Body-First Healing Podcast

The Myth of Nervous System Optimization: Why You Can’t Hack Healing

• Britt Piper • Episode 38

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Healing has increasingly been framed as something to optimize, perfect, or hack. In this episode, Britt explores the growing pressure within wellness culture to constantly upgrade your nervous system and why that mindset can actually move you further away from regulation. She breaks down common healing myths, why overcomplicating your practices can keep you stuck, and how nervous system safety is built through consistency, relationship, and everyday moments rather than endless tools. If you are interested in somatic healing, nervous system regulation, and a more honest approach to personal growth, this conversation will help you rethink what healing actually asks of you. Tune in to learn how to move out of performance and back into a more sustainable relationship with your body.


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LISTEN, FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE:

We’ve Outsourced Our Healing

Healing Has Become a Performance

The Physiological Response of Optimizing Everything

The Antidote: A Return to Simplicity

What Actually Supports the Nervous System

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week, I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing, you have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here. Hey, hey guys, welcome back to another episode here of the Body First Healing Podcast. I am your host, Britt Piper. Okay, guys, so I have been, I'll be very honest, I've been preparing quite a bit for this episode because this is a conversation that I've wanted to have for quite some time, but it's kind of delicate. And I wanted to make sure that I put in a lot of intentional thought and reflection just behind today's topic. So let's just dive right in. I feel like there's something that I've been noticing more and more. And you guys let me know if you feel the same. But I've noticed this both in my own life and in the people that I work with. And I want to name it because I think that once you once you kind of see it, you can't unsee it. So I feel like we are living in an age where healing has become something that we are constantly trying to optimize. There is a tool for everything, a product for everything, a protocol for everything. So for instance, I was scrolling through social media the other day, which I don't do a ton of, but within the course of five minutes, I saw like 10 posts on different products that you can buy to regulate your nervous system. You can buy this weighted blanket for nervous system regulation. You can install this specific lighting in your home to regulate your circadian rhythm. You can track your sleep, track your stress, track your recovery, stack your supplements. And let's not forget about building the perfect routine. And again, I participate in some of these things. So none of these things are inherently bad. Okay. I want to say that from the beginning. If you're someone who really loves to use some of these protocols, tips, routines, tools. But what I'm watching happen is that we are starting to believe that our healing is dependent on all of these external inputs. And in that process, we are quietly disconnecting from the very thing that healing actually requires, which is your nervous system. Because more than anything, your nervous system does not need to be managed. It needs to be in relationship with. Regulate yourself, calm down, buy this, and you'll feel better. And then suddenly your body becomes another problem to solve, another thing to fix. And we have enough problems, right? Like, let's be honest. Life is hard enough. And so it just becomes kind of like another place where you begin to feel like you are falling short. But your nervous system is not something that you control. It is something that, again, you build relationship with. Your nervous system is responding exactly as it was designed to in the environments that it has experienced. And so when you start to come back into that relationship, something shifts. You stop looking for the next thing to add and you start remembering what's already there. And if you guys have heard me say this before, I will continue to say it over and over and over again. Often the answers that we are looking for when it comes to our healing have been here within all along. Okay, so healing was never meant to be something that you purchase. It was meant to be something that you return to. And I will say it's not often that I boast about the work that I do, but I can say, in just full honesty here and with my whole heart and my whole chest, okay, that one of the things that I am most proud of when it comes to the Body First Healing Program and the Body First Healing Institute practitioner training is that the biggest teachable moment that people have in that experience that I hear from alumni year after year after year is this self-trust that they start to rediscover with their body. When people tell me, oh, Brittany, you and your program, it changed my life. I'm like, I didn't have anything to do with it. It was actually all you, right? My program helped you to reposition your posture, to turn inward to the innate, instinctual, primal, and ancient wisdom of your body, your brain, and your nervous system. You are your own best self-healer. And so again, I