So I dropped most of my new age practices
what I released when I restored regulation to my nervous system
In the fall of 2024, on the tail end of Pluto conjuncting my Sun and squaring my Moon, I restored regulation to my nervous system.
Rebirth! Transformation! Total life change and turning into a whole new person!!!
Wow, Pluto. You have put me through the wringer but I’ll take the spoils now thank you very much.
Basically, I took a course for nervous system regulation. You can read more about my process here: https://unwindingdivining.substack.com/p/why-ive-not-been-writing
In this piece, I’m going to specifically focus on what shifted in my spiritual practice and why (this sounds as if I was the grand orchestrator of it all, which I wasn't, I was just taken along for a ride) and there will also be a tiny portion of roasting of the new age involved, for those of you that have a taste for my nerd humor.
In short, it was a big fat brain pruning.
After restoring regulation to my nervous system, most of the new age habits and processes that I had, were deleted from my mind.
In other words: I just forgot about them.
It was only later that I realized: ‘hey, I haven’t done X, Y and Z in a while’.
The practices were just no longer needed.
I went into a deep resting phase and was finally able to ‘just be'.
So I dropped most of my new age practices
I am talking about:
my personally curated morning yoga routine to stretch stiff muscles - I no longer woke up that ache-y (which is why I implemented this in the first place) and so I didn’t feel the urge to stretch and asana anymore,
multiple intensive energy work sessions a day - now my energy wasn’t constantly out of balance anymore, so no need to heal, moreover, I found energywork to be less effective than nervous system work,
meditation - now my mind was generally quiet and I found myself in a naturally meditative, restful state if I wasn’t doing anything else,
reaching for past life memories on other planets and in other dimensions - I was content within my own body already and had completed a phase of remembrance https://unwindingdivining.substack.com/p/i-think-i-am-done-talking-about-aliens, so I had no desire to reach for someplace else,
developing my psychic gifts - I no longer had that same level of hypervigilance, so I didn’t have the need to ‘see’ or ‘hear’ everything all the time anymore, and just switched to receiving the gifts instead, as I had been taught, which was now much easier to actually—do,
doing shadow work as a lifestyle - I wasn’t in a constant state of dysregulation (trauma) anymore, so no need to dig into my subconscious by default, only when something naturally came up,
psychic protection techniques - with a regulated nervous system, you’re in ‘coherence’, a state that offers natural protection, so unless you're doing active spiritual battling (like posting spiritual content, which I stopped doing), no need to bring in the shields.
I never felt that these practices were ‘wrong’, though. They can be resources to self-soothe and heal or ways of self-discovery, if used in an embodied way. I describe this in more depth in this post on why I took a long break.
I also didn’t suddenly disagree with the beliefs behind these practices.
I just didn’t do them anymore.
It was like they had dropped off the radar. And it wasn’t a conscious choice.
My brain had just cut away the pathways that had apparently previously led to ‘executing new age shenanigans’, and replaced them with resounding, quiet peace.
That's what I intuitively feel has happened. Lots of cutting and pruning and deleting up there.
To notice your brain changing like that is a really fun trip, by the way! I have definitely gotten a feel for fluctuations in GABA and other neurotransmitters and hormones while going through the change.
So why did my brain have to change?
Well…
A harsh truth about dysregulation
Often, when we really need spiritual practices and can’t function without a whole wellness-spiritual regime throughout our day, that means we are inherently dysregulated.
With ‘can't function’, I mean: when we skip one of the practices in our daily regime, anxiety or depression immediately takes over in such a way that we can’t coherently do what we want or need to do.
Then, we are not ‘regulating’ our nervous system with our regime of practices, we are just managing our dysregulation, so that we won’t go too far into ‘danger zone’, where we panic, rage or are depressed.
But we’re never really calm or relaxed as a baseline.
