No One-Size Wellness Protocol Fits All
When the protocol isn’t the problem... but your nervous system state might be.
Full disclosure, I love a good protocol. The ones I gravitate toward are well-researched and grounded in science. So I say this with full respect for the work: protocols do work. How well they work, however, depends on your particular nervous system state.
For example, telling someone to “just breathe” when their system is locked in a chronic state of fight or flight can actually backfire. For a regulated nervous system, breathwork does what the science touts: improves stress levels, slows heart rate, activates the vagus nerve. But when a system is in chronic threat mode, the signal can’t cut through the static.
Humans today are impatient. Problems need to be solved yesterday. So when breathing fails to follow a protocol’s promise, the whole thing gets thrown out, the baby and the bathwater. But it’s nearly impossible to override physiology because adrenaline is fast, powerful, and designed to mobilize. So when you introduce a slowed response while the brain thinks it’s running from a tiger, you’re basically sending your nervous system a mixed signal.
It’s a disconnect. And your nervous system knows it.
Protocols are only one piece of the puzzle
In many ways, protocols are built around what is supposed to work in an ideal state. I remember being a new mom, researching protocols about how a baby should sleep so you don’t ruin their lives. My biggest issue wasn’t the protocols (after all, I needed to raise a genius), it was more, how could these protocols fit this tiny 7-pound baby who had inherited two nervous systems and was creating his own? In my mind they couldn’t. The problem wasn’t the advice, it was the context. It never felt right to me to try to fit an individual to a protocol when to me it needed to be the other way around.
Ready, Set... Respond
It all circles back to one thing: your nervous system’s readiness.
Number one, buy in on the promise, that’s fine, but monitor your response. That’s where the real information lies. You can actually do something with that piece of evidence.
When I work with a client, I pay close attention to how their system is responding to what I’m asking of them. Are they bracing? Does a startle response come over their face when I have them breathe deeply? Sometimes the answer is yes, and I need to respect that, no matter what I had planned for the session.
Readiness isn’t a feeling. It’s a response. And if you’re not looking for it, you’ll miss it.
The best thing you can do is stop asking, “Is this the right protocol?” and start asking, “Is my system ready for it?”
Incidentally, my son just turned eighteen and is an incorrigible night owl. I’m pretty sure I was never going to out-protocol that.