Feed & Breed versus Fight or Flight: Your nervous system & Your business
Today we’re going to look at your nervous system and your business.
As I mentioned in episode 38 of the podcast (Behind the Scenes of the ABA Launch I've been working with the planetary deity Mercury for the past couple months.
He governs commerce, marketing, travel, the internet. And he’s associated with the nervous system.
If you’ve ever seen an illustration of the nervous system in the body this may make sense to you.
It looks like tributaries spidering off a larger river carrying water to various parts of a land. It can be like a trade route carrying goods from one part of the world to far reaches of the globe. It’s how our body senses & then carries that information to other parts of our body.
Kind of like the Internet. ;)
The nervous system is the most complex and highly organized body system
How it works greatly affects our business. Especially as highly sensitive people, empaths & intuitives.
So let’s look at How the nervous system works
The nervous system takes in information through our senses - touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound, processes the information and triggers various reactions in our body, such as making your muscles move or causing you to feel pain.
It can be reflexive reactions like pulling your hand off of a hot stove top, or shivering when you get too chilled.
Or more conscious reactions like eating another bite when you taste something you like.
Through our nervous system we communicate with the outside world. Can you see why this would be ruled by Mercury, the god who travels and carries messages between worlds?
It also controls various mechanisms in our body, including metabolic processes. It literally dictates how we digest life.
Or our inability to digest life, as you see when we get into the sympathetic nervous system in a bit.
There are billions of nerve cells in the nervous system, called neurons, making up the involuntary and voluntary nervous systems. As you may expect, the voluntary nervous system controls what we are consciously aware of & what we can consciously control, like moving our body. The involuntary nervous system controls what we cannot consciously control, like keeping our heart beating, or digesting lunch, or sweating. It takes signals from the brain, bypassing our conscious thought, and passes them on to the body, or vice versa.
Let’s note here that our breath falls into both of these categories. It is automatically controlled by our involuntary nervous system, and at the same time we can consciously control it. Through our breath we can link these 2 worlds.
How interesting that Mercury is associated with the element of Air.
We’ll go down the rabbit hole of what we can consciously do to affect our involuntary or autonomic nervous system in a bit, but first let's look a little deeper at the involuntary nervous system.
The involuntary nervous system is made up of three parts:
The sympathetic nervous system
*The parasympathetic nervous system
The enteric (gastrointestinal) nervous system
The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems generally do opposite things in the body.
The sympathetic nervous system controls what we lovingly know as fight, flight, or freeze.
It prepares us mentally and physically to SURVIVE.
The parasympathetic nervous system controls what scientists call the Feed & Breed responses or the Rest & Digest mechanism in the body.
It helps us relax, it properly digests and eliminating our food, it’s a key part in sex...
So what does all of this have to do with business?
Commerce is the exchange of money for goods and services.
It encouraged travel and expanding trade routes and connection with new peoples.
And as one of the most notable economists and social philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Von Mises is quoted:
“Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.”
And as a magically turned on person, you know that the macro is a reflection of the micro. The external, a reflection of the internal.
So with war being bad for business, perhaps the fight or flight response could also be bad for our business.
Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the American University Joshua Goldstein notes:
“Recurring war has drained wealth, disrupted markets, and depressed economic growth. War generally impedes economic development and undermines prosperity.”
So while the government or other individuals could benefit from war. Or you being in a fight or fight state most of the time. The average person, the average business, loses prosperity in times of war.
War used to mean job creation, but that’s pretty much covered by machine run factories now.
And while a fight or flight response helps us flee from a car hurling at us while crossing the street ... it makes it so we’re sexually turned off, with all of our bodies energy funneled toward survival, and our digestion is turned off for that same reason.
Fast heart beat, blood moving to our limbs so we can run quickly, is wayyyy more important.
You already know that the modern world we live in with constant notifications and distractions and the media compelled to report on the worst of the worst because it keeps us watching more than positive news does...
We’re in a sympathetic nervous system state most of the time.
You’ve heard the statistics that “In 2011, Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986—the equivalent of 174 newspapers. During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes, or 100,000 words, every day.” [1]
[1] The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin
We’re being assaulted with information.
And we’re turning off because of it.
As we already discussed, the parasympathetic nervous system controls our sexual impulse and our digestion. These are turned off when the sympathetic nervous system is turned on.
On a more metaphorical level it controls our creativity & how we digest life. Both key in running successful, and FULFILLING businesses.
Okay okay okay I won’t simplify it that much. The sexual response cycle is actually the interplay of sympathetic and parasympathetic.