We never go into what’s called our ‘window of tolerance’, which is true regulation. In here, we can move through different states (even fight/flight and freeze) smoothly and easily, we notice ourselves coming down without having to do anything, and we have a baseline of calm.
When we can’t relax without feeling anxious or depressed, and always have to ‘do’ something in order to relax, we are not regulated or even regulating: we are just managing our trapped survival stress so that it won’t come out.
This is a harsh truth, I know.
It is humbling indeed.
But it’s an important truth, one that will piss us off, but can set us free.
Instead of endlessly going in circles, we can break the loop.
The good news is, we don’t have to live like that.
Deep peace is possible for anyone with a nervous system.
Spiritual initiations and integrating what came before
I don't want you to think that I turned anti-spirituality or anti-new age, now that I found the holy grail of nervous system work. And that's important.
When someone transforms deeply on the spiritual path (as Pluto transits will push us to do), and then turns against their past identification/group/practice (the ‘new age to christianity pipeline’, for example, where people burn their oracle decks because they think it is the devil), it means that they are not truly developing spiritually.
They are just in the grips of the next delusion, the next identity.
Initiation failed.
They haven't faced their shadow and they haven't faced their trauma.
They are trying to fill a secure attachment-shaped hole with an idea of God - or aliens, or tantra, or whatever cult egregor got its claws on them in their vulnerable transition time - by seeking refuge in a big group ego, instead of being present with what arises within.
In order to be present, we have to work with the less-than-ideal state of our nervous system though, and it can be really hard to start, so I get it.
The way I see it: spiritual development means integrating what came before and seeing the lessons and therefore value in every experience.
We never ‘turn against’ - we turn toward, and integrate.
It is a humbling path for sure.
So with this in mind, I got really curious about what happened with my brain and my practices.
I decided I was willing to be honest about it, not just to myself (which had some ouchy moments where I had to admit my previous escapisms and coping patterns), but also to the wider world.
My heart told me to share it all, so that's what I’m doing.
New age vs. spirituality?
So since I was on a path of integration rather than escapism, I was not planning on throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Even with nervous system regulation on board, I didn't think spirituality was just suddenly redundant.
But before we go into that, let me clarify my language first.
It might be confusing that I both use the terms ‘new age’ and ‘spirituality’, so I’d like to define my distinction between the two.
I see new age as an eclectic, DIY mix of mostly eastern spiritual traditions blended with western self-help consumerism, some sad little traces of what we have in our rich history of western spirituality (paganism, witchcraft etc), various conspiracy theories that can stem from either True Sight or infiltration from not so enlightened agendas, infused with the background frequency of the American Dream, and (hopefully) a smidge of real spirituality.
And in my opinion, spirituality is simply connecting to a higher dimension of consciousness.
So with my definitions, we can be spiritual without being ‘new age’, just living a life connected to Spirit, whatever it looks like on the outside. Maybe it doesn’t look like the typical mainstream image of a spiritual person (‘new age’), but it can be much more profound.
But we can’t be new age without being spiritual. Or, well, that isn’t actually true. I’ve seen many performative people being super new age without an ounce of true spirituality. But let’s not start ranting about Instagram gurus as of yet, I have a whole essay coming up about that and boy is it tasty.
I would say that the actual spirituality of each of our individually crafted new age concoctions depends on the ingredients we mix - less the bad agenda-infiltration and consumerism, more the ancient wisdom and newly channeled insight while tapping into the divine.
If you don’t agree with my proposed distinction between new age and spirituality, that’s fine. I intend this as a (temporary?) framework for my experiences, so I can better describe how I released certain practices, and that this didn’t mean that I lost the essence of spirituality - or even the essence of my practices (!)
Which, to me, is just connecting to a higher dimension of consciousness.
To be precise, that dimension or density in which everything just IS. When we tap into it, we are permeated by a deep peace that passes all understanding. It is like stepping into a field of pure light. Everything is connected. It feels really good.
You know*, that one.
