Yoga & The Nervous System
By The Yoga Loft Last updated
In short
Your autonomic nervous system has two modes: fight or flight (sympathetic) and rest and digest (parasympathetic). Most of us spend too much of the day in fight or flight. Slow, breath-led yoga is one way to build more rest and repair time into your week.
Watch
Rest and digest
The two modes of your nervous system, fight or flight and rest and digest.
33 seconds, no sound needed
Sympathetic
Fight or flight
- Excitation and arousal
- Alert, focused, competitive
- Where most of us spend too much of the day
Parasympathetic
Rest and digest
- Relaxation
- Rest, repair and digestion
- What slow, breath-led practice makes time for
Yoga and the nervous system
The autonomic nervous system has two parts: the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for excitation and arousal (“fight or flight”), and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation (“rest and digest”).
As a society we spend too much time in sympathetic mode: fight or flight. Of course this is great when we need to be alert, focused and competitive, but we also need to make time for rest, repair and digestion, building more parasympathetic time into our daily routine.
As the famous saying goes: “Do your practice and all is coming.”
