by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
How To Regulate Your Nervous System for REALNESS
Regulating your nervous system is one of the ‘secret’ ingredients for getting what you want out of life:
You can have the best intentions in the world, set goals, visualise success, and tell yourself affirmations until your mirror begs for mercy but if your nervous system isn’t regulated, life is always going to feel like you’re pushing a boulder uphill (only for it to roll all the way back down again once you get to the top).
That’s because your nervous system is the ultimate filter between you, the world, and life itself:
It’s the control centre of your body – the unseen ‘boss’ deciding whether you feel safe and grounded or wired and frazzled – and most of us don’t even realise we’re letting this invisible filter run the show (because we think we’re whatever the filter happens to be showing us).
The good news is that you can bring your system back into balance in less time than it takes to scroll through Instagram and that ten minutes of the right practice can mean the difference between reacting from fear and stress or responding from realness.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
How to Regulate Your Nervous System: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- How To Regulate Your Nervous System for REALNESS
- Your Nervous System: The Control Centre of Your Mind-Body
- Sympathetic Dominance: Why We’re Stuck in Stress Mode
- The Power of Nervous System Regulation
- The Most Powerful 10-Minute Nervous System Regulation Process (Backed by Science)
- Why This Works
- Making It a Daily Ritual
- How to Regulate Your Nervous System – The Final Word: From Surviving to Living REAL
Your Nervous System: The Control Centre of Your Mind-Body
Your nervous system is essentially two gears working together inside the same engine:
- Your sympathetic nervous system is the “fight or flight” state that you’ve probably heard about. It’s your body’s survival mode designed to pump out adrenaline and cortisol to get your body ready for action so that you outrun lions or stressful work emails.
- Your parasympathetic nervous system is the “rest and digest” state where your body can repair, heal, and connect to itself and life. It’s the place of safety and realness.
(These two parts of the nervous system are parts of the autonomic nervous system which is responsible for involuntary behaviours like breathing etc. – you don’t have to ‘think’ about doing it).
Both of these ‘gears’ of the nervous system are vital (which is why we have them):
You need the sympathetic to get up in the morning, train at the gym, or stand up for yourself and you need the parasympathetic to relax, digest your food, and allow your immune system to do its work.
Here’s the thing, though:
Most of us live in a world where our sympathetic nervous system is overclocked and so we only ever find ourselves in a world of threat, stress, and the confusing experience of the void.
Sympathetic Dominance: Why We’re Stuck in Stress Mode
Think about it:
Every ping from your phone, every unresolved argument, every suppressed emotion you’ve shoved down because you “don’t have time to deal with it” all become things that your nervous system perceives as a potential threat.
Unfortunately, instead of bouncing between action (sympathetic) and recovery (parasympathetic) and allowing natural stress cycles to pass, many of us get trapped in a state of sympathetic dominance which means that we’re always ‘on’ and scanning for danger, even if the only danger is a passive-aggressive email from your boss.
If we never break out of this sympathetic dominance and start to regulate then:
- We burn out.
- Our bodies flip into freeze mode (a prolonged shutdown – a.k.a. depression, in the most extreme cases).
- Anxiety and depression creep in.
- We mistake our nervous system state for our actual personality (“I’m just an anxious person” – no, that’s your dysregulated system speaking).
- Most tragically: we block our realness and so we never quite land in the safety we need to express who we really are and to do what we really want to do with our lives.
The Power of Nervous System Regulation
Regulating your nervous system isn’t about floating away on a cloud of Zen cliches:
It’s about returning to safety – the physiological state where your body knows it isn’t under constant threat.
When you feel safe, your parasympathetic system kicks in:
That’s when digestion works, immunity strengthens, creativity sparks, and you stop snapping at your loved ones for leaving the cupboard door open.
Safety is the foundation of real living because, without it, everything is distorted by survival mode.
With it, on the other hand, you get to experience life as it is – not as your fear interprets it to be (remember that F.E.A.R stands for “False Evidence Appearing Real”).
The Most Powerful 10-Minute Nervous System Regulation Process (Backed by Science)
There are dozens of tools out there to help you learn how to regulate your nervous system (examples are yoga, meditation, breathwork, and cold exposure) but if you want a no-nonsense, science-backed process that reliably shifts your system in ten minutes, then keep reading.