just hope that we can start to get to that place where we realize that the answers that we're seeking to our problems have actually been here all along within us. All right. So I want to talk about a different kind of perspective here. Healing has become another stage that we perform on. Like most of us were conditioned from a very early age to exist inside of a more performative structure where our value was tied to how well we could fix, achieve, hold, or, you know, manage what was going on around us. And so with that, we became the ones who anticipated needs, the ones who solved problems and made things work and just kind of kept everything together. And what we know now as adults is that over time, that doesn't just shape your behavior, right? It shapes your nervous system. Because now your body believes that safety is found in doing the right thing or doing things well. So when we enter the healing space, we can bring that exact same patterning with us. We want to do it correctly, we want to follow the right steps, we want to build the perfect routine or become the most regulated person in the room. And what I see happening is that nervous system work, which is something that is meant to expand our capacity, is being turned into another invisible standard. Like it's another place where you feel like you're failing if you're still anxious, if you're still reactive, or just basically you're still human. And it's likely because no one told you that your nervous system was never designed to be constantly calm. It was designed to respond, to move, to mobilize and withdraw and to connect and to feel into things. Okay, calm is not the goal. Capacity, flexibility, that is the goal. The ability to feel what's happening inside of you without abandoning yourself in the process. But when healing becomes performance, you kind of stop relating to your body, right? And instead you start to manage it. And as I mentioned earlier, the nervous system does not organize under that kind of pressure. Okay, it doesn't shift into regulation because you perfected the routine or the tool, it shifts because it feels safe enough to soften. So if your version of healing is making you smaller, quieter, less expressive, or more, I guess we could say controlled, that is not regulation. Okay, that is adaptation. And your body has already done enough of that to survive. Okay, so now let's bring in some of the physiological components. Okay. Because you guys know I'm all about the science, but I'm finding that what's kind of fascinating about all of this is that a lot of what we call optimization, and I'm using air quotes, you guys know I love my air quotes, is actually just a socially accepted version of the stress response. So when your system is trying to control every variable or track every metric or anticipate every outcome, that is not regulation. That is activation that's been given a purpose. And it's the same energy that once kept you safe now being redirected into quote wellness. And again, there is nuance here, okay? Because yes, structure can support the nervous system, rhythm can support the nervous system, but pressure does not, rigidity does not, flexibility supports the nervous system. So what I see happening is people stacking more and more and more on top of themselves in the name of healing, and their system is becoming more contracted, not less, more rigid and fixed, not less. And so on the outside, they're doing everything right. And yet they feel more anxious, more disconnected, okay, more exhausted than they've ever been. And that's because the body is not responding to what you're doing, it's responding to how you are being while you do it. And if underneath all of it there is urgency, fear, or pressure, then the nervous system is going to organize around that, no matter how healthy the behavior looks on the surface. And I just want to give an example here, just to kind of like paint the picture a bit more. So let's just think about how we build muscle. And you guys know I often go back to different body systems to kind of correlate to the nervous system and how we regulate and find resilience, but we don't build muscle in the workout. Okay. Even though people think you do. You actually build muscle in the recovery. That's why your recovery days are so important. So the stimulus matters, the stress matters, but it is the integration, it's the repair period and the rest that actually creates growth. And regulation works in the same way. It's not built in how much you do, it's built in how much your system is allowed to come back to itself after activation. It is built in the moments where you get to slow down enough to let your body reorganize when you're not pushing and optimizing and trying to get it right. But we have been conditioned to believe that more effort equals more results. So we keep adding, we keep hacking, we keep doing, keep stimulating the system without ever giving it space to really integrate. And so we find over time, and if you guys have heard my previous episodes on burnout, you know that for me, I found that doesn't create resilience, it creates exhaustion. So all that to say, the nervous system needs safety and softness more than anything. And that's not something that we can optimize our way into. It's something you have to allow to happen. And that only happens when we slow down enough. All right. So as I was, again, kind of like gathering my thoughts and, you