A Simple Morning Practice for Your Nervous System

Supporting the nervous system is an often-overlooked part of healing, but one that can have profound benefits in improving how we feel and how our body functions. Our autonomic nervous system is what keeps our bodily functions running smoothly in the background, so it’s pretty important.

You may have heard people delineate the main modes that our autonomic nervous system toggles between as rest-digest-repair mode and fight-flight-freeze mode. 

However, when we’re dealing with chronic stress, trauma, inflammation, or other health issues, our nervous system may end up stuck in fight-flight-freeze mode, simply because it’s trying to protect us from perceived threats. And of course we need that protective mechanism, it’s not all bad–but it can’t be our dominant nervous system setting.

When healing is a goal, one of our main jobs is to send our nervous system signals of safety, so that it can chill out and easily get back into rest-digest-repair mode.

That’s the mode where our body can do things like effectively extract nutrients from our food, rebuild tissues and repair injuries, and take advantage of neuroplasticity to build new, positive habits.

One of the simplest and most beneficial ways to support the nervous system is spending time outdoors, especially first thing in the morning.

We evolved spending most of our time outside, and yet our modern lifestyles take place mostly indoors, where we can’t reap the benefits of full-spectrum UV light from the sun.

Getting outside for 10-15 minutes first thing in the morning (ideally before 10am) sends signals through the eyes to the pineal gland in the brain.

Those signals help establish a healthy circadian rhythm, support a restorative sleep–wake cycle, improve immune function and tee you up for an overall beneficial, body-wide hormonal cascade. That doesn’t happen through windows, unfortunately, as we can’t receive the full spectrum of light through them.

I love how simple this can be. Maybe it’s a nice excuse to walk to a coffee shop or hang out on the stoop or in your backyard in the morning before work. Maybe you’re taking a brisk walk around the block before you dive into your day, or maybe it’s as easy as sticking your head out the window while you sip your tea. 

You don’t have to commune with nature (though feel free, that’s great for the nervous system too!), and you don’t need to gaze directly into the sun either (terrible idea, don’t do it!). 

Just try to get outdoors in the morning–no sunglasses though!