Nervous System Regulation and Devotion To Self

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) The easy answer, and I admit the one

that I have been guilty of from time

to time, is a kind of black and

white thinking that makes you think that taking

the spiritual out of practices like yoga, and

meditation and mindfulness is a Western thing to

do.

And to some extent, that is true.

However, that type of thinking also does not

fully grasp the work of Swami Vivekananda, as

well as BK Iyengar, and others who are

working very diligently to bring yoga to audiences

in Europe, in the Americas.

And I've sat with this, I've taken several

classes on yoga, on Buddhism, on histories, both

medieval and earlier histories and more modern histories.

I've read a lot of books, I have

a lot more books to read, just I've

really sat with this.

And the answer that I have kind of

come to is that, while my personal preference

is to incorporate the spiritual into my practice,

I also choose to look at it a

little differently than a lot of those who

are proposing the black and white thinking.

And that's what I wanted to talk to

you about today.

You're listening to Feathermane Soul Wisdom, a podcast

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in spite of life's challenges.

If you're living with a chronic illness or

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then this show is for you.

Your host is Kit Kaelstoe, Wild Spirit Storyteller.

Thanks for listening.

And now on to the episode.

I'm Kit Kaelstoe, your host.

And I want to start today by going

over a topic that I know you've heard

me talk about before, but I feel like

it really sets the groundwork for what we're

about to discuss, which is regulating your nervous

system, using tools to regulate your nervous system

as a form of devotion and in conjunction

with your spirituality without necessarily falling into the

thinking that you may have about what spirituality

is, specifically religion.

So I always like to begin these conversations

by just reiterating that when I talk about

spirituality, I am not talking about organized religion

or religious faiths, or any sort of belief

in a deity or deities or spiritual deity

religious system.

That's not what I'm talking about.

When I talk about spirituality, I follow the

dictionary definition that is found in the Merriam

-Webster dictionary, m-w.com if you want

to look it up, that basically says spirituality

is a devotion to something larger than yourself.

Full stop.

Doesn't define what that is, doesn't state that

that has to be within a certain belief

system within a certain religious framework.

It's simply a devotion to something larger than

yourself.

That could be a concept.

So in today's conversation, we're talking about tools

like yoga and meditation that often had a

spiritual or religious component to them, but not

necessarily depending on who's teaching, what school and

lineage everything came from.

Or they may have been completely removed from

that, which is something that's happened a lot

as these tools have become studied more diligently

for their health benefits.

So we see this in Mindfulness Based Stress

Reduction, MBSR, which is taught, I believe, at

Brown University.

I know I'm on their mailing list.

I really want to take some of their

classes eventually.

We could look at, there is a form

of Yoga Nidra that was specifically developed to

help veterans with PTSD.

And when we look at that, I know

there's also a hospital in Texas.

I've heard the gentleman speak that's doing a

lot of work with meditation and mindfulness in

cancer patients.

So when you think about the health benefits

that these have, meditation, mindfulness, being present, and

the ways that they're studied for pain relief,

for relaxation, for sleep, for mental health conditions,

then the spirituality is pretty much divorced from

them.

What I would like to talk to you

about today is to bring the spirituality back.

And the larger than yourself.

And again, I just want to say it

could be a concept.

And with that concept, we could think of

it as inner peace, relaxation, feeling good, whatever

good means to you, being calm and present.

That could be a concept that is part

of your devotion.

It could also be a devotion on a

larger level, for example, like the planet, or

compassion.

It could also be devotion, or thinking of

connecting with the universe, the broader universe, the

global community of humanity.

Whatever that concept or whatever they bring to

you, that would be part of spirituality.

And the reason why I mentioned this is

because there is a school of yoga called

bhakti yoga.

Bhakti is devotion.

And the devotion of bhakti takes many different

forms.

Bhakti comes from the Sanskrit root bhaj, which

means to divide, share, or partake.

And it implies a two-way sharing of

love and affection between the devotee and the

divine.

It is not just an emotion, it is

also considered to be an active, committed engagement.

So bhakti is something that you do, you

experience it, but you experience it through the

act of doing.