Desire in the brain triggers Excitement of the sympathetic nervous system, which peaks at Orgasm, which in turn triggers the parasympathetic nervous system.
But that TRIGGER was desire... not stress or war or a looming deadline.
Okay, sorry for that tangent ;)
So digesting life is when we can actually digest the information we take in. And I’m not only talking about what we read or see or hear. This is also what we sense, our intuition, how we feel, and the down time needed for our brain to process the information.
This is the Importance of not overworking.
Of our work not leaving us in a stress response where we can’t process our day & make world-changing stuff out of it.
To be a leader in your space, a thought leader, a visionary, you need to prioritize getting into a parasympathetic state so you can digest life & create new connections and solutions.
To birth new ideas and projects.
So what do we do about this?
An estimated 75% of all parasympathetic nerve fibers in the body come from the vagus nerve.
Activating the vagus nerve basically tells your brain all is peachy and that you can be in a parasympathetic state.
What’s interesting is your voice box is connected to your vagus nerve. So the conscious act of humming or singing can trigger the autonomic response of going into a parasympathetic state.
And as I dropped in earlier, BREATH is another way to consciously control the unconscious. Slowing down your breathing, slows down your heart rate, bringing you into that parasympathetic state.
Or maybe the ancient yogis had it right by doing a deep inhale followed by a long OMMMMMMMMM, checking both the conscious slow breathing box and the humming box.
As I’ve said over and over again now, Digesting healthy food isn’t really possible without being in a parasympathetic state. You can take it in... but without being in that relaxed rest-and-digest state you won’t really take in the nutrients.
Taking in healthy thoughts and practices isn’t possible without a parasympathetic state either. This is why hypnosis or guided meditation is so effective. You get into a deeply relaxed state & then take in new thoughts and beliefs. When your body can actually digest it.
So scooting back to my dear pal, Mercury...
Mercury also rules mushrooms. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen the mycelium network that is underground below any sort of mushroom fruiting body, it is only the fruiting body that is above ground and then this huge massive network of mycelium is connecting all of the above ground mushroom fruiting bodies to one another.
If you have seen this before, then you know that it looks very very similar to our nervous system. The expanse of mycelium, these long thin white fibers reaching out through the ground, connecting everything and communicating with one another.
The largest known organism is the large mycelium network underneath an Aspen forest, miles and miles wide. It has been shown that it will actually allow different aspen trees to communicate with one another so that a tree in the sunlight can transfer photosynthesis through the mycelium this mushroom structure separate from the tree, transfer that photosynthesis to a tree that is in the shade that doesn’t have access to sunlight.
So nervous systems, all of these long fibers of neurons connecting our brain in various organs to one another, reflecting the mycelium that connects various fruiting bodies or plants or trees to one another, so that they communicate. Reflecting our human systems of trade routes, of commerce. Of different nations and peoples being able to connect with one another and share resources and communicate.
Similar to mushrooms, Mercury rules adaptogens. Which could be mushrooms… But it is generally any plant or herb that we consume that will regulate our nervous system, stabilize our physiological processes and bring us to homeostasis.
Sounds a little like bringing us out of war time to a time of peace, right?
I’m starting to think of all activities that bring me to a parasympathetic state as adaptogenic activities.
Breath work, yoga, pleasure, singing, meditation, connecting with friends, long walks...
Maybe that idea can help you too.
Because beyond being in a parasympathetic state helping us be turned on & creative & digesting life... it also helps us to RECEIVE. To receive pleasure and other good things.
When we don’t feel safe we can’t really receive.
Like our example of not being able to fully digest nutrients when we eat while our sympathetic nervous system is activated.
You see this with a tight throat, a tight jaw, a tense gut.
Your stress response is activated and your not relaxed enough to take in life, to receive life.
And you probably already know this on some level.
I took the women of the Alchemical Business Accelerator through an exercise of connecting with themselves as the visionary CEO versus being a micromanager of their business, and every single one saw their visionary CEO as relaxed, trusting, at ease, in pleasure... they knew that to get to their next level of success and fulfillment in business they have to be in a relaxed, receptive state.
So that’s all for today friends.
As always I’d love to hear from you on Instagram I’m @thedirtyalchemy.
Let me know what your favorite practices are to get into a parasympathetic state, or your new commitment to getting out of flight-fight-freeze on a daily basis.
Next week I’m talking with Brooke Adams Law on why & how to write a book to serve your business success - so see you next Thursday!
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