know, the direction that I wanted to take this conversation, I feel like there's another aspect here that we don't really talk about. I think that people are starting to talk about how maybe we're overdoing it in the wellness space, we're overdoing it with nervous system regulation, we're we're saturating the market a little too much. But I feel like this is where I kind of want to zoom out and name something that I think also sits underneath a lot of this. I believe that right now we are so focused on longevity and biohacking and extending life because we don't actually know how to live young. And even as you hear that, you're probably like, what do you mean? What does that even mean? So, what I mean by that is we don't know how to be in our bodies in a way that feels alive, expressive, curious, free, you know, like how a child feels. For so many of us, those parts were not fully available in childhood. Maybe play was limited, maybe our expression or our big feelings were corrected or rest became conditional for us. What I see a lot of in the Body First Healing program is that growing up, maybe our power was either suppressed or it had to be earned. And so we adapted. We became, as young children, very responsible, very composed. And later in life, that showed up as being high-functioning, productive, an overachiever, a people pleaser. But in that process, something very real got left behind. And that is aliveness. If you guys have read my book, Body First Healing, you know I have an entire chapter titled Healthy Aggression and Life Force rising into your power. And in the somatic world, we refer to your aliveness as your life force, as your vitality. And what we commonly see when we have chronic nervous system dysregulation is that usually in our developmental years, that aliveness was dimmed within us, which is why in the Body First Healing program, we don't just explore nervous system regulation and somatics. We have entire modules over attachment and inner child work. So, you know, when that aliveness gets dimmed or extinguished, now instead of returning to that as adults, we are trying to engineer it. Okay, we're trying to create it through routines, through tools and strategies. But the nervous system doesn't experience this aliveness that I'm talking about through control. Like it's not something that's manufactured, it's experienced through expression, through things like movement, through sound, through connection and co-regulation and through exploration. So when I say living young, that's what I am referring to. I'm not referring to what age we are, but our ability to access those younger, playful, curious, and expressive parts of us. And I think what takes this topic of the conversation even deeper is this is where the research kind of aligns beautifully with what the body has always known. So if you look at the cultures with the greatest longevity, okay, greatest lifespan, life expectancy, places like Okinawa, Sardinia, Nicoia, it is usually the indigenous tribes and communities. And what you'll find in their daily life experience and their culture is not a list of hacks and routines, okay. You find a way of life. You find people who are deeply embedded in community, who are surrounded by family across generations, who eat together, who grieve together, who who celebrate alongside one another. You'll find movement that is kind of woven into daily life instead of extracted into this one-hour window at the gym. And you'll also find people who spend time outside, who are in relationship with the land, who sing and dance and create. And I have seen this with my own eyes. I've lived and worked in some of the most remote parts of the world, in communities across Asia, in communities across Africa, Asia, South America, places that are far removed from the modern worlds, and everything that we associate with comfort. And I talked about this a little bit in my book that what struck me about my many years that I spent living and working overseas wasn't what these cultures lacked, but what they embodied. Like there was this sense of presence, of connection and aliveness that didn't depend on anything external. There was joy without excess. There was wellness without this optimization that we're so obsessed with, and really like this kind of vitality that came from being fully inside of their life instead of trying to control it. Know from the research is that these experiences, these ways of life, these environments, they directly impact the nervous system and the body. We know that connection reduces our inflammatory markers. We know that a sense of purpose regulates the stress response. We know that social belonging increases oxytocin, which buffers against chronic stress and supports cardiovascular health. We know that rhythmic movement and expression, it increases our vagal tone, which is then, of course, directly tied to resilience and regulation. So, as you can tell, I'm really passionate as I talk about this because what we call longevity is not coming from something that they are adding. It's coming from what they are living. And that is a very different conversation. All right, guys, just a couple more perspectives that I want to add to this conversation. And this next one is all about returning to simplicity. So, as I've shared quite a bit on the podcast and just across social media, I've had to come back to this in my own life more times than I can count. Okay. There