My Favorite Self-Regulation Tools: What Works Best When Your Nervous System Needs Support

A Guide To Nervous System Regulation Tools That Have Worked Well For Me

In this blog post, I'll be sharing some of the self-regulation practices that have genuinely changed how I meet myself in moments of dysregulation.

After decades of exploring how to work with my own nervous system and supporting others in their regulation practice, I've gathered a collection of tools and techniques. Some I use daily, even several times a day when I sense that I might be heading towards dysregulation. Others I reserve for specific moments when I recognize particular patterns emerging. A few have become so integral to how I move through the world that I barely notice I'm doing them anymore.

These aren't generic tools I think should work, even though all of them have been thoroughly researched and proven to work well with a variety of nervous system states. They're the tools that have allowed my nervous system to settle and supported me in coming home to myself when anxiety has my heart racing and my thoughts spiral out of control as my body prepares for fight or flight and I get flooded with cortisol and adrenaline in the face of perceived threat. These tools have helped me stay present in difficult conversations when every part of my being started to shut down or screamed inside telling me that I needed to lash out or run away. Tools that have brought me back to myself when I realized I'd been dissociated for hours without even knowing it.

This post is my small contribution to you finding what works for you by sharing what has genuinely worked for me. It's a map of what's possible when we do nervous system care. That said, your nervous system might be entirely different from mine. What regulates me might activate you. What helps me discharge and complete my stress cycle might be overwhelming to others. I'm sharing these tools in hope that something here will resonate and feel like it was written for exactly what you're going through, giving you a new way to meet yourself and come back to a beautifully regulated you in your own timing.

The Tool I Return to Most: Voo Sounding Breath

Of all the practices I've explored over the years, this is the one I come back to most consistently. It's one of the fastest ways to change my nervous system state, calm my gut, and it works across the widest range of nervous system states, whether I'm activated and wired or starting to collapse into shutdown.

The voo breath is a vocalized exhale practice developed by Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing. In many ways, it's become an anchor for me when I need to shift my state without forcing anything or demanding that my body do something it might not yet be ready for.

Here's a simple description of how to do it:

Take a comfortable breath in through your nose. It doesn't have to be deep, just a natural and comfortable breath that matches what your body wants in this very moment.

As you exhale, make a "voo" sound. Let it be low and resonant in your chest, like you're humming but with more vibration, more depth. The sound should feel like it's vibrating in your torso, particularly around your heart and solar plexus. And also feel it resonate down into your gut, allowing the vibration to massage your enteric nervous system, the vast network of neurons lining your digestive tract that communicates directly with your brain. This deep resonance helps release tension patterns held in your belly, the place where most of our stress and emotion gets stored and where 80% of your vagus nerve fibers live. Let the sound help you completely finish your breath and free your gut from whatever stress pattern you might be holding there.

Let the exhale be long and the sound be continuous until you naturally need to breathe in again. Don't push or force the last bit of air out. Just let it end when it ends.

Repeat for several rounds, at least five or six, though I often do it for several minutes when I'm feeling overwhelmed with emotions and really need extra support.

The vocalization activates your vagus nerve through the vibration in your chest and throat. The long exhale signals safety to your parasympathetic system, telling it that there's no threat present, that it's okay to settle. The sound itself gives your mind something to focus on that isn't the anxious thoughts looping or the overwhelming feelings that feel too big to hold alone. And that resonance in your gut helps regulate the gut-brain axis, calming the digestive distress that often comes with nervous system dysregulation, the butterflies, the nausea, the clenching that happens when your body is preparing to fight or flee.

What I love most about voo breathing is how gentle it is with you. It doesn't feel complicated or demanding. You don't have to control your breath with precision or hold specific counts that your foggy brain can't track when you're dysregulated and you lose some or all access to your prefrontal cortex, your center for executive functioning and decision-making. You're just making a sound and letting it move through you, letting it do what it does, gently and naturally.

I use this when I wake at 3am with my nervous system activated for reasons I can't always name, my mind already racing even though nothing is actually wrong. I use it as I anticipate difficult conversations when I can feel myself bracing in preparation, or when I notice my jaw tightening or my shoulders creeping up toward my ears. I also use it when I'm running late and the idea of missing a flight, being late for an important appointment, or having a friend wait for me has me jittery and irritable. I also use it when I need a moment to transition between one thing and the next, when I can feel the activation from what I just did and need to settle before walking into what's next.

