Calm the Body to Calm the Mind: Somatic Strategies for Nervous System Regulation

How to Calm Your Nervous System

Have you ever woken during the night with symptoms of an anxiety or panic attack? Or perhaps you are driving home from work like normal and then suddenly you notice your body seems to be freaking out. I hear this often from clients, and I get it.  These symptoms are real, scary and seemingly inexplicable. Heart palpitations, tight or heavy sensation in your chest, quick shallow breaths or feeling like you can’t catch your breath, acute muscle tension, excessive sweating, shaking hands, racing thoughts, spiraling worry… Am I having a heart attack? Am I sick? Am I dying? What is wrong with me?

The first time a person experiences these symptoms often leads to a visit to the emergency room, followed by cardiac testing. And people should seek medical care and get fully checked out, because the sensations of a panic attack are very similar to symptoms related to a cardiac event. It can be difficult to tell the difference without medical testing. But if you do the full medical work up and the physician tells you there’s nothing physically wrong, it’s “just” anxiety… then it’s time to consult a licensed therapist to learn how to calm your nervous system.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy approaches and strategies, such as CBT and DBT, can be very helpful for anxiety, but these approaches take time and practice. When you’ve experienced a panic attack and your body feels out of control, when you’re afraid it may happen again without warning, you want relief fast - not several weeks from now. It’s hard to effectively think or rationalize your way through anxiety using cognitive-based strategies if your body still feels like it’s going haywire. Somatic strategies work to calm your body to calm your mind. Keep reading to learn specific steps for how to calm your nervous system.

Calm the Body to Calm the Mind

What's Actually Happening in Your Body

Emotions live in the body. When our emotions are dysregulated (i.e., out of control), our bodies feel out of control. That's not a flaw in your thinking. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it's designed to do, trying to protect you, but in a way that feels anything but helpful. Your nervous system runs on two main settings. One is built for action: it speeds up your heart rate, tightens your muscles, and sharpens your focus so you can respond to a perceived threat. The other is built for recovery: it slows your heart rate, supports digestion, and lets your body rest and repair.

Most of us know these as fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest responses. The switch between them runs largely through something called the vagus nerve, a long nerve that connects your brainstem to your heart, lungs, and gut. When your vagus nerve is well-balanced, your body moves between these two states with some flexibility: activated when it needs to be, calm again once the intense moment passes.

When you're under chronic stress, that flexibility breaks down. Your body gets stuck in the "on alert" position, even when nothing in front of you actually requires it. That's what a dysregulated nervous system feels like: tight, alert, and tired all at once, with no obvious threat to point to.

The Body Isn't the Problem - It's Trying to Protect You

It's easy to hear all this and think something's wrong with you for feeling this way. It isn't. A nervous system stuck in overdrive isn't a character flaw, and it isn't a sign you're "too anxious" or not handling things well enough. It's a physiological state, and physiological states can shift.

Have you ever watched the movie “Jaws”? If you’re Gen X like me, you’ve likely seen it many, many times. Still, if you watch it again today, notice what happens in your body when you suspect the shark is approaching the boat, the iconic Jaws theme music starts to play, and you start anticipating the shark will suddenly pop out of the water and attack. Does your heart speed up? Do you hold your breath? Get very still with tight muscles? Wide eyes? Clenched jaw? (If the shark attack was real, your body would be primed to react quickly to try and keep you safe. But since it’s just a movie… not helpful.)

Suddenly, the shark swims past, the danger resolves momentarily. “Whew, that was close” you say. You take a deep breath and sigh, your shoulders relax, your heart rate slows, your body moves again. You look around at others and start talking. That feeling of relief, the way you feel it in your body - those are safety signals that indicate your brain no longer detects a threat. Regulation strategies are designed to send the “all clear” signal to the brain and body to turn the vagus nerve response back to the “calm” position.

The nervous system Fight-or-Flight response is designed to protect you from perceived threats, but it can also create physiological symptoms of anxiety.

Seven Strategies to Signal Safety to Your Nervous System

These are somatic exercises, body-based tools you can use on your own, anytime, without special training. These work by sending a “safety” signal to your brain via sensory input and spreading the message to the body through the vagus nerve.  Next time you feel stressed or anxious, give one or more of these a try and notice which ones work best for you.

1. Slow deep breathing with a longer exhale. Inhale for a count of four, exhale for a count of six or eight. The extended exhale is the part that matters. Research suggests slower, longer exhales are linked to increased vagal activity, which is the body's signal to shift out of alert mode. When you’re scared, you hold your breath. When you feel relief, you exhale. “Whew! That was close!”