Bhakti yoga is considered one of the primary

methods or yogas to achieve that spiritual realization

of union with the divine.

And to do that, you're going to use

love and affection as an active bond that

unites your consciousness with divine consciousness.

And it is very accessible.

And it also emphasizes simple actions, like an

offering, like a flower, a cup of water,

over more expensive rituals, over more specific rigid

rituals.

And you can find this devotion expressed a

lot of times through singing or chanting or

reciting hymns, something that you may experience if

you ever watch videos like on YouTube of

like kirtan.

There are also seva, or performing acts of

service as an offering to the God.

And I'm talking about God here.

But I think it's important to note that

in Hindu philosophy, everything is an expression of

Brahma or the universal divine.

And so even though there may be different

deities, even though there may be different actions,

it is all the universal divine spark.

And your your bhakti or your devotion or

love also connects with the spark of divinity

inside of you.

So if we broaden our lens just a

little bit, you know, one of the things

that has really resonated with me is hearing

that the you know, we are all the

universe made flesh, we are the universe trying

to figure itself out.

And so it's doing that in human form.

So if our devotion is to the universe

or to the wall, the wider community of

humanity, then that bhakti or that devotion could

be to humanity in general, the spark of

the universe that is inside all humans, the

spark of the universe that unites all of

us.

And I think that's important to think about

because when we talk about neuro, when we

talk about our nervous system regulation, the things

that come along with that neuro nervous system

regulation is sometimes a lot of feelings that

we're not worthy.

We might feel that we're different from other

humans that we don't know how to human

correctly, that we don't quite feel like we're,

you know, we're right, we feel like we're

broken, we feel like we're wrong.

And a lot of that has to do

with the stories that we were told by

other people trying to get us to conform

to their ideas of what humanity should be

like, or what we should be like, as

far as somebody that's connected with their cultural

beliefs and ideas.

And so, for me, when we start thinking

about radical kindness or radical acceptance to of

ourselves, radical love to ourselves, to me Bhakti

falls right into that same line of thinking

that it is radical devotion to ourselves, not

in a way that places us above anybody

else, not in a way that says that

we're better than anybody else.

But a radical devotion to ourselves or radical

love to ourselves, because we are just as

worthy of devotion, or we are just as

worthy of love as anybody else on this

planet.

It's the kind of thought process where if

you start if you if you get into

that mindset where you feel like you're not

worthy, or you feel like you're not deserving

of something, then you start to think, well,

you know, if these other people are deserving

of it, what do they have that I

don't?

And there may be material things or physical

things that they have that you don't.

But at the end of the day, as

far as we know, you know, we're all

human.

You know, we're all human and those physical

things really have absolutely no bearing on our

humanness, or our worth and our deservingness of

things that every human is deserving of human

rights, housing, food, water, love, companionship, companionship,

understanding, self determination, I could go on the

list of things that we are all deserving

of, and that no one has a right

to take away from anybody else is very

long.

And it is very egalitarian, because we all

have the same rights to those.

And so to me, bhakti is a devotion

or a love of self.

Because through that I am connecting with the

part of me that is connected to the

larger world that's connected to the divine, the

ecosystem inside my body, that mirrors the ecosystem

of this planet.

And I actually have a podcast, probably in

a couple of weeks, I think I haven't

looked at my schedule recently, that will be

talking a bit about that.

The ways in that my wild nature, the

parts of my brain that maybe aren't considered

as civilized, like my amygdala, that that, you

know, that lizard brain, science and psychology calls

it the lizard, the amygdala, the lizard brain,

because it's very much fight, flight, free, flee,

freeze.

But it also has those very primal urges.

And no matter, you know, how fancy our

clothes, no matter how civilized we think of

ourselves, we all still have those primal urges.

And what sets us apart is our relationship

with our fellow beings on this planet, and

how we treat our fellow beings on this

planet.

So when we think about bhakti, and devotion

to nervous system regulation, I really think for

me, it's taking the scientific minded, the prescription

that I have spoken against, and I still

do, I feel like we can't just prescribe

yoga or prescribe meditation.

While I can certainly tell you that they

help.

And the way that I approach them is

different from just like writing a prescription for

a medicine.