It works when I feel way too activated for stillness, when sitting quietly with my breath just makes my anxiety even louder as my nervous system screams, "You need to move!" It also works really well for me when I feel too foggy to move my body around, when my body feels too heavy to shake or walk or do anything that requires energy I don't feel I have access to. It works when other practices feel like too much effort, or when I can barely remember what I'm supposed to do let alone do it.

If you only explore one tool from this post, try this one. Give yourself five minutes with voo breathing and notice what shifts inside you. Notice what it feels like to make a sound that vibrates through your chest and gut, to give your nervous system this particular kind of attention.

The Practice That Changed How I Experience My Body: Body Scan with Pendulation

Having spent most of my life dissociated and not knowing that I was, I found it difficult to implement body scans without getting distracted half way through. Often time when I'd tried a body scan during a yoga class or a guided meditation, I'd either dissociate completely and have no idea what the teacher was saying anymore, or I'd become so overwhelmed by uncomfortable sensations that I'd end the practice more dysregulated than when I started, sometimes even feeling panicky or like I needed to get out of my body entirely.

Then I started studying with Dr Peter Levine and experimenting with his Titration and Pendulation technique. That's when I realized that combining body scanning with pendulation helped me stay present with the discomfort that often shows up when doing body scans. Adding pendulation to body scans has helped me be with my body instead of forcing myself to tolerate it or endure it or wait for it to feel different.

This is how I practice body scans now:

Start with your feet. Just notice what you feel there right now. Temperature, pressure, tingling, numbness, comfort, discomfort, movement, whatever is present in this moment. You're not looking for anything specific or trying to feel a certain way, you're just noticing what's there in your feet right now, and letting it be just as it is.

If what you find feels neutral, pleasant, or stabilizing, simply stay there for a few breaths. Let yourself really take in that this part of you feels okay right now, that there's a place in your body that doesn't hurt or feel tense or overwhelmed with sensations. Let that be enough and let yourself receive that as important information.

If what you find feels uncomfortable or activating or painful, notice it for just a moment. Just long enough to acknowledge it's there, to say internally, "Oh, there's that tension" or "There's that numbness." or "There's that familiar feeling.', like you're noticing what's here and saying hello to it. Then deliberately move your attention to somewhere in your body that feels easier, lighter, more open, or even stable and strong. Maybe that's your hands, or your legs, or even your belly, or the sound of your breath, or even just the feeling of air on your face or the temperature of the room or space you're in.

Next, slowly work your way up through your body, spending more time with what feels resourced and steady and less time with what feels difficult or destabilizing. You're not avoiding the hard places or pretending they don't exist, you're just not over exposing yourself in a way that might bring about dysregulation as in when we get exposed to too much too fast, which happens to be one definition of an event that can bring about a trauma response for many of us as that takes us out of our window of tolerance. You're simply visiting the hard places or uncomfortable, and even painful, sensations briefly, acknowledging them, then moving on to what feels more available.

When you encounter areas of tension or numbness or pain, you're not trying to fix them or breathe into them or release them or make them different than they are. You're just acknowledging them. 'Oh, hello, there you are. I see you. I know you're there.' And then moving to what feels more available, more open, more accessible, more okay in this very moment.

Over time, keep pendulating back and forth between the difficulty and the resource places you uncover inside of you. Come back to the difficult area for a moment, and without any expectation, see if anything has shifted or changed or softened. You're just being curious and exploring. Then return to the resource, to the place that feels easier, more neutral, or even steady and strong. Back and forth like a pendulum swinging, like a wave moving in and out. Never staying so long in the difficulty that you become overwhelmed or flooded or lose your grounding entirely.

What this practice taught me is that my body isn't just one monolithic experience of discomfort or numbness or pain that I have to somehow tolerate or push through. Even when I'm struggling, even when so much feels hard or overwhelming or like too much, there are always places in my body that feel relatively okay or even at ease. My left shoulder might be rigid with tension and locked up tight, but my right hand might feel warm and relaxed and soft. My chest might be tight and restricted and hard to breathe into, but my feet might feel grounded and stable and connected to the earth beneath me. It's good to notice that contrast and to use it to stabilize.

