How to calm your nervous system so you can sleep well!

When you’re stuck in fight or flight, it’s impossible to sleep well.

Chronic illness, trauma, or stress can keep your body in stress mode instead of relax mode.

Watch the video above and read this blog post where I interview Emily Neumann of Primal Trust, a membership and community created by Dr. Cathleen King, that focuses on retraining the nervous system for people with chronic illness, trauma, and stress.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

What’s happening inside your body at a cellular level when you’re dealing with chronic illness, trauma, or stress
2 ways that chronic issues contribute to sleep issues
How to heal your body from chronic issues
Tools that will help you retrain your nervous system so you can sleep better and feel better

Let’s dive in!

What’s happening inside your body at a cellular level when you’re dealing with chronic illness, trauma, or stress

When you have an illness or some form of toxic load inside your body, your cells go into a cell danger response, a term coined by Robert Naviaux.

A cell danger response triggers your body to go into survival mode by essentially turning off your autonomic functions - including digestion, hormones, and sleep - and focusing only on survival.

Sometimes the body doesn’t get out of this response so the stress response stays turned on which prevents nutrients from being absorbed and detoxification from happening, which then leads to even more chronic issues.

The good news is…when you heal your chronic illness, trauma, and stress, and you get out of a cell danger response, your cell walls will soften and your body can be restored to good health.

Easier said than done though, right?!

That is why seeking help for chronic illness, trauma, and stress is so important.

2 ways that chronic issues contribute to sleep issues

Chronic illness, trauma, and stress can contribute to sleep issues.

Here are two main ways this happens:

Parity associations: When your brain wires two neuro-networks together to associate night time or sleep or even your bed with the inability to sleep. So much of the suffering we’re feeling in this situation comes from the stories we’re telling ourselves. We can rewire our brains and tell new stories that help us sleep better.
Brain processing: Your brain needs time and space to process all of its inputs. If you don’t give it the time it needs, because you’re keeping your brain super busy with work, family, tv, phone scrolling, etc., then your brain will want to process its inputs at night when you’re laying in bed trying to sleep.

With intentionality and getting help if you need it, you can deal with both of these issues and sleep better.

How to heal your body from chronic issues

Learning how to get your body out of a cell danger response, rewire your brain if you have any parity associations, and give your brain time and space to process are keys to healing your body from chronic issues.

But also…reducing the amount of time you’re spending talking about (or complaining about) your symptoms will help you heal. This is because you don’t want to increase your suffering by talking about your symptoms all the time.

It’s not about gaslighting yourself into believing your symptoms aren’t real or trying to focus on positive thinking. Rather, it’s about focusing your thoughts on other good things in your life. Because there are other good things in your life!

Tools that will help you retrain your nervous system so you can sleep better and feel better

Primal Trust has over 40 tools that help you retrain your nervous system and they fall in 3 main categories.

Category 1: Breathwork tools. Voo breathing is one example.

Category 2: Emotional elevation tools. For example, visualization, attunements, dual-awareness, and pattern interruption.

Category 3: Movement tools. Including body movement, eye movement, and somatic movement.

Tools like these will help you heal your body and have a completely different experience during your day and at night when you’re sleeping.

Learn more about Primal Trust and how you can retrain your nervous system to heal chronic illness, trauma, and stress. Sign up using my affiliate link.

You can consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently! Learn more about our sleep solutions at the Sleep Detective™.