MEDITATION THROUGH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

This past weekend I had a 30-minute meditation in which I experienced all three of the basic states of the nervous system. It was interesting to “visit” each part of the ANS and just be with whatever was happening.  There were no great resolutions or some beautiful ending where everything was tied up in a bright bow, yet there is a kind of power in resting with what is and letting that be as it is, even if it’s uncomfortable. In the middle of the meditation I was not thinking, “Oh, this is the sympathetic nervous system, this is the ventral vagal system,” etc. and yet right afterward I did have a realization of what had happened which had the effect of bringing it all together somehow.

I started with a practice that I had just heard Liz Gilbert describe in a podcast called We Can Do Hard Things. She described a writing practice she does daily where she touches in with her sense of God and asks, “What would You have me know today?” Since I loved her description of the practice and have been finding a lot of benefit lately from writing during my meditations, I tried it out for myself.

My sense of the Divine these days is very spacious, with a loving, feminine flavor.  I wrote my question, paused, and then started to write as if I was my own Divine Mother.  She calls me “Darling” and “Sweetheart,” which I just love so much. It may seem strange, but I did hear words as if they were coming from outside of me.  They were wise and loving words. They were mainly reminding me how I was one of Her beloveds and was just so fine already just as I am. She invited me to chill and not work so hard to “do” anything.  That I not only didn’t have to do so much, but I also didn’t have to be the best—She knows I often think I need to be the best. She knows I had really good training in that, and it still runs deep.

At first I settled in and just loved hearing her call me Sweetie and Darling and I could relax and be with it all.  It felt very peaceful and dear, like I was sitting in Her lap, and She was stroking my hair. I was in the Ventral Vagal state of the nervous system—I felt both personally safe and connected along with a sense of spaciousness and connection to something bigger that was important.  It felt delicious and very nourishing.

I could just feel myself really letting go into that when BOOM, everything changed, and I could feel a sense of terror arising.  My heart started racing and I could feel it beating hard inside my chest as if I was in real danger.  This was the Sympathetic Nervous System coming online. I could feel myself noticing this new feeling and looked around inside to see if I could tell what had changed and if I were in some kind of danger. I felt that the part of me that thinks I need to keep doing to be ok was VERY confused by all this talk of doing less and this part of me was fearful that if I just kept resting back into Divine Mother’s lap, something bad would happen. This is the training.  Keep doing to be OK.  You will not be safe, loved or accepted if you are not efficient and effective in every moment. I even remembered times when I had relaxed fully and it had been fine, but today my scared self was having none of it.  It was as if there was a thread attached to the relaxation that pulled her out of me to stand up and be worried. I felt very uncomfortable yet could maintain just a speck of curiosity as I felt my body just be terrified for a while.

Then, perhaps because it was uncomfortable feeling what was there, or just because the mind wanders, my mind started wandering. I started thinking about the 10 people who had been killed the day before by a White supremacist gunman. I imagined and touched into the fear that every Black person must be feeling that morning, knowing that they could be shopping for food, and someone could decide they had to die that day because of the color of their skin.  I thought of my Back friends and colleagues and of all those touched by the shooting, which is all of us in some way. With my nervous system already in an agitated state, I felt rage at the divisions in our country and the fact that this young man had been trained to think that way by people who hoped he would do exactly what he did. 

Then I could feel the moment when I went from rage to despair.  Everything inside me collapsed and I felt hopeless and small. I felt frozen as if nothing inside me could move and nothing on the outside could move either.  I couldn’t write anymore—there were no more endearments coming from Divine Mother. My heartbeat was no longer beating hard, and I could barely breathe.  I have no idea how long I was in this Dorsal Vagal state (DV), but at some point I did recognize that I was frozen and collapsed and opened my eyes and looked around me. I recognized after the fact where I had been and that from my reading about White supremacy, I knew that this is the feeling we White people have been trained to have around race issues—a disempowerment and inability to act.  I also realized that silent seated meditation is not helpful for me when I am in DV and perhaps that is one of the reasons I have been moving so much in my meditations over these last few hard years.  Because DV is an extremely disembodied state, movement seems to break up the collapse and get me back in my body again.

Sometimes in meditation, things come full circle and uncomfortable sensations can fade into the background of a spacious loving feeling to end the meditation. This was not my experience that day.   My meditation was over as I came out of DV. What did seem to pull it all together though was this understanding and felt sense of all parts of my nervous system.  That day I got a very good look at several deep patterns within me, and I sat with them and really saw them in the light of the loving attention that had been present at the beginning.  I got up still feeling unsettled, and under the circumstances of that day, it felt important to feel unsettled.  Because of that, I could not go on with my day as if everything was alright, because it was not. I took a couple of actions that I felt were necessary to respond to the violence we had all witnessed the day before.  One response came from my anger, and another came from a place of deep compassion.

There is something so potent about understanding how our nervous systems work whether we can feel it in the moment or can circle back around to understand at a later date.  There are meditations we can use to make it more likely we can meet any of the states of the nervous system.  We don’t always touch into all the states as I did that day; often one is dominant for the majority of the time. I believe we need a big toolkit and that the same practice will likely not work for you in every circumstance.  If you would like to explore more ideas and practices in community, please join me for Meditations Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory on Saturday, June 4 at Radiant Yoga and Wellness (in person or livestream.) You can also register for the class and get the recording if you are not able to attend in person.