The Body’s Wisdom

Well before I could articulate why, yoga became a deep passion.
There was something so blissful about moving my body with my breath.
Something grounding. Something transcendent.
The rhythm of my spine, the activation of muscle, the lift of my heart—
it felt like medicine, though I couldn’t have told you why.

Yoga gave my body and mind a way to regulate.
Like an animal that instinctively shakes after escaping danger,
my nervous system found a way to discharge stress—through movement.
And I kept returning to that rhythm.

It wasn’t until years later—after unraveling chronic anxiety, panic, and dissociation—that I realized my body had been leading me toward healing all along.
Long before I knew the language of polyvagal theory,
long before I understood trauma physiology—
my body knew what it needed.

How Movement Regulates the Nervous System

The science backs this up. Movement isn’t just about fitness—it’s a form of neuroregulation. Here's why:

🌀 Discharge of Sympathetic Energy:
When we move—especially rhythmically and with breath—we help the body release the buildup of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Just like animals shake to release survival energy, movement allows us to metabolize sympathetic charge instead of storing it as tension, anxiety, or numbness.

🫁 Vagal Tone + Parasympathetic Activation:
Mindful movement (especially with breath) stimulates the vagus nerve, the primary highway of the parasympathetic nervous system. This helps shift us from fight/flight into rest/digest/heal. Practices like yoga, walking, rocking, or even gentle stretching can all support vagal activation.

🧠 Interoception + Emotional Awareness:
Movement increases activity in the insula, a brain region associated with interoception—our ability to feel what's happening inside. This awareness allows us to better notice our emotions and sensations before we react to them, helping us respond with more choice and clarity.

The Body Knows Before the Mind Understands

I haven’t mastered any of this.
I’m still learning to come home to my body, again and again.
But now I recognize movement for what it is:
a deeply intelligent language of healing.

The yogis knew this centuries ago when they created asana.
They understood that conscious movement could be a spiritual practice—
one that unblocks stuck energy and reawakens presence.

Now, modern science confirms it:

“The body keeps the score:
if the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera,
in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions,
then the healing process must involve the body.”
— Bessel van der Kolk

The Nest and the Bird: A Journey Through Anxiety and Stillness

Thirteen years ago, I sat in a circle of women, freshly initiated into a specific form of meditation.

As our teacher guided us into our first group practice, I let my mantra play in my mind, following it into a stillness I had never known. And then, as we were instructed to begin coming out, I felt something… strange. My soul felt like it was shaking in and out of my body—like it couldn’t quite settle in. The feeling was so intense I had to grip my chair to keep from falling off.

From that moment on, I never let myself go deep again. I would arrive at the threshold, but never cross it. I stayed at the surface. I was afraid.

Shortly after, I found myself in the office of Dr. Fred Travis, a world-renowned neurologist and professor at the university I attended. I described what had happened, and how meditation now triggered waves of anxiety.

That day, Dr. Travis introduced me to the concept of trauma.

At 24, I didn’t fully understand it—only that something inside me had been shaken. He explained that my nervous system was reacting to an event it couldn’t distinguish from past experiences. It wasn’t the meditation that was dangerous—it was that something in me remembered something else.

A therapist later gave me a metaphor I’ve carried with me to this day. He placed his pinky fingers together and cupped his hands like a bowl.

“Your nervous system is like a nest,” he said. “And your soul is a bird. If the nest is full of prickly twigs, the bird won’t feel safe to land.”

Years later, after my son was born, I sat with an astrologer from India—the same one who predicted my pregnancy two months before I knew. He held out his hands in that same cupped shape and said:

“You’re trying to catch the rain with your hands… but you have nowhere to hold it.”

So much energy. Nowhere to ground it.

In hindsight, I see the through line. Different teachers, different languages—but the same message:
Your nervous system is dysregulated. It has been for a long time.

It took a full-blown mental health crisis for me to recognize what had always been true. Why?
Because chaos, anxiety, and hypervigilance were normalized in my life. It was all I knew—from womb to present.

Disconnection became my survival strategy. Anxiety, my constant companion.

I am a yoga teacher. A meditation guide.
And I am also a human actively healing from chronic anxiety and dissociation.

I believe there’s not enough real, compassionate information for people like me—because too often, these experiences are shrouded in shame.

But anxiety is not a weakness.
It’s a signal. It’s a messenger.
It’s a part of you asking to be seen.

Anxiety has been my most terrifying enemy… and also my most powerful teacher.

Your nervous system remembers everything.
Your body holds the pain, the grief, the trauma, the losses. And though we may carry those knots and appear to function—we cannot function well or for long if we don’t tend to them.

So sit with your nervous system.
Sit with the discomfort.
Notice where you go—or where you avoid going.

Can you be still? Can you stay grounded?

Treat your nervous system well.
Make your nest soft. Safe. Nourishing.

I am endlessly grateful for the teachers who have helped me peel back the layers. There’s still work to do—decades of knots to untangle—but had it not been for my practice, I may have never known how tightly I’d been holding on.

If you suffer from anxiety, know this:

You are not alone.
I am here. As a shoulder. As a heart that understands.
As someone who knows.
And maybe, as someone with a tool or two that might help.