SHAKE to Regulate
If you’ve taken my yoga class at Lizard Yoga, you know we like to shake, breathe, and emote!
Here’s why that works:
It engages the Sympathetic branch of your Nervous System
You read that right! The sympathetic or fight/flight state isn’t “bad” unless you’re stuck and unable to downregulate when needed.
When your body is stuck in a sympathetic state, it means it’s activated and ready to move! Sometimes you can ground this energy of activation with gentle breathwork and movement, but other times, you have to facilitate its full, wild expression!
By allowing yourself to act on the desire to activate that stems from the fight/flight state, your system is able to naturally return to baseline.
Play is a blended neurological state
When you shake you’re actually using a blended neurological state that combines activation with safety. This blended state is considered “play” and it combines ventral vagal (safe + social) with sympathetic activity. Read more about play here.
Healing gets to be fun! And silliness is welcomed as the inner child lets loose! It can be easy to let “healing” feel dull and serious.
It can ease you out of a freeze response
Once safety has been established, gentle shaking can added needed activation to a system that is expressing from a freeze/shutdown response (AKA dorsal vagal, an aspect of parasympathetic)
While this process may initially feel uncomfortable, it can facilitate the system moving into a more sympathetic state, which is more evolved than a pure dorsal vagal state! In fact, you always pass through the sympathetic state when traveling from dorsal vagal (freeze) to ventral vagal (safe + social)...
Here’s one more way that studies show can regulate your nervous system and enhance your neurological capacity to hold more LIFE: get adjusted! Ensure that your chiropractor is evaluating your Nervous System. This is my specialty and I’d be honored to support you in this capacity!