The body mind connection to restore the nervous system
How tuning into your body can calm your nervous system, and the Qigong practice I use in my Tonbridge classes
Lately I have been extremely busy teaching at Kent Wellness Festival, being a finalist at TN Card Business Awards, teaching yoga at a TriSwim solstice event, leading retreats, workshops, creating experiences for my one to one offering. Staying connected to my body while in a busy month has never been so important to remain regulated for my nervous system.
Teaching Yoga Qigong at Kent Wellness Festival in June 2026.
Following your internal season
Last month I was blogging about the seasons in Qigong and how it connects us to nature. I also approached the topic of tuning in to our internal seasons. I want to expand this month a little bit on that subject. Lately in Tonbridge we had a heatwave which exposed us to unprecedented high temperatures. From last month blog, I explained summer is connected to the fire element and therefore the heart and small intestine.
But as I was preparing my classes, I felt a resistance within me to lean in the season, it was just too hot and I felt rather tired and depleted. When tuning in to my internal landscape, I realised I was in winter (water element), I was craving rest and recovery from the hot sweaty nights and that was exactly the direction I gave to my classes as a theme. Sometimes, it is not necessarily because we are in summer that internally we should feel in summer. So I invited the participants at the beginning to ground themselves and lean in to how they actually feel internally and maybe some like me where in winter but others might have felt they were in a different season and that’s okay. Too many times, we just block how we feel internally to blend in but that can create a disconnection between our body and our mind, leading to a dysregulation of the nervous system.
The nervous system, briefly
I explained in previous blogs that the nervous system has 2 parts: sympathetic nervous system also called fight or flight and parasympathetic nervous system, rest, digest. For instance the sympathetic is going from meeting to meeting and the parasympathetic is doing a savasana or guided relaxation or gazing at a flower. I was talking over the weekend with my friend Antonia and this came in the discussion as we were talking about a family member who struggled to self regulate. As it turned out, his parasympathetic nervous system was depleted. The best activities for him were the ones which were slow and encouraging him to feel how his body resonate with it.
Feeling it in the body
When restorating the body mind connection and regulating the nervous system, one of the exercises is about visualising a situation which triggers the nervous system positively or negatively and feeling where the emotion is located in the body. It can be in the throat, the heart, the chest, the solar plexus, the gut (or abdomen) or elsewhere. Then as you speak, you continue to feel the connection between what you say and where you feel it in your body. What you notice without failing is that as you talk, the feeling starts to dissipate until it disappears for good. As the Buddhists say, “nothing is permanent, everything passes”.
Research supports this. A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that developing interoceptive awareness, the ability to notice and interpret what is happening inside your body, leads to meaningful improvements in emotion regulation and reductions in psychological distress. In other words, the simple act of locating where you feel something in your body is not just useful. It is actually therapeutic.
I teach Yoga and Qigong Fusion classes weekly in Tonbridge, this is the post class glow.
The Qigong clearing practice I use in my Tonbridge classes
Lately I have been working with this concept of body mind connection in visualisation in my classes. I start by grounding the participants, they are lying down or standing up, feeling the point of contact between the body and the floor. Sending the sole of their feet and then the crown of their heads, I often refer to the connection between heaven and earth which is where we stand. Then they tune to their breath, sensing their natural rhythm. Each breathing pattern is unique to everyone they reflect the nervous system as well. Short shallow breath is a nervous system into the sympathetic nervous system. Deep, full, long breaths, is a nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system. I invite the participants to do a clearing, a traditional Qigong (*means energy practice). A clearing consists of 3 steps. First step, you bring to your mind something you want to offload. Depending on the theme, it can be something which no longer serve you or burdens your heart. I usually advise not to visualise a 10 out of 10 in terms of triggers but something milder, like a 5. Then I invite you to feel in your body as you are bringing the situation in your mind and where in your body you feel the emotion. Then you imagine you hold in the palm of each hand that memory in the form of a grey smoke. Staying connected to how you feel in the body, you start raising the hands slowly towards the sky. When the hands are up above the hands, the palms of the hands turn towards the earth and slowly start going down, We say we empty the Qi (energy) from the blockages or negative energy and you visualise grey smoke leaving your body.