*I hope
Practices that I didn’t drop
Although I dropped a lot, there were a few things that stuck.
Here’s a list:
Connecting to Source: reorienting myself to that which permeates everything, which was more like a repeated split-second repositioning of consciousness than a step-by-step practice and is always a good idea to keep in our field of vision,
Talking to my Higher Self and guides: I believe that the role of our guides is to offer additional guidance to our own inner guidance. But we need to be sovereign in our inner intuitive process first. They can’t and won’t come as substitutes for that. And when we’re in harmony with our body and let it move us, there is not as much to talk to our guides about, I’ve found. Just a sprinkle here and there, when my mind needs help figuring something out. Guides are not here for our body: our body is perfectly capable of guiding us all by itself. They are here for our mind.
Cleansing my aura from other people’s energies (but wayyy less).
A little card pull here and there, when I needed a quick mirror for my subconscious.
Even these things went more to the background.
I didn’t need them as much or as deeply.
A phase of deep rest and peace
Over the years, I had acquired quite the basket full of various new age tools. As shared above, I had yoga, meditation, crystals, past-life regression, alien stuff, energy work, channeling, shadow work, psychic development and a whole lot of weird conspiracy beliefs that just got crazier and crazier as time went on.
Some of them are definitely true, but I also believed in things that I have since rectified. And not all new age stuff is equally important either.
It was good to put that basket down, and throw most of its contents out.
And then after I had dropped most of my new age practices, I relaxed into true rest.
The low tone dorsal vagal branch of my parasympathetic nervous system was now finally dominant and worked its magic for a few months. I didn't even socialize that much. (Except for with goats and such.)
I remember how delicious my sleep became. It was like going into a personal spa dimension every night. I woke up deeply rested and vital.
My days were like a long, smooth velvet ribbon.
I was much more peaceful. I was primarily in touch with my body and oriented to my environment.
This, I found, already gave me the clues on what to do or where to go.
The body is the main source of intuition, after all. Everything else comes on top.
When we restore nervous system regulation, we no longer live in ‘danger zone’ where life is a furnace of stress, like Rumi says.
(The comic sans is strong in this one)
There is lots more to explore here. It is an ongoing process. I am by no means ‘super regulated nervous system master’ now, just accessed my window of tolerance which restored more regulation to my autonomic nervous system, and which already makes a WILD difference. From there, it is all about building more capacity in the nervous system, which potentially has an endless range.
Signs that my nervous system is regulated:
I am sitting in silence way more than before. Before, I couldn’t sit still without doing something or using a calming resource in order to settle. Now, I am spending a lot of time just peacefully sitting in a chair looking around the room and feeling my body, letting my breath move as it wants to move. The programming says: “what a waste, you can fill this time with learning something on your phone, receiving inspiration on your phone, connecting to people and AI on your phone, or going outside to exhaust yourself in an unnatural urban landscape, don’t you want to live life?!” But I am not susceptible to this weird program anymore, because the underlying stress that it hooked into is gone. I am just sitting there and I feel calm, like this guy.
The Alchemist from the Clavis Artis.
When my fight/flight or freeze get activated, I go out of it much easier and faster, without having to do that consciously - I just notice that it happens.
I listen to different music. Before, I vibed with sad, slow music, soothing the frantic energy my nervous system was in. Now, I listen to more dynamic music, like rock and country, with a more intense and varied sound.
I create when I feel the flow, instead of when I feel stressed. For example, I’ve switched to long-form writing instead of talking as fast as I can in YouTube videos to grab everybody’s attention for as long as possible (that would be my fight/flight energy, yikes). If I move too slowly for some people now or if I’m too deep and long-winded, that’s completely fine. I am now able to choose to deepen the relationships with the small group that actually cares (by deepening my authenticity), over trying to hold the attention of thousands of people that only marginally care. So I invite you to unwind and slow down with me, if this speaks to you.