Learning to find those islands of okayness and actually rest in them, even while acknowledging the places that hurt or feel scary or uncomfortable, has fundamentally changed my relationship with being embodied. It's changed what it means to live in this body that has been through everything it's been through, that holds all the history it holds.

This practice is not positive thinking or pretending the difficult parts aren't there or trying to talk yourself into feeling better than you actually do in this moment. It's a process that teaching your nervous system that it doesn't have to fixate on threat and cues of danger, that it doesn't have to pour all its attention and energy into what's wrong or painful or uncomfortable. There are resources available even now, even in this body that sometimes feels like it's working against you, even in this moment that feels hard or that gives you little hope for relief.

The Unexpected, Simple Tool That Works Well With Freeze, Shutdown, and Even Collapse: Humming

I discovered this while training in Yoga Therapy over 25 years ago, and realizing that my anxiety had naturally dissolved without me trying to make it go away or doing anything deliberate or conscious.

Both ancient traditions and science agree that, humming is one of the most efficient ways to stimulate your vagus nerve, even more efficient than many breath practices people spend years learning and that require a lot more effort and cognition to practice. The vibration in your throat and chest, combined with the extended exhale that humming naturally requires, creates a direct pathway to parasympathetic activation. When you hum, your nervous system gets the message loud and clear: we're safe, we can settle, there's no threat here that requires our vigilance.

I hum when I'm washing dishes, folding laundry, walking between rooms in my house for no particular reason. I hum in the shower, in my car when I'm alone, while I'm making organic green tea and waiting for the water to come to temperature. Sometimes I also hum to an actual melody from a song I love or heard on the radio, sometimes I just hum a steady tone that feels good vibrating in my body and that brings about soothing and calming.

What I love about humming is how it requires so little of me, how accessible it is even when I'm so depleted or overwhelmed that I can't bring myself to apply any self-regulation technique. I also hum when I'm feeling too dysregulated to remember a specific breathing pattern, when the instructions for box breathing or extended exhale or any other technique have completely left my brain, when I'm too collapsed to get up and move my body or do anything that requires energy or effort, because even in all those challenging situation, I find that I can still find my way back to humming. What I also love about humming is that, it doesn't require any setup or particular environment or privacy or special conditions to hum. It's always available, always accessible, no matter where I am or what's happening.

And unlike some regulation tools that can feel clinical or therapeutic in a way that creates its own kind of pressure or rigidity to 'do it right or perfectly', humming feels natural and human and easy. It's something we, humans, have done for a very long time, across every culture and every time period, often as a way of soothing ourselves or our babies or the people we love when they're distressed.

I invite to explore humming right now if that feels right for you. Start by simply humming for sixty seconds. Find a pitch that feels comfortable in your throat, use any melody that calls to you, or just hold one steady note for as long as it feels good to. Just follow your instinct and allow whatever wants to come through your body in this moment. Notice what happens in your chest, in your gut, notice what shifts in your nervous system state, notice if your shoulders drop even a little bit or your jaw softens or your breath deepens naturally, and if your thinking and emotional state also change.

The Practice I Use Most When I Need to Discharge and Close an Unfinished Stress Loop: Shaking

There are moments when my body is so full of activation and ready for action that any stillness-based or calming practice makes things worse instead of better and builds the pressure and sense of urgency even higher. My nervous system has mobilized for action, my body is ready to fight or run or do something physical to deal with the perceived threat, and trying to breathe slowly or ground calmly or sit with my feet on the floor just creates more internal tension and even frustration. As more pressure builds with seemingly nowhere to go, I feel like a pot with a lid on it and the heat turned up high.

This is when I know it's time to shake and I give my body permission to do what it's been letting me know it needs to do to complete the natural stress cycle.

Animals do this instinctively, automatically, without thinking about it after a threat has passed. You've probably seen a dog shake off vigorously after a stressful encounter with another dog at the park, or watched a bird ruffle its feathers and shake its whole body after flying away from a predator. They're completing the stress cycle, discharging the activation their nervous system created to deal with the threat. They're letting the energy move through and out instead of storing it in their body, instead of carrying it with them for days or weeks or years or decades like some of us have learned to do.