Then the second step, you bring to your mind something you want more of. Again depending on the theme, it can be a memory such as your wedding, birth of a child or first pet. Then again you feel where in your body the emotion is, once you located it, you stay connected on that body mind connection and where it is in your body as you start raising the hands towards to sky. Depending on the theme, you can visualise either a golden light or silver light or any other colour in the palms of your hands as you start raising them towards the sky until they are above your head. Then again, you turn them towards the earth slowly bring them down, bringing the energy into your own.
The last step is called sealing. You seal the process you’ve just done. But rather than doing it mechanically with your hands. You tune in to your body, how you feel, where the emotion is. I also invite you to visualise where you want to be in terms of direction. As you bring the hands towards the sky, that body mind connection is fully present, then finally as with the 2 precedent practiced you lower the hands towards the ground sealing the process into your own energy or qi.
What children know that we forget
I think as we grow and need to conform, we lose that body mind connection which impacts our nervous system. I was talking with my daughter earlier as she was nervous about performing with her class in front of the parents her musical Pirates versus Mermaids. When she talked about her fear of standing in front of an audience, she could easily feel where the emotion was in her body and then I encouraged her to visualise an ideal performance and hold it in her mind. As I was asking her to feel where is the emotion was, she located it in her heart. Children are so in tune with their body but somehow, we lose that connection as we become adults.
Moving at your own rhythm
We live in a conformist society and as it keeps cohesion as a group, it has its downsides. For instance, we are so conditioned to perform the same as a group that people really struggle keeping their individuality in a class environment. Those who come to my yoga and Qigong classes in Tonbridge know how much I insist on this because if we want to balance the nervous system, it is essential to establish and lean in to your internal season. I don’t expect everyone in a class to do the same pose, that is why the options are for. I expect participants to listen to their body and choose what resonates best. You would not go to a buffet and eat everything on it, same thing here. Once the preconception of everyone should do the same thing has dropped we have the next big one which is about not doing less than others. Again, I think it relates to the fear of being excluded from the group and there is an element of competitiveness something we condition our children with the education system to an early age. That is one people often struggling with. But we can see with our eyes that people in a class have different ages, different lifestyle, maybe some slept the night before, others didn’t etc. So the concept we should move the same is completely bypassing our individualism and who we are, how we feel and our nervous system. I encourage you to breath at your rhythm as well as moving as your rhythm without judgement. My hope is that some of the moving practice might bleed into your daily life and you might start pressing the stop button when you feel resistance in your body.
Setting the tone at The Causeway Hall, Chiddingstone Causeway — ready to welcome everyone for a day's retreat.
What yoga is to me
That is what yoga is to me. Tuning in, mindfulness, awareness. Traditionally, yoga was a preparation for meditation. We say Prana (life force energy) flows where awareness goes. My wish after you read those lines is for you to develop further awareness to how you feel and where in your body that emotion is and observe it. You might be surprised by how some big emotions might dissipate when before by pushing them down you thought it would overwhelm you.
Want to experience it?
I teach weekly Yoga and Qigong classes in Tonbridge and online, along with Yin and Yoga Nidra, and offer private one-to-one sessions, retreats and workshops through the year. If you are based in Tonbridge, Hildenborough, Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells or the surrounding area and any of this resonates, I would love to welcome you. You will find all the details at www.candiceyoga.co.uk.
About Candice Machtus
Candice Machtus is a Yoga and Qigong teacher based in Tonbridge, Kent. She supports busy people to restore balance, energy and clarity through embodied movement and nervous system regulation. Find out more at www.candiceyoga.co.uk.
