The human body is a holistic whole, and the aspects of diet, sleep and nervous system regulation are all tied to each other. Certain dietary choices will have an impact on quality of sleep and the balance of your nervous system. Poor sleep has a negative impact on metabolism and causes an increase in stress hormones. The state of our nervous system has an impact on the kind of food we desire, how we metabolize and how we sleep.
It might seem that this interaction is impossible to untangle, particularly when the overall systems contributing to health and well-being have become disturbed. However, because the state of our nervous system has an impact on all of the rest of these aspects, interventions into that area can have positive knock-off effects in other aspects. We will be next looking at these factors and how they can have an impact on your spiritual practice. On the flip side, certain aspects of spiritual practices can also help with issues in each of these systems. It's simply a matter of identifying areas that need help, and practices that can support improvements. This rather extensive writeup should not be taken as discouragement, but rather as a tool for self-understanding.
Nervous system activation and management
The human nervous system is a balancing act between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Whenever there is need to take action or a stressor, sympathetic nervous system activates our bodies and minds and get us ready for action. This in itself is normal and beneficial, as without ever becoming primed for action, nothing would ever get done. However, problems begin to arise when sources of stress become too prolonged, numerous or overwhelming or when we do not get adequate opportunities to rest. This causes the sympathetic nervous system to become chronically active.
In a normal state, the parasympathetic nervous system in turn should activate after the need for action has passed. This would dampen the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and return the body to a neutral state. However, when the sympathetic nervous system has become overactive, the parasympathetic response cannot activate even in rest and the person can not effectively rest. The kind of prolonged stress and anxiety that many people feel is fundamentally a chronic imbalance in the nervous system.
Anxiety is indeed another thing that activates the sympathetic nervous system. Occasional feelings of anxiety are normal. However, it becomes a problem when it does not resolve or becomes generalized. We might find ourselves getting dragged over and over again into anxiety-arousing situations, but sometimes the problem might be more about our perception of the self. We might be dealing with the situations just fine, but not able to see it ourselves. Sometimes a generalized sense of anxiety stems from overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system itself. It can be a very vicious cycle of sympathetic nervous system overactivation causing one to see threats everywhere and the sense of being threatened leaving them unable to relax...
Even if your situation is not so dire, it's very likely that your life has more stressors than you think of and that you are more stressed than you might be aware of. We tend to fill our lives with all kinds of very stimulating and stressful activities such as constantly browsing media content or social media, making constant comparisons to others, being very self-aware in an unhealthy way that makes us feel insecure and vulnerable, and making unrealistic expectations of ourselves.
It should also be noted that the excessive consumption of caffeine in the form of coffee and energy drinks also contributes to stress. The sense of ”stimulation” that comes from caffeine is actually it interfering with the metabolism of stress hormones, which sustains a state of sympathetic nervous system activation.
Beyond the mental impact, prolonged stress and anxiety will also cause a host of physiological conditions. These include increased blood pressure, which then starts to sustain itself as your veins harden. This in turn can lead to a host of problems related to peripheral blood circulation and nervous system function, brain functioning, sensory functioning and sexual functioning. The chronic elevated heart rate caused by sympathetic nervous system activation increases risk for heart arrhythmias, heart attacks and other heart conditions. Chronic stress and anxiety will also have an impact on your hormonal and digestive systems, and contribute to muscle pain and stiffness.
This all is relevant to spiritual pursuits in two ways. Firstly, it's very hard to make any kind of positive, constructive progress if you are in a very bad headspace, and this includes an extremely stressed state. You will attract very unwanted attention this way and you will not be able to react in a constructive way to the more challenging elements of the spiritual journey.
Secondly, spiritual pursuits can be of use in management of stress and anxiety. It's said that all relaxation has an element of meditation and all meditation has an element of relaxation. This is very true, and this is the reason why secularized forms of meditation and mindfulness have become so popular. The base-level, non-esoteric forms of qigong are mostly a meditative form of exercise too. Taking a more spiritual outlook on life can also help you to see just how profoundly pointless many of the stressors we surround ourselves with are, and help you to give up them. The challenge then becomes being mature enough to let go of such things.
