Every practitioner needs to become nervous system-trained.

On June 13, Indy, Ivy and I flew out from Brisbane headed for Los Angeles, excited to connect with our students and meet new people. We had four incredible events in San Diego, Denver, Austin and Phoenix.

One of the most meaningful parts of this journey was finally meeting students I've known since 2018 face-to-face. After years of virtual connections, being able to hug people who have been part of our community for so long was incredibly moving. There's something magical about seeing the real-world impact of this work through the practitioners who've been applying these principles in their communities for some time.

During those five weeks, I connected with hundreds of coaches, clinicians, and nervous system practitioners. From city to city, I heard the same compelling message: there's been a piece missing.

Here's what I learned: there's a place for every practitioner to become nervous system-trained.

Maybe you're familiar with this scenario: your clients visit one practitioner for digestive issues, another for anxiety, and ask their doctor for sleep medication. They have ongoing physical pain too. This siloed approach isn't serving our clients because what appears as separate symptoms is often interconnected through the nervous system.

• The gut-brain connection means digestive issues can't be fully addressed without considering stress patterns.
• Sleep disturbances often stem from an overactive sympathetic nervous system.
• Chronic pain frequently involves both physical and neurological components that maintain each other in complex feedback loops or the neuroimmune system.

When practitioners work in isolation, they miss the underlying nervous system dysregulation that links these seemingly separate conditions. A client might get temporary relief from individual treatments, but without addressing the foundational nervous system patterns, they often cycle back to the same issues. The anxiety returns, the digestive problems persist, the sleep remains disrupted—because the root cause hasn't been addressed.

This fragmented approach leaves gaps that nervous system training can bridge—not by practicing outside your scope, but by integrating foundational principles into your existing practice. Whether you work with the body through massage, movement, or manual therapy, or focus on cognitive approaches through counseling or coaching, a vital piece is often missing when it comes to nervous system regulation.

If you support people stuck in freeze, dissociation, or burnout, you know that bottom-up interventions can regulate what mindset strategies and education alone can't reach. Without foundational sensory system work first, your other strategies don't land. You can teach breathing techniques, but if the nervous system is locked in a protective state, those techniques won't create lasting change.

The Solution: A Nervous System-Informed Framework

What we need is a comprehensive framework that brings everything together while honoring the sensory system hierarchy. This hierarchy recognizes that our most primitive sensory systems—the ones that detect safety and threat—must be regulated before higher-level interventions can be effective.

The interoceptive system (our internal body awareness) needs to be online before we can effectively process emotions. The vestibular system (balance and spatial orientation) must be stable before we can feel grounded enough for cognitive work. The proprioceptive system (body position awareness) needs to be integrated before movement-based interventions can create lasting change.

When we understand this hierarchy, we can sequence our interventions more effectively. Instead of jumping straight to cognitive strategies or advanced techniques, we start with foundational sensory system support that creates the neurological conditions for everything else to work.

The nervous system is the communication pathway between brain and body—and no single profession owns this work. Your clients need a more holistic approach that integrates nervous system principles into whatever modality you already provide. This framework doesn't compete with existing approaches; it enhances them by providing the foundational platform that makes all other interventions more effective.

Becoming nervous system-trained doesn't mean leaving your expertise—it means enhancing it with the foundational knowledge that makes everything else more effective. When practitioners understand how to work with the sensory system hierarchy, they can create the optimal conditions for healing, regardless of their specific modality.

Nervous system training is so often the missing piece of the puzzle.