I also think we are all different enough

that it's very much not one size fits

all.

And I think one of the keys to

finding a way of meditation that works for

you is to be able to find a

way to access or that makes that practice

accessible to you, a way to make that

practice work for you.

And bhakti or devotion is one way to

do that.

So how does that look when we're talking

about nervous system regulation?

First of all, what is nervous system regulation?

Well, there are probably as many different definitions

of that as there are practitioners, and then

you can probably double that number of definitions.

For me, when my nervous system is regulated,

it means that if I am triggered, so

let me back up a bit.

When I talk about nervous system regulation, I

am not talking about never, ever being triggered,

never ever being depressed, never ever having an

experience that is less than ideal.

When I'm talking about nervous system regulation, I'm

talking about being in tune with your body,

in tune with your thoughts, in tune with

what's going on with your mind.

And this may be difficult, especially for my

neurodivergent community, because one of the great stories,

and great is in air quotes there, that

we're told by the people around us when

we're younger, is that we can't trust what

our own body is telling us, what our

own mind and body and nervous system is

telling us that something is too much and

overwhelming.

We're told we need to ignore that because

of some random arbitrary reason.

So one of the first acts of bhakti

or devotion is simply listening to yourself and

honoring what your body is telling you.

Being curious.

For me, curiosity goes hand in hand with

devotion.

Because when I am curious about something, I

want to explore it.

I want to learn more about it.

I want to find out how it fits

in my world or in my worldview, and

how I can connect with it.

You know, it's like when you when you

see a cat, maybe it's a stray cat,

and you may crouch down and you'll hold

out your hand and make the noise.

You know, you're curious.

You're like, Who are you?

You know, are you friendly?

Would you like attention?

What do you need?

It's that sort of, I'd like to get

to know you better, but I'd like to

do that on your own terms, not rush

over, pick you up and squeeze you in

a big hug.

That might be fun for you.

Not so much fun for the stray cat.

Likewise, for your nervous system.

Your nervous system is going to freak out

if you do that.

It is much easier to take a slow,

cautious, curious, Hey, okay, I'm feeling something.

What am I feeling?

What is coming up for me?

Oh, I'm realizing I'm overwhelmed by this sensation

in my body.

I should probably quit ignoring that sensation, which

for me recently was my chronic pain, and

actually tried to do something to help it

and see if I can't bring my overwhelm

levels down.

And lo and behold, if I actually tried

to treat my pain, instead of ignoring it,

I can bring my overwhelm levels down.

That's bhakti, inaction, devotion to yourself to regulate

your nervous system.

So when I talk about regulating the nervous

system, I'm talking about being aware.

So if you are triggered, because it's going

to happen, it's not something we can avoid

no matter how much you try.

Especially if like me, you're a ADHD, because

the the quiet calmness that soothes the autism

kind of drives the ADHD part of your

brain up the wall.

So it's trying to find that happy medium.

And sometimes you go too far in either

direction.

So when you have that regulated nervous system,

you can recognize Oh, I just got triggered.

Okay.

What do I need right now?

And if you don't know what you need

right now, can I just sit with this

feeling and explore it?

Or can I just sit with this feeling

and be curious about it?

Okay, maybe I'll try some some breathing exercises.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Okay, I'm feeling calmer now.

That seems to work.

Let's do that a little bit more.

You know, I'm not I'm not talking about

a strenuous, you know, like hot yoga practice.

You know, oh, I've been sitting at the

computer hyper focusing for an hour working on

something.

Maybe I should move.

So I'm going to get up, I'm going

to stretch, I'm going to do a couple

yoga poses.

Okay, that felt good.

Do I need to do some more?

Am I ready to sit back down and

work for another stretch?

What do I need to do here?

You know, I start my morning with a

sun salutation with a small yoga practice.

Because that kind of that settles me after

the nightmares I have in the evenings when

I sleep.

You know, okay, now I'm settled.

Now I can face my day, that sort

of thing.

So when we start thinking about those practices,

not as prescriptions, not as medicinal practices, but

rather as care and devotion that we deserve,

and that we are entitled to, we can

begin to combine bhakti or love, or the

spiritual, you know, the spiritual connection with something

larger than ourselves, with being in tune with

our own body, with understanding that our body

is made of star stuff, the same elements

that are in the stars are in our

bodies are in our earth is in everything

around us.