In general, I am moving through life more slowly. There is no rush.
I have picked (back) up analogue hobbies and spend more time on them. I am less online. I barely stream tv shows anymore. I have created healthy digital habits and deleted most of the apps from my phone. Read more in my essay on quitting Instagram. Now, what I focus on primarily enriches me.
After dropping the new age practices, I rediscovered some of them
In my resting phase, it was really nice to no longer have to worry about all things new age. It was a lot of work to juggle all these practices! And it did cost some money, too.
After restoring regulation, I didn’t keep up with energy updates, astrology forecasts or tarot readings anymore. I just saw the moon when it was full and took extra care with my sleep hygiene around then, and that was it.
I stopped charging and using my crystals and canceled a commission I had with a seller for new crystals. I was no longer interested in other spiritual people’s insights on social media. I left a group focused on ascension, unfollowed gurus that talked about starseeds, did away with books on 5D, etc.
But a few months after restoring regulation, I found myself wanting to do certain spiritual practices again. So I revisited them - only the essential, genuine practices though, not so much the more ‘out there’ new age stuff.
It was a natural evolution to pick them back up and see how they landed now. I was just following my impulse.
Some examples:
Meditation. Rather than having to deploy all kinds of guided practices, I’m now focusing on the baseline of peace that I already have inside - that peace that I found with the nervous system work. I don’t do it as often, but when I feel the impulse (‘following the impulse’ is nervous system lingo btw, I promise it is not cultish, just (bio)logical), I meditate. It’s much easier now, because my brain isn’t as noisy. I then notice myself dropping deeply into a transcendent state (without needing any kind of expensive hindu mantra whatsoever - iykyk).
Sometimes, I do yoga. But now, I don’t do the same rigid structure every time and I do it at random times. I just feel what my body wants. I stay in poses for longer and have more capacity to feel and be present with the effect of each pose. I also took a class.
I have done a sprinkle of energy work here and there. Sometimes, visualizing my roots into the earth. Or dressing my aura in light. I really take care to not overdo it, and listen to my body. Instead of having to deploy heavy machinery, I only need a smidge and I’m good.
Why these practices feel completely different now
I am actually able to learn and grow now.
Before, I was mostly just managing all the stress that I didn’t realize was lurking below.
I couldn’t fully build something, just keep the ‘bad stuff’ from getting out.
For example, I wasn’t able to sustain an exercise routine. Now, I have the ability to keep doing it. (With a dysregulated nervous system, our heartbeat doesn't get modulated properly, so exercise can be difficult or even impossible in the case of certain chronic illnesses.)
Norman Doidge describes 5 stages of neuroplastic healing in his book ‘The Brain’s Way of Healing’. If you liked my remark about not having a ‘noisy brain’ anymore - that’s an expression I got from his book.
A noisy brain is basically a brain in which random neurons keep firing when they don’t need to, making it hard to settle and focus.
So, there are 5 stages, in order to rewire our brain and nervous system - what is called ‘neuroplastic healing’. The brain has the capacity for neuroplasticity until we die. So that’s really good news! We can always heal.
I am in the 5th stage now, neurodifferentiation. This is when our brain and nervous system are well-rested and modulated to a state of regulation, so there is space to learn new things that are more challenging and complex.
Often in the world of wellness, we skip the first steps and push ourselves to do neurodifferentiation immediately: complex, engaging exercises that require us to learn a lot of new stuff.
This can range from high intensity mind-body workouts like certain kinds of yoga or breathwork, to really intricate esoteric procedures where we implement high-end spiritual technology into our energy system, to advanced brain-training exercises, to intense channeling sessions to basically anything that requires our higher brain to focus optimally, often combined with some form of body work.
If we’re inherently dysregulated though, it doesn’t stick, so our search continues.
Maybe the next fad will help, or the next. If it costs enough money and looks fancy enough, maybe this will be the thing that breaks through our stagnation! Quick! (That's just the fight/flight talking, by the way.)
