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The Body Tells Truth: What Your Nervous System Wants You to Know

Writer's picture: Reanna CostaReanna Costa

There is a reason why certain experiences stay with us long after they have passed. The body doesn’t forget. Even when the mind convinces us that we’ve “moved on,” unresolved experiences often remain imprinted in the nervous system, shaping how we move through the world. Many of us have been conditioned to override, ignore, or intellectualize our feelings, but the body always tells the truth. Learning to listen to the signals of the nervous system—rather than bypass them—is a profound key to healing.



Your Nervous System as the Gatekeeper of Experience

The nervous system is our body's command center, responsible for how we respond to stress, process emotions, and engage with the world around us. It operates through different states:

  • The Parasympathetic Nervous System (Rest & Restore): A state of safety, ease, connection, and receptivity.

  • The Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight or Flight): Mobilization in response to perceived threat or stress.

  • The Dorsal Vagal State (Freeze & Shut Down): A survival response where the body goes into collapse, dissociation, or numbness.


These states aren’t just theoretical—they are deeply felt. If someone has lived in prolonged stress or trauma, their baseline may be a constant state of hypervigilance (fight/flight) or shutdown (freeze), making true rest, connection, and joy feel foreign.


The Stories Your Body is Holding

Because the body stores emotional experiences, unprocessed trauma doesn’t just “disappear” when time passes. It lives in tension patterns, chronic pain, digestive issues, insomnia, and emotional reactivity.

  • Do you find yourself feeling "on edge" even when everything is okay?

  • Do you struggle to relax, always anticipating the next thing to go wrong?

  • Do you disconnect or numb out when facing discomfort?


These are nervous system responses, not personality traits. They are adaptations the body has made to keep you safe. And the good news? With the right tools, these patterns can shift.


Rewiring the Nervous System: The Role of Breath, Movement & Somatic Work

If trauma is stored in the body, then healing must also happen through the body. This is why breathwork, movement, and somatic therapy are so effective—they allow us to process experiences on a level deeper than words.


Here are a few ways to begin re-regulating your nervous system:

  1. Grounding Through the Body

    • Bring awareness to your physical sensations. Feel your feet on the ground. Notice your breath. Place a hand on your heart or belly.

    • In breathwork, maintaining the ready position (feet planted, body supported) helps regulate and ground energy, prevent overwhelm and build trust and resilience with your system.

  2. Breathing with Awareness

    • What type of breathing best supports you and where you are at?

    • Long, slow exhales activate the parasympathetic nervous system, shifting the body from stress to rest.

    • Short, faster and intentional breath holds help build a charge and move us out of lethargy

  3. Releasing Through Movement

    • Trauma often creates stuck energy in the body. Work on listneing to the body and what is needs (rather than thinking you know). Often times movements will appear such as : gentle shaking, stretching, or intuitive movement that can help release stored tension.

  4. Feeling Without the Story

    • One of the biggest shifts in nervous system healing is learning to feel sensations without needing to intellectualize them.

    • Instead of thinking why you feel a certain way, practice simply noticing what you feel—tightness, heat, constriction, expansion.

  5. Microdosing as a Nervous System Ally

    • Psychedelic microdosing can support nervous system regulation by increasing neuroplasticity and enhancing emotional processing.

    • When combined with breath, movement, and integration practices, it can gently help shift long-held patterns.


The Path to Regulation is Not Linear

Healing the nervous system is not about "fixing" yourself or achieving a perfect state of calm. It’s about expanding your capacity to be present with life—to feel without fear, to rest without guilt, to move through the world with greater ease and authenticity.


Your body already holds the wisdom to heal. The key is learning how to listen.

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