We can discharge too, deliberately and consciously, giving ourselves what our body is asking for. Here's a simple way to shake:

Stand with feet hip-width apart, knees soft and slightly bent, not locked or rigid.

Start bouncing gently, just up and down a little bit, letting the movement travel up through your legs and into your body.

Gradually let the bounce become a shake. Let your arms shake if they want to, your legs, your torso, your head if that feels okay and safe and not disorienting.

You can also let your arms move naturally side to side or cross your midline for a litte bilateral stimulation.

Make sounds if they want to come out. Sighs, groans, grunts, 'haaa' or 'hooo' sounds, letting whatever wants to be expressed naturally come. Let your jaw be loose and soft, let your face relax and not hold any particular expression.

Continue for one to three minutes, or until you feel a natural settling happening in your body, a shift from activated to released, from wired and tense to discharged and softer.

Then stand still for a moment and just notice. What's different now? How does your body feel compared to before you started? What shifted or changed or released?

The first time I did this practice, it felt kind of weird and awkward and silly. I felt self-conscious even though I was around great people practicing Skeletal Shaking together as part of a Kundalini Awakening training, like I was doing something wrong or weird or embarrassing and this couldn't possibly be a real therapeutic technique. But within thirty seconds, I felt something shifting dramatically in my nervous system and whole body. The activation that had been cycling through me for hours and the underlying anxiety I had been unknowingly carrying for days, keeping me wired and tense and unable to settle no matter what else I tried, started to dissipate. I could feel the stress starting to move out of my body instead of staying trapped inside.

Shaking, also known as skeletal shaking in Qi Gong, isn't a form of exercise or a workout or something you do to tire yourself out or exhaust yourself. You're not trying to wear your body down into submission or force it to calm down through physical exertion. You're giving your nervous system permission to complete the mobilization response it initiated when it detected a threat, whether that threat was real or perceived. You're letting the energy move through and out rather than staying stuck in your muscles and tissues and fascia, rather than becoming the chronic tension you carry around in your shoulders or your jaw or your hips for days or weeks or months or even years.

I shake in my bedroom, in my bathroom, sometimes in my kitchen, or in front of my computer when I need a brake from the activation that's building up from sitting in front of a screen for hours. I shake before difficult phone calls when I sense the activation building in my chest and my hands, when I feel my body preparing to defend itself or protect me in any situation that brings up this response. I shake after difficult conversations when my body is still holding the charge, still ready to fight or argue even though the interaction is over and I'm safe now and there's nothing left to defend against.

If you've been in sympathetic activation, if you feel wired and jittery and can't settle no matter what you try, if anxiety has you pacing or fidgeting or unable to sit still for even a minute, try shaking before you try to calm down. Sometimes you have to let the activation complete itself, you have to give it somewhere to go and a way to discharge, before regulation becomes possible at all.

The Tool for Shutdown That Brings Me Back: Cold Water

When enter the state of dorsal vagal collapse, where everything feels heavy and impossible and like too much to even think about, and I find myself walking the painful territory of dissociation and numbness where I can barely find the energy to care about anything including myself or the people I love, cold water is often the only thing that can reach me. Cold water exposure is known to be one of the only things that can penetrate the fog and the distance created by an overwhelmed nervous system that shuts down and bring us back to some sense of being present in our body, of being here in this moment instead of floating somewhere far away.

I keep ice packs in my freezer specifically for this purpose, multiple of them so I always have one ready and cold when I need it and can't wait for something to freeze. When I recognize shutdown happening, when I feel myself drifting away from presence and engagement and connection to the world around me, I hold ice in my hands or place a cold pack on the back of my neck or splash cold water on my face repeatedly, over and over until I sense something starts to shift in my nervous system state and I feel alive once again. I also love contrast therapy and invite you to check it out if it's available where you live. It consists of going back and forth between ice baths around 40 degrees Fahrenheit and saunas over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. I personally like to do this circuit 5-6 times, 5 minutes in the ice bath and then 15-20 minutes into the sauna. You can pick a Swedish or Infrared Light sauna for this. Both are helpful and help you melt into a parasympathetic state quite fast.

