Your nervous system is your body’s key communication system.
It is the highly complex part of your body that coordinates your actions and sensory information by transmitting signals via neurons to and from different parts of your body.
The nervous system is the body’s command centre. It controls:
- Thoughts, emotions, and memory: The nervous system controls how you think, feel, and remember.
- Senses: The nervous system interprets all of your sensory awareness e.g. what you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.
- Movement: The nervous system controls balance, coordination, and physical movement.
- Basic body functions: The nervous system controls breathing, digestion, sweating, and shivering.
- Stress response: The nervous system controls how the body responds to stressful situations.
- Sleep
- Healing
- Aging
The nervous system consists of two main parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists mainly of nerves, which are enclosed bundles of long fibers or axons, that connect the CNS to every other part of the body.
There are some aspects of our nervous system that we can consciously control, for example moving our hand, and walking, and there are some aspects which function without our conscious awareness such as regulating our body temperature. The part of the nervous system that functions without conscious awareness is called the autonomic nervous system (ANS). All of our emotional expressions are mediated by the ANS. The ANS either mobilizes energy through our sympathetic nervous system, or conserves energy through our parasympathetic nervous system.
- The sympathetic nervous system is associated with the fight or flight response and the release of cortisol (stress chemicals) throughout the bloodstream.
- The parasympathetic is associated with relaxation, digestion, and regeneration.
The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are meant to work in a rhythmic alternation that supports healthy digestion, sleep, and immune system functioning.
There are neurons throughout your nervous system, and we have three neural centres or brains: a “head” or cephalic brain, a heart (cardiac) brain and a gut (enteric) brain. Each of these brains has sensory neurons, motor neurons and neurotransmitters. They are able to take in information, process it, store it and access it when needed.
our nervous system is a bustling highway of sensation [which is] is constantly scanning the environment for both danger and safety. When danger is noted it takes priority. We take in the sensations from our environment in the form of sights, sounds, smells and feelings and then our defense mechanisms kicks in to mitigate threat. We go into fight , and if that’s not a workable option, we switch into flight, and if all else fails we go into freeze or shut down. When we are safe we go into digestion and restoration, this is when our healing capacity kicks in. It’s why we get sick when we go on holiday. These are purely physiological processes based upon what our nervous system reads from it’s environment. The physiological overrides the psychological and does whatever it needs to to ensure our survival. – The Nurture Foundation
The Relationship Between the Nervous System and the Mind
In Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) the nervous system is referred to as your mind, and there are seen to be two aspects of your mind, the conscious mind and the sub-conscious/unconscious mind.
Your central nervous system regulates your thoughts, memory, learning, senses and feelings. Whenever neurological tissue in the nervous system is activated it creates mind or awareness or consciousness. However, the nervous system is only part of our mind. Mind also communicates with non-human cells in our body such as the gut bacteria, which comprise nine tenths of the cells in our bodies. Our mind is a greater awareness than just our brain, or our nervous system, or all our cells and even arguably all of the human and non-human cells that make up our physical body community. Cell biologists have found evidence that our cells also communicate with energy outside of our physical body in the greater quantum field.
Do you have more questions about the connection between your body, mind and soul?
For example:
What is your soul?
Where is your soul?
What is Ego?
What is the connection between your mind and soul?
I explore answers to these questions in my post “What is the Connection Between Our Body, Mind and Soul?”
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