The parts of ourselves that are tasked with evoking autonomic state– the parts that decide we are in danger and ramp up the adrenaline and cortisol, or shut down our Connection Systems– are not our ordinary sense of self. They do not communicate with us in the everyday language of words.

But we can learn to interpret them. And we can learn to change the inputs to our Autonomic Nervous System. We gain autonomic fluency so that we can learn to grasp and move these levers for ourselves. Putting us in charge of our own wellbeing for anything related to stress– which is 80% of what brings people into primary care healthcare settings.

If you want to start to get hold of these systems, in their ancestral embodied language, it is good to understand a few things.