COURSE

Explore your Nervous System – Mindful Tools for Awareness & Regulation

Over the next 21 days, you will learn many skills to explore the landscape of your nervous system. We will practice skills of safety, tracking sensations, understanding the basics of Polyvagal Theory and how our nervous system affects our bodies, emotions and thoughts. Each day you will be guided through practices to experience and then help regulate and re-balance your nervous system. Learning about our internal operating system is a life changing practice and we will journey together with curiosity and deep kindness.

Awakening Spiritual Resilience Health & Happiness Stress Stress & Anxiety Neuroscience Science Mindfulness Meditation Mindfulness Happiness

Meet your Teacher

Bhanu Joy Harrison

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Bhanu Joy Harrison, LCSW, SEP is a long-time meditator, clinical social worker, trauma therapist and UCLA Trained Mindfulness Facilitator. She has accompanied clients on their healing journeys for over 20 years using somatic and mindfulness interventions, such as Somatic Experiencing and EMDR. Her own spiritual journey began in her youth learning TM meditation when she was 16, living in a yoga ashram for 8 years, being a bodyworker for over a decade, and being an educator since 1985. She is absolutely fascinated by our exquisite nervous system and weaves neuroscience information into her meditations and courses in a simple and user-friendly manner. She is the founder of Choosing Mindfulness which offers classes and workshops to clinicians and the general public. Her deep intention is to offer simple, practical mindfulness tools to become more embodied, resilient, and joyful.

21 Days

8.9k students

4.9 stars

14 min / day

Awakening

English

Lesson 1

Coming Home To Ourselves

In this first session we will get an overview of our nervous system, how it develops and how it can change through the amazing capacity of neuro-plasticity. We will begin to pay attention to our inner ‘workings’ and also notice our felt sense so that we can gradually come back home to our bodies and ourselves. Our practice will be an intention setting investigation to identify body, heart and mind wishes for this course. Bring paper and pen for this practice!

Lesson 2

Inviting Curiosity

Curiosity is a beautiful mindfulness tool that activates our ventral vagal, safe and social part of our nervous system. Curiosity also brings us into the present moment where our body lives. Most of us travel back into the past or fast forward to the future, dragging our bodies along for the usually bumpy ride! We can have a more accurate assessment of our safety when we are actually in the present moment. Curiosity can be a beautiful pause practice where we can collect our attention and come back to the present moment in harmony with our body .

Lesson 3

Interoception - The Language Of Our Body

Interoception is our ability to perceive sensations inside of our bodies. It is how we become aware of hunger, thirst, exhaustion or high or low energy. If we want to grow a more balanced nervous system, we need to learn to listen to our bodies, and the language of the body is sensation.

Lesson 4

Neuroception - Deep Orienting Practice

Dr. Stephen Porges coined the term ‘neuroception’ as the ability of our nervous system to detect safety, danger or threat. We do this all the time, usually below the level of our conscious awareness. As we practice a deep orienting meditation, we will direct our neuroceptive attention to the assessment of safety in the external environment, our internal environment and between us and others.

Lesson 5

The Three C's Of Safety

All nervous systems need three ingredients to feel safe according to Polyvagal educator Deb Dana. We need context, choice and connection in order to allow our system settle and regulate. I have heard from so many students that they just can’t meditate because they are uncomfortable with focusing on their breath. When they realize there are many choices of anchors to focus their attention on, a whole new world opens up to them. We will bring choice to our nervous system today through exploring a toolbox of anchors you can choose from.

Lesson 6

Building Our Understanding Of The Nervous System

Today we will build our understanding of the nervous system by navigating the structure of our internal operating system. We will delineate the differences between our CNS and Peripheral system and voluntary and involuntary functions. Continuing to dive deep, we will explore the autonomic system – our sympathetic and parasympathetic workings. Our practice will be exploring the felt sense of our whole neural network.

Lesson 7

Our Dorsal Vagal System

The most primitive circuit of the parasympathetic nervous system is the dorsal vagal system. We will explore the workings of this branch of the autonomic nervous system in safety and under threat. Our practice will explore the different sensations of this system.

Lesson 8

Our Sympathetic Nervous System

Moving up the evolutionary ladder of development, we will explore our sympathetic nervous system in states of both safety and threat. This branch is a counter-balance system to our parasympathetic system. In our mindfulness practice we will reflect on experiences and sensations of this empowering part of our internal operating system.

Lesson 9

Our Ventral Vagal System

Our ventral vagal system is the most evolved branch of our nervous system. It is part of the parasympathetic and is our safe and social circuit. We will explore the function and expression of our ventral vagal system in safety and under threat and learn a mindful tool to access this deeply regulating branch of our system.

Lesson 10

Tracking Our Neural Patterns

We’ve covered a lot of information in this course and today we will do a practice of tracking your neural patterns, moving through the dorsal vagal, sympathetic and ventral vagal systems.

Lesson 11

What Is The Window Of Tolerance?

Our window of tolerance is our optimum level or energy or capacity at any given moment to manage what is happening in our lives. Another name for this is ‘resilience’. We all have experiences that either push us out of our window (overwhelm) or help us come back into our window (re-establishing balance). In this class we will create a list of these experiences, practice the skill of ‘titration’, doing just a bit at a time.

Lesson 12

Exploring Cues Of "Yes", "No" And "Maybe"

Following up on our lesson yesterday on the window of tolerance and titration, we will explore our body’s cues for making optimal decisions in our day-to-day life. Listening to our body sensations of approach, avoidance or indecision, we will practice paying attention and following through on our body’s wisdom.

