Your Nervous System Was Never Meant to Carry This Alone

There is a reason the smell of fresh orange peel instantly clears your mind as you unwrap the fruit. A reason songs were sung during labor, and why people gathered around food when grief arrived. Across cultures, generations, and societies, some acts of ritual are fundamental because they are built into how we tend to our own nervous systems, and often, that tending is not done alone. We are tended at times, and we do the tending in others.

How We Got Here

Nationally, communities of color report higher rates of anxiety, sleep disruption, and stress-related illness, driven not necessarily by individual behavior, but by the accumulation of systemic harm across generations. The human stress response is not innately a bad thing. It is one of our many instinctual hardwires for survival. But what happens when a population's stress levels are generationally altered because of traumatic events?

In South Texas, colonization played out in its own unique way. But one thing remained constant: the ongoing suppression, violence, and displacement that shaped this land also became part of our biology.

What Our Ancestors Already Knew

Nervous system regulation is not a wellness trend or a buzzword. It is a practice that has been carried across generations through food, music, movement, breath, and most importantly, community.

Scents and aromas, for example, can instantly trigger calming effects. Our plant relatives carry answers not just in their medicinal properties, but in their spirit-lifting ones. The same is true for cumbia circles, for music that moves through the body, and for shared meals. These practices change the body's chemistry. They are inherited intelligence, waiting to be practiced again.

What You Can Try Today

In its simplest form, nervous system regulation starts with an acknowledgment of self. First, you have to notice it. Here are a few easy places to start.

Scent. Grab an orange and peel it. Bend the rind between your fingers and let the oil pool on your wrist. Close your eyes and inhale. You are allowing the aroma to work through the limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for emotion and memory.¹

Movement and Breath. Even for just a few minutes, make an intentional moment. Stretch, take a short walk, dance a few pasos. As you move, let your exhale be slow and controlled. You are activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the body's natural pit crew for rest and repair.²

Food. Share a meal that carries cultural memory. With community, with one person, over FaceTime. Simply eating that food is in itself a form of regulation that our bodies will recognize even before our minds do.

Why This Matters

Choosing to tend to yourself is not empty self-help advice. It is a political act. When colonial systems are designed to produce chronic stress, returning to ancestral practices is its own form of care and resistance. The small micro-actions you make today are what will be the grounding force to stay rooted while the whole world may try to pull you back into urgency.

What are some practices living from your heritage?

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¹ Research finds that citrus aroma activates the limbic system, including the amygdala and hippocampus, with published studies finding measurable anxiolytic effects in humans. (Faturi et al., 2010, Chemical Senses; Asimakopoulos et al., 2022, MDPI) http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22849536/

² Slow, controlled exhalation activates the vagus nerve, which releases acetylcholine and shifts the body toward parasympathetic dominance. Research measuring heart rate variability confirms that prolonged exhalation significantly activates this rest-and-digest response. (Masaoka, 2018, BioPsychoSocial Medicine; Gerritsen & Band, 2018, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience) https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00397/full