Going back to cold exposure, the cold activates your vagus nerve through what's called the diving reflex, a powerful physiological response that's left over from our evolutionary past, from when our ancestors needed to survive in cold water. It can interrupt the freeze state, can bring your system back online when nothing else seems to work, when talking or thinking or trying to use your mind feels completely impossible.

Cold exposure is not meant to shock yourself into functioning or punishing yourself for being shut down or trying to force your way out of collapse through sheer willpower. The cold is information for your nervous system, a signal that cuts through the numbness and the distance that's part of your nervous system adaptation responses to perceived threats. When you expose your body, or a part of your body, to very cold water, it relays the message: you're here, you're alive, you're in a body, sensations are available to you right now in this moment. You exist. You're real. You're present.

Sometimes, when I feel dissociated, I'll stand at my sink and splash cold water on my face for thirty seconds or more, over and over until I can feel myself coming back into my body, until the fog starts to lift even a little bit. Sometimes I hold my hands under cold running water and let the sensation travel up my arms and into my chest. Sometimes I take cold showers, though that can be too much when I'm already depleted and barely have the energy to undress or stand up for that long.

The key is using cold in small doses, enough to activate your nervous system gently without tipping you over into fight-or-flight, without sending you from shutdown straight into panic or overwhelm. You want to use cold exposure to wake up and come back online, and you don't want to overwhelm an already fragile nervous system that's already outside of its window of tolerance in the process.

After the cold, I usually like to follow up with some gentle movement or orienting practice to help stabilize the activation and guide it toward regulation rather than just shifting from one dysregulated state to another.The cold always gives me access to enough energy and presence and aliveness to engage with those other practices, which I often can't do from deep shutdown because I'm too far away, too disconnected, too gone to even remember what tools I have or how to use them.

The Relationship Tool I Wish I'd Known Earlier: Naming and Claiming

Naming and claiming isn't a body-based practice like the others I've shared so far, and while it's not a bottom-up approach, it's been extremely supportive in transforming how I navigate dysregulation in relationship with others. With my personal history of early developmental and relational trauma, relationship is where I experience some of my most intense nervous system responses, where my oldest patterns show up most clearly and most painfully, and where I can go from regulated to completely overwhelmed or sink into shutdown or collapse in just a few seconds.

When I feel myself getting activated in conversation, when I notice defensiveness rising like a wall between me and the other person or the impulse to shut down and disconnect completely, I've learned to simply name to myself what's happening inside of me in real time, while it's happening:

"I'm noticing I'm getting activated right now."

"I can feel my nervous system going into shutdown."

"My chest is getting tight and I'm having trouble thinking clearly."

"I need a minute because I can feel myself wanting to either lash out or go completely silent."

It's that simple. And that's the whole practice. I'm not blaming the other person for what's happening in my body or making them responsible for my nervous system state or emotional reactivity. I'm not asking them to fix it or change what they're saying or walk on eggshells around me. I'm not explaining or justifying or defending myself or my reaction. I'm not walling up and deflecting the feedback they're sharing with me. I'm simply naming my internal experience to myself, or with the person I am in space with, and making visible what's happening under the surface that no one can see, not even myself in those moments.

This practice does several things simultaneously, all at once:

It brings my awareness to what's happening in my body and my nervous system, which itself is regulating because I'm not just reacting unconsciously anymore, I'm noticing and choosing how to respond.

It engages my ventral vagal system through speaking and connection, through using my voice and reaching out instead of closing down.

It creates space between the dysregulation and my response to it, a pause where I have choice instead of just automatic reaction, where I can decide what to do next instead of being taken over by the activation.

It often invites the other person's nervous system to help co-regulate mine, even if they don't consciously know that's what's happening, and even if I don't say a word and I am just mindful and present with what I am naming from within, just through the shift in energy that transparency and vulnerability creates between us.

It models honesty and vulnerability, which can shift the entire dynamic of the interaction toward more safety and connection instead of defense and protection.

