Nervous System Tracking: The Skill No One Teaches You But Everyone Should Know
How to read—and regulate—your nervous system...for pretty much better everything (life, work, leadership, relationships, well-being etc.)
Some time back someone in a meeting delivered their feedback in a way that made the temperature in the room drop precipitously. (See Where Feedback Fails for that story.)
I watched everyone withdraw—eyes averted, faces still, bodies pulled back from monitors. I noticed how my own heart suddenly started racing, I got prickly under my armpits and I felt a pit open up in stomach. And the feedback wasn’t even directed at me!!!!
How quickly we become aware of such physical responses—the ones that that just happen in our bodies without our conscious will or intention—and what we do once we become aware of them, determines how we show up in the moments that matter at work: whether we snap at someone who doesn’t deserve it; whether we freeze when we need to speak up; whether we can stay calmly present in a difficult conversation or get swept into reactivity.
We tend to think of these as personality traits or character flaws. We’re “not good under pressure” or we “need to work on our patience” or we “should be more confident.” Or, if we’re familiar with frameworks like the Conscious Leadership Group’s “above the line/below the line” model, we tell ourselves we need to get above the line. We try to think our way there, say the right words, take the right action.
But as Jim Fallon points out in his recent piece on the paradox of that framework, you can’t strong-arm your way above the line. Your autonomic nervous system moves before your executive function does. The body tightens, the breath shortens, the constriction happens—and you didn’t consciously do any of it.
The move isn’t to try to “get above the line”. It is, as Fallon writes, to notice what’s actually happening in your body first and foremost. Then and only then can you begin to think of how to respond (rather than just react).
And to do that, there’s a skill underneath all of it. A foundational skill that almost no one teaches but really is one of those life (and leadership) skills that everyone should know.
For simplicity we call it tracking. The proper neuroscience term is “interoception”. It’s the skill of learning to read—and then regulate—your nervous system.
And here’s how to do it.
Want more? Check out this program to really learn, practice and integrate these skills into your daily life, at work or at home.
Download the guide below 👇.
Note:
Resources, guides and worksheets etc. are for your personal use only. They are not to be shared, copied or distributed. Please have anyone who would like to use these become a paid subscriber, like yourself.
Copyright for these materials vests with Sansu Rising Coaching LLC, or the original creators from whom I have permission or a license to use.
