Disruption or regulation?

“My Nervous System Was Disrupted”

The Funktional Journal / Movement • Nutrition • Recovery • Life

My nervous system was disrupted.

And for a while, I didn’t realize just how much of my body was responding to things my mouth wasn’t saying.

I could stretch.

I could train.

I could work.

I could show up for my clients, my children, my business and everybody who needed something from me.

But my body knew.

It knew when I was overwhelmed.

It knew when I didn’t feel safe.

It knew when I was carrying too much.

And eventually, it stopped whispering.

Then the Storm Came

Recently, an EF-2 tornado came through my area.

Power was out. My normal environment was disrupted. I found myself at my shop, in the dark, trying to navigate life, motherhood, business and everything else while still attempting to function normally.

But I wasn’t normal.

I was dysregulated.

Emotionally, I became more reactive. Things that I may have been able to process differently when grounded suddenly felt bigger. I reached for reassurance. I responded from emotion instead of stillness.

And in the middle of all of that, I lost a friendship… a connection that mattered deeply to me.

At first, I focused on the loss.

I replayed conversations.

I thought about what I could have said differently.

I thought about what I could have done differently.

But eventually I had to look beyond the relationship and look at me.

My nervous system had been through something too.

The storm outside had passed, but internally, I was still responding like I was standing in it.

My Body Started Going Backward

That’s when I noticed something interesting.

I felt tight.

Movements that had been opening started feeling restricted again.

My body didn’t feel as soft.

My range didn’t feel the same.

And emotionally, I felt like I was going backward too.

That frustrated me because I had been doing the work.

But healing taught me something important:

Progress isn’t always linear.

Sometimes your body gives you access to a new range, and then stress comes along and suddenly that range feels different.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost everything you’ve worked for.

Sometimes your body is simply responding to what you’re experiencing.

Your Body Is More Than Muscles

We often approach tightness like it’s simply a flexibility problem.

My hips are tight, so I need to stretch.

My shoulders are stiff, so I need more mobility.

My back hurts, so I need to loosen it.

Sometimes that’s part of it.

But stress can influence the way we breathe, the amount of muscular tension we’re carrying and how guarded our movement feels.

And that realization changed the way I understood my own body.

Maybe I didn’t need to punish myself for feeling tight.

Maybe I needed to recognize everything my body had just carried.

A literal storm.

Disrupted routines.

Emotional instability.

Loss.

Uncertainty.

And the pressure I placed on myself to keep functioning through all of it.

I Stopped Fighting My Body

Instead of asking:

“Why won’t my body let me go further?”

I started asking:

“What does my body need from me right now?”

Some days that meant strength.

Some days mobility.

Some days breathing.

Some days slowing everything down.

And some days the most Funktional thing I could do was rest.

I stopped treating my body like something that needed to be conquered and started treating it like something I needed to understand.

Safety Creates Softness

This became one of the biggest lessons of my healing:

Safety creates softness.

You cannot always force yourself into a new range.

Sometimes range comes when resistance decreases.

Sometimes movement changes when breathing slows.

Sometimes the body begins to soften when the moment around it feels less threatening.

And sometimes what looks like physical resistance is an invitation to pay attention to something deeper.

The tornado reminded me that regulation isn’t just about what happens during the emergency.

Sometimes the storm passes before your body realizes it’s over.

Losing Something Taught Me Something

I wish I had handled certain moments differently.

I can acknowledge that without living inside regret.

The friendship ending forced me to look at how I respond when I’m overwhelmed, how quickly I search outside myself for reassurance and what happens when my emotions become louder than my ability to regulate them.

That’s growth too.

Healing isn’t pretending I didn’t make mistakes.

Healing is understanding who I was when I made them, taking responsibility for what belongs to me and learning how to respond differently next time.

I can’t undo the storm.

I can’t undo the friendship.

But I can decide what both experiences teach me.

And I’m choosing not to go backward.

This Is Why I Teach Movement Differently

iGET FUNKTIONAL has never been about touching your toes just to say you can touch your toes.

I want movement to improve your life.

Can you reach?

Can you bend?

Can you rotate?

Can you get off the floor?

Can you carry what you need to carry?

Can you move through your day with strength, confidence and less restriction?

But now there’s another question I believe belongs in that conversation:

Can you listen when your body speaks?

Because mine was speaking.

The tightness was information.

The emotions were information.

The resistance was information.

My nervous system was disrupted, and for a moment, so was I.

But disruption doesn’t have to become your destination.

I’m finding my range again… physically and emotionally.

Not by forcing myself back to where I was.

By creating enough safety to move forward.

The body doesn’t always need to be pushed. Sometimes it needs to be heard.

That’s Funktional movement.

That’s healing through movement.

And that’s why we don’t just stretch around here.

We Stay Funktional.

Raeshoana
Founder, iGET FUNKTIONAL INC.