Your Nervous System

The Hidden Conductor

Extract from Why Your Body Speaks and How to Listen - "The London Symphony Orchestra is made up of almost one hundred players of differing heights, sizes, cultural and social backgrounds and with dozens of distinct instrumental voices, whose aim is to unite in a shared expression of balance that is far greater than the sum of its parts. What could so easily become a chaotic, overwhelming cacophony, instead converges into a force that can stir the soul, evoking euphoria in one passage and unravelling you in despair in the next. Infinitely flexible but paradoxically contained, the chest-rattling music of an orchestra can ignite the thrill of anticipation, but also make you tremble in fear. In this way, it mirrors how your nervous system responds to your needs by orchestrating countless signals into a coherent, living experience. In short, your nervous system is what makes life as you know it possible.

Just like the orchestra, it is designed to be flexible and to ebb and flow with the stresses and joys of life, with moments of emotional openness being experienced in your body as expansion, as you feel calm, joyful or relaxed. You also naturally experience physiological constrictions throughout the day, feeling closed, heavy, withdrawn, reflective or tired. The nervous system is a hidden, never really thought about organ system that, if laid out in a straight line, would stretch for 45 miles. A single human body contains a neural network so incomprehensibly vast that its web of connections outnumbers the global population thousands of times over. It is not simply another part of your body. It shapes everything that you think, feel and do. What you see, touch, smell, think, and even remember is all made possible by your nervous system. It is, without exaggeration, the very foundation of how you experience your world . . .the body’s system of balance and counterbalance is designed to work with everyday activity and rest, it is also designed to be able to respond to sudden and unexpected demands that threaten your survival. Life is not about the absence of difficulty and the beauty of music does not lie in the absence of discord. The fullness of living, like the richness of music, lies in the balance between tension and release." 

- Gregory James