Come on a brief journey with me as I spend some time showing you all how to map your nervous system. What better way to do that than to use the experiences we have during the holiday season. Joy, peace, stress, anxiety, hopelessness, and dissociation are all words to describe our nervous system states; respectively, ventral vagal (socially engaged), sympathetic (fight or flight) and dorsal vagal or parasympathetic (freeze).

Using my Thanksgiving experience, I show how becoming aware of our vagal states provides us a wealth of information to regulate our emotions and track our autonomic states during the joys and stresses of the holiday season.

Let me know what you think.