Before I learned this, I would try to push through dysregulation in conversations, pretending I was fine while my body was screaming and my nervous system was in full alarm. Or I'd get so overwhelmed that I'd shut down completely and go silent and not be able to speak at all, or I'd lash out in ways I'd feel terrible and ashamed about later, saying things I didn't mean or that came from a place of defense rather than vulnerability and truth. Then I'd spend hours, days, or even weeks processing what happened, replaying the conversation, wishing I'd done it differently, beating myself up for how I handled it.

Now, naming what's happening in the moment has become one of my most powerful regulation tools in relationships. It honors what's true for me right now in this moment. It creates space for my nervous system to settle without having to pretend or perform or protect or hide what's real. And it usually deepens rather than damages the connection because the other person can actually see me, can know what's real for me, instead of trying to guess or interpret my reactions or wondering what they did wrong.

Obviously, this requires being with people who can hold that vulnerability, who won't weaponize your nervous system state against you or use it to hurt you or manipulate you or make you feel like you're too much or too difficult or that something's wrong with you. And in relationships where there's basic safety and goodwill and mutual care, where both people are trying to stay connected even when things get hard, this practice has changed how I show up and how I navigate difficult moments without losing myself or the connection with the other.

The Daily Practice That Builds Capacity: Micro-Moments of Presence

This might be the most important practice of all, even though it's the least dramatic, the least impressive, the one that doesn't look like much of anything from the outside and that no one would notice you doing even if they were standing right next to you.

Throughout my day, dozens of times, I pause. Just for a breath or two. Just for five seconds, sometimes even less than that. That's all it takes.

While my tea is brewing and I'm waiting for the water to heat up. While I'm waiting for my computer to start up after I press the power button. In the moment between ending one task and beginning another, between closing one tab and opening the next. At red lights when I'm driving and have to wait for the lights to turn green. In line at the store waiting to check out, instead of immediately reaching for my phone and potentially further disconnecting from myself and the present moment.

In those micro-moments, those tiny pauses, I check in with myself:

Where's my breath right now? Is it shallow in my chest, deep in my belly, held somewhere without me realizing it?

Where's my body? What's the quality of sensation and tension? Am I bracing anywhere? Am I collapsed? Am I agitated? Am I embodied?

What's the state of my nervous system in this moment? Am I activated, shut down, somewhere in between?

I'm not trying to fix anything or change my state or make myself feel different than I do in this moment. I'm just touching in with myself, building the neural pathway of self-awareness and presence, and remembering that I'm here, that I exist, that I matter enough to pay attention to, that I'm worth checking in with, and that no one can do this for me better than I can.

Here's what's actually happening in your brain when you do this, and why it's so important to understand and practice: Every time you pause and notice what's happening in your body and nervous system, you're strengthening the connections between your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for awareness and conscious choice) and your limbic system, where your emotional and survival responses live. This is neuroplasticity in action, the brain's ability to create and strengthen neural pathways through repetition.

When you're dysregulated, you lose access to your prefrontal cortex. You literally can't think clearly or remember your tools because that part of your brain goes offline when your nervous system detects threat. But these micro-moments of presence, practiced over and over when you're calm, build stronger highways between your thinking brain and your survival brain. You're training your nervous system to maintain some connection to awareness even during stress, creating what neuroscientists call "top-down regulation," where your conscious mind helps to calm your automatic survival responses.

Each tiny pause is also teaching your nervous system that it's safe to notice what's happening internally, that awareness itself isn't dangerous, and that you have time for that even when you feel the pressure of urgency. For many of us, especially those with trauma histories, checking in with our body triggers fear because we learned that feeling meant getting flooded or being overwhelmed. These brief, manageable moments of noticing build tolerance gradually, showing your system that you can be aware without being flooded, that presence is actually a resource rather than a threat.

These tiny check-ins are like deposits in a regulation savings account. Each one is small, maybe even insignificant on its own, barely noticeable. But they compound over time into a much more robust capacity to notice and work with my nervous system, to catch dysregulation earlier when it's still manageable, to stay connected to myself through my day instead of only realizing at the end that I've been running on autopilot for hours.

The moments when I'm most dysregulated are almost always the moments when I've gone the longest without checking in with myself, without pausing even once. When I've been barreling through my day on autopilot, ignoring every signal my body was sending, overriding every need, pushing through every whisper of discomfort or overwhelm. Until something tips me over the edge and suddenly I'm flooded or shut down and don't know how I got there, can't trace the path that led to this moment, can't remember the last time I actually paid attention to what was happening inside me.

