Books: "The Nervous System Reset" By Jessica Maguire

 

The Nervous System Reset: Heal Trauma, Resolve Chronic Pain, and Regulate Your Emotions with the Power of the Vagus Nerve

By Jessica Maguire, BHSci, MPhysio

Balance, hardcover, 352 pages; $30.00

Jessica Maguire is an expert in nervous system repair, TEDx speaker, and the voice of the popular social media account @repairing_the_nervous_system. She is the founder of Nervous System School, where she teaches a long-term, sustainable, transformative methodology of nervous system repair, which empowers students to step into the driver's seat of their own health and wellbeing. Maguire holds a Bachelor of Health Science degree and a Master of Physiotherapy, and her post-graduate study includes the fields of neuroscience, neuroplasticity, brain-heart biofeedback, brain-body medicine, and transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation.

In the engrossing, detailed new book, The Nervous System Reset, Maguire has created a cutting-edge program for the reader to heal their nervous system. It is most essential for anybody struggling with anxiety, chronic pain, burnout, depression, IBS, PTSD, and rheumatoid arthritis, among many other issues.

The basis of this work and thinking is that there is a physical structure that connects the mind and body. It is known as the Vagus nerve, and it's responsible for maintaining balance in our mental and physical health.

Maguire teaches readers neural exercises, breathwork, and somatic practices to widen their window of tolerance in order to regulate their emotions; resolve trauma and PTSD symptoms; and overcome mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, or burnout. She also shares the wisdom of her popular Nervous System School masterclass, and shows readers, sometimes with illustrations, how to unlock the Vagus nerve's power. There are plenty of case studies to help illustrate how many problems can be solved through repairing this nerve.

In this excerpt, Maguire writes: "Something feels 'off' in your body, heart, and mind, and you're searching for information to ease your physical or emotional distress. You may have spent a year or more cycling through appointments with various healthcare professionals to address these issues, and even had bloodwork or other lab tests done in an effort to get to the bottom of whatever's going on. You've probably trialled one or more medications and/or supplement regimes, and I bet you've exhausted Google looking for answers.

Am I on the right track? If I am, it's because I've seen these scenarios play out hundreds of times over the many years I've been guiding people through their healing journey - first as a physiotherapist, and now as a leading global educator on the nervous system. I understand how hard it is to stay positive and afloat in this sea of uncertainty, and I've seen how living with chronic health problems without an obvious cause or solution can bring people to the brink of despair and even make them wonder if the problem is all in their head...

Every one of us has an internal set point at which we feel and function our best. Like a thermostat in a house, our brain and body work together via our nervous system to bring us back to our set point and maintain this beautiful equilibrium - or what scientists call homeostasis.

Ideally, we'd spent the majority of our lives thriving at this comfortable set point, but it's not the only setting on our internal thermostat. There are two others - hot and cold - and both are necessary - even life-saving in certain circumstances. We're wired to slip in and out of these two quickly as life demands. If we're under attack, for example, switching to a hotter state allows us to react quickly and with aggression to defend ourselves or to run away. This is colloquially known as fight or flight. In a well-regulated system, once the threat has passed we come back to our set point and return to our lives.

The remarkable thing about this set point is that it's calibrated to meet our true needs (i.e. the needs of our lived reality). Unfortunately, factors such as illness, trauma and chronic stress can swing us away from this set point, and even change it entirely. If we exist in a hot or cold state for long enough for our brain to perceive it as our new reality, our set point will recalibrate to meet what it believes to be our true needs. Our brain is a 'prediction machine' and if we've experienced traumatic stress  and become hypervigilant to threat, our set point may shift so that it's calibrated to our predicted needs (how we perceive our reality).