Sometimes your reaction happens before you have had time to think about it.
- Your heart speeds up.
- Your shoulders tighten.
- You become restless.
- You cannot concentrate.
- Or instead of becoming more activated, you shut down and have trouble doing much of anything.
Then the judgment arrives: Why am I reacting like this? Why can't I just calm down? I know better than this.
In this episode of Notes to My Nervous System, I talk with Jessica Maguire, physiotherapist and author of The Nervous System Reset, about stress, regulation, body awareness, self-compassion, and what it means to become more familiar with your own patterns rather than treating every uncomfortable reaction as something you need to immediately eliminate. Jessica holds a Bachelor of Health Science and Master of Physiotherapy and has spent years studying and teaching nervous-system-related material to clinicians, coaches, and health professionals.
What does "nervous system regulation" actually mean?
The phrase nervous system regulation is everywhere now. Sometimes it gets presented as though being "regulated" means being calm all the time. It does not. A healthy nervous system needs to respond to changing demands. You need activation to get out of bed, solve problems, exercise, respond to danger, speak up, or meet a deadline. You also need the capacity to recover and shift when the demand changes.
So the goal is not: Stay calm. A more useful goal is: Notice what is happening, respond appropriately, and regain flexibility when the situation allows. That is a much more realistic definition of regulation.
Why does your body sometimes react before you consciously understand what is happening?
The brain and body are continuously processing information. Many physiological responses occur without deliberate conscious decision-making. That is normal. During stress, people may notice changes in heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, attention, digestion, energy, or emotional intensity. Sometimes those changes happen before you have consciously put words to the situation. That does not mean your "body knows the truth" while your thinking brain is wrong. It means conscious thought is only one part of a much larger biological system. Learning to notice those early signals can sometimes give you more information about what is happening before your reaction becomes harder to manage.
Mobilization, regulation and shutdown
Jessica discusses a framework describing patterns of mobilization, relative regulation, and immobilization or shutdown. Autonomic functioning is considerably complex. You might experience increased activation as: restlessness, racing thoughts, irritability, urgency, difficulty sitting still. Or you might experience lower energy, withdrawal, feeling disconnected, or having difficulty initiating action. The value of these categories is not diagnosing which "state" you are in. It is helping you notice: What is happening right now, and what response makes sense in this situation?
What does the vagus nerve have to do with stress?
The vagus nerve is a major component of the parasympathetic nervous system and participates in communication between the brain and multiple organs. It is involved in functions including heart-rate regulation, digestion, and other aspects of autonomic functioning. Jessica's book and educational work focus substantially on the vagus nerve and nervous-system regulation. The Nervous System Reset was published in 2024 and explores stress, emotional regulation, pain, and body-based approaches through this lens.
Can chronic stress affect the body? Yes. Chronic stress is associated with meaningful psychological and physiological effects.
Self-compassion instead of self-blame
One of the parts of this conversation I think matters most has very little to do with finding the perfect nervous-system exercise. It is what happens after you notice your reaction.
Many people immediately add judgment: I shouldn't feel this way. Why am I still struggling with this? I thought I had already worked through this.
That second layer can make an already difficult experience harder. Self-compassion does not mean pretending everything is fine. It can simply mean acknowledging: This is what I am experiencing right now. What would actually help me respond to it? That creates a different starting point than fighting with yourself.
Regulation is not about "hacking" your way to calm
There is an enormous market now for nervous-system hacks.
- Cold exposure.
- Breathing exercises.
- Vagus-nerve exercises.
- Grounding techniques.
- Movement.
- Somatic practices.
Some of these strategies may be useful for some people in some circumstances. None is a universal reset button. Jessica and I discuss the importance of learning what works for the individual rather than chasing the next technique. A brief strategy can help someone shift their immediate experience. Long-term health and psychological functioning are much broader than any individual exercise. Sleep, relationships, physical health, environment, stress exposure, workload, mental-health conditions, social support, and many other variables matter too.
Neuroplasticity refers to the nervous system's capacity to change in response to experience. Learning involves neuroplasticity. So do rehabilitation, skill development, memory, and many other everyday processes. That does not mean repeating a nervous-system exercise guarantees a specific therapeutic rewiring effect. Practice can strengthen learned patterns and skills, but exactly what changes — and whether those changes are clinically meaningful — depends on the intervention, person, context, and outcome being measured.
Practical ways to respond when you notice stress increasing
The first useful step may be simpler than finding the perfect technique. Notice what is happening.
- Is your body becoming more activated?
- Are you having trouble focusing?
- Are you rushing?
- Are you shutting down?
- Are you physically uncomfortable?
Then consider what the situation actually requires. Sometimes slowing your breathing may help. Sometimes movement helps. Sometimes you need food, sleep, water, medication, medical attention, less stimulation, another person, a boundary, or simply time. And sometimes the problem is not your reaction. The environment actually needs to change. That distinction is important. Regulation should never become a way of teaching people to tolerate situations that genuinely need attention.
In This Episode, We Discuss
- What people mean when they talk about nervous system regulation
- Why regulation does not mean staying calm all the time
- How stress can affect attention, energy, emotion, and physical experience
- Jessica Maguire's framework for understanding activation and shutdown
- The role of the vagus nerve in autonomic functioning
- Why IBS, pain, fatigue, and anxiety should not automatically be attributed to "dysregulation"
- How body awareness can provide useful information without becoming a diagnosis
- Why self-compassion can be more useful than criticizing yourself for having a stress response
- The limitations of "nervous system hacks"
- What neuroplasticity means — and what we should be careful not to claim about it
- How regulation strategies can be adapted to real life rather than becoming another thing you have to do perfectly
Frequently Asked Questions
Nervous-system regulation generally refers to the body's ability to adjust physiological activation in response to changing demands. It does not mean remaining calm all the time.
There is no single strategy that works universally. Sleep, physical activity, breathing practices, social connection, reducing unnecessary stressors, appropriate healthcare, and other approaches may help depending on the person and situation.
"Reset" is useful everyday language, but the nervous system does not literally switch back to a single default setting like a computer. Brief practices may change someone's immediate level of arousal or attention, but the effects vary.
Those conditions are complex and can have multiple contributing factors. Stress and autonomic processes may play a role in some cases, but symptoms should not automatically be attributed to nervous-system dysregulation.
The vagus nerve is a major cranial nerve involved in parasympathetic autonomic function and communication between the brain and several organs, including the heart and gastrointestinal system.
Experience and learning can produce neuroplastic change, but that does not mean any particular nervous-system exercise has been proven to "rewire" the brain in a specific therapeutic way.
From Erin Vandermore, Host
In therapy, schools, parenting, and everyday life, I have repeatedly seen the same basic problem: Knowing what you want to do does not guarantee that response will be easy to access when demands are high. The podcast explores that gap with clinicians, educators, researchers, authors, and people willing to talk honestly about what stress looks like outside of a textbook.
This core insight directly shaped the creation of Mind Circuit™. While the podcast dives into broad subjects like trauma, health, stress, and mental well-being, and the Ease app assists adults struggling with momentum or feeling stuck, Mind Circuit fills a distinct educational need. Mind Circuit targets a focused challenge in education: How can educators support students with a quick reset to regain focus when a classroom becomes derailed? To address this, Mind Circuit offers a structured four-step framework for classrooms: Notice → Match → Reset → Return to instruction.
