Today’s blogpost episode is something I get so many questions about and it’s foundational to the work I teach: the nervous system.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in overdrive, exhausted but wired, emotionally numb or overwhelmed, this is for you.

Whether you’re a yoga teacher, a yoga practitioner, or simply someone on a healing journey, understanding your nervous system will change the way you relate to your body, your emotions, and your everyday life.

What is the Nervous System?

Your nervous system is your body’s communication network that constantly scans your environment for danger or safety. It decides whether you’re in a regulated state (where you feel calm, grounded, connected), or a survival state (like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn).

This system operates on a primal level and evolved to protect you from sudden, immediate threats. Think tiger jumping out of the bush, your heart races, muscles tense, and you run. Then once the danger’s gone, the energy gets discharged, and you return to a calm, regulated state.

But here's the problem: the world we live in under chronic stress constantly triggers this survival system.

Deadlines. Emails. Traffic. Relationship stress. Financial worry. Social media pressure. The tiger never really leaves the room.

The human nervous system was never meant to process the intensity, pace, and constant stimulation of the modern world. It’s wired for bursts of stress, not chronic activation.

But most of us live in a near-constant state of low-level threat. Our systems are overwhelmed. We’re stuck in a loop of anxiety, disconnection, or shutdown. This leads to burnout, autoimmune issues, digestive problems, emotional numbness, insomnia, and other physical, emotional and mental challenges.

Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between real and perceived danger.

It doesn’t understand the difference between a predator chasing you and wanting to eat you or you sitting in your airconditioned office, in your ergonomic chair, in front of your 3000$ laptop, under tremendous pressure from your work. The nervous system responds the same way, producing the same stress hormones and entering into the same dysregulated states.

The 4 Survival States — Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn

Let’s look at first how a regulated nervous system feels like: you feel calm, grounded, present in your body and the given moment, open to social connections and learning.

But once you encounter a real or perceived danger, your nervous system can enter into 4 different dysregulated states, based on what your nervous system perceives as your best strategy for survival in the given situation. So, what are these 4 dysregulated states:

Fight Response

When your nervous system perceives, that in a stressful situation your best strategy for survival is to confront, fight back, defend, it enters into a fight response. You can recognize this nervous system state by the emotions that arise within you, such as anger, frustration, irritation, even rage, aggression or territorial behavior.

Flight Response

When your nervous system perceives, that in a stressful situation your best strategy for survival is to escape the situation, it enters into a flight response, so you will feel the urge to leave the situation, as the body prepares to avoid the threat. You can recognize this nervous system state by the emotions of fear and anxiety.

Freeze Response

If your nervous system perceives that in the given situation you have no way to fight back or escape, it might enter into a freeze response. Freeze response is characterized by physical and emotional numbness.

By physical numbness I mean your pain threshold increases, so when it comes to actual physic al harm, you might not feel the pain in the given moment. By emotional numbness I mean the tendency to shut down, check out, disconnecting from the situation, the body and yourself as a self-preservation strategy, protecting your from overwhelm.

If there are any emotions present in the freeze response, those are more along the lines of hopelessness, not seeing a way out, shame, powerlessness, a sense of altered reality or even a kind of out of body experience, as if you were observing what is happening as an outsider.

This is a very typical response in small children in the face of abuse. Small children cannot fight back, as they are smaller and weaker than their abuser. They cannot escape either, because they might depend on their abuser for food and shelter. So, their best strategy for survival is to disconnect and shut down.

Fawn Response

Fawn response is often an overlooked survival response, but it is a super important one, as many of us operate in the fawn response in our everyday life. This survival strategy is about avoiding conflict and characterized by strong people pleasing tendencies, difficulty setting boundaries around our time, energy and physical body. Difficulty saying no and prioritizing the needs of others rather than your own needs.

And I say that this is an important one, because so many of us are conditioned from a young age by society or even by the most well-meaning parents, that it is not okay to set boundaries. You might have an early childhood memory, where and adult wanted to touch you, hug you or kiss you and you really didn’t want it, but it was implied by your caregivers that if don’t sit in the lap of the creepy uncle or you don’t kiss grandma, you are not a good person.

Why Humans Get Traumatized?

Once the real or perceived danger passes, our nervous system in theory should return us into a regulated state. But it doesn’t always happen. When you remain stuck in fight, flight, freeze or fawn – that’s what we call trauma.

Here’s something really important:

Animals in the wild shake, tremble, or discharge energy after a threat. Then they go on with their day. Humans don’t. Why?

Because our neocortex - the rational, thinking brain often overrides our brainstem, which is responsible for our instinctual survival responses and also regulating the nervous system once the threat passes. So, the survival energy remains stuck in our body. And if it’s not released through safe movement, tears, expression, or connection, it builds into trauma.

The Role of the Vagus Nerve - Polyvagal Theory

The vagus nerve is the main pathway of our parasympathetic nervous system the “rest and digest” regulated state. It connects the brain, heart, lungs, and gut and it plays a key role in emotional regulation, social connection, and healing.

Polyvagal theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, teaches us that the nervous system isn’t binary. It’s not just “on” or “off.” It’s more like a ladder and we move up and down that ladder all the time.

Top of the ladder: Ventral Vagal state, where we are safe, connected, regulated
Middle of the ladder: Sympathetic nervous system, activated, in fight or flight response
Bottom of the ladder: Dorsal Vagal state, shut down, collapse, freeze

What This Has to Do with Yin Yoga?

The ultimate goal of a yin yoga class is not relaxation, it is nervous system regulation, activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Therefore, in case the nervous system is in an activated state (fight, flight), indeed, we aim at downregulating the nervous system. However, if the nervous system is already in a collapsed state, we want to upregulate.

The goal isn’t to never be dysregulated. We’re not meant to be calm all the time. The goal is flexibility. To move through states and come back to safety.

Closing Reflections

If you’ve been feeling like you “should be more grounded” or “shouldn’t feel anxious,” let this be your reminder:

Your nervous system isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do: protecting you. But in our world today, we need new ways to complete the cycle, to return to safety, to ourselves.

And that’s the work. That’s why I teach what I teach.

If this resonates and you feel called to this work, I invite you take the first gentle steps:

Download my free eBook: Meridians & Emotions in Yin Yoga

Watch my free Trauma Awareness Webinar: Trauma Informed Yoga Foundations

Join my next live 100HR Trauma Informed Yin Yoga & Chinese Meridians Teacher Training in Thailand:

14-23 Dec 2025
20-29 Jan 2026
2-11 Mar 2026

Join the waitlist of my online self-paced 100HR Trauma Informed Yin Yoga & Chinese Meridians Teacher Training launching in December 2025

Join my live 30HR Art of Trauma-Informed Space Holding course in Thailand:

4-8 Oct 2025

Check out what my previous graduates share about their experience:



Teacher Training Demo Video:



Work with me 1-1 for private mentoring

Subscribe to my channels, so you don’t miss future episodes:

Youtube
Podcast


Thank you for reading, and remember: take it slow.

With love,
Liz