These micro-moments help me catch dysregulation earlier, when it's smaller and easier to work with, when I still have some capacity to respond rather than just react. When I still have access to my tools and my awareness and my ability to choose how I want to meet this moment. They help me stay in relationship with myself throughout the day instead of only paying attention when something goes wrong, when I'm already in crisis mode and trying to put out fires.

And they're so small, so brief, so undramatic that there's no reason not to do them and no excuse for me not to pause. You don't need to set aside time or create perfect conditions or have privacy or remember complex instructions or have any particular skill. All you need is to just pause for a breath and notice. That's it. That's the whole practice. Just pause and notice what's actually happening right now.

This is the practice that underlies all other practices, the foundation everything else is built on. Without this foundation of awareness, the other tools are much harder to access when you actually need them because you don't even realize you need them until you're already overwhelmed and dysregulated and barely hanging on.

What I've Learned About Working With Tools

After decades of experimenting with regulation practices, with trying different techniques and tools, not getting the desired result and still being willing to explore what will get me into a regulated state, and slowly building a relationship with my nervous system, here's what I know to be true in my body and in my experience:

Tools work best in combination

Tools work best in combination, layered together rather than used in isolation like they're the one magic solution. I rarely use just one practice by itself anymore. More often, I'm stacking them: voo breathing while I'm also grounding through my feet and feeling the floor beneath me, humming while I'm doing some gentle movement like swaying or walking slowly, cold water on my face followed immediately by orienting to my environment and naming what I see around me.

Your needs change

Your needs change constantly based on your nervous system state, your energy level, how much sleep you got, what's happening in your life, what you ate, how long it's been since you moved your body. What works beautifully today might not work at all tomorrow, and might even make things worse. What helps in the morning when you first wake up might not help at night when you're exhausted. What regulates you when you're well-rested might activate you when you're depleted. Learning to read your system in real time and match the tool to your current state and capacity is as important as having the tools themselves, maybe even more important.

Sometimes nothing works, and that's information too

Sometimes nothing works, and that's important information too. It's not a sign that you've failed or that something's wrong with you. If I've tried multiple practices and nothing is shifting, if I'm still dysregulated after doing everything I know how to do, that usually means I'm more dysregulated than I realized and need more support, or there's something in my environment or my life or my relationships that needs to change. Getting dysregulated doesn't mean that something in my nervous system needs to be fixed, and that with the right technique or breath practice or body-based intervention, I will immediately feel better. It can be a signal for me to dig deeper into my life's present circumstances and see where I might be able to bring about gentle and supportive change.

The practice is staying in relationship with yourself

The practice is developing and staying in relationship with yourself through all of it, through the times when things work and the times when they don't. Even when the tools don't work perfectly, even when you're still dysregulated after trying everything you know, the practice of turning toward yourself with care and attention and curiosity is regulating in itself. You're showing your nervous system that you're not abandoning it, that you're here even in difficult moments, that you're worthy of your own care and attention no matter what state you're in. And you're also engaging the care and nurturing neural networks that help you to experience more of that.

Simplicity is often missed and underrated

Simplicity is underrated in nervous system work, especially when everyone is trying to sell you the most advanced technique or the cutting-edge modality or is promising that a simple hack will change you and your life forever. The most sophisticated practice isn't always the most helpful, isn't always what your nervous system actually needs. Sometimes the most profound regulation comes from the simplest things: a hand on your heart, three deep breaths, looking out the window at the sky and just watching clouds move, feeling your feet on the ground and remembering the earth is holding you, hugging a pet, or catching a glimmer. Don't dismiss something because it seems too simple or too basic or too obvious. Your nervous system often responds better to simple than to complex, especially when you're dysregulated and don't have access to your thinking brain.

Building Your Own Collection of Tools that Work Best for You

You don't need to try everything or master every technique or become an expert in nervous system regulation or know all the science and theory to expand your window of tolerance and build nervous system capacity, flexibility, and resilience. All you truly need is three to five practices that work for your particular nervous system, in different states, with different levels of energy and capacity and just use this as and when needed. Once, you find practices that work well for you, just get really familiar with them, practice them enough that they become available to you without having to even think about them because you've created the neural pathways that allow your body to remember them even when your mind is foggy.

