The Nervous System Reset

Why January Isn't About Pushing Harder

I need to tell you about what happened in a session recently.

We were three minutes into a gentle warm-up: basic breath work and spinal articulation, when my client started crying. Not subtle tears, but full-body sobs that she clearly hadn’t seen coming.

When she could speak, she said: “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s happening. We’re barely doing anything and I just... broke.”

Here’s what I knew that she didn’t: her body had been waiting for permission to release. And the gentle, intentional movement finally gave her nervous system the safety it needed to let go.

This is happening more and more in January, and it’s revealing something crucial about what our bodies actually need right now.

The Post-Holiday Nervous System Reality

Let’s talk about what your nervous system just endured:

November and December brought relational stress (family dynamics), financial stress (gift-giving and travel), temporal stress (deadlines and schedules), dietary stress (changed eating patterns), sleep stress (disrupted routines), and environmental stress (travel and different locations).

Your nervous system has been in a heightened state for eight weeks straight.

Now it’s January, and the cultural message is: push harder. Start that intense workout program. Restrict your eating. Go all-in on transformation.

This is asking your already-depleted nervous system to handle even more stress. And stress (whether it’s emotional, physical, or metabolic) all registers the same way in your body.

The research on somatic healing is exploding right now because people are finally understanding that trauma and stress register in our bodies on a cellular level. Our nervous systems hold experiences, and they need intentional support to process and release them.

January needs to be about nervous system reset.

What “Reset” Actually Means

In the fitness world, “reset” usually means starting an aggressive new program or doing a restrictive detox. But from a nervous system perspective, reset means something completely different.

Reset means helping your body transition from sympathetic dominance (fight-or-flight) back to parasympathetic function (rest-and-digest). It means creating safety in your body so it can finally relax the protective tension it’s been holding.

This happens through:

Gentle, intentional movement: Not intense exercise that adds stress, but movement that helps your nervous system regulate.

Breath work: Conscious breathing directly influences your autonomic nervous system and is one of the fastest ways to shift from stressed to calm states.

Somatic awareness: Learning to notice and respond to your body’s signals rather than override them.

Progressive challenge: Gradually increasing demand in a way that builds capacity rather than depletes reserves.

Notice what’s not on that list: intense bootcamps, aggressive calorie restriction, or punishment-based fitness.

The Somatic Movement Revolution

There’s a reason somatic healing is one of the biggest wellness trends right now.