This sequence combines breathwork, somatic release, and grounding – three of the most effective, research-backed levers for nervous system regulation.
Here we go (all you need is a timer and your body):
Step 1: Coherent Breathing (3 minutes)
Breath is the remote control for your nervous system and by slowing your breathing to around 5–6 breaths per minute, you signal safety to your body.
Here’s a simple practice:
- Inhale through the nose for 5.5 seconds.
- Exhale through the nose for 5.5 seconds.
- Keep your belly soft and rising as you breathe (a good technique is to put your hand on your belly as it rises and falls).
Research from the HeartMath Institute and multiple clinical studies have shown that coherent breathing activates the vagus nerve, boosting parasympathetic activity and balancing heart rate variability.
Step 2: Somatic Shake (2 minutes)
Animals in the wild shake after a stressful event to discharge adrenaline but, unfortunately, humans have learned to suppress this natural impulse and end up storing unnatural tension in their muscles.
Somatic shaking helps you get rid of it:
- Stand up, loosen your knees, and shake out your whole body as if you’re a wet dog trying to get rid of all the water on itself.
- Let your arms, shoulders, and jaw go ‘floppy’.
- Make sound if it helps – sighs, hums, even laughter…basically whatever your body needs to do in the moment (try to let your body move you, not your mind).
Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, notes that shaking helps release stored stress and resets the system back to baseline.
Step 3: Grounding with the 5-4-3-2-1 Method (3 minutes)
Now that you’ve calmed the body, anchor yourself in the present moment which prevents your mind from dragging you back into sympathetic overdrive.
To do this you need to get fully into your sense by focusing on:
- 5 things you can see – colours, shapes, light.
- 4 things you can feel – your feet on the ground, clothes on skin.
- 3 things you can hear – subtle sounds around you.
- 2 things you can smell – or imagine a scent you love.
- 1 thing you can taste – sip water, notice your tongue.
This practice pulls attention out of mental loops and roots you in reality, where you are already safe and so the nervous system can relax.
Step 4: Heart Focus (2 minutes)
Close with this simple heart coherence practice to reinforce the parasympathetic shift:
- Place a hand on your chest.
- Breathe as if the breath is flowing in and out of your heart.
- Recall something or someone you genuinely appreciate and let the gratitude expand throughout your body.
Studies show heart-focused breathing increases vagal tone, boosts emotional stability, and improves resilience under stress. Gratitude has also been proven to improve mood and feelings of safety.
Why This Works
This is a simple but very powerful process for regulating your nervous system and bringing yourself back to safety – in just ten minutes, you’ve:
- Regulated breathing rhythms → activated your parasympathetic nervous system.
- Discharged stored tension → freed your body from holding stress.
- Anchored your awareness → stopped the spiral of anxious thoughts.
- Activated appreciation → reconnected with the felt sense of safety.
This combination is like hitting ‘reset’ button on your entire system, allowing you to move from threat mode into safety mode – from survival into realness.
My book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace will take you deeper into nervous system regulation and building a solid foundation of realness within yourself and life.
Making It a Daily Ritual
You don’t need to wait until you’re overwhelmed to practise this – just like brushing your teeth, nervous system regulation works best when done daily.
- Do it before a big meeting.
- Do it after your commute.
- Do it in bed before sleep.
The more consistently you practise, the more flexible and resilient your nervous system becomes and the stronger the foundation of realness within you becomes as you’re coming from a place of regulation instead of restlessness – of course, stress still happens in life, but instead of hijacking you for hours (or days), it passes through and you can stay focused on your real life.
How to Regulate Your Nervous System – The Final Word: From Surviving to Living REAL
Your nervous system is not your enemy – it’s your ally – but if you let it get stuck in stress mode, it will convince you that the world is more dangerous than it really is.
In under ten minutes, you can flip the script and can return to safety, balance your system, and show up in the world as who you really are.
Realness doesn’t happen in fight-or-flight – happens in rest-and-digest.
So the next time you catch yourself spiralling, remember that you don’t need a retreat in Bali or a three-hour meditation marathon. You just need ten minutes.
Your nervous system – and your real self – will do the rest and then thank you for it.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you want to start building a foundation of realness within yourself so you can live your REAL life then book a free coaching call with me and I’ll guide and support you as you start taking real action in your life.
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