“Nervous System Mapping with Marissa was revelatory—both expansive and clarifying.”
This workshop teaches you how to work with rather than against your brilliant nervous system.
Your nervous system is a vital part of an evolutionary, biological technology that keeps you alive and thriving.
It does this through prioritizing survival, adaptation and connection.
When we feel unsafe, our nervous systems will always choose protection over growth, because of this hardwire to survive.
Yet we are also hardwired for joy, pleasure, healthy risk and nourishing relationships.
Due to trauma, chronic stress and systems of oppression—our wires sometimes get crossed. The discerned threads of what is a true threat and what is not gets knotted up into a ball of being stuck in a nervous system state of having the gas and the brakes on at the same time.
Our nervous systems are designed to prioritize adaptation and safety. When you don’t feel safe, your nervous system will always choose protection over growth, because you are wired to survive.
Nervous System Mapping
Nervous System Mapping helps you visualize, feel and name the invisible architecture of your embodied experience—transforming unconscious reactions into conscious choices while creating a personalized roadmap for regulation, authentic expression, and deeper connection.
Bring your art supplies because you are going to create an actual map of your nervous system!
“With the ability to recognize a moment of distress and notice the autonomic state, we move into a moment of awareness instead of simply being swept deeper into dysregulation.”
This Workshop Will Cover:
🪟 Your Window of Capacity
How it feels to be in your Window of Capacity, how to recognize when you’ve left it, moving into hyper-arousal (fight/flight) or hypo-arousal (freeze, shut-down), and how to get back into your range of resilience.
🎼 Cultivating Nervous System
Resilience
In the right conditions your nervous system is primed to move through stress and challenge with the ability to return to a baseline of balance once the stress has passed. In this context, stress and challenge are actually beneficial to our health and wellbeing.
🦄 Myths & Misunderstandings About Your Nervous System
Contrary to popular belief, your nervous system doesn’t always need to calm down. All of our nervous system states are adaptive and necessary. Through deepening our understanding, we grow our capacity to move through the states with fluidity and choice.
🫀 Polyvagal Theory
& the Physiology of the Vagus Nerve
Your nervous system is not an abstract concept, it lives in the same place you do—your body. In some ways, your nervous system is you. Polyvagal theory and the Vagus Nerve offer us a tangible pathway to integrate an understanding of our nervous systems so that we can have more freedom in our lives.
🗺 Mapping Your Nervous
System
We will begin with theory but we will make it applicable through going into the creative practice of your making your very own nervous system map which will allow you to understand, through the body (not just the mind), how each of the nervous system states we are learning about happen for you.
🫂 The Social Nervous System
We all exist in relationship of some kind. We all came from other humans who came from other humans. We were all raised and shaped by our primary caregivers, our culture and our society. We are deeply social creatures, our nervous systems are powerfully influenced by our relationships and our environments. This is a key piece of understanding how to work with our nervous systems.
After this workshop, you may notice that you…
Are responding to old feelings in new ways.
Catch yourself before spiraling into overwhelm or shutdown.
Respond to conflict with coherence rather than reactivity.
Soften your inner critic and speak to yourself with more compassion.
Bounce back from stress more quickly and with less impact.
Make decisions from grounded knowing rather than fear or urgency.
Find more moment of presence, joy and pleasure in your day.
Are nurturing a nervous system that can hold both rest and expansion.
Feel less stuck and more in flow with your natural rhythm.
“I just finished the recording of your workshop and wanted to share with you how incredibly interesting and profound it was! I’ve learned so much not only through all the detailed and on point information but also through your embodiment of what you’re sharing and my own experience with the mapping part. Thank you SO MUCH for this gift! I’m truly grateful and wish you all the best.”
This workshop is about…
〰 Nurturing understanding to increase your capacity for awareness and grow your access to choice.
〰 Working with rather than against the innate evolutionary intelligence of your nervous system.
〰 Compassionate understanding to foster an internal environment of safety and allow your nervous system to move towards its natural state of thriving.
〰 Becoming more emotionally intelligent and embodied.
〰 Feeling empowered, even when you are triggered.
〰 Transforming a lifetime of feeling out of control and overwhelmed by your feelings.
〰 Getting to make choices in alignment with growth rather than protection.
〰 Deepening into relationship with ourselves so that we can deepen into relationship with others.
〰 Staying in connection with ourselves when we feel activated.
This workshop is not about…
〰 Being perfectly calm or “regulated” all of the time.
〰 Controlling our nervous systems through “mind over matter”.
〰 Criticizing our natural nervous system states.
〰 Depersonalized and disconnected understanding of the nervous system.
〰 Valuing certain nervous system states over others.
〰 Learning abstract theory without practical application.
〰 Increasing alienation from our own bodies.