12 Ways to Calm Your Nervous System That Actually Work

You know the feeling of your nervous system being on high alert. Your shoulders are up by your ears, your jaw is clenched, you can’t concentrate, and even when you finally sit down, your body acts like it’s still bracing for something. Life keeps a lot of us in a low-grade state of switched-on. The lights, the phone, the news, the group chat, the never-ending to-do list. It adds up.

Here’s the good news: once you understand what your body is actually doing when it feels tense, restless, or wired-but-tired, it gets a lot easier to work with instead of against. On Dear Media podcasts, hosts like Lauryn Bosstick and experts like Dr. Will Cole and Luis Mojica, have gone deep on this exact thing. So we pulled the most useful, most doable takeaways into one place.

This is your guide to how the nervous system works, what keeps it stuck in overdrive, and the different ways people support a calmer state.

This post is for general information and is not medical advice. Talk to your own healthcare provider about your specific situation, especially anything involving medications or a diagnosis.

12 Ways to Calm Your Nervous System That Actually Work

Your nervous system is the command center running the show behind the scenes, and it’s constantly reading your environment to decide whether you’re safe or under threat. When you’re stressed, that read happens fast and physically. Learning how your body responds to stress matters because it turns a vague “I feel awful” into “oh, my system is activated, and here’s what tends to help.” 

That awareness alone changes things. As Michael put it on The Bossticks, just becoming aware of what your body is doing can start to shift it.

How Does the Nervous System Work?

Think of the nervous system as your body’s messaging network, sending signals between your brain and the rest of you so everything from your heartbeat to your breathing keeps running. A big part of that runs on autopilot. That’s the autonomic nervous system, which handles the stuff you don’t consciously control.

It has two main branches. The sympathetic nervous system is your gas pedal: it powers the fight or flight response, the surge you feel when your body senses a demand or a threat. Your heart rate climbs, your muscles tense, and your body gets ready to act. The parasympathetic nervous system is the brake: it runs your rest and digest state, the mode where your body settles, recovers, and calms down.

Here’s the part worth remembering. A stress response isn’t only in your head. On The Art of Being Well, Dr. Will Cole makes the point that mental health is physical health, that the brain and nervous system are part of the body just as much as anything else. So when you feel stressed, that’s mental and physical at once. 

Understanding how the nervous system works is the first step to actually supporting it. You can also hear more on the science of nervous system regulation on The Art of Being Well episode with Dr. Will Cole.

What Causes an Overactive Nervous System?

Plenty of everyday things can leave someone feeling like their stress response is stuck in the on position. Here are a few that come up again and again.

Overstimulation

Screens, notifications, noise, news, content on top of content. On The Bossticks, Lauryn Bosstick describes how the constant input of the phone, the computer, the TV, and the news can leave you feeling overstimulated. Rather than ignoring it, she treats that feeling as information that she’s taking on too much. When input never stops, your system rarely gets the quiet it needs to downshift.

Chronic Stress and Suppressed Emotion

When stress or difficult emotion has nowhere to go, the body often carries it. Elizabeth Endres shared how years of bottled-up, suppressed feelings showed up in her body as very real physical pain, and how a daily practice of getting it out on paper helped that pain ease. The emotional load doesn’t just vanish; it tends to find a physical address.

Diet and Blood Sugar Swings

What you eat can flip the switch too. On The Wellness Process, Luis Mojica describes what he calls food-induced stress: certain foods spike your glucose quickly, and that rapid rise and crash can also trigger the same fight or flight response your body uses under threat. In fact, even a “healthy” meal can leave you jittery and wired depending on how it hits your blood sugar.

Inflammation and Root-Cause Issues

Sometimes the driver is deeper in the body. On The Art of Being Well, Dr. Will Cole talks through how inflammation, gut health, and other root-cause factors can influence how the nervous system functions, and why the “check engine light” of mood or anxiety usually points to something underneath. Your brain also has its own immune system, a theme Dr. David Perlmutter unpacks in his conversation on the brain’s immune cells.

How to Calm the Nervous System

There’s no universal fix here. Different strategies land differently for different people, so treat this like a menu, not a prescription. Grab what resonates and leave the rest.

Try Deep Breathing and Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Deep breathing is the fastest free tool most of us have. On The Art of Being Well, Dr. Will Cole and his team discuss how practices like humming, gargling, and box breathing offer a kind of indirect vagus nerve stimulation, nudging your body toward that resting, digesting state. The vagus nerve is a major communication line for calm, and simple, intentional breathing is one of the easiest ways to engage it. You can also hear the full breakdown of the viral tongue trend and vagus nerve techniques on this Art of Being Well episode.

