The nervous system in brief: 50 day blog - day 48

I love the fascia system. If you've read a few of my posts then you'll know that I love the fascia system!

Let me now say that I am also deeply in love with the nervous system. 

Imagine then just how much I love the neurofascial system (an integrated system of nerves and fascia throughout the body)?!!. 

Let me however, for today give you a brief overview of the nervous system! 

Like fascia, the nervous system is a whole body system. This means that if it were possible to take away every other part of the body except the nerves then we would still see YOU. We would see your brain and spinal column that makes up the Central Nervous System, and we would see all the other nerves radiating out from this that make up the Peripheral Nervous System. Nerves  reach out from the central system into every other nuance of your body, through the organs and right out to the very outer layer of your skin.

I often imagine it as being like a tree full of. The Central Nervous System is like the trunk, and the Peripheral Nervous System reaches out as increasingly smaller and smaller branches finally reaching into all the nooks and crannies of the leaves making up the whole shape and life form.

This Peripheral Nervous System (all these branches, twigs and leaf veins) is grouped into the Automatic, Somatic and Sensory Nervous Systems. The Automatic Nervous System is then further sub divided into the Parasympathetic, Sympathetic and Enteric Nervous System. Phew! How you doing?  

Ok..... so the Automatic, Somatic and Sensory Nervous Systems can be described as follows:

Automatic

Functions as a control that generally works without us consciously making it happen, and generally includes visceral functions such as your heart beating, breathing, perspiration and organ function. 

Somatic

Associated with the voluntary control of muscles in the skeletal system. Some of these nerves transmit feeling to the central system, some transmit from the central system to make muscles work.

Sensory

Responsible for processing sensory information, such as sight, sound and taste. In some sense these bring the physical world to our mind where we interpret them and then create a perception of the world around us.   

And finally, subdivisions of the Automatic Nervous systems can be described as such:

Sympathetic System: 

This system is sometimes known as the 'fight, flight, freeze'* system in the body. Personally I find this too limiting and prefer to think of it as the system that is used to call the body to action. It uses energy and your heart beat increases, blood pressure rises and digestion slows down. The sympathetic nervous system branches out from the middle and lower back areas of the spinal cord. 

Parasympathetic System: 

In contrast this system is often known as the 'rest and digest' system. It works to save energy so that your heart rate can slow, your breathing can return to normal and your digestion can process again. The branches of the parasympathetic nervous system originate in the cranial and sacral area of the body (if you've ever had cranial sacral treatment, it is working with this nervous system to calm and return the body to a less vigilant state.    

Enteric System: 

This governs the function of the gastrointestinal system. At this point I put my hands up here and say that I don't know much more than that, but I intend to find out more! 

Right descriptions, and lesson, over! Aren't you glad that I haven't gone into segmenting the Central Nervous System up into all the brain segments?! 

My fascination of the nervous system stems around the link between this, our inner (and outer) responses and our different levels of consciousness. There is so much, I believe, that we can work with on a non physical level to cause changes in the nervous system, which then causes physical changes in the body (in association with the workings of the fascia and lymphatic systems (the 3rd holistic system in the body, another day perhaps!)).

I hope to delve more into the nervous system in future blogs, linking to movement, behaviour, actions, feeling, and whatever seems appropriate to write about. For now I'm going to have a rest from segmenting all its parts onto page, activate my parasympathetic system, and go and have a bath!

Til tomorrow..... 

CT :-) x

* fight and flight are often used when describing the sympathetic nervous system. Freeze is often missed as a third step which we reach when we can neither fight or flight. Essentially it means playing dead. A fourth stage called disassociation is reached when none of these stages takes us out of danger, and so the body in effect switches of from feeling. I will most definitely write about this at some point int he future, as I find this area of the nervous system particularly fascinating!