures. The key lies in having a functioning ventral vagus nerve, which signals our willingness to receive connection and support from others, creating a feedback loop of safety.
While many practices calm the nervous system, they often fall short in creating lasting resilience. An optimal nervous system is not one that stays perpetually calm but effortlessly and automatically returns to regulation after moments of having a dysregulated nervous system.
If freeze is a familiar state (your nervous system’s ‘home base’), you will probably feel attracted to meditation and spiritual practices, and they may be the only pathway you have to feeling regulated. It’s not uncommon for spiritual practitioners to mistake the numbness of freeze as ecstatic union with Source Energy.
Numbing can feel like being untethered and free – when the trappings of the physical body no longer constrain you. But if you numb to the sensations in your body, you also numb to your aliveness and switch off your connection to the web of life, to your life-force energy and creative power. Numbing will also feel expansive and convince you that you are untouchable. But when you’re untouchable, you’re also unreachable, which inhibits authentic connection – your true birthright.
Therefore, as important it is to understand the difference between calming and regulating the nervous system, it is essential to distinguish between calming and numbing.
Building the capacity to discern these states and return to connection with safe people, the environment, and our body through subtle and gentle movement aids in lifting freeze and rewiring nervous system patterns for health and well-being.
How can you lift the freeze and heal your nervous system?
An effective way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system without sliding into freeze or dissociation is through real-time interaction with a regulated nervous system. Nervous systems are learning systems and they contain mirror neurons that learn from one another.
When choosing a practice, if it focuses on nourishing and relaxing the nervous system, it is calming rather than healing. Orienting, singing, toning, and gentle head movements in a figure eight pattern will stimulate the vagus nerve and promote a state of 'relaxed alertness' rather than mere calmness. Genuine healing leads to growth and evolution, resembling a natural 'flow' state where everything becomes easy and effortless. Calming practices are necessary, but they are a steppingstone to building capacity to engage in practices that facilitate true healing and growth.
