Your nervous system affects every aspect of your health, including:
- Thoughts, memory, learning, and feelings
- Movements, such as balance & coordination
- Senses, including how your brain interprets what you see, hear, taste, touch & feel
- Sleep, healing, and aging
- Heartbeat & breathing patterns
- How we respond to stressful moments
- Digestion, as well as how hungry and thirsty you feel
…with all of those lines running throughout the city. Well those lines would represent a vast network of nerves sending electrical signals to and from other cells, glands and muscles all over our body, These nerves receive information from the world around you. Then the nerves interpret the information and control your response
The Two Main Parts of the Nervous System are…
- Central Nervous System (CNS) – your brain and spinal cord
- Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) – consists of many nerves that branch out from CNS all around the body. This system relays information about your brain and spinal cord to your organs, arms, legs and fingers and toes.
Your PNS consists of:
- Somatic Nervous System, which guides our voluntary movements like choosing to engage a muscle.
- Autonomic Nervous System, which controls the activities you do without thinking about it.
Our ANS is broken into Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Nervous System.
Our sympathetic nervous system is often referred to as “Fight. Flight or freeze”. Our body constantly scans our environment evaluating stimuli. When we sense a threat our SNS leaps into action sending vital resources to the parts of our body needed to fight danger.
Our parasympathetic nervous system is referred to as “rest and digest”. The parasympthatic system is like the brake that slows us down and helps us to re-establish balance after a more stressful period. Increased parasympathetic activity causes the heart rate and respiration to slow down. When we feel safe, our body sends blood to our organs and away from skeletal muscles. We digest our food. We make hormones. We repair our muscles. We build strength. Our body is in a state of feeling calm and this relaxation breeds recovery.
In an ideal world we are seeking a healthy balance between both aspects of our Nervous System. We want to invite more equal parts of ‘being’ and ‘doing’.