Before we know it, we’re sucked into the vortex of new age/wellness consumerism, which is just the old age in a new jacket.
According to Norman Doidge’s model, we actually need something else.
First, we need to take care of our physical body. So people that have already done a lot of work on clearing up their their diet, sleep hygiene, exercise routine etc, you’re good!
But as you’ve probably found, that’s not everything either, and can add a ton of stress instead, if we’re getting too rigid about it. In my experience, food is less important than nervous system regulation (unless you have a deadly allergy, of course). I can now eat food types with a bad rap, like gluten and dairy, that used to make me feel tired and bloated before.
Turned out, it was not really about my gut flora after all. The gut flora and lining just react to survival physiology in a detrimental way.
The root cause of my digestive issues was the chronic dysregulation that activated and sustained that survival physiology and prevented rest and repair at night. And that's in the nervous system.
In order to work with our brain and nervous system, we need to start really gently. According to the 5 stages of neuroplastic healing.
Second stage: neurostimulation, activating our nervous system with fairly simple stimuli.
If this has happened and our brain has been activated into engagement, then we modulate our autonomic nervous system and RAS (which governs the sleep/wake cycle) so they are more regulated.
Then we REST A LOT (god, this took months for me), and then, and only then, neurodifferentiation.
Here’s all that in order:
CORRECTION OF GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF THE NEURONS AND GLIA (good diet, exercise etc)
NEUROSTIMULATION
NEUROMODULATION
NEURORELAXATION
NEURODIFFERENTATION/LEARNING
If you want a more detailed description of each step, I recommend reading Doidge’s book, or checking out this free guide by Irene Lyon. I haven't gotten enough education to properly teach on it yet or guide others through it, so here you'll mostly read my experiences.
Yeah, I’ve gone through quite a change
When I do yoga, meditation or energy work now, it is much more effective.
I don't have to force my body and brain into a state.
I can build a practice. I can drop in much deeper. I can learn, explore and deepen. The progress is clear and measurable.
For example, instead of always staying in the same range of movement in a yoga pose, I can now incrementally go deeper, without forcing it.
Instead of always having to start from scratch in meditation - with a noisy mind that had to gasp for space between the thoughts - I can play around with that peaceful transcendent state now, and actually explore how it works.
With a base of nervous system regulation, I can grow, instead of manage.
Dropping or integrating?
You could say that I didn't drop my new age practices as much as I integrated them.
For example, with the energetic coherence that nervous system regulation brings, I had now integrated psychic protection. I didn't ‘drop it’ in the sense that I wasn't psychicallly protected anymore - that would just be silly. In a way, I had mastered it to that ‘unconsious competence’ level in the conscious competence model. (Or a level of it, anyway, I’m sure I will be humbled in future endeavors with new end bosses.)
And with the healing of early developmental trauma (which is the effect of successfully addressing dysregulation in the nervous system), I found a balanced way to now do psychic development, shadow work, starseed/past life remembrance and energy work. I mostly didn't do them though, because I didn't have to. But I can. You know, as a flex.
Anticipative humility and self-deprecating jokes aside (it is good to master things, but there are always next layers of ego death ahead, which I am already noticing since I started posting again, so best to hold this playfully), I have a lot of new insight to share with you about all these topics, now that my resting phase has ended.
Pluto hasn't just visited me with its transformation (although it has most deeply worked all my fellow Capricorns and other cardinal signs over the last 16 years and we can now harvest all the goods).
It has moved into a whole new sign for the collective, accelerating technological development and humanitarianism in Aquarius, for better or for worse. And that's not all.
I feel like a lot of people are going through a deep transformation this year of the wood snake, because all the outer planets are shifting signs as well. Check out my last post for an energy update, and keep your eyes peeled for a Solstice update on the 18th (meanwhile, keep that energy circulating baby!)
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