are definitely seasons where I can feel myself starting to tighten again, where I start to think that maybe I just need to refine things a little more or dial things in a little or get a little bit more disciplined with my routine or, you know, like more structured. And what I have found time and time again, I feel like I've kind of learned my lesson at this point, is that every time I go down that path, there is going to be a moment where my body starts to feel smaller. It starts to feel more contained and just really less of that aliveness that I was talking about. And so what helps me to kind of shift away from that is when I step away from the control, when I step away from the rigidity. It's when I find myself in nature. I know I shared about my trip to Mendocino and, you know, just what that brought me and the land that we've purchased in Montana. I feel like where there's space, where there's quiet and not this constant input or expectation to do more, I can feel my nervous system reorganize without me trying to do anything to it. And the way that I can sense into this is my breath deepens. Like I feel like I have room and space and time to breathe. I feel a softening across my entire body, my mind, especially. I can notice when it slows down, that is a sign that my system feels more settled. And what takes place in this like kind of beautiful way is that I get to remember very clearly that nothing was missing all along. Like there was nothing that I needed to add. And what my system actually needed was less interference. And by the way, just a teaser for you guys, I recently sat down with celebrity health coach, nutritionist, and NLP Mona Sharma in Los Angeles, and I interviewed her for the podcast. And this is something that we talked about extensively in the episode, which is coming out in just a few weeks. So keep an eye out for that. But something that I really loved about our conversation was we touched on this idea that healing is not about accumulating more. It is about removing what is in the way of what's already there. And we talked about returning to a body that already knows how to regulate when it's given the right conditions, which is exactly the work that we do in the Body First Healing program. Okay, you guys. So let's start wrapping this up. I would love to end this dialogue today by just talking about like what it is that your nervous system is actually asking for, because there's so much information online. Again, the conversation around nervous system regulation, I feel like is so loud and so saturated right now. And sometimes the information is conflicting. And so it's like, what is the right answer? So let's just chat about that a little bit. I feel like when you strip all of this back, okay, the nervous system is not asking for a perfectly curated life. It is asking for a felt one. It is asking for moments where you are not performing, moments where you are not fixing, moments where you're not trying to become anything other than what you already are. Okay. It's asking for movement that feels like life moving through you, that aliveness that we just spoke about, and that not being something that you have to ask for. It's asking for connection that feels real and safe and authentic. It's also asking for expression that is allowed rather than managed. Okay, because the truth behind all of this is that again, your body already knows what to do. It knows how to heal, it knows how to regulate. It just cannot do that in an environment where it feels constantly evaluated, controlled, or uh, you know, being pressured into this tool or this practice. So in that regard, the question becomes less about what else you need to do. And it actually becomes more about what you can begin to let go of. So, with all that said, if you feel like you have been doing everything, right? Learning everything, trying everything, and it just still feels like something is not landing. I just want you to consider the possibility that it's not because you're missing something. Okay. It might be because there's too much going on. Like there's too much noise, too much pressure, too much doing. And what your system might actually be asking for is a return, a return to simplicity, to your body, and to the kind of aliveness that does not have to be earned. Now, of course, as I've mentioned, this is the work that we do inside of the Body First Healing program, where over six months you learn how to come back to what's already within you. And so if you're ready for that kind of work, remember you can join at any time. Just go to bodyfirsthealing.com to apply. If this is the kind of work that you want to guide others in, as a somatic practitioner, enrollment for our July 2026 and January 2027 cohorts is still open. So again, you can go to bodyfirsthealing.com and apply for the training as well. But remember, as always, guys, that if this episode landed well with you, if it resonated, or you feel like this would really support someone that you know who is deep into regulation and wellness right now, um, then make sure to send it their way. Thank you guys for always being such big supporters of the podcast. I love your comments, love your shares, love your reviews. I will see you next week here on the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning into the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week, and until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.