Your Nervous System is Not a Machine — It’s a Garden.

How to Reset Your Nervous System in Chaotic Times with Movement-Based, Holistic Practices

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Snapshot: What You'll Get From This Blog

• A unique metaphor to help reframe your nervous system

• Accessible movement-based techniques to reset your body

• A trauma-informed, anti-capitalist lens on self-care

• Examples from lesser-known somatic tools (Roy Hart voice, Feldenkrais, TRE & more)

• The link between ancestral trauma, burnout, and resistance through embodiment

• Empowering affirmations that healing is nonlinear and communal

🌱 Let’s Begin Here: Your Nervous System is Not a Machine — It’s a Garden.

Machines break. They get replaced. They wear out. But your body is not a machine. Your nervous system is a garden — overgrown in places, tender in others, sometimes scorched by the sun of crisis or frozen in long winters of survival. It grows in community, not in isolation. And like a garden, your nervous system responds to care, rhythm, attention, and rewilding.

In this era where everything feels like it's unraveling — politically, environmentally, socially — the most radical thing we can do is learn how to tend to our internal ecosystem. Especially for those of us trying to show up for others, hold businesses together, or create from a place of heart when our bodies feel like they're holding centuries of unspoken stories.

woman lying on the cracked, dry ground in a dress with her hair covered.

 The Problem with Burnout Isn't You — It’s the System

Many of us in healing, creative, or purpose-driven work feel the pressure to stay productive even when we’re emotionally or physically disregulated. But the truth is…

Rest is not a reward. It’s a right. Reconnection is not indulgent. It’s resistance.

So let’s shift the question from “How do I push through?” to “How can I support my nervous system to stay with myself?”

🌿 7 Movement-Based Ways to Reset the Nervous System

These practices are gentle, non-performative, and can be done alone or in community. Most don’t require equipment or a lot of time. They’re perfect for folks recovering from burnout, trauma, or simply living in today’s overstimulated world.

1. Roy Hart Vocal Release 🎤

This voice work is not about “singing pretty”—it’s about letting your nervous system use the voice as a somatic exhale. From whispers to roars, you allow unspoken energy to move.

• Try humming, then gently sliding into growls, sighs, or laughter

• Voice what your body wants to say without needing it to “make sense”
  
  
  
  
  
  

🔗 Learn more: Roy Hart Theatre Vocal Work

2. TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises) 🌊

Developed by Dr. David Berceli, TRE uses simple movements to activate the body’s natural shaking mechanism, like how animals shake off stress. It was originally used for parents who witness traumatic events and catch themselves holding the tremors in their body to not cause nervousness in their children; ex. a parent trying to soothe their child while a bombing is going off isn’t going to let themselves look scared for their children. That trauma then gets stored in the body, and these exercises are here to help release it without getting stuck in the narrative of it.

• These tremors come from the psoas muscle, your body's deepest tension holder

• Often helps with sleep, chronic pain, and emotional overwhelm

🔗 Explore a video intro: TRE® Exercises Guided Session

3. Eye Gazing and Saccadic Eye Movements 👁️

The eyes are part of your brain—literally. Eye movements regulate the vagus nerve and support co-regulation.

• Practice 2 minutes of soft eye gazing with a trusted person (or mirror)

• Try “saccades”: move your eyes left/right in rapid movements to signal safety
  
  
  
  
  
  

This is incredible for reducing anxiety and improving connection — especially for dissociation or social burnout.

4. Feldenkrais Method® 🧘‍♀️

Feldenkrais is like somatic mindfulness through slow, intentional movement. It rewires patterns of tension and habitual stress.

• Do it lying down, with micro-movements like “rolling your head slowly”

• Brings awareness to unconscious muscular habits caused by trauma or stress
  
  
  
  
  
  

🔗 Intro to a session: Free Feldenkrais Class Library

5. 5-Minute Energetic Morning Routines 🌞

Inspired by Traditional Chinese Medicine and energetic body mapping:

• Do a full-body dry brush or tap (use fingers or hands to gently wake limbs)

• Stretch arms upward, twist spine gently, and bounce knees to release stagnant Qi

• Tapping your body from top to bottom
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

This is a powerful reset for your lymphatic and nervous systems, especially for people who wake up anxious or depleted. Check out Donna Eden’s 5-minute morning routine; she is ridiculous, but also the practice is great to use as a simple connection once you have the moves down. 

6. Somatic Grounding Through the Feet 🦶

So many of us live in our heads. Grounding helps bring us back to body:

• Stand and feel each foot pressing into the floor

• Imagine roots growing into the earth

• Name 5 things you feel without judgment (coolness, pressure, tingling, etc.)

Feet pain often reflects lack of support or overwhelm — grounding helps you move from “over-functioning” to belonging.

7. Community Movement Rituals 🫂

Healing is not meant to be solo. Come together in the community and witness others' healing as well as your own. Nobody has succeeded without the help of many others.

• Try slow collective movement, even just walking in rhythm with others

• Attend (or host!) embodied check-ins where you all stretch or shake first, then speak

Letting the body lead connection fosters true regulation and allows us to share the weight of the world — not carry it all alone.

🧬 Why This Matters: Ancestral Trauma, Capitalism & The Body

We are not just individuals with stress—we’re carrying epigenetic memories. For many, especially in marginalized communities, the body holds intergenerational trauma: silence, flight, survival, forced endurance.

Here’s your permission slip to:

• Shake. Roar. Gaze. Breathe.

• Ask your body: “What do you need to feel a little more okay today?”

• Choose one small practice and commit to doing it for 5 days

• Make space for mistakes. You are not broken.

Living in a capitalist system asks us to override this truth. But:

🔥 To regulate your nervous system is to disrupt capitalist extraction from your body.

Let that sink in.

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 A Personal Note from the Writer (Hey, I am Brook, a HoneyFlow Heartwork Guide 😀) 

As a neurodivergent somatic practitioner and holistic creative, I began working with emotional body mapping during a period of deep burnout and chronic kidney pain. I had normalized emotionally abusive dynamics for years — in part because I had internalized patterns from my upbringing.

Once I started mapping my pain to my own unspoken needs — kidneys representing fear, control, and deep overwhelm — I could begin the gentle journey of listening to myself without shame. Now I support others in naming where their pain lives, like feet from hyper-responsibility, or shoulders from not asking for help.

This work is ongoing. And it’s never just about the body—it’s about reclaiming your wholeness.

🌻 You Are Allowed to Rest. You Are Allowed to Reset.

💫 At Honeyflow Heartwork, we’re not just building a resource hub—we’re weaving a constellation of creative, neurodivergent, and heart-led humans who refuse to play by extractive rules. This is a space for joy, slowness, wild ideas, and ethical collaboration.

✨Meet the dreamers behind the magic and learn how we’re reimagining business as a place of belonging and brilliance.

👉 Meet the Founders & Our Vision