Why Awareness Is the First Step to Regulation

You can’t regulate a nervous system you can’t feel. Most of us learned early on to override or ignore the signals our bodies send—tight chest, shallow breath, jaw tension, racing thoughts. But these signals are not the enemy; they’re information.

When you start slowing down enough to notice your patterns—“My breath gets tight before every meeting,” “I shut down when I feel criticized,” “I stop eating when I’m anxious”—you begin to understand how your body protects you. Awareness isn’t a fix; it’s an invitation. It opens the door for choice where there used to be reaction.

For many years of my life, when things got difficult, I stopped eating and drinking. By controlling my intake of food and water, I kept my body in a state of dysregulation that felt appropriate to what I was experiencing. It was a coping mechanism that deprived me of experiencing the natural “rest and digest” sensation that happens when we digest food. Learning to self-soothe was an incredibly important and difficult task for me. Many things that were soothing felt painful because I had taught my body to mistrust and resist relaxation.

Becoming aware of the sensations in my body was not something that came naturally to me. In fact, the first time I was in a group therapy session where I saw people identifying what sensation they felt where in their body, I thought it was a joke. These days, it’s unimaginable to me that I couldn’t access the range and intensity of sensation that I can feel.

Learning to reconnect to the sensation in your body might sound scary if you’re used to pushing your body aside or numbing yourself. However, your body is part of YOU and nothing to fear. Becoming aware of your body in moments of distress or activation is the key to understanding what somatic tools you need to support yourself. And I’m here for you every step of the way.

Feeling your body’s sensation is a key part of learning to regulate your nervous system. IN a world that often asks us to ignore our body, it can be challenging to relearn how to connect back to our body’s sensation, especially in times of activation.