Put the Phone Away First

Sometimes the most powerful reset is removing the source. On The Bossticks, Lauryn Bosstick describes physically putting her phone in the laundry room and turning it off the moment she walks in, because she believes a big reason so many of us feel overstimulated is the phone itself. Creating real boundaries around your device gives your system a break it can’t get otherwise. Her full nervous system reset routine is worth a listen on this episode of The Bossticks.

Build a Wind-Down Environment

Dimming the input helps your body feel it’s safe to power down. Lauryn Bosstick shares how she swaps bright overhead and blue light for red light and salt rock nightlights at night, plays low, gentle background music, and keeps things calm and warm to signal relaxation. Lowering the sensory load in your space can quietly do a lot of the work for you.

Move Your Body

You don’t have to earn calm through suffering, but movement genuinely helps you move your body out of a stuck state. Lauryn Bosstick keeps a daily workout as a non-negotiable, and also loves gentle, rhythmic movement like walking, arm swinging, and yes, ribbon dancing, to release tension! 

Dr. David Perlmutter, meanwhile, makes the case that a mix of resistance training and cardio, including some intense exercise in intervals, is powerfully protective. Whether it’s a hard session or a loose shake-out, movement is a tool.

Get Outside and Into Sunlight

A simple walk with morning light does more than clear your head. Lauryn Bosstick describes strapping the baby in the stroller, getting outside, and soaking up sunlight and grounding energy as part of how she re-regulates. Gentle movement plus natural light is an easy, repeatable way to help your body feel more settled.

Support Your Body With Food and Minerals

If food can spike stress, it can also steady you. Luis Mojica points to “balancers” like proteins, green vegetables, and beans as foods that meet your body’s needs without setting off that glucose-driven stress response. Lauryn Bosstick leans on hydration, minerals, electrolytes, and magnesium as part of her daily rituals. Nourishing your body well is a real lever for regulating your nervous system, not an afterthought.

Use Cold and Heat as a Reset

A deliberate temperature change can act like a switch. Lauryn Bosstick describes cold plunges, contrast showers, and sauna sessions as a way to reset your system, noting the heat especially helps her decompress when she’s feeling hyped up. If you’re looking to reset your nervous system, a cold shower or a warm one paired with hydration is an accessible place to start.

Get It Out on Paper

This one is quietly life-changing for a lot of people. On The Bossticks, Elizabeth Endres swears that the single most impactful thing she’s done for chronic pain is a daily journaling practice: writing out the raw, unfiltered stuff you’d never say out loud and then ripping it up. Getting it out of your head and onto the page keeps it from turning into a physical symptom later. If you want gentler prompts, these daily affirmations for anxiety are an easy companion.

Touch and Self-Soothing

Your body responds to safety cues, and you can give yourself one. Dr. Will Cole’s team mentions research on how simply placing your hand on your bare chest can help your nervous system feel like it’s being hugged, prompting the body to calm down. It sounds almost too simple, which is exactly why it’s worth keeping in your back pocket.

Try Somatic and Nervous System Work

Sometimes calm comes from working directly with stored tension. Elizabeth Endres and Luis Mojica both point to somatic practices and body-based work as ways to release what the body holds. Mojica describes how his own path into embodiment started with music and vibration, softening parts of his body he’d disconnected from. Working with a trained practitioner can open a door that talking alone doesn’t.

Anchor Into Repetition and Routine

Novelty is stimulating; sameness is soothing. Lauryn Bosstick makes the point that she doesn’t reinvent her routines every week, because repetition soothes the nervous system. The same anchors, tools, lights, and rituals, day after day, give your body a predictable rhythm it can relax into. Consistency is the feature, not the boring part.

Protect Your Sleep

None of the above sticks without rest. Lauryn Bosstick is firm about being in bed early, sometimes by 8:30, because without enough sleep, the rest of the regulation work doesn’t hold. Protecting your sleep is foundational for your physical health and for everything else on this list. For more calm-in-your-ears support, our roundup of relaxing podcasts makes a good wind-down companion.

The Small Habits That Keep Your Nervous System Calm

Here’s the throughline across every one of these Dear Media conversations: you don’t need a perfect protocol or a full day of self-care to feel better. You need a few realistic tools, used consistently, that tell your body it’s safe. Breathe. Move. Get outside. Eat in a way that steadies you. Put the phone down. Write it out. Sleep. Repeat the ones that work.

Pick two or three, try them for a week, and pay attention to how your body responds. That awareness, plus a little repetition, is how a calmer nervous system stops being a goal and starts being your baseline.

Dear Media is the network home to over 100 pop culture, entertainment, and lifestyle podcasts hosted by the creators and celebrities shaping the conversation. For more real talk like this, explore all our shows at Dear Media and come find us in person at Dear Media IRL.