First Impulse vs. Your Body: Who Wins? It happens in arguments. It happens in traffic. But it also happens in math problems, headlines, meetings, and everyday judgments. A question is asked. An answer pops up instantly. It feels obvious. That fast, dominant first answer is called a prepotent response. “Prepotent” simply means most powerful in … Read more

If you’ve ever been told to “take a deep breath and slowly exhale,” you’ve already been given a piece of what we call somatic hygiene: simple, repeatable ways to regulate your nervous system. But here’s where people often get tripped up: Calming the body is not the same thing as making the body functional. The … Read more

The allostatic load is the cumulative physiological cost of maintaining stability in the body under repeated or chronic demands. Unlike homeostasis, which refers to keeping internal variables within narrow ranges, allostasis emphasizes the process of adapting to stressors through regulatory change such as shifts in autonomic tone, endocrine activity and inflammatory signaling. Over time, repeated … Read more

Most people practice somatic hygiene every day because our bodies tell us when we need maintenance. We’ve developed habits to keep ourselves resilient. Discover some of the simple things that help with nervous system maintenance.

Somatic hygiene means doing small, ordinary things each day that keep your nervous system from quietly wearing down, even when nothing feels wrong. Somatic hygiene works by reducing background regulatory load during normal activity so that the body’s capacity to regulate and recover is preserved over time. Because modern life imposes continuous low-grade demands on … Read more