I would argue that starting to work on baseline stress and anxiety management before doing anything outside of very basic meditation is the way to go. You will inevitably have to face this in one form or another, and tackling it among the first things will save you a lot of trouble. While extreme cases of chronic stress and anxiety require medical attention, there are a number of techniques that everyone can use to trigger the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. These include simple yawning, progressive muscle relaxation, certain body movements as well as breathing techniques. Breathing in particular is something we will be looking at next, because it is of such great importance when it comes to regulating the nervous system.
Breathing
Breathing is something that might seem very obvious, but in fact is not. While breathing is an autonomous function of the body, various factors can cause it to deviate from the natural, neutral state called eupnea. It's also called quiet breathing and resting breath rate. This is an effortless type of breathing that requires no conscious attention. Inhalation during eupnea works as follows: the diaphragm contracts, moves downwards and draws air into lungs. At the same time the ribcage expands. When you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes, moves upwards and pushes the air out of your lungs.
When you become anxious, stressed or assume certain postures, your breathing will however shift from this neutral state to shallow breathing. During shallow breathing, the diaphragm doesn't move enough or at all, and instead the breathing is done mostly using the muscles between your ribs. This type of breath doesn't let you take in a full breath of oxygen. There's an even worse version known as clavicular breathing, where you breathe in by lifting the collarbone while contracting the stomach muscles. This lets in very little air.
Shallow breathing should be by its nature a transient phenomenon that helps the body to deal with a crisis situation. However, as our modern life is full of stressors that simply build up without ever getting properly released, many find that this shallow breathing just becomes their normal state of breathing. This causes a vicious cycle where shallow breathing causes further anxiety, deprives you of oxygen and can cause panic attacks, hyperventilation and increases the risk of pulmonary diseases.
Beyond chronic stress and anxiety, certain habits and bad postures contribute to shallow breathing becoming habitual. Many people constantly tense their abdominal muscles, either because they are sucking in their stomach to appear less overweight or because of an embodied stress response. Slouching or excessively tensing your back also obstructs natural breathing. So stop sitting in that shrimp pose. Scoliosis can also obstruct natural breathing, but fixing it will require dedicated medical attention.
The good news is that the cycle of anxiety leading to shallow breathing leading to more anxiety can be interrupted. It simply requires you to be mindful about your posture, muscle tension and breathing. The idea of manual breathing most likely sounds horrible, but as your body starts to unlearn shallow breathing, the normal resting state will come once again naturally. You can find more detailed instructions online by searching for ”neutral breathing” or ”diaphragmatic breathing”, but the gist of it is to get relaxed, untense your stomach muscles, assume a posture that is not too slouched or too erect and then just breathing calmly in a way where you can feel your belly expanding and ribcage rising during inhalation.
Another factor related to breathing is that you should breathe through your nose. Breathing through your mouth contributes to shallow breathing. You also inhale more pathogens into your lungs without the nose hair and mucus to catch some of them going in, which can contribute to pulmonary diseases. Consciously nose breathing is also a way to force your body to do diaphragmatic breathing.
Why am I writing so much about breathing? There's two reasons. Firstly, breathing contributes a lot to the state of your nervous system and overall well-being. It's part of the anxiety and stress management toolkit. Secondly, when you start exploring various spiritual techniques, you will very soon discover instructions related to breathing. Some of these instructions will ask for notable divergences from what is the usual breathing pattern for humans. Becoming more mindful of your breathing is a good way to witness the power of breath first hand and get a better grasp at how it all works. You shouldn't however get too neurotic about scrutinizing the way you breathe either. We all know manual breathing is a terrible curse. You'll notice that, as with many things, once you improve the baseline conditions and get the process going, it will sustain itself.
Diet and nutrition
Diet and nutrition are of course greatly tied to your overall health. There are however some particular considerations when it comes to the spiritual side of things. Many spiritual traditions advocate for an essentially a vegan diet. These include of course the Buddhists, but also the Taoists too. In Shinto, there were certain taboos about eating mammals as well as certain types of birds. When it comes to certain ceremonies, at least the kannushi still abstain from eating such taboo food items.
Outside of the traditions that have been the scope of this document, veganism is part of Hinduism too. Other religions, even Christianity, have or used to have abstinence from eating meat as part of certain events or certain groups of devotees.
