It’s 10pm. You’re exhausted. You dim the lights, open a meditation app, try to breathe — and absolutely nothing happens. Your brain won’t stop running its highlight reel. Your body feels like it’s still in the office.

If this sounds familiar, I want to tell you something: you’re not failing at relaxing. You’re doing it in the wrong order.

That’s exactly what this episode of Alive & Well is about — and the distinction might change how you end every single night.

Why Calming Down Doesn’t Work When You Skip This Step

Here’s what most wind-down routines miss: your nervous system doesn’t care about your bedtime routine.

It doesn’t care that you dimmed the lights or took a bath or curated a beautiful lo-fi playlist. If your system is still activated — still running some version of fight-or-flight — it will resist rest. Not because something is wrong with you. Because your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

All day, your nervous system is responding. To your inbox, your to-do list, your kids needing things, the emotional labor, the decisions, the noise. Even when none of it is a physical threat, your body doesn’t always know the difference. Stress is stress. Stimulation is stimulation.

And fight-or-flight is a mobilizing response — your body literally wants to move. When the brain perceives threat, it prepares the body for action. Muscles activate, adrenaline surges, heart rate increases. This system evolved to help you run from danger or fight it off.

We, as modern humans, mostly hold meetings instead.

So when you try to go straight from a full, demanding day into stillness? Your body still has all of that stored activation. It doesn’t just evaporate because work is over.

The key insight: discharging before soothing helps the body settle more fully. When you release the stored activation first — honor what your body is trying to do — and then introduce calming cues, your nervous system can actually receive them.

The Sequence: Two to Release, Two to Restore

Think of this as a two-part handshake with your nervous system. First, we meet it where it is. Then, once the body has released some of that activation, we introduce the cues that tell your system: you’re safe. You can rest now.

Reset #1: Shaking

I know. Bear with me.

Shaking feels ridiculous until it works — and then you become a complete evangelist for it.

Somatic therapist Peter Levine spent decades studying how the body processes stress and observed that animals in the wild discharge activation through tremoring after a threatening event. A deer that just outran a predator will literally shake for minutes, then walk off and start grazing like nothing happened. The shaking completes the stress cycle. The system resets.

We have this same biology. We just learned to suppress it.

Shaking activates the muscle spindles, releases tension held in the fascia and deep muscle tissue, and gently stimulates the vagus nerve — your body’s primary pathway for parasympathetic activation. It gives your nervous system something to do with the energy it’s been holding.

How to do it: Stand or sit at the edge of your bed. Start with gently bouncing your knees. Let the movement be loose and easy. Let it travel up through your hips, belly, shoulders. Add your arms and let your hands flop. Let your jaw be loose. Do this for 2–5 minutes.

If you notice a big exhale or a yawn during this? That’s your nervous system releasing. That’s the sound of your body saying: okay. We can let this go.

Reset #2: Tension and Release Body Scan

Progressive muscle relaxation works by deliberately creating tension in the body — and then releasing it. Here’s why that works: when you consciously squeeze a muscle and let go, you activate the antagonist response. The release after intentional tension is deeper than if you’d tried to simply relax. You’re tricking your body into letting go more completely than it would on its own.

Research published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine shows that progressive muscle relaxation reduces cortisol, lowers heart rate, and decreases psychological stress. It’s been used in sleep medicine for decades.

How to do it: Lie down. Starting at your feet, squeeze your toes and feet as tight as you can — hold 5–7 seconds — then release completely. Notice the difference. Move up through calves, thighs, glutes, belly, hands, shoulders, face. Breathe normally. After each release, just notice the softening.

This one works equally well for kids. ‘Squeeze like a lemon, now be a wet noodle’ — genuinely effective.

Reset #3: Rocking and Self-Hold

Rocking is a regulating behavior hardwired into us. Babies are rocked to sleep. Humans across cultures sway during prayer and ritual. When we’re overwhelmed, we instinctively reach for rhythm. This isn’t coincidence — it’s biology.

Rhythmic movement activates the vestibular system, which has direct connections to the vagus nerve and the brain’s regulatory circuits. Gentle, repetitive rocking signals to the nervous system that you’re safe, your environment is stable, no threat is present.

Self-hold — wrapping your arms around yourself, hands resting on your chest — activates oxytocin release through touch. Even when you’re doing it to yourself, your body receives it.

How to do it: Sit or lie comfortably. Cross your arms over your chest (the butterfly hug position). Begin to slowly rock side to side — gentle, easy, like being on a boat in calm water. Breathe slowly with longer exhales. Stay here 3–5 minutes. You may feel your shoulders drop, your breathing slow. That’s your parasympathetic system coming online.

Reset #4: NSDR Body Scan

NSDR — Non-Sleep Deep Rest — was coined by neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman. It refers to practices that guide the brain into a deeply restful, theta-dominant brainwave state — the state between waking and sleep — without requiring you to actually fall asleep. Think of it as putting your nervous system on airplane mode.

This is especially powerful for people who struggle with sleep, because so much of the problem is the pressure of trying to fall asleep. NSDR removes that pressure. And ironically, that’s often when sleep finally arrives.

Studies out of Stanford have shown that even a short NSDR practice can restore dopamine levels similarly to actual sleep — which means you’re going into sleep with a less depleted system.

How to do it: Lie down. Begin with a slow breath in through the nose, long exhale out the mouth. Shift your awareness to your body — not to change anything, just to notice. Slowly move your attention from crown to feet. Scalp, forehead, jaw, throat, chest, belly, hips, thighs, knees, calves, feet. Don’t try to relax anything. Just observe. If thoughts come, let them pass without following them. Return to the body. Do this for 10–20 minutes.

Free guided NSDR recordings are available on YouTube — search ‘NSDR’ or ‘Yoga Nidra.’

The Full Sequence

1. Shaking — 2–5 minutes. Let your body move and discharge.
2. Tension and Release — feet to face, squeeze and let go.
3. Rocking and Self-Hold — slow, rhythmic, gentle.
4. NSDR Body Scan — lie still, move your awareness through your body, let rest arrive.

You don’t have to do all four every night. Even one or two, done intentionally, will shift your system. But if you’re someone who lies awake with a racing mind, who feels wired and tired at the same time — try the full sequence for a week. I think you’ll be surprised.

The point isn’t to add another thing to your to-do list. It’s to stop fighting your own biology and start working with it.

Your nervous system has been working hard for you all day. This is how you thank it.

Listen to the full episode here: https://youtu.be/mhI76DRJF1I

>>> 💌 DOWNLOAD THE NERVOUS SYSTEM RESET GUIDE <<<

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