I recommend that you start by experimenting when you're calm and relatively regulated and well resourced, when you have access to your thinking brain and can actually pay attention to what's happening. Explore each practice in this post or my other posts on self-regulation as well as others you've learned about and notice how your body responds, what shifts or changes or settles. And always ask yourself, 'how did I do this?' as that engages the witnessing part of the brain and allows you to deepen your recall of these practices. Some will feel immediately right, like you've been looking for exactly this tool and it was made for your nervous system. Others will feel awkward or uncomfortable or even activating, like they're making things worse instead of better. Trust your nervous system's feedback and what your body tells you about what helps and what doesn't, even if the science says it should work or other people, including myself, use them with great success. They're not you and they don't live in your body!

Build your collection of self-regulation practices over time, slowly and patiently, without rushing or forcing. Notice what helps with activation versus shutdown, what you reach for when you're wired versus when you feel collapsed. Notice what works quickly for acute moments of overwhelm versus what works gradually for chronic patterns that have been there for years. Notice what you can do in public or at work versus what needs privacy and safety and being alone. Notice what requires energy and capacity versus what you can do when you're completely depleted and running on empty.

And remember: having a tool doesn't mean you'll always remember to use it when you need it most. That will happen over time with practice and as you return to the same successful practices again and again. Cultivate self-compassion in times when you forget, or you're too dysregulated to access what you know works, or times you choose not to use a tool even though you know it would probably help. Being patient and compassionate with yourself as you unwind old conditioned in patterns is also part of practicing self-regulation and will ensure that you eventually start using these practices more consistently and automatically. You're human. And it's completely natural and normal for new habits to take time forming and anchoring more deeply. And it's completely ok to have hard days where nothing works and you just survive however you can. That's also part of our adaptations and resilience to stressful events.

The Invitation

The tools I shared with you in this post have changed my life in ways I couldn't have imagined when I first started learning about nervous system regulation. My life didn't change because they make dysregulation disappear or because I never struggle anymore or because I've somehow transcended being human and having a nervous system that responds to stress. These tools have changed my life because they've given me ways to meet myself in difficult moments that actually help and make a difference in how I experience my life and my body and my relationships and my ability to show up in the world.

They've expanded my window of tolerance gradually over months and years until I now have so much more capacity now than I did when I started this work, when I could barely handle a difficult conversation without shutting down completely or running away. I can handle situations that would have completely overwhelmed me before or that would have sent me into dysregulation for days on end. I now can stay present in conversations that used to trigger immediate shutdown or even rage. I can feel difficult emotions without collapsing or numbing out or needing to escape my body. Not perfectly, not always, not every single time. But more and more, with more consistency, with more ease.

I'm inviting you to experiment with what I've shared here, to take what resonates and leave the rest. Choose one practice from this post that speaks to you, that feels like it might be for you and your nervous system and what you're going through right now. Explore it this week when you're calm and regulated and have some capacity, and notice what happens in your body, what shifts or changes or settles. Then try it when you're activated or shut down and see if it helps, if it makes any difference at all in your state.

Build your relationship with your nervous system one practice at a time, one moment of noticing at a time, one choice to turn toward yourself with care and curiosity at a time instead of adding to your dysregulation through judgment or criticism.

This is how your self-regulation capacity grows, how your window of tolerance expands, and how you become more flexible and resilient. Not through perfection or getting it right every time or never being dysregulated again. But through consistent and grounded practice. Through showing up again and again, curious about what might help, willing to experiment and not get the desired result and then exploring something else, being patient with the slow pace of nervous system healing and the reality that this work takes time.

Your nervous system is always doing its best to keep you safe with the resources and information it has available in any given moment. That's by design! These tools are ways of partnering with your nervous system, supporting it, helping it find its way back to balance and regulation when it's lost in protection and survival responses and can't find its way home on its own.

You already have everything you need inside you. These practices are just here to help you access it and remember what's already there waiting so that you may come back to yourself when you've lost your way.

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