There is modern research evidence suggesting that vegans have more spiritual experiences, and the more strictly you adhere to veganism, the more you have such experiences. My own experience is very much in line with this. I also have experience with a challenging entity trying to justify more unsavory aspects of its behavior by comparing how humans treat animals, so there's that too to consider.
That said, the operative word in our exchange was ”try”. I am not a perfect vegan. It's not easy. And I can not expect anyone else to be such either. However, beyond the spiritual aspects of it all, there are great many good reasons to move towards a more vegetable-centered diet. These boil down to health benefits. There are strong indications that excess meat consumption can cause certain types of cancers. Lack of vitamins, fibers and certain phytochemicals found in plants are associated with many negative health conditions.
People have legitimate concerns about pesticides in plants, and you should of course wash the vegetables you consume. But eating meat will not keep you safe from pesticides or things like microplastics either. After all, meat is at the top of the food chain, and has thus absorbed all of the trace toxins in its food.
It should also be kept in mind that for the vast majority of human history, we did not consume anywhere near as much animal products as we do today. The current situation is in many ways unsustainable and unnatural.
I strongly recommend that you at least incorporate more vegetables into your diet, if for nothing else then your own health and well-being. If you decide to go fully vegan, you need to use your brains. Getting enough macronutrients isn't as challenging as some people make it out to be, but you need to pay attention to it a bit more. You will also need to pay attention to getting enough vitamin B-12, iron and iodine.
In general, no matter if you go vegan, vegetarian or keep on eating meat, it's advisable to pay attention to the quality and contents of your food. Nutrition science is complicated, there's a billion faddish diets, but ultimately humans have survived on all kinds of foods. Still, as much as I am not an expert, I would mainly argue for sufficient protein and lots of fiber. Things to avoid in excess are fats with a lot of LDL cholesterol and lots of fast carbs like sugar. Beyond these, I am convinced of the health benefits of trying to include some kind of beans, a source of chlorophyll and plants from the cabbage family as well as nuts and seeds into your daily diet.
I understand that in some countries eating healthily can be difficult and expensive. I would then at least argue for cutting out the absolute worst things out of your diet.
We should also make note of fasting. Fasting, sometimes to extremes, has been used as a spiritual technique in many traditions. Feel free to experiment with it, but keep it reasonable. Some people claim that it has health benefits that get activated around 18 hours, so 18-24 hours, which is definitively doable, could be a reasonable minimum. Some say that fasting literally ”sublimates” your body and makes it more ”spiritual” in a sense. I have not experimented with fasting myself yet, but the peak of most intense spirit activity in my life overlapped with a period of rapid weight loss, so I think there might very well be something to this.
Sleep
I can not overstate how important sleep is. It impacts your metabolism, nervous system and cleans out your brain among other things. Sleep deprivation, especially when it starts accumulating, will considerably worsen your overall health. For some reason many seem to however find that sleep is the one thing they can seemingly compromise on.
As you become more spiritually attuned, maintaining your overall health becomes more important than ever. You really need to put in the effort to get adequate sleep everyday. Fortunately, various techniques of nervous system regulation can also help you to sleep better, by undoing the kind of sympathetic nervous system activation which interferes with falling and staying asleep. Once again, consider your caffeine consumption. While it seems to give ”energy”, the nervous system activation it causes lasts surprisingly long, for up to 12 hours.
It should be noted that sleep deprivation can be used as a spiritual technique. I urge you to strongly consider the merits and drawbacks of this before engaging in such practices and whether you are ready for such. It's also because sleep deprivation can be a spiritual technique that you want to avoid when you are not intentionally seeking it. Getting catapulted into some spiritual state when you are nowhere near in the right place or headspace for such is awkward at best and dangerous at worst.
When you start your journey you might even experience a temporal increase in sleep disturbances and decline of sleep quality. This can be for several reasons. Practices like meditation can kick off subconscious processes, which might emerge in intense dreams. You might find yourself becoming more sensitive to various stimuli, and discover that drinking four cups of coffee and playing video games late into the night has actual consequences. Or you might be getting unwanted (or wanted!) astral attention.
These types of issues are usually transient and can be dealt with appropriately. The various subconscious processes are highly important and should be listened to. You can adjust your life around the heightened sensitivity, it is leading you to a more balanced, sustainable way of living to begin with. As for astral visitations, we will be talking about such in greater detail later on.