And so we have that larger connection.

We have that connection with the wild earth

with with the earth that we try to

tame, you know, thunderstorms roll through.

Well, if you think about your system, you

know, storms roll through your body as well.

That's what tears are.

When you cry, that's a that's an emotional

release.

You know, the the emotions, the hormones, the

cortisol that all gets too much in the

body.

And it and for me, it comes out

my eyes.

And so I cry.

You know, when the grief gets to be

too heavy or too much, it builds up

like energy in the atmosphere.

So if you start to connect those two

things, you start to see that just like

there is gentle waves, as well as larger

waves when there are storms, but there's always

movement on this planet.

There's always cycles.

There's always times of rest, followed by times

of activity.

And when you think about all of that,

and you make that connection, then incorporating those

those cycles, those movements, the periods of rest,

the nervous system regulation into your own body.

When you start to combine all of that,

you really start to see that we are

connected to something larger than ourselves.

So I know I've been speaking very, very

abstract.

I've been speaking kind of in big sweeping

generalizations here for this podcast.

So I would I would like to just

invite you to think about maybe not even

something as strenuous as a full sun salutation

or a full session of yoga.

I'd like to invite you that when things

start feeling overwhelming, when things when you start

feeling like when you get that, you know,

that drumbeat of too much, too much, too

much in your brain, when I invite you

just to stop, take a deep breath, release

that breath, and just bring your focus back

to your body and back to your breath.

That for a moment, you can set aside

the too much, the to do list, the

everything you need to do the people, the

critters you need to take care of, the

chores, the finances, the job, everything that this

life throws at us.

Set that aside for 30 seconds to a

minute and just breathe and see how that

feels.

It might feel really good.

It might feel really weird if you're not

used to that kind of, okay, I need

to take 30 seconds for me devotion.

You might feel as if you're doing something

wrong.

You might feel as if you're going to

get in trouble if you take time for

yourself.

Because again, that's another one of those stories

that kind of gets, you know, pushed into

our psyches.

Whatever you're feeling after that 30 seconds is

perfectly normal and I don't want you to

give up on it.

If your brain tells you, oh, I took

30 seconds, I want to get in trouble.

I invite you to be curious.

Will I?

Does something come up in the next hour,

in the next 30 minutes, in the next

10 minutes that would make you think that

you're getting in trouble?

Now, if you're at a work environment and

you take 30 seconds to breathe and somebody

says something to you, I want to tell

you that, you know, that very clearly is

not a healthy, that that is a toxic

work environment.

Unfortunately, too many of our work environments are

toxic.

But I want to reassure you that if

that happens, that's not your fault.

If you need to take 30 seconds to

breathe and you're in an environment that doesn't

allow you 30 seconds to breathe, that's not

a good environment to be in.

That's an environment that thrives off of making

you feel bad.

And I would encourage you to think about

what you might need to do to change

that.

I understand that not everybody can.

I understand that there are, there are times

when you just have to, you know, be

where you are and make the best of

it.

And so what I might encourage you to

do is if you get home, take that

time to breathe when you get home when

you're alone.

Just check in with yourself periodically over the

next week.

What can I do to support myself?

What do I need right now?

How can I help myself feel more regulated?

That is bhakti.

That is a true act of devotion.

That is an act of love.

And that is an act of love that

has ripples across everything that you do.

And it has ripples even outside of yourself.

So I hope that you've enjoyed this conversation.

I hope that it has sparked food for

thought.

And I look forward to the next episode

of Feathermane Soul Wisdom Show.

Please take a moment to like and subscribe.

And if this resonated with you, leave a

comment.

I love to hear from my listeners.

Thank you.

You've been listening to the Feathermane Soul Wisdom

Podcast hosted by Kit Kelstoe.

Learn more about Feathermane Soul at feathermanesoul.com.

As a wild spirit storyteller, Kit is passionate

about helping those who are neurodivergent, disabled, or

living with chronic illness rediscover their own inner

wild spirit.

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