The Most Misunderstood Word in Wellness?
A regulated nervous system still reacts. The difference is what happens next.
There’s a moment that happens after something throws you off. Not during it, after.
The difficult email. The conversation that didn’t go the way you planned. The unexpected news, or the small but sharp thing that landed wrong. The situation is technically resolved. You’re fine... yet something hasn’t quite returned.
You’re still carrying the charge of it. Still a few degrees off your own axis. You know, intellectually, that things are okay – and still, you don’t quite feel like yourself.
That gap, between the thing resolving and you actually feeling like yourself, is where nervous system regulation lives.
Most People’s Idea of Regulation is Wrong
Regulation has become a fixture in wellness language, and most people have inherited a flawed definition of it.
They think it means staying calm. Not reacting. Rising above the fray. Managing your emotions so gracefully that nothing much seems to reach you.
That’s not regulation. That’s performance… or in many cases, suppression.
A regulated nervous system still responds to stress. It still activates when something requires activation. It still goes quieter when it needs to recover.
The difference isn’t the absence of a reaction. It’s the speed of the return.
What regulation actually describes is the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems operating in balance. One branch activates when a response is needed, the other brings the system back down. A healthy nervous system is able to surf those waves and return to neutral, rather than remaining flat all the time. (Dysregulation is what happens when that return gets disrupted – when activation keeps outpacing recovery and the system stays stuck.)
It’s Not Just About Calming Down
Here’s something else that often gets missed: regulation isn’t only about coming down from too much.
It also applies to coming up from too little.
The flat feeling after a long stretch of depletion. The emotionally checked-out afternoon. The version of you that’s functional but not quite present. That state also represents a nervous system that’s drifted from center. It’s just gone in the other direction.
A truly regulated system has flexibility. It can activate when activation is useful, settle when settling is needed, and, crucially, find its way back to neutral in either direction. Not suppressed calm. Not forced energy. Just you, returned to yourself.
As the primary part of the autonomic nervous system you can consciously work with, your breath can help you access this. And you can breathe in certain ways that don’t necessarily push you in either direction, but into neutral balance.
A Subtle Return to Equilibrium
Dirga pranayama (or three-part breath) is different from diaphragmatic breathing, which focuses primarily on the belly. This technique engages the entire respiratory range in sequence, returning your breathing to its complete, natural state.
Here’s how to do it.
Sit comfortably with your spine upright, or lie down. Place one hand on your belly and one on your chest.
Breathe in slowly through your nose. As you do, let your belly expand first. You want to feel it rise gently under your hand. Then, continuing that same inhale, let your ribcage expand outward to the sides. Then let the breath travel all the way up through the chest and into the collarbones, filling from the bottom of your lungs to the top. The whole thing is one continuous motion – belly, ribs, chest – not three separate steps.
Then exhale from the top down: chest releases, ribs draw in, belly falls. Let all the air go fully before starting your next breath.
Do 6–8 full dirgas. Slow and complete on each one.
You might not notice a definitive shift towards calm or a surge of energy. It may be more subtle, like something settling back into its right shape. That’s because when you’re activated, breathing tends to contract up into the chest, shallow and tight. When you’re flat, it also shallows out, just differently.
In either case, the three-part breath returns your breathing to a fuller state. And you start to feel a little better without necessarily being able to clarify why.
Like all my favorite breaths, you can do this one anywhere: in your car, at your desk before a meeting, in bed when you’ve realized you’re still carrying something from six hours ago. (I personally dig this one lying down.)
You’re not trying to change how you feel. You’re just breathing… and somehow, the change simply happens.
Last Gasp
“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”
— Aldous Huxley
P.S. The Breathing & Balance Hub includes dozens of short, practical practices for returning to yourself after whatever the day brings. Sessions start at 2 minutes and go up to 58 minutes. If you’ve been thinking about joining, there’s a special offer open until Friday, May 8. Get the details here →