ABSTRACT
If you’ve been in the yoga or trauma recovery community for long, chances are you have heard mention of the nervous system. Even beyond these communities, we often describe shifts that occur in the nervous system in common language. Western models of fitness often focus on the muscles, heart, and lungs, but fail to address the importance of a healthy and balanced nervous system. Holistic wellness efforts, like those we find in most yoga communities, recognize that we are more than muscles and bones, even physiologically speaking, and incorporate awareness of the nervous system into teaching choices and wellness efforts. In this chapter we discuss models of the nervous system that evolve our understanding of the fight, flight, and freeze responses.