   
   

2. Humming or vocal toning. The vibration from humming travels along the same pathways as the vagus nerve, right through your throat and chest. A low hum for thirty seconds can be surprisingly effective. When people are scared or anxious, they often go quiet and turn their focus inward to their thoughts and internal experience.  When calm and secure, they become more interactive and talkative. 

   
   

3. Cold water on your face. Splashing very cold water over your face or hands/ wrists triggers what's called the dive reflex, which slows your heart rate quickly. Anxiety can raise the heart rate, and noticing a racing heart can trigger anxiety (especially if someone interprets the fast heartbeat as dangerous / something is wrong with me). Therefore, calming the heart rate back to normal can be beneficial in reducing the physiological trigger and sustainer of feeling anxious. 

   
   

4. Changing your body's position in space. Lie on your back and let your head hang gently off the edge of a bed or couch for a minute or two (don’t do this if you have any neck or back problems/ pain). Yes, you experience a headrush, and it’s hard to focus on worry thoughts when you’re distracted by the blood rushing to your head. More importantly, body position affects the autonomic nervous system directly. Changing position changes proprioceptive and interoceptive input (some O.T. jargon), which changes what the nervous system is signaling as "safe" or "threatened.” Positional changes that affect breathing mechanics (like lying flat vs. sitting upright) directly change vagal tone, and vagal tone is tightly linked to emotional regulation capacity.

   
   

5. Bilateral movement. Bilateral, rhythmic movement - like walking, running, swimming, cycling - activates both sides of the brain and has a regulating effect on the autonomic nervous system. Walking specifically increases vagal tone and shifts the body toward the “calm” state over time, which is part of why sustained aerobic movement reliably reduces anxiety and depressive symptoms in the research literature. Ever heard of the runner’s high? It describes that euphoric, calm, serene feeling people sometimes experience with sustained, moderate aerobic exercise such as running. Bilateral eye movements, used in therapeutic approaches like Accelerated Resolution Therapy, can create that same calm body, calm mind feeling.  

   
   

6. Butterfly Tapping. Criss-cross your arms and put your hands on the opposite shoulder. Your arms will look like a butterfly shape.  Gently tap your shoulders, alternating one side then the other (lef, right, left, right). Do this for 2 or 3 minutes. Notice what this feels like and slowly decrease the pace of your tapping; slow your breathing as you slow your tapping. This bilateral, rhythmic touch can be self-soothing. The steady, repetitive tactile pattern can help regulate autonomic arousal by sending a safety signal to the brain. It also can interrupt rumination by shifting attention to something more concrete and present-focused to track. If you’re out in public and don’t want to draw attention to your tapping, you can also put your hands on your knees and alternate tapping.

   
   

7. Sour candy. Sour candy (like Warheads or Sour Patch Kids) is often used as a grounding technique; the sudden, strong sensory input can interrupt rumination and focus your attention into the present moment (specifically, your tongue demanding to know “What are you doing to me?!?”)  Sour taste activates the trigeminal nerve fairly intensely, and it's generally believed that a strong enough taste stimulus can also nudge that nervous system calm switch activation similarly to how cold water or strong taste stimulates the vagus nerve.

When to Seek Help

If there is any question about whether or not your physical sensations could be a sign of a medical condition, especially a cardiovascular event, always seek immediate medical attention first. If you are having a medical emergency, don't ignore or minimize the symptoms or delay getting necessary medical help.

Call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room if you are experiencing a medical emergency.

However, if you are medically cleared and the physicians confirm your sensations are psycho-somatic (meaning real symptoms felt in the body that are triggered by psychological factors, such as stress or anxiety) then it’s time to consult with a mental health professional.  

Therapy that works directly with the body and nervous system, not just traditional talk therapy, tends to make the biggest difference. It’s important to calm the body in order to calm the mind.  

As a Certified Master Practitioner of Accelerate Resolution Therapy with advanced training, I specialize in helping people find relief fast from physical sensations of anxiety and panic attacks, because the work is happening at the nervous system level where the emotional dysregulation actually lives. 

Don’t settle for living with feeling anxious about feeling anxious, simply because you don’t know what else to do.  Book a free 15-minute consultation and let's talk about what's actually going on and how my therapy services might help.

Jill Wiseman, MA, LPC-S | Wiseman Counseling & Therapy | Katy, TX | jillwisemanlpcs.com