How it Works: The Autonomic Compass

If our present moment autonomic state is the primary governor of our felt experience (it is), and we find ourselves in a moment, or moments, where we are not feeling well, it stands to reason that we might want to evaluate the current state of our ANS. I’m not even necessarily talking about a catastrophic decrease in our wellbeing– this could simply be the mundane experience of finding yourself in a funk at mid-day. Let’s say that you do the baseline check of things, and make sure that you’ve eaten, are hydrated, haven’t been sitting for hours, and that you’ve taken a shower. Still, you don’t feel great. What is it?

Are you ruminating? Stuck in a worry loop because you made the foolish decision to scroll on Facebook for ten minutes? Or are you angry? The f*cking politicians. ICE. Man-babies throwing temper-tantrums that effect millions of people.

We cannot find our way back to center if we are not aware of what has moved us out of it. Was there a moment when your state shifted? When something happened that recruited the biology of defense?

It can feel like a minefield these days navigating the modern world. We are, many of us, under the relentless pressure of obligations, of bills to pay, mortgages, tuition (our own or our children’s), debt, etc. We look out a world that is increasingly fractious: many of us have stopped talking to people (sometimes even members of our own family) because our political views have diverged so completely. There are climate-related catastrophes, and Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez just spent 50 million bucks on a wedding, which was inescapable in the news cycles, and about which it is hard not to feel some kind of way (why didn’t I get invited? The ultra-rich are so gross.) The stock market is fueled, like all markets, by greed. And then, we carry a catalog of distractions in the form factor of a digital brick in our pockets.

So what was the moment that shifted something in our bodies? Do we even know?

But then, once we have identified this flavor, inwardly, how do we get ourselves back to a neutral setting? What if you’ve tried taking a few deep breaths? Tried meditating? Tried a brisk walk, and yet none of it is doing the trick?

Might you need some more targeted neural exercise? Might it help to have more granular clarity about the neurobiology of the autonomic state you are in, and a sense of pathways out of it?

This is why we built the Autonomic Compass.

What it does is fairly simple, but not commonly understood.

It helps you evaluate the present moment state of your Autonomic Nervous System. It then provides dozens of targeted neural exercises to help you shift out of that state if it is defensive, and no longer adaptive, or deepen into the state if it is health-creating. From among this menu of options, you can further tailor your choices. You can tell the platform that you are looking for a practice that you can do outside, with friends, in water. Or that you are looking for a practice that is specifically heart-opening, and addresses communication. There are an infinite number of ways to refine your search.

Let’s start with the diagnostic side of things. Let’s say that you are feeling out of sorts, not really clear why, and need help figuring it out. Let’s launch the Diagnostics tool.

Let’s do a bit of triage to see if we can find the present moment state we are in.

Now we’ve identified that we are having a flight response. Good to know.

What we need now are ways to shift us back into safety and connection. Here is a list of 67 practices that address the flight response….

This is still too many options, so let’s add some additional criteria. We’d like to do something that focuses on the feet as our portal to connection, and that we can do out-of-doors. This will target our search with much greater specificity. Now there are three practices listed: a much more reasonable number of choices.

Let’s say that you decide you are going to learn Grounding. Click on the tile, and you get the 15-minute video teaching it to you.

If you like that, scroll down to the page to see every practice on the platform that is related to Grounding.

Each one of these is a relevant and viable pathway. Each one of them will also have a list of every related practice on the platform. In this way you tailor your learning journey around you like a bespoke outfit.

The Autonomic Compass is quite possibly the world’s most sophisticated self-healing platform.

Find your true north.