In order to pursue health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance it is necessary to enhance nervous system balance by utilizing psychological skills and somatic practices.
Dr. Darin Davidson partners with Learner+, a CME/CE reflective learning platform for healthcare providers. For the opportunity to reflect on this article and earn CME/CE credits, Launch here. Check out all past articles which are also eligible for reflections and CME/CE credits.
For downloadable, actionable strategies and tactics to leverage biology in the pursuit of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance, visit the resource store, Launch here. Chapters are arranged by topic so those of interest can be selected and each are also eligible for reflections and CME/CE credits through Learner+.
Throughout this article series, the mind-based and body-based skills within the framework of the Practices of the Healthcare Athlete have been discussed in detail. The goal of training and implementing these skills is to improve our degree of nervous system balance. This is an important attribute as it allows us to more fully pursue health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance.
The concept of nervous system balance reflects two primary components, each of which have been discussed throughout the article series. The first is the ability to strengthen our anchored and grounded states. As has been discussed throughout this article series, these states are essential for the promotion of health and wellbeing through shifting our biology towards homeostasis, allowing for recovery and restoration. It is within these states that we are able to also exhibit greater degrees of mental agility and other cognitive capacities, as well as engage in social interaction. Ultimately these characteristics allow us to pursue our fullest potential across many domains of life.
The second element of nervous system balance is a higher degree of flexibility within our nervous system. This allows us to return to anchored and grounded states following shifts into protective and defensive states. The goal of training these skills is not to avoid all shifts away from anchored and grounded states. It is entirely normal and perfectly adaptive for our biology to shift into protective and defensive states in response to cues along the internal, external, and relational pathways. What is necessary in the pursuit of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance is the ability to shift back towards anchored and grounded states once the situation has resolved. This is the essence of nervous system flexibility.
In order to pursue health and wellbeing, as well as sustainable high performance, it is essential that we are able to recover following high demand situations. It is inevitable that we will experience such scenarios. In particular, within the domain of sustainable high performance, we will frequently be exposed to high demand and high consequence situations.
Understandably, in order to manage these situations and perform at our best level, we will expend significant resources. In order to continue to be able to perform at our potential on a sustainable and durable basis, it is therefore essential that we are able to restore and recover these resources. This is why restoration and recovery are essential elements to the pursuit of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance. Our ability to accomplish this is strongly related to our degree of nervous system balance. In essence, we want to experience shifts in our biology to meet the demands of the situations we face, followed by shifts towards recovery states so that we can restore the resources we utilize. This process is also essential in the promotion of health and wellbeing.
The above discussion reflects the importance of an adaptive nervous system response to the situations we encounter. We do not want to avoid shifts into mobilized, protective, and defensive states as these can be entirely necessary dependent upon the situation. Rather, we want to titrate and modulate our degree of response to meet the demands and requirements of a given situation. Following resolution of these situations, we then want to shift back towards anchored and grounded states so that we are able to recover and restore our resources as well as experience as much of life as possible within anchored and grounded states due to the greater flexibility and options these states provide us.
When presented with appropriate situations, as may occur across any domains of life and often within high performance domains, we want to develop the ability to shift into optimal performance states. This requires shifting our biological state into a hybrid blended state between anchored and grounded states and protective and defensive states. The ability to accomplish this biological state shift as well as return back to anchored and grounded states is a characteristic feature of nervous system balance.
As is hopefully evident from the discussion above, the benefits of developing nervous system balance relate to our ability to pursue health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance. Without a sufficient degree of balance within our nervous system, we will not be able to optimally recover and restore our resources, repair daily and inevitable damage to our cells and body, or pursue our ability to perform at our highest level from the optimal biological state. For these reasons, developing nervous system balance is an essential feature of the pursuit of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance.
The extent to which we are able to develop nervous system balance is dependent upon training, developing, and implementing the mind-based and body-based skills within the framework provided by the Practices of the Healthcare Athlete. As has been discussed throughout past articles, when we consider the body-based skills, this includes not only somatic practices, but also complementary health strategies to optimize cellular and, in particular, mitochondrial health.
Given the importance of developing and improving upon our nervous system balance, a means by which to assess and determine our status and progress is important. This can be done on a subjective basis through an awareness and acknowledgment of our biological states. We can develop such an awareness that allows us to notice and recognize the shifts in our biological state. We can then determine whether or not we are successful in titrating these shifts and returning back to anchored and grounded states once situations have resolved.
In addition to the subjective experience of the shifts in our biological state, it is also important to measure heart rate variability (HRV). The importance of HRV as a biological metric has been discussed in past articles and will be revisited in future articles. As previously noted, we do not train these skills for the sole purpose of increasing HRV. Rather, by measuring HRV we are able to obtain an objective measure of our overall nervous system balance. This is most directly reflected in our resting HRV, which can be measured using wearable devices. In addition, we can measure our HRV during various activities to determine how it changes in response to the situations we encounter. In this scenario, we can also measure HRV following completion of the activity which provides important information regarding recovery following the situation. The use of HRV reflects a more dynamic assessment than is possible through other measures, such as blood tests.
Ultimately, a combination of the subjective determination of our experience in conjunction with objective measurement of HRV provides the greatest depth of information. It is useful to be able to correlate the objective measures of HRV changes with our subjective experience. Ideally, we will become less dependent upon measurement of HRV over time as our ability to accurately identify and acknowledge our biological state shifts improve.
The development of nervous system balance and means through which to determine our status, through subjective experience recognition and HRV measurement, are essential to the pursuit of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance. It is important that we not only develop the necessary skills, strategies, and tactics to improve our nervous system balance, but also determine means through which we can increase this over time. In so doing we are optimally positioned to pursue health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance.
To learn more, including about biologically complementary coaching for healthcare professionals and others in high demand domains, please visit www.darindavidson.com.
Dr. Darin Davidson partners with Learner+, a CME/CE reflective learning platform for healthcare providers. For the opportunity to reflect on this article and earn CME/CE credits, Launch here. Check out all past articles which are also eligible for reflections and CME/CE credits.
For downloadable, actionable strategies and tactics to leverage biology in the pursuit of health, wellbeing, and sustainable high performance, visit the resource store, Launch here. Chapters are arranged by topic so those of interest can be selected and each are also eligible for reflections and CME/CE credits through Learner+.