Your Calmness Is Your Strength

I’ve read a lot of criticism of nervous system regulation online recently. Critics dismiss it as a trend, while more conspiratorially-minded folks shout, “It’s a trap to make you compliant,” as if I were advising you to breathe away injustice. 

As someone who has been involved in activism in some capacity and is also a yogi, I must clap back against these false ideas. Emotional regulation via soothing your nervous system isn’t a trend intended to make you a compliant robot. It’s quite the opposite. Regulation is not retreat; in hostile times, it is your unregulated nervous system that makes you predictable, easily manipulable, and readily disarmed. 

I’m not speaking from my pristine yoga tower here at A Quiet Place (which is not all that pristine, much as this old maid strives to keep it clean). I’m coming from my perspective as an older, disabled woman who very much remembers having nowhere to turn and no one to help her. I’m speaking from my core wounds, from childhood, when there was no legal or structural recourse under patriarchal tyranny. 

My prior poor nervous system regulation made me ripe prey for the worst predators, and that’s not a good place to be in (to steal a line from the goddess Tori Amos) “a time of dragons.” Your calmness is your strength, and here’s why.

The Illusion of Rage: Why an Unregulated Nervous System Feeds the Authoritarian Vampires

As Public Image Ltd., once sang, anger is, indeed, an energy. When rage courses through your veins, you feel as if you could bench press a Buick. You have to put that adrenaline-laden drive somewhere. And leading with emotional fire can feel powerful in the moment. 

However, this very emotionality in me made me grist for the abusers mill. First, let me be clear: I love my dad, and in retrospect, I recognize the enormity of the sacrifices he made for me. That doesn’t change the fact that I grew up amid alcoholism, violence, severe emotional dysregulation, and watching him treat my mother with such contempt that it made me hate myself for being “just a girl” much more than any beating (those I sometimes felt I deserved).

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been trapped in an abusively narcissistic relationship—but your abuser accused you of being the narcissist and portrayed you as such to the rest of the world. Then add in being autistic, albeit undiagnosed, and so weird that you got bullied at school, too, and struggled to make friends to begin with. Yeah. 

That’s what happened to me in childhood, and the pattern followed me into my adult relationships, causing me no end of misery and wasting close to 50 whole years that I will never get back—until I began talking to my mat in earnest. 

A.k.a, until I began regulating my nervous system. 

Calmness As Tactical Noncompliance 

Raise your hand again if other people believed your abuser because they stayed calm. One of the most infuriating aspects of dealing with narcissists is that they take genuine pleasure in one-upping you. They push every single button you have, sometimes going so far as to make life-altering threats against you—then they stand there like Marcus Aurelius when you finally lose your shit. “You’re so emotional,” they sneer dismissively. 

Nervous system regulation isn’t a “wellness aesthetic.” It’s what literally saved my life when I was reduced to living in a vehicle and was one more unlucky break away from sidewalk city. 

What nervous system regulation is is retaining access to your prefrontal cortex—your wise mind—amid conditions intended to trigger panic or rage. It’s refusing to let external conditions, or even your racing pulse or surging blood pressure, dictate your next move. 

Here’s the cold, hard, gray-rock fact, my beautiful fellow yogi friends, coming from someone who endured a lifetime of dealing with narcissists: When you refuse to melt down on cue, when you refuse to take their emotional bait, authoritarians lose their most powerful lever with which to control you. 

Responding Versus Reacting Is Where Your True Power Lies 

When your next action is driven by pure emotion, things often go south, even if you had the purest of intentions. I’m well-acquainted with this dynamic, and the road to my personal hell was absolutely littered with filthy leaflets reading, “Do the right thing; this is the right thing; you must do it right now.” When in reality, had I calmed myself and thought things through, I would have acted quite differently. 

Some critical definitions: 

• Reacting: An automated, uncalculated reflex. It’s driven by the stimulus, but it’s often fast, loud—and ultimately futile. 
• Responding: A deliberate, calculated maneuver operating on your timeline. 

Many will say I overreact, and there, their criticism has a lot of merit, I must admit. I was extremely impulsive for much of my life, driven by a nervous system spun well out of control from my earliest memories, and while I lack the capacity for cruelty or the desire for revenge, I nevertheless hurt a lot of people with my stupidity and rashness. I battle with that guilt daily today, but fortunately, calmness isn’t only a tool for how to deal with others. It also assists in forgiving yourself for survival strategies you’ve outgrown (I’m working on this).

Had I slowed down, had I learned to respond instead of deciding, “I need a drink to deal with this,” and then letting my beer muscles do the decision-making, I might have learned the four pillars of agency much sooner. It’s a handy decision-making framework you can use. Once you get in your wise mind (regulate your nervous system) that is: 

• Time: Do I need to take action this second? Or does the system want me to rush so that I make a mistake? 
• Energy: What does this cost my physical body (how I wish I had paused to ask this question), and can I afford the bill? By “bill,” here, I’m not necessarily referring to medical debt, although that is a reality. 
• Resources: What actual leverage or assets can I deploy right now without risking my future? 
• Impact: Will this action move the needle, or is it just performative noise? 

Here, too, I struggle with immense guilt. I’ve always been active in various causes, taking seriously the principle of “being the change you want to see in the world.” However, while my values have not changed and I continue to support the same causes of gender and racial equality and healthcare and environmental justice, my approach has shifted significantly. 

Before, my efforts were very much focused on changing the world, aka, on trying to control things I could not control. 

As a result, I wasted the entire first half of my life. 50 years. 50 long years. That’s a life sentence, man. I also wasted enormous energy, and, considering where I was a few years ago, I left myself with no resources to boot. 

Today, I focus on what I can control. I still support the same third party politically. I still write letters to the editor and attend the occasional protest, and I still strive to give back to this beautiful planet for the gift of life she has given to us (some would say too much…even here, at A Quiet Place, I’m sometimes teased for my goal of reaching net-zero and showing others the way). 

I can’t change the world. The fact of the matter is, most people probably wouldn’t be happy with the alterations I’d make if I could. 

However, I can work to develop A Quiet Place into a haven of organic food, capable of also hosting a few folks who need affordable housing, a safe place to park, if you will. I can’t stop the war out there, but I can refuse to use harsh chemicals or drop verbal bombs here. 

I can continue coming to you live every Saturday night, offering a quiet, sacred space where you can regulate your own nervous system. 

Most of all, I can become a safe person for other people to turn to. And becoming that light matters, perhaps more than anything else in the world. Humans don’t just regulate their own nervous systems; they co-regulate one another’s, [1] and each new calm soul helps others find their equilibrium, too. 

Don’t fall for the latest lie—that regulating your nervous system is just the influencer flavor of the month. In reality, your calmness is your best weapon. Cultivate it and learn to use it through regularly talking to your mat. 

References:

[1] “Co-regulation of the Nervous System.” L.E.A.P.S. Blog. September 23, 2026. Retrieved Friday, September 25, 2026 from: https://leapsinc.com/blogs/co-regulation-nervous-system/