Why Yoga and Meditation Are Not a Nervous System Cure-All

Written by Halie Devlin

Having a yoga and/or meditation practice doesn’t necessarily equate to a spacious nervous system. In fact, sometimes these practices can actually become sophisticated ways to continue to avoid what is happening in our systems - where we learn to move/breathe away the discomfort we feel instead of learning how to be in conscious relationship with it. Learning how to be in conscious relationship with it is actually how we metabolize it, rather than just keep it at bay.

Sometimes the way yoga and meditation are taught and practiced only supports a faux window of tolerance - whereby they may make us feel better while we’re in them, but we quickly revert back to a baseline of high stress when we’re out of them.

Quality somatic support helps us widen our window of tolerance in a sustainable way - whereby we can experience a greater capacity to regulate and feel more ease, not just on a mat, but in our day-to-day life. Somatic practice gets to be about learning how to stay in connection with, and care for, the fullness of our human experience - not just in a ‘formal practice’, but in real time, in the face of life’s complexity, in your every day moment-to-moment interactions.

If you’ve been practicing yoga & meditation for years and are still bumping up against the same old walls of dysregulation just know: there is nothing wrong with you. This may just be an invitation to approach nervous system healing in a different way.

With love,

Halie