Lesson 13

Emotions And Our Nervous System

All emotions have bio-individuated body sensations. In this class we will learn skills to listen to our heart through our body and its’ sensations. We will also identify the Polyvagal states of various emotions which can help us understand how these feelings are generated by our neural states. If we can move from the ‘storyline’ of events to the felt sensation of emotions, we create deeper connection and kindness for ourselves. We will learn a somatic practice of being present with emotions.

Lesson 14

Thoughts And Our Nervous System

Just like emotions are connected to our Polyvagal state, so are our thoughts. In this class, we explore the impact of our thoughts on our body and how our neural states can change our mental processes. We will do an inquiry practice, attending to thoughts and sensations and bringing kindness to our experience.

Lesson 15

Understanding Neural Highways

We will touch on Don Hebb’s theory of learning and how this theory helps us understand our habits. We all experience repetitive thought loops and emotional patterns that are not helpful and we want to put effort into create more beneficial neural pathways. The good news is that we have the superpower of mindfulness to shape our neural highways, so that over time, you can create a more fulfilling life. Our practice will give you skills to interrupt looping thought and emotional patterns.

Lesson 16

Nervous System Reset - Neuro-Modulation

Today I will speak about the concept of neuro-modulation, our body’s ability to move through all our modes of neural functioning. We will practice a mindful skill of modulating internal speed which can help us reset and come back into flow and a breath practice to shift our system.

Lesson 17

Getting Unstuck

We all get stuck in our neural default patterns and we can’t “think” our way out of them. Again, our body can come to our rescue! Join me as we do a "pause practice" and learn to come back into more flow through an additional “pendulation” practice.

Lesson 18

Neural Tending

Today’s material follows up on the concept of neuroplasticity. We have the capacity to shape our nervous system over time to one that has a wider window of tolerance, greater resilience and regulation. We will develop a toolbox of resources that will tend our nervous system.

Lesson 19

Honoring Our History

Our bodies are the sum of our life experiences and that of our ancestors. All families experience trauma and patterns of protection and connection are inherited by later generations. We will do a mindful practice of acknowledging and honoring our inherited legacy and letting go of the patterns that no longer serve us.

Lesson 20

Neural Compassion

We all have a well-developed inner critic! And we often berate our responses to life events when we are actually just reacting from our default neural responses. Self-compassion can change our nervous system over time as it brings us back to our ventral vagal system of regulation. Let’s do a neural compassion practice to offer kindness for how our nervous system is trying to keep us safe.

Lesson 21

Integration Practice

What a journey we have been on for the last 21 days! I honor your tenacity in sticking with my passion for the nervous system. I hope I have inspired some curiosity in you for your own internal operating system. In our last practice together, we will revisit our intentions from Day 1 (bring your written intentions to practice) and do a mindful nervous system integration meditation.

Ask your teacher

This course includes 182 community questions and 122 audio replies from Bhanu Joy Harrison. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

182

4.9 (217)

Recent Reviews

LAD

December 6, 2025

Excellent

Valerie

November 20, 2025

Learned helpful information about my nervous system while feeling nurtured.

Cathy

September 18, 2025

Thank you. I learned thing I did not know about my nervous system m.

Deneen

August 11, 2025

Wonderful, insightful, knowledge-filled class! With all the relatively new emphasis on the nervous system, it was invaluable to learn the science behind it. Thank you!

Ananeri

July 30, 2025

Very helpful!

May 18, 2025

Great! Learned so much! Will do this course again! Thank you!

mandy

May 10, 2025

This course was so good I'll probably take it again. Thank you so much!

Griselda

April 27, 2025

I’m grateful for the wise words, and creativity to teach a complex topic in a gentle and clear way.

Karen

March 17, 2025

Your calm voice, clear explanations of the complex nervous system and tools to navigate its varied impact on us is so impactful. Each session was relaxing and informative.

Annette

March 2, 2025

Bhanu is one of my favorite teachers here on Insight Timer. I have been following her for over 4 years and try to attend all her live sessions. Despite mostly hanging out in the background I have gotten a lot out of her kind, sincere, trauma informed teachings. Her presence truly is a balm to my nervous system. Thank you, Bhanu, for all you have done! I'd love to give you 6 stars if I could! 💕⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lou

February 15, 2025

Thank you so much. Although I already had a knowledge of this area I found Bhanu’s combination of education and practice inspiring and extremely helpful. She also has a wonderfully soothing voice!

Addie

February 12, 2025

Thank you so much for this course! It was thoughtfully paced with a great balance of information and applied practices. You filled in some blanks for me in my understanding of polyvagal theory and helped me start my mornings from a more steady place. 🙏🏼

Kristen

January 22, 2025

This was a great course for learning about the nervous system and your own personal ways of how you react in times of stress or trauma. She also teaches you strategies to help yourself.

Greg

January 15, 2025

Excellent, so rich, will need to return to this one again and again.

TMC

December 30, 2024

Fantastic course, full of information about the human nervous system and methods to tune in to our own. Well done!

Heidi

December 20, 2024

This course was just what I needed right now. Thank you. I've learned so much about my nervous system. The awareness of my own state of being has not only helped me find regulation but it has shifted my perspective regarding other's behavior and the possible states they are experiencing at the time I am interacting with them. I don't take what they say or do personally. I even have more compassion for their struggles as I practice with more of these tools. What an unexpected gift that was to receive from my work through these lessons! Aloha.

Lisa

December 17, 2024

The best course I've done on this app. I have learned so much and I am so grateful

Albana

December 14, 2024

I will keep coming back to this… the stuff people teaches for thousands of rupees, thanks Bhanu. This information should be a part of curriculum in teachings, this is a fundamental knowledge of one self. I bow to you too 🙇🏽‍♀️❤️💫

Sari

December 9, 2024

Thanks a LOT for getting better! 🙏✨❤️

Jayne

November 25, 2024

Thanks so much for this course!

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