Nervous System Reset Guide
This guide offers five gentle, actionable practices to help you regulate your nervous system, help you feel more present, and reconnect to yourself and your loved ones. Use these tools any time you need a little support.
🌿 If you can get outside to do any of these practices, I highly recommend it.
Being in nature offers a unique gift: the chance to regulate your nervous system, tune into natural rhythms, and settle more fully into your body.
We are expressions of nature itself. When you take a moment to feel the earth beneath your feet, the air on your skin, and the movement of life around you, something simple but powerful happens — you remember yourself, your presence, and your vitality.
Even a few mindful minutes outdoors can be deeply grounding. Step outside if you can. Breathe. Notice what you see, hear, and feel. Let your body reconnect with the natural flow of life.
Energy regulation doesn’t require hours of meditation, complex spiritual practices, or deep emotional processing. It can be simple, gentle, and woven into everyday moments. These techniques are designed to support you before a difficult conversation, after a stressful day, during conflict, or anytime you want to return home to yourself.
🌿 The first step is always presence.
Arriving in the here and now — rather than in the story, the future, or the past — sends a meaningful signal of safety to your nervous system. A few intentional breaths, awareness of physical sensation, and gentle grounding are often enough to begin shifting your state.
With just a few minutes of practice, you can settle your system, redirect your energy, and restore clarity and calm. There is nothing to push or force. Your body already knows how to return to balance — these practices simply help you listen.
Here are your five skills to reset your nervous system and arrive more fully within yourself:
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Set yourself up for success: Get your feet flat on the floor, lengthen your spine, and let your breath get a little deeper.
Try this: Begin gently tapping the tops of your thighs and make contact with your bones. Our bones carry us around all day every day. Reflect on how supported you are by your bones and let your chest soften into gratitude.
What it does: Brings awareness to the physical body and gets you ready for the following practices.
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Your breath is the most direct gateway to your nervous system. When you slow your exhale, your body shifts out of survival mode and into regulation.
Try this: Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Inhale through your nose for a count of 4, exhale out your nose gently for a count of 6. As that feels comfortable, extend your exhale to 8 counts
Repeat for a few minutes.
What it does: Signals safety, reduces stress hormones, softens the body, and brings you back into presence.
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When you become anxious or overwhelmed, attention collapses inward. Orienting your attention outwards gently widens your awareness so your body can relax. It disrupts your familiar body pattern and creates a new orientation.
Try this: Look slowly around the space you’re in and allow your eyes to land on three things you find neutral or pleasant. See if you can bring your attention to your peripheral vision. Pause to notice the support under your feet or seat and feel the stability of the surface you’re sitting or standing on.
What it does: Reconnects you to your environment, interrupts spiraling thoughts, and brings you back into the present moment through safety cues.
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Touch communicates safety to the nervous system more powerfully than words.
Try this: Place your palms gently on your heart, thighs, or ribcage. Feel the warmth and weight of your hands. Let your breath slow and deepen.
Touch your body in a way that feels genuinely comforting. Some people prefer gentle caresses, others like firmer pressure or squeezing, and some respond best to light tapping or rhythmic contact. Follow what feels supportive for your system.
What it does: Provides a regulating sensory signal that can soften internal bracing, increase a sense of safety, and calm emotional activation.
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The “grounding cord” is a foundational practice for energy regulation and connects you to the Earth and provides you with a channel to both release and receive energy. To utilize your grounding cord, all you have to do is picture the practice and your energy follows.
Try this: Visualize a green ball of light filling your pelvic bowl. Now picture dropping that ball of light towards the center of the earth to activate your grounding cord. Imagine this cord anchoring you into feeling of security. As you exhale, imagine releasing stress or discomfort down and out of the cord.
What it does: Grounds you into your body, invites more presence, directs uncomfortable emotional energy out of you instead of avoiding, resisting or recirculating the sensations.
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Create saliva in your mouth and swallow several times.
I know this one sounds strange, but it’s a highly effective yet subtle tool for vagus-nerve activation. It’s a technique that rapidly shifts the body out of fight-or-flight and into parasympathetic regulation.
Try this: Relax your jaw and tongue, allow saliva to gather naturally, or imagine something sour. Swallow slowly and intentionally. Repeat 3–5 times.
What it supports: Signals safety to the body, helps exit a freeze response, and softens anxiety.
Perfect for: Moments of intensity, overwhelm, stress, or conflict.
Victoria Leilani guides adults to reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, and cultivate a deeper presence in themselves and their relationships. Through gentle somatic practices, energy regulation, and mindful guidance, she helps people feel more present, have more choice over their inner worlds, and step fully into their embodiment.
If these nervous system resets felt supportive, I’d love to work with you more deeply.
These practices create space, but lasting change comes from learning how to regulate your energy in real time — in your body, your relationships, and your everyday life.