10 Nervous System Hacks to Ignore
I got an email from a mattress company recently who called their products ‘sleep performance machines’. They asked me to be an affiliate for them. You can guess what I said (it involved heavy eye-rolls and throwing my laptop out the window).
I got another email a few days ago from a well-known app telling me how to ‘optimise your commute’.
And I found an app just this week that called their breathing techniques — ones that yoga teachers and mindfulness guides have been teaching for centuries — ‘strategic’. Because if you’re not breathing ‘right’, you’re missing the strategy that would, what, help you smash your SMART goals (which have never been all that smart)? Help you dominate your habits? Help you be more of an insufferable arse at dinner parties?
When did breathing and sleeping and travelling all turn into things we’re supposed to be good at? Where does this insanity end?
As an antidote to all this rubbish, this week I’m sharing a list of things that are sold as nervous system habits, or life-hacks, or some other improvement nonsense, but which we can happily disregard. Thank me later (or in the comments. I do like it when you leave me comments).
Ten things that are not nervous system hacks
1. Feeling guilty for watching the telly
Sure, let’s not watch seventeen hours of reality trash a day. It’ll probably make us think we’re too fat or something. But when did watching and listening to excellent stories become something to be shameful about?
Humanity is built on storytelling. We’ve been telling stories for millennia. The arts — theatre and art and TV and film — help us feel more connected, help put life into context. Research suggests good TV can even offer emotional regulation, relatedness, and helps us make sense of difficulty.
Watch TV on purpose. So much of it is remarkable and life-bettering.
Things I’ve enjoyed watching recently:
Parks & Recreation — one of the best sitcoms in the world
Green Wing — another of the best sitcoms in the world
12 Angry Men (1957) — one of the best movies in the world
Off Campus — and I don’t feel weird about it
Caveat: make sure you’re not double-screening. If you feel compelled to reach for your phone while watching, watch something better and turn your phone off.
2. Breathing as a strategy
We might benefit from breathing, and sleeping, and clean clothes, and excellent croissants, but that doesn’t mean we need to strategise any of them. Sure, excellent diaphragmatic breathing is brilliant. Sure, breathing can help us feel calmer, and more energised, and ready for sleep. But breathing, just like clean clothes, isn’t about smashing our goals, it’s something to feel, appreciate, and embrace as a facet of being alive.
Instead, try breathing into your belly for a couple of breaths while the kettle boils and notice how nice it feels. Pleasure, not strategy.
3. Sleep as a performance
Tracking your sleep scores or buying mattresses claiming to be ‘performance machines’ or in any other way attempting to perfect your sleep can make you more anxious.
A US survey of those who track their sleep showed that over 30% of them show signs of orthosomnia1 — an unhealthy obsession with ‘perfect’ sleep, worsened by trackers and devices.
Instead, ignore the score and notice how you feel in the morning.
4. Habit-stacking your entire life
Yep, I’m an advocate for joyfully habit-stacking your front door. And yep, I also draw the line when we have a million books, podcasts, and gurus telling us to habit-stack the crap out of everything ever.
Linking breathwork, movement, facial massage, single-leg balances, meditation, and those 390766 supplements we’re told to take daily onto our morning teeth-brushing isn’t helpful, attainable, or healthy. We burn out when we achieve it all, we feel anxious and guilty when we don’t.
Instead, try adding one habit at once for a few weeks. Notice how you feel before, during, after. Is it benefiting your life? Do you feel guilty when you skip it? Just notice: it’s all data.
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5. Wearable scorekeeping
Tracking your HRV every day, and your sleep score, and resting heart rate, step count, stress levels, temperature, blood pressure, eye roundness, and belly-button position every day can send the sanest person into a dark pit of anxiety. It’s hypervigilance at its best, and we’re the suckers paying for it.
I love my Oura ring, but sometimes I just need to take it off. Instead, let’s use our wearables and trackers to teach us how to feel more ourselves — what does a shitty night of sleep feel like? What does a heavy workout do to our energy?
Our wearables are there to teach us how to feel again, not to be the health police.
6. Cold water as proof of your toughness
Are you cold-plunging for toughness? To prove something? Because you read somewhere it’s, like, super totally healthy? Or are you doing it because it actually feels nice and helps you regulate?
If you’re not great at interoception in the first place, you’re not in a great position to be able to tell if cold water therapy works for you. Start there, then test cold water when you’re better connected to your body. And let’s stop outsourcing our health to ‘influencers’.
Read this next: Interoception: Your Hidden Superpower
7. The ‘perfect’ morning routine
I once followed a seven-step morning routine every morning at 6am. For years I did this. And when I didn’t — if I was travelling or sick or tired or just didn’t feel like it — I’d feel massive guilt and shame. I even had a mentor who’d lightly berate me for skipping it.
These kinds of morning routines are just another way for us to be hypervigilant. To worship at the altar of performance and metrics and optimisation and productivity culture.
We’re humans, not robots. Wake up, do something enjoyable. Some days maybe it is a seven-step thing. Some days maybe it’s a nice book and some well-buttered toast. You get to decide. There’s nothing wrong with a lie-in and a zero-step start to your day.
8. Earned rest so you can perform better
Fuck this with bells on. Like breathing, like excellent pastries, good books, a rare meal out with that friend you love… these things are a pleasure of aliveness, just like rest.
Rest isn’t about your performance — you’re not an olympian (or maybe you are, but the olympics are a while off so you’re alright). Rest is a fundamental part of the human experience. Stop earning it, stop tracking it, and just have a nice sit down and a cup of tea without it meaning anything.
9. Forcing calm when you’re not calm
Nervous system regulation is about being calm all the time. Oh, that’s never really you? Okay, so just force the calm then. Simple.
If you’ve been getting this messaging, you’re not alone. I thought I was a rubbish yoga teacher back in the day when I was burning out, eating my feelings, having panic attacks in the car.
But nervous system regulation is about feeling your feelings and being able to respond accordingly, not about being calm all the time. For some folks, maybe that genuinely IS an ice bath, for some maybe it’s knitting, or baking, or lying on the floor reading The Lord of the Rings for the thousandth time.
If you’re not calm, go for a run, dance to some Rage Against the Machine, do the laundry. This is nervous system 101.
Read this next: Nervous System 101
10. Following wellness content that makes you feel behind
If your feed, your inbox, or whatever else you’re engaging with is making you feel less-than, behind, guilty, or exhausted, then let’s do something about it. Delete the apps, unsubscribe from the emails, stop watching the videos…
Remember: most ‘content’ you see is created for engagement, not to help you. Influencers on the whole want to grow their influence, get more free shit, earn more money. The more divisive or beautiful the ‘content’ is, the more engagement it gets. It doesn’t mean you should pay attention.
Feel it, don’t optimise it
Use wearables, track your sleep, ice bath your face off if it’s genuinely something that feels good in your life. But that’s the point: how does it feel when you do it? How does it feel when you skip it?
Instead of outsourcing to folks selling things on the internet, learn to feel what you actually need again. Listen to your own body, respond accordingly.
We’re not robots, last I checked. We’re bipedal animals who’ve learned to question themselves and the universe, who’ve built houses out of bricks and documentaries out of sheer curiosity.
Life is about the way you feel around your best friend, the buttery goodness of a well-made croissant, wondering at the stars, baking for our neighbours, creating and loving and leaving some magic behind us every day.
As soon as we try to optimise it, we begin to miss the point entirely.
Here’s to imperfect being enough (and regulating anyway),
Chloe
I’m a writer, joy philosopher, nervous system guide, and yoga teacher. Here to make our world a more joyful place.
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